Realizing a large tunneling electroresistance (TER) effect is crucial for device application of ferroelectric tunnel junctions (FTJs). FTJs are typically composed of a thin ferroelectric layer sandwiched by two metallic electrodes, where TER generally results from the dependence of the effective tunneling barrier height on the ferroelectric polarization. Since the resistance depends exponentially not only on barrier height but also on barrier width, TER is expected to be greatly enhanced when one of the electrodes is a semiconductor where the depletion region near the interface can be controlled via ferroelectric polarization. To explore this possibility, we perform studies of ${\mathrm{SrRuO}}_3/{\mathrm{BaTiO}}_3/n-{\mathrm{SrTiO}}_3$ FTJs, where $n\text{−}{\mathrm{SrTiO}}_3$ is an electron doped ${\mathrm{SrTiO}}_3$ electrode, using first-principles density functional theory. Our studies reveal that, in addition to modulation of the depletion region in $n\text{−}{\mathrm{SrTiO}}_3$, the ${\mathrm{BaTiO}}_3$ barrier layer becomes conducting near the interface for polarization pointing into $n\text{−}{\mathrm{SrTiO}}_3$, leading to dramatic enhancement of TER. The effect is controlled by the band alignment between the semiconductor and the ferroelectric insulator and opens the way for experimental realization of enhanced TER in FTJs through the choice of a semiconducting electrode and interface engineering.

Contact-based vibrations play an essential role in the dynamics of granular materials. Significant insights into vibrational granular dynamics have previously been obtained with reduced-dimensional systems containing macroscale particles. We study contact-based vibrations of a two-dimensional monolayer of micron-sized spheres on a solid substrate that forms a microscale granular crystal. Measurements of the resonant attenuation of laser-generated surface acoustic waves reveal three collective vibrational modes that involve displacements and rotations of the microspheres, as well as interparticle and particle-substrate interactions. To identify the modes, we tune the interparticle stiffness, which shifts the frequency of the horizontal-rotational resonances while leaving the vertical resonance unaffected. From the measured contact resonance frequencies we determine both particle-substrate and interparticle contact stiffnesses and find that the former is an order of magnitude larger than the latter. This study paves the way for investigating complex contact-based dynamics of microscale granular crystals and yields a new approach to studying micro- to nanoscale contact mechanics in multiparticle networks.

We study the onset of friction for rough contacting blocks whose interface is coated with a thin lubrication layer. High speed measurements of the real contact area and stress fields near the interface reveal that propagating shear cracks mediate lubricated frictional motion. While lubricants reduce interface resistances, surprisingly they significantly increase the energy dissipated $\mathrm{\Gamma }$ during rupture. Moreover, lubricant viscosity affects the onset of friction but has no effect on $\mathrm{\Gamma }$. Fracture mechanics provide a new way to view the otherwise hidden complex dynamics of the lubrication layer.

We study theoretically Coulomb drag in capacitively coupled quantum dots (CQDs)—a bias-driven dot coupled to an unbiased dot where transport is due to Coulomb mediated energy transfer drag. To this end, we introduce a master-equation approach that accounts for higher-order tunneling (cotunneling) processes as well as energy-dependent lead couplings, and identify a mesoscopic Coulomb drag mechanism driven by nonlocal multielectron cotunneling processes. Our theory establishes the conditions for a nonzero drag as well as the direction of the drag current in terms of microscopic system parameters. Interestingly, the direction of the drag current is not determined by the drive current, but by an interplay between the energy-dependent lead couplings. Studying the drag mechanism in a graphene-based CQD heterostructure, we show that the predictions of our theory are consistent with recent experiments on Coulomb drag in CQD systems.

We report ac susceptibility, specific heat, and neutron scattering measurements on a dipolar-coupled antiferromagnet ${\mathrm{LiYbF}}_4$. For the thermal transition, the order-parameter critical exponent is found to be 0.20(1) and the specific-heat critical exponent $-0.25(1)$. The exponents agree with the 2D $XY/h_4$ universality class despite the lack of apparent two-dimensionality in the structure. The order-parameter exponent for the quantum phase transitions is found to be 0.35(1) corresponding to $(2+1)\mathrm{D}$. These results are in line with those found for ${\mathrm{LiErF}}_4$ which has the same crystal structure, but largely different $T_N$, crystal field environment and hyperfine interactions. Our results therefore experimentally establish that the dimensional reduction is universal to quantum dipolar antiferromagnets on a distorted diamond lattice.

We predict that a direct band gap semiconductor (GaAs) resonantly excited by a strong ultrashort laser pulse exhibits a novel regime: kicked anharmonic Rabi oscillations. In this regime, Rabi oscillations are strongly coupled to intraband motion, and interband transitions mainly take place when electrons pass near the Brillouin zone center where electron populations undergo very rapid changes. The asymmetry of the residual population distribution induces an electric current controlled by the carrier-envelope phase of the driving pulse. The predicted effects are experimentally observable using photoemission and terahertz spectroscopies.

A control mechanism for stopping x-ray pulses in resonant nuclear media is investigated theoretically. We show that narrow-band x-ray pulses can be mapped and stored as nuclear coherence in a thin-film planar x-ray cavity with an embedded ${}^{57}\mathrm{Fe}$ nuclear layer. The pulse is nearly resonant to the 14.4 keV Mössbauer transition in the ${}^{57}\mathrm{Fe}$ nuclei. The role of the control field is played here by a hyperfine magnetic field which induces interference effects reminiscent of electromagnetically induced transparency. We show that, by switching off the control magnetic field, a narrow-band x-ray pulse can be completely stored in the cavity for approximately 100 ns. Additional manipulation of the external magnetic field can lead to both group velocity and phase control of the pulse in the x-ray cavity sample.

