@article{20708, abstract = {In equilibrium, the physical properties of matter are set by the interactions between the constituents. In contrast, the energy input of the individual components controls the behavior of synthetic or living active matter. Great progress has been made in understanding the emergent phenomena in active fluids, though their inability to resist shear forces hinders their practical use. This motivates the exploration of active solids as shape-shifting materials, yet, we lack controlled synthetic systems to devise active solids with unconventional properties. Here we build active elastic beams from dozens of active colloids and unveil complex emergent behaviors such as self-oscillations or persistent rotations. Developing tensile tests at the microscale, we show that the active beams are ultrasoft materials, with large (nonequilibrium) fluctuations. Combining experiments, theory, and stochastic inference, we show that the dynamics of the active beams can be mapped on different phase transitions which are tuned by boundary conditions. More quantitatively, we assess all relevant parameters by independent measurements or first-principles calculations, and find that our theoretical description agrees with the experimental observations. Our results demonstrate that the simple addition of activity to an elastic beam unveils novel physics and can inspire design strategies for active solids and functional microscopic machines.}, author = {Martinet, Quentin and Li, Yuting I and Aubret, A. and Hannezo, Edouard B and Palacci, Jérémie A}, issn = {2160-3308}, journal = {Physical Review X}, number = {4}, publisher = {American Physical Society}, title = {{Emergent dynamics of active elastic microbeams}}, doi = {10.1103/rjk2-q2wh}, volume = {15}, year = {2025}, } @article{8125, abstract = {Biological memory is known to be flexible—memory formation and recall depend on factors such as the behavioral context of the organism. However, this property is often ignored in associative memory models, leaving it unclear how memories can be organized and recalled when subject to contextual control. Because of the lack of a rigorous analytical framework, it is also unknown how contextual control affects memory stability, storage capacity, and information content. Here, we bring the dynamic nature of memory to the fore by introducing a novel model of associative memory, which we refer to as the context-modular memory network. In our model, stored memory patterns are associated to one of several background network states, or contexts. Memories are accessible when their corresponding context is active, and are otherwise inaccessible. Context modulates the effective network connectivity by imposing a specific configuration of neuronal and synaptic gating—gated neurons (synapses) have their activity (weights) momentarily silenced, thereby reducing interference from memories belonging to other contexts. Memory patterns are randomly and independently chosen, while neuronal and synaptic gates may be selected randomly or optimized through a process of contextual synaptic refinement. Through analytic and numerical results, we show that context-modular memory networks can exhibit both improved memory capacity and differential control of memory stability with random gating (especially for neuronal gating). For contextual synaptic refinement, we devise a method in which synapses are gated off for a given context if they destabilize the memory patterns in that context, drastically improving memory capacity and enabling even more precise control over memory stability. Notably, synaptic refinement allows for patterns to be accessible in multiple contexts, stabilizing memory patterns even for weight matrices that alone do not contain any information about the memory patterns, such as Gaussian random matrices. Overall, our model integrates recent ideas about context-dependent memory organization with classic associative memory models and proposes a rigorous theory which can act as a framework for future work. Furthermore, our work carries important implications for the understanding of biological memory storage and recall in the brain, such as highlighting an intriguing trade-off between memory capacity and accessibility.}, author = {Podlaski, William F. and Agnes, Everton J. and Vogels, Tim P}, issn = {2160-3308}, journal = {Physical Review X}, publisher = {American Physical Society}, title = {{High capacity and dynamic accessibility in associative memory networks with context-dependent neuronal and synaptic gating}}, doi = {10.1103/PhysRevX.15.011057}, volume = {15}, year = {2025}, } @article{19816, abstract = {Understanding and manipulating emergent phases, which are themes at the forefront of quantum-materials research, rely on identifying their underlying symmetries. This general principle has been particularly prominent in materials with coupled electronic and magnetic degrees of freedom, in which magnetic order influences the electronic band structure and can lead to exotic topological