The metal-insulator transition and the underlying electronic and orbital structure in $e_g^1$ quantum wells based on ${\mathrm{NdNiO}}_3$ were investigated by dc transport and resonant soft x-ray absorption spectroscopy. By comparing quantum wells of the same dimension but with two different confinement structures, we explicitly demonstrate that the quantum well boundary condition of correlated electrons is critical to selecting the many-body ground state. In particular, the long-range orderings and the metal-insulator transition are found to be strongly enhanced under quantum confinement by sandwiching ${\mathrm{NdNiO}}_3$ with the wide-gap dielectric ${\mathrm{LaAlO}}_3$, while they are suppressed when one of the interfaces is replaced by a surface (interface with vacuum). Resonant spectroscopy reveals that the reduced charge fluctuations in the sandwich structure are supported by the enhanced propensity to charge ordering due to the suppressed $e_g$ orbital splitting when interfaced with the confining ${\mathrm{LaAlO}}_3$ layer.

With a combined ab initio density functional and model Hamiltonian approach we establish that in the recently discovered multiferroic phase of the manganite ${\mathrm{Sr}}_{1/2}{\mathrm{Ba}}_{1/2}{\mathrm{MnO}}_3$ the polar distortion of Mn and O ions is stabilized via enhanced in-plane Mn-O hybridizations. The magnetic superexchange interaction is very sensitive to the polar bond-bending distortion, and we find that this dependence directly causes a strong magnetoelectric coupling. This novel mechanism for multiferroicity is consistent with the experimentally observed reduced ferroelectric polarization upon the onset of magnetic ordering.

We report the first direct evidence that the morphotropic phase boundary in ferroelectric materials, along with the associated strong piezoelectricity, can be created, destroyed, or even replaced by another morphotropic phase boundary through phase transitions during electrical poling. The real-time evolution of crystal structure and domain morphology during the poling-induced phase transitions in $({\mathrm{Bi}}_{1/2}{\mathrm{Na}}_{1/2}){\mathrm{TiO}}_3\mathrm{\text{−}}{\mathrm{BaTiO}}_3$ is observed with in situ transmission electron microscopy. These observations elucidate the microstructural origin of the macroscopic piezoelectricity’s dependence on the poling field and previously unexplained strain behaviors. This study demonstrates that the ferroelectric-to-ferroelectric transitions during the poling process can completely alter the morphotropic phase boundaries and, hence, must be comprehensively investigated when interpreting the microscopic mechanism of macroscopic piezoelectric behaviors.

We report an anomalous dielectric effect of electrolytes under cylindrical nanoconfinement. In bulk phase, the decrease in the water dielectric constant ($ϵ$) with increasing salt concentration is well known, and is due to dielectric saturation. From molecular dynamic simulations of confined water and NaCl solutions, we show a dielectric anisotropy and an unexpected increase in ${ϵ}_{\perp }$ of NaCl solutions with respect to the confined pure liquid until a critical concentration is reached. We infer that this striking dielectric behavior results from the interplay between the effect of confinement and that of ions on the water hydrogen bonding network.

We demonstrate subnanometer resolution cryo-TEM imaging of smectic layers in the smectic and nematic phases of two bent-core liquid crystals. Our results show perfect periodicity over several hundred layers in the smectic phase and also provide the first direct evidence of smectic clusters on length scales of 30–50 nm in a nematic liquid crystal. The results are corroborated with small angle x-ray scattering measurements. The observation of smectic clusters in the nematic phase is of special interest in bent-core liquid crystals, where the smectic clusters are stable over wide temperature ranges, in contrast to the well-known pretransitional “cybotactic” clusters that appear only in the vicinity of a bulk smectic phase. The means to characterize and manipulate this nanoscale molecular order could open up completely new liquid crystal-based technologies.

While there is a rigorously proven relationship about uncertainties intrinsic to any quantum system, often referred to as “Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle,” Heisenberg originally formulated his ideas in terms of a relationship between the precision of a measurement and the disturbance it must create. Although this latter relationship is not rigorously proven, it is commonly believed (and taught) as an aspect of the broader uncertainty principle. Here, we experimentally observe a violation of Heisenberg’s “measurement-disturbance relationship”, using weak measurements to characterize a quantum system before and after it interacts with a measurement apparatus. Our experiment implements a 2010 proposal of Lund and Wiseman to confirm a revised measurement-disturbance relationship derived by Ozawa in 2003. Its results have broad implications for the foundations of quantum mechanics and for practical issues in quantum measurement.

