We present the theoretical derivation and numerical implementation of the linear-response equations for relativistic quantum-electrodynamical density functional theory (QEDFT). In contrast to previous works based on the Pauli-Fierz Hamiltonian, our approach describes electrons interacting with photonic cavity modes at the four-component Dirac-Kohn-Sham level, derived from fully relativistic QED through a series of established approximations. Moreover, we show that a new type of spin-orbit-like (SO) cavity-mediated interaction appears under the relativistic description of the coupling of matter with quantized cavity modes. Benchmark calculations performed for atoms of group 12 elements (Zn, Cd, Hg) demonstrate how a relativistic treatment enables the description of exciton polaritons that arise from the hybridization of formally forbidden singlet-triplet transitions with cavity modes. For atoms in cavities tuned on resonance with a singlet-triplet transition, we discover a significant interplay between SO effects and coupling to an off-resonant intense singlet-singlet transition. This dynamic relationship highlights the crucial role of ab initio approaches in understanding cavity quantum electrodynamics. Finally, using the mercury porphyrin complex as an example, we show that relativistic linear-response QEDFT provides computationally feasible first-principles calculations of polaritonic states in large heavy-element-containing molecules of chemical interest.

The ${{}^{1}S}_0-{{}^{3}P}_0$ clock transition in strontium serves as the foundation for the world’s best atomic clocks and for gravitational wave detector concepts in clock atom interferometry. This transition is weakly allowed in the fermionic isotope ${}^{87}\mathrm{Sr}$ but strongly forbidden in bosonic isotopes. Here, we demonstrate coherent excitation of the clock transition in bosonic ${}^{88}\mathrm{Sr}$ using a novel collinear three-photon process in a weak magnetic field. We observe Rabi oscillations with frequencies of up to 50 kHz using $\mathrm{W}/{\mathrm{cm}}^2$ laser intensities and Gauss-level magnetic field amplitudes. The absence of nuclear spin in bosonic isotopes offers decreased sensitivity to magnetic fields and optical lattice light shifts, enabling atomic clocks with reduced systematic errors. The collinear propagation of the laser fields permits the interrogation of spatially separated atomic ensembles with common laser pulses, a key requirement for dark matter searches and gravitational wave detection with next-generation quantum sensors.

Unlike biological active matter that constantly adapt to their environment, the motors of synthetic active particles are typically agnostic to their surroundings and merely operate at constant force. Here, we design colloidal active rods capable of modulating their inner activity in response to crowding, thereby enforcing a primitive form of quorum sensing interactions. Through experiments, simulations, and theory we elucidate the impact of these interactions on the phase behavior of isotropic active matter. We demonstrate that, when conditioned to density, motility regulation can either lead to an absorbing phase transition, where all particles freeze their dynamics, or to atypical phase separation, where flat interfaces supporting a net pressure drop are in mechanical equilibrium. Fully active and fully arrested particles can then form heterogeneous patterns ruled by the competition between quorum sensing and mechanical interactions. Beyond the specifics of motile colloids, we expect our findings to apply broadly to adaptive active matter assembled from living or synthetic units.

Tuning the density of resident electrons or holes in semiconductors through electrostatic doping provides crucial insight into the composition of the many excitonic complexes that are routinely observed as absorption or photoluminescence resonances in optical studies. Moreover, we can change the way these resonances shift and broaden in energy by controlling the quantum numbers (e.g., spin and valley) of the resident carriers with applied magnetic fields and doping levels, as well as by selecting the quantum numbers of the photoexcited or recombining electron-hole ($e\text{−}h$) pair through optical polarization. Here, we discuss the roles of distinguishability and optimality of excitonic complexes, showing them to be key ingredients that determine the energy shifts and broadening of optical resonances in charge-tunable semiconductors. A distinguishable $e\text{−}h$ pair means that the electron and hole undergoing photoexcitation or recombination have quantum numbers that are not shared by any of the resident carriers. An optimal excitonic complex refers to a complex whose particles come with all available quantum numbers of the resident carriers. Based on the carrier density, magnetic field, and light polarization, all optical resonances may be classified as either distinct or indistinct depending on the distinguishability of the $e\text{−}h$ pair, and the underlying excitonic complex can be classified as either optimal or suboptimal. The universality of these classifications, inherited from the fundamental Pauli exclusion principle, allows us to understand how optical resonances shift in energy and whether they should broaden as doping is increased. This understanding is supported by conclusive evidence that the broadening and decay of optical resonances cannot be simply attributed to enhanced screening when resident carriers are added to a semiconductor. Finally, applying the classification scheme in either monolayer or moiré heterobilayer semiconductor systems, we relate the energy shift and amplitude of the neutral-exciton resonance to the compressibility of the resident carrier gas.

