@article{21149, abstract = {We present a general theoretical framework for helical dichroism (HD), establishing an explicit link between chiral resolution and orbital angular momentum (OAM) exchange in light–matter interaction. Tracing microscopic mechanisms of the OAM transfer, we derive rotational selection rules, which establish that HD emerges only from the spin–orbit coupling of light, even for beams without the far-field OAM. Our findings refine the conditions for observing HD, provide a tool to re-examine the outcome of prior experiments, and guide future designs for chiral sensing with structured light.}, author = {Hrast, Mateja and Koutentakis, Georgios and Maslov, Mikhail and Lemeshko, Mikhail}, issn = {1079-7114}, journal = {Physical Review Letters}, number = {5}, publisher = {American Physical Society}, title = {{Bottom-up analysis of rovibrational helical dichroism}}, doi = {10.1103/fkf1-1jml}, volume = {136}, year = {2026}, } @article{21469, abstract = {Terahertz (THz) spectroscopy is a powerful probe of low-energy excitations in complex materials. Extending it into the nonlinear regime broadens its scope and can provide valuable insight into interactions among these modes. However, interpreting nonlinear spectra is challenging because resonant features in this case do not always reflect intrinsic material dynamics. Here, we study nonlinear THz-induced Kerr effect in a generic material LaAlO3. After detailed analysis of temporal oscillations of the Kerr signal, we identify an 𝐸𝑔 Raman mode at 1.1 THz excited through a two-photon process, while two additional peaks (0.86 and 0.36 THz) arise from phase matching of the near-infrared probe beam with co- and counterpropagating THz pump fields, mediated by off-resonant electronic hyperpolarizability. These results demonstrate the crucial role of kinematic effects in shaping THz-induced Kerr response and establish a framework for interpreting nonlinear spectroscopies in complex materials.}, author = {Shen, Chao and Frenzel, Maximilian and Maehrlein, Sebastian F. and Alpichshev, Zhanybek}, issn = {1079-7114}, journal = {Physical Review Letters}, number = {10}, publisher = {American Physical Society}, title = {{Disentangling electronic and ionic nonlinear polarization effects in bulk THz Kerr response}}, doi = {10.1103/1c5k-9z82}, volume = {136}, year = {2026}, } @article{21480, abstract = {We present and test a protocol to learn the matrix-product operator (MPO) representation of an experimentally prepared quantum state. The protocol takes as input classical shadows corresponding to local randomized measurements, and outputs the tensors of an MPO maximizing a suitably defined fidelity with the experimental state. The tensor optimization is carried out sequentially, similarly to the well-known density matrix renormalization group algorithm. Our approach is provably efficient under certain technical conditions expected to be met in short-range correlated states and in typical noisy experimental settings. Under the same conditions, we also provide an efficient scheme to estimate fidelities between the learned and the experimental states. We experimentally demonstrate our protocol by learning entangled quantum states of up to N = 96 qubits in a superconducting quantum processor. Our method upgrades classical shadows to large-scale quantum computation and simulation experiments.}, author = {Votto, Matteo and Ljubotina, Marko and Lancien, Cécilia and Cirac, J. Ignacio and Zoller, Peter and Serbyn, Maksym and Piroli, Lorenzo and Vermersch, Benoît}, issn = {1079-7114}, journal = {Physical Review Letters}, number = {9}, publisher = {American Physical Society}, title = {{Learning mixed quantum states in large-scale experiments}}, doi = {10.1103/rbg2-f61m}, volume = {136}, year = {2026}, } @article{21555, abstract = {Spin-polarized electron beam sources enable studies of spin-dependent electric and magnetic effects at the nanoscale. We propose a method of creating spin-polarized electrons on an integrated photonics chip by laser-driven nanophotonic fields. A two-stage interaction separated by a free-space drift length is proposed, where the first stage and drift length introduces spin-dependent characteristics into the probability distribution of the electron wave function. The second stage uses an adjusted optical near field to rotate the spin states utilizing the spin-dependent wave-packet distribution to produce electrons with high ensemble average spin expectation values. This platform provides an integrated and compact method to generate spin-polarized electrons, implementable with millimeter scale chips and tabletop lasers.