One of the most important characteristics of a quantum graph is the average density of resonances, $\rho =(\mathcal{L}/\pi )$, where $\mathcal{L}$ denotes the length of the graph. This is a very robust measure. It does not depend on the number of vertices in a graph and holds also for most of the boundary conditions at the vertices. Graphs obeying this characteristic are called Weyl graphs. Using microwave networks that simulate quantum graphs we show that there exist graphs that do not adhere to this characteristic. Such graphs are called non-Weyl graphs. For standard coupling conditions we demonstrate that the transition from a Weyl graph to a non-Weyl graph occurs if we introduce a balanced vertex. A vertex of a graph is called balanced if the numbers of infinite leads and internal edges meeting at a vertex are the same. Our experimental results confirm the theoretical predictions of [E. B. Davies and A. Pushnitski, Analysis and PDE 4, 729 (2011)] and are in excellent agreement with the numerical calculations yielding the resonances of the networks.

In this Letter, combining peak theory and the numerical analysis of gravitational collapse in the radiation dominated era, we show that the abundance of primordial blacks holes, generated by an enhancement in the inflationary power spectrum, is extremely dependent on the shape of the peak. Given the amplitude of the power spectrum, we show that the density of primordial black holes generated from a narrow peak is exponentially smaller than in the case of a broad peak. Specifically, for a top-hat profile of the power spectrum in Fourier space, we find that to have primordial black holes comprising all of the dark matter, one would only need a power spectrum amplitude an order of magnitude smaller than suggested previously, whereas in the case of a narrow peak, one would instead need a much larger power spectrum amplitude, which in many cases would invalidate the perturbative analysis of cosmological perturbations. Finally, we show that, although critical collapse gives a broad mass spectrum, the density of primordial black holes formed is dominated by masses roughly equal to the cosmological horizon mass measured at horizon crossing.

We study chemical equilibration in out-of-equilibrium quark-gluon plasma using the first principles method of QCD effective kinetic theory, accurate at weak coupling. In longitudinally expanding systems—relevant for relativistic nuclear collisions—we find that for realistic couplings chemical equilibration takes place after hydrodynamization, but well before local thermalization. We estimate that hadronic collisions with final state multiplicities $d{N}_{\mathrm{ch}}/d\eta \gtrsim {10}^2$ live long enough to reach approximate chemical equilibrium, which is consistent with the saturation of strangeness enhancement observed in proton-proton, proton-nucleus, and nucleus-nucleus collisions.

Engineering controllable, strongly interacting many-body quantum systems is at the frontier of quantum simulation and quantum information processing. Arrays of laser-cooled neutral atoms in optical tweezers have emerged as a promising platform because of their flexibility and the potential for strong interactions via Rydberg states. Existing neutral atom array experiments utilize alkali atoms, but alkaline-earth atoms offer many advantages in terms of coherence and control, and also open the door to new applications in precision measurement and time keeping. In this Letter, we present a technique to trap individual alkaline-earth-like ytterbium (Yb) atoms in optical tweezer arrays. The narrow ${}^1{S}_0\text{−}{}^3{P}_1$ intercombination line is used for both cooling and imaging in a magic-wavelength optical tweezer at 532 nm. The low Doppler temperature allows for imaging near the saturation intensity, resulting in a very high atom detection fidelity. We demonstrate the imaging fidelity concretely by observing rare ($<1$ in $10^4$ images) spontaneous quantum jumps into and out of a metastable state. We also demonstrate stochastic loading of atoms into a two-dimensional, 144-site tweezer array. This platform will enable advances in quantum information processing, quantum simulation, and precision measurement. The demonstrated narrow-line Doppler imaging may also be applied in tweezer arrays or quantum gas microscopes using other atoms with similar transitions, such as erbium and dysprosium.

We characterize topological phases in photonic lattices by unveiling a formal equivalence between the singular value decomposition of the non-Hermitian coupling matrix and the diagonalization of an effective Hamiltonian. Our theory reveals a relation between topological insulators and directional amplifiers. We exemplify our ideas with an array of photonic cavities which can be mapped into an AIII topological insulator. We investigate stability properties and prove the existence of stable topologically nontrivial steady-state phases. Finally, we show numerically that the topological amplification process is robust against disorder in the lattice parameters.

The vibrational spectra of solids, both ordered and amorphous, in the low-energy regime, control the thermal and transport properties of materials, from heat capacity to heat conduction, electron-phonon couplings, conventional superconductivity, etc. The old Debye model of vibrational spectra at low energy gives the vibrational density of states (VDOS) as proportional to the frequency squared, but in many materials the spectrum departs from this law which results in a peak upon normalizing the VDOS by frequency squared, which is known as the “boson peak.” A description of the VDOS of solids (both crystals and glasses) is presented starting from first principles. Without using any assumptions whatsoever of disorder in the material, it is shown that the boson peak in the VDOS of both ordered crystals and glasses arises naturally from the competition between elastic mode propagation and diffusive damping. The theory explains the recent experimental observations of boson peak in perfectly ordered crystals, which cannot be explained based on previous theoretical frameworks. The theory also explains, for the first time, how the vibrational spectrum changes with the atomic density of the solid, and explains recent experimental observations of this effect.