The history of astronomy has shown that advances in sensing methods open up new windows to the Universe and often lead to unexpected discoveries. Quantum sensor networks in combination with traditional astronomical observations are emerging as a novel modality for multimessenger astronomy. Here we develop a generic analysis framework that uses a data-driven approach to model the sensitivity of a quantum sensor network to astrophysical signals as a consequence of beyond-the-standard model (BSM) physics. The analysis method evaluates correlations between sensors to search for BSM signals coincident with astrophysical triggers, such as black hole mergers, supernovae, or fast radio bursts. Complementary to astroparticle approaches that search for particlelike signals (e.g., weakly interacting massive particles), quantum sensors are sensitive to wavelike signals from exotic quantum fields. This analysis method can be applied to networks of different types of quantum sensors, such as atomic clocks, matter-wave interferometers, and nuclear clocks, which can probe many types of interactions between BSM fields and standard model particles. We use this analysis method to carry out the first direct search utilizing a terrestrial network of precision quantum sensors for BSM fields emitted during a black hole merger. Specifically, we use the global network of optical magnetometers for exotic physics (GNOME) to perform a search for exotic low-mass field (ELF) bursts generated in coincidence with a gravitational-wave signal from a binary black hole merger (GW200311_115853) detected by LIGO/Virgo on the March 11, 2020. The associated gravitational wave heralds the arrival of the ELF burst that interacts with the spins of fermions in the magnetometers. This enables GNOME to serve as a tool for multimessenger astronomy. Our search found no significant events and, consequently, we place the first lab-based limits on combinations of ELF production and coupling parameters.

In the tensor network approach to statistical physics, properties of the critical point of a 2D lattice model are encoded by a four-legged tensor which is a fixed point of a renormalization group (RG) map. The traditional way to find the fixed-point tensor consists in iterating the RG map after having tuned the temperature to criticality. Here, we develop a different and more direct technique, which solves the fixed-point equation via the Newton method. This is challenging due to the existence of marginal deformations—linear transformations of the coordinate frame, which parametrize a two-dimensional family of fixed points. We address this challenge by including a 90° rotation into the RG map. This flips the sign of the problematic marginal eigenvalues, rendering the fixed point isolated and accessible via the Newton method. We demonstrate the power of this technique via explicit computations for the 2D Ising and three-state Potts models. Using the Gilt-TNR algorithm at bond dimension $\chi =30$, we find the fixed-point tensors with ${10}^{-9}$ accuracy, much higher than what was previously achieved.

We consider a generic one-dimensional spin system of length $L$, arbitrarily large, with strictly local interactions, for example, nearest neighbor, and prove that the dynamical $\alpha$-Rényi entropies, $0<\alpha \le 1$, of an initial product state grow at most linearly in time. This result arises from a general relation among dynamical $\alpha$-Rényi entropies and Lieb-Robinson bounds. We extend our bound on the dynamical generation of entropy to systems with exponential decay of interactions, for values of $\alpha$ close enough to 1, and, moreover, to initial pure states with low entanglement, of the order of $\log L$, that are typically represented by critical states. We establish that low entanglement states have an efficient matrix product state representation that persists at least up to times of the order of $\log L$. The main technical tools are the Lieb-Robinson bounds, to locally approximate the dynamics of the spin chain, a strict upper bound of Audenaert on $\alpha$-Rényi entropies, and a bound on their concavity. Such a bound, that we provide in an appendix, can be of independent interest.

