The nuclear equation of state (EOS) is explored with the constrained Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov approach for self-conjugate nuclei. It is found that beyond a certain low, more or less universal density, those nuclei spontaneously cluster into $A/4$ $\alpha$ particles with $A$ the nucleon number. The energy at the threshold density increases linearly with the number of $\alpha$ particles as does the experimental threshold energy. Taking off the spurious c.m. energy of each $\alpha$ particle almost gives agreement between theory and experiment. The implications of these results with respect to $\alpha$ clustering and the nuclear EOS at low density are discussed.

Optomechanical systems have been shown both theoretically and experimentally to exhibit an analogon to atomic electromagnetically induced transparency, with sharp transmission features that are controlled by a second laser beam. Here we investigate these effects in the regime where the fundamental nonlinear nature of the optomechanical interaction becomes important. We demonstrate that pulsed transistorlike switching of transmission still works even in this regime. We also show that optomechanically induced transparency at the second mechanical sideband could be a sensitive tool to see first indications of the nonlinear quantum nature of the optomechanical interaction even for single-photon coupling strengths significantly smaller than the cavity linewidth.

A strong energy modulation in an electron bunch passing through a dielectric-lined waveguide was recently demonstrated in Antipov et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 108, 144801 (2012). In this Letter, we demonstrate a successful conversion of this energy modulation into a beam density modulation, and the formation of a series of microbunches with a subpicosecond periodicity by means of magnetic optics (chicane). A strong coherent transition radiation signal produced by the microbunches is obtained and the tunability of its carrier frequency in the 0.68–0.9 THz range by regulating the energy chirp in the incoming electron bunch is demonstrated using infrared interferometry. A tabletop, compact, tunable, and narrowband source of intense THz radiation based on this technology is proposed.

We propose a simple but novel scheme to realize the Kondo effect with ultracold atoms. Our system consists of a Fermi sea of spinless fermions interacting with an impurity atom of different species which is confined by an isotropic potential. The interspecies attraction can be tuned with an $s$-wave Feshbach resonance so that the impurity atom and a spinless fermion form a bound dimer that occupies a threefold-degenerate $p$ orbital of the confinement potential. Many-body scatterings of this dimer and surrounding spinless fermions occur with exchanging their angular momenta and thus exhibit the SU(3) orbital Kondo effect. The associated Kondo temperature has a universal leading exponent given by $T_K\propto \exp [-\pi /(3a_p{k}_F^3)]$ that depends only on an effective $p$-wave scattering volume $a_p$ and a Fermi wave vector $k_F$. We also elucidate a Kondo singlet formation at zero temperature and an anisotropic interdimer interaction mediated by surrounding spinless fermions. The Kondo effect thus realized in ultracold atom experiments may be observed as an increasing atom loss by lowering the temperature or with radio-frequency spectroscopy. Our scheme and its extension to a dense Kondo lattice will be useful to develop new insights into yet unresolved aspects of Kondo physics.

By applying a genetic algorithm and ab initio atomistic thermodynamics, we identify the stable and metastable compositions and structures of ${\mathrm{Mg}}_M{\mathrm{O}}_x$ clusters at realistic temperatures and oxygen pressures. We find that small clusters ($M\lesssim 5$) are in thermodynamic equilibrium when $x>M$. The nonstoichiometric clusters exhibit peculiar magnetic behavior, suggesting the possibility of tuning magnetic properties by changing environmental pressure and temperature conditions. Furthermore, we show that density-functional theory with a hybrid exchange-correlation functional is needed for predicting accurate phase diagrams of metal-oxide clusters. Neither a (sophisticated) force field nor density-functional theory with (semi)local exchange-correlation functionals is sufficient for even a qualitative prediction.

Bottom-up growth of microscopic pillars is observed at room temperature on GaN irradiated with a ${\mathrm{Ga}}^{+}$ beam in a gaseous ${\mathrm{XeF}}_2$ environment. Ion bombardment produces Ga droplets which evolve into pillars, each comprised of a spherical Ga cap atop a Ga-filled, gallium fluoride tapered tube (sheath). The structures form through an interdependent, self-ordering cycle of liquid cap growth and solid sheath formation. The sheath and core growth mechanisms are not catalytic, but instead consistent with a model of ion-induced Ga and F generation, Ga transport through surface diffusion, and heterogeneous sputtering caused by self-masking of the tapered pillars.

