We observe the direct excitation of pairs of Cs atoms from the ground state to molecular states correlating asymptotically to $ns{n}^{\prime }f$ asymptotes. The molecular resonances are interpreted as originating from the dipole-quadrupole interaction between the $ns{n}^{\prime }f$ pair states and close-by $npnp$ asymptotes ($22\le n\le 32$). This interpretation is supported by Stark spectroscopy of the pair states and a detailed modeling of the interaction potentials. The dipole-quadrupole interaction mixes electronic states of opposite parity and, thus, requires a coupling between electronic and nuclear motion to conserve the total parity of the system. This non-Born-Oppenheimer coupling is facilitated by the near-degeneracy of even- and odd-$L$ partial waves in the atom-atom scattering which have opposite parity.

During the early stages of the impact of a drop on a solid surface, pressure builds up in the intervening thin lubricating air layer and deforms the drop. The extent of the characteristic deformation is determined by the competition between capillary, gravitational, and inertial forces that has been encapsulated in a simple analytic scaling law. For millimetric drops, variations of the observed deformation with impact velocity $V$ exhibit a maximum defined by the Weber and Eötvös numbers: $\mathrm{We}=1+\mathrm{Eo}$. The deformation scales as $V^{1/2}$ at the low-velocity capillary regime and as $V^{-1/2}$ at the high-velocity inertia regime, in excellent agreement with a variety of experimental systems.

We study attractively interacting fermions on a square lattice with dispersion relations exhibiting strong spin-dependent anisotropy. The resulting Fermi surface mismatch suppresses the $s$-wave BCS-type instability, clearing the way for unconventional types of order. Unbiased sampling of the Feynman diagrammatic series using diagrammatic Monte Carlo methods reveals a rich phase diagram in the regime of intermediate coupling strength. Instead of a proposed Cooper-pair Bose metal phase [A. E. Feiguin and M. P. A. Fisher, Phys. Rev. Lett. 103, 025303 (2009)], we find an incommensurate density wave at strong anisotropy and two different $p$-wave superfluid states with unconventional symmetry at intermediate anisotropy.

We discuss the violation of spin-charge separation in generic nonlinear Luttinger liquids and investigate its effect on the relaxation and thermal transport of genuine spin-$1/2$ electron liquids in ballistic quantum wires. We identify basic scattering processes compatible with the symmetry of the problem and conservation laws that lead to the decay of plasmons into the spin modes. We derive a closed set of coupled kinetic equations for the spin-charge excitations and solve the problem of thermal conductance of interacting electrons for an arbitrary relation between the quantum wire length and spin-charge thermalization length.

We investigate four CuAu-I-type metallic antiferromagnets for their potential as spin current detectors using spin pumping and inverse spin Hall effect. Nontrivial spin Hall effects were observed for FeMn, PdMn, and IrMn while a much higher effect was obtained for PtMn. Using thickness-dependent measurements, we determined the spin diffusion lengths of these materials to be short, on the order of 1 nm. The estimated spin Hall angles of the four materials follow the relationship $\mathrm{PtMn}>\mathrm{IrMn}>\mathrm{PdMn}>\mathrm{FeMn}$, highlighting the correlation between the spin-orbit coupling of nonmagnetic species and the magnitude of the spin Hall effect in their antiferromagnetic alloys. These experiments are compared with first-principles calculations. Engineering the properties of the antiferromagnets as well as their interfaces can pave the way for manipulation of the spin dependent transport properties in antiferromagnet-based spintronics.

We explore enzyme conformational dynamics at sub-Å resolution, specifically, temperature effects. The ensemble-averaged mechanical response of the folded enzyme is viscoelastic in the whole temperature range between the warm and cold denaturation transitions. The dissipation parameter $\gamma$ of the viscoelastic description decreases by a factor of 2 as the temperature is raised from 10 to $45°\mathrm{C}$; the elastic parameter $K$ shows a similar decrease. Thus, when probed dynamically, the enzyme softens for increasing temperature. Equilibrium mechanical experiments with the DNA spring (and a different enzyme) also show, qualitatively, a small softening for increasing temperature.

