We prove that the boundaries of all nontrivial ($1+1$)-dimensional intrinsically fermionic symmetry-protected-topological phases, protected by finite on-site symmetries (unitary or antiunitary), are supersymmetric quantum mechanical systems. This supersymmetry does not require any fine-tuning of the underlying Hamiltonian, arises entirely as a consequence of the boundary ’t Hooft anomaly that classifies the phase, and is related to a “Bose-Fermi” degeneracy different in nature from other well known degeneracies such as Kramers doublets.

We investigate the electron-phonon coupling in ${\mathrm{CH}}_3{\mathrm{NH}}_3\mathrm{Pb}{X}_3$ lead halide perovskites through the observation of Landau levels and high-order excitons at weak magnetic fields, where the cyclotron energy is significantly smaller than the longitudinal optical phonon energy. The reduced masses of the carriers and the exciton binding energies obtained from these data are clearly influenced by polaron formation. We analyze the field-dependent polaronic and excitonic properties, and show that they can be quantitatively reproduced by the Fröhlich large polaron model.

The interfacial tension of coacervates, the liquidlike phase composed of oppositely charged polymers that coexists at equilibrium with a supernatant, forms the basis for multiple technologies. Here we present a comprehensive set of experiments and molecular dynamics simulations to probe the effect of molecular mass on interfacial tension $\gamma$, far from the critical point, and derive $\gamma ={\gamma }_{\infty }(1-h/N)$, where $N$ is the degree of polymerization, ${\gamma }_{\infty }$ is the infinite molecular mass limit, and $h$ is a constant that physically corresponds to the number of monomers of one chain within the coacervate correlation volume.

We describe an efficient and scalable framework for modeling crosstalk effects on quantum information processors. By applying optimal control techniques, we show how to tune-up arbitrary high-fidelity parallel operations on systems with substantial local and nonlocal crosstalk. As an example, we simulate a 2D square array of 100 superconducting transmon qubits. These results suggest that rather than striving to engineer away undesirable interactions during fabrication, we can largely mitigate such effects with software through careful characterization and control optimization.

Excited-state quantum phase transitions extend the notion of quantum phase transitions beyond the ground state. They are characterized by closing energy gaps amid the spectrum. Identifying order parameters for excited-state quantum phase transitions poses, however, a major challenge. We introduce a topological order parameter that distinguishes excited-state phases in a large class of mean-field models and can be accessed by interferometry in current experiments with spinor Bose-Einstein condensates. Our work opens a way for the experimental characterization of excited-state quantum phases in atomic many-body systems.

The duration, strength, and structure of memory effects are crucial properties of physical evolution. Because of the invasive nature of quantum measurement, such properties must be defined with respect to the probing instruments employed. Here, using a photonic platform, we experimentally demonstrate this necessity via two paradigmatic processes: future-history correlations in the first process can be erased by an intermediate quantum measurement; for the second process, a noisy classical measurement blocks the effect of history. We then apply memory truncation techniques to recover an efficient description that approximates expectation values for multitime observables. Our proof-of-principle analysis paves the way for experiments concerning more general non-Markovian quantum processes and highlights where standard open systems techniques break down.

It is argued that cosmic chronometers yield estimates of the spatially averaged expansion rate even in a universe that is not well described by a global FLRW model—as long as the universe is statistically homogeneous and isotropic with a sufficiently small homogeneity scale. On the other hand, measurements of the expansion rate based on observations of redshift drift will not in general yield estimates of the spatially averaged expansion rate—but it will in the case where the universe is described well by a single FLRW model on large scales. Therefore, a disagreement between measurements of the expansion rate based on cosmic chronometers versus redshift drift is an expected signal of non-negligible cosmic backreaction.

We study Feynman integrals and scattering amplitudes in $\mathcal{N}=4$ super-Yang-Mills theory by exploiting the duality with null polygonal Wilson loops. As the main application, we compute for the first time the symbols of the general double pentagon integrals, which give the finite part of two-loop maximally helicity violating (MHV) amplitudes and finite components of next-to-MHV (NMHV) amplitudes to all multiplicities. The rational parts of the symbol consist of 164 letters, while the algebraic part contains 96 algebraic letters and cancel in MHV amplitudes and NMHV components which are free of square roots.

Solvent exchange facilitates high-density nucleation of sessile nanodroplets or nanobubbles by successively wetting a surface with two solvents of contrasting solubility with respect to a target species. Yet the key physical mechanisms underlying its efficacy have yet to be theoretically explained. We develop a minimal model for solvent exchange, for the prototypical example of water and ethanol as the solvents and nitrogen as the target species. Our calculations show that solvent exchange is mediated by transient solubility gradients that dominate over the intrinsic concentration gradient of nitrogen in the incipient moments after exchange. Solubility gradients advect nitrogen toward the substrate during ethanol-water exchange but away from it in water-ethanol exchange, consistent with the directionality observed in experiments.