}, author = {Woodahl, Clarisse and Murillo, Melanie and Roques-Carmes, Charles and Karnieli, Aviv and Miller, David A. B. and Solgaard, Olav}, issn = {1079-7114}, journal = {Physical Review Letters}, number = {6}, publisher = {American Physical Society}, title = {{On-chip laser-driven free-electron spin polarizer}}, doi = {10.1103/3c1m-d3hh}, volume = {136}, year = {2026}, } @article{21764, abstract = {Colloidal fluids can exhibit complex phase behavior and determining phase diagrams via experiments or computer simulations can be laborious. We demonstrate that the dispersion relation ω(k), obtained from dynamical density functional theory for the uniform density system, is a highly versatile tool for predicting where in the phase diagram complex crystals form. The sign of ω(k) determines whether density modes with wave number k grow or decay over time. We demonstrate the predictive power by investigating the complex phase behavior of particles interacting via core-shoulder pair potentials. With complementary Monte Carlo simulations, we show that regions of the phase diagram where ωðkÞ has one or several unstable (growing) wave numbers are also where crystalline phases occur. Going further, by tuning these unstable wave numbers via the interaction-potential and state-point parameters, we design systems with quasicrystals in the phase diagram. We identify a system with a certain shoulder range exhibiting at least ten different phases. Our general approach accelerates considerably the mapping of complex phase diagrams, crucial for the design of new materials.}, author = {Wassermair, Michael and Kahl, Gerhard and Roth, Roland and Archer, Andrew J.}, issn = {1079-7114}, journal = {Physical Review Letters}, number = {14}, publisher = {American Physical Society}, title = {{Navigating complex phase diagrams in soft matter systems}}, doi = {10.1103/nbvt-fgjy}, volume = {136}, year = {2026}, } @article{20477, abstract = {An electric double-layer capacitor (EDLC) stores energy by modulating the spatial distribution of ions in the electrolytic solution that it contains. We determine the mean-field timescales for planar EDLC relaxation to equilibrium after a potential difference is applied. We tackle first the fully symmetric case, where positive and negative ionic species have the same valence and diffusivity, and then the general, more complex, asymmetric case. Depending on the applied voltage and salt concentration, different regimes appear, revealing a remarkably rich phenomenology relevant for nanocapacitors.}, author = {Palaia, Ivan and Asta, Adelchi J. and Dutta, Megh and Warren, Patrick B. and Rotenberg, Benjamin and Trizac, Emmanuel}, issn = {1079-7114}, journal = {Physical Review Letters}, number = {14}, publisher = {American Physical Society}, title = {{Charging dynamics of electric double-layer nanocapacitors in mean field}}, doi = {10.1103/72b9-c8cq}, volume = {135}, year = {2025}, } @article{20481, abstract = {Kelvin probe force microscopy (KPFM) is widely used in stationary and dynamic studies of contact electrification. An obvious question that connects these two has been overlooked: when are charge dynamics too fast for stationary studies to be meaningful? Using a rapid transfer system to quickly perform KPFM after contact, we find the dynamics are too fast in all but the best insulators. Our data further suggest that dynamics are caused by bulk as opposed to surface conductivity, and that charge-transfer heterogeneity is less prevalent than previously suggested.}, author = {Pertl, Felix and Lenton, Isaac C and Cramer, Tobias and Waitukaitis, Scott R}, issn = {1079-7114}, journal = {Physical Review Letters}, number = {14}, publisher = {American Physical Society}, title = {{No time for surface charge: How bulk conductivity hides charge patterns from Kelvin probe force microscopy in contact-electrified surfaces}}, doi = {10.1103/lcsm-xxty}, volume = {135}, year = {2025}, } @article{20503, abstract = {We introduce a class of interacting fermionic quantum models in d dimensions with nodal interactions that exhibit superdiffusive transport. We establish nonperturbatively that the nodal structure of the interactions gives rise to long-lived quasiparticle excitations that result in a diverging diffusion constant, even though the system is fully chaotic. Using a Boltzmann equation approach, we find that the charge mode acquires an anomalous dispersion relation at long wavelength ωðqÞ ∼ qz with dynamical exponent z ¼ min½ð2n þ dÞ=2n; 2, where n is the order of the nodal point in momentum space. We verify our predictions in one-dimensional systems using tensor-network techniques.