We construct ensembles of random scalar potentials for $N_f$-interacting scalar fields using nonequilibrium random matrix theory, and use these to study the generation of observables during small-field inflation. For $N_f=\mathcal{O}(\mathrm{few})$, these heavily featured scalar potentials give rise to power spectra that are highly nonlinear, at odds with observations. For $N_f\gg 1$, the superhorizon evolution of the perturbations is generically substantial, yet the power spectra simplify considerably and become more predictive, with most realizations being well approximated by a linear power spectrum. This provides proof of principle that complex inflationary physics can give rise to simple emergent power spectra. We explain how these results can be understood in terms of large $N_f$ universality of random matrix theory.

When ultralight axion dark matter encounters a static magnetic field, it sources an effective electric current that follows the magnetic field lines and oscillates at the axion Compton frequency. We propose a new experiment to detect this axion effective current. In the presence of axion dark matter, a large toroidal magnet will act like an oscillating current ring, whose induced magnetic flux can be measured by an external pickup loop inductively coupled to a SQUID magnetometer. We consider both resonant and broadband readout circuits and show that a broadband approach has advantages at small axion masses. We estimate the reach of this design, taking into account the irreducible sources of noise, and demonstrate potential sensitivity to axionlike dark matter with masses in the range of ${10}^{-14}\text{−}{10}^{-6}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{V}$. In particular, both the broadband and resonant strategies can probe the QCD axion with a GUT-scale decay constant.

We present a first-principles study of anomaly induced transport phenomena by performing real-time lattice simulations with dynamical fermions coupled simultaneously to non-Abelian $SU(N_c)$ and Abelian $U(1)$ gauge fields. Investigating the behavior of vector and axial currents during a sphaleron transition in the presence of an external magnetic field, we demonstrate how the interplay of the chiral magnetic and chiral separation effect leads to the formation of a propagating wave. We further analyze the dependence of the magnitude of the induced vector current and the propagation of the wave on the amount of explicit chiral symmetry breaking due to finite quark masses.

We analyze the emergence of correlated optical phenomena in the transmission of light through a waveguide that confines classical or ultracold quantum degenerate atomic ensembles. The conditions of the correlated collective response are identified in terms of atom density, thermal broadening, and photon losses by using stochastic Monte Carlo simulations and transfer matrix methods of transport theory. We also calculate the “cooperative Lamb shift” for the waveguide transmission resonance, and discuss line shifts that are specific to effectively one-dimensional waveguide systems.

The crucial role of hydrodynamic pinch-off instabilities is evidenced in the coarsening stage of viscous liquids. The phase separation of a barium borosilicate glass melt is studied by in situ synchrotron tomography at high temperature. The high viscosity contrast between the less viscous phase and the more viscous phase induces a topological symmetry breaking: capillary breakups occur preferentially in the less viscous phase. As a result, contrasting morphologies are obtained in the two phases. This symmetry breaking is illustrated on three different glass compositions, corresponding to different volume fractions of the two phases. In particular, a fragmentation phenomenon, reminiscent of the end-pinching mechanism proposed by Stone and co-workers is evidenced in the less viscous phase.

It is known that individual metal atoms on insulating ionic films can occur in several different (meta)stable charge states, which can be reversibly switched in a controlled fashion. Here we show that the diffusion of gold adatoms on NaCl thin films depends critically on their charge state. Surprisingly, the anionic species has a lower diffusion barrier than the neutral one. Furthermore, for the former we observe that the diffusion atop a bilayer of NaCl is strongly influenced by the interface between NaCl and the underlying copper substrate. This effect disappears for a trilayer of NaCl. These observations open the prospect of controlling the diffusion properties of individual metal atoms on thin insulating films.

Since their discovery, topological insulators are expected to be ideal spintronic materials owing to the spin currents carried by surface states with spin-momentum locking. However, the bulk doping problem remains an obstacle that hinders such an application. In this work, we predict that a newly discovered family of topological materials, the Weyl semimetals, exhibits a large intrinsic spin Hall effect that can be utilized to generate and detect spin currents. Our ab initio calculations reveal a large spin Hall conductivity in the TaAs family of Weyl materials. Considering the low charge conductivity of semimetals, Weyl semimetals are believed to present a larger spin Hall angle (the ratio of the spin Hall conductivity over the charge conductivity) than that of conventional spin Hall systems such as the $4d$ and $5d$ transition metals. The spin Hall effect originates intrinsically from the bulk band structure of Weyl semimetals, which exhibit a large Berry curvature and spin-orbit coupling, so the bulk carrier problem in the topological insulators is naturally avoided. Our work not only paves the way for employing Weyl semimetals in spintronics, but also proposes a new guideline for searching for the spin Hall effect in various topological materials.