Large-scale universal quantum computing requires the implementation of quantum error correction (QEC). While the implementation of QEC has already been demonstrated for quantum memories, reliable quantum computing requires also the application of nontrivial logical gate operations to the encoded qubits. Here, we present examples of such operations by implementing, in addition to the identity operation, the NOT and the Hadamard gate to a logical qubit encoded in a five qubit system that allows correction of arbitrary single-qubit errors. We perform quantum process tomography of the encoded gate operations, demonstrate the successful correction of all possible single-qubit errors, and measure the fidelity of the encoded logical gate operations.

We conceived a model experiment for a continuous separation strategy of chiral molecules (enantiomers) without the need of any chiral selector structure or derivatization agents: Microparticles that only differ by their chirality are shown to migrate along different directions when driven by a steady fluid flow through a square lattice of cylindrical posts. In accordance with our numerical predictions, the transport directions of the enantiomers depend very sensitively on the orientation of the lattice relative to the fluid flow.

Sun spots are prominent manifestations of solar magnetoconvection, and imaging their subsurface structure is an outstanding problem of wide physical importance. Travel times of seismic waves that propagate through these structures are typically used as inputs to inversions. Despite the presence of strongly anisotropic magnetic waveguides, these measurements have always been interpreted in terms of changes to isotropic wave speeds and flow-advection-related Doppler shifts. Here, we employ partial-differential-equation-constrained optimization to determine the appropriate parametrization of the structural properties of the magnetic interior. Seven different wave speeds fully characterize helioseismic wave propagation: the isotropic sound speed, a Doppler-shifting flow-advection velocity, and an anisotropic magnetic velocity. The structure of magnetic media is sensed by magnetoacoustic slow and fast modes and Alfvén waves, each of which propagates at a different wave speed. We show that even in the case of weak magnetic fields, significant errors may be incurred if these anisotropies are not accounted for in inversions. Translation invariance is demonstrably lost. These developments render plausible the accurate seismic imaging of magnetoconvection in the Sun.

Based on the full BABAR data sample, we report improved measurements of the ratios $\mathcal{R}(D^{(*)})=\mathcal{B}(\overline{B}\to D^{(*)}{\tau }^{-}{\overline{\nu }}_{\tau })/\mathcal{B}(\overline{B}\to D^{(*)}{\ell }_{\ell }^{-}{\overline{\nu }}_{\ell })$, where $\ell$ is either $e$ or $\mu$. These ratios are sensitive to new physics contributions in the form of a charged Higgs boson. We measure $\mathcal{R}(D)=0.440\pm 0.058\pm 0.042$ and $\mathcal{R}(D^{*})=0.332\pm 0.024\pm 0.018$, which exceed the standard model expectations by $2.0\sigma$ and $2.7\sigma$, respectively. Taken together, our results disagree with these expectations at the $3.4\sigma$ level. This excess cannot be explained by a charged Higgs boson in the type II two-Higgs-doublet model.

We introduced recently a new theoretical scheme which accounts for hydrodynamically expanding bulk matter, jets, and the interaction between the two. Important for the particle production at intermediate values of transverse momentum ($p_t$) are jet hadrons produced inside the fluid. They pick up quarks and antiquarks (or diquarks) from the thermal matter rather than creating them via the Schwinger mechanism—the usual mechanism of hadron production from string fragmentation. These hadrons carry plasma properties (flavor, flow) but also the large momentum of the transversely moving string segment connecting quark and antiquark (or diquark). They therefore show up at quite large values of $p_t$, not polluted by soft particle production. We will show that this mechanism leads to a pronounced peak in the Lambda-to-kaon ratio at intermediate $p_t$. The effect increases substantially with centrality, which reflects the increasing transverse size with centrality.

Quantum lithography achieves phase superresolution using fragile, experimentally challenging entangled states of light. We propose a scalable scheme for creating features narrower than classically achievable with reduced use of quantum resources and, consequently, enhanced resistance to loss. The scheme is an implementation of interferometric lithography using a mixture of a spontaneous parametric down-converted entangled state with intense classical coherent light. We measure coincidences of up to four photons mimicking multiphoton absorption. The results show a narrowing of the interference fringes of up to 30% with respect to the best analogous classical scheme using only 10% of the nonclassical light required for creating NOON states.

