With infrared spectroscopy we investigated the spin-reorientation transition from an orthorhombic antiferromagnetic (o-AF) to a tetragonal AF (t-AF) phase and the reentrance of the o-AF phase in the superconducting state of underdoped ${\mathrm{Ba}}_{1-x}{\mathrm{K}}_x{\mathrm{Fe}}_2{\mathrm{As}}_2$. In agreement with the predicted transition from a single-$\mathbf{Q}$ to a double-$\mathbf{Q}$ AF structure, we found that a distinct spin density wave develops in the t-AF phase. The pair breaking peak of this spin density wave acquires much more low-energy spectral weight than the one in the o-AF state which indicates that it competes more strongly with superconductivity. We also observed additional phonon modes in the t-AF phase which likely arise from a Brillouin-zone folding that is induced by the double-$\mathbf{Q}$ magnetic structure with two Fe sublattices exhibiting different magnitudes of the magnetic moment.

We demonstrate theoretically that charge transport across a Josephson junction, voltage-biased through a resistive environment, produces antibunched photons. We develop a continuous-mode description of the emitted radiation field in a semi-infinite transmission line terminated by the Josephson junction. Within a perturbative treatment in powers of the tunneling coupling across the Josephson junction, we capture effects originating in charging dynamics of consecutively tunneling Cooper pairs. We find that within a feasible experimental setup the Coulomb blockade provided by high zero-frequency impedance can be used to create antibunched photons at a very high rate and in a very versatile frequency window ranging from a few GHz to a THz.

The recent observation of dipole-allowed $P$ excitons up to principal quantum numbers of $n=25$ in cuprous oxide has given insight into exciton states with unprecedented spectral resolution. While so far the exciton description as a hydrogenlike complex has been fully adequate for cubic crystals, we demonstrate here distinct deviations: The breaking of rotational symmetry leads to mixing of high angular momentum $F$ and $H$ excitons with the $P$ excitons so that they can be observed in absorption. The $F$ excitons show a threefold splitting that depends systematically on $n$, in agreement with theoretical considerations. From detailed comparison of experiment and theory we determine the cubic anisotropy parameter of the ${\mathrm{Cu}}_2\mathrm{O}$ valence band.

We describe a simple method to derive high performance semidefinite programing relaxations for optimizations over complex and real operator algebras in finite dimensional Hilbert spaces. The method is very flexible, easy to program, and allows the user to assess the behavior of finite dimensional quantum systems in a number of interesting setups. We use this method to bound the strength of quantum nonlocality in Bell scenarios where the dimension of the parties is bounded from above. We derive new results in quantum communication complexity and prove the soundness of the prepare-and-measure dimension witnesses introduced in Gallego et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 230501 (2010). Finally, we propose a new dimension witness that can distinguish between classical, real, and complex two-level systems.

Using a covariant formalism, we construct a chiral kinetic theory Lorentz invariant to order $\mathcal{O}(\hslash )$, which includes collisions. We find a new contribution to the particle number current due to the side jumps required by the conservation of angular momentum during collisions. We also find a conserved symmetric stress-energy tensor as well as the $H$ function obeying Boltzmann’s $H$ theorem. We demonstrate their use by finding a general equilibrium solution and the values of the anomalous transport coefficients characterizing the chiral vortical effect.

By using a combined amplitude analysis of the $\gamma \gamma \to D\overline{D}$ and $\gamma \gamma \to J/\psi \omega$ data, we demonstrate that the $X(3915)$, which is quoted as a $J^{PC}=0^{++}$ state in the Particle Data Group table, is favored by the data to be a $J^{PC}=2^{++}$ state appearing in both channels, which means that the $X(3915)$ and the $X(3930)$ can be regarded as the same $J^{PC}=2^{++}$ state. Meanwhile, the data also prefer a large helicity-0 contribution of this tensor resonance to the amplitudes instead of the helicity-2 dominance assumed by BABAR, which may indicate a sizable portion of non-$q\overline{q}$ components in this state. Identifying the $X(3915)$ with the $X(3930)$ and abandoning the helicity-2 dominance for this tensor state are helpful for the further understandings of the properties of this state and also of the mysterious “$XYZ$” charmoniumlike resonances.

