We experimentally demonstrate that a precipitation reaction at the miscible interface between two reactive solutions can trigger a hydrodynamic instability due to the buildup of a locally adverse mobility gradient related to a decrease in permeability. The precipitate results from an $A+B\to C$ type of reaction when a solution containing one of the reactants is injected into a solution of the other reactant in a porous medium or a Hele-Shaw cell. Fingerlike precipitation patterns are observed upon displacement, the properties of which depend on whether $A$ displaces $B$ or vice versa. A mathematical modeling of the underlying mobility profile confirms that the instability originates from a local decrease in mobility driven by the localized precipitation. Nonlinear simulations of the related reaction-diffusion-convection model reproduce the properties of the instability observed experimentally. In particular, the simulations suggest that differences in diffusivity between $A$ and $B$ may contribute to the asymmetric characteristics of the fingering precipitation patterns.

We study persistent currents for interacting one-dimensional bosons on a tight ring trap, subjected to a rotating barrier potential, which induces an artificial $U(1)$ gauge field. We show that, at intermediate interactions, the persistent current response is maximal, due to a subtle interplay of effects due to the barrier, the interaction, and quantum fluctuations. These results are relevant for ongoing experiments with ultracold atomic gases on mesoscopic rings.

Low-temperature deformation of body-centered cubic metals shows a significant amount of plastic slip on planes with low shear stresses, a phenomenon called anomalous slip. Despite progress in atomistic modeling of the consequences of complex stress states on dislocation mobility, the phenomenon of anomalous slip remained elusive. Using in situ Laue microdiffraction and discrete dislocation dynamics in micrometer sized tungsten single crystals, we demonstrate the occurrence of significant anomalous slip. It occurs as a consequence of cross kinks, topological configurations generated by prior dislocation interactions. This clearly identifies anomalous slip as a multidislocation process and not a property of isolated dislocations. The cross-kink mechanism also explains the ambiguous reporting of anomalous slip traces in the past and directs us to ways of including anomalous slip in continuum crystal plasticity formulations.

We report the lattice thermal conductivity ($\kappa$) of cubic boron nitride ($c$-BN) under pressure calculated using density functional theory. Pressure was used to manipulate the $c$-BN phonon dispersion and study its effect on thermal conductivity. These results were compared to $c$-BN’s mass-equivalent, nonpolar counterpart, diamond, in order to isolate the effect of polar bonds on thermal conductivity. Unlike diamond, the variation of $\kappa$ at room temperature (${\kappa }_{\mathrm{RT}}$) with applied pressure in $c$-BN is nonlinear in the low-pressure regime followed by a transition to a linear regime with a distinct change in the slope at $P>114\mathrm{GPa}$. We find that the change in $\kappa$ with pressure cannot be described with power law expressions commonly used for Earth mantle materials. The nonlinearity in the low-pressure regime can be related to the nonlinear change in LO-TO gap, group velocities, and specific heat with increasing pressure. In addition, we find that, although optical branch contributions to thermal conductivity are small ($\sim 2\%$ at RT), the rise in ${\kappa }_{\mathrm{RT}}$ for $P>114\mathrm{GPa}$ is due to (1) the decoupling of the longitudinal acoustic branch from the optical branches and (2) depopulation of the optical branches. These lead to a sharp reduction in acoustic-acoustic-optic ($a\text{−}a\text{−}o$) scattering and a discrete change in the acoustic phonon mean free paths. This study illustrates the importance of optical branches and their interactions with acoustic branches in determining the total thermal conductivity of polar materials. This finding is also relevant for current research in geologic minerals under pressure and the design of thermoelectrics.

We study the spin-$1/2$ Heisenberg model on the square lattice with first- and second-neighbor antiferromagnetic interactions $J_1$ and $J_2$, which possesses a nonmagnetic region that has been debated for many years and might realize the interesting $Z_2$ spin liquid. We use the density matrix renormalization group approach with explicit implementation of $SU(2)$ spin rotation symmetry and study the model accurately on open cylinders with different boundary conditions. With increasing $J_2$, we find a Néel phase and a plaquette valence-bond (PVB) phase with a finite spin gap. From the finite-size scaling of the magnetic order parameter, we estimate that the Néel order vanishes at $J_2/J_1\simeq 0.44$. For $0.5<J_2/J_1<0.61$, we find dimer correlations and PVB textures whose decay lengths grow strongly with increasing system width, consistent with a long-range PVB order in the two-dimensional limit. The dimer-dimer correlations reveal the $s$-wave character of the PVB order. For $0.44<J_2/J_1<0.5$, spin order, dimer order, and spin gap are small on finite-size systems, which is consistent with a near-critical behavior. The critical exponents obtained from the finite-size spin and dimer correlations could be compatible with the deconfined criticality in this small region. We compare and contrast our results with earlier numerical studies.

