We study the stability of globular proteins as a function of temperature and pressure through $NPT$ simulations of a coarse-grained model. We reproduce the elliptical stability of proteins and highlight a unifying microscopic mechanism for pressure and cold denaturations. The mechanism involves the solvation of nonpolar residues with a thin layer of water. These solvated states have lower volume and lower hydrogen-bond energy compared to other conformations of nonpolar solutes. Hence, these solvated states are favorable at high pressure and low temperature, and they facilitate protein unfolding under these thermodynamical conditions.

Entanglement is one of the essential resources in quantum information and communication technology (QICT). The entanglement thus far explored and applied to QICT has been pure and distillable entanglement. Yet, there is another type of entanglement, called “bound entanglement,” which is not distillable by local operations and classical communication. We demonstrate the experimental “activation” of the bound entanglement held in the four-qubit Smolin state, unleashing its immanent entanglement in distillable form, with the help of auxiliary two-qubit entanglement and local operations and classical communication. We anticipate that it opens the way to a new class of QICT applications that utilize more general classes of entanglement than ever, including bound entanglement.

Most states in the Hilbert space are maximally entangled. This fact has proven useful to investigate—among other things—the foundations of statistical mechanics. Unfortunately, most states in the Hilbert space of a quantum many-body system are not physically accessible. We define physical ensembles of states acting on random factorized states by a circuit of length $k$ of random and independent unitaries with local support. We study the typicality of entanglement by means of the purity of the reduced state. We find that for a time $k=O(1)$, the typical purity obeys the area law. Thus, the upper bounds for area law are actually saturated, on average, with a variance that goes to zero for large systems. Similarly, we prove that by means of local evolution a subsystem of linear dimensions $L$ is typically entangled with a volume law when the time scales with the size of the subsystem. Moreover, we show that for large values of $k$ the reduced state becomes very close to the completely mixed state.

We implement a noiseless optical amplifier using a phase-sensitive four-wave mixing process in rubidium vapor. We observe performance near the quantum limit for this type of amplifier over a range of experimental parameters and show that the noise figure is always better than would be obtained with a phase-insensitive amplifier with the same gain. Additionally, we observe that the amplifier supports hundreds of spatial modes, making it possible to amplify complex two-dimensional spatial patterns with less than a 10% degradation of the input signal-to-noise ratio for gains up to 4.6. To confirm the multimode character of the amplifier, we study the noise figure as a function of spatially-varying losses. Additionally, we investigate the spatial resolution of the amplifier and show that it supports a range of spatial frequencies from 1.3 to more than 35 line pairs per millimeter.

A new concept devoted to sensing the depolarization strength of materials from a single measurement is proposed and successfully validated on a variety of samples. It relies on the measurement of the orthogonality breaking between two orthogonal states of polarization after interaction with the material to be characterized. Due to orthogonality preservation between the two states after propagation in birefringent media, this measurement concept is shown to be perfectly suited to depolarization remote sensing through fibers, opening the way to real-time depolarization endoscopy.

Cascaded nonlinearities have attracted much interest, but ultrafast applications have been seriously hampered by the simultaneous requirements of being near phase matching and having ultrafast femtosecond response times. Here we show that in strongly phase-mismatched nonlinear frequency conversion crystals the pump pulse can experience a large and extremely broadband self-defocusing cascaded Kerr-like nonlinearity. The large cascaded nonlinearity is ensured through interaction with the largest quadratic tensor element in the crystal, and the strong phase mismatch ensures an ultrafast nonlinear response with an octave-spanning bandwidth. We verify this experimentally by showing few-cycle soliton compression with noncritical cascaded second-harmonic generation: Energetic 47 fs infrared pulses are compressed in a just 1-mm long bulk lithium niobate crystal to 17 fs (under 4 optical cycles) with 80% efficiency, and upon further propagation an octave-spanning supercontinuum is observed. Such ultrafast cascading is expected to occur for a broad range of pump wavelengths spanning the near- and mid-IR using standard nonlinear crystals.

We construct and discuss a semirational, multiparametric vector solution of coupled nonlinear Schrödinger equations (Manakov system). This family of solutions includes known vector Peregrine solutions, bright- and dark-rogue solutions, and novel vector unusual freak waves. The vector rogue waves could be of great interest in a variety of complex systems, from optics and fluid dynamics to Bose-Einstein condensates and finance.