effects. However, identifying symmetry of a magnetically ordered phase can pose a challenge, particularly in the presence of small domains. Here we introduce a multimodal approach for determining magnetic structures, which combines symmetry-sensitive optical probes, scattering, and group-theoretical analysis. We apply it to EuIn2⁢As2, a material that has received attention as a candidate axion insulator. While first-principles calculations predict this state on the assumption of a simple collinear antiferromagnetic structure, subsequent neutron-scattering measurements reveal a much more intricate magnetic ground state characterized by two coexisting magnetic wave vectors reached by successive thermal phase transitions. The proposed high- and low-temperature phases are a spin helix and a state with interpenetrating helical and Néel antiferromagnetic order termed a “broken helix,” respectively. Employing a multimodal approach, we identify the magnetic structure associated with these two phases of EuIn2⁢As2. We find that the higher-temperature phase is characterized by a variation of the magnetic moment amplitude from layer to layer, with the moment vanishing entirely in every third Eu layer. The lower-temperature structure is similar to the broken helix, with one important difference: Because of local strain, the relative orientation of the magnetic structure and the lattice is not fixed. Consequently, the symmetry required to protect the axion phase is not generically protected in EuIn2⁢As2, but we show that it can be restored if the magnetic structure is tuned with uniaxial strain. Finally, we present a spin Hamiltonian that identifies the spin interactions that account for the complex magnetic order in EuIn2⁢As2. Our work highlights the importance of a multimodal approach in determining the symmetry of complex order parameters.}, author = {Donoway, E. and Trevisan, T. V. and Liebman-Peláez, A. and Day, R. P. and Yamakawa, K. and Sun, Y. and Soh, J. R. and Prabhakaran, D. and Boothroyd, A. T. and Fernandes, R. M. and Analytis, J. G. and Moore, J. E. and Orenstein, J. and Sunko, Veronika}, issn = {2160-3308}, journal = {Physical Review X}, number = {3}, publisher = {American Physical Society}, title = {{Multimodal approach reveals the symmetry-breaking pathway to the broken helix in EuIn2As2}}, doi = {10.1103/physrevx.14.031013}, volume = {14}, year = {2024}, } @article{17477, abstract = {Trapped-ion systems are a leading platform for quantum information processing, but they are currently limited to 1D and 2D arrays, which imposes restrictions on both their scalability and their range of applications. Here, we propose a path to overcome this limitation by demonstrating that Penning traps can be used to realize remarkably clean bilayer crystals, wherein hundreds of ions self-organize into two well-defined layers. These bilayer crystals are made possible by the inclusion of an anharmonic trapping potential, which is readily implementable with current technology. We study the normal modes of this system and discover salient differences compared to the modes of single-plane crystals. The bilayer geometry and the unique properties of the normal modes open new opportunities—in particular, in quantum sensing and quantum simulation—that are not straightforward in single-plane crystals. Furthermore, we illustrate that it may be possible to extend the ideas presented here to realize multilayer crystals with more than two layers. Our work increases the dimensionality of trapped-ion systems by efficiently utilizing all three spatial dimensions, and it lays the foundation for a new generation of quantum information processing experiments with multilayer 3D crystals of trapped ions.}, author = {Hawaldar, Samarth and Shahi, Prakriti and Carter, Allison L. and Rey, Ana Maria and Bollinger, John J. and Shankar, Athreya}, issn = {2160-3308}, journal = {Physical Review X}, number = {3}, publisher = {American Physical Society}, title = {{Bilayer crystals of trapped ions for quantum information processing}}, doi = {10.1103/PhysRevX.14.031030}, volume = {14}, year = {2024}, } @article{12839, abstract = {Universal nonequilibrium properties of isolated quantum systems are typically probed by studying transport of conserved quantities, such as charge or spin, while transport of energy has received considerably less attention. Here, we study infinite-temperature energy transport in the kinetically constrained PXP model describing Rydberg atom quantum simulators. Our state-of-the-art numerical simulations, including exact diagonalization and time-evolving block decimation methods, reveal the existence of two distinct transport regimes. At moderate times, the energy-energy correlation function displays periodic oscillations due to families of eigenstates forming different su(2) representations hidden within the spectrum. These families of eigenstates generalize the quantum many-body scarred states found in previous works and leave an imprint on the infinite-temperature energy transport. At later times, we observe a long-lived superdiffusive transport regime that we attribute to the proximity of a nearby integrable point. While generic strong deformations of the PXP model indeed restore diffusive transport, adding a strong chemical potential intriguingly gives rise to a well-converged superdiffusive exponent z≈3/2. Our results suggest constrained models to be potential hosts of novel transport regimes and call for developing an analytic understanding of their energy transport.