Coupled-cluster theories can be used to compute ab initio electronic correlation energies of real materials with systematically improvable accuracy. However, the widely used coupled cluster singles and doubles plus perturbative triples [CCSD(T)] method is only applicable to insulating materials. For zero-gap materials the truncation of the underlying many-body perturbation expansion leads to an infrared catastrophe. Here, we present a novel perturbative triples formalism denoted as (cT) that yields convergent correlation energies in metallic systems. Furthermore, the computed correlation energies for the three-dimensional uniform electron gas at metallic densities are in good agreement with quantum Monte Carlo results. At the same time the newly proposed method retains all desirable properties of CCSD(T) such as its accuracy for insulating systems as well as its low computational cost compared to a full inclusion of the triples. This paves the way for ab initio calculations of real metals with chemical accuracy.

Coupled-cluster theory with single, double, and perturbative triple excitations (CCSD(T))—often considered the “gold standard” of main-group quantum chemistry—is inapplicable to three-dimensional metals due to an infrared divergence, preventing its application to many important problems in materials science. We study the full, nonperturbative inclusion of triple excitations (CCSDT) and propose a new, iterative method, which we call ring-CCSDT, that resums the essential triple excitations with the same $N^7$ run-time scaling as CCSD(T). CCSDT and ring-CCSDT are used to calculate the correlation energy of the uniform electron gas at metallic densities and the structural properties of solid lithium. Inclusion of connected triple excitations is shown to be essential to achieving high accuracy. We also investigate semiempirical CC methods based on spin-component scaling and the distinguishable cluster approximation and find that they enhance the accuracy of their parent ab initio methods.

The Fe intercalated transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD), ${\mathrm{Fe}}_{1/3}{\mathrm{NbS}}_2$, exhibits remarkable resistance switching properties and highly tunable spin ordering phases due to magnetic defects. We conduct synchrotron x-ray scattering measurements on both underintercalated ($x=0.32$) and overintercalated ($x=0.35$) samples. We discover a new charge order phase in the overintercalated sample, where the excess Fe atoms lead to a zigzag antiferromagnetic order. The agreement between the charge and magnetic ordering temperatures, as well as their intensity relationship, suggests a strong magnetoelastic coupling as the mechanism for the charge ordering. Our results reveal the first example of a charge order phase among the intercalated TMD family and demonstrate the ability to stabilize charge modulation by introducing electronic correlations, where the charge order is absent in bulk $2\mathrm{H}\text{−}{\mathrm{NbS}}_2$ compared to other pristine TMDs.

Transition metal dichalcogenide heterostructures have been extensively studied as a platform for investigating exciton physics. While heterobilayers such as ${\mathrm{WSe}}_2/{\mathrm{MoSe}}_2$ have received significant attention, there has been comparatively less research on heterotrilayers, which may offer new excitonic species and phases, as well as unique physical properties. In this Letter, we present theoretical and experimental investigations on the emission properties of quadrupolar excitons (QXs), a newly predicted type of exciton, in a ${\mathrm{WSe}}_2/{\mathrm{MoSe}}_2/{\mathrm{WSe}}_2$ heterotrilayer device. Our findings reveal that the optical brightness or darkness of QXs is determined by horizontal mirror symmetry and valley and spin selection rules. Additionally, the emission intensity and energy of both bright and dark QXs can be adjusted by applying an out-of-plane electric field, due to changes in hole distribution and the Stark effect. These results not only provide experimental evidence for the existence of QXs in heterotrilayers but also uncover their novel properties, which have the potential to drive the development of new exciton-based applications.

We demonstrate that quantum dynamical localization in the Arnold web of higher-dimensional Hamiltonian systems is destroyed by an intrinsic classical drift. Thus quantum wave packets and eigenstates may explore more of the intricate Arnold web than previously expected. Such a drift typically occurs, as resonance channels widen toward a large chaotic region or toward a junction with other resonance channels. If this drift is strong enough, we find that dynamical localization is destroyed. We establish that this drift-induced delocalization transition is universal and is described by a single transition parameter. Numerical verification is given using a time-periodically kicked Hamiltonian with a four-dimensional phase space.

