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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 1,783 records · Page 99

Nonequilibrium Phase Precursors during a Photoexcited Insulator-to-Metal Transition in V 2 O 3

Here, we photoinduce and directly observe with x-ray scattering an ultrafast enhancement of the structural long-range order in the archetypal Mott system V 2 O 3 . Despite the ultrafast increase in crystal symmetry, the change of unit cell volume occurs an order of magnitude slower and coincides with the insulator-to-metal transition. The decoupling between the two structural responses in the time domain highlights the existence of a transient photoinduced precursor phase, which is distinct from the two structural phases present in equilibrium. X-ray nanoscopy reveals that acoustic phonons trapped in nanoscale twin domains govern the dynamics of the ultrafast transition into the precursor phase, while nucleation and growth of metallic domains dictate the duration of the slower transition into the metallic phase. In conclusion, the enhancement of the long-range order before completion of the electronic transition demonstrates the critical role the nonequilibrium structural phases play during electronic phase transitions in correlated electrons systems.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗

Three-Dimensional Chiral Lattice Fermion in Floquet Systems

Here, we show that the Nielsen-Ninomiya no-go theorem still holds on a Floquet lattice: there is an equal number of right-handed and left-handed Weyl points in a three-dimensional Floquet lattice. However, in the adiabatic limit, where the time evolution of the low-energy subspace is decoupled from the high-energy subspace, we show that the bulk dynamics in the low-energy subspace can be described by Floquet bands with extra left- or right-handed Weyl points, despite the no-go theorem. Assuming adiabatic evolution of two bands, we show that the difference of the number of right-handed and left-handed Weyl points equals twice the winding number of the adiabatic Floquet operator over the Brillouin zone. Based on these findings, we propose a realization of purely left- or right-handed Weyl particles on a 3D lattice using a Hamiltonian obtained through dimensional reduction of a four-dimensional quantum Hall system. We argue that the breakdown of the adiabatic approximation on the surface facilitates unusual closed orbits of wave packets in an applied magnetic field, which traverse alternatively through the low-energy and high-energy sector of the spectrum.

74 ATOMIC AND MOLECULAR PHYSICS↗

Probing the State of a Mechanical Oscillator with an Ultrastrongly Coupled Quantum Emitter

Performing accurate position measurements of a mechanical resonator by coupling it to some optically driven quantum emitter is an important challenge for quantum sensing and metrology. We fully characterize the quantum noise associated with this measurement process, by deriving master equations for the coupled emitter and the resonator valid in the ultrastrong coupling regime. At short timescales, we show that this noise sets a fundamental limit to the readout sensitivity and that the standard quantum limit can be recovered for realistic experimental conditions. At long timescales, the scattering of the mechanical quadratures leads to the decoupling of the emitter from the driving light, switching off the noise source. Furthermore, this method can be used to describe the interaction of any quantum system strongly coupled to a finite size reservoir.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

Predicting Complex Relaxation Processes in Metallic Glass

Relaxation processes significantly influence the properties of glass materials. However, understanding their specific origins is difficult; even more challenging is to forecast them theoretically. In this study, using microseconds molecular dynamics simulations together with an accurate many-body interaction potential, we predict that an Al 90 Sm 10 metallic glass would have complex relaxation behaviors: In addition to the main (α) relaxation, the glass (i) shows a pronounced secondary (β) relaxation at cryogenic temperatures and (ii) exhibits an anomalous relaxation process (α 2 ) accompanying α relaxation. Both of the predictions are verified by experiments. Computational simulations reveal the microscopic origins of relaxation processes: while the pronounced β relaxation is attributed to the abundance of stringlike cooperative atomic rearrangements, the anomalous α 2 process is found to correlate with the decoupling of the faster motions of Al with slower Sm atoms. The combination of simulations and experiments represents a first glimpse of what may become a predictive routine and integral step for glass physics.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗

Revealing the Emergence of Classicality Using Nitrogen-Vacancy Centers

The origin of classical reality in our quantum world is a long-standing mystery. Here, we examine a nitrogen-vacancy center in diamond evolving in the presence of its magnetic nuclear spin environment which is formed by the natural appearance of carbon 13 C atoms in the diamond lattice, to study quantum Darwinism—the proliferation of information about preferred quantum states throughout the world via the environment. This redundantly imprinted information accounts for the perception of objective reality, as it is independently accessible by many without perturbing the system of interest. To observe this process, we implement a novel dynamical decoupling scheme that enables the measurement and control of several nuclear spins (the environment $\mathcal{E}$) interacting with a nitrogen vacancy (the system $\mathcal{S}$). Our experiment demonstrates that, in the course of the decoherence of $\mathcal{S}$, redundant information is indeed imprinted onto $\mathcal{E}$, giving rise to incipient classical objectivity—a consensus recorded in redundant copies, and available from the fragments of the nuclear spin environment E, about the state of $\mathcal{S}$. This provides the first laboratory verification of the process responsible for the emergence of the objective classical world from the underlying quantum substrate.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Early Dark Energy from Massive Neutrinos as a Natural Resolution of the Hubble Tension

The Hubble tension can be significantly eased if there is an early component of dark energy that becomes active around the time of matter-radiation equality. Early dark energy models suffer from a coincidence problem—the physics of matter-radiation equality and early dark energy are completely disconnected, so some degree of fine-tuning is needed in order for them to occur nearly simultaneously. In this Letter, we propose a natural explanation for this coincidence. If the early dark energy scalar couples to neutrinos then it receives a large injection of energy around the time that neutrinos become nonrelativistic. This is precisely when their temperature is of order of their mass, which, coincidentally, occurs around the time of matter-radiation equality. Neutrino decoupling therefore provides a natural trigger for early dark energy by displacing the field just before matter-radiation equality. Finally, we discuss various theoretical aspects of this proposal, potential observational signatures, and future directions for its study.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Viscous Properties of a Degenerate One-Dimensional Fermi Gas

In this paper, we study the viscous properties of a system of weakly interacting spin-1/2 fermions in one dimension. Accounting for the effect of interactions on the quasiparticle energy spectrum, we obtain the bulk viscosity of this system at low temperatures. Our result is valid for frequencies that are small compared with the rate of fermion backscattering. For frequencies larger than this exponentially small rate, the excitations of the system become decoupled from the center of mass motion, and the fluid is described by two-fluid hydrodynamics. We calculate the three transport coefficients required to describe viscous dissipation in this regime.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗

Dynamical Enhancement of Symmetries in Many-Body Systems

We construct a dynamical decoupling protocol for accurately generating local and global symmetries in general many-body systems. Multiple commuting and noncommuting symmetries can be created by means of a self-similar-in-time ("polyfractal") drive. The result is an effective Floquet Hamiltonian that remains local and avoids heating over exponentially long times. This approach can be used to realize a wide variety of quantum models, and nonequilibrium quantum phases.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

Manipulating Core Excitations in Molecules by X-Ray Cavities

Core excitations on different atoms are highly localized and therefore decoupled. By placing molecules in an x-ray cavity the core transitions become coupled via the exchange of cavity photons and form delocalized hybrid light-matter excitations known as core polaritons. Here, we demonstrate these effects for the two inequivalent carbon atoms in 1,1-difluoroethylene. Polariton signatures in the x-ray absorption, two-photon absorption, and multidimensional four-wave mixing signals are predicted.

74 ATOMIC AND MOLECULAR PHYSICS↗

Radial Two-Dimensional Ion Crystals in a Linear Paul Trap

We experimentally study two-dimensional (2D) Coulomb crystals in the “radial-2D” phase of a linear Paul trap. This phase is identified by a 2D ion lattice aligned entirely with the radial plane and is created by imposing a large ratio of axial to radial trapping potentials. Using arrays of up to 19 171 Yb + ions, we demonstrate that the structural phase boundaries of such crystals are well described by the pseudopotential approximation, despite the time-dependent ion positions driven by intrinsic micromotion. We further observe that micromotion-induced heating of the radial-2D crystal is confined to the radial plane. Finally, we verify that the transverse motional modes, which are used in most ion-trap quantum simulation schemes, are well-predictable numerically and remain decoupled and cold in this geometry. Our results establish radial-2D ion crystals as a robust experimental platform for realizing a variety of theoretical proposals in quantum simulation and computation.

