We have employed fast electrons produced by intense laser illumination to isochorically heat thermal electrons in solid density carbon to temperatures of $\sim 10000\mathrm{K}$. Using time-resolved x-ray diffraction, the temperature evolution of the lattice ions is obtained through the Debye-Waller effect, and this directly relates to the electron-ion equilibration rate. This is shown to be considerably lower than predicted from ideal plasma models. We attribute this to strong ion coupling screening the electron-ion interaction.

Resonant interactions between energetic electrons and whistler mode waves are an essential ingredient in the space environment, and in particular in controlling the dynamic variability of Earth’s natural radiation belts, which is a topic of extreme interest at the moment. Although the theory describing resonant wave-particle interaction has been present for several decades, it has not been hitherto tested in a controlled laboratory setting. In the present Letter we report on the first laboratory experiment to directly detect resonant pitch angle scattering of energetic ($\sim \mathrm{keV}$) electrons due to whistler mode waves. We show that the whistler mode wave deflects energetic electrons at precisely the predicted resonant energy, and that varying both the maximum beam energy, and the wave frequency, alters the energetic electron beam very close to the resonant energy.

Thermalization in nonlinear systems is a central concept in statistical mechanics and has been extensively studied theoretically since the seminal work of Fermi, Pasta, and Ulam. Using molecular dynamics and continuum modeling of a ring-down setup, we show that thermalization due to nonlinear mode coupling intrinsically limits the quality factor of nanomechanical graphene drums and turns them into potential test beds for Fermi-Pasta-Ulam physics. We find the thermalization rate $\mathrm{\Gamma }$ to be independent of radius and scaling as $\mathrm{\Gamma }\sim T^{*}/{\epsilon }_{\text{pre}}^2$, where $T^{*}$ and ${\epsilon }_{\text{pre}}$ are effective resonator temperature and prestrain.

The narrow gap semiconductor ${\mathrm{Pb}}_{1-x}{\mathrm{Sn}}_x\mathrm{Se}$ was investigated for topologically protected surface states in its rocksalt structural phase for $x=0.45$, 0.23, 0.15, and 0. Angle-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy of intrinsically $p$-doped samples showed a clear indication of two Dirac cones, eccentric about the time-reversal invariant point $\overline{X}$ of the surface Brillouin zone for all but the $x=0$ sample. Adsorption of alkalies gradually filled the surface bands with electrons, driving the $x>0$ topological crystalline insulator systems through Lifshitz transitions, and from a holelike to electronlike Fermi surface. The electron-doped bands in $x>0$ samples exhibited the full configuration of the Dirac cones, also confirming electron-hole symmetry of the surface bands.

We report on the study of a polariton gas confined in a quasiperiodic one-dimensional cavity, described by a Fibonacci sequence. Imaging the polariton modes both in real and reciprocal space, we observe features characteristic of their fractal energy spectrum such as the opening of minigaps obeying the gap labeling theorem and log-periodic oscillations of the integrated density of states. These observations are accurately reproduced solving an effective 1D Schrödinger equation, illustrating the potential of cavity polaritons as a quantum simulator in complex topological geometries.

We study the weak antilocalization (WAL) effect in the magnetoresistance of narrow HgTe wires fabricated in quantum wells with normal and inverted band ordering. Measurements at different gate voltages indicate that the WAL is only weakly affected by Rashba spin-orbit splitting and persists when the Rashba splitting is about zero. The WAL amplitude in wires with normal band ordering is an order of magnitude smaller than for wires with an inverted band structure. These observations are attributed to the Dirac-like dispersion of the energy bands in HgTe quantum wells. From the magnetic-field and temperature dependencies we extract the dephasing lengths and band Berry phases. The weaker WAL for samples with a normal band structure can be explained by a nonuniversal Berry phase which always exceeds $\pi$, the characteristic value for gapless Dirac fermions.

The gapless edge modes of the quantum spin Hall insulator form a helical liquid in which the direction of motion along the edge is determined by the spin orientation of the electrons. In order to probe the Luttinger liquid physics of these edge states and their interaction with a magnetic (Kondo) impurity, we consider a setup where the helical liquid is tunnel coupled to a semiconductor quantum dot that is excited by optical absorption, thereby inducing an effective quantum quench of the tunneling. At low energy, the absorption spectrum is dominated by a power-law singularity. The corresponding exponent is directly related to the interaction strength (Luttinger parameter) and can be computed exactly using boundary conformal field theory thanks to the unique nature of the quantum spin Hall edge.

Magnetic properties and spin dynamics have been studied for the structurally ordered double perovskite ${\mathrm{Sr}}_2{\mathrm{CoOsO}}_6$. Neutron diffraction, muon-spin relaxation, and ac-susceptibility measurements reveal two antiferromagnetic (AFM) phases on cooling from room temperature down to 2 K. In the first AFM phase, with transition temperature $T_{\mathrm{N}1}=108\mathrm{K}$, cobalt ($3d^7$, $S=3/2$) and osmium ($5d^2$, $S=1$) moments fluctuate dynamically, while their average effective moments undergo long-range order. In the second AFM phase below $T_{\mathrm{N}2}=67\mathrm{K}$, cobalt moments first become frozen and induce a noncollinear spin-canted AFM state, while dynamically fluctuating osmium moments are later frozen into a randomly canted state at $T\approx 5\mathrm{K}$. Ab initio calculations indicate that the effective exchange coupling between cobalt and osmium sites is rather weak, so that cobalt and osmium sublattices exhibit different ground states and spin dynamics, making ${\mathrm{Sr}}_2{\mathrm{CoOsO}}_6$ distinct from previously reported double-perovskite compounds.