Breathing solitons consist of a fast beating wave within a compact envelope of stable shape and velocity. They can propagate and carry information and energy in a variety of contexts such as plasmas, optical fibers, and cold atoms, but propagating breathers have remained elusive when energy conservation is broken. Here, we report on the observation of breathing, unidirectional, arbitrarily long-lived solitons in nonreciprocal, nonconservative active metamaterials. Combining precision desktop experiments, numerical simulations, and perturbation theory on generalizations of the sine-Gordon and nonlinear Schrödinger equations, we demonstrate that unidirectional breathers generically emerge in weakly nonlinear nonreciprocal materials, and that their dynamics are governed by an unstable fixed point. Crucially, breathing solitons can persist for arbitrarily long times provided that (i) this fixed point displays a bifurcation when a delicate balance between energy injection and dissipation is struck and (ii) the initial conditions allow the dynamics to reach this bifurcation point. Importantly, discrete effects tend to stabilize these nonreciprocal breathers over a wider range of initial conditions. Our work establishes nonreciprocity as a promising avenue to generate stable nonlinear unidirectional waves and could be generalized beyond metamaterials to optics, soft matter, and superconducting circuits.

The metallic oxide ${\mathrm{RuO}}_2$ has emerged as a promising altermagnet candidate, owing to reports of this material hosting antiferromagnetic ordering accompanied by a spin-split electronic band structure characteristic of time-reversal symmetry breaking. However, recent studies have robustly questioned this scenario. Here we map the Fermi surface of pristine single-crystalline ${\mathrm{RuO}}_2$. By measuring magnetic quantum oscillations of a bulk thermodynamic property, our study resolves the electronic structure present in the bulk of ${\mathrm{RuO}}_2$. Several Fermi sheets are discerned, with a range of effective quasiparticle masses up to 5 times that of the bare electron mass. We compare our measurements with the predictions for altermagnetic and nonmagnetic Fermi surfaces deduced from density functional theory calculations. The quantum oscillatory frequency spectra correspond very poorly to the profile expected for the case of altermagnetism; by contrast, they correspond well to the nonmagnetic scenario. Our findings place significant constraints on the bulk magnetic properties of ${\mathrm{RuO}}_2$ and strongly suggest that this material is an itinerant electron paramagnet.

In this study, we investigate the potential of electronic interferometers for probing the quantum state of electromagnetic radiation on a chip at subnanosecond timescales. We propose to use single-electron excitations propagating within an electronic Mach-Zehnder interferometer in the Aharonov-Bohm-dominated regime. We discuss how information about the quantum state of the electromagnetic radiation is encoded into the interference contribution to the average outgoing electrical current. By investigating squeezed radiation and single-edge magnetoplasmons probed by leviton pulses in a realistic setup, we show that single-electron interferometers have the potential to probe quantum radiation in the time domain with subnanosecond to picosecond time resolution. Our research could have significant implications for probing the fundamental properties of light in the microwave to terahertz domains at extremely short timescales.

Semiconductor spin qubits have emerged as a promising platform for quantum computing, following a significant improvement in their control fidelities over recent years. Increasing the qubit count remains challenging, beginning with the fabrication of small features and complex fan-outs. A particular challenge has been formed by the need for individual barrier gates to control the exchange interaction between adjacent spin qubits. Here, we propose a method to vary two-qubit interactions without applying pulses on individual barrier gates while also remaining insensitive to detuning noise in first order. Experimentally we find that changing plunger gate voltages over 300 mV can tune the exchange energy $J$ from 100 kHz to 60 MHz. This allows us to perform two-qubit operations without changing the barrier gate voltage. Based on these findings we conceptualize a spin qubit architecture without individual barrier gates, simplifying the fabrication while maintaining the control necessary for universal quantum computation.

