Dielectric laser acceleration is a versatile scheme to accelerate and control electrons with the help of femtosecond laser pulses in nanophotonic structures. We demonstrate here the generation of a train of electron pulses with individual pulse durations as short as $270\pm 80\mathrm{attoseconds}$ (FWHM), measured in an indirect fashion, based on two subsequent dielectric laser interaction regions connected by a free-space electron drift section, all on a single photonic chip. In the first interaction region (the modulator), an energy modulation is imprinted on the electron pulse. During free propagation, this energy modulation evolves into a charge density modulation, which we probe in the second interaction region (the analyzer). These results will lead to new ways of probing ultrafast dynamics in matter and are essential for future laser-based particle accelerators on a photonic chip.

We theoretically investigate the many-body states of exciton polaritons that can be observed by pump-probe spectroscopy in high-$Q$ inorganic microcavities. Here, a weak-probe “spin-down” polariton is introduced into a coherent state of “spin-up” polaritons created by a strong pump. We show that the $\downarrow$ impurities become dressed by excitations of the $\uparrow$ medium, and that they form new polaronic quasiparticles that feature two-point and three-point many-body quantum correlations that, in the low density regime, arise from coupling to the vacuum biexciton and triexciton states, respectively. In particular, we find that these correlations generate additional branches and avoided crossings in the $\downarrow$ optical transmission spectrum that have a characteristic dependence on the $\uparrow$-polariton density. Our results thus demonstrate a way to directly observe correlated many-body states in an exciton-polariton system that go beyond classical mean-field theories.

We present a method to characterize non-Abelian anyons that is based only on static measurements and that does not rely on any form of interference. For geometries where the anyonic statistics can be revealed by rigid rotations of the anyons, we link this property to the angular momentum of the initial state. We test our method on the paradigmatic example of the Moore-Read state that is known to support excitations with non-Abelian statistics of Ising type. As an example, we reveal the presence of different fusion channels for two such excitations, a defining feature of non-Abelian anyons. This is obtained by measuring density-profile properties, like the mean square radius of the system or the depletion generated by the anyons. Our study paves the way to novel methods for characterizing non-Abelian anyons, both in the experimental and theoretical domains.

An algebraic tail in the Green-Kubo integral for the solid-fluid friction coefficient hampers its use in the determination of the slip length. A simple theory for discrete nonlocal hydrodynamics near parallel solid walls with extended friction forces is given. We explain the origin of the algebraic tail and give a solution of the plateau problem in the Green-Kubo expressions. We derive the slip boundary condition with a microscopic expression for the slip length and the hydrodynamic wall position, and assess it through simulations of an unsteady plug flow.

Terahertz pulse generation by ultraintense two-color laser fields ionizing gases with near- to far-infrared carrier wavelength is studied from particle-in-cell simulations. For a long pump wavelength ($10.6\mu \mathrm{m}$) promoting a large ratio of electron density over critical, photoionization is shown to catastrophically enhance the plasma wakefield, causing a net downshift in the optical spectrum and exciting THz fields with tens of GV/m amplitude in the laser direction. This emission is accompanied by coherent transition radiation (CTR) of comparable amplitude due to wakefield-driven electron acceleration. We analytically evaluate the fraction of CTR energy up to 30% of the total radiated emission including the particle self-field and numerically calibrate the efficiency of the matched blowout regime for electron densities varied over three orders of magnitude.

Nonstationary longtime dynamics was recently observed in a driven two-component Bose-Einstein condensate coupled to an optical cavity [N. Dogra, M. Landini, K. Kroeger, L. Hruby, T. Donner, and T. Esslinger, arXiv:1901.05974] and analyzed in mean-field theory. We solve the underlying model in the thermodynamic limit and show that this system is always dynamically unstable—even when mean-field theory predicts stability. Instabilities always occur in higher-order correlation functions leading to squeezing and entanglement induced by cavity dissipation. The dynamics may be understood as the formation of a dissipative time crystal. We use perturbation theory for finite system sizes to confirm the nonstationary behavior.

We report on the experimental measurement of the Hilbert-Schmidt distance between two two-qubit states by many-particle interference. We demonstrate that our three-step method for measuring distances in the Hilbert space is far less complex than reconstructing density matrices and that it can be applied in quantum-enhanced machine learning to reduce the complexity of calculating Euclidean distances between multidimensional points, which can be especially interesting for near term quantum technologies and quantum artificial intelligence research. Our results are also a novel example of applying mixed states in quantum information processing. Usually working with mixed states is undesired, but here it gives the possibility of encoding extra information as the degree of coherence between the given two dimensions of the density matrix.

Generic rotationally invariant matrix models satisfy a simple relation: the probability distribution of half the difference between any two diagonal elements and the one of off-diagonal elements are the same. In the spirit of the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis, we test the hypothesis that the same relation holds in quantum systems that are nonlocalized, when one considers small energy differences. The relation provides a stringent test of the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis beyond the Gaussian ensemble. We apply it to a disordered spin chain, the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model, and a Floquet system.

