Dual-type qubits have become a promising way to suppress the crosstalk error of auxiliary operations in large-scale ion trap quantum computation. Here we demonstrate a direct entangling gate between dual-type qubits encoded in the $S_{1/2}$ and $D_{5/2}$ hyperfine manifolds of ${}^{137}{\mathrm{Ba}}^{+}$ ions. Our scheme is economic in the hardware, requiring only a single 532 nm laser system to entangle both qubit types by driving their Raman transitions. We achieve a Bell state fidelity of 96.3(4)% for the dual-type Molmer-Sorensen gate between an $S\text{−}D$ ion pair, comparable to that for the same-type $S\text{−}S$ or $D\text{−}D$ gates. This technique can reduce the overhead for back-and-forth conversions between dual-type qubits in the quantum circuit with wide applications in quantum error correction and ion-photon quantum networks.

Conformal Regge theory predicts the existence of analytically continued conformal field theory data for complex spin. How could this work when there are so many more operators with large spin compared to small spin? Using planar $N=4$ SYM as a test ground, we find a simple physical picture. Operators do organize themselves into analytic families but the continuation of the higher families have zeros in their structure operator product expansion constants for lower integer spins. They thus decouple. Newton’s interpolation series technique is perfectly suited to this physical problem and will allow us to explore the complex spin half-plane.

We report on a major milestone in the construction of logarithmically accurate final-state parton showers, achieving next-to-next-to-leading-logarithmic (NNLL) accuracy for the wide class of observables known as event shapes. The key to this advance lies in the identification of the relation between critical NNLL analytic resummation ingredients and their parton-shower counterparts. Our analytic discussion is supplemented with numerical tests of the logarithmic accuracy of three shower variants for more than a dozen distinct event-shape observables in $Z\to q\overline{q}$ and $\mathrm{Higgs}\to gg$ decays. The NNLL terms are phenomenologically sizeable, as illustrated in comparisons to data.

Mixtures of ultracold gases with long-range interactions are expected to open new avenues in the study of quantum matter. Natural candidates for this research are spin mixtures of atomic species with large magnetic moments. However, the lifetime of such assemblies can be strongly affected by the dipolar relaxation that occurs in spin-flip collisions. Here we present experimental results for a mixture composed of the two lowest Zeeman states of ${}^{162}\mathrm{Dy}$ atoms, that act as dark states with respect to a light-induced quadratic Zeeman effect. We show that, due to an interference phenomenon, the rate for such inelastic processes is dramatically reduced with respect to the Wigner threshold law. Additionally, we determine the scattering lengths characterizing the $s$-wave interaction between these states, providing all necessary data to predict the miscibility range of the mixture, depending on its dimensionality.

Superpositions of coherent light states are vital for quantum technologies. However, restrictions in existing state preparation and characterization schemes, in combination with decoherence effects, prevent their intensity enhancement and implementation in nonlinear optics. Here, by developing a decoherence-free approach, we generate intense femtosecond-duration infrared coherent state superpositions (CSSs) with a mean photon number orders of magnitude higher than the existing CSS sources. We utilize them in nonlinear optics to drive the second harmonic generation process in an optical crystal. We experimentally and theoretically show that the nonclassical nature of the intense infrared CSS is imprinted in the second-order autocorrelation traces. Additionally, theoretical analysis shows that the quantum features of the infrared CSS are also present in the generated second harmonic. The findings introduce the optical CSS into the realm of nonlinear quantum optics, opening up new paths in quantum information science and quantum light engineering by creating nonclassical light states in various spectral regions via nonlinear up-conversion processes.

A novel method is presented for generating radiation using the beat wave of a bifrequency laser pulse to excite plasma oscillations in a plasma slab that has a density gradient. The plasma wave is localized where it is excited resonantly and becomes a plasma oscillator that produces a beam of radially polarized, terahertz radiation. Particle-in-cell simulations and a theoretical analysis are used to demonstrate its main characteristics, such as its narrow bandwidth. The radiator should have useful applications including driving terahertz-band particle accelerators and for pump-probe experiments.

This Letter explores the stability of disconnections (step-dislocation defects) at grain boundaries in binary alloys. We introduce interfacial defect diagrams, derived from atomistic simulations and segregation theory, to predict the stability of disconnections in the temperature-solute concentration phase space and relate it to governing segregation mechanisms. These diagrams reveal multiple stability regimes influenced by solute-induced clustering and pinning effects impacting the thermal migration of disconnections and offering insights into their thermodynamics and kinetic properties.

