Onsager’s regression hypothesis makes a fundamental connection between macroscopic transport phenomena and the average relaxation of spontaneous microscopic fluctuations. This relaxation, however, is agnostic to odd transport phenomena, in which fluxes run orthogonal to the gradients driving them. To account for odd transport, we generalize the regression hypothesis, postulating that macroscopic linear constitutive laws are, on average, obeyed by microscopic fluctuations, whether they contribute to relaxation or not. From this “flux hypothesis,” Green-Kubo and reciprocal relations follow, elucidating the separate roles of broken time-reversal and parity symmetries underlying various odd transport coefficients. As an application, we derive and verify the Green-Kubo relation for odd collective diffusion in chiral active matter, first in an analytically tractable model and subsequently through molecular dynamics simulations of concentrated active spinners.

The growth of cracks combines materials science, fracture mechanics, and statistical physics. The importance of fluctuations in the crack velocity is fundamental since it signals that the crack overcomes local barriers such as tough spots by avalanches. In ductile materials the omnipresent plasticity close to the crack tip influences the growth by history effects, which we here study in polymethylmetacrylate by various fatigue and creep protocols. We show how the crack tip local history may be encompassed in a time- and protocol-dependent length scale, which allows us to apply a statistical fracture description to the time-dependent crack growth rate, resolving the well-known paradox why fatigue cracks grow faster if the stress during a cycle is let to relax more from the peak value. The results open up novel directions for understanding fracture by statistical physics.

Active particles self-assemble into emergent structures that respond sensitively to external constraints. Consequently, their behavior under confinement is complex, especially in soft confined media, leading to diverse emergent morphologies. Through computer simulations, we investigate the dynamical interplay between active Brownian particles and a binary mixture. Our results show that active particles stabilize nonequilibrium morphologies, arresting coarsening by exerting active pressure that competes with surface tension. For moderate activities, particles stabilize an active emulsion with a well-defined droplet size. At higher activities, when particles can cross the liquid domains, a dynamic emulsion with large droplet dispersion is sustained. Furthermore, active particles drive phase-separated mixtures away from equilibrium configurations, demonstrating a rich coassembly behavior due to competing energy scales in the system.

We investigate the denaturation dynamics of nucleic acids through extensive molecular dynamics simulations of a coarse-grained RNA hairpin model. In apparent contradiction to Arrhenius’ law, our findings reveal that the denaturation time of RNA hairpins is a nonmonotonous function of temperature for molecules longer than few persistence lengths, with an optimal temperature above the melting point, $T_m$, at which denaturation occurs fastest. This anomaly arises from the existence of two distinct pathways: “unidirectional” unzipping, progressing from one end to the other and favored near $T_m$, and “bidirectional” denaturation, where competing unzipping events initiate from both ends at higher temperatures. The two regimes manifest distinct scaling laws for the melting time vs length, $L$, and are separated by a crossover temperature $T_{\times }$, with $(T_{\times }-T_m)\sim L^{-1}$. The results highlight the significant role of the helical structure in the out-of-equilibrium dynamics of RNA and DNA denaturation and unveil multiple surprises in a decades-old problem.

It is generally assumed that the spectral acquisition speed in photothermal spectroscopy is fundamentally limited by the thermal diffusion process. Here, we demonstrate midinfrared energy deposition (MIRED) spectroscopy that offers both microsecond-scale temporal resolution and submicron spatial resolution. In this approach, the photothermal process is optically probed while the infrared pulses from a quantum cascade laser array are rapidly tuned. Based on Newton’s law of heating and cooling, the energy deposition is the first derivative of local temperature rise over time and gives the instantaneous absorption. By employing time-resolved measurement of transient energy deposition, the upper limit for spectrum encoding shifts to the vibrational relaxation level, which occurs on the picosecond scale. This method significantly increases the detection bandwidth while retaining the sensitivity and resolution benefits of photothermal detection.

The average ionization state is a critical parameter in plasma models for charged particle transport, equations of state, and optical response. The dynamical or nonadiabatic Born effective charge (NBEC), calculated via first principles time-dependent density-functional theory, provides exact ionic partitioning of bulk electron response for both metallic and insulating materials. The NBEC can be transformed into a “group conductivity,” i.e., the electron conductivity ascribed to a subset of ions. We show that for disordered metallic systems, such as warm dense matter (WDM) and hot dense plasma, the static limit of the NBEC is different from the average ionization states, but that the ionization state can be extracted from the group conductivity even in mixed systems. We demonstrate this approach using a set of archetypical examples, including cold and warm aluminium, low- and high-density WDM carbon, and a WDM carbon-beryllium-hydrogen mixture.

