Search

Interface engineering of zinc metal anodes is a promising remedy to relieve their inferior stability caused by dendrite growth and side reactions. Nevertheless, the low affinity and additional weight of the protective coating remain obstacles to their further implementation. Here, aroused by DFT simulation, self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) are selectively constructed to enhance the stability of zinc metal anodes in dilute aqueous electrolytes. It is found that the monolayer thiol molecules relatively prefer to selectively graft onto the unstable zinc crystal facets through strong Zn-S chemical interactions to engineer a covalent interface, enabling the uniform deposition of Zn

Modern development of flexible electronics has made use of bioelectronic materials as artificial tissue in vivo. As hydrogels are more similar to nerve tissue, functional hydrogels have become a promising candidate for bioelectronics. Meanwhile, interfacing functional hydrogels and living tissues is at the forefront of bioelectronics. The peripheral nerve injury often leads to paralysis, chronic pain, neurologic disorders, and even disability, because it has affected the bioelectrical signal transmission between the brain and the rest of body. Here, a kind of light-stimuli-responsive and stretchable conducting polymer hydrogel (CPH) is developed to explore artificial nerve. The conductivity of CPH can be enhanced when illuminated by near-infrared light, which can promote the conduction of the bioelectrical signal. When CPH is mechanically elongated, it still has high durability of conductivity and, thus, can accommodate unexpected strain of nerve tissues in motion. Thereby, CPH can better serve as an implant of the serious peripheral nerve injury in vivo, especially in the case that the length of the missing nerve exceeds 10 mm.

The variational preparation of complex quantum states using the quantum approximate optimization algorithm (QAOA) is of fundamental interest, and becomes a promising application of quantum computers. Here, we systematically study the performance of QAOA for preparing ground states of target Hamiltonians near the critical points of their quantum phase transitions, and generating Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) states. We reveal that the performance of QAOA is related to the translational invariance of the target Hamiltonian: Without the translational symmetry, for instance due to the open boundary condition (OBC) or randomness in the system, the QAOA becomes less efficient. We then propose a generalized QAOA assisted by the parameterized resource Hamiltonian (PRH-QAOA), to achieve a better performance. In addition, based on the PRH-QAOA, we design a low-depth quantum circuit beyond one-dimensional geometry, to generate GHZ states with perfect fidelity. The experimental realization of the proposed scheme for generating GHZ states on Rydberg-dressed atoms is discussed. Our work paves the way for performing QAOA on programmable quantum processors without translational symmetry, especially for recently developed two-dimensional quantum processors with OBC., Comment: 21 pages, 15 figures

Many-body localization (MBL) describes a quantum phase where an isolated interacting system subject to sufficient disorder displays non-ergodic behavior, evading thermal equilibrium that occurs under its own dynamics. Previously, the thermalization-MBL transition has been largely characterized with the growth of disorder. Here, we explore a new axis, reporting on an energy resolved MBL transition using a 19-qubit programmable superconducting processor, which enables precise control and flexibility of both disorder strength and initial state preparations. We observe that the onset of localization occurs at different disorder strengths, with distinguishable energy scales, by measuring time-evolved observables and many-body wavefunctions related quantities. Our results open avenues for the experimental exploration of many-body mobility edges in MBL systems, whose existence is widely debated due to system size finiteness, and where exact simulations in classical computers become unfeasible., Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures + supplementary information

We experimentally study the ergodic dynamics of a 1D array of 12 superconducting qubits with a transverse field, and identify the regimes of strong and weak thermalization with different initial states. We observe convergence of the local observable to its thermal expectation value in the strong-thermalizaion regime. For weak thermalization, the dynamics of local observable exhibits an oscillation around the thermal value, which can only be attained by the time average. We also demonstrate that the entanglement entropy and concurrence can characterize the regimes of strong and weak thermalization. Our work provides an essential step towards a generic understanding of thermalization in quantum systems., Comment: 6+6 pages, 4+8 figures