We report on the implementation of a time-multiplexed click detection scheme to probe quantum correlations between different spatial optical modes. We demonstrate that such measurement setups can uncover nonclassical correlations in multimode light fields even if the single mode reductions are purely classical. The nonclassical character of correlated photon pairs, generated by a parametric down-conversion, is immediately measurable employing the theory of click counting instead of low-intensity approximations with photoelectric detection models. The analysis is based on second- and higher-order moments, which are directly retrieved from the measured click statistics, for relatively high mean photon numbers. No data postprocessing is required to demonstrate the effects of interest with high significance, despite low efficiencies and experimental imperfections. Our approach shows that such novel detection schemes are a reliable and robust way to characterize quantum-correlated light fields for practical applications in quantum communications.

In situ spacecraft data on the solar wind show events identified as magnetic reconnection with wide outflows and extended “$X$ lines,” ${10}^3–{10}^4$ times ion scales. To understand the role of turbulence at these scales, we make a case study of an inertial-range reconnection event in a magnetohydrodynamic simulation. We observe stochastic wandering of field lines in space, breakdown of standard magnetic flux freezing due to Richardson dispersion, and a broadened reconnection zone containing many current sheets. The coarse-grain magnetic geometry is like large-scale reconnection in the solar wind, however, with a hyperbolic flux tube or apparent $X$ line extending over integral length scales.

We report on an extensive characterization of the cracking noise produced by charcoal samples when dampened with ethanol. We argue that the evaporation of ethanol causes transient and irregularly distributed internal stresses that promote the fragmentation of the samples and mimic some situations found in mining processes. The results show that, in general, the most fundamental seismic laws ruling earthquakes (the Gutenberg-Richter law, the unified scaling law for the recurrence times, Omori’s law, the productivity law, and Båth’s law) hold under the conditions of the experiment. Some discrepancies were also identified (a smaller exponent in the Gutenberg-Richter law, a stationary behavior in the aftershock rates for long times, and a double power-law relationship in the productivity law) and are related to the different loading conditions. Our results thus corroborate and elucidate the parallel between the seismic laws and fracture experiments caused by a more complex loading condition that also occurs in natural and induced seismicity (such as long-term fluid injection and gas-rock outbursts in mining processes).

We study Fermi liquid instabilities in spin-orbit-coupled metals with inversion symmetry. By introducing a canonical basis for the doubly degenerate Bloch bands in momentum space, we derive the general form of Landau interaction functions. A variety of time-reversal-invariant, parity-breaking phases is found, whose Fermi surface is spontaneously deformed and spin split. In terms of symmetry, these phases possess gyrotropic, ferroelectric, and multipolar orders. The ferroelectric and multipolar phases are accompanied by structural distortions, from which the electronic orders can be identified. The gyrotropic phase exhibits a unique nonlinear optical property. We identify correlated electron materials that exhibit these parity-breaking phases, including ${\mathrm{LiOsO}}_3$ and ${\mathrm{Cd}}_2{\mathrm{Re}}_2{\mathrm{O}}_7$.

We present evidence of a direct, continuous quantum phase transition between a Bose superfluid and the $\nu =1/2$ fractional Chern insulator in a microscopic lattice model. In the process, we develop a detailed field theoretic description of this transition in terms of the low energy vortex dynamics. The theory explicitly accounts for the structure of lattice symmetries and predicts a Landau forbidden transition that is protected by inversion. That the transition is continuous enables the quasiadiabatic preparation of the fractional Chern insulator in nonequilibrium, quantum optical systems.

