dc and ac magnetic susceptibility, magnetization, specific heat, and Raman scattering measurements are combined to probe low-lying spin excitations in $\alpha$-${\mathrm{Ru}}_{1-x}{\mathrm{Ir}}_x{\mathrm{Cl}}_3$ ($x\approx 0.2$), which realizes a disordered spin liquid. At intermediate energies ($\hslash \omega >3\mathrm{meV}$), Raman spectroscopy evidences linearly $\omega$-dependent Majorana-like excitations, obeying Fermi statistics. This points to robustness of a Kitaev paramagnetic state under spin vacancies. At low energies below 3 meV, we observe power-law dependences and quantum-critical-like scalings of the thermodynamic quantities, implying the presence of a weakly divergent low-energy density of states. This scaling phenomenology is interpreted in terms of the random hoppings of Majorana fermions. Our results demonstrate an emergent hierarchy of spin excitations in a diluted Kitaev honeycomb system subject to spin vacancies and bond randomness.

The interaction of light with solids gives rise to new bosonic quasiparticles, with the exciton being—undoubtedly—the most famous of these polaritons. While excitons are the generic polaritons of semiconductors, we show that for strongly correlated systems another polariton is prevalent—originating from the dominant antiferromagnetic or charge density wave fluctuations in these systems. As these are usually associated with a wave vector $(\pi ,\pi ,\dots )$ or close to it, we propose to call the derived polaritons $\pi$-tons. These $\pi$-tons yield the leading vertex correction to the optical conductivity in all correlated models studied: the Hubbard, the extended Hubbard model, the Falicov-Kimball, and the Pariser-Parr-Pople model, both in the insulating and in the metallic phase.

Can a bath of isotropic but active particles promote ordering of anisotropic but passive particles? In this Letter, we uncover a fluctuation-driven mechanism by which this is possible. Somewhat counterintuitively, we show that the passive particles tend to be more ordered upon increasing the noise strength of the active isotropic bath. We first demonstrate this in a general dynamical model for a nonconserved order parameter (model $A$) coupled to an active isotropic field and then concentrate on two examples: (i) a collection of polar rods on a substrate in an active isotropic bath and (ii) a passive apolar suspension in a momentum conserved, actively forced but isotropic fluid, which are relevant for current research in active systems. Our theory, which is relevant for understanding ordering transitions in out-of-equilibrium systems can be tested in experiments, for instance, by introducing a low concentration of passive rodlike objects in active isotropic fluids and, since it is applicable to any nonconserved dynamical field, may have applications far beyond active matter.

Experiments have suggested that bacterial mechanosensitive channels separate into 2D clusters, the role of which is unclear. By developing a coarse-grained computer model we find that clustering promotes the channel closure, which is highly dependent on the channel concentration and membrane stress. This behaviour yields a tightly regulated gating system, whereby at high tensions channels gate individually, and at lower tensions the channels spontaneously aggregate and inactivate. We implement this positive feedback into the model for cell volume regulation, and find that the channel clustering protects the cell against excessive loss of cytoplasmic content.

Motivated by an unexpected experimental observation from the Cambridge group, [Eigen et al., Nature 563, 221 (2018)], we study the evolution of the momentum distribution of a degenerate Bose gas quenched from the weakly interacting regime to the unitary regime. For the two-body problem, we establish a relation that connects the momentum distribution at a long time to a subleading term in the initial wave function. For the many-body problem, we employ the time-dependent Bogoliubov variational wave function and find that, in certain momentum regimes, the momentum distribution at long times displays the same exponential behavior found by the experiment. Moreover, we find that this behavior is universal and is independent of the short-range details of the interaction potential. Consistent with the relation found in the two-body problem, we also numerically show that this exponential form is hidden in the same subleading term of the Bogoliubov wave function in the initial stages. Conceptually, our results show that, for quench to the universal regime and coherent quantum dynamics afterward, the universal longtime behavior is hidden in the initial state.

Double ionization of helium by a single intense (above ${10}^{18}\mathrm{W}/{\mathrm{cm}}^2$) linearly polarized extreme ultraviolet laser pulse is studied by numerically solving the full-dimensional time-dependent Schrödinger equation. For the laser intensities well beyond the perturbative limit, novel gridlike interference fringes are found in the correlated energy spectrum of the two photoelectrons. The interference can be traced to the multitude of two-electron wave packets emitted at different ionization times. A semianalytical model for the dressed two-photon double ionization is shown to qualitatively account for the interference patterns in the joint energy spectrum. Similar signatures of interferences between transient induced time-delayed ionization bursts are expected for other atomic and molecular multielectron systems.

