In order to investigate the long-term dimensional stability of matter, we have operated an optical resonator fabricated from crystalline silicon at 1.5 K continuously for over one year and repeatedly compared its resonance frequency $f_{\mathrm{res}}$ with the frequency of a GPS-monitored hydrogen maser. After allowing for an initial settling time, over a 163-day interval we found a mean fractional drift magnitude $|f_{\mathrm{res}}^{-1}d{f}_{\mathrm{res}}/dt|<1.4\times {10}^{-20}/\mathrm{s}$. The resonator frequency is determined by the physical length and the speed of light and we measure it with respect to the atomic unit of time. Thus the bound rules out, to first order, a hypothetical differential effect of the Universe’s expansion on rulers and atomic clocks. We also constrain a hypothetical violation of the principle of local position invariance for resonator-based clocks and derive bounds for the strength of space-time fluctuations.

We propose a new method to search for hypothetical scalar particles that have feeble interactions with standard-model particles. In the presence of massive bodies, these interactions produce a nonzero Yukawa-type scalar-field magnitude. Using radio-frequency spectroscopy data of atomic dysprosium, as well as atomic clock spectroscopy data, we constrain the Yukawa-type interactions of a scalar field with the photon, electron, and nucleons for a range of scalar-particle masses corresponding to length scales $>10\mathrm{cm}$. In the limit as the scalar-particle mass $m_{\varphi }\to 0$, our derived limits on the Yukawa-type interaction parameters are ${\mathrm{\Lambda }}_{\gamma }\gtrsim 8\times 10^{19}\mathrm{GeV}$, ${\mathrm{\Lambda }}_e\gtrsim 1.3\times 10^{19}\mathrm{GeV}$, and ${\mathrm{\Lambda }}_N\gtrsim 6\times 10^{20}\mathrm{GeV}$. Our measurements also constrain combinations of interaction parameters, which cannot otherwise be probed with traditional anomalous-force measurements. We suggest further measurements to improve on the current level of sensitivity.

Using color-kinematics duality, we construct for the first time the full integrand of the five-loop Sudakov form factor in $\mathcal{N}=4$ super-Yang-Mills theory, including nonplanar contributions. This result also provides a first manifestation of the color-kinematics duality at five loops. The integrand is explicitly ultraviolet finite when $D<26/5$, coincident with the known finiteness bound for amplitudes. If the double-copy method could be applied to the form factor, this would indicate an interesting ultraviolet finiteness bound for $\mathcal{N}=8$ supergravity at five loops. The result is also expected to provide an essential input for computing the five-loop nonplanar cusp anomalous dimension.

Appropriately designed optomechanical devices are ideal for making ultra-sensitive measurements. Here we report a fused-silica microspike that supports a flexural resonance with a quality factor greater than 100 000 at room temperature in vacuum. Fashioned by tapering single-mode fiber (SMF), it is designed so that the core-guided optical mode in the SMF evolves adiabatically into the fundamental mode of the air-glass waveguide at the tip. The very narrow mechanical linewidth (20 mHz) makes it possible to measure extremely small changes in resonant frequency. In a vacuum chamber at low pressure, the weak optical absorption of the glass is sufficient to create a temperature gradient along the microspike, which causes it to act as a microscopic Knudsen pump, driving a flow of gas molecules towards the tip where the temperature is highest. The result is a circulating molecular flow within the chamber. Momentum exchange between the vibrating microspike and the flowing molecules causes an additional restoring force that can be measured as a tiny shift in the resonant frequency. The effect is strongest when the mean free path of the gas molecules is comparable with the dimensions of the vacuum chamber. The system offers a novel means of monitoring the behavior of weakly absorbing optomechanical sensors operating in vacuum.

We calculate the energetic structure of defect cores and propose controlled methods to imprint a nontrivially entangled vortex pair that undergoes non-Abelian vortex reconnection in a biaxial nematic spin-2 condensate. For a singular vortex, we find three superfluid cores in addition to depletion of the condensate density. These exhibit order parameter symmetries that are different from the discrete symmetry of the biaxial nematic phase, forming an interface between the defect and the bulk superfluid. We provide a detailed analysis of phase mixing in the resulting vortex cores and find an instability dependent upon the orientation of the order parameter. We further show that the spin-2 condensate is a promising system for observing spontaneous deformation of a point defect into an “Alice ring” that has so far avoided experimental detection.

