We present a low-temperature experimental test of the fluctuation theorem for electron transport through a double quantum dot. The rare entropy-consuming system trajectories are detected in the form of single charges flowing against the source-drain bias by using time-resolved charge detection with a quantum point contact. We find that these trajectories appear with a frequency that agrees with the theoretical predictions even under strong nonequilibrium conditions, when the finite bandwidth of the charge detection is taken into account.

Pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone bosons (pNGBs) are naturally light, spin-zero particles that can be interesting dark-matter (DM) candidates. We study the phenomenology of a pNGB $\theta$ associated with an approximate symmetry of the neutrino seesaw sector. A small coupling of $\theta$ to the Higgs boson is induced radiatively by the neutrino Yukawa couplings. By virtue of this Higgs-portal interaction, (i) the pNGB acquires a mass $m_{\theta }$ proportional to the electroweak scale, and (ii) the observed DM relic density can be generated by the freeze-in of $\theta$ particles with mass $m_{\theta }\simeq 3\mathrm{MeV}$. Alternatively, the coupling of $\theta$ to heavy sterile neutrinos can account for the DM relic density, in the window 1 keV $\lesssim m_{\theta }\lesssim 3\mathrm{MeV}$. The decays of $\theta$ into light fermions are suppressed by the seesaw scale, making such pNGBs sufficiently stable to play the role of DM.

To better understand the organization of overlapping modules in large networks with respect to flow, we introduce the map equation for overlapping modules. In this information-theoretic framework, we use the correspondence between compression and regularity detection. The generalized map equation measures how well we can compress a description of flow in the network when we partition it into modules with possible overlaps. When we minimize the generalized map equation over overlapping network partitions, we detect modules that capture flow and determine which nodes at the boundaries between modules should be classified in multiple modules and to what degree. With a novel greedy-search algorithm, we find that some networks, for example, the neural network of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, are best described by modules dominated by hard boundaries, but that others, for example, the sparse European-roads network, have an organization of highly overlapping modules.

We consider the general problem of laser pulse heating of spherical metal particles with the sizes ranging from nanometers to millimeters. We employ the exact Mie solution of the diffraction problem and solve the heat-transfer equation to determine the maximum temperature rise at the particle surface as a function of optical and thermometric parameters of the problem. Primary attention is paid to the case when the thermal diffusivity of the particle is much larger than that of the environment, as it is in the case of metal particles in fluids. We show that, in this case, for any given duration of the laser pulse, the maximum temperature rise as a function of the particle size reaches a maximum at a certain finite size of the particle. We suggest simple approximate analytical expressions for this dependence, which cover the entire parameter range of the problem and agree well with direct numerical simulations.

We have demonstrated the efficient generation of sub-9-nm-wavelength picosecond laser pulses of microjoule energy at 1-Hz repetition rate with a tabletop laser. Gain-saturated lasing was obtained at $\lambda =8.85\mathrm{nm}$ in nickel-like lanthanum ions excited by collisional electron-impact excitation in a precreated plasma column heated by a picosecond optical laser pulse of 4-J energy. Furthermore, isoelectronic scaling along the lanthanide series resulted in lasing at wavelengths as short as $\lambda =7.36\mathrm{nm}$. Simulations show that the collisionally broadened atomic transitions in these dense plasmas can support the amplification of subpicosecond soft-x-ray laser pulses.

We analyze the effects of quantum correlations, such as entanglement and discord, on the efficiency of phase estimation by studying four quantum circuits that can be readily implemented using NMR techniques. These circuits define a standard strategy of repeated single-qubit measurements, a classical strategy where only classical correlations are allowed, and two quantum strategies where nonclassical correlations are allowed. In addition to counting space (number of qubits) and time (number of gates) requirements, we introduce mixedness as a key constraint of the experiment. We compare the efficiency of the four strategies as a function of the mixedness parameter. We find that the quantum strategy gives $\sqrt{N}$ enhancement over the standard strategy for the same amount of mixedness. This result applies even for highly mixed states that have nonclassical correlations but no entanglement.

Evolutionary games model a common type of interactions in a variety of complex, networked, natural systems and social systems. Given such a system, uncovering the interacting structure of the underlying network is key to understanding its collective dynamics. Based on compressive sensing, we develop an efficient approach to reconstructing complex networks under game-based interactions from small amounts of data. The method is validated by using a variety of model networks and by conducting an actual experiment to reconstruct a social network. While most existing methods in this area assume oscillator networks that generate continuous-time data, our work successfully demonstrates that the extremely challenging problem of reverse engineering of complex networks can also be addressed even when the underlying dynamical processes are governed by realistic, evolutionary-game type of interactions in discrete time.

