Adoption of innovations, whether new ideas, technologies, or products, is crucially important to knowledge societies. The landmark studies of adoption dealt with innovations having great societal impact (such as antibiotics or hybrid crops) but where determining the utility of the innovation was straightforward (such as fewer side effects or greater yield). Recent large-scale studies of adoption were conducted within heterogeneous populations and focused on products with little societal impact. Here, we focus on a case with great practical significance: adoption by small groups of highly trained individuals of innovations with large societal impact but for which it is impractical to determine the true utility of the innovation. Specifically, we study experimentally the adoption by critical care physicians of a diagnostic assay that complements current protocols for the diagnosis of life-threatening bacterial infections and for which a physician cannot estimate the true accuracy of the assay based on personal experience. We show through computational modeling of the experiment that infection-spreading models—which have been formalized as generalized contagion processes—are not consistent with the experimental data, while a model inspired by opinion models is able to reproduce the empirical data. Our modeling approach enables us to investigate the efficacy of different intervention schemes on the rate and robustness of innovation adoption in the real world. While our study is focused on critical care physicians, our findings have implications for other settings in education, research, and business, where small groups of highly qualified peers make decisions about the adoption of innovations whose utility is difficult if not impossible to gauge.

The quantum evolution that occurs after a metallic lead is suddenly connected to an electron system contains information about the excitation spectrum of the combined system. We exploit this type of “quantum quench” to probe the presence of Majorana fermions at the ends of a topological superconducting wire. We obtain an algebraically decaying overlap (Loschmidt echo) $\mathcal{L}(t)={|⟨\psi (0)|\psi (t)⟩|}^2\sim t^{-\alpha }$ for large times after the quench, with a universal critical exponent $\alpha =\frac{1}{4}$ that is found to be remarkably robust against details of the setup, such as interactions in the normal lead, the existence of additional lead channels, or the presence of bound levels between the lead and the superconductor. As in recent quantum-dot experiments, this exponent could be measured by optical absorption, offering a new signature of Majorana zero modes that is distinct from interferometry and tunneling spectroscopy.

In statistically homogeneous turbulent flows, pressure forces provide the main mechanism to redistribute kinetic energy among fluid elements, without net contribution to the overall energy budget. This holds true in both two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) flows, which show fundamentally different physics. As we demonstrate here, pressure forces act on fluid elements very differently in these two cases. We find in numerical simulations that in 3D pressure forces strongly accelerate the fastest fluid elements, and that in 2D this effect is absent. In 3D turbulence, our findings put forward a mechanism for a possibly singular buildup of energy, and thus may shed new light on the smoothness problem of the solution of the Navier-Stokes equation in 3D.

Current modeling of infectious diseases allows for the study of complex and realistic scenarios that go from the population to the individual level of description. However, most epidemic models assume that the spreading process takes place on a single level (be it a single population, a metapopulation system, or a network of contacts). In particular, interdependent contagion phenomena can be addressed only if we go beyond the scheme-one pathogen-one network. In this paper, we propose a framework that allows us to describe the spreading dynamics of two concurrent diseases. Specifically, we characterize analytically the epidemic thresholds of the two diseases for different scenarios and compute the temporal evolution characterizing the unfolding dynamics. Results show that there are regions of the parameter space in which the onset of a disease’s outbreak is conditioned to the prevalence levels of the other disease. Moreover, we show, for the susceptible-infected-susceptible scheme, that under certain circumstances, finite and not vanishing epidemic thresholds are found even at the limit for scale-free networks. For the susceptible-infected-removed scenario, the phenomenology is richer and additional interdependencies show up. We also find that the secondary thresholds for the susceptible-infected-susceptible and susceptible-infected-removed models are different, which results directly from the interaction between both diseases. Our work thus solves an important problem and paves the way toward a more comprehensive description of the dynamics of interacting diseases.

Inspiraling compact binaries as standard sirens will become an invaluable tool for cosmology when we enter the gravitational-wave detection era. However, a degeneracy in the information carried by gravitational waves between the total rest-frame mass $M$ and the redshift $z$ of the source implies that neither can be directly extracted from the signal; only the combination $M(1+z)$, the redshifted mass, can be directly extracted from the signal. Recent work has shown that for third-generation detectors, a tidal correction to the gravitational-wave phase in the late-inspiral signal of binary neutron star systems can be used to break the mass-redshift degeneracy. Here, we propose to use the signature encoded in the postmerger signal allowing the accurate extraction of the intrinsic rest-frame mass of the source, in turn permitting the determination of source redshift and luminosity distance. The entirety of this analysis method and any subsequent cosmological inference derived from it would be obtained solely from gravitational-wave observations and, hence, would be independent of the cosmological distance ladder. Using numerical simulations of binary neutron star mergers of different mass, we model gravitational-wave signals at different redshifts and use a Bayesian parameter estimation to determine the accuracy with which the redshift and mass can be extracted. We find that for a known illustrative neutron star equation of state and using the Einstein telescope, the median of the $1\sigma$ confidence regions in redshift corresponds to $\sim 10\%–20\%$ uncertainties at redshifts of $z<0.04$.

