Hexagonal ice density dependence on interatomic distance changes due to nuclear quantum effects.

Hexagonal ice (Ih), the most common structure of ice, displays a variety of fascinating properties. Despite major efforts, a theoretical description of all its properties is still lacking. In particular, correctly accounting for its density and interatomic interactions is of utmost importance as a stepping stone for a deeper understanding of other properties.

Vacuum tunneling of vortices in two-dimensional He superfluid films.

At low temperature we expect vacuum tunneling processes to occur in superfluid He films. We distinguish between extrinsic processes, in which single vortices nucleate by tunneling off boundaries in the system, and intrinsic processes, in which vortex/anti-vortex pairs nucleate far from boundaries. It is crucial to incorporate the varying effective mass of the vortex in tunneling calculations.

Higgs like stiffness and fractons on the verge of phase transitions.

In condensed matter Physics, massive longitudinal Higgs modes emerge from fluctuations of the order parameter amplitude. A few years ago, the Higgs mode was caught experimentally in the vicinity of an insulator-to-superconductor quantum phase transition [Nat. Phys.

Designing Hall crystals with variable Chern numbers.

Topological electronic crystals are electron crystals in which spontaneously broken translation symmetry coexists with or gives rise to a nontrivial topological response. Here, we introduce a novel platform and analytical theory for realizing interaction-induced Hall crystals, a class of topological electronic crystals, with various Chern numbers C. The platform consists of a two-dimensional semiconductor subjected to an out-of-plane magnetic field and one-dimensional modulation, which can be realized by moiré or dielectric engineering.

Unconventional Electromechanical Response in Ferrocene-Assisted Gold Atomic Chain.

Atomically thin metallic chains serve as pivotal systems for studying quantum transport, with their conductance strongly linked to the orbital picture. We report an unusual electromechanical response in Au/ferrocene/Au junctions, manifested as tilted "Z"- and "V"-shaped features with more than an order-of-magnitude conductance change upon stretching at cryogenic temperatures, a striking deviation from the flat, decaying, or occasionally increasing profiles typically observed in metallic or molecular junctions. This response emerges during the formation of a ferrocene-assisted atomic gold chain in a mechanically controllable break junction setup, enabled by direct metal-organometallic bonding in the absence of anchoring groups.

Influence of vibrational motion and temperature on interatomic Coulombic electron capture.

Interatomic Coulombic electron capture (ICEC) is an environment-mediated process in which a free electron attaches to a species by transferring excess energy to a neighbor. While previous theoretical investigations assumed fixed nuclei, recent studies indicate that nuclear dynamics significantly influences the ICEC process. In this work, we incorporate the vibrational motion into an analytical model of the ICEC cross section, including both energy and electron transfer.

Critical Dynamics in Short-Range Quadratic Hamiltonians.

We investigate critical transport and the dynamical exponent through the spreading of an initially localized particle in quadratic Hamiltonians with short-range hopping in lattice dimension d_{l}. We consider critical dynamics that emerges when the Thouless time, i.e.

Roadmap for Photonics with 2D Materials.

Triggered by advances in atomic-layer exfoliation and growth techniques, along with the identification of a wide range of extraordinary physical properties in self-standing films consisting of one or a few atomic layers, two-dimensional (2D) materials such as graphene, transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs), and other van der Waals (vdW) crystals now constitute a broad research field expanding in multiple directions through the combination of layer stacking and twisting, nanofabrication, surface-science methods, and integration into nanostructured environments. Photonics encompasses a multidisciplinary subset of those directions, where 2D materials contribute remarkable nonlinearities, long-lived and ultraconfined polaritons, strong excitons, topological and chiral effects, susceptibility to external stimuli, accessibility, robustness, and a completely new range of photonic materials based on layer stacking, gating, and the formation of moiré patterns. These properties are being leveraged to develop applications in electro-optical modulation, light emission and detection, imaging and metasurfaces, integrated optics, sensing, and quantum physics across a broad spectral range extending from the far-infrared to the ultraviolet, as well as enabling hybridization with spin and momentum textures of electronic band structures and magnetic degrees of freedom.