Systematic ab initio structure prediction was applied for the first time to predict low energy surface reconstructions by employing the minima hopping method on the $\alpha$-boron (111) surface. Novel reconstruction geometries were identified and carefully characterized in terms of structural and electronic properties. Our calculations predict the formation of a planar, monolayer sheet at the surface, which is responsible for conductive surface states. Furthermore, the isolated boron sheet is shown to be the ground state 2D structure in vacuum at a hole density of $\eta =1/5$ and is therefore a potential candidate as a precursor for boron nanostructures.

We consider Majorana fermions tunneling among an array of vortices in a 2D chiral $p$-wave superconductor or equivalent material. The amplitude for Majorana fermions to tunnel between a pair of vortices is found to necessarily depend on the background superconducting phase profile; it is found to be proportional to the sine of half the difference between the phases at the two vortices. Using this result we study tight-binding models of Majorana fermions in vortices arranged in triangular or square lattices. In both cases we find that the aforementioned phase-tunneling relationship leads to the creation of superlattices where the Majorana fermions form macroscopically degenerate localizable flat bands at zero energy, in addition to other dispersive bands. This finding suggests that tunneling processes in these vortex arrays do not change the energies of a finite fraction of Majorana fermions, contrary to previous expectation. The presence of flat Majorana bands, and hence less-than-expected decoherence in these vortex arrays, bodes well for the prospects of topological quantum computation with large numbers of Majorana states.

Floquet Majorana fermions are steady states of equal superposition of electrons and holes in a periodically driven superconductor. We study the experimental signatures of Floquet Majorana fermions in transport measurements and show, both analytically and numerically, that their presence is signaled by a quantized conductance sum rule over discrete values of lead bias differing by multiple absorption or emission energies at drive frequency. We also study the effects of static disorder and find that the quantized sum rule is robust against weak disorder. Thus, we offer a unique way to identify the topological signatures of Floquet Majorana fermions.

We report the measurement of the fluctuations of the two quadratures of the electromagnetic field generated by a quantum conductor, a dc- and ac-biased tunnel junction placed at very low temperature. We observe that the variance of the fluctuations on one quadrature can go below that of vacuum, i.e., that the radiated field is squeezed. This demonstrates the quantum nature of the radiated electromagnetic field.

We consider the effect of disorder on the themopower in quantum Hall systems. For a sample in the Corbino geometry, where dissipative currents are not carried by edge states, we find that thermopower behaves at high temperatures like a system with a gap and has a maximum which increases as the temperature is reduced. At lower temperatures this maximum reduces as a function of temperature as a result of tunneling across saddle points in the background potential. Our model assumes that the mean saddle point height varies linearly with the deviation in filling factor from the quantized value. We test this hypothesis against observations for the dissipative electrical conductance as a function of temperature and field and find good agreement with experiment around the minimum.

Spin-orbit interaction provides a spin filtering effect in carbon nanotube based Cooper pair splitters that allows us to determine spin correlators directly from current measurements. The spin filtering axes are tunable by a global external magnetic field. By a bending of the nanotube, the filtering axes on both sides of the Cooper pair splitter become sufficiently different that a test of entanglement of the injected Cooper pairs through a Bell-like inequality can be implemented. This implementation does not require noise measurements, supports imperfect splitting efficiency and disorder, and does not demand a full knowledge of the spin-orbit strength. Using a microscopic calculation we demonstrate that entanglement detection by violation of the Bell-like inequality is within the reach of current experimental setups.

Recent experiments have indicated that dopants and defects can trigger new redshifted photoluminescence (PL) peaks below the $E_{11}$ peak in single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs). To understand the origin of the new PL peaks, we study theoretically the excited-state properties of SWCNTs with some typical dopants and defects by ab initio many-body perturbation theory. Our calculations demonstrate that the Stokes shift in doped centers can be as large as 170 meV, which is much larger than that of intact SWCNTs and must be taken into account. We find dipole-allowed transitions from localized midgap and shallow impurity levels, which can give rise to pronounced PL peaks. Dark excitons, on the other hand, seem to have oscillator strengths that are too small to account for the new PL peaks.

