Drift Versus Entropic Forces in Overdamped Diffusion Through a Widening Channel.

This study examines the diffusion of spherical particles in a conical widening channel, with a focus on the effects of deterministic drift and entropic forces. Through numerical simulations, we analyze the motion of particles from a reflecting boundary to an absorbing one. Properties of diffusive motion are explored by inspection of mean squared displacement and mean first passage time.

Conductivity of Filled Diblock Copolymer Systems: Identifying the Main Influencing Factors.

By developing and making use of the multi-scale theoretical approach, we identify the main factors that affect the conductivity of a composite composed of a diblock copolymer (DBC) system and conductive particles. This approach relies on the consistent phase-field model of DBC, Monte-Carlo simulations of the filler localization in DBC, and the resistor network model that mimics the conductive filler network formed in DBC. Based on the described approach, we thoroughly explore the relation among the morphological state of the microphase-separated DBC, localization of fillers in DBC, and the electrical response of the composite.

Predictive model for evolving density and viscosity gradients in band-forming ultracentrifugation.

Band-forming experiments allow the study of a wide variety of systems by overlaying two solutions with different densities in an analytical ultracentrifuge. Despite their potential benefits over other methods, these experiments are rarely used because all available fitting software encounters systematic errors, failing to account for the evolving gradient in density and viscosity due to diffusive mixing between the two layers. We develop and experimentally validate a predictive model for the purely diffusive mixing of two solutions in a cylindrical system.

Mutation-induced rigidity in the Fyn SH2 domain enhances pY-binding affinity at the cost of peptide specificity.

Interactions between SH2 domains and tyrosine-phosphorylated (pY) peptides are essential for cellular signaling. While structural studies have revealed how triple-point Fyn SH2 mutants achieve ultra-high pY-peptide affinity, the dynamic consequences of these mutations remain unexplored. In this study, we performed extensive all-atom molecular dynamics simulations on the isolated wild-type Fyn SH2 domain, its mutant, and their complexes with the pY-peptide (EPQpYEEIPIYL).

Quantum Monte Carlo Study of Hydrodynamics in Systems with Particle-Hole Symmetry.

The emergence of hydrodynamic behavior in electronic flow within clean, particle-hole-symmetric systems at half filling is a nontrivial problem. Navier-Stokes (NS) equations describe the momentum flow, while experimental measurements typically capture the current flow profiles. However, in particle-hole-symmetric systems, electric current and momentum flow are entirely decoupled, because electrons and holes move in opposite directions with equal distribution functions.

Proton Acceleration with Relativistic Electromagnetic Shock.

Understanding the mechanisms behind the extreme energies of cosmic rays is crucial for unraveling fundamental physical processes in astrophysical environments. This study proposes a novel mechanism for accelerating cosmic-ray protons. By examining a high-velocity collision between an astrophysical object and static magnetic fields, the generation of an intense transverse electric field capable of trapping and accelerating protons are find to relativistic energies.

How the ionic liquid [CCIm][OTf] affects the stability of Pt(111) during potential cycling.

Modifying electrocatalysts with ionic liquids (ILs) not only allows for precise control of selectivity but also often directly impacts the stability of the electrocatalyst. In this work, we study how the IL 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium trifluoromethanesulfonate [CCIm][OTf] influences the electrochemical stability of the Pt(111) surface in acidic electrolyte (0.1 M HClO) during oxidation and reduction cycles (ORCs; 0.

Possible nonstellar explanation for the unexpected brightness of the earliest galaxies observed by the James Webb Space Telescope.

The James Webb Space Telescope's infrared observations revealed that the youngest spotted galaxies are larger and brighter than predicted by extrapolations from previous Hubble Space Telescope data, other observatories, and the ΛCDM model. Conventional explanations for these puzzling data require extraordinary and difficult-to-justify assumptions about galaxy evolution. We propose the inclusion of a newly identified source of radiation associated with matter consumption by black holes, to supplement galaxies' optical signatures.

Inherent Circular Dichroism of Phonons in Magnetic Weyl Semimetal Co_{3}Sn_{2}S_{2}.

