The gyromagnetic factor of the low-lying $E=251.96(9)\mathrm{keV}$ isomeric state of the nucleus ${}^{99}\mathrm{Zr}$ was measured using the time-dependent perturbed angular distribution technique. This level is assigned a spin and parity of $J^{\pi }=7/2^{+}$, with a half-life of $T_{1/2}=336(5)\mathrm{ns}$. The isomer was produced and spin aligned via the abrasion-fission of a ${}^{238}\mathrm{U}$ primary beam at RIKEN RIBF. A magnetic moment $|\mu |=2.31(14){\mu }_N$ was deduced showing that this isomer is not single particle in nature. A comparison of the experimental values with interacting boson-fermion model IBFM-1 results shows that this state is strongly mixed with a main $\nu d_{5/2}$ composition. Furthermore, it was found that monopole single-particle evolution changes significantly with the appearance of collective modes, likely due to type-II shell evolution.

We report on the experimental observation of a decreased self-injection threshold by using laser pulses with circular polarization in laser wakefield acceleration experiments in a nonpreformed plasma, compared to the usually employed linear polarization. A significantly higher electron beam charge was also observed for circular polarization compared to linear polarization over a wide range of parameters. Theoretical analysis and quasi-3D particle-in-cell simulations reveal that the self-injection and hence the laser wakefield acceleration is polarization dependent and indicate a different injection mechanism for circularly polarized laser pulses, originating from larger momentum gain by electrons during above threshold ionization. This enables electrons to meet the trapping condition more easily, and the resulting higher plasma temperature was confirmed via spectroscopy of the XUV plasma emission.

We study the gap closure with pressure of crystalline molecular hydrogen. The gaps are obtained from grand-canonical quantum Monte Carlo methods properly extended to quantum and thermal crystals, simulated by coupled electron ion Monte Carlo methods. Nuclear zero point effects cause a large reduction in the gap ($\sim 2\mathrm{eV}$). Depending on the structure, the fundamental indirect gap closes between 380 and 530 GPa for ideal crystals and 330–380 GPa for quantum crystals. Beyond this pressure the system enters into a bad metal phase where the density of states at the Fermi level increases with pressure up to $\sim 450–500\mathrm{GPa}$ when the direct gap closes. Our work partially supports the interpretation of recent experiments in high pressure hydrogen.

Random matrix theory has proven very successful in the understanding of the spectra of chaotic systems. Depending on symmetry with respect to time reversal and the presence or absence of a spin $1/2$ there are three ensembles, the Gaussian orthogonal (GOE), Gaussian unitary (GUE), and Gaussian symplectic (GSE) one. With a further particle-antiparticle symmetry the chiral variants of these ensembles, the chiral orthogonal, unitary, and symplectic ensembles (the BDI, AIII, and CII in Cartan’s notation) appear. We exhibit a microwave setup based on a linear chain of evanescently coupled dielectric cylindrical resonators allowing us to study all three chiral ensembles experimentally. In all cases the predicted repulsion behavior between positive and negative eigenvalues for energies close to zero could be verified.

It has recently been indicated that the hexagonal manganites exhibit Higgs- and Goldstone-like phonon modes that modulate the amplitude and phase of their primary order parameter. Here, we describe a mechanism by which a silent Goldstone-like phonon mode can be coherently excited, which is based on nonlinear coupling to an infrared-active Higgs-like phonon mode. Using a combination of first-principles calculations and phenomenological modeling, we describe the coupled Higgs-Goldstone dynamics in response to the excitation with a terahertz pulse. Besides theoretically demonstrating coherent control of crystallographic Higgs and Goldstone excitations, we show that the previously inaccessible silent phonon modes can be excited coherently with this mechanism.

Surface acoustic waves (SAW) have been utilized to investigate the properties of a two-dimensional electron system subjected to a perpendicular magnetic field and monochromatic microwave radiation in the regime where the so-called microwave-induced zero-resistance states form. Contrary to conventional magnetotransport in Hall bar and van der Pauw geometries, the collimated SAW beam probes only the bulk of the electronic system exposed to this wave. Clear signatures appear in the SAW propagation velocity, corroborating that neither contacts nor sample edges are a root source for their emergence. By virtue of the directional nature of this probing method and with the assistance of theoretical modeling, we were able to demonstrate that the SAW response depends on the angle between its propagation vector and the orientation of domains that spontaneously form when zero-resistance is observed in transport. This confirms in unprecedented manner the formation of an inhomogeneous phase under these nonequilibrium conditions.

We numerically investigate stress relaxation in soft athermal disks to reveal critical slowing down when the system approaches the jamming point. The exponents describing the divergence of the relaxation time differ dramatically depending on whether the transition is approached from the jammed or unjammed phase. This contrasts sharply with conventional dynamic critical scaling scenarios, where a single exponent characterizes both sides. We explain this surprising difference in terms of the vibrational density of states, which is a key ingredient of linear viscoelastic theory. The vibrational density of states exhibits an extra slow mode that emerges below jamming, which we utilize to demonstrate the anomalous exponent below jamming.

Motivated by the dynamics of particles embedded in active gels, both in vitro and inside the cytoskeleton of living cells, we study an active generalization of the classical trap model. We demonstrate that activity leads to dramatic modifications in the diffusion compared to the thermal case: the mean square displacement becomes subdiffusive, spreading as a power law in time, when the trap depth distribution is a Gaussian and is slower than any power law when it is drawn from an exponential distribution. The results are derived for a simple, exactly solvable, case of harmonic traps. We then argue that the results are robust for more realistic trap shapes when the activity is strong.