Solitons in liquid crystals have generated considerable interest. Several hypotheses of varying complexity have been advanced to explain how they arise, but consensus has not emerged yet about the underlying forces responsible for their formation or their structure. In this work, we present a minimal model for solitons in achiral nematic liquid crystals, which reveals the key requirements needed to generate them in the absence of added charges. These include a surface inhomogeneity, consisting of an adsorbed particle capable of producing a twist, flexoelectricity, dielectric contrast, and an applied ac electric field that can couple to the director’s orientation. Our proposed model is based on a tensorial representation of a confined liquid crystal, and it predicts the formation of “butterfly” structures, quadrupolar in character, in regions of a slit channel where the director is twisted by the surface imperfection. As the applied electric field is increased, solitons (or “bullets”) become detached from the wings of the butterfly, and then propagate rapidly throughout the system. The main observations that emerge from the model, including the formation and structure of butterflies, bullets, and stripes, as well as the role of surface inhomogeneity and the strength of the applied field, are consistent with experimental findings presented here for nematic LCs confined between two chemically treated parallel plates.

We investigate how randomly oriented cell traction forces lead to fluidization in a vertex model of epithelial tissues. We find that the fluidization occurs at a critical value of the traction force magnitude $F_c$. We show that this transition exhibits critical behavior, similar to the yielding transition of sheared amorphous solids. However, we find that it belongs to a different universality class, even though it satisfies the same scaling relations between critical exponents established in the yielding transition of sheared amorphous solids. Our work provides a fluidization mechanism through active force generation that could be relevant in biological tissues.

We study the thermodynamic behavior of attractive binary Bose mixtures using exact path-integral Monte Carlo methods. Our focus is on the regime of interspecies interactions where the ground state is in a self-bound liquid phase, stabilized by beyond mean-field effects. We calculate the isothermal curves in the pressure vs density plane for different values of the attraction strength and establish the extent of the coexistence region between liquid and vapor using the Maxwell construction. Notably, within the coexistence region, Bose-Einstein condensation occurs in a discontinuous way as the density jumps from the normal gas to the superfluid liquid phase. Furthermore, we determine the critical point where the line of first-order transition ends and investigate the behavior of the density discontinuity in its vicinity. We also point out that the density discontinuity at the transition could be observed in experiments of mixtures in traps.

We perform a systematic study of Andreev conversion at the interface between a superconductor and graphene in the quantum Hall (QH) regime. We find that the probability of Andreev conversion from electrons to holes follows an unexpected but clear trend: the dependencies on temperature and magnetic field are nearly decoupled. We discuss these trends and the role of the superconducting vortices, whose normal cores could both absorb and dephase the individual electrons in a QH edge. Our Letter may pave the road to engineering a future generation of hybrid devices for exploiting superconductivity proximity in chiral channels.

Bosonic codes offer noise resilience for quantum information processing. Good performance often comes at a price of complex decoding schemes, limiting their practicality. Here, we propose using a Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill code to detect and discard error-prone qubits, concatenated with a quantum parity code to handle the residual errors. Our method employs a simple linear-time decoder that nevertheless offers significant performance improvements over the standard decoder. Our Letter may have applications in a wide range of quantum computation and communication scenarios.

Quantum memories represent one of the main ingredients of future quantum communication networks. Their certification is therefore a key challenge. Here we develop efficient certification methods for quantum memories. Considering a device-independent approach, where no a priori characterization of sources or measurement devices is required, we develop a robust self-testing method for quantum memories. We then illustrate the practical relevance of our technique in a relaxed scenario by certifying a fidelity of 0.87 in a recent solid-state ensemble quantum memory experiment. More generally, our methods apply for the characterization of any device implementing a qubit identity quantum channel.