The negatively charged boron vacancy ($V_{\mathrm{B}}^{-}$) in hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) has garnered significant attention among defects in two-dimensional materials. This owes, in part, to its deterministic generation, well-characterized atomic structure, and optical polarizability at room temperature. We investigate the latter through extensive measurements probing both the ground and excited state polarization dynamics. We develop a semiclassical model based on these measurements that predicts a near-unity degree of spin polarization, surpassing other solid-state spin defects under ambient conditions. Building upon our model, we include the presence of nuclear spin degrees of freedom adjacent to the $V_{\mathrm{B}}^{-}$ and perform a comprehensive set of Lindbladian numerics to investigate the hyperfine-induced polarization of the nuclear spins. Our simulations predict a number of important features that emerge as a function of magnetic field which are borne out by experiment.

Using x-ray photoelectron diffraction (XPD) and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy, we study photoemission intensity changes related to changes in the geometric and electronic structure in the kagome metal ${\mathrm{CsV}}_3{\mathrm{Sb}}_5$ upon transition to an unconventional charge density wave (CDW) state. The XPD patterns reveal the presence of a chiral atomic structure in the CDW phase. Furthermore, using circularly polarized x-rays, we have found a pronounced nontrivial circular dichroism in the angular distribution of the valence band photoemission in the CDW phase, indicating a chirality of the electronic structure. This observation is consistent with the proposed orbital loop current order. In view of a negligible spontaneous Kerr signal in recent magneto-optical studies, the results suggest an antiferromagnetic coupling of the orbital magnetic moments along the $c$ axis. While the inherent structural chirality may also induce circular dichroism, the observed asymmetry values seem to be too large in the case of the weak structural distortions caused by the CDW.

Qubits built out of Majorana zero modes (MZMs) have long been theorized as a potential pathway toward fault-tolerant topological quantum computation. Almost unavoidable in these processes is Majorana wave function overlap, known as hybridization, which arises throughout the process when Majorana modes get close to each other. This breaks the ground state degeneracy, leading to qubit errors in the braiding process. This work presents a simple but precise method to predict qubit errors for dynamic hybridization which varies in space and time. This includes hybridization between four or more MZMs through topological or trivial regions or both of them. As an illustration, we characterize qubit errors for an X gate. We demonstrate how to utilize the hybridization to implement not only arbitrary one-qubit rotations but also a two-qubit controlled variable phase gate, providing a demonstration of universal quantum computing.

Continuous phase transitions where symmetry is spontaneously broken are ubiquitous in physics and often found between “Landau-compatible” phases where residual symmetries of one phase are a subset of the other. However, continuous “deconfined quantum critical” transitions between Landau-incompatible symmetry-breaking phases are known to exist in certain quantum systems, often with anomalous microscopic symmetries. In this Letter, we investigate the need for such special conditions. We show that Landau-incompatible transitions can be found in a family of well-known classical statistical mechanical models with anomaly-free symmetries, introduced by José et al. [Phys. Rev. B 16, 1217 (1977).]. The models are anisotropic deformations of the classical 2D XY model labeled by a positive integer $Q$. For a range of temperatures, even $Q$ models exhibit two Landau-incompatible partial symmetry-breaking phases and a direct transition between them for $Q\ge 4$. Characteristic features of deconfined quantum criticality, such as enhanced symmetries and melting of charged defects, are easily seen in a classical setting. For odd $Q$ and corresponding temperature ranges, two regions of a single partial symmetry-breaking phase appear, split by a stable “unnecessary critical” line. We discuss experimental systems that realize these transitions and present anomaly-free quantum models that also exhibit similar phase diagrams.

Integrable spin chains with a continuous non-Abelian symmetry, such as the one-dimensional isotropic Heisenberg model, show superdiffusive transport with little theoretical understanding. Although recent studies reported a surprising connection to the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang (KPZ) universality class in that case, this view was most recently questioned by discrepancies in full counting statistics. Here, by combining extensive numerical simulations of classical and quantum integrable isotropic spin chains with a framework developed by exact studies of the KPZ class, we characterize various two-point quantities that remain hitherto unexplored in spin chains, and find full agreement with KPZ scaling laws without adjustable parameters. This establishes the partial emergence of the KPZ class in integrable isotropic spin chains. Moreover, we reveal that the KPZ scaling laws are intact in the presence of an energy current, under the appropriate Galilean boost required by the propagation of spacetime correlation.

