We calculate the fluorescence spectra of a driven lattice of coupled cavities. To do this, we extend methods of evaluating two-time correlations in infinite lattices to open quantum systems; this allows access to momentum-resolved fluorescence spectrum. We illustrate this for a driven-dissipative transverse-field anisotropic $XY$ model. By studying the fluctuation-dissipation theorem, we find the emergence of a quasithermalized steady state with a temperature dependent on system parameters; for blue-detuned driving, we show this effective temperature is negative. In the low excitation density limit, we compare these numerical results to analytical spin-wave theory, providing an understanding of the form of the distribution function and the origin of quasithermalization.

We investigate thermalization dynamics of a driven dipolar many-body quantum system through the stability of discrete time crystalline order. Using periodic driving of electronic spin impurities in diamond, we realize different types of interactions between spins and demonstrate experimentally that the interplay of disorder, driving, and interactions leads to several qualitatively distinct regimes of thermalization. For short driving periods, the observed dynamics are well described by an effective Hamiltonian which sensitively depends on interaction details. For long driving periods, the system becomes susceptible to energy exchange with the driving field and eventually enters a universal thermalizing regime, where the dynamics can be described by interaction-induced dephasing of individual spins. Our analysis reveals important differences between thermalization of long-range Ising and other dipolar spin models.

Fundamental observations in physics ranging from gravitational wave detection to laser cooling of a nanomechanical oscillator into its quantum ground state rely on the interaction between the optical and the mechanical degrees of freedom. A key parameter to engineer this interaction is the spatial overlap between the two fields, optimized in carefully designed resonators on a case-by-case basis. Disorder is an alternative strategy to confine light and sound at the nanoscale. However, it lacks an a priori mechanism guaranteeing a high degree of colocalization due to the inherently complex nature of the underlying interference processes. Here, we propose a way to address this challenge by using $\mathrm{GaAs}/\mathrm{AlAs}$ vertical distributed Bragg reflectors with embedded geometrical disorder. Because of a remarkable coincidence in the physical parameters governing light and motion propagation in these two materials, the equations for both longitudinal acoustic waves and normal-incidence light become practically equivalent for excitations of the same wavelength. This guarantees spatial overlap between the electromagnetic and displacement fields of specific photon-phonon pairs, leading to strong light-matter interaction. In particular, a statistical enhancement in the vacuum optomechanical coupling rate, $g_o$, is found, making this system a promising candidate to explore Anderson localization of high frequency ($\sim 20\mathrm{GHz}$) phonons enabled by cavity optomechanics. The colocalization effect shown here unlocks the access to unexplored localization phenomena and the engineering of light-matter interactions mediated by Anderson-localized states.

We investigate via a combination of experiments and numerical analyses the collision of elastic vector solitons in a chain of rigid units connected by flexible hinges. Because of the vectorial nature of these solitons, very unusual behaviors are observed: while, as expected, the solitons emerge unaltered from the collision if they excite rotations of the same direction, they do not penetrate each other and instead repel one another if they induce rotations of the opposite direction. Our analysis reveals that such anomalous collisions are a consequence of the large-amplitude characteristics of the solitons, which locally modify the properties of the underlying media. Specifically, their large rotations create a significant barrier for pulses that excite rotations of the opposite direction and this may block their propagation. Our findings provide new insights into the collision dynamics of elastic solitary waves. Furthermore, the observed anomalous collisions pave new ways towards the advanced control of large amplitude mechanical pulses, as they provide opportunities to remotely detect, change, or destruct high-amplitude signals and impacts.

The infinite superpositions of random plane waves are known to be threaded with vortex line singularities which form complicated tangles and obey strict topological rules. We observe that within these structures, a timelike axis appears to emerge with which we can define vortex velocities in a useful way: With both numerical simulations and optical experiments, we show that the statistics of these velocities match those of turbulent quantum fluids such as superfluid helium and atomic Bose-Einstein condensates. These statistics are shown to be independent of system scale. These results raise deep questions about the general nature of quantum chaos and the role of nonlinearity in the structure of turbulence.

Many materials are anisotropic. However, there is no widely accepted measure for characterizing the degree of elastic anisotropy. Here, assuming that the limiting case of extreme anisotropy should possess a positive semidefinite stiffness matrix, we propose three criteria to evaluate measures of anisotropy and show that the existing measures in the literature do not satisfy all of the proposed criteria. We then introduce a new measure of anisotropy based on the maximum strain energy ratio that is universally applicable to all material systems. The proposed measure is helpful for understanding the properties and behaviors of materials. Furthermore, this measure can be easily generalized to situations involving multiple fields and nonlinearity.

