To elucidate the magnetic structure and the origin of the nematicity in FeSe, we perform a high-pressure ${}^{77}\mathrm{Se}$ NMR study on FeSe single crystals. We find a suppression of the structural transition temperature with pressure up to about 2 GPa from the anisotropy of the Knight shift. Above 2 GPa, a stripe-order antiferromagnetism that breaks the spatial fourfold rotational symmetry is determined by the NMR spectra under different field orientations and with temperatures down to 50 mK. The magnetic phase transition is revealed to be first-order type, implying the existence of a concomitant structural transition via a spin-lattice coupling. Stripe-type spin fluctuations are observed at high temperatures, and remain strong with pressure. These results provide clear evidence for strong coupling between nematicity and magnetism in FeSe, and therefore support a universal scenario of magnetic driven nematicity in iron-based superconductors.

The Belitz-Kirkpatrick-Vojta (BKV) theory shows in excellent agreement with experiment that ferromagnetic quantum phase transitions (QPTs) in clean metals are generally first order due to the coupling of the magnetization to electronic soft modes, in contrast to the classical analogue that is an archetypical second-order phase transition. For disordered metals the BKV theory predicts that the second-order nature of the QPT is restored because the electronic soft modes change their nature from ballistic to diffusive. Our low-temperature magnetization study identifies the ferromagnetic QPT in the disordered metal ${\mathrm{UCo}}_{1-x}{\mathrm{Fe}}_x\mathrm{Ge}$ as the first clear example that exhibits the associated critical exponents predicted by the BKV theory.

The complex electronic properties of ${\mathrm{ZrTe}}_5$ have recently stimulated in-depth investigations that assigned this material to either a topological insulator or a 3D Dirac semimetal phase. Here we report a comprehensive experimental and theoretical study of both electronic and structural properties of ${\mathrm{ZrTe}}_5$, revealing that the bulk material is a strong topological insulator (STI). By means of angle-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy, we identify at the top of the valence band both a surface and a bulk state. The dispersion of these bands is well captured by ab initio calculations for the STI case, for the specific interlayer distance measured in our x-ray diffraction study. Furthermore, these findings are supported by scanning tunneling spectroscopy revealing the metallic character of the sample surface, thus confirming the strong topological nature of ${\mathrm{ZrTe}}_5$.

Molecular dynamics simulations are used to provide strong evidence for barrier-free nucleation events in a heterogeneous solid-solid system. The barrier-free events are characterized by an absence of an incubation time and a growth rate of the emerging phase that is independent of the system size. Furthermore, an analysis of the size and shape of the critical nucleus using the Winterbottom construction indicates that no solution exists for these barrier-free cases. We propose that barrier-free nucleation, which will have a profound effect on phase transformation kinetics, may be a general phenomenon for any polycrystalline material.

We propose a model solely based on actin treadmilling and polymerization which describes many characteristic states of actin-wave formation: spots, spirals, and traveling waves. In our model, as in experiments on cells recovering motility following actin depolymerization, we choose an isotropic low-density initial condition; polymerization of actin filaments then raises the density towards the Onsager threshold where they align. We show that this alignment, in turn, destabilizes the isotropic phase and generically induces transient actin spots or spirals as part of the dynamical pathway towards a polarized phase which can either be uniform or consist of a series of actin-wave trains (flocks). Our results uncover a universal route to actin-wave formation in the absence of any system-specific nonlinear biochemistry, and it may help to understand the mechanism underlying the observation of actin spots and waves in vivo. They also suggest a minimal setup to design similar patterns in vitro.

In biology, template-directed copolymerization is the fundamental mechanism responsible for the synthesis of DNA, RNA, and proteins. More than 50 years have passed since the discovery of DNA structure and its role in coding genetic information. Yet, the kinetics and thermodynamics of information processing in DNA replication, transcription, and translation remain poorly understood. Challenging issues are the facts that DNA or RNA sequences constitute disordered media for the motion of polymerases or ribosomes while errors occur in copying the template. Here, it is shown that these issues can be addressed and sequence heterogeneity effects can be quantitatively understood within a framework revealing universal aspects of information processing at the molecular scale. In steady growth regimes, the local velocities of polymerases or ribosomes along the template are distributed as the continuous or fractal invariant set of a so-called iterated function system, which determines the copying error probabilities. The growth may become sublinear in time with a scaling exponent that can also be deduced from the iterated function system.

The weak-value-based metrology is very promising and has attracted a lot of attention in recent years because of its remarkable ability in signal amplification. However, it is suggested that the upper limit of the precision of this metrology cannot exceed that of classical metrology because of the low sample size caused by the probe loss during postselection. Nevertheless, a recent proposal shows that this probe loss can be reduced by the power-recycling technique, and thus enhance the precision of weak-value-based metrology. Here we experimentally realize the power-recycled interferometric weak-value-based beam-deflection measurement and obtain the amplitude of the detected signal and white noise by discrete Fourier transform. Our results show that the detected signal can be strengthened by power recycling, and the power-recycled weak-value-based signal-to-noise ratio can surpass the upper limit of the classical scheme, corresponding to the shot-noise limit. This work sheds light on higher precision metrology and explores the real advantage of the weak-value-based metrology over classical metrology.

