Triboelectrification mechanism is still not understood, despite centuries of investigations. Here, we propose a model showing that mechanochemistry is key to elucidate triboelectrification fundamental properties. Studying contact between gold and silicate glasses, we observe that the experimental triboelectric output is subject to large variations and polarity inversions. First principles analysis shows that electronic transfer is activated by mechanochemistry and the tribopolarity is determined by the termination exposed to contact, depending on the material composition, which can result in different charging at the macroscale. The electron transfer mechanism is driven by the interface barrier dynamics, regulated by mechanical forces. The model provides a unified framework to explain several experimental observations, including the systematic variations in the triboelectric output and the mixed positive-negative “mosaic” charging patterns, and paves the way to the theoretical prediction of the triboelectric properties.

Applications of active particles require a method for controlling their dynamics. While this is typically achieved via direct interventions, indirect interventions based, e.g., on an orientation-dependent self-propulsion speed of the particles, become increasingly popular. In this Letter, we investigate systems of interacting active Brownian spheres in two spatial dimensions with orientation-dependent propulsion using analytical modeling and Brownian dynamics simulations. It is found that the orientation dependence leads to self-advection, circulating currents, and programmable cluster shapes.

The nonclassicality of quantum states is a fundamental resource for quantum technologies and quantum information tasks, in general. In particular, a pivotal aspect of quantum states lies in their coherence properties, encoded in the nondiagonal terms of their density matrix in the Fock-state bosonic basis. We present operational criteria to detect the nonclassicality of individual quantum coherences that use only data obtainable in experimentally realistic scenarios. We analyze and compare the robustness of the nonclassical coherence aspects when the states pass through lossy and noisy channels. The criteria can be immediately applied to experiments with light, atoms, solid-state system, and mechanical oscillators, thus providing a toolbox allowing practical experiments to more easily detect the nonclassicality of generated states.

Noise is ubiquitous in nature, so it is essential to characterize its effects. Considering a fluctuating Hamiltonian, we introduce an observable, the stochastic operator variance (SOV), which measures the spread of different stochastic trajectories in the space of operators. The SOV obeys an uncertainty relation and allows us to find the initial state that minimizes the spread of these trajectories. We show that the dynamics of the SOV is intimately linked to that of out-of-time-order correlators, which define the quantum Lyapunov exponent $\lambda$. Our findings are illustrated analytically and numerically in a stochastic Lipkin-Meshkov-Glick Hamiltonian undergoing energy dephasing.

Quantum technology has led to increasingly sophisticated and complex quantum devices. Assessing their reliability (quantum reliability) is an important issue. Although reliability theory for classical devices has been well developed in industry and technology, a suitable metric on quantum reliability and its loss has not been systematically investigated. Since reliability loss depends on the process, quantum fidelity does not always fully depict it. This study provides a metric of quantum reliability by shifting the focus from state distinguishing to trajectory distinguishing. In contrast to the conventional notion of classical reliability, which is evaluated using probabilistic measurements of binary logical variables, quantum reliability is grounded in the quantum probability amplitude or wave function. This research provides a universal framework for reliability theory encompassing both classical and quantum devices. It offers a new perspective on quantum engineering by elucidating how intensely the real quantum process that a device undergoes influences its performance.

The spreading of quantum information in closed systems, often termed scrambling, is a hallmark of many-body quantum dynamics. In open systems, scrambling competes with noise, errors, and decoherence. Here, we provide a universal framework that describes the scrambling of quantum information in open systems: we predict that the effect of open-system dynamics is fundamentally controlled by operator size distributions and independent of the microscopic error mechanism. This framework allows us to demonstrate that open quantum systems exhibit universal classes of information dynamics that fundamentally differ from their unitary counterparts. Implications for the Loschmidt echo, nuclear magnetic resonance experiments, and the classical simulability of open quantum dynamics will be discussed.

The nonequilibrium dynamics of quantum spin models is a most challenging topic, due to the exponentiality of Hilbert space, and it is central to the understanding of the many-body entangled states that can be generated by state-of-the-art quantum simulators. A particularly important class of evolutions is the one governed by U(1)-symmetric Hamiltonians, initialized in a state that breaks the U(1) symmetry—the paradigmatic example being the evolution of the so-called one-axis-twisting (OAT) model, featuring infinite-range interactions between spins. In this Letter, we show that the dynamics of the OAT model can be closely reproduced by systems with power-law-decaying interactions, thanks to an effective separation between the zero-momentum degrees of freedom, associated with the so-called Anderson tower of states, and reconstructing an OAT model, as well as finite-momentum ones, associated with spin-wave excitations. This mechanism explains quantitatively the recent numerical observation of spin squeezing and Schrödinger cat-state generation in the dynamics of dipolar Hamiltonians, and it paves the way for the extension of this observation to a much larger class of models of immediate relevance for quantum simulations.

