The static permittivity of ice is computed from first principles as a function of the electric field, together with the generalized Kirkwood factor. The molecular dipole in ice is unambiguously obtained by an original method combining a slab approach and Berry phase calculations, and the fluctuations of the polarization are sampled by Monte Carlo runs using first-principles model Hamiltonians for different proton configurations. Common approximations in the exchange-correlation functionals overestimate the dielectric permittivity and enhance ferroelectric configurations and the Kirkwood factor, whereas dielectric saturation effects compare well with experiment.

We analyze, using inhomogeneous mode-coupling theory, the critical scaling behavior of the dynamical susceptibility at a distance $\epsilon$ from continuous second-order glass transitions. We find that the dynamical correlation length $\xi$ behaves generically as ${\epsilon }^{-1/3}$ and that the upper critical dimension is equal to six. More surprisingly, we find that $\xi$ grows with time as ${\ln }^{2}t$ exactly at criticality. All of these results suggest a deep analogy between the glassy behavior of attractive colloids or randomly pinned supercooled liquids and that of the random field Ising model.

Hydrogen adatoms and other species covalently bound to graphene act as resonant scattering centers affecting the electronic transport properties and inducing Anderson localization. We show that attractive interactions between adatoms on graphene and their diffusion mobility strongly modify the spatial distribution, thus fully eliminating isolated adatoms and increasing the population of larger size adatom aggregates. Such spatial correlation is found to strongly influence the electronic transport properties of disordered graphene. Our scaling analysis shows that such aggregation of adatoms increases conductance by up to several orders of magnitude and results in significant extension of the Anderson localization length in the strong localization regime. We introduce a simple definition of the effective adatom concentration $x^{\star }$, which describes the transport properties of both random and correlated distributions of hydrogen adatoms on graphene across a broad range of concentrations.

We report an intriguing transition from the quantum spin Hall phase to the spin Hall effect upon segregation of thallium adatoms adsorbed onto a graphene surface. Landauer-Büttiker and Kubo-Greenwood simulations are used to access both edge and bulk transport physics in disordered thallium-functionalized graphene systems of realistic sizes. Our findings not only quantify the detrimental effects of adatom clustering in the formation of the topological state, but also provide evidence for the emergence of spin accumulation at opposite sample edges driven by spin-dependent scattering induced by thallium islands, which eventually results in a minimum bulk conductivity $\sim 4e^2/h$, insensitive to localization effects.

We study multiphoton resonances in a strongly driven three-level quantum system, where one level is periodically swept through a pair of levels with constant energy separation $E$. Near the multiphoton resonance condition $n\hslash \omega =E$, where $n$ is an integer, we find qualitatively different behavior for $n$ even or odd. We explain this phenomenon in terms of families of interfering trajectories of the multilevel system. Remarkably, the behavior is insensitive to fluctuations of the energy of the driven level, and survives deep into the strong dephasing regime. The setup can be relevant for a variety of solid state and atomic or molecular systems. In particular, it provides a clear mechanism to explain recent puzzling experimental observations in strongly driven double quantum dots.

A spectrum exhibiting $E_8$ symmetry is expected to arise when a small longitudinal field is introduced in the transverse-field Ising chain at its quantum critical point. Evidence for this spectrum has recently come from neutron scattering measurements in cobalt niobate, a quasi-one-dimensional Ising ferromagnet. Unlike its zero-temperature counterpart, the finite-temperature dynamics of the model has not yet been determined. We study the dynamical spin structure factor of the model at low frequencies and nonzero temperatures, using the form factor method. Its frequency dependence is singular, but differs from the diffusion form. The temperature dependence of the nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) relaxation rate has an activated form, whose prefactor we also determine. We propose NMR experiments as a means to further test the applicability of the $E_8$ description for ${\mathrm{CoNb}}_2{\mathrm{O}}_6$.

Thin film magnetization reversal without applying external fields is an attractive perspective for applications in sensors and devices. One way to accomplish it is by fine-tuning the microstructure of a magnetic substrate via temperature control, as in the case of a thin Fe layer deposited on a $\mathrm{MnAs}/\mathrm{GaAs}(001)$ template. This work reports a time-resolved resonant scattering study exploring the magnetic and structural properties of the $\mathrm{Fe}/\mathrm{MnAs}$ system, using a 100 fs optical laser pulse to trigger local temperature variations and a 100 fs x-ray free-electron laser pulse to probe the induced magnetic and structural dynamics. The experiment provides direct evidence that a single optical laser pulse can reverse the Fe magnetization locally. It reveals that the time scale of the magnetization reversal is slower than that of the MnAs structural transformations triggered by the optical pulse, which take place after a few picoseconds already.

We present a microscopic theory of diffusive magnetotransport in Weyl metals and clarify its relation to the chiral anomaly. We derive coupled diffusion equations for the total and axial charge densities and show that the chiral anomaly manifests as a magnetic-field-induced coupling between them. We demonstrate that a universal experimentally observable consequence of this coupling in magnetotransport in Weyl metals is a quadratic negative magnetoresistance, which will dominate all other contributions to magnetoresistance under certain conditions.