We investigate the exciton Mott transition in Si by using optical pump and terahertz probe spectroscopy. The density-dependent exciton ionization ratio $\alpha$ is quantitatively evaluated from the analysis of dielectric function and conductivity spectra. The Mott density is clearly determined by the rapid increase in $\alpha$ as a function of electron-hole ($e\mathrm{\text{−}}h$) pair density, which agrees well with the value expected from the random phase approximation theory. However, exciton is sustained in the high-density metallic region above the Mott density as manifested by the $1s\mathrm{\text{−}}2p$ excitonic resonance that remains intact across the Mott density. Moreover, the charge carrier scattering rate is strongly enhanced slightly above the Mott density due to nonvanishing excitons, indicating the emergence of highly correlated metallic phase in the photoexcited $e\mathrm{\text{−}}h$ system. Concomitantly, the loss function spectra exhibit the signature of plasmon-exciton coupling, i.e., the existence of a new collective mode of charge density excitation combined with the excitonic polarization at the proximity of Mott density.

Polarized magnetophotoluminescence is employed to study the energies and occupancies of four lowest Landau levels in a couple quantum Hall $\mathrm{GaAs}/\mathrm{AlGaAs}$ double quantum well. As a result, a magnetic field-induced redistribution of charge over the Landau levels manifesting to the continuous formation of the charge density wave and direct evidence for the symmetric-antisymmetric gap shrinkage at $\nu =3$ are found. The observed interlayer charge exchange causes depolarization of the ferromagnetic ground state.

An undoped three-orbital spin-fermion model for the Fe-based superconductors is studied via Monte Carlo techniques in two-dimensional clusters. At low temperatures, the magnetic and one-particle spectral properties are in agreement with neutron and photoemission experiments. Our main results are the resistance versus temperature curves that display the same features observed in ${\mathrm{BaFe}}_2{\mathrm{As}}_2$ detwinned single crystals (under uniaxial stress), including a low-temperature anisotropy between the two directions followed by a peak at the magnetic ordering temperature, that qualitatively appears related to short-range spin order and concomitant Fermi surface orbital order.

A half-century quest for improving resolution in Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) has enabled the study of molecular structures, biological interactions, and fine details of anatomy. This progress largely relied on the advent of sophisticated superconducting magnets that can provide stable and homogeneous fields with temporal and spatial variations below $\Delta {\mathrm{B}}_0/{\mathrm{B}}_0<0.01\mathrm{ppm}$. In many cases however, inherent properties of the objects under investigation, pulsating arteries, breathing lungs, tissue-air interfaces, surgical implants, etc., lead to fluctuations and losses of local homogeneity. A new method dubbed “long-lived-coherence correlation spectroscopy” (LLC-COSY) opens the way to overcome both inhomogeneous and homogeneous broadening, which arise from local variations in static fields and fluctuating dipole-dipole interactions, respectively. LLC-COSY makes it possible to obtain ultrahigh resolution two-dimensional spectra, with linewidths on the order of $\Delta \nu =0.1$ to 1 Hz, even in very inhomogeneous fields ($\Delta {\mathrm{B}}_0/{\mathrm{B}}_0>10\mathrm{ppm}$ or 5000 Hz at 9.7 T), and can improve resolution by a factor up to 9 when the homogeneous linewidths are determined by dipole-dipole interactions. The resulting LLC-COSY spectra display chemical shift differences and scalar couplings in two orthogonal dimensions, like in “$J$ spectroscopy.” LLC-COSY does not require any sophisticated gradient switching or frequency-modulated pulses. Applications to in-cell NMR and to magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) of selected volume elements in MRI appear promising, particularly when susceptibility variations tend to preclude high resolution.

Analysis of deformations in terms of principal directions appears well suited for biological tissues that present an underlying anatomical structure of fiber arrangement. We applied this concept here to study deformation of the beating heart in vivo analyzing 30 subjects that underwent accurate three-dimensional echocardiographic recording of the left ventricle. Results show that strain develops predominantly along the principal direction with a much smaller transversal strain, indicating an underlying anisotropic, one-dimensional contractile activity. The strain-line pattern closely resembles the helical anatomical structure of the heart muscle. These findings demonstrate that cardiac contraction occurs along spatially variable paths and suggest a potential clinical significance of the principal strain concept for the assessment of mechanical cardiac function. The same concept can help in characterizing the relation between functional and anatomical properties of biological tissues, as well as fiber-reinforced engineered materials.

We report a comprehensive experimental-theoretical study of the temperature- and concentration-dependent swelling behavior of weakly cross-linked PNiPAm ionic microgel particles in the deionized fluid phase. The particles swell reversibly when the dispersion is cooled from the collapsed state to lower temperatures. While the collapsed state shows no dependence on the microgel number density, the swelling at lower $T$ is more pronounced at lower concentrations. The static pair correlations and short-time diffusion functions, and the concentration and temperature dependence of the microgel radius and effective charge, are studied using static and dynamic light scattering in combination with state-of-the-art analytical theoretical schemes based on a Yukawa-type effective pair potential and a core-shell model. We show that only such a combined, simultaneous fit of static and dynamic scattering functions allows for an unambiguous determination of the microgel radius and effective charge.