We investigated the infrared-active phonons in ferromagnetic Weyl semimetal Co_{3}Sn_{2}S_{2} using optical spectroscopy. Below the Curie temperature (T_{C}≈175  K), we observed asymmetric Fano line shapes of phonons peaks in the optical conductivities, reflecting the presence of electron-phonon coupling. Additionally, the detected phonon signals by the polar Kerr rotation and the ellipticity spectroscopy indicate the circular dichroism (CD) of phonons.

Magnetic Order Induced Chiral Phonons in a Ferromagnetic Weyl Semimetal.

Chiral phonons are vibrational modes in a crystal that possess a well-defined handedness or chirality, typically found in materials that lack inversion symmetry. Here, we report the discovery of chiral phonon modes in the kagome ferromagnetic Weyl semimetal Co_{3}Sn_{2}S_{2}, a material that preserves inversion symmetry but breaks time-reversal symmetry. Using helicity-resolved magneto-Raman spectroscopy, we observe the spontaneous splitting of the doubly degenerate in-plane E_{g} modes into two distinct chiral phonon modes of opposite helicity when the sample is zero-field cooled below the Curie temperature in the absence of an external magnetic field.

Exact Decoding of Quantum Error-Correcting Codes.

We study the exact maximum-likelihood decoding of quantum error-correcting codes. Our primary focus is on the repetition code under circuit-level noise, which serves as a fundamental basis for quantum error correction experiments and is the only code that has achieved large distances and extremely low error rates. We uncover that the repetition code under circuit-level noise has an exact solution and propose an optimal maximum-likelihood decoding algorithm called "planar.

Discovery of the α-emitting isotope Pa.

Synthesizing isotopes located far away from the line of β-stability is the core research topic in nuclear physics. However, it remains a challenge due to their tiny production cross sections and short half-lives. Here, we report on the observation of a very neutron-deficient isotope Pa produced via the fusion-evaporation reaction Lu(Ca, 5n)Pa at a newly constructed China Accelerator Facility for Superheavy Elements.

Anisotropic atom motion on a row-wise antiferromagnetic surface.

Diffusion on surfaces is a fundamental process in surface science, governing nanostructure and film growth, as well as molecular self-assembly, chemical reactions and catalysis. Atom motion on non-magnetic surfaces has been studied extensively both theoretically and by real-space techniques such as field ion microscopy and scanning tunneling microscopy. For magnetic surfaces ab-initio calculations have predicted strong effects of the magnetic state onto adatom diffusion, but to date no corresponding experimental data exists.

Universal scaling solution for a rigidity transition: Renormalization group flows near the upper critical dimension.

Rigidity transitions induced by the formation of system-spanning disordered rigid clusters, like the jamming transition, can be well described in most physically relevant dimensions by mean-field theories. A dynamical mean-field theory commonly used to study these transitions, the coherent potential approximation (CPA), shows logarithmic corrections in two dimensions. By solving the theory in arbitrary dimensions and extracting the universal scaling predictions, we show that these logarithmic corrections are a symptom of an upper critical dimension d_{upper}=2, below which the critical exponents are modified.

Surface Kinematics and the Canonical Yang-Mills All-Loop Integrand.

It has been a long-standing challenge to define a canonical loop integrand for nonsupersymmetric gluon scattering amplitudes in the planar limit. Naive integrands are inflicted with 1/0 ambiguities associated with tadpoles and massless external bubbles, which destroy integrand-level gauge invariance as well as consistent on-shell factorization on single loop cuts. In this Letter, we show that this essentially kinematical obstruction to defining "the" integrand for Yang-Mills theory has a structural solution, handed to us by the formulation of gluon amplitudes in terms of curves on surfaces.

Analytic Solution for the Motion of Spinning Particles in Kerr Spacetime.

The equations of motion of massive test particles near Kerr black holes are separable in Boyer-Lindquist coordinates, as established by Carter. This separability, however, is lost when the particles are endowed with classical spin. We show that separability of the equations of motion can be recovered to linear order in spin by a shift of the worldline derived with the use of the hidden symmetry of Kerr spacetime.

