We consider the Bose condensation of bosonic particles with spin $1/2$. The condensation is driven by an external magnetic field. Our work is motivated by ideas of quantum critical deconfinement and bosonic spinons in spin liquid states. We show that both the nature of the novel Bose condensate and the excitation spectrum are fundamentally different from that in the usual integer spin case. We predict two massive (“Higgs”) excitations and two massless Goldstone excitations. One of the Goldstone excitations has a linear excitation spectrum and another has a quadratic spectrum. This implies that the Bose condensate does not support superfluidity, the Landau criterion is essentially violated. We formulate a “smoking gun” criterion for searches of the novel Bose condensation.

We report on the real space profile of spin polarons in the quasi-two-dimensional frustrated dimer spin system ${\mathrm{SrCu}}_2({\mathrm{BO}}_3{)}_2$ doped with 0.16% of Zn. The ${}^{11}\mathrm{B}$ nuclear magnetic resonance spectrum exhibits 15 additional boron sites near nonmagnetic Zn impurities. With the help of exact diagonalizations of finite clusters, we have deduced from the boron spectrum, the distribution of local magnetizations at the Cu sites with fine spatial resolution, providing direct evidence for an extended spin polaron. The results are confronted with those of other experiments performed on doped and undoped samples of ${\mathrm{SrCu}}_2({\mathrm{BO}}_3{)}_2$.

We investigate the possibility of realizing a disorder-induced topological Floquet spectrum in two-dimensional periodically driven systems. Such a state would be a dynamical realization of the topological Anderson insulator. We establish that a disorder-induced trivial-to-topological transition indeed occurs, and characterize it by computing the disorder averaged Bott index, suitably defined for the time-dependent system. The presence of edge states in the topological state is confirmed by exact numerical time evolution of wave packets on the edge of the system. We consider the optimal driving regime for experimentally observing the Floquet topological Anderson insulator, and discuss its possible realization in photonic lattices.

Inelastic neutron scattering is employed to investigate the impact of electronic nematic order on the magnetic spectra of LaFeAsO and $\mathrm{Ba}({\mathrm{Fe}}_{0.953}{\mathrm{Co}}_{0.047}{)}_2{\mathrm{As}}_2$. These materials are ideal to study the paramagnetic-nematic state, since the nematic order, signaled by the tetragonal-to-orthorhombic transition at $T_S$, sets in well above the stripe antiferromagnetic ordering at $T_N$. We find that the temperature-dependent dynamic susceptibility displays an anomaly at $T_S$ followed by a sharp enhancement in the spin-spin correlation length, revealing a strong feedback effect of nematic order on the low-energy magnetic spectrum. Our findings can be consistently described by a model that attributes the structural or nematic transition to magnetic fluctuations, and unveils the key role played by nematic order in promoting the long-range stripe antiferromagnetic order in iron pnictides.

We explain how and why all thermodynamic properties of spin systems can be computed in one and two dimensions in the whole range of temperatures overcoming the divergence towards zero temperature of the standard high-temperature series expansions (HTEs). The method relies on an approximation of the entropy versus energy (microcanonical potential function) on the whole range of energies. The success is related to the intrinsic physical constraints on the entropy function and a careful treatment of the boundary behaviors. This method is benchmarked against two one-dimensional solvable models: the Ising model in longitudinal field and the $XY$ model in a transverse field. With ten terms in the HTE, we find a spin susceptibility within a few percent of the exact results over the entire range of temperatures. The method is then applied to two two-dimensional models: the supposedly gapped Heisenberg model and the $J_1\text{−}{J}_2\text{−}{J}_d$ model on the kagome lattice.

By combination of two independent approaches, nuclear resonant inelastic x-ray scattering and first-principles calculations in the framework of density functional theory, we demonstrate significant changes in the element-resolved vibrational density of states across the first-order transition from the ferromagnetic low temperature to the paramagnetic high temperature phase of ${\mathrm{LaFe}}_{13-x}{\mathrm{Si}}_x$. These changes originate from the itinerant electron metamagnetism associated with Fe and lead to a pronounced magneto-elastic softening despite the large volume decrease at the transition. The increase in lattice entropy associated with the Fe subsystem is significant and contributes cooperatively with the magnetic and electronic entropy changes to the excellent magneto- and barocaloric properties.