}, author = {Ljubotina, Marko and Desaules, Jean Yves and Serbyn, Maksym and Papić, Zlatko}, issn = {2160-3308}, journal = {Physical Review X}, number = {1}, publisher = {American Physical Society}, title = {{Superdiffusive energy transport in kinetically constrained models}}, doi = {10.1103/PhysRevX.13.011033}, volume = {13}, year = {2023}, } @article{14515, abstract = {Most natural and engineered information-processing systems transmit information via signals that vary in time. Computing the information transmission rate or the information encoded in the temporal characteristics of these signals requires the mutual information between the input and output signals as a function of time, i.e., between the input and output trajectories. Yet, this is notoriously difficult because of the high-dimensional nature of the trajectory space, and all existing techniques require approximations. We present an exact Monte Carlo technique called path weight sampling (PWS) that, for the first time, makes it possible to compute the mutual information between input and output trajectories for any stochastic system that is described by a master equation. The principal idea is to use the master equation to evaluate the exact conditional probability of an individual output trajectory for a given input trajectory and average this via Monte Carlo sampling in trajectory space to obtain the mutual information. We present three variants of PWS, which all generate the trajectories using the standard stochastic simulation algorithm. While direct PWS is a brute-force method, Rosenbluth-Rosenbluth PWS exploits the analogy between signal trajectory sampling and polymer sampling, and thermodynamic integration PWS is based on a reversible work calculation in trajectory space. PWS also makes it possible to compute the mutual information between input and output trajectories for systems with hidden internal states as well as systems with feedback from output to input. Applying PWS to the bacterial chemotaxis system, consisting of 182 coupled chemical reactions, demonstrates not only that the scheme is highly efficient but also that the number of receptor clusters is much smaller than hitherto believed, while their size is much larger.}, author = {Reinhardt, Manuel and Tkačik, Gašper and Ten Wolde, Pieter Rein}, issn = {2160-3308}, journal = {Physical Review X}, number = {4}, publisher = {American Physical Society}, title = {{Path weight sampling: Exact Monte Carlo computation of the mutual information between stochastic trajectories}}, doi = {10.1103/PhysRevX.13.041017}, volume = {13}, year = {2023}, } @article{13994, abstract = {Ultrafast lasers are an increasingly important tool to control and stabilize emergent phases in quantum materials. Among a variety of possible excitation protocols, a particularly intriguing route is the direct light engineering of microscopic electronic parameters, such as the electron hopping and the local Coulomb repulsion (Hubbard U). In this work, we use time-resolved x-ray absorption spectroscopy to demonstrate the light-induced renormalization of the Hubbard U in a cuprate superconductor, La1.905Ba0.095CuO4. We show that intense femtosecond laser pulses induce a substantial redshift of the upper Hubbard band while leaving the Zhang-Rice singlet energy unaffected. By comparing the experimental data to time-dependent spectra of single- and three-band Hubbard models, we assign this effect to an approximately 140-meV reduction of the on-site Coulomb repulsion on the copper sites. Our demonstration of a dynamical Hubbard U renormalization in a copper oxide paves the way to a novel strategy for the manipulation of superconductivity and magnetism as well as to the realization of other long-range-ordered phases in light-driven quantum materials.}, author = {Baykusheva, Denitsa Rangelova and Jang, Hoyoung and Husain, Ali A. and Lee, Sangjun and TenHuisen, Sophia F. R. and Zhou, Preston and Park, Sunwook and Kim, Hoon and Kim, Jin-Kwang and Kim, Hyeong-Do and Kim, Minseok and Park, Sang-Youn and Abbamonte, Peter and Kim, B. J. and Gu, G. D. and Wang, Yao and Mitrano, Matteo}, issn = {2160-3308}, journal = {Physical Review X}, keywords = {General Physics and Astronomy}, number = {1}, publisher = {American Physical Society}, title = {{Ultrafast renormalization of the on-site Coulomb repulsion in a cuprate superconductor}}, doi = {10.1103/physrevx.12.011013}, volume = {12}, year = {2022}, } @article{19823, abstract = {The delafossite metals PdCoO2, PtCoO2, and PdCrO2 are among the highest conductivity materials known, with low-temperature