We report tunneling transport in spatially controlled networks of quantum Hall (QH) edge states in bilayer graphene. By manipulating the separation, location, and spatial span of QH edge states via gate-defined electrostatics, we observe resonant tunneling between copropagating QH states across incompressible strips. Employing spectroscopic tunneling measurements and an analytical model, we characterize the energy gap, width, density of states, and compressibility of the QH edge states with high precision and sensitivity within the same device. The capability to engineer the QH edge network also provides an opportunity to build future quantum electronic devices with electrostatic manipulation of QH edge states, supported by rich underlying physics.

$ABC$-stacked trilayer graphene (TLG) was predicted to exhibit novel many-body phenomena due to the existence of almost dispersionless flat bands near the charge neutrality point. Here, using high-magnetic-field scanning tunneling microscopy, we present Landau Level (LL) spectroscopy measurements of high-quality $ABC$-stacked TLG on graphite. We observe an approximately linear magnetic-field scaling of valley splitting and spin splitting in the $ABC$-stacked TLG. Our experiment indicates that the spin splitting decreases dramatically with increasing the LL index. When the lowest LL is partially filled, we find an obvious enhancement of the spin splitting, attributing to strong many-body effects. Moreover, we observe linear energy scaling of the inverse lifetime of quasiparticles, providing an additional evidence for the strong electron-electron interactions in the $ABC$-stacked TLG. These results imply that interesting broken-symmetry states and novel electron correlated effects could emerge in the $ABC$-stacked TLG in the presence of high magnetic fields.

The newly discovered noncentrosymmetric superconductor ${\mathrm{ThCoC}}_2$ exhibits numerous types of unconventional behavior in the field dependent heat capacity data. Here we present the first measurement of the gap symmetry of ${\mathrm{ThCoC}}_2$ by muon spin rotation and relaxation ($\mu \mathrm{SR}$) measurements. The temperature dependence of the magnetic penetration depth measured using the transverse field $\mu \mathrm{SR}$ experiment reveals the evidence of a nodal pairing symmetry. To understand this finding, we carry out calculations of the superconducting pairing eigenvalue and eigenfunction (pairing symmetry) due to the spin-fluctuation mechanism by directly implementing the ab initio band structures. We find that the system possesses a single Fermi surface with considerable three dimensionality and a strong nesting along the $k_z$ direction. Such nesting promotes a superconducting state with a $\cos k_z$-like pairing symmetry with a prominent nodal line on the $k_z=\pm \pi /2$ plane. The result agrees well with the experimental data.

We formally extend the notion of Markov order to open quantum processes by accounting for the instruments used to probe the system of interest at different times. Our description recovers the classical property in the appropriate limit: when the stochastic process is classical and the instruments are noninvasive, i.e., restricted to orthogonal, projective measurements. We then prove that there do not exist non-Markovian quantum processes that have finite Markov order with respect to all possible instruments; the same process exhibits distinct memory effects when probed by different instruments. This naturally leads to a relaxed definition of quantum Markov order with respect to specified instrument sequences. The memory effects captured by different choices of instruments vary dramatically, providing a rich landscape for future exploration.

Holonomic quantum computation uses non-Abelian geometric phases to realize error resilient quantum gates. Nonadiabatic holonomic gates are particularly suitable to avoid unwanted decoherence effects, as they can be performed at high speed. By letting the computational system interact with a structured environment, we show that the scope of error resilience of nonadiabatic holonomic gates can be widened to include systematic parameter errors. Our scheme maintains the geometric properties of the evolution and results in an environment-assisted holonomic quantum map that can mimic the effect of a holonomic gate. We demonstrate that the sensitivity to systematic errors can be reduced in a proof-of-concept spin-bath model.

Maximally entangled two-qubit states (Bell states) are of central importance in quantum technologies. We show that heralded generation of a maximally entangled state of two intrinsically open qubits can be realized in a one-dimensional (1D) system through strong coherent driving and continuous monitoring. In contrast to the natural idea that dissipation leads to decoherence and so destroys quantum effects, continuous measurement and strong interference in our 1D system generate a pure state with perfect quantum correlation between the two open qubits. Though the steady state is a trivial product state that has zero coherence or concurrence, we show that, with carefully tuned parameters, a Bell state can be generated in the system’s quantum jump trajectories, heralded by a reflected photon. Surprisingly, this maximally entangled state survives the strong coherent state input—a classical state that overwhelms the system. This simple method to generate maximally entangled states using classical coherent light and photon detection may, since our qubits are in a 1D continuum, find application as a building block of quantum networks.

