A supramolecular adduct 4-methoxyanilinium perrhenate 18-crown-6 was synthesized, which undergoes a disorder-order structural phase transition at about 153 K ($T_c$) due to slowing down of a pendulumlike motion of the 4-methoxyanilinium group upon cooling. Ferroelectric hysteresis loop measurements give a spontaneous polarization of $1.2\mu \mathrm{C}/{\mathrm{cm}}^2$. Temperature-dependent solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance measurements reveal three kinds of molecular motions existing in the compound: pendulumlike swing of 4-methoxyanilinium cation, rotation of 18-crown-6 ring, and rotation of the methoxyl group. When the temperature decreases, the first two motions are frozen at about 153 K and the methoxyl group becomes rigid at around 126 K. The slowing down or freezing of pendulumlike motion of the cation triggered by temperature decreasing corresponds to the centrosymmetric-to-noncentrosymmetric arrangement of the compound, resulting in the formation of ferroelectricity.

The nature of the glass transition is one of the most important unsolved problems in condensed matter physics. The difference between glasses and liquids is believed to be caused by very large free energy barriers for particle rearrangements; however, so far it has not been possible to confirm this experimentally. We provide the first quantitative determination of the free energy for an aging hard sphere colloidal glass. The determination of the free energy allows for a number of new insights in the glass transition, notably the quantification of the strong spatial and temporal heterogeneity in the free energy. A study of the local minima of the free energy reveals that the observed variations are directly related to the rearrangements of the particles. Our main finding is that the probability of particle rearrangements shows a power law dependence on the free energy changes associated with the rearrangements similar to the Gutenberg-Richter law in seismology.

We report on the detailed study of multicomponent spin waves in an $s=3/2$ Fermi gas where the high spin leads to novel tensorial degrees of freedom compared to $s=1/2$ systems. The excitations of a spin-nematic state are investigated from the linear to the nonlinear regime, where the tensorial character is particularly pronounced. By tuning the initial state we engineer the tensorial spin-wave character, such that the magnitude and the sign of the counterflow spin currents are effectively controlled. A comparison of our data with numerical and analytical results shows good agreement.

The normal Casimir force between a sinusoidally corrugated gold coated plate and a sphere was measured at various angles between the corrugations using an atomic force microscope. A strong dependence on the orientation angle of the corrugation is found. The measured forces were found to deviate from the proximity force approximation and are in agreement with the theory based on the gradient expansion including correlation effects of geometry and material properties. We analyze the role of temperature. The obtained results open new opportunities for control of the Casimir effect in micromechanical systems.

Using the joint distribution for proper time delays of a chaotic cavity derived by Brouwer, Frahm, and Beenakker [Phys. Rev. Lett. 78, 4737 (1997)], we obtain, in the limit of the large number of channels $N$, the large deviation function for the distribution of the Wigner time delay (the sum of proper times) by a Coulomb gas method. We show that the existence of a power law tail originates from narrow resonance contributions, related to a (second order) freezing transition in the Coulomb gas.

We investigate the magnetic field dependent thermopower, thermal conductivity, resistivity, and Hall effect in the heavy fermion metal ${\mathrm{YbRh}}_2{\mathrm{Si}}_2$. In contrast to reports on thermodynamic measurements, we find in total three transitions at high fields, rather than a single one at 10 T. Using the Mott formula together with renormalized band calculations, we identify Lifshitz transitions as their origin. The predictions of the calculations show that all experimental results rely on an interplay of a smooth suppression of the Kondo effect and the spin splitting of the flat hybridized bands.

We consider strongly interacting systems of effective spins, subject to dissipative spin-flip processes associated with optical pumping. We predict the existence of novel magnetic phases in the steady state of this system, which emerge due to the competition between coherent and dissipative processes. Specifically, for strongly anisotropic spin-spin interactions, we find ferromagnetic, antiferromagnetic, spin-density-wave, and staggered-$XY$ steady states, which are separated by nonequilibrium phase transitions meeting at a Lifshitz point. These transitions are accompanied by quantum correlations, resulting in spin squeezing. Experimental implementations in ultracold atoms and trapped ions are discussed.