}, author = {Wang, Yupeng and Ren, Jie and Gopalakrishnan, Sarang and Vasseur, Romain}, issn = {1079-7114}, journal = {Physical Review Letters}, number = {16}, publisher = {American Physical Society}, title = {{Superdiffusive transport in chaotic quantum systems with nodal interactions}}, doi = {10.1103/xx9z-4j6c}, volume = {135}, year = {2025}, } @article{20706, abstract = {We experimentally realize a quantum clock by using a charge sensor to count charges tunneling through a double quantum dot (DQD). Individual tunneling events are used as the clock’s ticks. We quantify the clock’s precision while measuring the power dissipated by the DQD and, separately, the charge sensor in both direct-current and radio-frequency readout modes. This allows us to probe the thermodynamic cost of creating ticks microscopically and recording them macroscopically. Our experiment is the first to explore the interplay between the entropy produced by a microscopic clockwork and its macroscopic measurement apparatus. We show that the latter contribution not only dwarfs the former but also unlocks greatly increased precision, because the measurement record can be exploited to optimally estimate time even when the DQD is at equilibrium. Our results suggest that the entropy produced by the amplification and measurement of a clock’s ticks, which has often been ignored in the literature, is the most important and fundamental thermodynamic cost of timekeeping at the quantum scale.}, author = {Wadhia, Vivek and Meier, Florian and Fedele, Federico and Silva, Ralph and Nurgalieva, Nuriya and Craig, David L. and Jirovec, Daniel and Saez Mollejo, Jaime and Ballabio, Andrea and Chrastina, Daniel and Isella, Giovanni and Huber, Marcus and Mitchison, Mark T. and Erker, Paul and Ares, Natalia}, issn = {1079-7114}, journal = {Physical Review Letters}, number = {20}, publisher = {American Physical Society}, title = {{Entropic costs of extracting classical ticks from a quantum clock}}, doi = {10.1103/5rtj-djfk}, volume = {135}, year = {2025}, } @article{19067, abstract = {Modern experimental methods enable the creation of self-assembly building blocks with tunable interactions, but optimally exploiting this tunability for the self-assembly of desired structures remains an important challenge. Many studies of this inverse problem start with the so-called fully addressable limit, where every particle in a target structure is different. This leads to clear design principles that often result in high assembly yield, but it is not a scalable approach—at some point, one must grapple with “reusing” building blocks, which lowers the degree of addressability and may cause a multitude of off-target structures to form, complicating the design process. Here, we solve a key obstacle preventing robust inverse design in the “semiaddressable regime” by developing a highly efficient algorithm that enumerates all structures that can be formed from a given set of building blocks. By combining this with established partition-function-based yield calculations, we show that it is almost always possible to find economical semiaddressable designs where the entropic gain from reusing building blocks outweighs the presence of off-target structures and even increases the yield of the target. Thus, not only does our enumeration algorithm enable robust and scalable inverse design in the semiaddressable regime, our results demonstrate that it is possible to operate in this regime while maintaining the level of control often associated with full addressability.}, author = {Hübl, Maximilian and Goodrich, Carl Peter}, issn = {1079-7114}, journal = {Physical Review Letters}, number = {5}, publisher = {American Physical Society}, title = {{Accessing semiaddressable self-assembly with efficient structure enumeration}}, doi = {10.1103/PhysRevLett.134.058204}, volume = {134}, year = {2025}, } @article{19437, abstract = {We demonstrate the formation of ferroelectric domain-wall polarons in a minimal two-dimensional lattice model of electrons interacting with rotating dipoles. Along the domain wall, the rotors polarize in opposite directions, causing the electron to localize along a particular lattice direction. The rotor-electron coupling is identified as the origin of a structural instability in the crystal that leads to the domain-wall formation via a symmetry-breaking process. Our results provide the first theoretical description of ferroelectric polarons, as discussed in the context of soft semiconductors.