Multipartite entangled states are significant resources for both quantum information processing and quantum metrology. In particular, non-Gaussian entangled states are predicted to achieve a higher sensitivity of precision measurements than Gaussian states. On the basis of metrological sensitivity, the conventional linear Ramsey squeezing parameter (RSP) efficiently characterises the Gaussian entangled atomic states but fails for much wider classes of highly sensitive non-Gaussian states. These complex non-Gaussian entangled states can be classified by the nonlinear squeezing parameter (NLSP), as a generalisation of the RSP with respect to nonlinear observables, and identified via the Fisher information. However, the NLSP has never been measured experimentally. Using a 19-qubit programmable superconducting processor, here we report the characterisation of multiparticle entangled states generated during its nonlinear dynamics. First, selecting 10 qubits, we measure the RSP and the NLSP by single-shot readouts of collective spin operators in several different directions. Then, by extracting the Fisher information of the time-evolved state of all 19 qubits, we observe a large metrological gain of 9.89$^{+0.28}_{-0.29}$ dB over the standard quantum limit, indicating a high level of multiparticle entanglement for quantum-enhanced phase sensitivity. Benefiting from high-fidelity full controls and addressable single-shot readouts, the superconducting processor with interconnected qubits provides an ideal platform for engineering and benchmarking non-Gaussian entangled states that are useful for quantum-enhanced metrology., 13+12 pages, 10+2 figures

Understanding various phenomena in non-equilibrium dynamics of closed quantum many-body systems, such as quantum thermalization, information scrambling, and nonergodic dynamics, is a crucial for modern physics. Using a ladder-type superconducting quantum processor, we perform analog quantum simulations of both the $XX$ ladder and one-dimensional (1D) $XX$ model. By measuring the dynamics of local observables, entanglement entropy and tripartite mutual information, we signal quantum thermalization and information scrambling in the $XX$ ladder. In contrast, we show that the $XX$ chain, as free fermions on a 1D lattice, fails to thermalize, and local information does not scramble in the integrable channel. Our experiments reveal ergodicity and scrambling in the controllable qubit ladder, and opens the door to further investigations on the thermodynamics and chaos in quantum many-body systems., Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, and supplementary materials with 10 pages, 3 tables and 14 figures

Quantum coherence and correlation of thermal states in the extended XY spin chain are studied in terms of the recently proposed l 1 norm, skew information, and Bures distance of geometry discord (BGD), respectively. The entanglement measured via concurrence is calculated for reference. A two-dimensional susceptibility is introduced to explore their capability in highlighting the critical lines associated with quantum phase transitions in the model. It is shown that the susceptibility of the skew information and BGD is a genuine indicator of quantum phase transitions, and characterizes the factorization. However, the l 1 norm is trivial for the factorization. An explicit scaling law of BGD is captured at low temperature in the XY model. In contrast to the entanglement, quantum coherence reveals a kind of long-range nonclassical correlation. Moreover, the obvious relation among model parameters is extracted for the factorized line in the extended model. Those are instructive for the understanding of quantum coherence and correlation in the theory of quantum information, and quantum phase transitions and factorization in condensed-matter physics.

We use a two-dimensional electrostatic model to explore Van der Pauw (VdP) method on samples with holes. Results of electrostatic simulation based on the model are consistent with the experimental results. The quantitative investigation of VdP method on sample with one hole indicate the value of f, i.e. the right hand side of VdP equation, is depend on the position of contacts and the size of holes. We also quantitatively explore the VdP method used on sample with two holes in special position of contacts and sample geometry. According to the guidance of simulation and experiment, we find proper position of contacts, which make VdP equation f = 1 valid again on sample with holes. It is helpful for the optimization of VdP method and measuring the resistivity of sample with holes.