We report electrostatic Debye-scale turbulence developing within the diffusion region of asymmetric magnetopause reconnection with a moderate guide field using observations by the Magnetospheric Multiscale mission. We show that Buneman waves and beam modes cause efficient and fast thermalization of the reconnection electron jet by irreversible phase mixing, during which the jet kinetic energy is transferred into thermal energy. Our results show that the reconnection diffusion region in the presence of a moderate guide field is highly turbulent, and that electrostatic turbulence plays an important role in electron heating.

Alternating current RLC electric circuits form an accessible and highly tunable platform simulating Hermitian as well as non-Hermitian (NH) quantum systems. We propose here a circuit realization of NH Dirac and Weyl Hamiltonians subject to time-reversal invariant pseudomagnetic field, enabling the exploration of novel NH physics. We identify the low-energy physics with a generic real energy spectrum from the NH Landau quantization of exceptional points and rings, which can avoid the NH skin effect and provides a physical example of a quasiparticle moving in the complex plane. Realistic detection schemes are designed to probe the flat energy bands, sublattice polarization, edge states protected by a NH energy-reflection symmetry, and a characteristic nodeless probability distribution.

We present a microscopic theory for collective excitations of quantum anomalous Hall ferromagnets (QAHF) in twisted bilayer graphene. We calculate the spin magnon and valley magnon spectra by solving Bethe-Salpeter equations and verify the stability of QAHF. We extract the spin stiffness from the gapless spin wave dispersion and estimate the energy cost of a skyrmion-antiskyrmion pair, which is found to be comparable in energy with the Hartree-Fock gap. The valley wave mode is gapped, implying that the valley polarized state is more favorable compared to the valley coherent state. Using a nonlinear sigma model, we estimate the valley ordering temperature, which is considerably reduced from the mean-field transition temperature due to thermal excitations of valley waves.

We develop a general framework to describe the thermodynamics of microscopic heat engines driven by arbitrary periodic temperature variations and modulations of a mechanical control parameter. Within the slow-driving regime, our approach leads to a universal trade-off relation between efficiency and power, which follows solely from geometric arguments and holds for any thermodynamically consistent microdynamics. Focusing on Lindblad dynamics, we derive a second bound showing that coherence as a genuine quantum effect inevitably reduces the performance of slow engine cycles regardless of the driving amplitudes. To show how our theory can be applied in practice, we work out a specific example, which lies within the range of current solid-state technologies.

Even though the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH) may be introduced as an extension of the random matrix theory, physical Hamiltonians and observables differ from random operators. One of the challenges is to embed local integrals of motion (LIOMs) within the ETH. Here we make steps towards a unified treatment of the ETH in integrable and nonintegrable models with translational invariance. Specifically, we focus on the impact of LIOMs on the fluctuations and structure of the diagonal matrix elements of local observables. We first show that nonvanishing fluctuations entail the presence of LIOMs. Then we introduce a generic protocol to construct observables, subtracted by their projections on LIOMs as well as products of LIOMs. The protocol systematically reduces fluctuations and/or the structure of the diagonal matrix elements. We verify our arguments by numerical results for integrable and nonintegrable models.

Searches are performed for both promptlike and long-lived dark photons, $A^{\prime }$, produced in proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV. These searches look for $A^{\prime }\to {\mu }^{+}{\mu }^{-}$ decays using a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of $5.5{\mathrm{fb}}^{-1}$ collected with the LHCb detector. Neither search finds evidence for a signal, and 90% confidence-level exclusion limits are placed on the $\gamma –A^{\prime }$ kinetic mixing strength. The promptlike $A^{\prime }$ search explores the mass region from near the dimuon threshold up to 70 GeV and places the most stringent constraints to date on dark photons with $214<m(A^{\prime })\lesssim 740\mathrm{MeV}$ and $10.6<m(A^{\prime })\lesssim 30\mathrm{GeV}$. The search for long-lived $A^{\prime }\to {\mu }^{+}{\mu }^{-}$ decays places world-leading constraints on low-mass dark photons with lifetimes $\mathcal{O}(1)\mathrm{ps}$.