}, author = {Kluibenschedl, Florian and Koutentakis, Georgios and Al Hyder, Ragheed and Lemeshko, Mikhail}, issn = {1079-7114}, journal = {Physical Review Letters}, number = {9}, publisher = {American Physical Society}, title = {{Domain-wall ferroelectric polarons in a two-dimensional rotor lattice model}}, doi = {10.1103/PhysRevLett.134.096302}, volume = {134}, year = {2025}, } @article{21318, abstract = {Matter waves have been observed in double-slit experiments with microscopic objects, such as atoms or molecules. The wave function describing the motion of these objects must extend over a distance comparable to the slit separation, much larger than the characteristic size of the objects. Preparing such states for more massive objects, such as mechanical oscillators, remains an outstanding challenge. Here we delocalize the quantum ground state of an optically levitated nanosphere by modulating the stiffness of the confining potential. We show a more than threefold increase of the initial coherence length, which corresponds to mechanical momentum squeezing of more than 7 dB. Our work is a stepping stone toward the generation of coherence lengths comparable to the object size, a crucial regime for macroscopic quantum experiments.}, author = {Rossi, M. and Militaru, Andrei and Carlon Zambon, N. and Riera-Campeny, A. and Romero-Isart, O. and Frimmer, M. and Novotny, L.}, issn = {1079-7114}, journal = {Physical Review Letters}, number = {8}, publisher = {American Physical Society}, title = {{Quantum delocalization of a levitated nanoparticle}}, doi = {10.1103/2yzc-fsm3}, volume = {135}, year = {2025}, } @article{20705, abstract = {Optical tweezers are widely used as a highly sensitive tool to measure forces on micron-scale particles. One such application is the measurement of the electric charge of a particle, which can be done with high precision in liquids, air, or vacuum. We experimentally investigate how the trapping laser itself can electrically charge such a particle, in our case a ∼1  μ⁢m SiO2 sphere in air. We model the charging mechanism as a two-photon process which reproduces the experimental data with high fidelity.}, author = {Stöllner, Andrea and Lenton, Isaac C and Volosniev, Artem and Millen, James and Shibuya, Renjiro and Ishii, Hisao and Rak, Dmytro and Alpichshev, Zhanybek and David, Grégory and Signorell, Ruth and Muller, Caroline J and Waitukaitis, Scott R}, issn = {1079-7114}, journal = {Physical Review Letters}, number = {21}, publisher = {American Physical Society}, title = {{Using optical tweezers to simultaneously trap, charge, and measure the charge of a microparticle in air}}, doi = {10.1103/5xd9-4tjj}, volume = {135}, year = {2025}, } @article{19856, abstract = {Unlike in crystals, it is difficult to trace emergent material properties of amorphous solids to their underlying structure. Nevertheless, one can tune features of a disordered spring network, ranging from bulk elastic constants to specific allosteric responses, through highly precise alterations of the structure. This has been understood through the notion of independent bond-level response—the observation that, in many cases, different springs have different effects on different properties. While this idea has motivated inverse design in numerous contexts, it has not been formalized and quantified in a general context that not just informs but enables and predicts inverse design. Here, we show how to quantify independent response by linearizing the simultaneous change in multiple emergent features, and introduce the much stronger notion of fully independent response. Remarkably, we find that the mechanical properties of disordered solids are always fully independent across a wide array of scenarios, regardless of the target features, tunable parameters, system size, dimensionality, and class of interactions. Furthermore, our formulation quantifies the susceptibility of features to parameter changes, which is correlated with the maximum linear tunability. We also demonstrate the implications for multifeature inverse design beyond the linear regime. These results formalize our understanding of a key fundamental difference between ordered and disordered solids while also creating a practical tool to both understand and perform inverse design.