Single-atom catalysts (SACs) combine the best of two worlds by bridging heterogeneous and homogeneous catalysis. The superior catalytic properties of SACs, however, can hardly be exploited without a suitable substrate. Here, we explore the possibility of using hybrid organic-inorganic perovskites as supporting materials for single transition-metal atoms. By means of first-principles calculations, we predict that single Pt atoms can be incorporated into methylammonium lead iodide surfaces by replacing the methylammonium groups at the outermost layer. The iodide anions at the surface provide potentially uniform anchoring sites for the Pt atoms and donate electrons, generating negatively charged ${\mathrm{Pt}}_1^{\delta -}$ species that allow for preferential ${\mathrm{O}}_2$ adsorption in the presence of CO. Such Pt sites are able to catalyze CO oxidation and may also play a role in ${\mathrm{CO}}_2$ reduction. The fundamental understanding generated here will shed light on potential applications of hybrid perovskites in the field of (photo)catalysis.

We study the effect of long-ranged interactions on Weyl semimetals. Such interactions can give rise to unpaired Weyl nodes, which we demonstrate by explicitly constructing a system with just a single node—a situation that is fundamentally forbidden by fermion doubling in noninteracting band structures. Adding a magnetic field, we investigate the fate of the chiral anomaly. Remarkably, as long as a system exhibits a single Weyl node in the absence of magnetic fields, arbitrarily weak fields qualitatively restore the lowest Landau level structure of a noninteracting Weyl semimetal. This underlines the universality of the chiral anomaly in the context of Weyl semimetals. We furthermore demonstrate how the topologically protected Fermi-arc surface states are modified by long-ranged interactions.

In 2005, Kane and Mele [Phys. Rev. Lett. 95, 226801 (2005)] predicted that at sufficiently low energy, graphene exhibits a topological state of matter with an energy gap generated by the atomic spin-orbit interaction. However, this intrinsic gap has not been measured to this date. In this Letter, we exploit the chirality of the low-energy states to resolve this gap. We probe the spin states experimentally by employing low temperature microwave excitation in a resistively detected electron-spin resonance on graphene. The structure of the topological bands is reflected in our transport experiments, where our numerical models allow us to identify the resonance signatures. We determine the intrinsic spin-orbit bulk gap to be exactly $42.2\mu \mathrm{eV}$. Electron-spin resonance experiments can reveal the competition between the intrinsic spin-orbit coupling and classical Zeeman energy that arises at low magnetic fields and demonstrate that graphene remains to be a material with surprising properties.

The study of superconductor-ferromagnet interfaces has generated great interest in the last decades, leading to the observation of spin-aligned triplet supercurrents and $0–\pi$ transitions in Josephson junctions where two superconductors are separated by an itinerant ferromagnet. Recently, spin-filter Josephson junctions with ferromagnetic barriers have shown unique transport properties, when compared to standard metallic ferromagnetic junctions, due to the intrinsically nondissipative nature of the tunneling process. Here we present the first extensive characterization of spin polarized Josephson junctions down to 0.3 K, and the first evidence of an incomplete $0–\pi$ transition in highly spin polarized tunnel ferromagnetic junctions. Experimental data are consistent with a progressive enhancement of the magnetic activity with the increase of the barrier thickness, as neatly captured by the simplest theoretical approach including a nonuniform exchange field. For very long junctions, unconventional magnetic activity of the barrier points to the presence of spin-triplet correlations.

We report anomalous enhancement of the critical current at low temperatures in gate-tunable Josephson junctions made from topological insulator ${\mathrm{BiSbTeSe}}_2$ nanoribbons with superconducting Nb electrodes. In contrast to conventional junctions, as a function of the decreasing temperature $T$, the increasing critical current $I_c$ exhibits a sharp upturn at a temperature $T_{*}$ around 20% of the junction critical temperature for several different samples and various gate voltages. The $I_c$ vs $T$ demonstrates a short junction behavior for $T>T_{*}$, but crosses over to a long junction behavior for $T<T_{*}$ with an exponential $T$ dependence $I_c\propto \exp (-k_{B}T/\delta )$, where $k_B$ is the Boltzmann constant. The extracted characteristic energy scale $\delta$ is found to be an order of magnitude smaller than the induced superconducting gap of the junction. We attribute the long-junction behavior with such a small $\delta$ to low-energy Andreev bound states arising from winding of the electronic wave function around the circumference of the topological insulator nanoribbon.

Triplet pairing in ${\mathrm{Sr}}_2{\mathrm{RuO}}_4$ was initially suggested based on the hypothesis of strong ferromagnetic spin fluctuations. Using polarized inelastic neutron scattering, we accurately determine the full spectrum of spin fluctuations in ${\mathrm{Sr}}_2{\mathrm{RuO}}_4$. Besides the well-studied incommensurate magnetic fluctuations, we do find a sizable quasiferromagnetic signal, quantitatively consistent with all macroscopic and microscopic probes. We use this result to address the possibility of magnetically driven triplet superconductivity in ${\mathrm{Sr}}_2{\mathrm{RuO}}_4$. We conclude that, even though the quasiferromagnetic signal is stronger and sharper than previously anticipated, spin fluctuations alone are not enough to generate a triplet state strengthening the need for additional interactions or an alternative pairing scenario.

