It is well documented that the central electron temperature in the national spherical torus experiment (NSTX) remains largely unchanged as the external heating power, and hence the normalized volume averaged plasma pressure $\beta$ increases [Stutman, Phys. Rev. Lett. 102, 115002 (2009)]. Here we present a hypothesis that low $n$, pressure driven ideal magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) instabilities that are nondisruptive, can break magnetic surfaces in the central region and thereby flatten the electron temperature profiles. We demonstrate this mechanism in a 3D resistive MHD simulation of a NSTX discharge. By varying the toroidal magnetic field strength, and/or the heating power, we show that there is a critical value of $\beta$, above which the central temperature profile no longer peaks on axis.

Nodal lines are symmetry-protected one-dimensional band degeneracies in momentum space, which can appear in numerous topological configurations such as nodal rings, chains, links, and knots. Very recently, non-Abelian topological physics have been proposed in space-time inversion ($PT$) symmetric systems. One of the most special configurations in such systems is the earring nodal link, composing of a nodal chain linking with an isolated nodal line. Such earring nodal links have not been observed in real systems. We designed phononic crystals with earring nodal links, and experimentally observed two different kinds of earring nodal links by measuring the band structures. We found that the order of the nodal chain and line can be switched after band inversion but their link cannot be severed. Our Letter provides experimental evidence for phenomena unique to non-Abelian band topology and our acoustic system provides a convenient platform for studying the new materials carrying non-Abelian charges.

We present a simple model describing the assembly and disassembly of heteropolymers consisting of two types of monomers $A$ and $B$. We prove that no matter how we manipulate the concentrations of $A$ and $B$, it takes longer than the exponential function of $d$ to synthesize a fixed amount of the desired heteropolymer, where $d$ is the number of $A\text{−}B$ connections. We also prove the decomposition time is linear for chain length $n$. When $d$ is proportional to $n$, synthesis and destruction have an exponential asymmetry. Our findings may facilitate research on the more general asymmetry of operational hardness.

Motile bacteria are known to accumulate at surfaces, eventually leading to changes in bacterial motility and biofilm formation. We use a novel two-color, three-dimensional Lagrangian tracking technique to follow simultaneously the body and the flagella of a wild-type Escherichia coli. We observe long surface residence times and surface escape corresponding mostly to immediately antecedent tumbling. A motility model accounting for a large behavioral variability in run-time duration reproduces all experimental findings and gives new insights into surface trapping efficiency.

We propose a quantum Wheatstone bridge as a fully quantum analog to the classical version. The bridge is a few-body boundary-driven spin chain exploiting quantum effects to gain an enhanced sensitivity to an unknown coupling. The sensitivity is explained by a drop in population of an entangled Bell state due to destructive interference as the controllable coupling approaches the unknown coupling. A simple criterion for the destructive interference is found, and an approximate expression for the width of the drop is derived. The sensitivity to the unknown coupling is quantified using the quantum Fisher information, and we show that the state of the bridge can be measured indirectly through the spin current. Our results are robust toward calibration errors and generic in the sense that several of the current state-of-the-art quantum platforms could be used as a means of realization. The quantum Wheatstone bridge may thus find use in fields such as sensing and metrology using near-term quantum devices.

Quantum resource manipulation may include an ancillary state called a catalyst, which aids the transformation while restoring its original form at the end, and characterizing the enhancement enabled by catalysts is essential to reveal the ultimate manipulability of the precious resource quantity of interest. Here, we show that allowing correlation among multiple catalysts can offer arbitrary power in the manipulation of quantum coherence. We prove that any state transformation can be accomplished with an arbitrarily small error by covariant operations with catalysts that may create a correlation within them while keeping their marginal states intact. This presents a new type of embezzlement-like phenomenon, in which the resource embezzlement is attributed to the correlation generated among multiple catalysts. We extend our analysis to general resource theories and provide conditions for feasible transformations assisted by catalysts that involve correlation, putting a severe restriction on other quantum resources for showing this anomalous enhancement, as well as characterizing achievable transformations in relation to their asymptotic state transformations. Our results provide not only a general overview of the power of correlation in catalysts but also a step toward the complete characterization of the resource transformability in quantum thermodynamics with correlated catalysts.