}, author = {Zu, Mengjie and Desai, Aayush A and Goodrich, Carl Peter}, issn = {1079-7114}, journal = {Physical Review Letters}, number = {23}, publisher = {American Physical Society}, title = {{Fully independent response in disordered solids}}, doi = {10.1103/PhysRevLett.134.238201}, volume = {134}, year = {2025}, } @article{19664, abstract = {Persistent revivals recently observed in Rydberg atom simulators have challenged our understanding of thermalization and attracted much interest to the concept of quantum many-body scars (QMBSs). QMBSs are non-thermal highly excited eigenstates that coexist with typical eigenstates in the spectrum of many-body Hamiltonians, and have since been reported in multiple theoretical models, including the so-called PXP model, approximately realized by Rydberg simulators. At the same time, questions of how common QMBSs are and in what models they are physically realized remain open. In this Letter, we demonstrate that QMBSs exist in a broader family of models that includes and generalizes PXP to longer-range constraints and states with different periodicity. We show that in each model, multiple QMBS families can be found. Each of them relies on a different approximate algebra, leading to oscillatory dynamics in all cases. However, in contrast to the PXP model, their observation requires launching dynamics from weakly entangled initial states rather than from a product state. QMBSs reported here may be experimentally probed using Rydberg atom simulator in the regime of longer-range Rydberg blockades.}, author = {Kerschbaumer, Aron and Ljubotina, Marko and Serbyn, Maksym and Desaules, Jean-Yves Marc}, issn = {1079-7114}, journal = {Physical Review Letters}, number = {16}, publisher = {American Physical Society}, title = {{Quantum many-body scars beyond the PXP model in Rydberg simulators}}, doi = {10.1103/PhysRevLett.134.160401}, volume = {134}, year = {2025}, } @article{19280, abstract = {Recent advancements in superconducting circuits have enabled the experimental study of collective behavior of precisely controlled intermediate-scale ensembles of qubits. In this work, we demonstrate an atomic frequency comb formed by individual artificial atoms strongly coupled to a single resonator mode. We observe periodic microwave pulses that originate from a single coherent excitation dynamically interacting with the multiqubit ensemble. We show that this revival dynamics emerges as a consequence of the constructive and periodic rephasing of the five superconducting qubits forming the vacuum Rabi split comb. In the future, similar devices could be used as a memory with in situ tunable storage time or as an on-chip periodic pulse generator with nonclassical photon statistics.}, author = {Redchenko, Elena and Zens, M. and Zemlicka, Martin and Peruzzo, Matilda and Hassani, Farid and Sett, Riya and Zielinski, Przemyslaw D and Dhar, H. S. and Krimer, D. O. and Rotter, S. and Fink, Johannes M}, issn = {1079-7114}, journal = {Physical Review Letters}, number = {6}, publisher = {American Physical Society}, title = {{Observation of collapse and revival in a superconducting atomic frequency comb}}, doi = {10.1103/PhysRevLett.134.063601}, volume = {134}, year = {2025}, } @article{15002, abstract = {The lattice Schwinger model, the discrete version of QED in 1 + 1 dimensions, is a well-studied test bench for lattice gauge theories. Here, we study the fractal properties of this model. We reveal the self-similarity of the ground state, which allows us to develop a recurrent procedure for finding the ground-state wave functions and predicting ground-state energies. We present the results of recurrently calculating ground-state wave functions using the fractal Ansatz and automized software package for fractal image processing. In certain parameter regimes, just a few terms are enough for our recurrent procedure to predict ground-state energies close to the exact ones for several hundreds of sites. Our findings pave the way to understanding the complexity of calculating many-body wave functions in terms of their fractal properties as well as finding new links between condensed matter and high-energy lattice models.}, author = {Petrova, Elena and Tiunov, Egor S. and Bañuls, Mari Carmen and Fedorov, Aleksey K.