The paucity of old millisecond pulsars observed at the galactic center of the Milky Way could be the result of dark matter accumulating in and destroying neutron stars. In regions of high dark matter density, dark matter clumped in a pulsar can exceed the Schwarzschild limit and collapse into a natal black hole which destroys the pulsar. We examine what dark matter models are consistent with this hypothesis and find regions of parameter space where dark matter accumulation can significantly degrade the neutron star population within the galactic center while remaining consistent with observations of old millisecond pulsars in globular clusters and near the solar position. We identify what dark matter couplings and masses might cause a young pulsar at the galactic center to unexpectedly extinguish. Finally, we find that pulsar collapse age scales inversely with the dark matter density and linearly with the dark matter velocity dispersion. This implies that maximum pulsar age is spatially dependent on position within the dark matter halo of the Milky Way. In turn, this pulsar age spatial dependence will be dark matter model dependent.

We report successful spin injection into the surface states of topological insulators by using a spin pumping technique. By measuring the voltage that shows up across the samples as a result of spin pumping, we demonstrate that a spin-electricity conversion effect takes place in the surface states of bulk-insulating topological insulators ${\mathrm{Bi}}_{1.5}{\mathrm{Sb}}_{0.5}{\mathrm{Te}}_{1.7}{\mathrm{Se}}_{1.3}$ and Sn-doped ${\mathrm{Bi}}_2{\mathrm{Te}}_2\mathrm{Se}$. In this process, the injected spins are converted into a charge current along the Hall direction due to the spin-momentum locking on the surface state.

Recent experiments show that periodic modulations of cold atoms in optical lattices may be used to engineer and explore interesting models. We show that double modulation combining lattice shaking and modulated interactions allows for the engineering of a much broader class of lattice with correlated hopping, which we study for the particular case of one-dimensional systems. We show, in particular, that by using this double modulation it is possible to study Hubbard models with asymmetric hopping, which, contrary to the standard Hubbard model, present insulating phases with both parity and string order. Moreover, double modulation allows for the simulation of lattice models in unconventional parameter regimes, as we illustrate for the case of the spin-$1/2$ Fermi-Hubbard model with correlated hopping, a relevant model for cuprate superconductors.

We consider the inelastic scattering of two photons from two qubits separated by an arbitrary distance $R$ and coupled to a one-dimensional transmission line. We present an exact, analytical solution to the problem, and use it to explore a particular configuration of qubits that is transparent to single-photon scattering, thus highlighting non-Markovian effects of inelastic two-photon scattering: strong two-photon interference and momentum dependent photon (anti)bunching. This latter effect can be seen as an inelastic generalization of the Hong-Ou-Mandel effect.

Interference between an unknown two-photon state (a “biphoton”) and the two-photon component of a reference state gives a phase-sensitive arrival-time distribution containing full information about the biphoton temporal wave function. Using a coherent state as a reference, we observe this interference and reconstruct the wave function of single-mode biphotons from a low-intensity narrow band squeezed vacuum state.

Momentum diffusion is a widespread phenomenon in generic Hamiltonian systems. We show for the prototypical standard map that this implies weak ergodicity breaking for the superdiffusive transport in coordinate direction with an averaging-dependent quadratic and cubic increase of the mean-squared displacement (MSD), respectively. This is explained via integrated Brownian motion, for which we derive aging time dependent expressions for the ensemble-averaged MSD, the distribution of time-averaged MSDs, and the ergodicity breaking parameter. Generalizations to other systems showing momentum diffusion are pointed out.