The transport of DNA polymers through nanoscale pores is central to many biological processes, from bacterial gene exchange to viral infection. In single-molecule nanopore sensing, the detection of nucleic acid and protein analytes relies on the passage of a long biopolymer through a nanoscale aperture. Understanding the dynamics of polymer translocation through nanopores, especially the relation between ionic current signal and polymer conformations, is thus essential for the successful identification of targets. Here, by analyzing ionic current traces of dsDNA translocation, we reveal that features up to now uniquely associated with knots are instead different structural motifs: plectonemes. By combining experiments and simulations, we demonstrate that such plectonemes form because of the solvent flow that induces rotation of the helical DNA fragment in the nanopore, causing torsion propagation outwards from the pore. Molecular dynamic simulations reveal that plectoneme nucleation is dominated by the applied torque, while the translocation time and size of the plectonemes depend on the coupling of torque and pulling force, a mechanism that might also be relevant for in vivo DNA organization. Experiments with nicked DNA constructs show that the number of plectonemes depends on the rotational constraints of the translocating molecules. Thus, our work introduces plectonemes as essential structural features that must be considered for accurate analysis of dsDNA polymers in the nanopore.

Emergent cooperative functionality in active matter systems plays a crucial role in various applications of active swarms, ranging from pollutant foraging and collective threat detection to tissue embolization. In nature, animals like bats and whales use acoustic signals to communicate and enhance their evolutionary competitiveness. Here, we show that information exchange by acoustic waves between active agents creates a large variety of multifunctional structures. In our realization of collective swarms, each unit is equipped with an acoustic emitter and a detector. The swarmers respond to the resulting acoustic field by adjusting their emission frequency and migrating toward the strongest signal. We find self-organized structures with different morphology, including snakelike self-propelled entities, localized aggregates, and spinning rings. These collective swarms exhibit emergent functionalities, such as phenotype robustness, collective decision making, and environmental sensing. For instance, the collectives show self-regeneration after strong distortion, allowing them to penetrate through narrow constrictions. Additionally, they exhibit a population-scale perception of reflecting objects and a collective response to acoustic control inputs. Our results provide insights into fundamental organization mechanisms in information-exchanging swarms. They may inspire design principles for technical implementations in the form of acoustically or electromagnetically communicating microrobotic swarms capable of performing complex tasks and concerting collective responses to external cues.

The non-Hermitian skin effect characterized by a proliferation of exponentially localized edge modes in open-boundary systems has led to the discovery of numerous novel physical phenomena that challenge the limits of conventional band theory. In sharp contrast to this familiar exponential localization, we report a distinct phenomenon—the algebraic non-Hermitian skin effect—which arises generically in non-Hermitian systems with two or more spatial dimensions. In such cases, the amplitude of skin modes typically decays from the boundary following a power law, rather than an exponential form—a behavior not captured by existing theoretical frameworks. To bridge this gap and describe the transition in localization from one to higher dimensions, we develop a generalized Fermi surface framework applicable to open-boundary systems in arbitrary dimensions. This framework not only reproduces known results for the exponential skin effect in 1D, but also predicts a new class of skin effects with algebraic decay in 2D and above. We demonstrate this framework in both tight-binding and continuum models in two and three dimensions. This investigation not only unveils a novel category of the non-Hermitian skin effect but also offers a comprehensive theoretical structure that describes skin effects in any non-Hermitian system, irrespective of its spatial dimensionality.

It was conjectured 30 years ago that gravity could arise from the entropic rearrangement of information. We offer a set of microscopic quantum models which realize this idea in detail. In particular, we suggest a simple mechanism by which Newton’s law of gravity arises from extremization of the free energy of a collection of qubits or oscillators, rather than from the exchange of virtual quanta of a fundamental field. We give both a local and a nonlocal version of the construction and show how to distinguish a range of these entropic models from ordinary perturbative quantum gravity using existing observations and near-term experiments.