74 ATOMIC AND MOLECULAR PHYSICS↗

Entanglement Purification and Protection in a Superconducting Quantum Network

High-fidelity quantum entanglement is a key resource for quantum communication and distributed quantum computing, enabling quantum state teleportation, dense coding, and quantum encryption. Any sources of decoherence in the communication channel, however, degrade entanglement fidelity, thereby increasing the error rates of entangled state protocols. Entanglement purification provides a method to alleviate these nonidealities by distilling impure states into higher-fidelity entangled states. In this work, we demonstrate the entanglement purification of Bell pairs shared between two remote superconducting quantum nodes connected by a moderately lossy, 1-meter long superconducting communication cable. We use a purification process to correct the dominant amplitude damping errors caused by transmission through the cable, with fractional increases in fidelity as large as 25%, achieved for higher damping errors. The best final fidelity the purification achieves is 94.09 ± 0.98%. In addition, we use both dynamical decoupling and Rabi driving to protect the entangled states from local noise, increasing the effective qubit dephasing time by a factor of 4, from 3 to 12 μs. These methods demonstrate the potential for the generation and preservation of very high-fidelity entanglement in a superconducting quantum communication network.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗

Is the Orbital-Selective Mott Phase Stable against Interorbital Hopping?

The localization-delocalization transition is at the heart of strong correlation physics. Recently, there is great interest in multiorbital systems where this transition can be restricted to certain orbitals, leading to an orbital-selective Mott phase (OSMP). Theoretically, the OSMP is widely studied for kinetically decoupled orbitals, but the effect of interorbital hopping remains unclear. Here, we show how nonlocal interorbital hopping leads to local hybridization in single-site dynamical mean-field theory (DMFT). Under fairly general circumstances, this implies that, at zero temperature, the OSMP, involving the Mott-insulating state of one orbital, is unstable against interorbital hopping to a different, metallic orbital. We further show that the coherence scale below which all electrons are itinerant is very small and gets exponentially suppressed even if the interorbital hopping is not overly small. Within this framework, the OSMP with interorbital hopping may thus reach down to extremely low temperatures T, but not to T = 0. Accordingly, it is part of a coherence-incoherence crossover and not a quantum critical point. Finally, we present analytical arguments supported by numerical results using the numerical renormalization group as a DMFT impurity solver. We also compare our findings with previous slave-spin studies.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗

Emergence of Spinons in Layered Trimer Iridate Ba 4 Ir 3 O 10

Spinons are well-known as the elementary excitations of one-dimensional antiferromagnetic chains, but means to realize spinons in higher dimensions is the subject of intense research. Here, we use resonant x-ray scattering to study the layered trimer iridate Ba 4 Ir 3 O 10 , which shows no magnetic order down to 0.2 K. An emergent one-dimensional spinon continuum is observed that can be well-described by XXZ spin-1/2 chains with magnetic exchange of ~55 meV and a small Ising-like anisotropy. With 2% isovalent Sr doping, magnetic order appears below TN=130 K along with sharper excitations, indicating that the spinons become more confined in (Ba 1-x Sr x ) 4 Ir 3 O 10 . We propose that the frustrated intra-trimer interactions effectively reduce the system into decoupled spin chains, the subtle balance of which can be easily tipped by perturbations such as chemical doping. Our results put Ba 4 Ir 3 O 10 between the one-dimensional chain and two-dimensional quantum spin liquid scenarios, illustrating a new way to suppress magnetic order and realize fractional spinons.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗

Thermalization of Interacting Quasi-One-Dimensional Systems

Many experimentally relevant systems are quasi-one-dimensional, consisting of nearly decoupled chains. In these systems, there is a natural separation of scales between the strong intrachain interactions and the weak interchain coupling. When the intrachain interactions are integrable, weak interchain couplings play a crucial part in thermalizing the system. Here, we develop a Boltzmann-equation formalism involving a collision integral that is asymptotically exact for any interacting integrable system, and apply it to develop a quantitative theory of relaxation in coupled Bose gases in the experimentally relevant Newton's cradle setup. Here we find that relaxation involves a broad spectrum of timescales. We provide evidence that the Markov process governing relaxation at late times is gapless; thus, the approach to equilibrium is generally nonexponential, even for spatially uniform perturbations.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