Quantum electromechanical systems offer a unique opportunity to probe quantum noise properties in macroscopic devices, properties that ultimately stem from Heisenberg’s uncertainty relations. A simple example of this behavior is expected to occur in a microwave parametric transducer, where mechanical motion generates motional sidebands corresponding to the up-and-down frequency conversion of microwave photons. Because of quantum vacuum noise, the rates of these processes are expected to be unequal. We measure this fundamental imbalance in a microwave transducer coupled to a radio-frequency mechanical mode, cooled near the ground state of motion. We also discuss the subtle origin of this imbalance: depending on the measurement scheme, the imbalance is most naturally attributed to the quantum fluctuations of either the mechanical mode or of the electromagnetic field.

Movement within eukaryotic cells largely originates from localized forces exerted by myosin motors on scaffolds of actin filaments. Although individual motors locally exert both contractile and extensile forces, large actomyosin structures at the cellular scale are overwhelmingly contractile, suggesting that the scaffold serves to favor contraction over extension. While this mechanism is well understood in highly organized striated muscle, its origin in disordered networks such as the cell cortex is unknown. Here, we develop a mathematical model of the actin scaffold’s local two- or three-dimensional mechanics and identify four competing contraction mechanisms. We predict that one mechanism dominates, whereby local deformations of the actin break the balance between contraction and extension. In this mechanism, contractile forces result mostly from motors plucking the filaments transversely rather than buckling them longitudinally. These findings shed light on recent in vitro experiments and provide a new geometrical understanding of contractility in the myriad of disordered actomyosin systems found in vivo.

Quantum phase transitions are usually studied in terms of Hermitian Hamiltonians. However, cold-atom experiments are intrinsically non-Hermitian because of spontaneous decay. Here, we show that non-Hermitian systems exhibit quantum phase transitions that are beyond the paradigm of Hermitian physics. We consider the non-Hermitian $XY$ model, which can be implemented using three-level atoms with spontaneous decay. We exactly solve the model in one dimension and show that there is a quantum phase transition from short-range order to quasi-long-range order despite the absence of a continuous symmetry in the Hamiltonian. The ordered phase has a frustrated spin pattern. The critical exponent $\nu$ can be 1 or $1/2$. Our results can be seen experimentally with trapped ions, cavity QED, and atoms in optical lattices.

We consider two-dimensional lattice models that support Ising anyonic excitations and are coupled to a thermal bath. We propose a phenomenological model for the resulting short-time dynamics that includes pair creation, hopping, braiding, and fusion of anyons. By explicitly constructing topological quantum error-correcting codes for this class of system, we use our thermalization model to estimate the lifetime of the quantum information stored in the encoded spaces. To decode and correct errors in these codes, we adapt several existing topological decoders to the non-Abelian setting. We perform large-scale numerical simulations of these two-dimensional Ising anyon systems and find that the thresholds of these models range from 13% to 25%. To our knowledge, these are the first numerical threshold estimates for quantum codes without explicit additive structure.

The effective Lagrangian for Nambu-Goldstone bosons (NGBs) in systems without Lorentz invariance has a novel feature that some of the NGBs are canonically conjugate to each other, hence describing 1 dynamical degree of freedom by two NGB fields. We develop explicit forms of their effective Lagrangian up to the quadratic order in derivatives. We clarify the counting rules of NGB degrees of freedom and completely classify possibilities of such canonically conjugate pairs based on the topology of the coset spaces. Its consequence on the dispersion relations of the NGBs is clarified. We also present simple scaling arguments to see whether interactions among NGBs are marginal or irrelevant, which justifies a lore in the literature about the possibility of symmetry breaking in $1+1$ dimensions.

Quantum random number generators (QRNGs) can significantly improve the security of cryptographic protocols by ensuring that generated keys cannot be predicted. However, the cost, size, and power requirements of current Quantum random number generators have prevented them from becoming widespread. In the meantime, the quality of the cameras integrated in mobile telephones has improved significantly so that now they are sensitive to light at the few-photon level. We demonstrate how these can be used to generate random numbers of a quantum origin.

High pressure provides a powerful means for exploring unconventional superconductivity which appears mostly on the border of magnetism. Here, we report the discovery of pressure-induced heavy-fermion superconductivity up to 2.5 K in the antiferromanget ${\mathrm{CeAu}}_2{\mathrm{Si}}_2$ ($T_N\approx 10\mathrm{K}$). Remarkably, the magnetic and superconducting phases are found to overlap across an unprecedentedly wide pressure interval from 11.8 to 22.3 GPa. Moreover, both the bulk $T_c$ and $T_M$ are strongly enhanced when increasing the pressure from 16.7 to 20.2 GPa. $T_c$ reaches a maximum at a pressure slightly below $p_c\approx 22.5\mathrm{GPa}$, at which magnetic order disappears. Furthermore, the scaling behavior of the resistivity provides evidence for a continuous delocalization of the Ce $4f$ electrons associated with a critical end point lying just above $p_c$. We show that the maximum $T_c$ of ${\mathrm{CeAu}}_2{\mathrm{Si}}_2$ actually occurs at almost the same unit-cell volume as that of ${\mathrm{CeCu}}_2{\mathrm{Si}}_2$ and ${\mathrm{CeCu}}_2{\mathrm{Ge}}_2$, and when the Kondo and crystal-field splitting energies become comparable. Dynamical mean-filed theory calculations suggest that the peculiar behavior in pressurized ${\mathrm{CeAu}}_2{\mathrm{Si}}_2$ might be related to its $\mathrm{Ce}\text{−}4f$ orbital occupancy. Our results not only provide a unique example of the interplay between superconductivity and magnetism, but also underline the role of orbital physics in understanding Ce-based heavy-fermion systems.