The first search for supersymmetry in events with an experimental signature of one soft, hadronically decaying $\tau$ lepton, one energetic jet from initial-state radiation, and large transverse momentum imbalance is presented. These event signatures are consistent with direct or indirect production of scalar $\tau$ leptons ($\tilde{\tau }$) in supersymmetric models that exhibit coannihilation between the $\tilde{\tau }$ and the lightest neutralino (${\tilde{\chi }}_1^0$), and that could generate the observed relic density of dark matter. The data correspond to an integrated luminosity of $77.2{\mathrm{fb}}^{-1}$ of proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}=13\mathrm{TeV}$ collected with the CMS detector at the LHC in 2016 and 2017. The results are interpreted in a supersymmetric scenario with a small mass difference ($\mathrm{\Delta }m$) between the chargino (${\tilde{\chi }}_1^{\pm }$) or next-to-lightest neutralino (${\tilde{\chi }}_2^0$), and the ${\tilde{\chi }}_1^0$. The mass of the $\tilde{\tau }$ is assumed to be the average of the ${\tilde{\chi }}_1^{\pm }$ and ${\tilde{\chi }}_1^0$ masses. The data are consistent with standard model background predictions. Upper limits at 95% confidence level are set on the sum of the ${\tilde{\chi }}_1^{\pm }$, ${\tilde{\chi }}_2^0$, and $\tilde{\tau }$ production cross sections for $\mathrm{\Delta }m({\tilde{\chi }}_1^{\pm },{\tilde{\chi }}_1^0)=50\mathrm{GeV}$, resulting in a lower limit of 290 GeV on the mass of the ${\tilde{\chi }}_1^{\pm }$, which is the most stringent to date and surpasses the bounds from the LEP experiments.

The presence of clusterlike narrow resonances in the vicinity of reaction or decay thresholds is a ubiquitous phenomenon with profound consequences. We argue that the continuum coupling, present in the open quantum system description of the atomic nucleus, can profoundly impact the nature of near-threshold states. In this Letter, we discuss the structure of the recently observed near-threshold resonance in ${}^{11}\mathrm{B}$, whose very existence explains the puzzling beta-delayed proton emission of the neutron-rich ${}^{11}\mathrm{Be}$.

We theoretically and experimentally investigate the photon momentum transfer in single-photon double ionization of helium at various large photon energies. We find that the forward shifts of the momenta along the light propagation of the two photoelectrons are roughly proportional to their fraction of the excess energy. The mean value of the forward momentum is about $\frac{8}{5}$ of the electron energy divided by the speed of light. This holds for fast and slow electrons despite the fact that the energy sharing is highly asymmetric and the slow electron is known to be ejected by secondary processes of shake off and knockout rather than directly taking its energy from the photon. The biggest deviations from this rule are found for the region of equal energy sharing where the quasifree mechanism dominates double ionization.

Streaking with a weak probe field is applied to ionization in a two-dimensional strong field tailored to mimic linear polarization, but without disturbance by recollision or intracycle interference. This facilitates the observation of electron-momentum-resolved times of ionization with few-attosecond precision, as demonstrated by simulations for a model helium atom. Aligning the probe field along the ionizing field provides meaningful ionization times in agreement with the attoclock concept that ionization at maximum field corresponds to the peak of the momentum distribution, which is shifted due to the Coulomb force on the outgoing electron. In contrast, this attoclock shift is invisible in orthogonal streaking. Even without a probe field, streaking happens naturally along the laser propagation direction due to the laser magnetic field. As with an orthogonal probe field, the attoclock shift is not accessible by the magnetic-field scheme. For a polar molecule, the attoclock shift depends on orientation, but this does not imply an orientation dependence in ionization time.

We study the dynamics of lattice models of quantum spins one-half, driven by a coherent drive and subject to dissipation. Generically the mean-field limit of these models manifests multistable parameter regions of coexisting steady states with different magnetizations. We introduce an efficient scheme accounting for the corrections to mean field by correlations at leading order, and benchmark this scheme using high-precision numerics based on matrix-product operators in one- and two-dimensional lattices. Correlations are shown to wash the mean-field bistability in dimension one, leading to a unique steady state. In dimension two and higher, we find that multistability is again possible, provided the thermodynamic limit of an infinitely large lattice is taken first with respect to the longtime limit. Variation of the system parameters results in jumps between the different steady states, each showing a critical slowing down in the convergence of perturbations towards the steady state. Experiments with trapped ions can realize the model and possibly answer open questions in the nonequilibrium many-body dynamics of these quantum systems, beyond the system sizes accessible to present numerics.