The thermoelectric (TE) properties of a material are dramatically altered when electron-electron interactions become the dominant scattering mechanism. In the degenerate hydrodynamic regime, the thermal conductivity is reduced and becomes a decreasing function of the electronic temperature, due to a violation of the Wiedemann-Franz law. We here show how this peculiar temperature dependence gives rise to new striking TE phenomena. These include an 80-fold increase in TE efficiency compared to the Wiedemann-Franz regime, dramatic qualitative changes in the steady state temperature profile, and an anomalously large Thomson effect. In graphene, which we pay special attention to here, these effects are further amplified due to a doubling of the thermopower.

In our previous work [Phys. Rev. Lett. 121, 046401 (2018)], we found a quantum spin liquid phase with a spinon Fermi surface in the two dimensional spin-$1/2$ Heisenberg model with four-spin ring exchange on a triangular lattice. In this work we dope the spinon Fermi surface phase by studying the $t\text{−}J$ model with four-spin ring exchange. We perform density matrix renormalization group calculations on four-leg cylinders of a triangular lattice and find that the dominant pair correlation function is that of a pair density wave; i.e., it is oscillatory while decaying with distance with a power law. The doping dependence of the period is studied. This is the first example where a pair density wave is the dominant pairing in a generic strongly interacting system where the pair density wave cannot be explained as a composite order and no special symmetry is required.

Driving a conventional superconductor with an appropriately tuned classical electromagnetic field can lead to an enhancement of superconductivity via a redistribution of the quasiparticles into a more favorable nonequilibrium distribution—a phenomenon known as the Eliashberg effect. Here, we theoretically consider coupling a two-dimensional superconducting film to the quantized electromagnetic modes of a microwave resonator cavity. As in the classical Eliashberg case, we use a kinetic equation to study the effect of the fluctuating, dynamical electromagnetic field on the Bogoliubov quasiparticles. We find that when the photon and quasiparticle systems are out of thermal equilibrium, a redistribution of quasiparticles into a more favorable nonequilibrium steady state occurs, thereby enhancing superconductivity in the sample. We predict that by tailoring the cavity environment (e.g., the photon occupation and spectral functions), enhancement can be observed in a variety of parameter regimes, offering a large degree of tunability.

We study the dynamical structure factor of the spin-1 pyrochlore material ${\mathrm{NaCaNi}}_2{\mathrm{F}}_7$, which is well described by a weakly perturbed nearest-neighbour Heisenberg Hamiltonian, Our three approaches—molecular dynamics simulations, stochastic dynamical theory, and linear spin wave theory—reproduce remarkably well the momentum dependence of the experimental inelastic neutron scattering intensity as well as its energy dependence with the exception of the lowest energies. We discuss two surprising aspects and their implications for quantum spin liquids in general: the complete lack of sharp quasiparticle excitations in momentum space and the success of the linear spin wave theory in a regime where it would be expected to fail for several reasons.

We investigate the turbulent dynamics of a two-dimensional active nematic liquid crystal constrained to a curved surface. Using a combination of hydrodynamic and particle-based simulations, we demonstrate that the fundamental structural features of the fluid, such as the topological charge density, the defect number density, the nematic order parameter, and defect creation and annihilation rates, are approximately linear functions of the substrate Gaussian curvature, which then acts as a control parameter for the chaotic flow. Our theoretical predictions are then compared with experiments on microtubule-kinesin suspensions confined on toroidal droplets, finding excellent qualitative agreement.

The availability of large datasets requires an improved view on statistical laws in complex systems, such as Zipf’s law of word frequencies, the Gutenberg-Richter law of earthquake magnitudes, or scale-free degree distribution in networks. In this Letter, we discuss how the statistical analysis of these laws are affected by correlations present in the observations, the typical scenario for data from complex systems. We first show how standard maximum-likelihood recipes lead to false rejections of statistical laws in the presence of correlations. We then propose a conservative method (based on shuffling and undersampling the data) to test statistical laws and find that accounting for correlations leads to smaller rejection rates and larger confidence intervals on estimated parameters.

We derive the rotation-vibration spectrum of a $3\alpha +1$ neutron(proton) configuration with triangular $D_{3h}$ symmetry by exploiting the properties of the double group $D_{3h}^{\prime }$ and show evidence for this symmetry to occur in the rotation-vibration spectra of ${}^{13}\mathrm{C}$. Our results, based on purely symmetry considerations, provide benchmarks for microscopic calculations of the cluster structure of light nuclei.

Measurement-based quantum computation, an alternative paradigm for quantum information processing, uses simple measurements on qubits prepared in cluster states, a class of multiparty entangled states with useful properties. Here we propose and analyze a scheme that takes advantage of the interplay between spin-orbit coupling and superexchange interactions, in the presence of a coherent drive, to deterministically generate macroscopic arrays of cluster states in fermionic alkaline earth atoms trapped in three dimensional (3D) optical lattices. The scheme dynamically generates cluster states without the need of engineered transport, and is robust in the presence of holes, a typical imperfection in cold atom Mott insulators. The protocol is of particular relevance for the new generation of 3D optical lattice clocks with coherence times $>10\mathrm{s}$, 2 orders of magnitude larger than the cluster state generation time. We propose the use of collective measurements and time reversal of the Hamiltonian to benchmark the underlying Ising model dynamics and the generated many-body correlations.