Using infinite projected entangled-pair states, we show that the Shastry-Sutherland model in an external magnetic field has low-magnetization plateaus which, in contrast to previous predictions, correspond to crystals of bound states of triplets, and not to crystals of triplets. The first sizable plateaus appear at magnetization $1/8$, $2/15$ and $1/6$, in agreement with experiments on the orthogonal-dimer antiferromagnet ${\mathrm{SrCu}}_2{({\mathrm{BO}}_3)}_2$, and they can be naturally understood as regular patterns of bound states, including the intriguing $2/15$ one. We also show that, even in a confined geometry, two triplets bind into a localized bound state with $S_z=2$. Finally, we discuss the role of competing domain-wall and supersolid phases, as well as that of additional anisotropic interactions.

Spin waves in antiferromagnets are linearly or circularly polarized. Depending on the polarization, traversing spin waves alter the staggered field in a qualitatively different way. We calculate the drift velocity of a moving domain wall as a result of spin wave-mediated forces and show that the domain wall moves in opposite directions for linearly and circularly polarized waves. The analytical results agree with micromagnetic simulations of an antiferromagnetic domain wall driven by a localized, alternating magnetic field.

The total, triplet, and pair contributions to the entropy with increasing tetrahedrality are mapped out for the Stillinger-Weber liquids to demonstrate the qualitative and quantitative differences between triplet-dominated, tetrahedral liquids and pair-dominated, simple liquids with regard to supercooling and crystallization. The heat capacity anomaly of tetrahedral liquids originates in local ordering due to both pair and triplet correlations. The results suggest that structural correlations can be directly related to thermodynamic anomalies, phase changes, and self-assembly in other atomic and colloidal fluids.

We investigate the mechanics of an active droplet endowed with internal nematic order and surrounded by an isotropic Newtonian fluid. Using numerical simulations we demonstrate that, due to the interplay between the active stresses and the defective geometry of the nematic director, this system exhibits two of the fundamental functions of living cells: spontaneous division and motility, by means of self-generated hydrodynamic flows. These behaviors can be selectively activated by controlling a single physical parameter, namely, an active variant of the capillary number.

We present a method to control the position as a function of time of one-dimensional traveling wave solutions to reaction-diffusion systems according to a prespecified protocol of motion. Given this protocol, the control function is found as the solution of a perturbatively derived integral equation. Two cases are considered. First, we derive an analytical expression for the space ($x$) and time ($t$) dependent control function $f(x,t)$ that is valid for arbitrary protocols and many reaction-diffusion systems. These results are close to numerically computed optimal controls. Second, for stationary control of traveling waves in one-component systems, the integral equation reduces to a Fredholm integral equation of the first kind. In both cases, the control can be expressed in terms of the uncontrolled wave profile and its propagation velocity, rendering detailed knowledge of the reaction kinetics unnecessary.

We demonstrate with molecular simulation that the acceleration of structural relaxation, also known as physical aging, commonly experimentally observed in thin polymer films slows down at extremely small thicknesses. This phenomenon can be attributed to an inversed free volume diffusion process caused by the sliding motion of chain molecules. Our findings provide direct evidence of the relationship between the sliding motion of short chain fragments and the structural relaxation of ultrathin polymer films, and also verify the existence of a new confinement effect at the nanoscale.

We predict a generic signature of quantum interference in many-body bosonic systems resulting in a coherent enhancement of the average return probability in Fock space. This enhancement is robust with respect to variations of external parameters even though it represents a dynamical manifestation of the delicate superposition principle in Fock space. It is a genuine quantum many-body effect that lies beyond the reach of any mean-field approach. Using a semiclassical approach based on interfering paths in Fock space, we calculate the magnitude of the backscattering peak and its dependence on gauge fields that break time-reversal invariance. We confirm our predictions by comparing them to exact quantum evolution probabilities in Bose-Hubbard models, and discuss their relevance in the context of many-body thermalization.

Observations in quantum mechanics are subject to complex restrictions arising from the principle of energy conservation. Determining such restrictions, however, has been so far an elusive task, and only partial results are known. In this Letter, we discuss how constraints on the energy spectrum of a measurement device translate into limitations on the measurements which we can effect on a target system with a nonconstant energy operator. We provide efficient algorithms to characterize such limitations and, in case the target is a two-level quantum system, we quantify them exactly. Our Letter, thus, identifies the boundaries between what is possible or impossible to measure, i.e., between what we can see or not, when energy conservation is at stake.

An important problem in quantum information processing is the certification of the dimension of quantum systems without making assumptions about the devices used to prepare and measure them, that is, in a device-independent manner. A crucial question is whether such certification is experimentally feasible for high-dimensional quantum systems. Here we experimentally witness in a device-independent manner the generation of six-dimensional quantum systems encoded in the orbital angular momentum of single photons and show that the same method can be scaled, at least, up to dimension 13.

We address the problem of compiling quantum operations into braid representations for non-Abelian quasiparticles described by the Fibonacci anyon model. We classify the single-qubit unitaries that can be represented exactly by Fibonacci anyon braids and use the classification to develop a probabilistically polynomial algorithm that approximates any given single-qubit unitary to a desired precision by an asymptotically depth-optimal braid pattern. We extend our algorithm in two directions: to produce braids that allow only single-strand movement, called weaves, and to produce depth-optimal approximations of two-qubit gates. Our compiled braid patterns have depths that are 20 to 1000 times shorter than those output by prior state-of-the-art methods, for precisions ranging between $10^{-10}$ and $10^{-30}$.