Short baseline neutrino oscillation experiments have shown hints of the existence of additional sterile neutrinos in the eV mass range. However, such neutrinos seem incompatible with cosmology because they have too large of an impact on cosmic structure formation. Here we show that new interactions in the sterile neutrino sector can prevent their production in the early Universe and reconcile short baseline oscillation experiments with cosmology.

We show that sterile neutrinos with masses $\gtrsim 1\mathrm{eV}$, as motivated by several short baseline oscillation anomalies, can be consistent with cosmological constraints if they are charged under a hidden sector force mediated by a light boson. In this case, sterile neutrinos experience a large thermal potential that suppresses mixing between active and sterile neutrinos in the early Universe, even if vacuum mixing angles are large. Thus, the abundance of sterile neutrinos in the Universe remains very small, and their impact on big bang nucleosynthesis, cosmic microwave background, and large-scale structure formation is negligible. It is conceivable that the new gauge force also couples to dark matter, possibly ameliorating some of the small-scale structure problems associated with cold dark matter.

We consider one-loop QCD corrections and renormalization group running of the neutrinoless double-$\beta$decay amplitude focusing on the short-range part of the amplitude (without the light neutrino exchange) and find that these corrections can be sizeable. Depending on the operator under consideration, there can be moderate to large cancellations or significant enhancements. We discuss several specific examples in this context. Such large corrections will lead to significant shifts in the half-life estimates, which currently are known to be plagued with the uncertainties due to nuclear physics inputs to the physical matrix elements.

We study modification of the photon-tagged and inclusive jets in $pp$ collisions at $\sqrt{s}=7\mathrm{TeV}$ due to mini-quark-gluon plasma which can be produced in high multiplicity events. We show that for underlying events with $d{N}_{\mathrm{ch}}/d\eta \sim 20–60$ the medium effects lead to a considerable modification of the photon-tagged and inclusive jet fragmentation functions. For inclusive jets, the magnitude of the effect is surprisingly large. The effect is quite strong even for typical underlying events. We find that the spectrum of charged hadrons is suppressed by $\sim 35\%–40\%$ at $p_T\sim 5–10\mathrm{GeV}$.

The ability to manufacture metamaterials with exotic electromagnetic properties has potential for surprising new applications. Here we report how a specific type of metamaterial—one whose permittivity is near zero—exerts a repulsive force on an electric dipole source, resulting in levitation of the dipole. The phenomenon relies on the expulsion of the time-varying electric field from the metamaterial interior, resembling the perfect diamagnetic expulsion of magnetostatic fields. Leveraging this concept, we study some realistic requirements for the levitation or repulsion of a polarized particle radiating at any frequency, from microwave to optics.

We explore the impact of weak disorder on the dynamics of classical particles in a periodically oscillating lattice. It is demonstrated that the disorder induces a hopping process from diffusive to regular motion; i.e., we observe the counterintuitive phenomenon that disorder leads to regular behavior. If the disorder is localized in a finite-sized part of the lattice, the described hopping causes initially diffusive particles to even accumulate in regular structures of the corresponding phase space. A hallmark of this accumulation is the emergence of pronounced peaks in the velocity distribution of particles that should be detectable in state of the art experiments, e.g., with cold atoms in optical lattices.

We report on a Dirac-like Fermi surface in three-dimensional bulk materials in a distorted spinel structure on the basis of density functional theory as well as tight-binding theory. The four examples we provide in this Letter are ${\mathrm{BiZnSiO}}_4$, ${\mathrm{BiCaSiO}}_4$, ${\mathrm{BiAlInO}}_4$, and ${\mathrm{BiMgSiO}}_4$. A necessary characteristic of these structures is that they contain a Bi lattice which forms a hierarchy of chainlike substructures, with consequences for both fundamental understanding and materials design.

We present transport measurements performed in $\mathrm{InAs}/\mathrm{GaSb}$ double quantum wells. At the electron-hole crossover tuned by a gate voltage, a strong increase in the longitudinal resistivity is observed with increasing perpendicular magnetic field. Concomitantly with a local resistance exceeding the resistance quantum by an order of magnitude, we find a pronounced nonlocal resistance signal of almost similar magnitude. The coexistence of these two effects is reconciled in a model of counterpropagating and dissipative quantum Hall edge channels providing backscattering, shorted by a residual bulk conductivity.

In high quality updoped GaAs field-effect transistors, the two-dimensional charge carrier concentrations can be tuned to very low values similar to the density of electrons on helium surfaces. An important interaction effect, screening of the Coulomb interaction by the gate, rises as a result of the large charge spacing comparable to the distance between the channel and the gate. Based on the results of the temperature ($T$) dependence of the resistivity from measuring four different samples, a power-law characteristic is found for charge densities $\le 2\times {10}^9{\mathrm{cm}}^{-2}$. Moreover, the exponent exhibits a universal dependence on a single dimensionless parameter, the ratio between the mean carrier separation and the distance to the metallic gate that screens the Coulomb interaction. Thus, the electronic properties are tuned through varying the shape of the interaction potential.

We investigate a type of bistability occurring in population systems where noise not only causes transitions between stable states, but also constructs the states themselves. We focus on the experimentally well-studied system of ants choosing between two food sources to illustrate the essential points, but the ideas are more general. The mean time for switching between the two bistable states of the system is calculated. This suggests a procedure for estimating, in a real system, the critical population size above which bistability ceases to occur.