We derive Floquet theory from quantum geometry. We identify quasienergy folding as a consequence of a broken gauge group of the adiabatic gauge potential $\mathrm{U}(1)\mapsto \mathbb{Z}$. Fixing instead the gauge freedom using the parallel-transport gauge uniquely decomposes Floquet dynamics into a purely geometric and a purely dynamical evolution. The dynamical average-energy operator provides an unambiguous sorting of the quasienergy spectrum, identifying a Floquet ground state and suggesting a way to define the filling of Floquet-Bloch bands. We exemplify the features of geometric Floquet theory using an exactly solvable $XY$ model and a nonintegrable kicked Ising chain. We elucidate the geometric origin of inherently nonequilibrium effects, like the $\pi$-quasienergy splitting in discrete time crystals or $\pi$-edge modes in anomalous Floquet topological insulators. The spectrum of the average-energy operator is a susceptible indicator for both heating and spatiotemporal symmetry-breaking transitions. Last, we demonstrate that the periodic lab-frame Hamiltonian generates transitionless counterdiabatic driving for Floquet eigenstates. This work directly bridges seemingly unrelated areas of nonequilibrium physics.

Gravitational-wave (GW) observations of binary black-hole (BBH) coalescences are expected to address outstanding questions in astrophysics, cosmology, and fundamental physics. Inference of BBH parameters relies on waveform models, and realizing the full discovery potential of upcoming LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA observing runs and new ground-based facilities (such as the Einstein Telescope and Cosmic Explorer) hinges on the accuracy of these waveform models. Using linear-signal approximation methods and Bayesian analysis, we start to assess our readiness for what lies ahead using two state-of-the-art quasicircular, spin-precessing models: seobnrv5phm and imrphenomxphm. We find that systematic biases increase with the spin of the BH, with parameter biases being approximately 6 to 8 times likelier, if the primary-spin magnitude exceeds 0.5 compared to when it is less than 0.5. Additionally, we ascertain that current waveforms can accurately recover the distribution of masses in the LVK astrophysical population but not spins. Upon exploring the broader parameter space of BHs, we find that systematic biases increase with detector-frame total mass, binary asymmetry, and spin precession, with a majority of such binaries incurring parameter biases, extending up to redshifts around 3 in future detectors. Furthermore, we examine three “golden” events characterized by mass ratios of approximately 6 to 10, significant spin magnitudes ($0.6-0.9$), and high precession, evaluating how systematic biases may affect their scientific outcomes. Our findings reveal that current waveforms fail to enable the unbiased measurement of the Hubble-Lemaître parameter and sky localization from loud signals, even for current detectors. Moreover, highly asymmetric systems within the lower BH mass gap exhibit biased measurements of the secondary-companion mass, which impacts the physics of both neutron stars and formation channels. Similarly, we deduce that the primary mass of massive binaries ($>60M_{\odot }$) will also be biased, affecting supernova physics. Future progress in analytical calculations and numerical-relativity simulations, crucial for calibrating the models, must target regions of the parameter space with significant biases to develop more accurate models. Only then can precision GW astronomy fulfill the promise it holds.

Fluctuations of conserved quantities within a subsystem are nonlocal observables that provide unique insights into quantum many-body systems. In this paper, we study bipartite charge (and spin) fluctuations across interaction-driven “metal-insulator transitions” out of Landau Fermi liquids. The “charge insulators” include a class of non-Fermi-liquid states of fractionalized degrees of freedom, such as compressible composite Fermi liquids (for spinless electrons) and incompressible spin-liquid Mott insulators (for spin-$1/2$ electrons). We find that charge fluctuations $\mathcal{F}$ exhibit distinct leading-order scalings across the transition: $\mathcal{F}\sim L\log (L)$ in Landau Fermi liquids and $\mathcal{F}\sim L$ in charge insulators, where $L$ is the linear size of the subsystem. In composite Fermi liquids, under certain conditions, we also identify a universal constant term $-\mathrm{f}(\theta )|{\sigma }_{xy}|/(2\pi )$ when the subsystem geometry contains a sharp corner, where $\mathrm{f}(\theta )$ denotes a function of the corner angle and ${\sigma }_{xy}$ is the Hall conductivity. At the critical point, provided the transition is continuous, the leading scaling $\mathcal{F}\sim L$ is accompanied by a subleading universal corner contribution $-\log (L)\mathrm{f}(\theta )C_{\rho }/2$ with the same angle dependence $\mathrm{f}(\theta )$, and the universal coefficient $C_{\rho }$ is directly related to the predicted universal jumps in longitudinal and Hall resistivities. These results establish fluctuation-transport relations, paving the way for numerical and experimental studies of unconventional quantum criticalities in metals.