We prove that matrix-product unitaries with on-site unitary symmetries are completely classified by the (chiral) index and the cohomology class of the symmetry group $G$, provided that we can add trivial and symmetric ancillas with arbitrary on-site representations of $G$. If the representations in both system and ancillas are fixed to be the same, we can define symmetry-protected indices (SPIs) which quantify the imbalance in the transport associated to each group element and greatly refines the classification. These SPIs are stable against disorder and measurable in interferometric experiments. Our results lead to a systematic construction of two-dimensional Floquet symmetry-protected topological phases beyond the standard classification, and thus shed new light on understanding nonequilibrium phases of quantum matter.

As a promising candidate for exhibiting quantum computational supremacy, Gaussian boson sampling (GBS) is designed to exploit the ease of experimental preparation of Gaussian states. However, sufficiently large and inevitable experimental noise might render GBS classically simulable. In this work, we formalize this intuition by establishing a sufficient condition for approximate polynomial-time classical simulation of noisy GBS—in the form of an inequality between the input squeezing parameter, the overall transmission rate, and the quality of photon detectors. Our result serves as a nonclassicality test that must be passed by any quantum computational supremacy demonstration based on GBS. We show that, for most linear-optical architectures, where photon loss increases exponentially with the circuit depth, noisy GBS loses its quantum advantage in the asymptotic limit. Our results thus delineate intermediate-sized regimes where GBS devices might considerably outperform classical computers for modest noise levels. Finally, we find that increasing the amount of input squeezing is helpful to evade our classical simulation algorithm, which suggests a potential route to mitigate photon loss.

A powerful perspective in understanding nonequilibrium quantum dynamics is through the time evolution of its entanglement content. Yet apart from a few guiding principles for the entanglement entropy, to date, much less is known about the refined characteristics of entanglement propagation. Here, we unveil signatures of the entanglement evolving and information propagating out of equilibrium, from the view of the entanglement Hamiltonian. We investigate quantum quench dynamics of prototypical Bose-Hubbard model using state-of-the-art numerical technique combined with conformal field theory. Before reaching equilibrium, it is found that a current operator emerges in the entanglement Hamiltonian, implying that entanglement spreading is carried by particle flow. In the long-time limit the subsystem enters a steady phase, evidenced by the dynamic convergence of the entanglement Hamiltonian to the expectation of a thermal ensemble. Importantly, the entanglement temperature in steady state is spatially independent, which provides an intuitive trait of equilibrium. These findings not only provide crucial information on how equilibrium statistical mechanics emerges in many-body dynamics, but also add a tool to exploring quantum dynamics from the perspective of the entanglement Hamiltonian.

Perturbative corrections to general relativity alter the expressions for both the entropy of black holes and their extremality bounds. We prove a universal relation between the leading corrections to these quantities. The derivation is purely thermodynamic and the result also applies beyond the realm of gravitational systems. In scenarios where the correction to the entropy is positive, our result proves that the perturbations decrease the mass of extremal black holes, when holding all other extensive variables fixed in the comparison. This implies that the extremality relations of a wide class of black holes display weak gravity conjecture-like behavior.

Gravitational waves carry energy, angular momentum, and linear momentum. In generic binary black hole mergers, the loss of linear momentum imparts a recoil velocity, or a “kick,” to the remnant black hole. We exploit recent advances in gravitational waveform and remnant black hole modeling to extract information about the kick from the gravitational wave signal. Kick measurements such as these are astrophysically valuable, enabling independent constraints on the rate of second-generation merger. Further, we show that kicks must be factored into future ringdown tests of general relativity with third-generation gravitational wave detectors to avoid systematic biases. We find that, although little information can be gained about the kick for existing gravitational wave events, interesting measurements will soon become possible as detectors improve. We show that, once LIGO and Virgo reach their design sensitivities, we will reliably extract the kick velocity for generically precessing binaries—including the so-called superkicks, reaching up to $5000\mathrm{km}/\mathrm{s}$.

We present a new method to evaluate the ${\alpha }^{\prime }$ expansion of genus-one integrals over open-string punctures and unravel the structure of the elliptic multiple zeta values in its coefficients. This is done by obtaining a simple differential equation of Knizhnik-Zamolodchikov-Bernard-type satisfied by generating functions of such integrals, and solving it via Picard iteration. The initial condition involves the generating functions at the cusp $\tau \to i\infty$ and can be reduced to genus-zero integrals.

A manifestly Lorentz invariant action is found for the Floreanini-Jackiw chiral boson. The method involves a novel chiral reduction of the phase-space action for a string and can be adapted to describe chiral bosons on the heterotic string worldsheet. A similar manifestly Lorentz invariant action is found for an entire class of conformal chiral $2k$-form electrodynamics in ($4k+2$) dimensions which includes the Floreanini-Jackiw theory as the $k=0$ case.

An axion dark matter search with the CAPP-8TB haloscope is reported. Our results are sensitive to axion-photon coupling $g_{a\gamma \gamma }$ down to the QCD axion band over the axion mass range between 6.62 and $6.82\mu \mathrm{eV}$ at a 90% confidence level, which is the most sensitive result in the mass range to date.

We present the results of a search for a hidden mirror sector in positronium decays with a sensitivity comparable with the bounds set by the prediction of the primordial ${\mathrm{He}}^4$ abundance from big bang nucleosynthesis. No excess of events compatible with decays into the dark sector is observed, resulting in an upper limit for the branching ratio of this process of $3.0\times {10}^{-5}$ (90% C.L.). This is an order of magnitude more stringent than the current existing laboratory bounds and it constrains the mixing strength of ordinary photons to dark mirror photons at a level of $ϵ<5.0\times {10}^{-8}$.