A theoretical study describing the coherence properties of near-field Raman scattering in two- and one-dimensional systems is presented. The model is applied to the Raman modes of pristine graphene and graphene edges. Our analysis is based on the tip-enhanced Raman scheme, in which a sharp metal tip located near the sample surface acts as a broadband optical antenna that transfers the information contained in the spatially correlated (but nonpropagating) near field to the far field. The dependence of the scattered signal on the tip-sample separation is explored, and the theory predicts that the signal enhancement depends on the particular symmetry of a vibrational mode. The model can be applied to extract the correlation length $L_{\mathrm{c}}$ of optical phonons from experimentally recorded near-field Raman measurements. The coherence properties of optical phonons have been broadly explored in the time and frequency domains, and the spatially resolved approach presented here provides a complementary methodology for the study of local material properties at the nanoscale.

A distinct electronic structure was observed in the single-layer FeSe which shows surprisingly high-temperature superconductivity over 65 K. Here, we demonstrate that the electronic structure can be explained by the effective strain effect due to substrates. More importantly, we find that this electronic structure can be tuned into robust topological phases from a topologically trivial metallic phase by the spin-orbital interaction and couplings to substrates. The topological phase is robust against any perturbations that preserve the time-reversal symmetry. Our study suggests that nontrivial topology and high-$T_c$ superconductivity can be intertwined in the single FeSe layer to search novel physics.

Weak connections between superconductors or superfluids can differ from classical links due to quantum coherence, which allows flow without resistance. Transport properties through such weak links can be described with a single function, the current-phase relationship, which serves as the quantum analog of the current-voltage relationship. Here, we present a technique for inteferometrically measuring the current-phase relationship of superfluid weak links. We interferometrically measure the phase gradient around a ring-shaped superfluid Bose-Einstein condensate containing a rotating weak link, allowing us to identify the current flowing around the ring. While our Bose-Einstein condensate weak link operates in the hydrodynamic regime, this technique can be extended to all types of weak links (including tunnel junctions) in any phase-coherent quantum gas. Moreover, it can also measure the current-phase relationships of excitations. Such measurements may open new avenues of research in quantum transport.

We study the properties of a quantum dot coupled to a topological superconductor and a normal lead and discuss the interplay between Kondo-and Majorana-induced couplings in quantum dots. The latter appears due to the presence of Majorana zero-energy modes localized, for example, at the ends of the one-dimensional superconductor. We investigate the phase diagram of the system as a function of Kondo and Majorana interactions using a renormalization-group analysis, a slave-boson mean-field theory, and numerical simulations using the density-matrix renormalization-group method. We show that, in addition to the well-known Kondo fixed point, the system may flow to a new fixed point controlled by the Majorana-induced coupling, which is characterized by nontrivial correlations between a localized spin on the dot and the fermion parity of the topological superconductor and the normal lead. We compute several measurable quantities, such as differential tunneling conductance and impurity-spin susceptibility, which highlight some peculiar features characteristic to the Majorana fixed point.

We propose a construction of a cholesteric pitch axis for an arbitrary nematic director field as an eigenvalue problem. Our definition leads to a Frenet-Serret description of an orthonormal triad determined by this axis, the director, and the mutually perpendicular direction. With this tool, we are able to compare defect structures in cholesterics, biaxial nematics, and smectics. Though they all have similar ground state manifolds, the defect structures are different and cannot, in general, be translated from one phase to the other.

We use inverse methods of statistical mechanics and computer simulations to investigate whether an isotropic interaction designed to stabilize a given two-dimensional lattice will also favor an analogous three-dimensional structure, and vice versa. Specifically, we determine the 3D-ordered lattices favored by isotropic potentials optimized to exhibit stable 2D honeycomb (or square) periodic structures, as well as the 2D-ordered structures favored by isotropic interactions designed to stabilize 3D diamond (or simple cubic) lattices. We find a remarkable “transferability" of isotropic potentials designed to stabilize analogous morphologies in 2D and 3D, irrespective of the exact interaction form, and we discuss the basis of this cross-dimensional behavior. Our results suggest that the discovery of interactions that drive assembly into certain 3D periodic structures of interest can be assisted by less computationally intensive optimizations targeting the analogous 2D lattices.