In this Letter we give a set of necessary and sufficient conditions such that quantum players of a two-party xor game cannot perform any better than classical players. With any such game, we associate a graph and examine its zero-error communication capacity. This allows us to specify a broad new class of graphs for which the Shannon capacity can be calculated. The conditions also enable the parametrization of new families of games that have no quantum advantage for arbitrary input probability distributions, up to certain symmetries. In the future, these might be used in information-theoretic studies on reproducing the set of quantum nonlocal correlations.

Using a generalized reciprocity relation between charge and vortex conductivities at complex frequencies in two space dimensions, we identify the capacitance in the insulating phase as a measure of vortex condensate stiffness. We compute the ratio of boson superfluid stiffness to vortex condensate stiffness at mirror points to be 0.21(1) for the relativistic O(2) model. The product of dynamical conductivities at mirror points is used as a quantitative measure of deviations from self-duality between charge and vortex theories. We propose the finite wave vector compressibility as an experimental measure of the vortex condensate stiffness for neutral lattice bosons.

We derive a set of isometric fluctuation relations, which constrain the order parameter fluctuations in finite-size systems at equilibrium and in the presence of a broken symmetry. These relations are exact and should apply generally to many condensed-matter physics systems. Here, we establish these relations for magnetic systems and nematic liquid crystals in a symmetry-breaking external field, and we illustrate them on the Curie-Weiss and the $XY$ models. Our relations also have implications for spontaneous symmetry breaking, which are discussed.

The stability of the standard model is determined by the true minimum of the effective Higgs potential. We show that the potential at its minimum when computed by the traditional method is strongly dependent on the gauge parameter. It moreover depends on the scale where the potential is calculated. We provide a consistent method for determining absolute stability independent of both gauge and calculation scale, order by order in perturbation theory. This leads to a revised stability bounds $m_h^{\text{pole}}>(129.4\pm 2.3)\mathrm{GeV}$ and $m_t^{\text{pole}}<(171.2\pm 0.3)\mathrm{GeV}$. We also show how to evaluate the effect of new physics on the stability bound without resorting to unphysical field values.

Optical transport represents a natural route towards fast communications, and it is currently used in large scale data transfer. The progressive miniaturization of devices for information processing calls for the microscopic tailoring of light transport and confinement at length scales appropriate for upcoming technologies. With this goal in mind, we present a theoretical analysis of a one-dimensional Fabry-Perot interferometer built with two highly saturable nonlinear mirrors: a pair of two-level systems. Our approach captures nonlinear and nonreciprocal effects of light transport that were not reported previously. Remarkably, we show that such an elementary device can operate as a microscopic integrated optical rectifier.

We consider Kramers pairs of Majorana bound states under adiabatic time evolution. This is important for the prospects of using such bound states as parity qubits. We show that local adiabatic perturbations can cause a rotation in the space spanned by the Kramers pair. Hence, the quantum information is unprotected against local perturbations, in contrast to the case of single localized Majorana bound states in systems with broken time reversal symmetry. We give an analytical and a numerical example for such a rotation, and specify sufficient conditions under which a rotation is avoided. We give a general scheme for determining when these conditions are satisfied and exemplify it with a general model of a quasi-1D time reversal symmetric topological superconductor.

We have used high-resolution neutron spectroscopy experiments to determine the complete spin wave spectrum of the heavy-fermion antiferromagnet ${\mathrm{CeRhIn}}_5$. The spin wave dispersion can be quantitatively reproduced with a simple frustrated $J_1-J_2$ model that also naturally explains the magnetic spin-spiral ground state of ${\mathrm{CeRhIn}}_5$ and yields a dominant in-plane nearest-neighbor magnetic exchange constant $J_0=0.74(3)\mathrm{meV}$. Our results pave the way to a quantitative understanding of the rich low-temperature phase diagram of the prominent $\mathrm{Ce}T{\mathrm{In}}_5$ ($T=\mathrm{Co}$, Rh, Ir) class of heavy-fermion materials.

We use low energy optical spectroscopy and first principles local density approximation plus dynamical mean field theory calculations to test the hypothesis that the anomalous transport properties of strongly correlated metals originate in the strong temperature dependence of their underlying resilient quasiparticles. We express the resistivity in terms of an effective plasma frequency ${\omega }_p^{*}$ and an effective scattering rate $1/{\tau }_{\mathrm{tr}}^{*}$. We show that in the archetypal correlated material ${\mathrm{V}}_2{\mathrm{O}}_3$, ${\omega }_p^{*}$ increases with increasing temperature, while the plasma frequency from the partial sum rule exhibits the opposite trend. $1/{\tau }_{\mathrm{tr}}^{*}$ has a more pronounced temperature dependence than the scattering rate obtained from the extended Drude analysis. The theoretical calculations of these quantities are in quantitative agreement with experiment. We conjecture that these are robust properties of all strongly correlated metals, and test the conjecture by carrying out a similar analysis on thin film ${\mathrm{NdNiO}}_3$ on a ${\mathrm{LaAlO}}_3$ substrate.