We report on a novel dynamic phase in electrical networks, in which current channels perpetually change in time. This occurs when the elementary units of the network are fuse-antifuse devices, namely, become insulators within a certain finite interval of local applied voltages. As a consequence, the macroscopic current exhibits temporal fluctuations which increase with system size. We determine the conditions under which this exotic situation appears by establishing a phase diagram as a function of the applied field and the size of the insulating window. Besides its obvious application as a versatile electronic device, due to its rich variety of behaviors, this network model provides a possible description for particle-laden flow through porous media leading to dynamical clogging and reopening of the local channels in the pore space.

We explicitly calculate the free-energy barrier for the initial proton abstraction in the water splitting reaction at rutile ${\mathrm{TiO}}_2(110)$ through ab initio molecular dynamics. Combining solid-state embedding, an energy based reaction coordinate and state-of-the-art free-energy reconstruction techniques renders the calculation tractable at the hybrid density-functional theory level. The obtained free-energy barrier of approximately 0.2 eV, depending slightly on the orientation of the first acceptor water molecule, suggests a hindered reaction on the pristine rutile surface.

Charge transport in disordered organic semiconductors is generally described as a result of incoherent hopping between localized states. In this work, we focus on multicomponent emissive host-guest layers as used in organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs), and show using multiscale ab initio based modeling that charge transport can be significantly enhanced by the coherent process of molecular superexchange. Superexchange increases the rate of emitter-to-emitter hopping, in particular if the emitter molecules act as relatively deep trap states, and allows for percolation path formation in charge transport at low guest concentrations.

Mach-Zehnder interferometry has been proposed as a probe for detecting the statistics of anyonic quasiparticles in fractional quantum Hall (FQH) states. Here, we focus on interferometers made of multimode edge states with upstream modes. We find that the interference visibility is suppressed due to downstream-upstream mode entanglement; the latter serves as a “which path” detector to the downstream interfering trajectories. Our analysis tackles a concrete realization of a filling factor of $\nu =2/3$, but its applicability goes beyond that specific case, and encompasses the recent observation of the ubiquitous emergence of upstream neutral modes in FQH states. The latter, according to our analysis, goes hand in hand with the failure to observe Mach-Zehnder anyonic interference in fractional states. We point out how charge-neutral mode disentanglement will resuscitate the interference signal.

We use neutron scattering to study magnetic excitations near the antiferromagnetic wave vector in the underdoped single-layer cuprate ${\mathrm{HgBa}}_2{\mathrm{CuO}}_{4+\delta }$ (superconducting transition temperature $T_c\approx 88\mathrm{K}$, pseudogap temperature $T^{*}\approx 220\mathrm{K}$). The response is distinctly enhanced below $T^{*}$ and exhibits a $Y$-shaped dispersion in the pseudogap state, whereas the superconducting state features an $X$-shaped (hourglass) dispersion and a further resonancelike enhancement. A large spin gap of about 40 meV is observed in both states. This phenomenology is reminiscent of that exhibited by bilayer cuprates. The resonance spectral weight, irrespective of doping and compound, scales linearly with the putative binding energy of a spin exciton described by an itinerant-spin formalism.

When the collective coupling of the rovibrational states in organic molecules and confined electromagnetic modes is sufficiently strong, the system enters into vibrational strong coupling, leading to the formation of hybrid light-matter quasiparticles. In this Letter, we demonstrate theoretically how this hybridization in combination with stimulated Raman scattering can be utilized to widen the capabilities of Raman laser devices. We explore the conditions under which the lasing threshold can be diminished and the system can be transformed into an optical parametric oscillator. Finally, we show how the dramatic reduction of the many final molecular states into two collective excitations can be used to create an all-optical switch with output in the midinfrared.