We introduce a method that allows one to infer many properties of a quantum state—including nonlinear functions such as Rényi entropies—using only global control over the constituent degrees of freedom. In this protocol, the state of interest is first entangled with a set of ancillas under a fixed global unitary, before projective measurements are made. We show that when the unitary is sufficiently entangling, a universal relationship between the statistics of the measurement outcomes and properties of the state emerges, which can be connected to the recently discovered phenomeonon of emergent quantum state designs in chaotic systems. Thanks to this relationship, arbitrary observables can be reconstructed using the same number of experimental repetitions that would be required in classical shadow tomography [Huang et al., Nat. Phys. 16, 1050 (2020)]. Unlike previous approaches to shadow tomography, our protocol can be implemented using only global Hamiltonian evolution, as opposed to qubit-selective logic gates, which makes it particularly well suited to analog quantum simulators, including ultracold atoms in optical lattices and arrays of Rydberg atoms.

Recently, there has been renewed interest in a crossing-symmetric dispersion relation from the 1970s due to its implications for both regular quantum field theory and conformal field theory. However, this dispersion relation introduces nonlocal spurious singularities and requires additional locality constraints for their removal, a process that presents considerable technical challenges. In this Letter, we address this issue by deriving a new crossing-symmetric dispersion relation free of spurious singularities. Our formulation offers a compact and nonperturbative representation of the local block expansion, effectively resumming both Witten (in conformal field theory) and Feynman (in quantum field theory) diagrams. Consequently, we explicitly derive all contact terms in relation to the corresponding perturbative expansion. Our results establish a solid foundation for the Polyakov-Mellin bootstrap in conformal field theories and the crossing-symmetry $S$-matrix bootstrap in quantum field theories.

Macroscopic properties of the strong interaction near its chiral phase transition exhibit scaling behaviors, which are the same as those observed close to the magnetic transition in a three-dimensional classical spin system with O(4) symmetry. We show that the universal scaling properties of the chiral phase transition in quantum chromodynamics (QCD) at the macroscale are, in fact, encoded within the microscopic energy levels of its fundamental constituents, the quarks. We establish a connection between the cumulants of the chiral order parameter, i.e., the chiral condensate, and the correlations among the energy levels of quarks, i.e., the eigenspectra of the massless QCD Dirac operator. This relation elucidates how the fluctuations of the chiral condensate arise from the correlations within the infrared part of the energy spectra of quarks, and naturally leads to a generalization of the Banks-Casher relation for the cumulants of the chiral condensate. Then, through ($2+1$)-flavor lattice QCD calculations with varying light quark masses near the QCD chiral transition, we demonstrate that the correlations among the infrared part of the Dirac eigenvalue spectra exhibit same universal scaling behaviors as expected of the cumulants of the chiral condensate. We find that these universal scaling behaviors extend up to the physical values of the up and down quark masses. Our study reveals how the hidden scaling features at the microscale give rise to the macroscopic universal properties of QCD.

The failure of observing the $e^{+}{e}^{-}\to J/\psi J/\psi$ events at $B$ factories to date is often attributed to the significant negative order-${\alpha }_s$ correction. In this work we compute the $\mathcal{O}({\alpha }_s^2)$ correction to this process for the first time. The magnitude of the next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) perturbative correction is substantially negative so that the standard nonrelativistic QCD prediction would suffer from an unphysical, negative cross section. This dilemma may be traced in the fact that the bulk contribution of the fixed-order radiative corrections stems from the perturbative corrections to the $J/\psi$ decay constant. We thus implement an improved nonrelativistic QCD factorization framework, by decomposing the amplitude into the photon-fragmentation piece and the nonfragmentation piece. With the measured $J/\psi$ decay constant as input, which amounts to resumming a specific class of radiative and relativistic corrections to all orders, the fragmentation-induced production rate can be predicted accurately and serves a benchmark prediction. The nonfragmentation type of the amplitude is then computed through NNLO in ${\alpha }_s$ and at lowest order in velocity. Both the $\mathcal{O}({\alpha }_s)$ and $\mathcal{O}({\alpha }_s^2)$ corrections in the interference term become positive and exhibit a decent convergence behavior. Our finest prediction is $\sigma (e^{+}{e}^{-}\to J/\psi J/\psi )=2.13_{-0.06}^{+0.30}\mathrm{fb}$ at $\sqrt{s}=10.58\mathrm{GeV}$. With the projected integrated luminosity of $50{\mathrm{ab}}^{-1}$, the prospect to observe this exclusive process at Belle 2 experiment appears to be bright.

