In this Letter, we present a new expression for the overlaps of wave functions in Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov based theories. Starting from the Pfaffian formula by Bertsch et al. [1], an exact and computationally stable formula for overlaps is derived. We illustrate the convenience of this new formulation with a numerical application in the context of the particle-number projection method. This new formula allows for substantially increased precision and versatility in chemical, atomic, and nuclear physics applications, particularly for methods dealing with superfluidity, symmetry restoration, and uses of nonorthogonal many-body basis states.

Long-range Rydberg interactions, in combination with electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT), give rise to strongly interacting photons where the strength, sign, and form of the interactions are widely tunable and controllable. Such control can be applied to both coherent and dissipative interactions, which provides the potential for generating novel few-photon states. Recently it has been shown that Rydberg-EIT is a rare system in which three-body interactions can be as strong or stronger than two-body interactions. In this work, we study three-body scattering loss for Rydberg-EIT in a wide regime of single and two-photon detunings. Our numerical simulations of the full three-body wave function and analytical estimates based on Fermi’s golden rule strongly suggest that the observed features in the outgoing photonic correlations are caused by the resonant enhancement of the three-body losses.

Applications of laser-plasma accelerators demand low energy spread beams and high-efficiency operation. Achieving both requires flattening the accelerating fields by controlled beam loading of the plasma wave. Here, we optimize the generation of an electron bunch via localized ionization injection, such that the combination of injected current profile and averaged acceleration dynamics results in optimal beam loading conditions. This enables the reproducible production of 1.2% rms energy spread bunches with 282 MeV and 44 pC at an estimated energy-transfer efficiency of $\sim 19\%$. We correlate shot-to-shot variations to reveal the phase space dynamics and train a neural network that predicts the beam quality as a function of the drive laser.

In quantum gases with contact repulsion, the distribution of momenta of the atoms typically decays as $\sim 1/|p{|}^4$ at large momentum $p$. Tan’s relation connects the amplitude of that $1/|p{|}^4$ tail to the adiabatic derivative of the energy with respect to the coupling constant or scattering length of the gas. Here it is shown that the relation breaks down in the one-dimensional Bose gas with contact repulsion, for a peculiar class of stationary states. These states exist thanks to the infinite number of conserved quantities in the system, and they are characterized by a rapidity distribution that itself decreases as $1/|p{|}^4$. In the momentum distribution, that rapidity tail adds to the usual Tan contact term. Remarkably, atom losses, which are ubiquitous in experiments, do produce such peculiar states. The development of the tail of the rapidity distribution originates from the ghost singularity of the wave function immediately after each loss event. This phenomenon is discussed for arbitrary interaction strengths, and it is supported by exact calculations in the two asymptotic regimes of infinite and weak repulsion.

We theoretically and numerically investigate a two-dimensional O(2) model where an order parameter is convected by shear flow. We show that a long-range phase order emerges in two dimensions as a result of anomalous suppression of phase fluctuations by the shear flow. Furthermore, we use the finite-size scaling theory to demonstrate that a phase transition to the long-range ordered state from the disordered state is second order. At a transition point far from equilibrium, the critical exponents turn out to be close to the mean-field value for equilibrium systems.

Mott insulator plateaus in optical lattices are a versatile platform to study spin physics. Using sites occupied by two bosons with an internal degree of freedom, we realize a uniaxial single-ion anisotropy term proportional to $(S^z{)}^2$ that plays an important role in stabilizing magnetism for low-dimensional magnetic materials. Here we explore nonequilibrium spin dynamics and observe a resonant effect in the spin alignment as a function of lattice depth when exchange coupling and on-site anisotropy are similar. Our results are supported by many-body numerical simulations and are captured by the analytical solution of a two-site model.

Current noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) devices constitute powerful platforms for analog quantum simulation. The exquisite level of control offered by state-of-the-art quantum computers make them especially promising to implement time-dependent Hamiltonians. We implement quasiperiodic driving of a single qubit in the IBM Quantum Experience and thus experimentally realize a temporal version of the half-Bernevig-Hughes-Zhang Chern insulator. Using simple error mitigation, we achieve consistently high fidelities of around 97%. From our data we can infer the presence of a topological transition, thus realizing an earlier proposal of topological frequency conversion by Martin, Refael, and Halperin. Motivated by these results, we theoretically study the many-qubit case, and show that one can implement a wide class of Floquet Hamiltonians, or time-dependent Hamiltonians in general. Our study highlights promises and limitations when studying many-body systems through multifrequency driving of quantum computers.

Simultaneously cooling the rotational and translational motion of nanoscale dielectrics into the quantum regime is an open task of great importance for sensing applications and quantum superposition tests. Here, we show that the six-dimensional ground state can be reached by coherent-scattering cooling with an elliptically polarized and shaped optical tweezer. We determine the cooling rates and steady-state occupations in a realistic setup and discuss applications for mechanical sensing and fundamental experiments.