We revisit the hypothesis of a possible line structure in the Hawking evaporation spectrum of black holes. Because of nonperturbative quantum gravity effects, this would take place arbitrarily far away from the Planck mass. We show, based on a speculative but consistent hypothesis, that this naive prediction might in fact hold in the specific context of loop quantum gravity. A small departure from the ideal case is expected for some low-spin transitions and could allow us to distinguish several quantum gravity models. We also show that the effect is not washed out by the dynamics of the process, by the existence of a mass spectrum up to a given width, or by the secondary component induced by the decay of neutral pions emitted during the time-integrated evaporation.

Diffusive shock acceleration (DSA) of ions occurs due to pitch-angle diffusion in the upstream and downstream regions of the shock and multiple crossing of the shock by these ions. The classical DSA theory implies continuity of the distribution at the shock transition and predicts a universal spectrum of accelerated particles, depending only on the ratio of the upstream and downstream fluid speeds. However, the ion dynamics at the shock front occurs within a collision-free region and is gyrophase dependent. The ions fluxes have to be continuous at the shock front. The matching conditions for the gyrophase-averaged distribution functions at the shock transition are formulated in terms of the transition and reflection probabilities. These probabilities depend on the shock angle and the magnetic compression as does the power spectrum of accelerated ions. Their spectral index is expressed in terms of the reflectivity. The spectrum is typically harder than the spectrum predicted by the classical DSA theory.

When applying two counterpropagating laser beams to a cold cloud of rubidium atoms, we observe the spontaneous formation of intensity patterns associated with a spatial structuration of the atomic spins. We study the average number of defects in these patterns as a function of the sweep time employed to cross the instability threshold. We observe a power-law decrease of the number of defects with increasing sweep time, typical of the Kibble-Zurek mechanism. The measured exponent is consistent with the prediction for a supercritical bifurcation.

We report a systematic lattice dynamics study of ${\mathrm{EuSi}}_2$ films and nanoislands by in situ nuclear inelastic scattering on ${}^{151}\mathrm{Eu}$ and ab initio theory. The Eu-partial phonon density of states of the nanoislands exhibits anomalous excess of phonon states at low and high energies, not present in the bulk and at the ${\mathrm{EuSi}}_2(001)$ surface. We demonstrate that atomic vibrations along the island-substrate interface give rise to phonon states both at low and high energies, while atomic vibrations across the island-island interface result in localized high-energy phonon modes.

We report a combined grazing incidence x-ray diffraction (GIXD), scanning tunneling microscopy (STM), and density-functional theory (DFT) study which clearly elucidates the atomic structure of the Si nanoribbons grown on the missing-row reconstructed Ag(110) surface. Our study allows us to discriminate between the theoretical models published in the literature, including the most stable atomic configurations and those based on a missing-row reconstructed Ag(110) surface. GIXD measurements unambiguously validate the pentamer model grown on the reconstructed surface, obtained from DFT. This pentamer atomistic model accurately matches the high-resolution STM images of the Si nanoribbons adsorbed on Ag(110). Our study closes the long-debated atomic structure of the Si nanoribbons grown on Ag(110) and definitively excludes a honeycomb structure similar to that of freestanding silicene.

The energy band structure of graphene has two inequivalent valleys at the $K$ and $K^{\prime }$ points of the Brillouin zone. The possibility to manipulate this valley degree of freedom defines the field of valleytronics, the valley analogue of spintronics. A key requirement for valleytronic devices is the ability to break the valley degeneracy by filtering and spatially splitting valleys to generate valley polarized currents. Here, we suggest a way to obtain valley polarization using strain-induced inhomogeneous pseudomagnetic fields (PMFs) that act oppositely on the two valleys. Notably, the suggested method does not involve external magnetic fields, or magnetic materials, unlike previous proposals. In our proposal the strain is due to experimentally feasible nanobubbles, whose associated PMFs lead to different real space trajectories for $K$ and $K^{\prime }$ electrons, thus allowing the two valleys to be addressed individually. In this way, graphene nanobubbles can be exploited in both valley filtering and valley splitting devices, and our simulations reveal that a number of different functionalities are possible depending on the deformation field.