We have recently seen new upper bounds for $B_s^0\to {\mu }^{+}{\mu }^{-}$, a key decay to search for physics beyond the standard model. Furthermore a nonvanishing decay width difference $\Delta {\Gamma }_s$ of the $B_s$ system has been measured. We show that $\Delta {\Gamma }_s$ affects the extraction of the $B_s^0\to {\mu }^{+}{\mu }^{-}$ branching ratio and the resulting constraints on the new physics parameter space and give formulas for including this effect. Moreover, we point out that $\Delta {\Gamma }_s$ provides a new observable, the effective $B_s^0\to {\mu }^{+}{\mu }^{-}$ lifetime ${\tau }_{{\mu }^{+}{\mu }^{-}}$, which offers a theoretically clean probe for new physics searches that is complementary to the branching ratio. Should the $B_s^0\to {\mu }^{+}{\mu }^{-}$ branching ratio agree with the standard model, the measurement of ${\tau }_{{\mu }^{+}{\mu }^{-}}$, which appears feasible at upgrades of the Large Hadron Collider experiments, may still reveal large new physics effects.

We report the first experimental observation of the dependence of strong-field ionization rate on the sign of the magnetic quantum number. We measure the strong-field sequential double ionization yield of argon by two time-delayed near-circularly polarized laser pulses. It is found that double-ionization yield is enhanced more than 3 times if two lasers have the opposite helicities. Analysis shows that the single ionization of both the neutral and ion prefer the same sign of the magnetic quantum number. A qualitative and intuitive model is proposed to help understand this phenomenon.

Domain walls (DWs) substantially influence a large number of applications involving ferroelectric materials due to their limited mobility when shifted during polarization switching. The discovery of greatly enhanced conduction at ${\mathrm{BiFeO}}_3$ DWs has highlighted yet another role of DWs as a local material state with unique properties. However, the lack of precise information on the local atomic structure is still hampering microscopical understanding of DW properties. Here, we examine the atomic structure of ${\mathrm{BiFeO}}_3$ 109° DWs with pm precision by a combination of high-angle annular dark-field scanning transmission electron microscopy and a dedicated structural analysis. By measuring simultaneously local polarization and strain, we provide direct experimental proof for the straight DW structure predicted by ab initio calculations as well as the recently proposed theory of diffuse DWs, thus resolving a long-standing discrepancy between experimentally measured and theoretically predicted DW mobilities.

Weak measurements are a unique tool for accessing information about weakly interacting quantum systems with minimal back action. Joint weak measurements of single-particle operators with pointer states characterized by a two-dimensional Gaussian distribution can provide, in turn, key information about quantum correlations that can be relevant for quantum information applications. Here we demonstrate that by employing two-dimensional pointer states endowed with orbital angular momentum (OAM), it is possible to extract weak values of the higher order moments of single-particle operators, an inaccessible quantity with Gaussian pointer states only. We provide a specific example that illustrates the advantages of our method both in terms of signal enhancement and information retrieval.

The famous question of Kac “can one hear the shape of a drum?” addressing the unique connection between the shape of a planar region and the spectrum of the corresponding Laplace operator, can be legitimately extended to scattering systems. In the modified version, one asks whether the geometry of a vibrating system can be determined by scattering experiments. We present the first experimental approach to this problem in the case of microwave graphs (networks) simulating quantum graphs. Our experimental results strongly indicate a negative answer. To demonstrate this we consider scattering from a pair of isospectral microwave networks consisting of vertices connected by microwave coaxial cables and extended to scattering systems by connecting leads to infinity to form isoscattering networks. We show that the amplitudes and phases of the determinants of the scattering matrices of such networks are the same within the experimental uncertainties. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the scattering matrices of the networks are conjugated by the so-called transplantation relation.

The well-known problem of the virial expansion low-density limitation is considered within Mayer’s cluster expansion method. The expression for the configuration integral and the corresponding equation of state are presented based on this approach but not limited by the convergence radius of the series for density and activity. When taking into account any number of irreducible integrals at the thermodynamic limit, this equation of state demonstrates the exact coincidence with the virial one inside the domain of its convergence but specifies the condensation process directly outside that domain. Thus, the assumption of some researchers that the condensation should appear in the domain where the proof of the virial expansion is limited may now be regarded as confirmed, exclusively using the classical Gibbs statistics.

We present a calculation of the kaon $B$ parameter $B_K$ using lattice QCD. We use improved staggered valence and sea fermions, the latter generated by the MILC Collaboration with $N_f=2+1$ light flavors. To control discretization errors, we use four different lattice spacings ranging down to $a\approx 0.045\mathrm{fm}$. The chiral and continuum extrapolations are done using SU(2) staggered chiral perturbation theory. Our final result is ${\widehat{B}}_K=0.727\pm 0.004(\mathrm{stat})\pm 0.038(\mathrm{syst})$, where the dominant systematic error is from our use of truncated (one-loop) matching factors.