Quasicrystals exhibit exotic properties inherited from the self-similarity of their long-range ordered, yet aperiodic, structure. The recent realization of optical quasicrystal lattices paves the way to the study of correlated Bose fluids in such structures, but the regime of strong interactions remains largely unexplored, both theoretically and experimentally. Here, we determine the quantum phase diagram of two-dimensional correlated bosons in an eightfold quasicrystal potential. Using large-scale quantum Monte Carlo calculations, we demonstrate a superfluid-to-Bose glass transition and determine the critical line. Moreover, we show that strong interactions stabilize Mott insulator phases, some of which have spontaneously broken eightfold symmetry. Our results are directly relevant to current generation experiments and, in particular, drive prospects to the observation of the still elusive Bose glass phase in two dimensions and exotic Mott phases.

We report on a theoretical analysis of the Floquet topological crystalline phases in driven one-dimensional photonic crystals mediated by second-order optical nonlinearity. We define the photonic Berry connection and photonic polarization in such systems using different methods and prove their equivalence. We present two examples of topological phase transitions in which two Floquet bands cross and open new gaps under the driving field. Finally, we analyze the physical consequences of each topological phase transition by examining edge states and filling anomalies. Our study presents routes toward the realization of robust reconfigurable photonic cavities with topologically protected light confinement.

We report on a precision energy loss measurement and theoretical investigation of $100\mathrm{keV}/u$ helium ions in a hydrogen-discharge plasma. Collision processes of helium ions with protons, free electrons, and hydrogen atoms are ideally suited for benchmarking plasma stopping-power models. Energy loss results of our experiments are significantly higher than the predictions of traditional effective charge models. We obtained good agreement with our data by solving rate equations, where in addition to the ground state, also excited electronic configurations were considered for the projectile ions. Hence, we demonstrate that excited projectile states, resulting from collisions, leading to capture-, ionization-, and radiative-decay processes, play an important role in the stopping process in plasma.

Dynamical charge transfer processes at molecule-metal interfaces proceed in the few fs timescale that renders them highly relevant to electronic excitations in optoelectronic devices. Yet, knowledge thereof is limited when electronic ground state situations are considered that implicate charge transfer directly at the fermi energy. Here we show that such processes can be accessed by means of vibrational excitations, with nonadiabatic electron-vibron coupling leading to distinct asymmetric line shapes. Thereby the characteristic timescale of this interfacial dynamical charge transfer can be derived by using the vibrational oscillation period as an internal clock reference.

Ferroelectric materials provide a useful model system to explore the jerky, highly nonlinear dynamics of elastic interfaces in disordered media. The distribution of nanoscale switching event sizes is studied in two $\mathrm{Pb}({\mathrm{Zr}}_{0.2}{\mathrm{Ti}}_{0.8}){\mathrm{O}}_3$ thin films with different disorder landscapes using piezoresponse force microscopy. While the switching event statistics show the expected power-law scaling, significant variations in the value of the scaling exponent $\tau$ are seen, possibly as a consequence of the different intrinsic disorder landscapes in the samples and of further alterations under high tip bias applied during domain writing. Importantly, higher exponent values (1.98–2.87) are observed when crackling statistics are acquired only for events occurring in the creep regime. The exponents are systematically lowered when all events across both creep and depinning regimes are considered—the first time such a distinction is made in studies of ferroelectric materials. These results show that distinguishing the two regimes is of crucial importance, significantly affecting the exponent value and potentially leading to incorrect assignment of universality class.

Strongly disordered systems in the many-body localized (MBL) phase can exhibit ground state order in highly excited eigenstates. The interplay between localization, symmetry, and topology has led to the characterization of a broad landscape of MBL phases ranging from spin glasses and time crystals to symmetry protected topological phases. Understanding the nature of phase transitions between these different forms of eigenstate order remains an essential open question. Here, we conjecture that no direct transition between distinct MBL orders can occur in one dimension; rather, an ergodic phase always intervenes. Motivated by recent advances in Rydberg-atom-based quantum simulation, we propose an experimental protocol where the intervening ergodic phase can be diagnosed via the dynamics of local observables.

We investigate accretion of dark matter onto a moving Schwarzschild black hole. The dark matter is modeled by the collisionless Vlasov gas, assumed to be in thermal equilibrium at infinity. We derive an exact stationary solution and provide a compact formula for the mass accretion rate. In general, the mass accretion rate is a nonmonotonic function of the black hole velocity. A monotonic relation (the accretion rate proportional to the Lorentz factor associated with the velocity of the black hole) is obtained for high asymptotic temperatures of the gas. The derived accretion rates are relevant for the growth of primordial black holes in the early Universe.

GW190521 is the compact binary with the largest masses observed to date, with at least one black hole in the pair-instability gap. This event has also been claimed to be associated with an optical flare observed by the Zwicky Transient Facility in an active galactic nucleus (AGN), possibly due to the postmerger motion of the merger remnant in the AGN gaseous disk. The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) may detect up to ten such gas-rich black-hole binaries months to years before their detection by Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory or Virgo-like interferometers, localizing them in the sky within $\approx 1{°}^2$. LISA will also measure directly deviations from purely vacuum and stationary waveforms arising from gas accretion, dynamical friction, and orbital motion around the AGN’s massive black hole (acceleration, strong lensing, and Doppler modulation). LISA will therefore be crucial to enable us to point electromagnetic telescopes ahead of time toward this novel class of gas-rich sources, to gain direct insight on their physics, and to disentangle environmental effects from corrections to general relativity that may also appear in the waveforms at low frequencies.