Nanoscale machines are strongly influenced by thermal fluctuations, contrary to their macroscopic counterparts. As a consequence, even the efficiency of such microscopic machines becomes a fluctuating random variable. Using geometric properties and the fluctuation theorem for the total entropy production, a “universal theory of efficiency fluctuations” at long times, for machines with a finite state space, was developed by Verley et al. [Nat. Commun. 5, 4721 (2014); Phys. Rev. E 90, 052145 (2014)]. We extend this theory to machines with an arbitrary state space. Thereby, we work out more detailed prerequisites for the “universal features” and explain under which circumstances deviations can occur. We also illustrate our findings with exact results for two nontrivial models of colloidal engines.

We define a new information theoretic quantity called odd entanglement entropy (OEE) which enables us to compute the entanglement wedge cross section in holographic conformal field theories (CFTs). The entanglement wedge cross section has been introduced as a minimal cross section of the entanglement wedge, a natural generalization of the Ryu-Takayanagi surface. By using the replica trick, we explicitly compute the OEE for two-dimensional holographic CFT (three-dimensional anti–de Sitter space and planar Bañados-Teitelboim-Zanelli black hole) and see agreement with the entanglement wedge cross section. We conjecture this relation will hold in general dimensions.

We develop a systematic method to calculate the trace distance between two reduced density matrices in $1+1$ dimensional quantum field theories. The approach exploits the path integral representation of the reduced density matrices and an ad hoc replica trick. We then extensively apply this method to the calculation of the distance between reduced density matrices of one interval of length $\ell$ in eigenstates of conformal field theories. When the interval is short, using the operator product expansion of twist operators, we obtain a universal form for the leading order in $\ell$ of the trace distance. We compute the trace distances among the reduced density matrices of several low lying states in two-dimensional free massless boson and fermion theories. We compare our analytic conformal results with numerical calculations in $XX$ and Ising spin chains finding perfect agreement.

We show that relativistic magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) can be recast as a novel theory of superfluidity. This new theory formulates MHD just in terms of conservation equations, including dissipative effects, by introducing appropriate variables such as a magnetic scalar potential, and providing necessary and sufficient conditions to obtain equilibrium configurations. We show that this scalar potential can be interpreted as a Goldstone mode originating from the spontaneous breaking of a one-form symmetry, and present the most generic constitutive relations at one derivative order for a parity-preserving plasma in this new superfluid formulation.

Gluon parton distribution functions (PDFs) in the proton can be calculated directly on Euclidean lattices using large momentum effective theory (LaMET). To realize this goal, one has to find renormalized gluon quasi-PDFs in which power divergences and operator mixing are thoroughly understood. For the unpolarized distribution, we identify four independent quasi-PDF correlators that can be multiplicatively renormalized on the lattice. Similarly, the helicity distribution can be derived from three independent multiplicatively renormalizable quasi-PDFs. We provide a LaMET factorization formula for these renormalized quasi-PDFs from which one can extract the gluon PDFs.

Based on a sample of $(1310.6\pm 7.0)\times {10}^{6}J/\psi$ events collected with the BESIII detector, we present measurements of $J/\psi$ and ${\eta }^{\prime }$ absolute branching fractions using the process $J/\psi \to \gamma {\eta }^{\prime }$. By analyzing events where the radiative photon converts into an $e^{+}{e}^{-}$ pair, the branching fraction for $J/\psi \to \gamma {\eta }^{\prime }$ is measured to be $(5.27\pm 0.03\pm 0.05)\times {10}^{-3}$. The absolute branching fractions of the five dominant decay channels of the ${\eta }^{\prime }$ are then measured for the first time and are determined to be $\mathcal{B}({\eta }^{\prime }\to \gamma {\pi }^{+}{\pi }^{-})=(29.90\pm 0.03\pm 0.55)\%$, $\mathcal{B}({\eta }^{\prime }\to \eta {\pi }^{+}{\pi }^{-})=(41.24\pm 0.08\pm 1.24)\%$, $\mathcal{B}({\eta }^{\prime }\to \eta {\pi }^0{\pi }^0)=(21.36\pm 0.10\pm 0.92)\%$, $\mathcal{B}({\eta }^{\prime }\to \gamma \omega )=(2.489\pm 0.018\pm 0.074)\%$, and $\mathcal{B}({\eta }^{\prime }\to \gamma \gamma )=(2.331\pm 0.012\pm 0.035)\%$, where the first uncertainties are statistical and the second systematic.