Recent imaging data for single bacterial cells reveal that their mean sizes grow exponentially in time and that their size distributions collapse to a single curve when rescaled by their means. An analogous result holds for the division-time distributions. A model is needed to delineate the minimal requirements for these scaling behaviors. We formulate a microscopic theory of stochastic exponential growth as a Master Equation that accounts for these observations, in contrast to existing quantitative models of stochastic exponential growth (e.g., the Black-Scholes equation or geometric Brownian motion). Our model, the stochastic Hinshelwood cycle (SHC), is an autocatalytic reaction cycle in which each molecular species catalyzes the production of the next. By finding exact analytical solutions to the SHC and the corresponding first passage time problem, we uncover universal signatures of fluctuations in exponential growth and division. The model makes minimal assumptions, and we describe how more complex reaction networks can reduce to such a cycle. We thus expect similar scalings to be discovered in stochastic processes resulting in exponential growth that appear in diverse contexts such as cosmology, finance, technology, and population growth.

We present a microscopic model of a disordered viscoelastic active solid, i.e., an active material whose long time behavior is elastic as opposed to viscous. It is composed of filaments, passive cross-links, and molecular motors powered by stored chemical energy, e.g., actomyosin powered by adenosine triphosphate. Our model allows us to study the collective behavior of contractile active elements and how their interaction with each other and the passive elastic elements determines the macroscopic mechanical properties of the active material. As a result of the (un)binding dynamics of the active elements, we find that this system provides a highly responsive material with a dynamic mechanical response strongly dependent on the amount of deformation.

The imbibition kinetics of a millimeter-sized aggregate of 300 nm diameter colloidal particles by a wetting pure solvent is studied. Three successive regimes are observed. First, the imbibition proceeds by compressing the air inside the aggregate. Next, the solvent stops when the pressure of the compressed air is equal to the excess of capillary pressure at the meniscus of the wetting solvent in the porous aggregate. The interface is pinned and the aggregate slowly degases up to the point where the pressure of the entrapped air stops decreasing and is controlled by the capillary pressure. Finally, the imbibition starts again at a constant excess of pressure, smaller than the capillary pressure but larger than the one of the atmosphere. This last stage leads to the complete infiltration of the aggregate.

Leveraging the decomposability of the fast Fourier transform, I propose a new class of tensor network that is efficiently contractible and able to represent many-body systems with local entanglement that is greater than the area law. Translationally invariant systems of free fermions in arbitrary dimensions as well as 1D systems solved by the Jordan-Wigner transformation are shown to be exactly represented in this class. Further, it is proposed that these tensor networks be used as generic structures to variationally describe more complicated systems, such as interacting fermions. This class shares some similarities with the Evenbly-Vidal branching multiscale entanglement renormalization ansatz, but with some important differences and greatly reduced computational demands.

We present a systematic scheme for the optimization of quantum simulations. Specifically, we show how polychromatic driving can be used to significantly improve the driving of Raman transitions in the Lambda system, which opens new possibilities for controlled driving-induced effective dynamics.

We study the relations between classical information and the feasibility of accurate manipulation of quantum system dynamics. We show that if an efficient classical representation of the dynamics exists, optimal control problems on many-body quantum systems can be solved efficiently with finite precision. In particular, one-dimensional slightly entangled dynamics can be efficiently controlled. We provide a bound for the minimal time necessary to perform the optimal process given the bandwidth of the control pulse, which is the continuous version of the Solovay-Kitaev theorem. Finally, we quantify how noise affects the presented results.

The dynamics of interacting bosons in one dimension following the sudden switching on of a weak disordered potential is investigated. On time scales before quasiparticles scatter (prethermalized regime), the dephasing from random elastic forward scattering causes all correlations to decay exponentially fast, but the system remains far from thermal equilibrium. For longer times, the combined effect of disorder and interactions gives rise to inelastic scattering and to thermalization. A novel quantum kinetic equation accounting for both disorder and interactions is employed to study the dynamics. Thermalization turns out to be most effective close to the superfluid-Bose-glass critical point where nonlinearities become more and more important. The numerically obtained thermalization times are found to agree well with analytic estimates.

We report strong cosmological constraints on the Brans-Dicke (BD) theory of gravity using cosmic microwave background data from Planck. We consider two types of models. First, the initial condition of the scalar field is fixed to give the same effective gravitational strength $G_{\mathrm{eff}}$ today as the one measured on Earth, $G_N$. In this case, the BD parameter $\omega$ is constrained to $\omega >692$ at the 99% confidence level, an order of magnitude improvement over previous constraints. In the second type, the initial condition for the scalar is a free parameter leading to a somewhat stronger constraint of $\omega >890$, while $G_{\mathrm{eff}}$ is constrained to $0.981<G_{\mathrm{eff}}/G_N<1.285$ at the same confidence level. We argue that these constraints have greater validity than for the BD theory and are valid for any Horndeski theory, the most general second-order scalar-tensor theory, which approximates the BD theory on cosmological scales. In this sense, our constraints place strong limits on possible modifications of gravity that might explain cosmic acceleration.

We consider a persistent superconductor current along the direction with no translational symmetry in a holographic gravity model. Incorporating a lattice structure into the model, we numerically construct novel solutions of hairy charged stationary black branes with momentum or rotation along the latticed direction. The lattice structure prevents the horizon from rotating, and the total momentum is only carried by matter fields outside the black brane horizon. This is consistent with the black hole rigidity theorem, and it suggests that in dual field theory with lattices, superconductor currents are made up of “composite” fields, rather than “fractionalized” degrees of freedom. We also show that our solutions are consistent with the superfluid hydrodynamics.