The $5d$-electron honeycomb compound ${\mathrm{H}}_3{\mathrm{LiIr}}_2{\mathrm{O}}_6$ [K. Kitagawa et al., Nature (London) 554, 341 (2018)] exhibits an apparent quantum spin liquid state. In this intercalated spin-orbital compound, a remarkable pileup of low-energy states was experimentally observed in specific heat and spin relaxation. We show that a bond-disordered Kitaev model can naturally account for this phenomenon, suggesting that disorder plays an essential role in its theoretical description. In the exactly soluble Kitaev model, we obtain, via spin fractionalization, a random bipartite hopping problem of Majorana fermions in a random flux background. This has a divergent low-energy density of states of the required power-law form $N(E)\propto E^{-\nu }$ with a drifting exponent which takes on the value $\nu \approx 1/2$ for relatively strong bond disorder. Breaking time-reversal symmetry removes the divergence of the density of states, as does applying a magnetic field in experiment. We discuss the implication of our scenario, both for future experiments and from a broader perspective.

The scope of magnetic neutron scattering has been expanded by the observation of electronic Dirac dipoles (anapoles) that are polar (parity odd) and magnetic (time odd). A zero-magnetization ferromagnet ${\mathrm{Sm}}_{0.976}{\mathrm{Gd}}_{0.024}{\mathrm{Al}}_2$ with a diamond-type structure presents Dirac multipoles at basis-forbidden reflections that include the standard (2, 2, 2) reflection. Magnetic amplitudes measured at four such reflections are in full accord with a structure factor calculated from the appropriate magnetic space group.

Dark excitons are of fundamental importance for a wide variety of processes in semiconductors but are difficult to investigate using optical techniques due to their weak interaction with light fields. We reveal and characterize dark excitons nonresonantly injected into a semiconductor microcavity structure containing $\mathrm{InGaAs}/\mathrm{GaAs}$ quantum wells by a gated train of eight 100 fs pulses separated by 13 ns by monitoring their interactions with the bright lower polariton mode. We find a surprisingly long dark exciton lifetime of more than 20 ns, which is longer than the time delay between two consecutive pulses. This creates a memory effect that we clearly observe through the variation of the time-resolved transmission signal. We propose a rate equation model that provides a quantitative agreement with the experimental data.

We investigate a quantum battery made of $N$ two-level systems, which is charged by an optical mode via an energy-conserving interaction. We quantify the fraction of energy stored in the battery that can be extracted in order to perform thermodynamic work. We first demonstrate that this quantity is highly reduced by the presence of correlations between the charger and the battery or between the subsystems composing the battery. We then show that the correlation-induced suppression of extractable energy, however, can be mitigated by preparing the charger in a coherent optical state. We conclude by proving that the charger-battery system is asymptotically free of such locking correlations in the $N\to \infty$ limit.

There is now growing evidence of the emergence and biological functionality of liquid crystal features, including nematic order and topological defects, in cellular tissues. However, how such features that intrinsically rely on particle elongation emerge in monolayers of cells with isotropic shapes is an outstanding question. In this Letter, we present a minimal model of cellular monolayers based on cell deformation and force transmission at the cell-cell interface that explains the formation of topological defects and captures the flow-field and stress patterns around them. By including mechanical properties at the individual cell level, we further show that the instability that drives the formation of topological defects, and leads to active turbulence, emerges from a feedback between shape deformation and active driving. The model allows us to suggest new explanations for experimental observations in tissue mechanics, and to propose designs for future experiments.

Sequence-dependent DNA conformation and flexibility play a fundamental role in the specificity of DNA-protein interactions. Here we quantify the DNA crookedness: a sequence-dependent deformation of DNA that consists of periodic bends of the base pair centers chain. Using extensive $100\mu \mathrm{s}$-long, all-atom molecular dynamics simulations, we found that DNA crookedness and its associated flexibility are bijective, which unveils a one-to-one relation between DNA structure and dynamics. This allowed us to build a predictive model to compute the stretch moduli of different DNA sequences from solely their structure. Sequences with very little crookedness show extremely high stretching stiffness and have been previously shown to form unstable nucleosomes and promote gene expression. Interestingly, the crookedness can be tailored by epigenetic modifications, known to affect gene expression. Our results rationalize the idea that the DNA sequence is not only a chemical code, but also a physical one that allows finely regulating its mechanical properties and, possibly, its 3D arrangement inside the cell.