We theoretically analyze superradiant emission of light from an ultracold gas of bosonic atoms confined in a bad cavity. A metastable dipolar transition of the atoms couples to the cavity field and is incoherently pumped, and the mechanical effects of cavity-atom interactions tend to order the atoms in the periodic cavity potential. By means of a mean-field model we determine the conditions on the cavity parameters and pump rate that lead to the buildup of a stable macroscopic dipole emitting coherent light. We show that this occurs when the superradiant decay rate and the pump rate exceed threshold values of the order of the photon recoil energy. Above these thresholds superradiant emission is accompanied by the formation of stable matter-wave gratings that diffract the emitted photons. Outside of this regime, instead, the optomechanical coupling can give rise to dephasing or chaos, for which the emitted light is respectively incoherent or chaotic. These behaviors exhibit the features of a dynamical phase transitions and emerge from the interplay between global optomechanical interactions, quantum fluctuations, and noise.

We demonstrate, both theoretically and experimentally, the concept of nonlinear second-order topological insulators, a class of bulk insulators with quantized Wannier centers and a bulk polarization directly controlled by the level of nonlinearity. We show that one-dimensional edge states and zero-dimensional corner states can be induced in a trivial crystal insulator made of evanescently coupled resonators with linear and nonlinear coupling coefficients, simply by tuning the intensity. This allows global external control over topological phase transitions and switching to a phase with nonzero bulk polarization, without requiring any structural or geometrical changes. We further show how these nonlinear effects enable dynamic tuning of the spectral properties and localization of the topological edge and corner states. Such self-induced second-order topological insulators, which can be found and implemented in a wide variety of physical platforms ranging from electronics to microwaves, acoustics, and optics, hold exciting promises for reconfigurable topological energy confinement, power harvesting, data storage, and spatial management of high-intensity fields.

We investigate the structure and dynamics of the bulk metallic glass-forming alloys ${\mathrm{Zr}}_{41.2}{\mathrm{Ti}}_{13.8}{\mathrm{Cu}}_{12.5}{\mathrm{Ni}}_{10}{\mathrm{Be}}_{22.5}$ and ${\mathrm{Zr}}_{58.5}{\mathrm{Cu}}_{15.6}{\mathrm{Ni}}_{12.8}{\mathrm{Al}}_{10.3}{\mathrm{Nb}}_{2.8}$. Combining in situ synchrotron x-ray diffraction and quasielastic neutron scattering with electrostatic levitation, we directly observe an abrupt change in the temperature dependence of the first structure factor maximum of these melts. We find that the kinetics of this liquid-liquid transition during cooling are on the order of tens of seconds, whereas its onset temperature depends only weakly on the applied cooling rate. Such slow transition kinetics require long-range mass transport, which is incompatible with a transition mechanism involving only local structural changes as in oxides or molecular liquids.

In the last decade, two revolutionary concepts in nanomagnetism emerged from research for storage technologies and advanced information processing. The first suggests the use of magnetic domain walls in ferromagnetic nanowires to permanently store information in domain-wall racetrack memories. The second proposes a hardware realization of neuromorphic computing in nanomagnets using nonlinear magnetic oscillations in the gigahertz range. Both ideas originate from the transfer of angular momentum from conduction electrons to localized spins in ferromagnets, either to push data encoded in domain walls along nanowires or to sustain magnetic oscillations in artificial neurones. Even though both concepts share a common ground, they live on very different timescales which rendered them incompatible so far. Here, we bridge both ideas by demonstrating the excitation of magnetic auto-oscillations inside nanoscale domain walls using pure spin currents. This Letter will shed light on the current characteristic and spatial distribution of the excited auto-oscillations.

We perform two-dimensional coherent spectroscopy on $\mathrm{CdSe}/\mathrm{CdZnS}$ core-shell colloidal quantum dots at cryogenic temperatures. In the two-dimensional spectra, sidebands due to electronic coupling with CdSe lattice LO-phonon modes are observed to have evolutions deviating from the exponential dephasing expected from Markovian spectral diffusion, which is instantaneous and memoryless. Comparison to simulations provides evidence that LO-phonon coupling induces energy-gap fluctuations on the finite timescales of nuclear motion. The femtosecond resolution of our technique probes exciton dynamics directly on the timescales of phonon coupling in nanocrystals.