We develop a novel approach aimed at solving the equations of motion of open quantum many-body systems. It is based on a combination of generalized wave function trajectories and matrix product states. We introduce an adaptive quantum stochastic propagator, which minimizes the expected entanglement in the many-body quantum state, thus minimizing the computational cost of the matrix product state representation of each trajectory. We illustrate this approach on the example of a one-dimensional open Brownian circuit. We show that this model displays an entanglement phase transition between area and volume law when changing between different propagators and that our method autonomously finds an efficiently representable area law unraveling.

High-resolution time- and angle-resolved photoemission measurements were made on FeSe superconductors. With ultrafast photoexcitation, two critical excitation fluences that correspond to two ultrafast electronic phase transitions were found only in the $d_{yz}$-orbit-derived band near the Brillouin-zone center within our time and energy resolution. Upon comparison to the detailed temperature dependent measurements, we conclude that there are two equilibrium electronic phase transitions (at approximately 90 and 120 K) above the superconducting transition temperature, and an anomalous contribution on the scale of 10 meV to the nematic states from the structural transition is experimentally determined. Our observations strongly suggest that the electronic phase transition at 120 K must be taken into account in the energy band development of FeSe, and, furthermore, the contribution of the structural transition plays an important role in the nematic phase of iron-based high-temperature superconductors.

We study, numerically, the charge neutral excitations (magnetorotons) in fractional quantum Hall systems, concentrating on the two Jain states near quarter filling, $\nu =2/7$ and $\nu =2/9$, and the $\nu =1/4$ Fermi-liquid state itself. In contrast to the $\nu =1/3$ states and the Jain states near half filling, on each of the two Jain states $\nu =2/7$ and $\nu =2/9$ the graviton spectral densities show two, instead of one, magnetoroton peaks. The magnetorotons have spin 2 and have opposite chiralities in the $\nu =2/7$ state and the same chirality in the $\nu =2/9$ state. We also provide a numerical verification of a sum rule relating the guiding center spin $\overline{s}$ with the spectral densities of the stress tensor.

Quantum phase transitions occur when quantum fluctuation destroys order at zero temperature. With an increase in temperature, normally the thermal fluctuation wipes out any signs of this transition. Here, we identify a physical quantity that shows nonanalytic behavior at finite temperatures, when an interaction parameter is quenched across the line of quantum phase transition. This quantity under consideration is the long time limit of a form of quantum fidelity. Our treatment is analytic for $XY$ chain and 2D Kitaev model and is numerical for a 3D Hamiltonian applicable to Weyl semimetals.

To search for experimental signals of the Gardner crossover, an active quasithermal granular glass is constructed using a monolayer of air-fluidized star-shaped particles. The pressure of the system is controlled by adjusting the tension exerted on an enclosing boundary. Velocity distributions of the internal particles and the scaling of the pressure, density, effective temperature, and relaxation time are examined, demonstrating that the system has key features of a thermal system. Using a pressure-based quenching protocol that brings the system into deeper glassy states, signals of the Gardner crossover are detected via cage size and separation order parameters for both particle positions and orientations, offering experimental evidence of Gardner physics for a system of anisotropic quasithermal particles in a low spatial dimension.

In an ordinary quantum algorithm the gates are applied in a fixed order on the systems. The introduction of indefinite causal structures allows us to relax this constraint and control the order of the gates with an additional quantum state. It is known that this quantum-controlled ordering of gates can reduce the query complexity in deciding a property of black-box unitaries with respect to the best algorithm in which the gates are applied in a fixed order. However, all tasks explicitly found so far require unitaries that either act on unbounded dimensional quantum systems in the asymptotic limit (the limiting case of a large number of black-box gates) or act on qubits, but then involve only a few unitaries. Here we introduce tasks (i) for which there is a provable computational advantage of a quantum-controlled ordering of gates in the asymptotic case and (ii) that require only qubit gates and are therefore suitable to demonstrate this advantage experimentally. We study their solutions with the quantum $n$-switch and within the quantum circuit model and find that while the $n$-switch requires to call each gate only once, a causal algorithm has to call at least $2n-1$ gates. Furthermore, the best known solution with a fixed gate ordering calls $O[n{\log }_2(n)]$ gates.