We address the question of what physical resources are required and sufficient to store classical information. While there is no lower bound on the required energy or space to store information, we find that there is a nonzero lower bound for the product $P=⟨E⟩⟨r^2⟩$ of these two resources. Specifically, we prove that any physical system of mass $m$ and $d$ degrees of freedom that stores $S$ bits of information will have a lower bound on the product $P$ that is proportional to $d^2/m\mathbf{(}\exp (S/d)-1{\mathbf{)}}^2$. This result is obtained in a nonrelativistic, quantum mechanical setting, and it is independent of earlier thermodynamical results such as the Bekenstein bound on the entropy of black holes.

We propose a multimode quantum memory protocol able to store the quantum state of the field in a microwave resonator into an ensemble of electronic spins. The stored information is protected against inhomogeneous broadening of the spin ensemble by spin-echo techniques resulting in memory times orders of magnitude longer than previously achieved. By calculating the evolution of the first and second moments of the spin-cavity system variables for current experimental parameters, we show that a memory based on nitrogen vacancy center spins in diamond can store a qubit encoded on the $|0⟩$ and $|1⟩$ Fock states of the field with 80% fidelity and outperform classical memory strategies for storage times $\le 69\mu \mathrm{s}$.

We describe a quantum algorithm that generalizes the quantum linear system algorithm [Harrow et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 103, 150502 (2009)] to arbitrary problem specifications. We develop a state preparation routine that can initialize generic states, show how simple ancilla measurements can be used to calculate many quantities of interest, and integrate a quantum-compatible preconditioner that greatly expands the number of problems that can achieve exponential speedup over classical linear systems solvers. To demonstrate the algorithm’s applicability, we show how it can be used to compute the electromagnetic scattering cross section of an arbitrary target exponentially faster than the best classical algorithm.

We develop a systematic approach to the linear-noise approximation for stochastic reaction systems with distributed delays. Unlike most existing work our formalism does not rely on a master equation; instead it is based upon a dynamical generating functional describing the probability measure over all possible paths of the dynamics. We derive general expressions for the chemical Langevin equation for a broad class of non-Markovian systems with distributed delay. Exemplars of a model of gene regulation with delayed autoinhibition and a model of epidemic spread with delayed recovery provide evidence of the applicability of our results.

We have investigated the generation of highly pure higher-order Laguerre-Gauss (LG) beams at high laser power of order 100 W, the same regime that will be used by second-generation gravitational wave interferometers such as Advanced LIGO. We report on the generation of a helical-type ${\mathrm{LG}}_{33}$ mode with a purity of order 97% at a power of 83 W, the highest power ever reported in literature for a higher-order LG mode. This is a fundamental step in proving technical readiness for use of LG beams in gravitational wave interferometers of future generations.

We show that in the limit of a large number of dimensions a wide class of nonextremal neutral black holes has a universal near-horizon limit. The limiting geometry is the two-dimensional black hole of string theory with a two-dimensional target space. Its conformal symmetry explains the properties of massless scalars found recently in the large-$D$ limit. For black branes with string charges, the near-horizon geometry is that of the three-dimensional black strings of Horne and Horowitz. The analogies between the ${\alpha }^{\prime }$ expansion in string theory and the large-$D$ expansion in gravity suggest a possible effective string description of the large-$D$ limit of black holes. We comment on applications to several subjects, in particular to the problem of critical collapse.

Scattering amplitudes at loop level can be expressed in terms of Feynman integrals. The latter satisfy partial differential equations in the kinematical variables. We argue that a good choice of basis for (multi)loop integrals can lead to significant simplifications of the differential equations, and propose criteria for finding an optimal basis. This builds on experience obtained in supersymmetric field theories that can be applied successfully to generic quantum field theory integrals. It involves studying leading singularities and explicit integral representations. When the differential equations are cast into canonical form, their solution becomes elementary. The class of functions involved is easily identified, and the solution can be written down to any desired order in $ϵ$ within dimensional regularization. Results obtained in this way are particularly simple and compact. In this Letter, we outline the general ideas of the method and apply them to a two-loop example.