mean free paths of tens of microns in the best as-grown single crystals. A key question is whether these very low resistive scattering rates result from strongly suppressed backscattering due to special features of the electronic structure or are a consequence of highly unusual levels of crystalline perfection. We report the results of experiments in which high-energy electron irradiation was used to introduce point disorder to the Pd and Pt layers in which the conduction occurs. We obtain the cross section for formation of Frenkel pairs in absolute units, and cross-check our analysis with first-principles calculations of the relevant atomic displacement energies. We observe an increase of resistivity that is linear in defect density with a slope consistent with scattering in the unitary limit. Our results enable us to deduce that the as-grown crystals contain extremely low levels of in-plane defects of approximately 0.001%. This confirms that crystalline perfection is the most important factor in realizing the long mean free paths and highlights how unusual these delafossite metals are in comparison with the vast majority of other multicomponent oxides and alloys. We discuss the implications of our findings for future materials research.}, author = {Sunko, Veronika and McGuinness, P. H. and Chang, C. S. and Zhakina, E. and Khim, S. and Dreyer, C. E. and Konczykowski, M. and Borrmann, H. and Moll, P. J. W. and König, M. and Muller, D. A. and Mackenzie, A. P.}, issn = {2160-3308}, journal = {Physical Review X}, number = {2}, publisher = {American Physical Society}, title = {{Controlled introduction of defects to delafossite metals by electron irradiation}}, doi = {10.1103/physrevx.10.021018}, volume = {10}, year = {2020}, } @article{6786, abstract = {Dipolar coupling plays a fundamental role in the interaction between electrically or magnetically polarized species such as magnetic atoms and dipolar molecules in a gas or dipolar excitons in the solid state. Unlike Coulomb or contactlike interactions found in many atomic, molecular, and condensed-matter systems, this interaction is long-ranged and highly anisotropic, as it changes from repulsive to attractive depending on the relative positions and orientation of the dipoles. Because of this unique property, many exotic, symmetry-breaking collective states have been recently predicted for cold dipolar gases, but only a few have been experimentally detected and only in dilute atomic dipolar Bose-Einstein condensates. Here, we report on the first observation of attractive dipolar coupling between excitonic dipoles using a new design of stacked semiconductor bilayers. We show that the presence of a dipolar exciton fluid in one bilayer modifies the spatial distribution and increases the binding energy of excitonic dipoles in a vertically remote layer. The binding energy changes are explained using a many-body polaron model describing the deformation of the exciton cloud due to its interaction with a remote dipolar exciton. The surprising nonmonotonic dependence on the cloud density indicates the important role of dipolar correlations, which is unique to dense, strongly interacting dipolar solid-state systems. Our concept provides a route for the realization of dipolar lattices with strong anisotropic interactions in semiconductor systems, which open the way for the observation of theoretically predicted new and exotic collective phases, as well as for engineering and sensing their collective excitations.}, author = {Hubert, Colin and Baruchi, Yifat and Mazuz-Harpaz, Yotam and Cohen, Kobi and Biermann, Klaus and Lemeshko, Mikhail and West, Ken and Pfeiffer, Loren and Rapaport, Ronen and Santos, Paulo}, issn = {2160-3308}, journal = {Physical Review X}, number = {2}, publisher = {American Physical Society}, title = {{Attractive dipolar coupling between stacked exciton fluids}}, doi = {10.1103/PhysRevX.9.021026}, volume = {9}, year = {2019}, } @article{21563, abstract = {Quantum electrodynamics (QED) is one of the most precisely tested theories in the history of science, giving accurate predictions to a wide range of experimental observations. Recent experimental advances allow for the ability to probe physics on extremely short attosecond timescales, enabling ultrafast imaging of quantum dynamics. It is of great interest to extend our understanding of short-time quantum dynamics to QED, where the focus is typically on long-time observables such as 𝑆 matrices, decay rates, and cross sections. That said, solving the short-time dynamics of the QED Hamiltonian can lead to divergences, making it unclear how to arrive at physical predictions. We present an approach to regularize QED at short times and apply it to the problem of free-electron radiation into a medium, known as Cherenkov radiation. Our regularization method, which can be extended to other QED processes, is performed by subtracting the self-energy in free space from the self-energy calculated in the medium. Surprisingly, we find a number of previously unknown phenomena yielding corrections to the conventional Cherenkov effect that could be observed in current experiments. Specifically, the Cherenkov velocity threshold increases relative to the famous conventional theory. This modification to the conventional theory, which can be non-negligible in realistic scenarios, should result in the suppression of spontaneous emission in readily available experiments. Finally, we reveal a bifurcation process creating radiation into new Cherenkov angles, occurring in the strong-coupling regime, which would be realizable by considering the radiation dynamics of highly charged ions. Our results shed light on QED phenomena at short times and reveal surprising new physics in the Cherenkov effect.