The joint computational and experimental efforts reveal that the organic molecule 1,2-diisocyano-4,5-dimethylbenzene (1) acts as both a reactant and a photosensitizer (PS) in a metal-free reaction with perfluoroalkylhalide (2) to produce 2-perfluoroalkyl quinoxalines (3) under visible light. Both the π-π stacking aggregation in crystals and the solvation in various solvents of PS 1 exhibited visible-light absorption at 466 nm in spite of its smaller coefficient than that of the ultraviolet-light absorption. Such an aggregation-assisted visible-light absorption phenomenon is rationalized by theoretical calculations of the condensed-phase properties with the consideration of the explicit polarization effect from the neighboring molecules. Upon irradiation with different wavelengths, the emission colors changed from navy to bright yellow. Fluorescence lifetime measurements show that the emission of 1 comes from its singlet excited state. The aggregation induced emission when excited at 420 nm has a shorter lifetime (0.45 ns) than that of the emission from isolated molecules (2.71 ns) when excited at 381 nm. It is conceived that the aggregation assisted visible light absorption properties may be general in other photo-reactive molecules, such as 1,4-diisocyano-2,5-dimethylbenzene (4), 1,4-dicyanobenzene (5), and 1,4-diisocyanobenzene (6), which are widely used in many photochemical reactions in the absence of any external photosensitizer.

The interaction between monolayered arsenene and fourteen kinds of solvents is found to be correlated with the extent of charge transfer from arsenene to the solvents by density functional theory calculations. Among them, three kinds of aprotic solvents (cyclohexane, tetrahydrofuran and chloroform), representing different adsorbability with arsenene, were selected to exfoliate bulk arsenic crystals into nanosheets in experiments. The as-prepared concentrations of the three dispersions vary monotonically with the calculated adsorption energies and charge transfer per contact area. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) characterization and size distribution analyses manifested that the lateral size distributions of the exfoliated arsenic nanosheets ranged from 100 nm to 1050 nm. This strategy shows the potential usage in liquid-phase exfoliation of multi-layered materials due to the interaction effects between the solvents and the surface of the materials.

The out-of-time-order correlators (OTOCs) is used to study the quantum phase transitions (QPTs) between the normal phase and the superradiant phase in the Rabi and few-body Dicke models with large frequency ratio of theatomic level splitting to the single-mode electromagnetic radiation field frequency. The focus is on the OTOC thermally averaged with infinite temperature, which is an experimentally feasible quantity. It is shown that thecritical points can be identified by long-time averaging of the OTOC via observing its local minimum behavior. More importantly, the scaling laws of the OTOC for QPTs are revealed by studying the experimentally accessible conditions with finite frequency ratio and finite number of atoms in the studied models. The critical exponents extracted from the scaling laws of OTOC indicate that the QPTs in the Rabi and Dicke models belong to the same universality class., 9 pages, 10 figures, v3: published version added; v2: supplemental material added, more results added

We investigate the diagonal entropy for ground states of the extended Kitaev chains with extensive pairing and hopping terms. The systems contain rich topological phases equivalently represented by topological invariant winding numbers and Majorana zero modes. Both the finite size scaling law and block scaling law of the diagonal entropy are studied, which indicates that the diagonal entropy demonstrates volume effect. The parameter of volume term is regarded as the diagonal entropy density, which can identify the critical points of symmetry-protected topological phase transitions efficiently in the studied models, even for those with higher winding numbers. The formulation of block scaling law and the capability of diagonal entropy density in detecting topological phase transitions are independent of the chosen bases. In order to manifest the advantage of diagonal entropy, we also calculate the global entanglement, which cannot show clear signatures of the topological phase transitions. This work provides a new quantum-informatic approach to characterize the feature of the topologically ordered states and may motivate a deep understanding of the quantum coherence and diagonal entropy in various condensed matter systems.

We investigate the diagonal entropy(DE) of the ground state for quantum many-body systems, including the XY model and the Ising model with next nearest neighbour interactions. We focus on the DE of a subsystem of L continuous spins. We show that the DE in many-body systems, regardless of integrability, can be represented as a volume term plus a logarithmic correction and a constant offset. Quantum phase transition points can be explicitly identified by the three coefficients thereof. Besides, by combining entanglement entropy and the relative entropy of quantum coherence, as two celebrated representatives of quantumness, we simply obtain the DE, which naturally has the potential to reveal the information of quantumness. More importantly, the DE is concerning only the diagonal form of the ground state reduced density matrix, making it feasible to measure in real experiments, and therefore it has immediate applications in demonstrating quantum supremacy on state-of-the-art quantum simulators., Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures

Fragment yields of projectile fragmentation reactions using primary beams of 36,40Ar at 50 MeV/nucleon on 64 Ni target have been measured. Fragment yields of different isotopes were obtained for Z ≥ 5 in RIBLL fragment seperator. We compare the extracted yields to the predictions of the empirical parametrization of fragmentation cross-sections(EPAX) and Statistical Abration-Ablation model(SAA) considering the RIBLL separator transmission rate. Isotope yield ratios between these 2 reactions were calculated, isoscaling parameters α and β, their dependence on fragment atomic number Z and neutron number N were calculated.

We investigate the microstructure and optical properties of Ge films on Si substrates prepared at low temperature by DC magnetron sputtering and the effect of in situ annealing on them. With increasing growth temperature, Ge films undergo a transition from amorphous to microcrystalline, then to polycrystalline. After annealing, these thin films transform into polycrystalline films with the (111) preferred orientation and identical crystal sizes. The surfaces of the amorphous and microcrystalline Ge films are severely coarsened, whereas the polycrystalline Ge film still displays a smooth surface. The growth mechanisms of Ge films with different crystalline phases in the annealing process are discussed, which can explain their morphology evolutions. Additionally, their infrared absorptions are enhanced after annealing, and this is useful for fabricating high-efficiency Si-based solar cells.

Mass excesses of short-lived $A=2Z\ensuremath{-}1$ nuclei $^{63}\mathrm{Ge}$, $^{65}\mathrm{As}$, $^{67}\mathrm{Se}$, and $^{71}\mathrm{Kr}$ have been directly measured to be $\ensuremath{-}46\text{ }921(37)$, $\ensuremath{-}46\text{ }937(85)$, $\ensuremath{-}46\text{ }580(67)$, and $\ensuremath{-}46\text{ }320(141)\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{keV}$, respectively. The deduced proton separation energy of $\ensuremath{-}90(85)\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{keV}$ for $^{65}\mathrm{As}$ shows that this nucleus is only slightly proton unbound. X-ray burst model calculations with the new mass excess of $^{65}\mathrm{As}$ suggest that the majority of the reaction flow passes through $^{64}\mathrm{Ge}$ via proton capture, indicating that $^{64}\mathrm{Ge}$ is not a significant $rp$-process waiting point.

Spectroscopic factors have been extracted for proton rich 34Ar and neutron rich 46Ar using the (p,d) neutron transfer reaction. The experimental results show little reduction of the ground state neutron spectroscopic factor of the proton rich nucleus 34Ar compared to that of 46Ar. The results suggest that correlations, which generally reduce such spectroscopic factors, do not depend strongly on the neutron-proton asymmetry of the nucleus in this isotopic region as was reported in knockout reactions. The present results are consistent with results from systematic studies of transfer reactions but inconsistent with the trends observed in knockout reaction measurements., Comment: 11 pages, 2 figures. submitted to PRL

Collisions involving 112Sn and 124Sn nuclei have been simulated with the improved Quantum Molecular Dynamics transport model. The results of the calculations reproduce isospin diffusion data from two different observables and the ratios of neutron and proton spectra. By comparing these data to calculations performed over a range of symmetry energies at saturation density and different representations of the density dependence of the symmetry energy, constraints on the density dependence of the symmetry energy at sub-normal density are obtained. Results from present work are compared to constraints put forward in other recent analysis., Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures,accepted for publication in Phy. Rev. Lett

The dynamics of electron tunneling between double quantum dots is investigated t heoretically in terms of a perturbation method based on a unitary transformation . Considering electron coupling with phonons, the dynamical tunneling current is obtained analytically. The phonon-induced decoherence is studied in detail. A possible decoupling mechanism is proposed.