Spin-charge conversion via spin-orbit interaction is one of the core concepts in the current spintronics research. The efficiency of the interconversion between charge and spin current is estimated based on Berry curvature of Bloch wave function in the linear-response regime. Beyond the linear regime, nonlinear spin-charge conversion in the higher-order electric field terms has recently been demonstrated in noncentrosymmetric materials with nontrivial spin texture in the momentum space. Here, we report the observation of the nonlinear charge-spin conversion in a nominally centrosymmetric oxide material ${\mathrm{SrIrO}}_3$ by breaking inversion symmetry at the interface. A large second-order magnetoelectric coefficient is observed at room temperature because of the antisymmetric spin-orbit interaction at the interface of Dirac semimetallic bands, which is subject to the symmetry constraint of the substrates. Our study suggests that nonlinear spin-charge conversion can be induced in many materials with strong spin-orbit interaction at the interface by breaking the local inversion symmetry to give rise to spin splitting in otherwise spin degenerate systems.

Superconductivity is commonly destroyed by a magnetic field due to orbital or Zeeman-induced pair breaking. Surprisingly, the spin-valley locking in a two-dimensional superconductor with spin-orbit interaction makes the superconducting state resilient to large magnetic fields. We investigate the spectral properties of such an Ising superconductor in a magnetic field taking into account disorder. The interplay of the in-plane magnetic field and the Ising spin-orbit coupling leads to noncollinear effective fields. We find that the emerging singlet and triplet pairing correlations manifest themselves in the occurrence of “mirage” gaps: at (high) energies of the order of the spin-orbit coupling strength, a gaplike structure in the spectrum emerges that mirrors the main superconducting gap. We show that these mirage gaps are signatures of the equal-spin triplet finite-energy pairing correlations and due to their odd parity are sensitive to intervalley scattering.

Majorana fermions exist on the boundaries of two-dimensional topological superconductors (TSCs) as charge-neutral quasiparticles. The neutrality makes the detection of such states challenging from both experimental and theoretical points of view. Current methods largely rely on transport measurements in which Majorana fermions manifest themselves by inducing electron-pair tunneling at the lead-contacting point. Here we show that chiral Majorana fermions in TSCs generate enhanced local optical response. The features of local optical conductivity distinguish them not only from trivial superconductors or insulators but also from normal fermion edge states such as those in quantum Hall systems. Our results provide a new applicable method to detect dispersive Majorana fermions and may lead to a novel direction of this research field.

Symmetry-protected topological edge modes are one of the most remarkable phenomena in topological physics. Here, we formulate and quantitatively examine the effect of a quantum bath on these topological edge modes. Using the density matrix renormalization group method, we study the ground state of a composite system of spin-1 quantum chain, where the system and the bath degrees of freedom are treated on the same footing. We focus on the dependence of these edge modes on the global and partial symmetries of system-bath coupling and on the features of the quantum bath. It is shown that the time-reversal symmetry (TRS) plays a special role for an open quantum system, where an emergent partial TRS breaking will result in a TRS-protected topological mode diffusing from the system edge into the bath, thus make it useless for quantum computation.

Turing instabilities of reaction-diffusion systems can only arise if the diffusivities of the chemical species are sufficiently different. This threshold is unphysical in most systems with $N=2$ diffusing species, forcing experimental realizations of the instability to rely on fluctuations or additional nondiffusing species. Here, we ask whether this diffusive threshold lowers for $N>2$ to allow “true” Turing instabilities. Inspired by May’s analysis of the stability of random ecological communities, we analyze the probability distribution of the diffusive threshold in reaction-diffusion systems defined by random matrices describing linearized dynamics near a homogeneous fixed point. In the numerically tractable cases $N⩽6$, we find that the diffusive threshold becomes more likely to be smaller and physical as $N$ increases, and that most of these many-species instabilities cannot be described by reduced models with fewer diffusing species.

Open quantum Dicke models are paradigmatic systems for the investigation of light-matter interaction in out-of-equilibrium quantum settings. Albeit being structurally simple, these models can show intriguing physics. However, obtaining exact results on their dynamical behavior is challenging, since it requires the solution of a many-body quantum system with several interacting continuous and discrete degrees of freedom. Here, we make a step forward in this direction by proving the validity of the mean-field semiclassical equations for open multimode Dicke models, which, to the best of our knowledge, so far has not been rigorously established. We exploit this result to show that open quantum multimode Dicke models can behave as associative memories, displaying a nonequilibrium phase transition toward a pattern-recognition phase.

Weyl semimetals host a variety of exotic effects that have no counterpart in conventional materials, such as the chiral anomaly and magnetic monopole in momentum space. These effects give rise to unusual transport properties, including a negative magnetoresistance and a planar Hall effect, etc. Here, we report a new type of Hall and magnetoresistance effect in a magnetic Weyl semimetal. Unlike antisymmetric (with respect to either magnetic field or magnetization) Hall and symmetric magnetoresistance in conventional materials, the discovered magnetoresistance and Hall effect are antisymmetric in both magnetic field and magnetization. We show that the Berry curvature, the tilt of the Weyl node, and the chiral anomaly synergically produce these phenomena. Our results reveal a unique property of Weyl semimetals with broken time reversal symmetry.