We study the dependence of 4D $\mathrm{SU}(N)$ gauge theories on the topological $\theta$ term at finite temperature $T$. We exploit the lattice formulation of the theory, presenting numerical results for the expansion of the free energy up to $O({\theta }^6)$, for $N=3$ and $N=6$. Our analysis shows that the $\theta$ dependence drastically changes across the deconfinement transition: the low-$T$ phase is characterized by a large-$N$ scaling with $\theta /N$ as relevant variable, while in the high-$T$ phase the scaling variable is just $\theta$ and the free energy is essentially determined by the instanton-gas approximation.

We compute the next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) quantum chromodynamics (QCD) correction to the total cross section for the reaction $gg\to t\overline{t}+X$. Together with the partonic channels we computed previously, the result derived in this Letter completes the set of NNLO QCD corrections to the total top pair-production cross section at hadron colliders. Supplementing the fixed order results with soft-gluon resummation with next-to-next-to-leading logarithmic accuracy, we estimate that the theoretical uncertainty of this observable due to unknown higher order corrections is about 3% at the LHC and 2.2% at the Tevatron. We observe a good agreement between the standard model predictions and the available experimental measurements. The very high theoretical precision of this observable allows a new level of scrutiny in parton distribution functions and new physics searches.

Current trends in laser technology have reached the regime of studying atoms stabilized against ionization, going beyond the perturbation theory. In this work, properties of a laser-dressed sulfur atom are examined in this stabilization regime. The electronic structure of a sulfur atom changes dramatically as it interacts with strong high-frequency laser fields. Degenerate molecularlike states are obtained for the ground state triplet of the laser-dressed sulfur atom for high-frequency and moderate intensity laser parameters. The degenerate ground state is obtained for a laser intensity which is smaller by more than one order of magnitude than the intensity required for hydrogen atoms due to many electron screening effects. An infinitesimally weak static field mixes these degenerate states to give rise to asymmetric states with large permanent dipole moments. Hence, a strong linear Stark effect rather than the usual quadratic one is obtained.

We show that a family of key periodic orbits drives the recollision process in a strong circularly polarized laser field. These orbits, coined recolliding periodic orbits, exist for a wide range of parameters, and their relative influence changes as the laser and atomic parameters are varied. We find the necessary conditions for recollision-driven nonsequential double ionization to occur. The outlined mechanism is universal in that it applies equally well beyond atoms: The internal structure of the target species plays a minor role in the recollision process.

We propose and analyze a new scheme to produce ultracold neutral plasmas deep in the strongly coupled regime. The method exploits the interaction blockade between cold atoms excited to high-lying Rydberg states and therefore does not require substantial extensions of current ultracold plasma experiments. Extensive simulations reveal a universal behavior of the resulting Coulomb coupling parameter, providing a direct connection between the physics of strongly correlated Rydberg gases and ultracold plasmas. The approach is shown to reduce currently accessible temperatures by more than an order of magnitude, which opens up a new regime for ultracold plasma research and cold ion-beam applications with readily available experimental techniques.

We show how strong steady-state entanglement can be achieved in a three-mode optomechanical system (or other parametrically coupled bosonic system) by effectively laser cooling a delocalized Bogoliubov mode. This approach allows one to surpass the bound on the maximum stationary intracavity entanglement possible with a coherent two-mode squeezing interaction. In particular, we find that optimizing the relative ratio of optomechanical couplings, rather than simply increasing their magnitudes, is essential for achieving strong entanglement. Unlike typical dissipative entanglement schemes, our results cannot be described by treating the effects of the entangling reservoir via a Linblad master equation.