We report measurements of particle number correlations and fluctuations of a photon Bose-Einstein condensate in a dye microcavity using a Hanbury Brown-Twiss experiment. The photon gas is coupled to a reservoir of molecular excitations, which serve as both heat bath and particle reservoir to realize grand-canonical conditions. For large reservoirs, we observe strong number fluctuations of the order of the total particle number extending deep into the condensed phase. Our results demonstrate that Bose-Einstein condensation under grand-canonical ensemble conditions does not imply second-order coherence.

We experimentally demonstrate that a nonclassical state prepared in an atomic memory can be efficiently transferred to a single mode of free-propagating light. By retrieving on demand a single excitation from a cold atomic gas, we realize an efficient source of single photons prepared in a pure, fully controlled quantum state. We characterize this source using two detection methods, one based on photon-counting analysis and the second using homodyne tomography to reconstruct the density matrix and Wigner function of the state. The latter technique allows us to completely determine the mode of the retrieved photon in its fine phase and amplitude details and demonstrate its nonclassical field statistics by observing a negative Wigner function. We measure a photon retrieval efficiency up to 82% and an atomic memory coherence time of 900  ns. This setup is very well suited to study interactions between atomic excitations and use them in order to create and manipulate more sophisticated quantum states of light with a high degree of experimental control.

Ball lightning (BL) has been observed with two slitless spectrographs at a distance of 0.9 km. The BL is generated by a cloud-to-ground lightning strike. It moves horizontally during the luminous duration. The evolution of size, color, and light intensity is reported in detail. The spectral analysis indicates that the radiation from soil elements is present for the entire lifetime of the BL.

As discovered by Philip Anderson in 1958, strong disorder can block propagation of waves and lead to the localization of wavelike excitations in space. Anderson localization of light is particularly exciting in view of its possible applications for random lasing or quantum information processing. We show that, surprisingly, Anderson localization of light cannot be achieved in a random three-dimensional ensemble of point scattering centers that is the simplest and widespread model to study the multiple scattering of waves. Localization is recovered if the vector character of light is neglected. This shows that, at least for point scatterers, the polarization of light plays an important role in the Anderson localization problem.

In a recent article, Yefsah et al. [Nature (London) 499, 426 (2013)] report the observation of an unusual excitation in an elongated harmonically trapped unitary Fermi gas. After phase imprinting a domain wall, they observe oscillations almost an order of magnitude slower than predicted by any theory of domain walls which they interpret as a “heavy soliton” of inertial mass some 200 times larger than the free fermion mass or 50 times larger than expected for a domain wall. We present compelling evidence that this “soliton” is instead a quantized vortex ring, by showing that the main aspects of the experiment can be naturally explained within the framework of time-dependent superfluid density functional theories.

Strain glass transition is a unique nanoscale displacive transition with local symmetry breaking while maintaining the macroscopic symmetry or average structure unchanged. It usually occurs in the “nonmartensitic” composition range of a martensitic system. So far, only indirect evidence exists for such a transition, essentially from macroscopic measurements and low-resolution transmission electron microscopy observations, and there is a lack of direct evidence for the speculated local symmetry breaking and the sluggish nature of the glass transition. In this Letter we report in situ high-resolution transmission electron microscopy observations on a ${\text{Ti}}_{50}({\text{Pd}}_{41}{\text{Cr}}_9)$ strain glass alloy and direct evidence for these key issues. Our results show that at temperatures well above the strain glass transition temperature ($T_g$), the lattice is essentially an undistorted $B2$ structure. With approaching $T_g$, the local symmetry breaking gradually occurs with the formation and growth of nanomartensite clusters with a combined stacking period of three and four plane intervals, but the average structure measured by x-ray diffraction remains $B2$. These nanomartensite clusters become finally frozen below $T_g$. Our results provide not only a microscopic basis for the macroscopic properties of strain glass, but also new insights into a range of possible applications of this unique class of materials.

Single magnetic Co atoms are deposited on atomically thin NaCl films on Au(111). Two different adsorption sites are revealed by high-resolution scanning tunneling microscopy (STM), i.e., at Na and at Cl locations. Using density functional based simulations of the STM images, we show that the Co atoms substitute with either a Na or Cl atom of the NaCl surface, resulting in cationic and anionic Co dopants with a high thermal stability. The dependence of the magnetic coupling between neighboring Co atoms on their separation is investigated via spatially resolved measurement of the local density of states.

We construct model wave functions for a family of single-quasielectron states supported by the $\nu =1/3$ fractional quantum Hall fluid. The charge $e^{*}=e/3$ quasielectron state is identified as a composite of a charge-$2e^{*}$ quasiparticle and a $-e^{*}$ quasihole, orbiting around their common center of charge with relative angular momentum $n\hslash >0$, and corresponds precisely to the “composite fermion” construction based on a filled $n=0$ Landau level plus an extra particle in level $n>0$. An effective three-body model (one $2e^{*}$ quasiparticle and two $-e^{*}$ quasiholes) is introduced to capture the essential physics of the neutral bulk excitations.

Quantum physics constrains the accuracy of joint measurements of incompatible observables. Here we test tight measurement-uncertainty relations using single photons. We implement two independent, idealized uncertainty-estimation methods, the three-state method and the weak-measurement method, and adapt them to realistic experimental conditions. Exceptional quantum state fidelities of up to 0.999 98(6) allow us to verge upon the fundamental limits of measurement uncertainty.

We experimentally test the error-disturbance uncertainty relation (EDR) in generalized, strength-variable measurement of a single photon polarization qubit, making use of weak measurement that keeps the initial signal state practically unchanged. We demonstrate that the Heisenberg EDR is violated, yet the Ozawa and Branciard EDRs are valid throughout the range of our measurement strength.