By quenching the strength of interactions in a partially condensed Bose gas, we create a “supersaturated” vapor which has more thermal atoms than it can contain in equilibrium. Subsequently, the number of condensed atoms ($N_0$) grows even though the temperature ($T$) rises and the total atom number decays. We show that the nonequilibrium evolution of the system is isoenergetic and, for small initial $N_0$, observe a clear separation between $T$ and $N_0$ dynamics, thus explicitly demonstrating the theoretically expected “two-step” picture of condensate growth. For increasing initial $N_0$ values, we observe a crossover to classical relaxation dynamics. The size of the observed quench-induced effects can be explained using a simple equation of state for an interacting harmonically trapped atomic gas.

We discuss the emergence of rings of zero-energy excitations in momentum space for superfluid phases of ultracold fermions when spin-orbit effects, Zeeman fields, and interactions are varied. We show that phases containing rings of nodes possess nontrivial topological invariants, and that phase transitions between distinct topological phases belong to the Lifshitz class. Upon crossing phase boundaries, existing massless Dirac fermions in the gapless phase annihilate to produce bulk zero-mode Majorana fermions at phase boundaries, and then become massive Dirac fermions in the gapped phase. We characterize these tunable topological phase transitions via several spectroscopic properties, including excitation spectrum, spectral function, and momentum distribution.

Simulations are used to determine the effect of inertia on athermal shear of amorphous two-dimensional solids. In the quasistatic limit, shear occurs through a series of rapid avalanches. The distribution of avalanches is analyzed using finite-size scaling with thousands to millions of disks. Inertia takes the system to a new underdamped universality class rather than driving the system away from criticality as previously thought. Scaling exponents are determined for the underdamped and overdamped limits and a critical damping that separates the two regimes. Systems are in the overdamped universality class even when most vibrational modes are underdamped.

The dynamical mechanisms controlling the rheology of dense suspensions close to jamming are investigated numerically, using simplified models for the relevant dissipative forces. We show that the velocity fluctuations control the dissipation rate and therefore the effective viscosity of the suspension. These fluctuations are similar in quasi-static simulations and for finite strain rate calculations with various damping schemes. We conclude that the statistical properties of grain trajectories—in particular the critical exponent of velocity fluctuations with respect to volume fraction $\varphi$—only weakly depend on the dissipation mechanism. Rather they are determined by steric effects, which are the main driving forces in the quasistatic simulations. The critical exponent of the suspension viscosity with respect to $\varphi$ can then be deduced, and is consistent with experimental data.

The interface between a crystalline and a vitreous phase of a thin metal supported silica film was studied by low temperature scanning tunneling microscopy. The locally resolved evolution of Si-Si nearest neighbor distances and characteristic angles was evaluated across the border. Furthermore, we investigated the behavior of the ring size distribution close to the crystalline-vitreous transition. The crystalline order was found to decay gradually within about 1.6 nm into the vitreous state.

We predict that graphene is a unique system where disorder-assisted scattering (supercollisions) dominates electron-lattice cooling over a wide range of temperatures, up to room temperature. This is so because for momentum-conserving electron-phonon scattering the energy transfer per collision is severely constrained due to a small Fermi surface size. The characteristic $T^3$ temperature dependence and power-law cooling dynamics provide clear experimental signatures of this new cooling mechanism. The cooling rate can be changed by orders of magnitude by varying the amount of disorder providing means for a variety of new applications that rely on hot-carrier transport.

We present a study of a Hanbury Brown–Twiss interferometer realized with anyons. Such a device can directly probe entanglement and fractional statistics of initially uncorrelated particles. We calculate Hanbury Brown–Twiss cross correlations of Abelian Laughlin anyons. The correlations we calculate exhibit partial bunching similar to bosons, indicating a substantial statistical transmutation from the underlying electronic degrees of freedom. We also find qualitative differences between the anyonic signal and the corresponding bosonic or fermionic signals, indicating that anyons cannot be simply thought of as intermediate between bosons and fermions.

In semiconductors, the $T_2^{*}$ coherence time of a single confined spin is limited either by the fluctuating magnetic environment (via the hyperfine interaction), or by charge fluctuations (via the spin-orbit interaction). We demonstrate that both limitations can be overcome simultaneously by using two exchange-coupled electron spins that realize a single decoherence-avoiding qubit. Using coherent population trapping, we generate a coherent superposition of the singlet and triplet states of an optically active quantum dot molecule, and show that the corresponding $T_2^{*}$ may exceed 200 ns.