We demonstrate that quantum scattering of fast atoms and molecules under grazing angles of incidence can be exploited to study the structure of organic molecules on metal surfaces. Making use of keV H and He atoms as well as ${\mathrm{H}}_2$ molecules, the surface structures of the chiral amino acid alanine adsorbed on a Cu(110) surface is studied. We present a detailed investigation on the ($3\times 2$) phase of a monolayer of enantiopure and racemic alanine on Cu(110), revealing the formation of an elongated surface unit cell of $c(n\times 2)$ symmetry with $n=3.16\pm 0.04$ for the sticking out methyl groups of the alanine molecules.

We analyze the effect of confining rigid and elastic boundaries on the motility of a model dipolar microswimmer. Flexible boundaries are deformed by the velocity field of the swimmer in such a way that the motility of both extensile and contractile swimmers is enhanced. The magnitude of the increase in swimming velocity is controlled by the ratio of the swimmer-advection and elastic time scales, and the dipole moment of the swimmer. We explain our results by considering swimming between inclined rigid boundaries.

It has been hypothesized that topological structures of biological transport networks are consequences of energy optimization. Motivated by experimental observation, we propose that adaptation dynamics may underlie this optimization. In contrast to the global nature of optimization, our adaptation dynamics responds only to local information and can naturally incorporate fluctuations in flow distributions. The adaptation dynamics minimizes the global energy consumption to produce optimal networks, which may possess hierarchical loop structures in the presence of strong fluctuations in flow distribution. We further show that there may exist a new phase transition as there is a critical open probability of sinks, above which there are only trees for network structures whereas below which loops begin to emerge.

Given a specific interacting quantum Hamiltonian in a general spatial dimension, can one access its entanglement properties, such as the entanglement entropy corresponding to the ground state wave function? Even though progress has been made in addressing this question for interacting bosons and quantum spins, as yet there exist no corresponding methods for interacting fermions. Here we show that the entanglement structure of interacting fermionic Hamiltonians has a particularly simple form—the interacting reduced density matrix can be written as a sum of operators that describe free fermions. This decomposition allows one to calculate the Renyi entropies for Hamiltonians which can be simulated via determinantal quantum Monte Carlo calculations, while employing the efficient techniques hitherto available only for free fermions. The method presented works for the ground state, as well as for the thermally averaged reduced density matrix.

We study a two-dimensional fermionic square lattice, which supports the existence of a two-dimensional Weyl semimetal, quantum anomalous Hall effect, and $2\pi$-flux topological semimetal in different parameter ranges. We show that the band degenerate points of the two-dimensional Weyl semimetal and $2\pi$-flux topological semimetal are protected by two distinct novel hidden symmetries, which both correspond to antiunitary composite operations. When these hidden symmetries are broken, a gap opens between the conduction and valence bands, turning the system into a insulator. With appropriate parameters, a quantum anomalous Hall effect emerges. The degenerate point at the boundary between the quantum anomalous Hall insulator and trivial band insulator is also protected by the hidden symmetry.

The momentum spectrum of a periodic network (quantum graph) has a band-gap structure. We investigate the relative density of the bands or, equivalently, the probability that a randomly chosen momentum belongs to the spectrum of the periodic network. We show that this probability exhibits universal properties. More precisely, the probability to be in the spectrum does not depend on the edge lengths (as long as they are generic) and is also invariant within some classes of graph topologies.

We perform a comprehensive set of experiments that characterize bosonic bunching of up to three photons in interferometers of up to 16 modes. Our experiments verify two rules that govern bosonic bunching. The first rule, obtained recently, predicts the average behavior of the bunching probability and is known as the bosonic birthday paradox. The second rule is new and establishes a $n!$-factor quantum enhancement for the probability that all $n$ bosons bunch in a single output mode, with respect to the case of distinguishable bosons. In addition to its fundamental importance in phenomena such as Bose-Einstein condensation, bosonic bunching can be exploited in applications such as linear optical quantum computing and quantum-enhanced metrology.