In an optomechanical system, we experimentally engineer the optical density of state to reduce or broaden the effective linewidth of the optical mode by introducing an ancillary mechanical mode, which has a large decay rate, i.e., stimulated backward Brillouin scattering. Based on this dissipation engineering, we could engineer the optical mode linewidth by one order of magnitude. In addition, we can either enhance or suppress the optomechanical cooling and amplification of the target mechanical oscillations. Our scheme demonstrates the cascaded photon-phonon coupling to control the mechanical interactions, and also presents a novel approach for engineering coherent light-matter interaction in hybrid systems, which consist of different types of nonlinear interactions and multiple modes, and promote the performance of quantum devices.

We study the propagation of electromagnetic waves in disordered photonic time crystals: spatially homogenous media whose refractive index changes randomly in time. We find that the group velocity of a pulse propagating in such media decreases exponentially, eventually coming to a complete stop, while experiencing exponential growth in intensity. These effects greatly depend on the Floquet band structure of the photonic time crystal, with the strongest sensitivity to disorder occurring in superluminal modes. Finally, we analyze the ensemble statistics and find them to coincide with those of Anderson localization, exhibiting single parameter scaling.

The recent experiments on fast (microsecond) pulse heating of graphite suggest the existence of sharp maximum (6500 K at 1–2 GPa) on its melting curve. To check the validity of these findings, we propose to investigate the accumulation of extended in-plane defects in graphene. Such defects would contribute to thermodynamic properties of graphene and impose the upper limit on its melting temperature. We propose a type of extended defect of graphene, consisting of pentagonal and heptagonal rings with record low formation energy, whose accumulation leads to the loss of shear rigidity of graphene at temperatures above 6400 K, thus setting the upper limit on its melting temperature. We found that this model satisfactorily explains the increase of specific heat observed in the premelting region of graphite in slow (millisecond) pulse heating experiments. However, in fast (microsecond) pulse heating experiments such an increase of specific heat was not observed, which is a strong indication of overheating that takes place in these experiments.

It is well known since the works of Utiyama and Kibble that the gravitational force can be obtained by gauging the Poincaré group, which puts gravity on the same footing as the standard model fields. The resulting theory—Einstein-Cartan gravity—inevitably contains four-fermion and scalar-fermion interactions that originate from torsion associated with spin degrees of freedom. We show that these interactions lead to a novel mechanism for producing singlet fermions in the early Universe. These fermions can play the role of dark matter particles. The mechanism is operative in a large range of dark matter particle masses: from a few keV up to $\sim {10}^8\mathrm{GeV}$. We discuss potential observational consequences of keV-scale dark matter produced this way, in particular for right-handed neutrinos. We conclude that a determination of the primordial dark matter momentum distribution might be able to shed light on the gravity-induced fermionic interactions.

An integrated correlator of four superconformal stress-tensor primaries of $\mathcal{N}=4$ supersymmetric $SU(N)$ Yang-Mills theory (SYM), originally obtained by localization, is reexpressed as a two-dimensional lattice sum that is manifestly invariant under $SL(2,\mathbb{Z})$ $S$ duality. This expression is shown to satisfy a novel Laplace equation in the complex coupling constant $\tau$ that relates the $SU(N)$ integrated correlator to those of the $SU(N+1)$ and $SU(N-1)$ theories. The lattice sum is shown to precisely reproduce known perturbative and nonperturbative properties of $\mathcal{N}=4$ SYM for any finite $N$, as well as extending previously conjectured properties of the large-$N$ expansion.

We present a measurement of $R_{K^{*}}$, the branching fraction ratio $\mathcal{B}(B\to K^{*}{\mu }^{+}{\mu }^{-})/\mathcal{B}(B\to K^{*}{e}^{+}{e}^{-})$, for both charged and neutral $B$ mesons. The ratio for the charged case $R_{K^{*+}}$ is the first measurement ever performed. In addition, we report absolute branching fractions for the individual modes in bins of the squared dilepton invariant mass $q^2$. The analysis is based on a data sample of $711{\mathrm{fb}}^{-1}$, containing $772\times {10}^{6}B\overline{B}$ events, recorded at the $\mathrm{\Upsilon }(4S)$ resonance with the Belle detector at the KEKB asymmetric-energy $e^{+}{e}^{-}$ collider. The obtained results are consistent with standard model expectations.

We present an angular analysis of the $B^{+}\to K^{*+}(\to K_S^0{\pi }^{+}){\mu }^{+}{\mu }^{-}$ decay using $9{\mathrm{fb}}^{-1}$ of $pp$ collision data collected with the LHCb experiment. For the first time, the full set of $CP$-averaged angular observables is measured in intervals of the dimuon invariant mass squared. Local deviations from standard model predictions are observed, similar to those in previous LHCb analyses of the isospin-partner $B^0\to K^{*0}{\mu }^{+}{\mu }^{-}$ decay. The global tension is dependent on which effective couplings are considered and on the choice of theory nuisance parameters.