We theoretically propose that giant magnetochiral anisotropy is achieved in Weyl semimetals in noncentrosymmetric crystals as a consequence of the chiral anomaly. The magnetochiral anisotropy is the nonlinearity of the resistivity $\rho$ that depends on the current $\mathit{I}$ and the magnetic field $\mathit{B}$ as $\rho ={\rho }_0(1+\gamma \mathit{I}·\mathit{B})$, and can be applied to rectifier devices controlled by $\mathit{B}$. We derive the formula for the coefficient $\gamma$ in noncentrosymmetric Weyl semimetals. The obtained formula for $\gamma$ shows that the magnetochiral anisotropy is strongly enhanced when the chemical potential is tuned to Weyl points, and that noncentrosymmetric Weyl semimetals such as TaAs can exhibit much larger magnetochiral anisotropy than that observed in other materials so far.

We propose a dynamical scheme for measuring the full-counting statistics in a mesoscopic conductor using an electronic Mach-Zehnder interferometer. The conductor couples capacitively to one arm of the interferometer and causes a phase shift which is proportional to the number of transferred charges. Importantly, the full-counting statistics can be obtained from average current measurements at the outputs of the interferometer. The counting field can be controlled by varying the time delay between two separate voltage signals applied to the conductor and the interferometer, respectively. As a specific application, we consider measuring the entanglement entropy generated by partitioning electrons on a quantum point contact. Our scheme is robust against moderate environmental dephasing and may be realized thanks to recent advances in gigahertz quantum electronics.

Generating and detecting a prescribed single-electron state is an important step towards solid-state fermion optics. We propose how to generate an electron in a Gaussian state, using a quantum-dot pump with gigahertz operation and realistic parameters. With the help of a strong magnetic field, the electron occupies a coherent state in the pump, insensitive to the details of nonadiabatic evolution. The state changes during the emission from the pump, governed by competition between the Landauer-Buttiker traversal time and the passage time. When the former is much shorter than the latter, the emitted state is a Gaussian wave packet. The Gaussian packet can be identified by using a dynamical potential barrier, with a resolution reaching the Heisenberg minimal uncertainty $\hslash /2$.

Resonant inelastic x-ray scattering is used to investigate the electronic origin of orbital polarization in nickelate heterostructures taking ${\mathrm{LaTiO}}_3-{\mathrm{LaNiO}}_3-3\times (\mathrm{LaA}\mathrm{l}{\mathrm{O}}_3)$, a system with exceptionally large polarization, as a model system. We find that heterostructuring generates only minor changes in the Ni $3d$ orbital energy levels, contradicting the often-invoked picture in which changes in orbital energy levels generate orbital polarization. Instead, O $K$-edge x-ray absorption spectroscopy demonstrates that orbital polarization is caused by an anisotropic reconstruction of the oxygen ligand hole states. This provides an explanation for the limited success of theoretical predictions based on tuning orbital energy levels and implies that future theories should focus on anisotropic hybridization as the most effective means to drive large changes in electronic structure and realize novel emergent phenomena.

We combined high field optical spectroscopy and first principles calculations to analyze the electronic structure of ${\mathrm{Ni}}_3{\mathrm{TeO}}_6$ across the 53 K and 9 T magnetic transitions, both of which are accompanied by large changes in electric polarization. The color properties are sensitive to magnetic order due to field-induced changes in the crystal field environment, with those around Ni1 and Ni2 most affected. These findings advance the understanding of magnetoelectric coupling in materials in which magnetic $3d$ centers coexist with nonmagnetic heavy chalcogenide cations.

Active particles disturb the fluid around them as force dipoles, or stresslets, which govern their collective dynamics. Unlike swimming speeds, the stresslets of active particles are rarely determined due to the lack of a suitable theoretical framework for arbitrary geometry. We propose a general method, based on the reciprocal theorem of Stokes flows, to compute stresslets as integrals of the velocities on the particle’s surface, which we illustrate for spheroidal chemically active particles. Our method will allow tuning the stresslet of artificial swimmers and tailoring their collective motion in complex environments.