Recent progress in the understanding of the collective behavior of electrons and ions has revealed new types of ferroic orders beyond ferroelectricity and ferromagnetism, such as the ferroaxial state. The latter retains only rotational symmetry around a single axis and reflection symmetry with respect to a single mirror plane, both of which are set by an emergent electric toroidal dipole moment. Because of this unusual symmetry-breaking pattern, it has been challenging to directly measure the ferroaxial order parameter, despite the increasing attention this state has drawn. Here, we show that off-diagonal components of the piezoresistivity tensor (i.e., the linear change in resistivity under strain) transform the same way as the ferroaxial moments, providing a direct probe of such order parameters. We identify two new proper ferroaxial materials through a materials database search, and use first-principles calculations to evaluate the piezoconductivity of the double-perovskite ${\mathrm{CaSnF}}_6$, revealing its connection to ferroaxial order and to octahedral rotation modes.

Elucidating spin correlations in the parent compounds of high-temperature superconductors is crucial for understanding superconductivity. We used neutron scattering to study spin correlations in ${\mathrm{Li}}_{1-x}{\mathrm{Fe}}_x\mathrm{ODFeSe}$, an insulating material with reduced electron carriers compared to its superconducting counterpart ($T_c=41\mathrm{K}$), serving as the undoped parent compound. Our findings show a reduced total fluctuating moment in this insulator relative to FeSe and 122 iron pnictides, likely due to increased interlayer distances from intercalation, which enhance fluctuations and reduce the intensity of spin excitations. Moreover, we observed a V-shaped spin wavelike excitation dispersion, contrasting with the twisted hourglass pattern in the superconducting counterpart. Electron doping shifts spin excitation from $(\pi ,0)$ point to an incommensurate position towards $(\pi ,\pi )$ direction below 65 meV. This transition from V-shaped to hourglasslike dispersion, akin to behaviors in hole-doped cuprates, suggests a potential shared mechanism in magnetism and superconductivity across these diverse systems.

Recent experiments demonstrate precise control over coherently excited circular phonon modes using high-intensity terahertz lasers, opening new pathways towards dynamical, ultrafast design of magnetism in functional materials. While the phonon Zeeman effect enables a theoretical description of phonon-induced magnetism, it lacks efficient angular momentum transfer from the phonon to the electron sector. In this work, we put forward a coupling mechanism based on electron-nuclear quantum geometry, with the inverse Faraday effect as a limiting case. This effect is rooted in the phase accumulation of the electronic wave function under a circular evolution of nuclear coordinates. An excitation pulse then induces a transient level splitting between electronic orbitals that carry angular momentum. First-principles simulations on ${\mathrm{SrTiO}}_3$ demonstrate that in parts of the Brillouin zone, this splitting between orbitals carrying angular momentum can easily reach 50 meV.

Noncollinear antiferromagnets (AFMs) have recently attracted attention in the emerging field of antiferromagnetic spintronics because of their various interesting properties. Because of the noncollinear magnetic order, the localized electron spins on different magnetic sublattices are not conserved even when spin-orbit coupling is neglected, making it difficult to understand the transport of spin angular momentum. Here we study the conserved Noether current due to spin-rotation symmetry of the local spins in noncollinear AFMs. Interestingly, we find that a Hall component of the spin current can be generically created by a longitudinal driving force associated with a propagating spin wave, inherently distinguishing noncollinear AFMs from collinear ones. We coin the corresponding Hall coefficient, an isotropic rank-four tensor, as the Hall (inverse) mass, which generally exists in noncollinear AFMs and their polycrystals. The resulting Hall spin current can be realized by spin pumping in a ferromagnet-noncollinear AFM bilayer structure as we demonstrate numerically, for which we also give the criteria of ideal boundary conditions. Our results shed light on the potential of noncollinear AFMs in manipulating the polarization and flow of spin currents in general spintronic devices.

In living matter, concentration gradients of nutrients carve the motility of microorganisms in a heterogeneous environment. Here, we use swimming droplets as a model system to study how swimmer-trail interactions guide locomotion. Combining experiments and theory, we show that our non-Markovian droplet model quantitatively captures droplet motility. The two fit parameters provide the first estimate of the effective temperature arising from hydrodynamic flows and the coupling strength of the propulsion force. This framework is general and explains memory effects, droplet hovering, and enhanced collective motion.