Spontaneous symmetry breaking (SSB) in statistical physics is a macroscopic collective phenomenon. For the paradigmatic $Q$-state Potts model it means a transition from the disordered color-symmetric phase to an ordered phase in which one color dominates. Existing mean field theories imply that SSB in the microcanonical statistical ensemble (with energy being the control parameter) should be a continuous process. Here we study microcanonical SSB on the random-graph Potts model and discover that the entropy is a kinked function of energy. This kink leads to a discontinuous phase transition at certain energy density value, characterized by a jump in the density of the dominant color and a jump in the microcanonical temperature. This discontinuous SSB in random graphs is confirmed by microcanonical Monte Carlo simulations, and it is also observed in bond-diluted finite-size lattice systems.

We present a model where the inflaton can naturally account for all the dark matter in the Universe within the warm inflation paradigm. In particular, we show that the symmetries and particle content of the warm little inflaton scenario (i) avoid large thermal and radiative corrections to the scalar potential, (ii) allow for sufficiently strong dissipative effects to sustain a radiation bath during inflation that becomes dominant at the end of the slow-roll regime, and (iii) enable a stable inflaton remnant in the postinflationary epochs. The latter behaves as dark radiation during nucleosynthesis, leading to a non-negligible contribution to the effective number of relativistic degrees of freedom, and becomes the dominant cold dark matter component in the Universe shortly before matter-radiation equality for inflaton masses in the ${10}^{-4}–{10}^{-1}\mathrm{eV}$ range. Cold dark matter isocurvature perturbations, anticorrelated with the main adiabatic component, provide a smoking gun for this scenario that can be tested in the near future.

We study the nature of photoexcited charge carriers in ${\mathrm{CsPbBr}}_3$ nanocrystal thin films by ultrafast optical pump-THz probe spectroscopy. We observe a deviation from a pure Drude dispersion of the THz dielectric response that is ascribed to the polaronic nature of carriers; a transient blueshift of observed phonon frequencies is indicative of the coupling between photogenerated charges and stretching-bending modes of the deformed inorganic sublattice, as confirmed by DFT calculations.

Pyrochlore systems ($A_2{B}_2{\mathrm{O}}_7$) with $A$-site rare-earth local moments and $B$-site $5d$ conduction electrons offer excellent material platforms for the discovery of exotic quantum many-body ground states. Notable examples include U(1) quantum spin liquid of the local moments and semimetallic non-Fermi liquid of the conduction electrons. Here we investigate emergent quantum phases and their transitions driven by the Kondo lattice coupling between such highly entangled quantum ground states. Using the renormalization group method, it is shown that weak Kondo lattice coupling is irrelevant, leading to a fractionalized semimetal phase with decoupled local moments and conduction electrons. Upon increasing the Kondo lattice coupling, this phase is unstable to the formation of broken symmetry states. Particularly important is the opposing influence of the Kondo lattice coupling and long-range Coulomb interaction. The former prefers to break the particle-hole symmetry while the latter tends to restore it. The characteristic competition leads to possibly multiple phase transitions, first from a fractionalized semimetal phase to a fractionalized Fermi surface state with particle-hole pockets, followed by the second transition to a fractionalized ferromagnetic state. Multiscale quantum critical behaviors appear at nonzero temperatures and with external magnetic field near such quantum phase transitions. We discuss the implication of these results to the experiments on ${\mathrm{Pr}}_2{\mathrm{Ir}}_2{\mathrm{O}}_7$.

We study the microscopic origins of photocurrent generation in the topological insulator ${\mathrm{Bi}}_2{\mathrm{Se}}_3$ via time- and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy. We image the unoccupied band structure as it evolves following a circularly polarized optical excitation and observe an asymmetric electron population in momentum space, which is the spectroscopic signature of a photocurrent. By analyzing the rise times of the population we identify which occupied and unoccupied electronic states are coupled by the optical excitation. We conclude that photocurrents can only be excited via resonant optical transitions coupling to spin-orbital textured states. Our work provides a microscopic understanding of how to control photocurrents in systems with spin-orbit coupling and broken inversion symmetry.

The structural and functional organization of biological tissues relies on the intricate interplay between chemical and mechanical signaling. Whereas the role of constant and transient mechanical perturbations is generally accepted, several studies recently highlighted the existence of long-range mechanical excitations (i.e., waves) at the supracellular level. Here, we confine epithelial cell monolayers to quasi-one-dimensional geometries, to force the establishment of tissue-level waves of well-defined wavelength and period. Numerical simulations based on a self-propelled Voronoi model reproduce the observed waves and exhibit a phase transition between a global and a multinodal wave, controlled by the confinement size. We confirm experimentally the existence of such a phase transition, and show that wavelength and period are independent of the confinement length. Together, these results demonstrate the intrinsic origin of tissue oscillations, which could provide cells with a mechanism to accurately measure distances at the supracellular level.