Nonaligning self-propelled particles with purely repulsive excluded volume interactions undergo athermal motility-induced phase separation into a dilute gas and a dense cluster phase. Here, we use enhanced sampling computational methods and analytic theory to examine the kinetics of formation of the dense phase. Despite the intrinsically nonequilibrium nature of the phase transition, we show that the kinetics can be described using an approach analogous to equilibrium classical nucleation theory, governed by an effective free energy of cluster formation with identifiable bulk and surface terms. The theory captures the location of the binodal, nucleation rates as a function of supersaturation, and the cluster size distributions below the binodal, while discrepancies in the metastable region reveal additional physics about the early stages of active crystal formation. The success of the theory shows that a framework similar to equilibrium thermodynamics can be obtained directly from the microdynamics of an active system, and can be used to describe the kinetics of evolution toward nonequilibrium steady states.

The $\beta$-decay intensity of ${}^{70}\mathrm{Co}$ was measured for the first time using the technique of total absorption spectroscopy. The large $\beta$-decay $Q$ value [12.3(3) MeV] offers a rare opportunity to study $\beta$-decay properties in a broad energy range. Two surprising features were observed in the experimental results, namely, the large fragmentation of the $\beta$ intensity at high energies, as well as the strong competition between $\gamma$ rays and neutrons, up to more than 2 MeV above the neutron-separation energy. The data are compared to two theoretical calculations: the shell model and the quasiparticle random phase approximation (QRPA). Both models seem to be missing a significant strength at high excitation energies. Possible interpretations of this discrepancy are discussed. The shell model is used for a detailed nuclear structure interpretation and helps to explain the observed $\gamma$-neutron competition. The comparison to the QRPA calculations is done as a means to test a model that provides global $\beta$-decay properties for astrophysical calculations. Our work demonstrates the importance of performing detailed comparisons to experimental results, beyond the simple half-life comparisons. A realistic and robust description of the $\beta$-decay intensity is crucial for our understanding of nuclear structure as well as of $r$-process nucleosynthesis.

The periodically kicked rotor is a paradigm system for studying quantum effects on classically chaotic dynamics. The wave function of the quantum rotor localizes in angular momentum space, similarly to Anderson localization of the electronic wave function in disordered solids. Here, we observe dynamical localization in a system of true quantum rotors by subjecting nitrogen molecules to periodic sequences of femtosecond pulses. Exponential distribution of the molecular angular momentum—the hallmark of dynamical localization—is measured directly by means of coherent Raman scattering. We demonstrate the suppressed rotational energy growth with the number of laser kicks and study the dependence of the localization length on the kick strength. Because of its quantum coherent nature, both timing and amplitude noise are shown to destroy the localization and revive the diffusive growth of energy.

We consider the orthogonality catastrophe at the Anderson metal-insulator transition (AMIT). The typical overlap $F$ between the ground state of a Fermi liquid and the one of the same system with an added potential impurity is found to decay at the AMIT exponentially with system size $L$ as $F\sim \exp (-c{L}^{\eta })$, where $\eta$ is the power of multifractal intensity correlations. Thus, strong disorder typically increases the sensitivity of a system to an added impurity exponentially. We recover, on the metallic side of the transition, Anderson’s result that the fidelity $F$ decays with a power law $F\sim L^{-q(E_F)}$ with system size $L$. Its power increases as the Fermi energy $E_F$ approaches the mobility edge $E_M$ as $q(E_F)\sim [(E_F-E_M)/E_M{]}^{-\nu \eta }$, where $\nu$ is the critical exponent of the correlation length ${\xi }_c$. On the insulating side of the transition, $F$ is constant for system sizes exceeding the localization length $\xi$. While these results are obtained for the typical fidelity $F$, we find that $\log F$ is widely, log normally, distributed with a width diverging at the AMIT. As a consequence, the mean value of the fidelity $F$ converges to one at the AMIT, in strong contrast to its typical value which converges to zero exponentially fast with system size $L$. This counterintuitive behavior is explained as a manifestation of multifractality at the AMIT.

Using specially engineered structures to tailor the optical absorption in a metallic multilayer, we analyze the magnetization dynamics of a $\mathrm{Co}/\mathrm{Pt}$ multilayer buried below a thick Cu layer. We demonstrate that hot electrons alone can very efficiently induce ultrafast demagnetization. Simulations based on hot electron ballistic transport implemented within a microscopic model that accounts for local dissipation of angular momentum nicely reproduce the experimental results, ruling out contribution of pure thermal transport.