STIM1 transmembrane helix dimerization captured by AI-guided transition path sampling.

Stromal interaction molecule 1 (STIM1) is a Ca-sensing protein in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) membrane. The depletion of ER Ca stores induces a large conformational transition of the cytosolic STIM1 C-terminus, initiated by the dimerization of the transmembrane (TM) domain. We use the AI-guided transition path sampling algorithm aimmd to extensively sample the dimerization of STIM1-TM helices in an ER-mimicking lipid bilayer.

Stokes drag on a sphere in a three-dimensional anisotropic porous medium.

We study the hydrodynamic drag force exerted on a sphere in a static anisotropic porous medium. This problem is analyzed using the Brinkman-Debye-Bueche equations with an axisymmetric shielding (or permeability) tensor. Using the exact Green's functions for this model fluid within a single-layer boundary element formulation, we numerically compute the friction tensor for a translating sphere subjected to stick boundary conditions.

Electron-Nucleus Cross Sections from Transfer Learning.

Transfer learning allows a deep neural network (DNN) trained on one type of data to be adapted for new problems with limited information. We propose to use the transfer learning technique in physics. The DNN learns the details of one process, and after fine-tuning, it makes predictions for related processes.

Neutralization of Multiply Charged Ground-State Ions by Collective Electron Transfer from an Environment.

Highly charged cations are omnipresent species after the interaction of high-energy or high-intensity light with matter. When embedded in environments, the mechanism and outcome of the redistribution of the cation's charge are crucial for the further fate of the whole system. Generally, ground-state cations can decay by charge transfer, proceeding radiatively, through nuclear dynamics, or by electron-transfer-mediated decay (ETMD).

Detection of EEG dynamic complex patterns in disorders of consciousness.

Diagnosing Disorders of Consciousness (DoC) remains a critical challenge in cognitive neuroscience. In this study we introduce Electroencephalography (EEG)-based brain states as a real-time, bedside tool for assessing dynamic brain connectivity in DoC patients. We analyze EEG data from 237 acute and chronic DoC patients across three centers, identifying five recurrent functional connectivity patterns.

Phase Transitions in an Expanding Medium: Hot Remnants.

We analyze the dynamics of a first order confinement-deconfinement phase transition in an expanding medium using an effective boundary description fitted to the holographic Witten model. We observe and analyze hot plasma remnants, which do not cool down or nucleate bubbles despite the expansion of the system. The appearance of the hot remnants, the dynamics of their shrinking, and subsequent dissolution and further heating up is very robust and persists in such diverse scenarios as boost-invariant expansion with a flat Minkowski metric and cosmological expansion in a Friedmann-Robertson-Walker spacetime.

Spin-Polarized Condensed Plasmoids in Radiation Reaction Dominated Magnetic Reconnection.

Transient plasma evolution with spin polarization dynamics in radiation reaction dominated magnetic reconnection is investigated using particle-in-cell simulations. We identify a condensation of plasmoids accumulated into multiple tiny islands within the reconnection layer, where electrons are strongly polarized while emitting energetic γ-ray photons to undergo radiative spin flips. Nonlinear analyses elucidate that the condensation is caused by a spiral attractor appearing in the electron's phase space due to radiation reaction.

Atomic-scale visualization of strain-tailored noncollinear spin textures in an antiferromagnetic ultrathin film.

Crystalline strain is typically considered as an effective approach to engineer low-dimensional antiferromagnets. However, a direct visualization of strained-tailored noncollinear spin textures in antiferromagnetic atomic layers has so far not been achieved. Here, we uncover a strain-induced transition from a three-dimensional noncollinear spin state in pseudomorphic Mn bilayer to a cycloidal spin spiral with a canted rotation plane in reconstructed Mn bilayer on the Ag(111) surface.

The effect of molecular interactions on strong coupling spectra in a molecule-nanocavity system.