Scientific analysis for the gravitational wave detector LISA will require theoretical waveforms from extreme-mass-ratio inspirals (EMRIs) that extensively cover all possible orbital and spin configurations around astrophysical Kerr black holes. However, on-the-fly calculations of these waveforms have not yet overcome the high dimensionality of the parameter space. To confront this challenge, we present a user-ready EMRI waveform model for generic (eccentric and inclined) orbits in Kerr spacetime, using an analytical self-force approach. Our model accurately covers all EMRIs with arbitrary inclination and black hole spin, up to modest eccentricity ($\lesssim 0.3$) and separation ($\gtrsim 2–10\mathrm{M}$ from the last stable orbit). In that regime, our waveforms are accurate at the leading “adiabatic” order, and they approximately capture transient self-force resonances that significantly impact the gravitational wave phase. The model fills an urgent need for extensive waveforms in ongoing data-analysis studies, and its individual components will continue to be useful in future science-adequate waveforms.

We present the precision measurement of 2824 daily helium fluxes in cosmic rays from May 20, 2011 to October 29, 2019 in the rigidity interval from 1.71 to 100 GV based on $7.6\times {10}^8$ helium nuclei collected with the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) aboard the International Space Station. The helium flux and the helium to proton flux ratio exhibit variations on multiple timescales. In nearly all the time intervals from 2014 to 2018, we observed recurrent helium flux variations with a period of 27 days. Shorter periods of 9 days and 13.5 days are observed in 2016. The strength of all three periodicities changes with time and rigidity. In the entire time period, we found that below $\sim 7\mathrm{GV}$ the helium flux exhibits larger time variations than the proton flux, and above $\sim 7\mathrm{GV}$ the helium to proton flux ratio is time independent. Remarkably, below 2.4 GV a hysteresis between the helium to proton flux ratio and the helium flux was observed at greater than the $7\sigma$ level. This shows that at low rigidity the modulation of the helium to proton flux ratio is different before and after the solar maximum in 2014.

We use the formalism of strange correlators to construct a critical classical lattice model in two dimensions with the Haagerup fusion category ${\mathcal{H}}_3$ as input data. We present compelling numerical evidence in the form of finite entanglement scaling to support a Haagerup conformal field theory (CFT) with central charge $c=2$. Generalized twisted CFT spectra are numerically obtained through exact diagonalization of the transfer matrix, and the conformal towers are separated in the spectra through their identification with the topological sectors. It is further argued that our model can be obtained through an orbifold procedure from a larger lattice model with input $Z({\mathcal{H}}_3)$, which is the simplest modular tensor category that does not admit an algebraic construction. This provides a counterexample for the conjecture that all rational CFT can be constructed from standard methods.

We numerically study an anyon chain based on the Haagerup fusion category and find evidence that it leads in the long-distance limit to a conformal field theory whose central charge is $\sim 2$. Fusion categories generalize the concept of finite group symmetries to noninvertible symmetry operations, and the Haagerup fusion category is the simplest one which comes from neither finite groups nor affine Lie algebras. As such, ours is the first example of conformal field theories which have truly exotic generalized symmetries. Basically the same result was independently obtained in the preceding Letter [Phys. Rev. Lett. 128, 231602 (2022)].

Uncovering the nature of dark matter is one of the most important goals of particle physics. Light bosonic particles, such as the dark photon, are well-motivated candidates: they are generally long-lived, weakly interacting, and naturally produced in the early universe. In this work, we report on Light $A^{\prime }$ Multilayer Periodic Optical SNSPD Target, a proof-of-concept experiment searching for dark photon dark matter in the eV mass range, via coherent absorption in a multilayer dielectric haloscope. Using a superconducting nanowire single-photon detector (SNSPD), we achieve efficient photon detection with a dark count rate of $\sim 6\times {10}^{-6}\mathrm{counts}/\mathrm{s}$. We find no evidence for dark photon dark matter in the mass range of $\sim 0.7–0.8\mathrm{eV}$ with kinetic mixing $\epsilon \gtrsim {10}^{-12}$, improving existing limits in $\epsilon$ by up to a factor of 2. With future improvements to SNSPDs, our architecture could probe significant new parameter space for dark photon and axion dark matter in the meV to 10 eV mass range.