Correlations of fluctuations are the driving forces behind the dynamics and thermodynamics in quantum many-body systems. For qubits embedded in a quantum bath, the correlations in the bath are key to understanding and combating decoherence—a critical issue in quantum information technology. However, there is no systematic method for characterizing the many-body correlations in quantum baths beyond the second order or the Gaussian approximation. Here we present a scheme to characterize the correlations in a quantum bath to arbitrary order. The scheme employs a weak measurement of the bath via the projective measurement of a central system. The bath correlations, including both the “classical” and the “quantum” parts, can be reconstructed from the correlations of the measurement outputs. The possibility of full characterization of many-body correlations in a quantum bath forms the basis for optimizing quantum control against decoherence in realistic environments, for studying the quantum characteristics of baths, and for the quantum sensing of correlated clusters in quantum baths.

We revisit the problem of boundary excitations at a topological boundary or junction defects between topological boundaries in nonchiral bosonic topological orders in $2+1$ dimensions. Based on physical considerations, we derive a formula that relates the fusion rules of the boundary excitations and the “half-linking” number between condensed anyons and confined boundary excitations. This formula is a direct analogue of the Verlinde formula. We also demonstrate how these half-linking numbers can be computed in explicit Abelian and non-Abelian examples. As a fundamental property of topological orders and their allowed boundaries, this should also find applications in the search for suitable platforms realizing quantum computing devices.

We study the $O(4)$ Wilson-Fisher fixed point in $2+1$ dimensions in fixed large-charge sectors identified by products of two spin-$j$ representations $(j_L,j_R)$. Using effective field theory we derive a formula for the conformal dimensions $D(j_L,j_R)$ of the leading operator in terms of two constants, $c_{3/2}$ and $c_{1/2}$, when the sum $j_L+j_R$ is much larger than the difference $|j_L-j_R|$. We compute $D(j_L,j_R)$ when $j_L=j_R$ with Monte Carlo calculations in a discrete formulation of the $O(4)$ lattice field theory, and show excellent agreement with the predicted formula and estimate $c_{3/2}=1.068(4)$ and $c_{1/2}=0.083(3)$.

Neural networks are transforming the field of computer algorithms, yet their emulation on current computing substrates is highly inefficient. Reservoir computing was successfully implemented on a large variety of substrates and gave new insight in overcoming this implementation bottleneck. Despite its success, the approach lags behind the state of the art in deep learning. We therefore extend time-delay reservoirs to deep networks and demonstrate that these conceptually correspond to deep convolutional neural networks. Convolution is intrinsically realized on a substrate level by generic drive-response properties of dynamical systems. The resulting novelty is avoiding vector matrix products between layers, which cause low efficiency in today’s substrates. Compared to singleton time-delay reservoirs, our deep network achieves accuracy improvements by at least an order of magnitude in Mackey-Glass and Lorenz time series prediction.

Recently, it was shown that surface electromagnetic waves at interfaces between continuous homogeneous media (e.g., surface plasmon-polaritons at metal-dielectric interfaces) have a topological origin [K. Y. Bliokh et al., Nat. Commun. 10, 580 (2019)]. This is explained by the nontrivial topology of the non-Hermitian photon helicity operator in the Weyl-like representation of Maxwell equations. Here we analyze another type of classical waves: longitudinal acoustic waves corresponding to spinless phonons. We show that surface acoustic waves, which appear at interfaces between media with opposite-sign densities, can be explained by similar topological features and the bulk-boundary correspondence. However, in contrast to photons, the topological properties of sound waves originate from the non-Hermitian four-momentum operator in the Klein-Gordon representation of acoustic fields.

When a weakly outgassing comet is sufficiently close to the Sun, the formation of an ionized coma results in solar wind mass loading and magnetic field draping around its nucleus. Using a 3D fully kinetic approach, we distill the components of a generalized Ohm’s law and the effective electron equation of state directly from the self-consistently simulated electron dynamics and identify the driving physics in the various regions of the cometary plasma environment. Using the example of space plasmas, in particular multispecies cometary plasmas, we show how the description for the complex kinetic electron dynamics can be simplified through a simple effective closure, and identify where an isotropic single-electron fluid Ohm’s law approximation can be used, and where it fails.

The fractional quantum Hall (FQH) effect at the filling number $\nu =5/2$ is a primary candidate for non-Abelian topological order, while the fate of such a state in the presence of random disorder has not been resolved. We address this open question by implementing an unbiased diagnosis based on numerical exact diagonalization. We calculate the disorder averaged Hall conductance and the associated statistical distribution of the topological invariant Chern number, which unambiguously characterize the disorder-driven collapse of the FQH state. As the disorder strength increases towards a critical value, a continuous phase transition is detected based on the disorder configuration averaged wave function fidelity and the entanglement entropy. In the strong disorder regime, we identify a composite Fermi liquid phase with fluctuating Chern numbers, in striking contrast to the well-known $\nu =1/3$ case where an Anderson insulator appears. Interestingly, the lowest Landau level projected a local density profile, the wave function overlap, and the entanglement entropy as a function of disorder strength simultaneously signal an intermediate phase, which may be relevant to the recent proposal of a particle-hole Pfaffian state or Pfaffian–anti-Pfaffian puddle state.