Frustration, that is, the impossibility of satisfying the energetic preferences between all spin pairs simultaneously, underlies the complexity of many fundamental properties in spin systems, including the computational difficulty in determining their ground states. Coherent Ising machines (CIMs) have been proposed as a promising analog computational approach to efficiently find different degenerate ground states of large and complex Ising models. However, CIMs also face challenges in solving frustrated Ising models: frustration not only reduces the probability of finding good solutions, but it also prohibits the leveraging of quantum effects in doing so. To circumvent these detrimental effects of frustration, we show how frustrated Ising models can be mapped to frustration-free CIM configurations by including ancillary modes and modifying the coupling protocol used in current CIM designs. Such frustration elimination may empower current CIMs to benefit from quantum effects in dealing with frustrated Ising models. In addition, these ancillary modes can also enable error detection and searching for excited states.

We compute four-point correlators in $\mathcal{N}=4$ $SU(N)$ super-Yang-Mills theory with both single and double-particle $1/2$-Bogomol’nyi-Prasad-Sommerfield (BPS) operators in the regime of large ’t Hooft coupling and large $N$. In particular, we give explicit expressions up to $\mathcal{O}(1/N^4)$ for the lightest correlator with two double-particle and two single-particle operators built out of the stress-tensor multiplet. Our derivation makes use of the general holographic prescription applied to an asymptotically ${\mathrm{AdS}}_5\times {\mathrm{S}}^5$ geometry that describes a coherent superposition of multigraviton operators. The final result can be written in terms of a natural generalization of the standard $D$ functions and takes a compact form in Mellin space. The correlator we compute here is the simplest of a more general class of correlators where two inserted operators are multiparticles. These can be derived with the same approach, suggesting that the structure found here is general.

We introduce the technique of entangled-beam reflectometry for extracting spatially correlated (magnetic or nonmagnetic) information from material surfaces or thin films. Our amplitude- and phase-sensitive technique exploits the coherent nature of an incoming entangled probe beam, of matter or light waves, undergoing reflection from the surface. Such reflection encodes the surface spatial structure into the probe’s geometric and phase-derived Goos-Hänchen shifts, which can then be measured to unveil the structure. We investigate the way these shifts depend on the wave packet widths, and illustrate our technique in the case of in-plane periodic (non)magnetic structures by utilizing spin-path mode-entangled neutron beams.

The Goos-Hänchen (GH) shift describes a phenomenon in which a specularly reflected beam is translated along the reflecting surface such that the incident and reflected rays no longer intersect at the surface. Using a neutron spin-echo technique and a specially designed magnetic multilayer mirror, we have measured the relative phase between the reflected up and down neutron spin states in total reflection. The relative GH shift calculated from this phase shows a strong resonant enhancement at a particular incident neutron wave vector, which is due to a waveguiding effect in one of the magnetic layers. Calculations based on the observed phase difference between the neutron states indicate a propagation distance along the waveguide layer of 0.65 mm for the spin-down state, which we identify with the magnitude of the giant GH shift. The existence of a physical GH shift is confirmed by the observation of neutron absorption in the waveguide layer. We propose ways in which our experimental method may be exploited for neutron quantum-enhanced sensing of thin magnetic layers.

We explore the decoherence of the critical (gapless) boundary of a topological order, through interactions with the bulk reservoir of “ancilla anyons.” We take the critical boundary of the $2d$ Toric code as an example. The intrinsic nonlocal nature of the anyons demands the strong and weak symmetry condition for the ordinary decoherence problem be extended to the strong or weak gauge invariance conditions. We demonstrate that in the doubled Hilbert space, the partition function of the boundary is mapped to two layers of the $2d$ critical Ising model with an interlayer line defect that depends on the species of the anyons causing the decoherence. The line defects associated with the tunneling of bosonic $e$ and $m$ anyons are relevant, and result in long-range correlations for either the $e$ or $m$ anyon, respectively, on the boundary in the doubled Hilbert space. In contrast, the defect of the $f$ anyon is marginal and leads to a line of fixed points with varying effective central charges, and power-law correlations having continuously varying scaling dimensions. We also demonstrate that decoherence-analogs of Majorana zero modes are localized at the spatial interface of the relevant $e$ and $m$ anyon decoherence channels, which leads to a universal logarithmic scaling of the Rényi entropy of the boundary.