We propose a Hamiltonian approach to reproduce the relevant elements of the centuries-old Subak irrigation system in Bali, showing a cluster-size distribution of rice-field patches that is a power-law with an exponent of $\sim 2$. Besides this exponent, the resulting system presents two equilibria. The first originates from a balance between energy and entropy contributions. The second arises from the specific energy contribution through a local Potts-type interaction in combination with a long-range antiferromagnetic interaction without attenuation. Finite-size scaling analysis shows that, as a result of the second equilibrium, the critical transition balancing energy and entropy contributions at the Potts (local ferromagnetic) regime is absorbed by the transition driven by the global-antiferromagnetic interactions, as the system size increases. The phase transition balancing energy and entropy contributions at the global-antiferromagnetic regime also shows signs of criticality. Our study extends the Hamiltonian framework to a new domain of coupled human-environmental interactions.

We show that the resource theory of contextuality does not admit catalysts, i.e., there are no correlations that can enable an otherwise impossible resource conversion and still be recovered afterward. As a corollary, we observe that the same holds for nonlocality. As entanglement allows for catalysts, this adds a further example to the list of “anomalies of entanglement,” showing that nonlocality and entanglement behave differently as resources. We also show that catalysis remains impossible even if, instead of classical randomness, we allow some more powerful behaviors to be used freely in the free transformations of the resource theory.

We combine adaptive template fitting and pixel count statistics in order to assess the nature of the Galactic Center excess in Fermi-LAT data. We reconstruct the flux distribution of point sources well below the Fermi-LAT detection threshold, and measure their radial and longitudinal profiles in the inner Galaxy. We find that all point sources and the bulge-correlated diffuse emission each contributes $\mathcal{O}(10\%)$ of the total inner Galaxy emission, and disclose a potential subthreshold point-source contribution to the Galactic Center excess.

We study a disordered one-dimensional fermionic system subject to quasiperiodic driving by two modes with incommensurate frequencies. We show that the system supports a topological phase in which energy is transferred between the two driving modes at a quantized rate. The phase is protected by a combination of disorder-induced spatial localization and frequency localization, a mechanism unique to quasiperiodically driven systems. We demonstrate that an analogue of the phase can be realized in a cavity-qubit system driven by two incommensurate modes.

We study experimentally the effect of added salt in the phoretic motion of chemically driven colloidal particles. We show that the response of passive colloids to a fixed active colloid, be it attractive or repulsive, depends on the ionic strength, the $\zeta$ potential, and the size of the passive colloids. We further report that the direction of self-propulsion of Janus colloids can be reversed by decreasing their $\zeta$ potential below a critical value. By constructing an effective model that treats the colloid and ions as a whole subjected to the concentration field of generated ions and takes into account the joint effect of both generated and background ions in determining the Debye length, we demonstrate that the response of the passive colloids and the velocity of the Janus colloids can be quantitatively captured by this model under the ionic diffusiophoresis theory beyond the infinitely-thin-double-layer limit.

We investigate the effect of coupling between translational and internal degrees of freedom of composite quantum particles on their localization in a random potential. We show that entanglement between the two degrees of freedom weakens localization due to the upper bound imposed on the inverse participation ratio by purity of a quantum state. We perform numerical calculations for a two-particle system bound by a harmonic force in a 1D disordered lattice and a rigid rotor in a 2D disordered lattice. We illustrate that the coupling has a dramatic effect on localization properties, even with a small number of internal states participating in quantum dynamics.

Using Monte Carlo computer simulations, we study the impact of matter fields on the geometry of a typical quantum universe in the causal dynamical triangulations (cdt) model of lattice quantum gravity. The quantum universe has the size of a few Planck lengths and the spatial topology of a three-torus. The matter fields are multicomponent scalar fields taking values in a torus with circumference $\delta$ in each spatial direction, which acts as a new parameter in the cdt model. Changing $\delta$, we observe a phase transition caused by the scalar field. This discovery may have important consequences for quantum universes with nontrivial topology, since the phase transition can change the topology to a simply connected one.

It is shown that the Ablowitz-Kaup-Newell-Segur (AKNS) integrable hierarchy can be obtained as the dynamical equations of three-dimensional general relativity with a negative cosmological constant. This geometrization of the AKNS system is possible through the construction of novel boundary conditions for the gravitational field. These are invariant under an asymptotic symmetry group characterized by an infinite set of AKNS commuting conserved charges. Gravitational configurations are studied by means of $SL(2,\mathbb{R})$ conjugacy classes. Conical singularities and black hole solutions are included in the boundary conditions.

Studying spin-momentum correlations in hadronic collisions offers a glimpse into a three-dimensional picture of proton structure. The transverse single-spin asymmetry for midrapidity isolated direct photons in $p^{\uparrow }+p$ collisions at $\sqrt{s}=200\mathrm{GeV}$ is measured with the PHENIX detector at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). Because direct photons in particular are produced from the hard scattering and do not interact via the strong force, this measurement is a clean probe of initial-state spin-momentum correlations inside the proton and is in particular sensitive to gluon interference effects within the proton. This is the first time direct photons have been used as a probe of spin-momentum correlations at RHIC. The uncertainties on the results are a 50-fold improvement with respect to those of the one prior measurement for the same observable, from the Fermilab E704 experiment. These results constrain gluon spin-momentum correlations in transversely polarized protons.