We propose a variational approach for computing the macroscopic entanglement in a many-body mixed state, based on entanglement witness operators, and compute the entanglement of formation (EoF), a mixed-state generalization of the entanglement entropy, in single- and two-channel Kondo systems at finite temperature. The thermal suppression of the EoF obeys power-law scaling at low temperature. The scaling exponent is halved from the single- to the two-channel system, which is attributed, using a bosonization method, to the non-Fermi liquid behavior of a Majorana fermion, a “half” of a complex fermion, emerging in the two-channel system. Moreover, the EoF characterizes the size and power-law tail of the Kondo screening cloud of the single-channel system.

We derive the statistics of the efficiency under the assumption that thermodynamic fluxes fluctuate with normal law, parametrizing it in terms of time, macroscopic efficiency, and a coupling parameter $\zeta$. It has a peculiar behavior: no moments, one sub-, and one super-Carnot maxima corresponding to reverse operating regimes (engine or pump), the most probable efficiency decreasing in time. The limit $\zeta \to 0$ where the Carnot bound can be saturated gives rise to two extreme situations, one where the machine works at its macroscopic efficiency, with Carnot limit corresponding to no entropy production, and one where for a transient time scaling like $1/\zeta$ microscopic fluctuations are enhanced in such a way that the most probable efficiency approaches the Carnot limit at finite entropy production.

The large-scale homogeneity and isotropy of the Universe is generally thought to imply a well-defined background cosmological model. It may not. Smoothing over structure adds in an extra contribution, transferring power from small scales up to large. Second-order perturbation theory implies that the effect is small, but suggests that formally the perturbation series may not converge. The amplitude of the effect is actually determined by the ratio of the Hubble scales at matter-radiation equality and today—which are entirely unrelated. This implies that a universe with significantly lower temperature today could have significant backreaction from more power on small scales, and so provides the ideal testing ground for understanding backreaction. We investigate this using two different $N$-body numerical simulations—a 3D Newtonian and a 1D simulation which includes all relevant relativistic effects. We show that while perturbation theory predicts an increasing backreaction as more initial small-scale power is added, in fact the virialization of structure saturates the backreaction effect at the same level independently of the equality scale. This implies that backreaction is a small effect independently of initial conditions. Nevertheless, it may still contribute at the percent level to certain cosmological observables and therefore it cannot be neglected in precision cosmology.

We show how nuclear effective field theory (EFT) and ab initio nuclear-structure methods can turn input from lattice quantum chromodynamics (LQCD) into predictions for the properties of nuclei. We argue that pionless EFT is the appropriate theory to describe the light nuclei obtained in LQCD simulations carried out at pion masses heavier than the physical pion mass. We solve the EFT using the effective-interaction hyperspherical harmonics and auxiliary-field diffusion Monte Carlo methods. Fitting the three leading-order EFT parameters to the deuteron, dineutron, and triton LQCD energies at $m_{\pi }\approx 800\mathrm{MeV}$, we reproduce the corresponding alpha-particle binding and predict the binding energies of mass-5 and mass-6 ground states.

We introduce a paradigm for spatial and modal wave manipulation based on nonlinear phononic crystals and explore its potential for engineering wave control systems with tunable, adaptive, and multifunctional characteristics. Our approach exploits nonlinear mechanisms to stretch the frequency signature of the wave response and distribute it over multiple modes, thereby activating a mixture of modal characteristics and enabling functionalities associated with high-frequency optical modes, even while operating in the low-frequency regime. To elucidate the versatility of this approach, we consider different granular crystal configurations that span the available landscape of crystal topologies and wave control functionalities. The ability to switch between complementary functionalities allows rethinking nonlinear phononic crystals as programmable acoustic ports that form the building blocks of a new structural logic framework enabled by nonlinearity.

A critical challenge facing the basic long-pulse high-confinement operation scenario ($H$ mode) for ITER is to control a magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) instability, known as the edge localized mode (ELM), which leads to cyclical high peak heat and particle fluxes at the plasma facing components. A breakthrough is made in the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak in achieving a new steady-state $H$ mode without the presence of ELMs for a duration exceeding hundreds of energy confinement times, by using a novel technique of continuous real-time injection of a lithium (Li) aerosol into the edge plasma. The steady-state ELM-free $H$ mode is accompanied by a strong edge coherent MHD mode (ECM) at a frequency of 35–40 kHz with a poloidal wavelength of 10.2 cm in the ion diamagnetic drift direction, providing continuous heat and particle exhaust, thus preventing the transient heat deposition on plasma facing components and impurity accumulation in the confined plasma. It is truly remarkable that Li injection appears to promote the growth of the ECM, owing to the increase in Li concentration and hence collisionality at the edge, as predicted by GYRO simulations. This new steady-state ELM-free $H$-mode regime, enabled by real-time Li injection, may open a new avenue for next-step fusion development.