A bipartite perfect quantum strategy (BPQS) allows two players who cannot communicate with each other to always win a nonlocal game. BPQSs are rare but fundamental in light of some recent results in quantum information, computation, and foundations. A more than 40-year-old open problem is how many inputs (measurement settings) a BPQS requires. A related problem is how many inputs are needed if, in addition, the quantum system has minimum dimension. A third, apparently unrelated, problem is what is the connection between BPQSs and state-independent contextuality, which inspired the first BPQSs. Here, we solve the third problem: we prove that every BPQS defines a Kochen-Specker set. We use this result to identify the BPQS with the smallest number of inputs, both in the general case and in the case of minimum dimension, and solve some related problems. We conjecture that the BPQSs presented here are the solutions to the first two problems.

We investigate quantum random tensor network states in which the dimension of the bond scales polynomially with the size of the system $N$. Specifically, we examine the delocalization properties of random matrix product states (RMPS) in the computational basis by deriving an exact analytical expression for the inverse participation ratio (IPR) of any degree, applicable to both open and closed boundary conditions. For bond dimensions $\chi \sim \gamma N$, we determine the leading order of the associated overlaps probability distribution and demonstrate its convergence to the Porter-Thomas distribution, characteristic of Haar-random states, as $\gamma$ increases. Additionally, we provide numerical evidence for the frame potential, measuring the 2-distance from the Haar ensemble, which confirms the convergence of random MPS to Haar-like behavior for $\chi \gg \sqrt{N}$. We extend this analysis to two-dimensional systems using random projected entangled pair states, where we similarly observe the convergence of IPRs to their Haar values for $\chi \gg \sqrt{N}$. These findings demonstrate that random tensor networks with bond dimensions scaling polynomially in the system size are fully Haar anticoncentrated and approximate unitary designs, regardless of the spatial dimension.

The spectral form factor (SFF) captures universal spectral fluctuations as signatures of quantum chaos, and has been instrumental in advancing multiple frontiers of physics including the studies of black holes and quantum many-body systems. The measurement of the SFF in many-body systems is however challenging due to the difficulty in resolving level spacings that become exponentially small with increasing system size. Here, we utilize the random measurement toolbox to perform a direct experimental measurement of the SFF, and hence probe the presence or absence of chaos in quantum many-body systems on superconducting quantum processors. For a Floquet chaotic system, we observe signatures of both short- and long-range spectral correlations in the SFF given by the ramp-plateau behavior. Furthermore, for a Hamiltonian system we utilize the SFF to distinguish a quantum many-body chaotic phase and the prethermal many-body localization. We observe the dip-ramp-plateau behavior of random matrix theory in the chaotic phase and contrast the scaling of the plateau time in system size between the many-body chaotic and localized phases. Finally, we probe the eigenstate statistics by measuring a generalization of the SFF, known as the partial SFF, and observe distinct behaviors in the purity of the reduced density matrices in these two phases. This work unveils a new experimental way of extracting the universal signatures of many-body quantum chaos in quantum devices by probing short- and long-range correlations in the energy spectrum and eigenstates.

We present a family of local quantum channels whose steady states exhibit stable mixed-state symmetry-protected topological (SPT) order. Motivated by recent experimental progress on “erasure conversion” techniques that allow one to identify (herald) decoherence processes, we consider open systems with biased erasure noise, which leads to strongly symmetric heralded errors. We utilize this heralding to construct a local correction protocol that effectively confines errors into short-ranged pairs in the steady state. Using a combination of numerical simulations and mean-field analysis, we show that our protocol stabilizes SPT order against a sufficiently low rate of decoherence. As the rate of heralded noise increases, SPT order is eventually lost through a directed percolation transition. We further find that while introducing unheralded errors destroys SPT order in the limit of long length scales and timescales, the correction protocol is sufficient for ensuring that local SPT order persists, with a correlation length that diverges as $\xi \sim (1-f_e{)}^{-1/2}$, where $f_e$ is the fraction of errors that are heralded.

The apparent randomness of chaotic eigenstates in interacting quantum systems hides subtle correlations dynamically imposed by their finite energy per particle. These correlations are revealed when Berry’s approach for chaotic eigenfunctions in single-particle systems is lifted into many-body space. We achieve this by a many-body semiclassical analysis, appropriate for the mesoscopic regime of a large but finite number of particles. We thereby identify as signatures of chaotic many-body eigenstates the universality of both their cross-correlations and the Gaussian distribution of expansion coefficients. Combined, these two features imprint characteristic features to the morphology of eigenstates that we check against extensive quantum simulations. The universality of eigenstate correlations for fixed energy density is hence a further signature of many-body quantum chaos that, while consistent with the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis, lies beyond random matrix theory.