The nature of the parent compound of a high-temperature superconductor (HTS) often plays a pivotal role in determining its superconductivity. The parent compounds of the cuprate HTSs are antiferromagnetically ordered Mott insulators, while those of the iron-pnictide HTSs are metals with spin-density-wave order. Here we report the electronic identification of two insulating parental phases and one semiconducting parental phase of the newly discovered family of ${\mathrm{K}}_x{\mathrm{Fe}}_{2-y}{\mathrm{Se}}_2$ superconductors. The two insulating phases exhibit Mott-insulator-like signatures, and one of the insulating phases is even present in the superconducting and semiconducting ${\mathrm{K}}_x{\mathrm{Fe}}_{2-y}{\mathrm{Se}}_2$ compounds. However, it is mesoscopically phase-separated from the superconducting or semiconducting phase. Moreover, we find that both the superconducting and semiconducting phases are free of the magnetic and vacancy orders present in the insulating phases, and that the electronic structure of the superconducting phase could be developed by doping the semiconducting phase with electrons. The rich electronic properties discovered in these parental phases of the ${\mathrm{K}}_x{\mathrm{Fe}}_{2-y}{\mathrm{Se}}_2$ superconductors provide the foundation for studying the anomalous behavior in this new class of iron-based superconductors.

We demonstrate the coupling of bright and dark surface lattice resonances (SLRs), which are collective Fano resonances in 2D plasmonic crystals. As a result of this coupling, a frequency stop gap in the dispersion relation of SLRs is observed. The different field symmetries of the low- and high-frequency SLR bands lead to pronounced differences in their coupling to free-space radiation. Standing waves of very narrow spectral width compared to localized surface-plasmon resonances are formed at the high-frequency band edge, while subradiant damping onsets at the low-frequency band edge, leading the resonance into darkness. We introduce a coupled-oscillator analog to the plasmonic crystal, which serves to elucidate the physics of the coupled plasmonic resonances and which is used to estimate very high quality factors for SLRs.

We design a quantum simulator for the Majorana equation, a non-Hamiltonian relativistic wave equation that might describe neutrinos and other exotic particles beyond the standard model. Driven by the need of the simulation, we devise a general method for implementing a number of mathematical operations that are unphysical, including charge conjugation, complex conjugation, and time reversal. Furthermore, we describe how to realize the general method in a system of trapped ions. The work opens a new front in quantum simulations.

We describe the hyperboloidal compactification for Teukolsky equations in Kerr spacetime. We include null infinity on the numerical grid by attaching a hyperboloidal layer to a compact domain surrounding the rotating black hole and the orbit of an inspiralling point particle. This technique allows us to study, for the first time, gravitational waveforms from large- and extreme-mass-ratio inspirals in Kerr spacetime extracted at null infinity. Tests and comparisons of our results with previous calculations establish the accuracy and efficiency of the hyperboloidal layer method.

We computationally and experimentally investigate the use of metamaterial resonators as bandpass filters and other components that enable control of guided surface electromagnetic waves. The guided surface electromagnetic wave propagates on a planar Goubau line, launched via a coplanar waveguide coupler with $50\Omega$ impedance. Experimental samples targeted for either microwave or terahertz frequencies are measured and shown to be in excellent agreement with simulations. Metamaterial elements are designed to absorb energy only of the planar Goubau line and yield narrow-band resonances with relatively high quality factors. Two independent configurations of coupled metamaterial elements are demonstrated that modify the otherwise flat transmission spectrum of the planar Goubau line. By physically shunting the capacitive gaps of the coupled metamaterial elements, we demonstrate the potential for a large dynamic range in transmissivity, suggesting the use of this configuration for high-bandwidth terahertz communications.

We further develop an approach to identify the braiding statistics associated to a given fractional quantum Hall state through adiabatic transport of quasiparticles. This approach is based on the notion of adiabatic continuity between quantum Hall states on the torus and simple product states—or patterns—in the thin torus limit, together with a suitable coherent state ansatz for localized quasiholes that respects the modular invariance of the torus. We give a refined and unified account of the application of this method to the Laughlin and Moore-Read states, which may serve as a pedagogical introduction to the nuts and bolts of this technique. Our main result is that the approach is also applicable—without further assumptions—to more complicated non-Abelian states. We demonstrate this in great detail for the level $k=3$ Read-Rezayi state at filling factor $\nu =3/2$. These results may serve as an independent check of other techniques, where the statistics are inferred from conformal block monodromies. Our approach has the benefit of giving rise to intuitive pictures representing the transformation of topological sectors during braiding, and allows for a self-consistent derivation of non-Abelian statistics without heavy mathematical machinery.

Chern insulators are band insulators exhibiting a nonzero Hall conductance but preserving the lattice translational symmetry. We conclusively show that a partially filled Chern insulator at $1/3$ filling exhibits a fractional quantum Hall effect and rule out charge-density-wave states that have not been ruled out by previous studies. By diagonalizing the Hubbard interaction in the flat-band limit of these insulators, we show the following: The system is incompressible and has a 3-fold degenerate ground state whose momenta can be computed by postulating an generalized Pauli principle with no more than 1 particle in 3 consecutive orbitals. The ground-state density is constant, and equal to $1/3$ in momentum space. Excitations of the system are fractional-statistics particles whose total counting matches that of quasiholes in the Laughlin state based on the same generalized Pauli principle. The entanglement spectrum of the state has a clear entanglement gap which seems to remain finite in the thermodynamic limit. The levels below the gap exhibit counting identical to that of Laughlin $1/3$ quasiholes. Both the 3 ground states and excited states exhibit spectral flow upon flux insertion. All the properties above disappear in the trivial state of the insulator—both the many-body energy gap and the entanglement gap close at the phase transition when the single-particle Hamiltonian goes from topologically nontrivial to topologically trivial. These facts clearly show that fractional many-body states are possible in topological insulators.