We report on the measurement of the two-neutrino double-$\beta$ decay of ${}^{82}\mathrm{Se}$ performed for the first time with cryogenic calorimeters, in the framework of the CUPID-0 experiment. With an exposure of 9.95 kg yr of $\mathrm{Zn}{}^{82}\mathrm{Se}$, we determine the two-neutrino double-$\beta$ decay half-life of ${}^{82}\mathrm{Se}$ with an unprecedented precision level, $T_{1/2}^{2\nu }=[8.60\pm 0.03(\text{stat}){}_{-0.13}^{+0.19}(\text{syst})]\times {10}^{19}\mathrm{yr}$. The very high signal-to-background ratio, along with the detailed reconstruction of the background sources allowed us to identify the single state dominance as the underlying mechanism of such a process, demonstrating that the higher state dominance hypothesis is disfavored at the level of $5.5\sigma$.

Pattern formation, observed experimentally in a radio-frequency plasma in annular geometry, and characterized by azimuthal symmetry breaking of the plasma parameters, is reported. The azimuthal modulation increases with increasing pressure in the range 1–300 Pa. These experimental observations are accurately described by a fluid model in which the transport coefficients are computed from a 0D Boltzmann kinetic equation. A linear stability analysis shows that unstable modulations develop at low and intermediate pressures, following an instability mechanism due to an energy transport effect—the instability mechanism lies in the sign of off-diagonal terms for the electron particles and energy fluxes expressed as functions of gradients of the plasma density and the electron temperature. This model is an excellent candidate to explain the occurrence of striations in radio-frequency plasmas.

If a liquid is cooled rapidly to form a glass, its structural relaxation becomes retarded, producing a drastic increase in viscosity. In two dimensions, strong long-wavelength fluctuations persist, even at low temperature, making it difficult to evaluate the microscopic structural relaxation time. This Letter shows that, in a 2D glass-forming liquid, relative displacement between neighbor particles yields a relaxation time that grows in proportion to the viscosity. In addition to thermal elastic vibrations, hydrodynamic fluctuations are found to affect the long-wavelength dynamics, yielding a logarithmically diverging diffusivity in the long-time limit.

We investigate the effects of disorder on a periodically driven one-dimensional model displaying quantized topological transport. We show that, while instantaneous eigenstates are necessarily Anderson localized, the periodic driving plays a fundamental role in delocalizing Floquet states over the whole system, henceforth allowing for a steady-state nearly quantized current. Remarkably, this is linked to a localization-delocalization transition in the Floquet states at strong disorder, which occurs for periodic driving corresponding to a nontrivial loop in the parameter space. As a consequence, the Floquet spectrum becomes continuous in the delocalized phase, in contrast with a pure-point instantaneous spectrum.

We study the critical behavior of a model with nondissipative couplings aimed at describing the collective behavior of natural swarms, using the dynamical renormalization group under a fixed-network approximation. At one loop, we find a crossover between an unstable fixed point, characterized by a dynamical critical exponent $z=d/2$, and a stable fixed point with $z=2$, a result we confirm through numerical simulations. The crossover is regulated by a length scale given by the ratio between the transport coefficient and the effective friction, so that in finite-size biological systems with low dissipation, dynamics is ruled by the unstable fixed point. In three dimensions this mechanism gives $z=3/2$, a value significantly closer to the experimental window, $1.0\le z\le 1.3$, than the value $z\approx 2$ numerically found in fully dissipative models, either at or off equilibrium. This result indicates that nondissipative dynamical couplings are necessary to develop a theory of natural swarms fully consistent with experiments.

We present a microscopic theory for the nonequilibrium interfacial tension ${\gamma }_{\mathrm{gl}}$ of the free interface between gas and liquid phases of active Brownian particles. The underlying square gradient treatment and the splitting of the force balance in flow and structural contributions is general and applies to inhomogeneous nonequilibrium steady states. We find ${\gamma }_{\mathrm{gl}}\ge 0$, which opposes claims by Bialké et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 115, 098301 (2015)] and delivers the theoretical justification for the widely observed interfacial stability in active Brownian dynamics many-body simulations.

Classical dynamical systems close to a critical point are known to act as efficient sensors due to a strongly nonlinear response. We explore such systems in the quantum regime by modeling a quantum version of a driven van der Pol oscillator. We find the classical response survives down to one excitation quantum. At very weak drives, genuine quantum features arise, including diverging and negative susceptibilities. Further, the linear response is greatly enhanced by using a strong incoherent pump. These results are largely generic and can be probed in current experimental platforms suited for quantum sensing.

We study the dynamics of a Bose-Einstein condensate trapped circumferentially on a ring, and which is governed by an interacting gauge theory. We show that the associated density-dependent gauge potential and concomitant current nonlinearity permits a ground state in the form of a rotating chiral bright soliton. This chiral soliton is constrained to move in one direction by virtue of the current nonlinearity, and represents a time crystal in the same vein as Wilczek’s original proposal.

Perfect entanglement swapping, which can be realized without the postselection by using the nonlinear optical technology, provides an important way toward generating the large-scale quantum network. We explore an entanglement-swapping-based dense wavelength division multiplexed network in the experiment. Four users receive single quantum states at different wavelengths, and we perform a time-energy entanglement swapping operation based on the sum-frequency generation to make users fully connected in the network. The results show that the fidelity of the entangled state is larger than 90% and is independent of the number of users. Our Letter demonstrates the feasibility of a proposed multiuser network, and hence paves a route toward a variety of quantum applications, including entanglement-swapping-based quantum direct communication.