Learning Many-Body Hamiltonians with Heisenberg-Limited Scaling

Learning a many-body Hamiltonian from its dynamics is a fundamental problem in physics. Here, in this Letter, we propose the first algorithm to achieve the Heisenberg limit for learning an interacting N-qubit local Hamiltonian. After a total evolution time of $\mathscr{O}$⁡(ε –1 ), the proposed algorithm can efficiently estimate any parameter in the N-qubit Hamiltonian to ε error with high probability. Our algorithm uses ideas from quantum simulation to decouple the unknown N-qubit Hamiltonian H into noninteracting patches and learns H using a quantum-enhanced divide-and-conquer approach. The proposed algorithm is robust against state preparation and measurement error, does not require eigenstates or thermal states, and only uses polylog⁡(ε –1 ) experiments. In contrast, the best existing algorithms require $\mathscr{O}$⁡⁡(ε –2 ) experiments and total evolution time. We prove a matching lower bound to establish the asymptotic optimality of our algorithm.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

Demonstration of Algorithmic Quantum Speedup

Despite the development of increasingly capable quantum computers, an experimental demonstration of a provable algorithmic quantum speedup employing today’s non-fault-tolerant devices has remained elusive. Here, in this study, we unequivocally demonstrate such a speedup within the oracular model, quantified in terms of the scaling with the problem size of the time-to-solution metric. We implement the single-shot Bernstein-Vazirani algorithm, which solves the problem of identifying a hidden bitstring that changes after every oracle query, using two different 27-qubit IBM Quantum superconducting processors. The speedup is observed on only one of the two processors when the quantum computation is protected by dynamical decoupling but not without it. The quantum speedup reported here does not rely on any additional assumptions or complexity-theoretic conjectures and solves a bona fide computational problem in the setting of a game with an oracle and a verifier.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Quantum Logic Enhanced Sensing in Solid-State Spin Ensembles

We demonstrate quantum logic enhanced sensitivity for a macroscopic ensemble of solid-state, hybrid two-qubit sensors. We achieve over a factor of 30 improvement in the single-shot signal-to-noise ratio, translating to an ac magnetic field sensitivity enhancement exceeding an order of magnitude for time-averaged measurements. Using the electronic spins of nitrogen vacancy (NV) centers in diamond as sensors, we leverage the on-site nitrogen nuclear spins of the NV centers as memory qubits, in combination with homogeneous and stable bias and control fields, ensuring that all of the ~10 9 two-qubit sensors are sufficiently identical to permit global control of the NV ensemble spin states. We find quantum logic sensitivity enhancement for multiple measurement protocols with varying optimal sensing intervals, including XY8 and DROID-60 dynamical decoupling, as well as correlation spectroscopy, using an applied ac magnetic field signal. The results are independent of the nature of the target signal and broadly applicable to measurements using NV centers and other solid-state spin ensembles. Furthermore, this work provides a benchmark for macroscopic ensembles of quantum sensors that employ quantum logic or quantum error correction algorithms for enhanced sensitivity.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

Asymptotic Freedom at the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless Transition without Fine-Tuning Using a Qubit Regularization

We propose a two-dimensional hard-core loop-gas model as a way to regularize the asymptotically free massive continuum quantum field theory that emerges at the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless transition. Without fine-tuning, our model can reproduce the universal step-scaling function of the classical lattice X Y model in the massive phase as we approach the phase transition. This is achieved by lowering the fugacity of Fock-vacuum sites in the loop-gas configuration space to zero in the thermodynamic limit. Some of the universal quantities at the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless transition show smaller finite size effects in our model as compared to the traditional X Y model. Our model is a prime example of qubit regularization of an asymptotically free massive quantum field theory in Euclidean space-time and helps understand how asymptotic freedom can arise as a relevant perturbation at a decoupled fixed point without fine-tuning. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Physics↗