For several atomistic models of glass formers, at conditions below their glassy-dynamics–onset temperatures, $T_{\mathrm{o}}$, we use importance sampling of trajectory space to study the structure, statistics, and dynamics of excitations responsible for structural relaxation. Excitations are detected in terms of persistent particle displacements of length $a$. At supercooled conditions, for $a$ of the order of or smaller than a particle diameter, we find that excitations are associated with correlated particle motions that are sparse and localized, occupying a volume with an average radius that is temperature-independent and no larger than a few particle diameters. We show that the statistics and dynamics of these excitations are facilitated and hierarchical. Excitation-energy scales grow logarithmically with $a$. Excitations at one point in space facilitate the birth and death of excitations at neighboring locations, and space-time excitation structures are microcosms of heterogeneous dynamics at larger scales. This nature of dynamics becomes increasingly dominant as temperature $T$ is lowered. We show that slowing of dynamics upon decreasing temperature below $T_{\mathrm{o}}$ is the result of a decreasing concentration of excitations and concomitantly growing length scales for dynamical correlations that develop in a hierarchical manner, and further that the structural-relaxation time $\tau$ follows the parabolic law, $\log (\tau /{\tau }_{\mathrm{o}})=J^2(1/T-1/T_{\mathrm{o}}{)}^2$, for $T<T_{\mathrm{o}}$, where $J$, ${\tau }_{\mathrm{o}}$ and $T_{\mathrm{o}}$ can be predicted quantitatively from dynamics at short time scales. Particle motion is facilitated and directional, and we show that this becomes more apparent with decreasing $T$. We show that stringlike motion is a natural consequence of facilitated, hierarchical dynamics.

Several thousand compounds from the Inorganic Crystal Structure Database have been considered as nanograined, sintered-powder thermoelectrics with the high-throughput ab-initio AFLOW framework. Regression analysis unveils that the power factor is positively correlated with both the electronic band gap and the carrier effective mass, and that the probability of having large thermoelectric power factors increases with the increasing number of atoms per primitive cell. Avenues for further investigation are revealed by this work. These avenues include the role of experimental and theoretical databases in the development of novel materials.

The ability to engineer both linear and nonlinear coupling with a mechanical resonator is an important goal for the preparation and investigation of macroscopic mechanical quantum behavior. In this work, a measurement based scheme is presented where linear or square mechanical-displacement coupling can be achieved using the optomechanical interaction that is linearly proportional to the mechanical position. The resulting square-displacement measurement strength is compared to that attainable in the dispersive case that has a direct interaction with the mechanical-displacement squared. An experimental protocol and parameter set are discussed for the generation and observation of non-Gaussian states of motion of the mechanical element.

We demonstrate strong-field ionization from multiple orbitals of excited-state uracil molecules. The molecules are excited to the first bright state by an ultrafast laser pulse in the deep ultraviolet and then ionized with a strong-field laser pulse in the near infrared during ultrafast relaxation back down to the ground state. We measure time- and angle-dependent ion yields for multiple fragments created by strong-field ionization, and interpret the temporally and angularly resolved yields via ab initio electronic structure calculations. We find that the angular distribution for the electron removed from the lowest unoccupied molecular orbital follows the symmetry of the molecular orbital, whereas ionization of the molecule by removing electrons from deeper bound orbitals is more complicated.

We present a quantum optics formalism to study the intensity power broadening of a semiconductor quantum dot interacting with an acoustic-phonon bath and a high-$Q$ microcavity. Power broadening is investigated using a time-convolutionless master equation in the polaron frame, which allows for a nonperturbative treatment of the interaction of the quantum dot with the phonon reservoir. We calculate the full non-Lorentzian photoluminescence (PL) line shapes and numerically extract the intensity linewidths of the quantum-dot exciton and the cavity mode as a function of the pump rate and temperature. For increasing field strengths, multiphonon and multiphoton effects are found to be important, even for phonon-bath temperatures as low as 4 K. We show that the interaction of the quantum dot with the phonon reservoir introduces pronounced features in the power-broadened PL line shape, enabling one to observe clear signatures of electron-phonon scattering. The PL line shapes from cavity pumping and exciton pumping are found to be distinctly different, primarily since the latter is excited through the exciton-phonon reservoir. To help explain the underlying physics of phonon scattering on the power-broadened line shape, an effective phonon Lindblad master equation derived from the full time-convolutionless master equation is introduced; we identify and calculate distinct Lindblad scattering contributions from electron-phonon interactions, including effects such as excitation-induced dephasing, incoherent exciton excitation, and exciton-cavity feeding. Our effective phonon master equation is shown to reproduce the full PL intensity and the phonon-coupling effects very well, suggesting that its general Lindblad form may find widespread use in semiconductor cavity-QED.