The effective spin-mixing conductance ($G_{\mathrm{eff}}^{\uparrow \downarrow }$) of a heavy-metal–ferromagnet (HM-FM) interface characterizes the efficiency of the interfacial spin transport. Accurately determining $G_{\mathrm{eff}}^{\uparrow \downarrow }$ is critical to the quantitative understanding of measurements of direct and inverse spin Hall effects. $G_{\mathrm{eff}}^{\uparrow \downarrow }$ is typically ascertained from the inverse dependence of magnetic damping on the FM thickness under the assumption that spin pumping is the dominant mechanism affecting this dependence. We report that this assumption fails badly in many in-plane magnetized prototypical HM-FM systems in the nanometer-scale thickness regime. Instead, the majority of the damping is from two-magnon scattering at the FM interface, while spin-memory-loss scattering at the interface can also be significant. If these two effects are neglected, the results will be an unphysical “giant” apparent $G_{\mathrm{eff}}^{\uparrow \downarrow }$ and hence considerable underestimation of both the spin Hall ratio and the spin Hall conductivity in inverse or direct spin Hall experiments.

Living cells respond to spatially confined signals. Intracellular signal transmission often involves the release of second messengers like ${\mathrm{Ca}}^{2+}$. They eventually trigger a physiological response, for example, by activating kinases that in turn activate target proteins through phosphorylation. Here, we investigate theoretically how positional information can be accurately read out by protein phosphorylation in spite of rapid second messenger diffusion. We find that accuracy is increased by binding of kinases to the cell membrane prior to phosphorylation and by increasing the rate of ${\mathrm{Ca}}^{2+}$ loss from the cell interior. These findings could explain some salient features of the conventional protein kinase $\mathrm{C}\alpha$.

We describe a new mechanism that produces bedforms and characterize the conditions under which it operates. The mechanism is associated with pressure gradients generated in a fluid saturated particle bed by a plate oscillating in the water above it. These vertical pressure gradients cause oscillatory bed failure. This facilitates particle displacement in its interior and transport at and near its surface that contribute to the formation of a heap under the plate. Flows over erodible beds generally cause shear stresses on the bed and these induce bed failure. Failure driven by pressure gradients is different from this. We report on bedforms in a bed of glass beads associated with such fluctuating pressure gradients. We measure the development of the profiles of heaps as a function of time and determine the tangential and normal motion of areas on the beds surface and estimate the depth of penetration of the tangential transport. The measurements compare favorably with a simple model that describes the onset of failure due to oscillations in pressure.

Extendibility of bosonic Gaussian states is a key issue in continuous-variable quantum information. We show that a bosonic Gaussian state is $k$-extendible if and only if it has a Gaussian $k$-extension, and we derive a simple semidefinite program, whose size scales linearly with the number of local modes, to efficiently decide $k$-extendibility of any given bosonic Gaussian state. When the system to be extended comprises one mode only, we provide a closed-form solution. Implications of these results for the steerability of quantum states and for the extendibility of bosonic Gaussian channels are discussed. We then derive upper bounds on the distance of a $k$-extendible bosonic Gaussian state to the set of all separable states, in terms of trace norm and Rényi relative entropies. These bounds, which can be seen as “Gaussian de Finetti theorems,” exhibit a universal scaling in the total number of modes, independently of the mean energy of the state. Finally, we establish an upper bound on the entanglement of formation of Gaussian $k$-extendible states, which has no analogue in the finite-dimensional setting.

Quantum Brownian motion plays a fundamental role in many areas of modern physics. In the path-integral formulation, environmental fluctuations can be characterized by auxiliary stochastic fields. Intriguingly, for fermionic environments the stochastic fields must be Grassmann valued so as to memorize the order of the random forces exerted on the system. Such nonclassical fields cannot be represented by conventional means. We propose a strategy to map the Grassmann-number fields to conventional $c$-number noises and a set of quantized pseudolevels. The resulting stochastic equation of motion (SEOM) enables direct stochastic simulation of the fermionic dissipative dynamics. The SEOM gives exact physical observables of noninteracting systems, and yields accurate approximate results for interacting systems. The practicality and accuracy of the proposed strategy and the SEOM are exemplified by numerical studies conducted on a single-impurity Anderson model.