The influence of lattice-melt-induced resistivity gradients on the transport of mega-ampere currents of fast electrons in solids is investigated numerically and experimentally using laser-accelerated protons to induce isochoric heating. Tailoring the heating profile enables the resistive magnetic fields which strongly influence the current propagation to be manipulated. This tunable laser-driven process enables important fast electron beam properties, including the beam divergence, profile, and symmetry to be actively tailored, and without recourse to complex target manufacture.

We compute the finite-temperature phase diagram of a pseudospin-$1/2$ Bose gas with contact interactions, using two complementary methods: the random-phase approximation and self-consistent Hartree-Fock theory. We show that the spin-dependent interactions, which break the (pseudo-) spin-rotational symmetry of the Hamiltonian, generally lead to the appearance of a magnetically ordered phase at temperatures above the superfluid transition. In three dimensions, we predict a normal easy-axis (easy-plane) ferromagnet for sufficiently strong repulsive (attractive) interspecies interactions, respectively. The normal easy-axis ferromagnet is the bosonic analog of Stoner ferromagnetism known in electronic systems. For the case of interspecies attraction, we also discuss the possibility of a bosonic analog of the Cooper-paired phase. This state is shown to significantly lose in energy to the transverse ferromagnet in three dimensions, but is more energetically competitive in lower dimensions. Extending our calculations to a spin-orbit-coupled Bose gas with equal Rashba and Dresselhaus-type couplings (as recently realized in experiment), we investigate the possibility of stripe ordering in the normal phase. Within our approximations, however, we do not find an instability towards stripe formation, suggesting that the stripe order melts below the condensation temperature, which is consistent with the experimental observations of Ji et al. [Ji et al., Nat. Phys. 10, 314 (2014)].

Intermolecular features in atomic force microscopy images of organic molecules have been ascribed to intermolecular bonds. A recent theoretical study [P. Hapala et al., Phys. Rev. B 90, 085421 (2014)] showed that these features can also be explained by the flexibility of molecule-terminated tips. We probe this effect by carrying out atomic force microscopy experiments on a model system that contains regions where intermolecular bonds should and should not exist between close-by molecules. Intermolecular features are observed in both regions, demonstrating that intermolecular contrast cannot be directly interpreted as intermolecular bonds.

The iron selenides are important because of their superconducting properties. Here, an unexpected phenomenon is predicted to occur in an iron-selenide compound with a quasi-one-dimensional ladder geometry: ${\mathrm{BaFe}}_2\mathrm{S}{\mathrm{e}}_3$ should be a magnetic ferrielectric system, driven by its magnetic block order via exchange striction. A robust performance (high $T_C$ and large polarization) is expected. Different from most multiferroics, ${\mathrm{BaFe}}_2\mathrm{S}{\mathrm{e}}_3$ is ferrielectric, with a polarization that mostly cancels between ladders. However, its strong magnetostriction still produces a net polarization that is large ($\sim 0.1\mu C/{\mathrm{cm}}^2$) as compared with most magnetic multiferroics. Its fully ferroelectric state, with energy only slightly higher than the ferrielectric, has a giant improper polarization $\sim 2–3\mu \mathrm{C}/{\mathrm{cm}}^2$.

A generalized master equation (GME) governing quantum evolution of modular exciton density (MED) is derived for large scale light harvesting systems composed of weakly interacting modules of multiple chromophores. The GME-MED offers a practical framework to incorporate real time coherent quantum dynamics calculations of small length scales into dynamics over large length scales, and also provides a non-Markovian generalization and rigorous derivation of the Pauli master equation employing multichromophoric Förster resonance energy transfer rates. A test of the GME-MED for four sites of the Fenna-Matthews-Olson complex demonstrates how coherent dynamics of excitonic populations over coupled chromophores can be accurately described by transitions between subgroups (modules) of delocalized excitons. Application of the GME-MED to the exciton dynamics between a pair of light harvesting complexes in purple bacteria demonstrates its promise as a computationally efficient tool to investigate large scale exciton dynamics in complex environments.