We present experimental evidence showing that an interacting Bose condensate in a shaken optical lattice develops a roton-maxon excitation spectrum, a feature normally associated with superfluid helium. The roton-maxon feature originates from the double-well dispersion in the shaken lattice, and can be controlled by both the atomic interaction and the lattice modulation amplitude. We determine the excitation spectrum using Bragg spectroscopy and measure the critical velocity by dragging a weak speckle potential through the condensate—both techniques are based on a digital micromirror device. Our dispersion measurements are in good agreement with a modified Bogoliubov model.

We perform variational studies of the interaction-localization problem to describe the interaction-induced renormalizations of the effective (screened) random potential seen by quasiparticles. Here we present results of careful finite-size scaling studies for the conductance of disordered Hubbard chains at half-filling and zero temperature. While our results indicate that quasiparticle wave functions remain exponentially localized even in the presence of moderate to strong repulsive interactions, we show that interactions produce a strong decrease of the characteristic conductance scale $g^{*}$ signaling the crossover to strong localization. This effect, which cannot be captured by a simple renormalization of the disorder strength, instead reflects a peculiar non-Gaussian form of the spatial correlations of the screened disordered potential, a hitherto neglected mechanism to dramatically reduce the impact of Anderson localization (interference) effects.

We experimentally identify fractional quasiparticle creation in a tunneling process through a local fractional quantum Hall (FQH) state. The local FQH state is prepared in a low-density region near a quantum point contact in an integer quantum Hall (IQH) system. Shot-noise measurements reveal a clear transition from elementary-charge tunneling at low bias to fractional-charge tunneling at high bias. The fractional shot noise is proportional to $T_1(1-T_1)$ over a wide range of $T_1$, where $T_1$ is the transmission probability of the IQH edge channel. This binomial distribution indicates that fractional quasiparticles emerge from the IQH state to be transmitted through the local FQH state. The study of this tunneling process enables us to elucidate the dynamics of Laughlin quasiparticles in FQH systems.

Biological macromolecules experience two seemingly very different types of noise acting on different time scales: (i) point mutations corresponding to changes in molecular sequence and (ii) thermal fluctuations. Examining the secondary structures of a large number of microRNA precursor sequences and model lattice proteins, we show that the effects of single point mutations are statistically indistinguishable from those of an increase in temperature by a few tens of kelvins. The existence of such an effective mutational temperature establishes a quantitative connection between robustness to genetic (mutational) and environmental (thermal) perturbations.

In single-component theories of dark matter, the $2\to 2$ amplitudes for dark-matter production, annihilation, and scattering can be related to each other through various crossing symmetries. The detection techniques based on these processes are thus complementary. However, multicomponent theories exhibit an additional direction for dark-matter complementarity: the possibility of dark-matter decay from heavier to lighter components. We discuss how this new detection channel may be correlated with the others, and demonstrate that the enhanced complementarity which emerges can be an important ingredient in probing and constraining the parameter spaces of such models.

A study of vector boson scattering in $pp$ collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 8 TeV is presented. The data sample corresponds to an integrated luminosity of $19.4{\mathrm{fb}}^{-1}$ collected with the CMS detector. Candidate events are selected with exactly two leptons of the same charge, two jets with large rapidity separation and high dijet mass, and moderate missing transverse energy. The signal region is expected to be dominated by electroweak same-sign $W$-boson pair production. The observation agrees with the standard model prediction. The observed significance is 2.0 standard deviations, where a significance of 3.1 standard deviations is expected based on the standard model. Cross section measurements for $W^{\pm }{W}^{\pm }$ and $WZ$ processes in the fiducial region are reported. Bounds on the structure of quartic vector-boson interactions are given in the framework of dimension-eight effective field theory operators, as well as limits on the production of doubly charged Higgs bosons.