The ground-state properties of the Sm-based mixed valence compounds are discussed by means of introducing an indirect on-site hybridization mediated by phonons, for the direct on-site hybridization is forbidden by inversion symmetry. A self-consistent field approximation is used, and a nonzero energy gap and a fluctuating valence state are given. The results obtained can be used to explain the small energy gap and the valence fluctuation phenomena observed in SmB6 and SmS.

The electron-phonon interactions in valence fluctuation systems have been reconsidered and a new procedure has been developed to transform the author's model Hamiltonian, which is a periodic Anderson model with indirect hybridisation, by a unitary transformation of the displacement operator type. Then, a variational ground state of the phonons subsystem has been constructed; thus the electron and the phonon subsystems could be separated approximately and an effective Hamiltonian for the electron subsystem could be obtained. Finally, a functional integration approach has been used to investigate the ground-state properties of the effective Hamiltonian, and the ground-state phase diagrams have been given. By requiring that the total ground-state energy of the model system should be a minimum, he has found that the ground state of the phonon subsystem must be a two-phonon coherent state which is different from any eigenstate of phonon number operators. Also, the author has shown that through the electron-phonon interaction the f-f Hubbard U-term could contribute to the d-f hybridisation and he considers that this contribution might be used to explain why most of valence fluctuation systems have a strongly correlated f band but are not in any magnetic state.

In this paper, a new variational ground state of strong electron-phonon interacting system is proposed, in which the electron subsystem is in superconducting pairing state and the phonon subsystem in two -phonon coherent state. We show that such a variational state is necessary for obtaining a superconducting condensation energy with reasonable magnitude and for the effective mass of the charge carriers not being too large.

In this article, taking the exciton and polar-phonon interaction as an example, we introduce an integral operator to deal with the dynamical problem of exciton-phonon interaction. Compared with the methods of earlier arthors, our method has some characteristics : besides the binding energies which agree with the measured data of experiments, the lifetime of excitons, the renormalization factors of translational masses, and the relation between these quantities and temperature, are obtained simultaneously. This method may be used not only for the Is state, but also the states higher than Is state. Furthermore, this method may be extended to the anisotropic case and the case of degenerate valence band conveniently.

This article deals with the low-lying electronic states——the charge transfer excitons(CTE), of alkali halide crystals. By the standard perturbation method of degenerate states, the energy spectra of the CTE are studied and the effective Hamiltonian of the CTE system is derived. The energy levels of the CTE obtained by numerical calculations agree with the peak positions of light absorption spectra found in the literature, the relative errors are small. In this article, the bandwidth and the effective transla-tional mass of the CTE are also obtained.

Two-magnon Raman spectra of RbNiF3 are calculated for the temperature range between 0 K to Néel point TN(= 133 K). From considerations of the general symmetry principle and the experimental results, we have derived the Hamiltonian of interaction between the magnetic system and the radiation field. The method of the equation of motion of retarded Green's function is used to obtain the analytic expression of the two-magnon Raman scattering intensity. In the two-magnon propagator, both the effects of energy renormalization and the life time have been taken into account. Finally, quantitative calculations are performed with proper approximations using computer. Although there are no adjustable parameters, the results account very well for the observed temperature dependence of both the. peak position and the line width in the range from 0 K up to TN.

This article deals with the exciton-phonon interaction which has important effects on the properties of the charge transfer excitons (CTE) in alkali halide crystals. An interaction mechanism: the modulation of the Hamiltonian of the CTE system by the vibrations of the constituent ions, which may play an important role, is studied. The CTE-phonon interaction Hamiltonian is derived. From this interaction Hamiltonian, we have discussed the lifetime of the CTE. The linewidths calculated self-consistently under proper approximations agree semiquantitatively with the data measured by experiments in the literature. So we consider that this interaction Hamiltonian may present the important exciton-phonon interaction in alkali halide crystals.

Via a reconsideration of a simple model for bipolarons, we have shown that in order to-keep the total energy of the model system to be a stable minimum, a new phonon coherent state should be introduced as a result of the electron-phonon interaction. Thus it could be in-fered that the reduction effect of phonons is much weaker and the range of the singlet bipo-laronic state as the stable ground state configuration is more extensive than what the previous authors considered.