We perform a Bayesian analysis of NANOGrav 15-yr and IPTA DR2 pulsar timing residuals and show that the recently detected stochastic gravitational-wave background is compatible with a stochastic gravitational-wave background produced by bubble dynamics during a cosmological first-order phase transition. The timing data suggest that the phase transition would occur around QCD confinement temperature and would have a slow rate of completion. This scenario can naturally lead to the abundant production of primordial black holes with solar masses. These primordial black holes can potentially be detected by current and advanced gravitational-wave detectors LIGO-Virgo-Kagra, Einstein Telescope, Cosmic Explorer, by astrometry with GAIA, and by 21-cm survey.

We study the low-temperature phases of interacting bosons on a two-dimensional quasicrystalline lattice. By means of numerically exact path integral Monte Carlo simulations, we show that for sufficiently weak interactions the system is a homogeneous Bose-Einstein condensate that develops density modulations for increasing filling factor. The simultaneous occurrence of sizeable condensate fraction and density modulation can be interpreted as the analogous, in a quasicrystalline lattice, of supersolid phases occurring in conventional periodic lattices. For sufficiently large interaction strength and particle density, global condensation is lost and quantum exchanges are restricted to specific spatial regions. The emerging quantum phase is therefore a Bose glass, which here is stabilized in the absence of any source of disorder or quasidisorder, purely as a result of the interplay between quantum effects, particle interactions and quasicrystalline substrate. This finding clearly indicates that (quasi)disorder is not essential to observe Bose glass physics. Our results are of interest for ongoing experiments on (quasi)disorder-free quasicrystalline lattices.

Dispersion relations govern wave behaviors, and tailoring them is a grand challenge in wave manipulation. We demonstrate the inverse design of phononic dispersion using nonlocal interactions on one-dimensional spring-mass chains. For both single-band and double-band cases, we can achieve any valid dispersion curves with analytical precision. We further employ our method to design phononic crystals with multiple ordinary (roton or maxon) and higher-order (undulation) critical points and investigate their wave packet dynamics.

Tessellations of the hyperbolic spaces by regular polygons support discrete quantum and classical models with unique spectral and topological characteristics. Resolving the true bulk spectra and the thermodynamic response functions of these models requires converging periodic boundary conditions and our Letter delivers a practical and rigorous solution for this open problem on generic $\{p,q\}$-tessellations. This enables us to identify the true spectral gaps of bulk Hamiltonians and construct all but one topological models that deliver the topological gaps predicted by the $K$ theory of the lattices. We demonstrate the emergence of the expected topological spectral flows whenever two such bulk models are deformed into each other and prove the emergence of topological channels whenever a soft physical interface is created between different topological classes of Hamiltonians.

We introduce two families of criteria for detecting and quantifying the entanglement of a bipartite quantum state of arbitrary local dimension. The first is based on measurements in mutually unbiased bases and the second is based on equiangular measurements. Both criteria give a qualitative result in terms of the state’s entanglement dimension and a quantitative result in terms of its fidelity with the maximally entangled state. The criteria are universally applicable since no assumptions on the state are required. Moreover, the experimenter can control the trade-off between resource-efficiency and noise-tolerance by selecting the number of measurements performed. For paradigmatic noise models, we show that only a small number of measurements are necessary to achieve nearly-optimal detection in any dimension. The number of global product projections scales only linearly in the local dimension, thus paving the way for detection and quantification of very high-dimensional entanglement.

We present experimental demonstrations of accurate and unambiguous single-shot discrimination between three quantum channels using a single trapped ${}^{40}{\mathrm{Ca}}^{+}$ ion. The three channels cannot be distinguished unambiguously using repeated single channel queries, the natural classical analogue. We develop techniques for using the six-dimensional $D_{5/2}$ state space for quantum information processing, and we implement protocols to discriminate quantum channel analogues of phase shift keying and amplitude shift keying data encodings used in classical radio communication. The demonstrations achieve discrimination accuracy exceeding 99% in each case, limited entirely by known experimental imperfections.