Puzzles in the determination of the hadronic-vacuum-polarization contribution currently impede a conclusive interpretation of the precision measurement of the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon at the Fermilab experiment. One such puzzle concerns tensions between evaluations in lattice QCD and using $e^{+}{e}^{-}\to \text{hadrons}$ cross-section data. In lattice QCD, the dominant isospin-symmetric part and isospin-breaking (IB) corrections are calculated separately, with very different systematic effects. Identifying these two pieces in a data-driven approach provides an opportunity to compare them individually and trace back the source of the discrepancy. Here, we estimate the IB component of the lattice-QCD calculations from phenomenology, based on a comprehensive study of exclusive contributions that can be enhanced via infrared singularities, threshold effects, or hadronic resonances, including, for the first time, in the $e^{+}{e}^{-}\to 3\pi$ channel. We observe sizable cancellations among different channels, with a sum that even suggests a slightly larger result for the QED correction than obtained in lattice QCD. We conclude that the tensions between lattice QCD and $e^{+}{e}^{-}$ data therefore cannot be explained by the IB contributions in the lattice-QCD calculations.

The accuracy of parton-shower simulations is often a limiting factor in the interpretation of data from high-energy colliders. We present the first formulation of parton showers with accuracy 1 order beyond state-of-the-art next-to-leading logarithms, for classes of observables that are dominantly sensitive to low-energy (soft) emissions, specifically nonglobal observables and subjet multiplicities. This represents a major step toward general next-to-next-to-leading logarithmic accuracy for parton showers.

Neutrinoless double beta decay ($0\nu \beta \beta$) is a yet unobserved nuclear process that would demonstrate Lepton number violation, a clear evidence of beyond standard model physics. The process two neutrino double beta decay ($2\nu \beta \beta$) is allowed by the standard model and has been measured in numerous experiments. In this Letter, we report a measurement of $2\nu \beta \beta$ decay half-life of ${}^{100}\mathrm{Mo}$ to the ground state of ${}^{100}\mathrm{Ru}$ of $[7.07\pm 0.02(\mathrm{stat})\pm 0.11(\mathrm{syst})]\times {10}^{18}\mathrm{yr}$ by the CUPID-Mo experiment. With a relative precision of $\pm 1.6\%$ this is the most precise measurement to date of a $2\nu \beta \beta$ decay rate in ${}^{100}\mathrm{Mo}$. In addition, we constrain higher-order corrections to the spectral shape, which provides complementary nuclear structure information. We report a novel measurement of the shape factor ${\xi }_{3,1}=0.45\pm 0.03(\mathrm{stat})\pm 0.05(\mathrm{syst})$ based on a constraint on the ratio of higher-order terms from theory, which can be reliably calculated. This is compared to theoretical predictions for different nuclear models. We also extract the first value for the effective axial vector coupling constant obtained from a spectral shape study of $2\nu \beta \beta$ decay.

We describe a mechanism for guiding the dynamical evolution of ultracold atomic motional degrees of freedom toward multiparticle entangled Dicke-squeezed states, via nonlinear self-organization under external driving. Two examples of many-body models are investigated. In the first model, the external drive is a temporally oscillating magnetic field leading to self-organization by interatomic scattering. In the second model, the drive is a pump laser leading to transverse self-organization by photon-atom scattering in a ring cavity. We numerically demonstrate the generation of multiparticle entangled states of atomic motion and discuss prospective experimental realizations of the models. For the cavity case, the calculations with adiabatically eliminated photonic sidebands show significant momentum entanglement generation can occur even in the “bad cavity” regime. The results highlight the potential for using self-organization of atomic motion in quantum technological applications.

Unlike the well-known Mott’s argument that extended and localized states should not coexist at the same energy in a generic random potential, we formulate the main principles and provide an example of a nearest-neighbor tight-binding disordered model which carries both localized and extended states without forming the mobility edge. Unexpectedly, this example appears to be given by a well-studied $\beta$ ensemble with independently distributed random diagonal potential and inhomogeneous kinetic hopping terms. In order to analytically tackle the problem, we locally map the above model to the 1D Anderson model with matrix-size- and position-dependent hopping and confirm the coexistence of localized and extended states, which is shown to be robust to the perturbations of both potential and kinetic terms due to the separation of the above states in space. In addition, the mapping shows that the extended states are nonergodic and allows one to analytically estimate their fractal dimensions.

We study the effects of strain in moiré systems composed of honeycomb lattices. We elucidate the formation of almost perfect one-dimensional moiré patterns in twisted bilayer systems. The formation of such patterns is a consequence of an interplay between twist and strain which gives rise to a collapse of the reciprocal space unit cell. As a criterion for such collapse we find a simple relation between the two quantities and the material specific Poisson ratio. The induced one-dimensional behavior is characterized by two, usually incommensurate, periodicities. Our results offer explanations for the complex patterns of one-dimensional channels observed in low angle twisted bilayer graphene systems and twisted bilayer dicalcogenides. Our findings can be applied to any hexagonal twisted moiré pattern and can be easily extended to other geometries.