Long-Range Angular Correlations of Particle Displacements at a Plastic-to-Elastic Transition in Jammed Amorphous Solids.

Understanding how a fluid turns into an amorphous solid is a fundamental challenge in statistical physics, during which no apparent structural ordering appears. In the athermal limit, the two states are connected by a well-defined jamming transition, near which the solid is marginally stable. A recent mechanical response screening theory proposes an additional transition above jamming, called a plastic-to-elastic transition here, separating anomalous and quasielastic mechanical behavior.

Quantum Geometric Kohn-Luttinger Superconductivity.

Coulomb repulsion can, counterintuitively, mediate Cooper pairing via the Kohn-Luttinger mechanism. However, it is commonly believed that observability of the effect requires special circumstances, e.g.

Self-Organized Cavity Bosons beyond the Adiabatic Elimination Approximation.

The longtime behavior of weakly interacting bosons moving in a two-dimensional optical lattice and coupled to a lossy cavity is investigated numerically via the truncated Wigner method, which allows us to take into full account the dynamics of the cavity mode, quantum fluctuations, cavity-boson correlations, and self-organization of individual runs. We first compare our results for small systems with quasi-exact calculations based on quantum trajectories, finding a remarkably good agreement for experimentally relevant boson fillings that improves further with system size. For large systems, we observe metastability at very long times and superfluid quasi-long range order, in sharp contrast with the true long range order found in the ground state of the approximate Bose-Hubbard model with extended interactions, obtained by adiabatically eliminating the cavity field.

Extreme synchronization transitions.

Across natural and human-made systems, transition points mark sudden changes of order and are thus key to understanding overarching system features. Motivated by recent experimental observations, we here uncover an intriguing class of transitions in coupled oscillators, extreme synchronization transitions, from asynchronous disordered states to synchronous states with almost completely ordered phases. Whereas such a transition appears like discontinuous or explosive phase transitions, it exhibits markedly distinct features.

Electrically Tunable Momentum Space Polarization Singularities in Liquid Crystal Microcavities.

Momentum space polarization singularities of light appear as vectorial twists in the scattered and radiated far field patterns of exotic photonic structures. They relate to important concepts such as bound states in the continuum, spatiotemporal light steering, polarization Möbius strips, Berry curvature, and associated topological photonic phenomena. Polarization singularities, such as completely circularly polarized C-points, are readily designed in real space through interference of differently polarized beams.

Mobile Game Evaluation Method Based on Data Mining of Affective Time Series.

Our work is positioned at the intersection of game data science, affective gaming, and the implementation of multimodal body sensors analysis. We propose an original method of evaluating the quality of a class of video games based on the emotional reactions of players. Game developers ask why some games are more profitable (MP games) than others (LP games).

Magnon damping and mode softening in quantum double-exchange ferromagnets.

We present a comprehensive analysis of the magnetic excitations and electronic properties ofdouble-exchange ferromagnets, i.e. systems where ferromagnetic (FM) ordering emerges from the competition between spin, charge, and orbital degrees of freedom, but without the canonical approximation of using classical localized spins.

Amoeboid propulsion of active solid bodies, vesicles and droplets: a comparison.

We present a unified discussion of three types of near-spherical amoeboid microswimmers, driven by periodic, axially symmetric, achiral deformations (swim strokes): a solid deformable body, a vesicle with incompressible fluid membrane, and a droplet. Minimal models are used, which characterize the swimmer type only by boundary conditions. We calculate the swimming velocities, the dissipated power and the Lighthill efficiencies within a second order perturbation expansion in the small deformation amplitudes.

Ground and First Excited States of the NaSr Molecule: Experimental and Theoretical Study.

We report the first spectroscopic investigation of the NaSr molecule. Spectra related to the B(2)Σ → X(1)Σ transition were observed with partial rotational resolution by thermoluminescence and laser-induced fluorescence techniques. Simultaneously, potential energy curves of the lowest electronic states of NaSr and transition dipole moments were calculated by using two different theoretical approaches.