The most precise top quark mass measurements use kinematic reconstruction methods, determining the top mass parameter of a Monte Carlo event generator $m_t^{\mathrm{MC}}$. Because of hadronization and parton-shower dynamics, relating $m_t^{\mathrm{MC}}$ to a field theory mass is difficult. We present a calibration procedure to determine this relation using hadron level QCD predictions for observables with kinematic mass sensitivity. Fitting $e^{+}{e}^{-}$ 2-jettiness calculations at next-to-leading-logarithmic and next-to-next-to-leading-logarithmic order to pythia 8.205, $m_t^{\mathrm{MC}}$ differs from the pole mass by 900 and 600 MeV, respectively, and agrees with the MSR mass within uncertainties, $m_t^{\mathrm{MC}}\simeq m_{t,1\mathrm{GeV}}^{\mathrm{MSR}}$.

We present pump-probe measurements of an all-optical photonic crystal switch based on a nanocavity, resolving fast coherent temporal dynamics. The measurements demonstrate the importance of coherent effects typically neglected when considering nanocavity dynamics. In particular, we report the observation of an idler pulse and more than 10 dB parametric gain. The measurements are in good agreement with a theoretical model that ascribes the observation to oscillations of the free-carrier population in the nanocavity. The effect opens perspectives for the realization of new all-optical photonic crystal switches with unprecedented switching contrast.

Bluff bodies moving in a fluid experience a drag force which usually increases with velocity. However in a particular velocity range a drag crisis is observed, i.e., a sharp and strong decrease of the drag force. This counterintuitive result is well characterized for a sphere or a cylinder. Here we show that, for an object breaking the up-down symmetry, a lift crisis is observed simultaneously to the drag crisis. The term lift crisis refers to the fact that at constant incidence the time-averaged transverse force, which remains small or even negative at low velocity, transitions abruptly to large positive values above a critical flow velocity. This transition is characterized from direct force measurements as well as from change in the velocity field around the obstacle.

We report on the single-shot readout of three two-electron spin states—a singlet and two triplet substates—whose $z$ components of spin angular momentum are 0 and $+1$, in a gate-defined GaAs single quantum dot. The three spin states are distinguished by detecting spin-dependent tunnel rates that arise from two mechanisms: spin filtering by spin-resolved edge states and spin-orbital correlation with orbital-dependent tunneling. The three states form one ground state and two excited states, and we observe the spin relaxation dynamics among the three spin states.

We theoretically study the motion of a magnetic domain wall induced by transverse elastic waves in a one-dimensional magnetic wire, which respects both rotational and translational symmetries. By invoking the conservation of the associated total angular and linear momenta, we are able to derive the torque and the force on the domain wall exerted by the waves. We then show how ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic domain walls can be driven by circularly and linearly polarized waves, respectively. We envision that elastic waves may provide effective means to drive the dynamics of magnetic solitons in insulators.

We experimentally show that nonlocality can be produced from single-particle contextuality by using two-particle correlations which do not violate any Bell inequality by themselves. This demonstrates that nonlocality can come from an a priori different simpler phenomenon, and connects contextuality and nonlocality, the two critical resources for, respectively, quantum computation and secure communication. From the perspective of quantum information, our experiment constitutes a proof of principle that quantum systems can be used simultaneously for both quantum computation and secure communication.

Trapped ions are a promising tool for building a large-scale quantum computer. However, the number of required radiation fields for the realization of quantum gates in any proposed ion-based architecture scales with the number of ions within the quantum computer, posing a major obstacle when imagining a device with millions of ions. Here, we present a fundamentally different approach for trapped-ion quantum computing where this detrimental scaling vanishes. The method is based on individually controlled voltages applied to each logic gate location to facilitate the actual gate operation analogous to a traditional transistor architecture within a classical computer processor. To demonstrate the key principle of this approach we implement a versatile quantum gate method based on long-wavelength radiation and use this method to generate a maximally entangled state of two quantum engineered clock qubits with fidelity 0.985(12). This quantum gate also constitutes a simple-to-implement tool for quantum metrology, sensing, and simulation.

We derive fundamental constraints for the Schur complement of positive matrices, which provide an operator strengthening to recently established information inequalities for quantum covariance matrices, including strong subadditivity. This allows us to prove general results on the monogamy of entanglement and steering quantifiers in continuous variable systems with an arbitrary number of modes per party. A powerful hierarchical relation for correlation measures based on the log-determinant of covariance matrices is further established for all Gaussian states, which has no counterpart among quantities based on the conventional von Neumann entropy.

Dynamic nuclear polarization (DNP) is an attractive method for initializing nuclear spins that are strongly coupled to optically active electron spins because it functions at room temperature and does not require strong magnetic fields. In this Letter, we theoretically demonstrate that DNP, with near-unity polarization efficiency, can be generally realized in weakly coupled electron spin-nuclear spin systems. Furthermore, we theoretically and experimentally show that the nuclear spin polarization can be reversed by magnetic field variations as small as 0.8 Gauss. This mechanism offers new avenues for DNP-based sensors and radio-frequency free control of nuclear qubits.