The bootstrap method aims to solve problems by imposing constraints on the space of physical observables, which often follow from physical assumptions such as positivity and symmetry. Here, we employ a bootstrap approach to study interacting electrons in the lowest Landau level by minimizing the energy as a function of the static structure factor subject to a set of constraints, bypassing the need to construct the full many-body wave function. This approach rigorously lower bounds the ground state energy, making it complementary to conventional variational upper bounds. We show that the lower bound we obtain is relatively tight, within at most a few percent from the ground state energy computed with exact diagonalization at small system sizes, and generally gets tighter as we include more constraints. We also show that, by combining the bootstrap lower bounds with variational Monte Carlo calculations for various quantum Hall states, we can obtain two-sided bounds on the ground state energy that rigorously bounds the error to below a few percentage for large system sizes where exact diagonalization is not accessible. Beyond the energetics, our results reproduce the correct power law dependence of the pair correlation function at short distances and the existence of a large entanglement gap in the two-particle entanglement spectra for the Laughlin states at $\nu =1/3$. We further identify signatures of the composite Fermi liquid state close to half filling. This shows that the bootstrap approach is capable, in principle, of describing nontrivial gapped topologically ordered, as well as gapless, phases. We further study the evolution of the ground state energy and correlation functions as we interpolate between the lowest and first Landau levels at half filling and find indications of a phase transition from a composite Fermi liquid to a non-Abelian state. We also discuss more generally how the geometry of the allowed set of structure factors can be used to diagnose phase transitions. At the end, we discuss possible extensions and current limitations of this approach and how they can be overcome in future studies. Our work establishes numerical bootstrap as a promising method to study many-body phases in topological bands, paving the way to its application in moiré platforms where the energetic competition between fractional quantum anomalous Hall, symmetry broken, and gapless states remains poorly understood.

Heteroanionic thermoelectric (TE) oxides have attracted considerable attention due to their unique phonon and carrier transports. The recent investigation of ${\mathrm{Bi}}_6{\mathrm{Cu}}_2{\mathrm{Se}}_4{\mathrm{O}}_6$ has opened new prospects for the development of $n$-type TE oxides. Herein, we first investigate the mechanism of superlattice formation and the origin of narrow band gap in ${\mathrm{Bi}}_6{\mathrm{Cu}}_2{\mathrm{Se}}_4{\mathrm{O}}_6$. The physical picture of lattice vibration hierarchy in ${\mathrm{Bi}}_6{\mathrm{Cu}}_2{\mathrm{Se}}_4{\mathrm{O}}_6$ is indexed to the lone pair rattler of Bi and liquidlike behavior of Cu since more diffusons are observed as temperature increases. Additionally, the modified band structure and crystal defects are responsible for the stable $n$-type transport in ${\mathrm{Bi}}_6{\mathrm{Cu}}_2{\mathrm{Se}}_4{\mathrm{O}}_6$ compared to the well-known $p$-type BiCuSeO. Combining phonon transport and carrier mean-free-path filtering, theoretical results demonstrate that $n$-type case exhibits two optimized carrier concentration regions with peak $ZT$ values approaching $\sim 1.0$ at 300 K and $\sim 1.4$ at 900 K, respectively, while $p$-type case shows a higher power factor of $\sim 90\mathrm{\mu }\mathrm{W}{\mathrm{cm}}^{-1}{\mathrm{K}}^{-2}$, leading to high-ranged TE performance among 300–900 K. Our results demonstrate ${\mathrm{Bi}}_6{\mathrm{Cu}}_2{\mathrm{Se}}_4{\mathrm{O}}_6$ is a promising TE oxide with potential applications in both refrigeration and power generation. Moreover, understanding and establishing a physical and chemical link between the superlattice structure and TE properties enables the future development of TE oxides.