}, author = {Roques-Carmes, Charles and Rivera, Nicholas and Joannopoulos, John D. and Soljačić, Marin and Kaminer, Ido}, issn = {2160-3308}, journal = {Physical Review X}, number = {4}, publisher = {American Physical Society}, title = {{Nonperturbative quantum electrodynamics in the Cherenkov effect}}, doi = {10.1103/physrevx.8.041013}, volume = {8}, year = {2018}, } @article{14003, abstract = {Molecular chirality plays an essential role in most biochemical processes. The observation and quantification of chirality-sensitive signals, however, remains extremely challenging, especially on ultrafast timescales and in dilute media. Here, we describe the experimental realization of an all-optical and ultrafast scheme for detecting chiral dynamics in molecules. This technique is based on high-harmonic generation by a combination of two-color counterrotating femtosecond laser pulses with polarization states tunable from linear to circular. We demonstrate two different implementations of chiral-sensitive high-harmonic spectroscopy on an ensemble of randomly oriented methyloxirane molecules in the gas phase. Using two elliptically polarized fields, we observe that the ellipticities maximizing the harmonic signal reach up to 4.4 ± 0.2 % (at 17.6 eV). Using two circularly polarized fields, we observe circular dichroisms ranging up to 13 ± 6 % (28.3–33.1 eV). Our theoretical analysis confirms that the observed chiral response originates from subfemtosecond electron dynamics driven by the magnetic component of the driving laser field. This assignment is supported by the experimental observation of a strong intensity dependence of the chiral effects and its agreement with theory. We moreover report and explain a pronounced variation of the signal strength and dichroism with the driving-field ellipticities and harmonic orders. Finally, we demonstrate the sensitivity of the experimental observables to the shape of the electron hole. This technique for chiral discrimination will yield femtosecond temporal resolution when integrated in a pump-probe scheme and subfemtosecond resolution on chiral charge migration in a self-probing scheme.}, author = {Baykusheva, Denitsa Rangelova and Wörner, Hans Jakob}, issn = {2160-3308}, journal = {Physical Review X}, keywords = {General Physics and Astronomy}, number = {3}, publisher = {American Physical Society}, title = {{Chiral discrimination through bielliptical high-harmonic spectroscopy}}, doi = {10.1103/physrevx.8.031060}, volume = {8}, year = {2018}, } @article{983, abstract = {The half-filled Landau level is expected to be approximately particle-hole symmetric, which requires an extension of the Halperin-Lee-Read (HLR) theory of the compressible state observed at this filling. Recent work indicates that, when particle-hole symmetry is preserved, the composite fermions experience a quantized π-Berry phase upon winding around the composite Fermi surface, analogous to Dirac fermions at the surface of a 3D topological insulator. In contrast, the effective low-energy theory of the composite fermion liquid originally proposed by HLR lacks particle-hole symmetry and has vanishing Berry phase. In this paper, we explain how thermoelectric transport measurements can be used to test the Dirac nature of the composite fermions by quantitatively extracting this Berry phase. First, we point out that longitudinal thermopower (Seebeck effect) is nonvanishing because of the unusual nature of particle-hole symmetry in this context and is not sensitive to the Berry phase. In contrast, we find that off-diagonal thermopower (Nernst effect) is directly related to the topological structure of the composite Fermi surface, vanishing for zero Berry phase and taking its maximal value for π Berry phase. In contrast, in purely electrical transport signatures, the Berry phase contributions appear as small corrections to a large background signal, making the Nernst effect a promising diagnostic of the Dirac nature of composite fermions.}, author = {Potter, Andrew and Serbyn, Maksym and Vishwanath, Ashvin}, issn = {2160-3308}, journal = {Physical Review X}, number = {3}, publisher = {American Physical Society}, title = {{Thermoelectric transport signatures of Dirac composite fermions in the half-filled Landau level}}, doi = {10.1103/PhysRevX.6.031026}, volume = {6}, year = {2016}, }