We introduce a new kind of foliated quantum field theory (FQFT) of gapped fracton orders in the continuum. FQFT is defined on a manifold with a layered structure given by one or more foliations, which each decompose spacetime into a stack of layers. FQFT involves a new kind of gauge field, a foliated gauge field, which behaves similar to a collection of independent gauge fields on this stack of layers. Gauge invariant operators (and their analogous particle mobilities) are constrained to the intersection of one or more layers from different foliations. The level coefficients are quantized and exhibit a duality that spatially transforms the coefficients. This duality occurs because the FQFT is a foliated fracton order. That is, the duality can decouple $2+1\mathrm{D}$ gauge theories from the FQFT through a process we dub exfoliation.

Analyzing the pion mass dependence of $\pi \pi$ scattering phase shifts beyond the low-energy region requires the unitarization of the amplitudes from chiral perturbation theory. In the two-flavor theory, unitarization via the inverse-amplitude method (IAM) can be justified from dispersion relations, which is therefore expected to provide reliable predictions for the pion mass dependence of results from lattice QCD calculations. In this work, we provide compact analytic expression for the two-loop partial-wave amplitudes for $J=0$, 1, 2 required for the IAM at subleading order. To analyze the pion mass dependence of recent lattice QCD results for the $P$ wave, we develop a fit strategy that for the first time allows us to perform stable two-loop IAM fits and assess the chiral convergence of the IAM approach. While the comparison of subsequent orders suggests a breakdown scale not much below the $\rho$ mass, a detailed understanding of the systematic uncertainties of lattice QCD data is critical to obtain acceptable fits, especially at larger pion masses.

We present, for the first time, an ab initio calculation of the individual up, down, and strange quark helicity parton distribution functions for the proton. The calculation is performed within the twisted mass clover-improved fermion formulation of lattice QCD. The analysis is performed using one ensemble of dynamical up, down, strange, and charm quarks with a pion mass of 260 MeV. The lattice matrix elements are nonperturbatively renormalized and the final results are presented in the $\overline{\mathrm{MS}}$ scheme at a scale of 2 GeV. We give results for $\mathrm{\Delta }{u}^{+}(x)$, $\mathrm{\Delta }{d}^{+}(x)$ $\mathrm{\Delta }{u}^{-}(x)$, $\mathrm{\Delta }{d}^{-}(x)$, including disconnected quark loop contributions, as well as for $\mathrm{\Delta }{s}^{+}(x)$ and $\mathrm{\Delta }{s}^{-}(x)$. For the latter we achieve unprecedented precision compared to the phenomenological estimates.

A direct measurement of the decay width of the excited $0_1^{+}$ state of ${}^6\mathrm{Li}$ using the relative self-absorption technique is reported. Our value of ${\mathrm{\Gamma }}_{\gamma ,0_1^{+}\to 1_1^{+}}=8.17(14{)}_{\mathrm{stat}.}(11{)}_{\mathrm{syst}\mathrm{.}}\mathrm{eV}$ provides sufficiently low experimental uncertainties to test modern theories of nuclear forces. The corresponding transition rate is compared to the results of ab initio calculations based on chiral effective field theory that take into account contributions to the magnetic dipole operator beyond leading order. This enables a precision test of the impact of two-body currents that enter at next-to-leading order.

By modeling the transition paths of the nuclear $\gamma$-decay cascade using a scale-free random network, we uncover a universal power-law distribution of $\gamma$-ray intensity ${\rho }_I(I)\propto I^{-2}$, with $I$ the $\gamma$-ray intensity of each transition. This property is consistently observed for all datasets with a sufficient number of $\gamma$-ray intensity entries in the National Nuclear Data Center database, regardless of the reaction type or nuclei involved. In addition, we perform numerical simulations that support the model’s predictions of level population density.

We explore the relaxation dynamics of elementary spin clusters in a kinetically constrained spin system. Inspired by experiments with Rydberg lattice gases, we focus on the situation in which an excited spin leads to a “facilitated” excitation of a neighboring spin. We show that even weak interactions that extend beyond nearest neighbors can have a dramatic impact on the relaxation behavior: they generate a linear potential, which under certain conditions leads to the onset of Bloch oscillations of spin clusters. These hinder the expansion of a cluster and, more generally, the relaxation of many-body states toward equilibrium. This shows that nonergodic behavior in kinetically constrained systems may occur as a consequence of the interplay between reduced connectivity of many-body states and weak interparticle interactions. We furthermore show that the emergent Bloch oscillations identified here can be detected in experiment through measurements of the Rydberg atom density and discuss how spin-orbit coupling between internal and external degrees of freedom of spin clusters can be used to control their relaxation behavior.

The novel strong field autoionization (SFAI) dynamics is identified and investigated by channel-resolved angular streaking measurements of two electrons and two ions for the double-ionized CO. Comparing with the laser-assisted autoionization calculations, we demonstrate the electrons from SFAI are generated from the field-induced decay of the autoionizing state with a following acceleration in the laser fields. The energy-dependent photoelectron angular distributions further reveal that the subcycle ac-Stark effect modulates the lifetime of the autoionizing state and controls the emission of SFAI electrons in molecular frame. Our results pave the way to control the emission of resonant high-harmonic generation and trace the electron-electron correlation and electron-nuclear coupling by strong laser fields. The lifetime modulation of quantum systems in the strong laser field has great potential for quantum manipulation of chemical reactions and beyond.