Graphene, the first discovered 2D Dirac material, has had a profound impact on science and technology. In the last decade, we have witnessed huge advances in graphene related fundamental and applied research. Here, based on first-principles calculations, we propose a new 2D Dirac band on the Si(111) surface with $1/3$ monolayer halogen coverage. The $s{p}^3$ dangling bonds form a honeycomb superstructure on the Si(111) surface that results in an anisotropic Dirac band with a group velocity ($\sim {10}^6\mathrm{m}/\mathrm{s}$) comparable to that in graphene. Most remarkably, the Si-based surface Dirac band can be used to excite a tunable THz plasmon through electron-hole doping. Our results demonstrate a new way to design Dirac states on a traditional semiconductor surface, so as to make them directly compatible with Si technology. We envision this new type of Dirac material to be generalized to other semiconductor surfaces with broad applications.

Topological crystalline superconductivity in locally noncentrosymmetric multilayer superconductors (SCs) is proposed. We study the odd-parity pair-density wave (PDW) state induced by the spin-singlet pairing interaction through the spin-orbit coupling. It is shown that the PDW state is a topological crystalline SC protected by a mirror symmetry, although it is topologically trivial according to the classification based on the standard topological periodic table. The topological property of the mirror subsectors is intuitively explained by adiabatically changing the Bogoliubov–de Gennes Hamiltonian. A subsector of the bilayer PDW state reduces to the two-dimensional noncentrosymmetric SC, while a subsector of the trilayer PDW state is topologically equivalent to the spinless $p$-wave SC. Chiral Majorana edge modes in trilayers can be realized without Cooper pairs in the spin-triplet channel and chemical potential tuning.

The spin character of the states at the top of the valence band in doped ${\mathrm{La}}_{2-x}{\mathrm{Sr}}_x{\mathrm{CuO}}_4$ ($x=0.03$, 0.07, 0.15, 0.22, and 0.30) has been investigated using spin-polarized resonant photoemission. A clear Zhang-Rice singlet (ZRS) is observed at all doping levels. Its stability and polarization are preserved as a function of doping, suggesting that the concept of the ZRS can be used across a wide doping range and up to the metallic nonsuperconducting overdoped regime. The results are significant for theoretical models that use the ZRS approximation and for the understanding of the peculiar interplay between the ZRS and the remaining localized spins.

We introduce photon-statistics excitation spectroscopy and exemplarily apply it to a quantum-dot micropillar laser. Both the intensity and the photon number statistics of the emission from the micropillar show a strong dependence on the photon statistics of the light used for excitation of the sample. The results under coherent and pseudothermal excitation reveal that a description of the laser properties in terms of mean input photon numbers is not sufficient. It is demonstrated that the micropillar acts as a superthermal light source when operated close to its threshold. Possible applications for important spectroscopic techniques are discussed.

The resonant capture of electrons from a metallic surface into the outer shell of a helium ion creates doubly excited states in a spin singlet ($\uparrow \downarrow$) or triplet ($\uparrow \uparrow$) configuration. Here it is shown that the capture of one or two electrons can be described in a simple quantitative model, and the capture of two electrons by ${\mathrm{He}}^{++}$ proceeds in a single step. The double capture of electrons from the Fermi energy of the metal is dominated by the spin dependent electron correlation that blocks the occupation of triplet states in the ion, but creates a singlet two-hole final state at the surface, related to the concept of the exchange-correlation hole.

We develop a theoretical method for solving the quantum mechanical reactive scattering problem in the presence of external fields based on a hyperspherical coordinate description of the reaction complex combined with the total angular momentum representation for collisions in external fields. The method allows us to obtain converged results for the chemical reaction $\mathrm{LiF}+\mathrm{H}\to \mathrm{Li}+\mathrm{HF}$ in an electric field. Our calculations demonstrate that, by inducing couplings between states of different total angular momenta, electric fields with magnitudes $<150\mathrm{kV}/\mathrm{cm}$ give rise to resonant scattering and a significant modification of the total reaction probabilities, product state distributions, and the branching ratios for reactive versus inelastic scattering.