The impact of the finite top-quark mass on the inclusive Higgs production cross section at higher perturbative orders has been an open question for almost three decades. In this Letter, we report on the computation of this effect at next-to-next-to-leading order QCD. For the purely gluonic channel, it amounts to $+0.62\%$ relative to the result obtained in the Higgs effective field theory approximation. The formally subleading partonic channels overcompensate this shift, leading to an overall effect of $-0.26\%$ at a $pp$ collider energy of 13 TeV, and $-0.1\%$ at 8 TeV. This result eliminates one of the main theoretical uncertainties to inclusive Higgs production cross section at the LHC.

We demonstrate loading of SrF molecules into an optical dipole trap (ODT) via in-trap $\mathrm{\Lambda }$-enhanced gray molasses cooling. We find that this cooling can be optimized by a proper choice of relative ODT and cooling beam polarizations. In this optimized configuration, we observe molecules with temperatures as low as $14(1)\mu \mathrm{K}$ in traps with depths up to $570\mu \mathrm{K}$. With optimized parameters, we transfer $\sim 5\%$ of molecules from our radio-frequency magneto-optical trap into the ODT, at a density of $\sim 2\times {10}^9{\mathrm{cm}}^{-3}$, a phase space density of $\sim 2\times {10}^{-7}$, and with a trap lifetime of $\sim 1\mathrm{s}$.

Single photons exhibit inherently quantum and unintuitive properties such as the Hong-Ou-Mandel effect, demonstrating their bosonic and quantized nature, yet at the same time may correspond to single excitations of spatial or temporal modes with a very complex structure. Those two features are rarely seen together. Here we experimentally demonstrate how the Hong-Ou-Mandel effect can be spectrally resolved and harnessed to characterize a complex temporal mode of a single-photon—a zero-area pulse—obtained via a resonant interaction of a terahertz-bandwidth photon with a narrow gigahertz-wide atomic transition of atomic vapor. The combination of bosonic quantum behavior with bandwidth-mismatched light-atom interaction is of fundamental importance for deeper understanding of both phenomena, as well as their engineering offering applications in characterization of ultrafast transient processes.

We demonstrate that a long-propagating plasma bubble executing undulatory motion can be produced in the wake of two copropagating laser pulses: a near-single-cycle injector and a multicycle driver. When the undulation amplitude exceeds the analytically derived threshold, highly localized injections of plasma electrons into the bubble are followed by their long-distance acceleration. While the locations of the injection regions are controlled by the carrier-envelope phase (CEP) of the injector pulse, the monoenergetic spectrum of the accelerated subfemtosecond high-charge electron bunches is shown to be nearly CEP independent.

Ablative Rayleigh-Taylor instability growth was investigated to elucidate the fundamental physics of thermal conduction suppression in a magnetic field. Experiments found that unstable modulation growth is faster in an external magnetic field. This result was reproduced by a magnetohydrodynamic simulation based on a Braginskii model of electron thermal transport. An external magnetic field reduces the electron thermal conduction across the magnetic field lines because the Larmor radius of the thermal electrons in the field is much shorter than the temperature scale length. Thermal conduction suppression leads to spatially nonuniform pressure and reduced thermal ablative stabilization, which in turn increases the growth of ablative Rayleigh-Taylor instability.

Interaction of an ultrastrong short laser pulse with nonprepolarized near-critical density plasma is investigated in an ultrarelativistic regime, with an emphasis on the radiative spin polarization of ejected electrons. Our particle-in-cell simulations show explicit correlations between the angle resolved electron polarization and the structure and properties of the transient quasistatic plasma magnetic field. While the magnitude of the spin signal is the indicator of the magnetic field strength created by the longitudinal electron current, the asymmetry of electron polarization is found to gauge the islandlike magnetic distribution which emerges due to the transverse current induced by the laser wave front. Our studies demonstrate that the spin degree of freedom of ejected electrons could potentially serve as an efficient tool to retrieve the features of strong plasma fields.

Graphene nanoribbons (GNRs) possess distinct symmetry-protected topological phases. We show, through first-principles calculations, that by applying an experimentally accessible transverse electric field, certain boron and nitrogen periodically codoped GNRs have tunable topological phases. The tunability arises from a field-induced band inversion due to an opposite response of the conduction- and valence-band states to the electric field. With a spatially varying applied field, segments of GNRs of distinct topological phases are created, resulting in a field-programmable array of topological junction states, each may be occupied with charge or spin. Our findings not only show that electric field may be used as an easy tuning knob for topological phases in quasi-one-dimensional systems, but also provide new design principles for future GNR-based quantum electronic devices through their topological characters.

The origin of the coil-globule transition for water-soluble thermoresponsive polymers frequently used in nanomaterials remains elusive. Using polypropylene oxide as an example we demonstrate by means of atomistic molecular dynamics simulations that temperature-induced increase in the sequence length of monomers that are not hydrogen bonded to water drives the coil-globule transition. Longer chains statistically exhibit longer sequences which serve as nucleation sites for hydrophobic cluster formation, facilitating chain collapse at lower temperature in agreement with experimental data.