The nanoparticle-on-mirror (NPoM) structure is an excellent platform for light-matter interaction studies. However, in previous theoretical studies of strong coupling, aggregates are typically treated either as a whole entity using the Drude model or by considering individual molecule-plasmon interactions while neglecting molecular interactions. In this study, we employ the continuum model to obtain the optical response of the NPoM structure, extracting single-mode plasmons.

Complete Self-Testing of a System of Remote Superconducting Qubits.

Self-testing protocols enable the certification of quantum systems in a device-independent manner, i.e., without knowledge of the inner workings of the quantum devices under test.

Form Factors from String Amplitudes.

In this Letter, we propose a stringy model for n-point tree-level form factor with the off-shell operator in the scalar and gluon theories from the bosonic string disk amplitude: n open string states and one closed string state scatter on the disk. In the field-theory limit (α^{'}→0), the "stringy form factor" reduces to the form factor, which helps us to investigate the hidden properties of the field-theory form factors, manifest the factorization and soft behaviors, and uncover more nontrivial relations between form factors and scattering amplitudes.

Sum of Entanglement and Subsystem Coherence Is Invariant under Quantum Reference Frame Transformations.

Recent work on quantum reference frames (QRFs) has demonstrated that superposition and entanglement are properties that change under QRF transformations. Given their utility in quantum information processing, it is important to understand how a mere change of perspective can produce or reduce these resources. Here we prove the existence of a QRF invariant which can be decomposed such that it captures the trade-off between entanglement and subsystem coherence: we demonstrate the invariance of the sum of entanglement and subsystem coherence for two pairs of resource quantifiers.

Effective-Range Expansion with a Long-Range Force.

The validity range of the time-honored effective range expansion can be very limited due to the presence of a left-hand cut close to the two-particle threshold. Such a left-hand cut arises in the two-particle interaction involving a light particle exchange with a small mass or a mass slightly heavier than the mass difference of the two particles, identified as a long-range force, a scenario encountered in a broad range of systems. This can hinder a precise extraction of low-energy scattering observables and resonance poles.

Reduction in Nuclear Size and Quadrupole Deformation of High-Spin Isomers of ^{127,129}In.

We employed laser spectroscopy of atomic transitions to measure the nuclear charge radii and electromagnetic properties of the high-spin isomeric states in neutron-rich indium isotopes (Z=49) near the closed proton and neutron shells at Z=50 and N=82. Our data reveal a reduction in the nuclear charge radius and intrinsic quadrupole moment when protons and neutrons are fully aligned in ^{129}In(N=80), to form the high spin isomer. Such a reduction is not observed in ^{127}In(N=78), where more complex configurations can be formed by the existence of four neutron holes.

Fractality-Induced Topology.

Fractal geometries, characterized by self-similar patterns and noninteger dimensions, provide an intriguing platform for exploring topological phases of matter. In this Letter, we introduce a theoretical framework that leverages isospectral reduction to effectively simplify complex fractal structures, revealing the presence of topologically protected boundary and corner states. Our approach demonstrates that fractals can support topological phases, even in the absence of traditional driving mechanisms such as magnetic fields or spin-orbit coupling.

Dispersive determination of nucleon gravitational form factors.

Being closely connected to the origin of the nucleon mass, the gravitational form factors of the nucleon have attracted significant attention in recent years. We present the first model-independent determinations of the gravitational form factors of the pion and nucleon at the physical pion mass, using a data-driven dispersive approach. The so-called "last global unknown property" of the nucleon, the D-term, is determined to be .

Traction force generation in Plasmodium sporozoites is modulated by a surface adhesin.

Plasmodium sporozoites are the highly polarised and motile forms of the malaria parasite transmitted by mosquitoes to the vertebrate hosts. Sporozoites use myosin motors to generate retrograde flow of actin filaments. These are linked to plasma membrane spanning adhesins, which in turn bind to the extracellular environment, resulting in forward directed gliding motility.