Imperfections in experimental measurement schemes can lead to falsely identifying, or over estimating, entanglement in a quantum system. A recent solution to this is to define schemes that are robust to measurement imperfections—measurement-device-independent entanglement witness (MDI-EW). This approach can be adapted to witness all entangled qubit states for a wide range of physical systems and does not depend on detection efficiencies or classical communication between devices. Here we extend the theory to remove the necessity of prior knowledge about the two-qubit states to be witnessed. Moreover, we tested this model via a novel experimental implementation for MDI-EW that significantly reduces the experimental complexity. By applying it to a bipartite Werner state, we demonstrate the robustness of this approach against noise by witnessing entanglement down to an entangled state fraction close to 0.4.

Fusion yields from dense, $Z$-pinch plasmas are known to scale with the drive current, which is favorable for many potential applications. Decades of experimental studies, however, show an unexplained drop in yield for currents above a few mega-ampere (MA). In this work, simulations of DD $Z$-Pinch plasmas have been performed in 1D and 2D for a constant pinch time and initial radius using the code Lsp, and observations of a shift in scaling are presented. The results show that yields below 3 MA are enhanced relative to pure thermonuclear scaling by beamlike particles accelerated in the Rayleigh-Taylor induced electric fields, while yields above 3 MA are reduced because of energy lost by the instability and the inability of the beamlike ions to enter the pinch region.

Space- and time-resolved measurements of spin drift and diffusion are performed on a GaAs-hosted two-dimensional electron gas. For spins where forward drift is compensated by backward diffusion, we find a precession frequency in the absence of an external magnetic field. The frequency depends linearly on the drift velocity and is explained by the cubic Dresselhaus spin-orbit interaction, for which drift leads to a spin precession angle twice that of spins that diffuse the same distance.

Using a specially designed Monte Carlo algorithm with directed loops, we investigate the triangular lattice Ising antiferromagnet with coupling beyond the nearest neighbors. We show that the first-order transition from the stripe state to the paramagnet can be split, giving rise to an intermediate nematic phase in which algebraic correlations coexist with a broken symmetry. Furthermore, we demonstrate the emergence of several properties of a more topological nature such as fractional edge excitations in the stripe state, the proliferation of double domain walls in the nematic phase, and the Kasteleyn transition between them. Experimental implications are briefly discussed.

We report on Fourier spectroscopy experiments performed with near-surface nitrogen-vacancy centers in a diamond chip. By detecting the free precession of nuclear spins rather than applying a multipulse quantum sensing protocol, we are able to unambiguously identify the NMR species devoid of harmonics. We further show that, by engineering different Hamiltonians during free precession, the hyperfine coupling parameters as well as the nuclear Larmor frequency can be selectively measured with up to five digits of precision. The protocols can be combined to demonstrate two-dimensional Fourier spectroscopy. Presented techniques will be useful for mapping nuclear coordinates in molecules deposited on diamond sensor chips, en route to imaging their atomic structure.

We report the operation of a cold-atom inertial sensor which continuously captures the rotation signal. Using a joint interrogation scheme, where we simultaneously prepare a cold-atom source and operate an atom interferometer (AI), enables us to eliminate the dead times. We show that such continuous operation improves the short-term sensitivity of AIs, and demonstrate a rotation sensitivity of $100\mathrm{nrad}/\sec /\sqrt{\mathrm{Hz}}$ in a cold-atom gyroscope of $11{\mathrm{cm}}^2$ Sagnac area. We also demonstrate a rotation stability of $1\mathrm{nrad}/\sec$ at ${10}^4\sec$ of integration time, which represents the state of the art for atomic gyroscopes. The continuous operation of cold-atom inertial sensors will lead to large area AIs at their full sensitivity potential, determined by the quantum noise limit.

We present an experimental study on the interaction and dynamics of half-quantum vortices (HQVs) in an antiferromagnetic spinor Bose-Einstein condensate. By exploiting the orbit motion of a vortex dipole in a trapped condensate, we perform a collision experiment of two HQV pairs, and observe that the scattering motions of the HQVs is consistent with the short-range vortex interaction that arises from nonsingular magnetized vortex cores. We also investigate the relaxation dynamics of turbulent condensates containing many HQVs, and demonstrate that spin wave excitations are generated by the collisional motions of the HQVs. The short-range vortex interaction and the HQV-magnon coupling represent two characteristics of the HQV dynamics in the spinor superfluid.

We study the effect of turnover of cross-linkers, motors, and filaments on the generation of a contractile stress in a network of filaments connected by passive cross-linkers and subjected to the forces exerted by molecular motors. We perform numerical simulations where filaments are treated as rigid rods and molecular motors move fast compared to the time scale of an exchange of cross-linkers. We show that molecular motors create a contractile stress above a critical number of cross-linkers. When passive cross-linkers are allowed to turn over, the stress exerted by the network vanishes due to the formation of clusters. When both filaments and passive cross-linkers turn over, clustering is prevented and the network reaches a dynamic contractile steady state. A maximum stress is reached for an optimum ratio of the filament and cross-linker turnover rates. Taken together, our work reveals conditions for stress generation by molecular motors in a fluid isotropic network of rearranging filaments.

We introduce a new kind of quantum measurement that is defined to be symmetric in the sense of uniform Fisher information across a set of parameters that uniquely represent pure quantum states in the neighborhood of a fiducial pure state. The measurement is locally informationally complete—i.e., it uniquely determines these parameters, as opposed to distinguishing two arbitrary quantum states—and it is maximal in the sense of a multiparameter quantum Cramér-Rao bound. For a $d$-dimensional quantum system, requiring only local informational completeness allows us to reduce the number of outcomes of the measurement from a minimum close to but below $4d-3$, for the usual notion of global pure-state informational completeness, to $2d-1$.