}, issn = {1079-7114}, journal = {Physical Review Letters}, number = {5}, publisher = {American Physical Society}, title = {{Fractal states of the Schwinger model}}, doi = {10.1103/PhysRevLett.132.050401}, volume = {132}, year = {2024}, } @article{18627, abstract = {In contrast with extended Bloch waves, a single particle can become spatially localized due to the so-called skin effect originating from non-Hermitian pumping. Here we show that in kinetically constrained many-body systems, the skin effect can instead manifest as dynamical amplification within the Fock space, beyond the intuitively expected and previously studied particle localization and clustering. We exemplify this non-Hermitian Fock skin effect in an asymmetric version of the PXP model and show that it gives rise to ergodicity-breaking eigenstates—the non-Hermitian analogs of quantum many-body scars. A distinguishing feature of these non-Hermitian scars is their enhanced robustness against external disorders. We propose an experimental realization of the non-Hermitian scar enhancement in a tilted Bose-Hubbard optical lattice with laser-induced loss. Additionally, we implement digital simulations of such scar enhancement on the IBM quantum processor. Our results show that the Fock skin effect provides a powerful tool for creating robust nonergodic states in generic open quantum systems.}, author = {Shen, Ruizhe and Qin, Fang and Desaules, Jean-Yves Marc and Papić, Zlatko and Lee, Ching Hua}, issn = {1079-7114}, journal = {Physical Review Letters}, number = {21}, publisher = {American Physical Society}, title = {{Enhanced many-body quantum scars from the non-hermitian fock skin effect}}, doi = {10.1103/PhysRevLett.133.216601}, volume = {133}, year = {2024}, } @article{13990, abstract = {Many-body entanglement in condensed matter systems can be diagnosed from equilibrium response functions through the use of entanglement witnesses and operator-specific quantum bounds. Here, we investigate the applicability of this approach for detecting entangled states in quantum systems driven out of equilibrium. We use a multipartite entanglement witness, the quantum Fisher information, to study the dynamics of a paradigmatic fermion chain undergoing a time-dependent change of the Coulomb interaction. Our results show that the quantum Fisher information is able to witness distinct signatures of multipartite entanglement both near and far from equilibrium that are robust against decoherence. We discuss implications of these findings for probing entanglement in light-driven quantum materials with time-resolved optical and x-ray scattering methods.}, author = {Baykusheva, Denitsa Rangelova and Kalthoff, Mona H. and Hofmann, Damian and Claassen, Martin and Kennes, Dante M. and Sentef, Michael A. and Mitrano, Matteo}, issn = {1079-7114}, journal = {Physical Review Letters}, keywords = {General Physics and Astronomy}, number = {10}, publisher = {American Physical Society}, title = {{Witnessing nonequilibrium entanglement dynamics in a strongly correlated fermionic chain}}, doi = {10.1103/physrevlett.130.106902}, volume = {130}, year = {2023}, } @article{14238, abstract = {We demonstrate that a sodium dimer, Na2(13Σ+u), residing on the surface of a helium nanodroplet, can be set into rotation by a nonresonant 1.0 ps infrared laser pulse. The time-dependent degree of alignment measured, exhibits a periodic, gradually decreasing structure that deviates qualitatively from that expected for gas-phase dimers. Comparison to alignment dynamics calculated from the time-dependent rotational Schrödinger equation shows that the deviation is due to the alignment dependent interaction between the dimer and the droplet surface. This interaction confines the dimer to the tangential plane of the droplet surface at the point where it resides and is the reason that the observed alignment dynamics is also well described by a 2D quantum rotor model.}, author = {Kranabetter, Lorenz and Kristensen, Henrik H. and Ghazaryan, Areg and Schouder, Constant A. and Chatterley, Adam S. and Janssen, Paul and Jensen, Frank and Zillich, Robert E. and Lemeshko, Mikhail and Stapelfeldt, Henrik}, issn = {1079-7114}, journal = {Physical Review Letters}, number = {5}, publisher = {American Physical Society}, title = {{Nonadiabatic laser-induced alignment dynamics of molecules on a surface}}, doi = {10.1103/PhysRevLett.131.053201}, volume = {131}, year = {2023}, }