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We present in-situ x-ray diffraction and velocity measurements of Fe$_2$O$_3$ under laser shock compression at pressures between 38-116 GPa. None of the phases reported by static compression studies were observed. Instead, we observed an isostructural phase transition from $\alpha$-Fe$_2$O$_3$ to a new $\alpha^\prime$-Fe$_2$O$_3$ phase at a pressure of 50-62 GPa. The $\alpha^\prime$-Fe$_2$O$_3$ phase differs from $\alpha$-Fe$_2$O$_3$ by an 11% volume drop and a different unit cell compressibility. We further observed a two-wave structure in the velocity profile, which can be related to an intermediate regime where both $\alpha$ and $\alpha^\prime$ phases coexist. Density functional theory calculations with a Hubbard parameter indicate that the observed unit cell volume drop can be associated with a spin transition following a magnetic collapse., Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures

The structure and decay of the most neutron-rich beryllium isotope, $^{16}$Be, has been investigated following proton knockout from a high-energy $^{17}$B beam. Two relatively narrow resonances were observed for the first time, with energies of $0.84(3)$ and $2.15(5)$ MeV above the two-neutron decay threshold and widths of $0.32(8)$ and $0.95(15)$ MeV respectively. These were assigned to be the ground ($J^{\pi}=0^+$) and first excited ($2^+$) state, with $E_x=1.31(6)$ MeV. The mass excess of $^{16}$Be was thus deduced to be $56.93(13)$ MeV, some $0.5$ MeV more bound than the only previous measurement. Both states were observed to decay by direct two-neutron emission. Calculations incorporating the evolution of the wavefunction during the decay as a genuine three-body process reproduced the principal characteristics of the neutron-neutron energy spectra for both levels, indicating that the ground state exhibits a strong spatially compact dineutron component, while the 2$^+$ level presents a far more diffuse neutron-neutron distribution.

The dineutron correlation is systematically studied in three different Borromean nuclei near the neutron dripline, 11Li, 14Be and 17B, via the (p, pn) knockout reaction measured at the RIBF facility in RIKEN. For the three nuclei, the correlation angle between the valence neutrons is found to be largest in the same range of intrinsic momenta, which can be associated to the nuclear surface. This result reinforces the prediction that the formation of the dineutron is universal in environments with low neutron density, such as the surface of neutron-rich Borromean nuclei.

We report on the first production of an antihydrogen beam by charge exchange of 6.1 keV antiprotons with a cloud of positronium in the GBAR experiment at CERN. The antiproton beam was delivered by the AD/ELENA facility. The positronium target was produced from a positron beam itself obtained from an electron linear accelerator. We observe an excess over background indicating antihydrogen production with a significance of 3-4 standard deviations.

The Gaussian phase-space representation can be used to implement quantum dynamics for fermionic particles numerically. To improve numerical results, we explore the use of dynamical diffusion gauges in such implementations. This is achieved by benchmarking quantum dynamics of few-body systems against independent exact solutions. A diffusion gauge is implemented here as a so-called noise-matrix, which satisfies a matrix equation defined by the corresponding Fokker--Planck equation of the phase-space representation. For the physical systems with fermionic particles considered here, the numerical evaluation of the new diffusion gauges allows us to double the practical simulation time, compared with hitherto known analytic noise-matrices. This development may have far reaching consequences for future quantum dynamical simulations of many-body systems.

Barium ruthenate Ba$_{4}$Ru$_{3}$O$_{10}$, in which Ru$_{3}$O$_{12}$ trimers are connected together to form a chequered two-dimensional framework, has been synthesised and its structural, magnetic and transport properties studied between 300 K and 2 K. The paramagnetic to antiferromagnetic transition at $T_N \sim 105$ K evidenced on the susceptibility curve coincides with an increase of electron localization in transport measurements. Thermoelectric power and Hall coefficient measurements both exhibit dramatic changes at $T_N$, characteristic of a reconstruction of the bands structure near the Fermi level. No pronounced structural changes are observed at TN in this compound. The magnetic scattering signal on the neutron powder diffraction patterns below $T_N$ is weak, but can be tentatively modelled with an antiferromagnetic ordering of the spins at both ends of a trimer, the spin of the more symmetric Ru site remaining idle. Crystal field and strong spin-orbit coupling at the Ru$^{4+}$ site seem to be the key parameters to understand the magnetic state of Ba$_{4}$Ru$_{3}$O$_{10}$.

In stochastic modeling of infectious diseases, it has been established that variations in infectivity affect the probability of a major outbreak, but not the shape of the curves during a major outbreak, which is predicted by deterministic models [Diekmann et al., 2012]. However, such conclusions are derived under idealized assumptions such as the population size tending to infinity, and the individual degree of infectivity only depending on variations in the infectiousness period. In this paper we show that the same conclusions hold true in a finite population representing a medium size city, where the degree of infectivity is determined by the offspring distribution, which we try to make as realistic as possible for SARS-CoV-2. In particular, we consider distributions with fat tails, to incorporate the existence of super-spreaders. We also provide new theoretical results on convergence of stochastic models which allows to incorporate any offspring distribution with a finite variance.

Phase-space representations are a family of methods for dynamics of both bosonic and fermionic systems, that work by mapping the system's density matrix to a quasi-probability density and the Liouville-von Neumann equation of the Hamiltonian to a corresponding density differential equation for the probability. We investigate here the accuracy and the computational efficiency of one approximate phase-space representation, called the fermionic Truncated Wigner Approximation (fTWA), applied to the Fermi-Hubbard model. On a many-body 2D system, with hopping strength and Coulomb $U$ tuned to represent the electronic structure of graphene, the method is found to be able to capture the time evolution of first-order (site occupation) and second-order (correlation functions) moments significantly better than the mean-field, Hartree-Fock method. The fTWA was also compared to results from the exact diagonalization method for smaller systems, and in general the agreement was found to be good. The fully parallel computational requirement of fTWA scales in the same order as the Hartree-Fock method, and the largest system considered here contained 198 lattice sites.

We present a description of the GBAR positron (e+) trapping apparatus, which consists of a three stage Buffer Gas Trap (BGT) followed by a High Field Penning Trap (HFT), and discuss its performance. The overall goal of the GBAR experiment is to measure the acceleration of the neutral antihydrogen (H) atom in the terrestrial gravitational field by neutralising a positive antihydrogen ion (H+), which has been cooled to a low temperature, and observing the subsequent H annihilation following free fall. To produce one H+ ion, about 10^10 positrons, efficiently converted into positronium (Ps), together with about 10^7 antiprotons (p), are required. The positrons, produced from an electron linac-based system, are accumulated first in the BGT whereafter they are stacked in the ultra-high vacuum HFT, where we have been able to trap 1.4(2) x 10^9 positrons in 1100 seconds.

Two-dimensional (2D) layered magnetic materials are generating a great amount of interest for the next generation of electronic devices thanks to their remarkable properties associated to spin dynamics. The recently discovered layered VI$_3$ ferromagnetic phase belongs to this family, although a full understanding of its properties is limited by an ill-defined crystallographic structure. This is not any longer true. Here, we investigate the VI$_3$ crystal structure upon cooling using both synchrotron X-ray and neutron powder diffraction and provide structural models for the two structural transitions occurring at 76 K and 32 K. Moreover, we confirm by magnetic measurements that VI$_3$ becomes ferromagnetic at 50 K and discuss the difficulty of solving its full magnetic structure by neutrons. We equally determined the magnetic properties of our recently reported LiVI$_3$ phase, which is alike the well-known CrI$_3$ ferromagnetic phase in terms of electronic and crystallographic structures and found to our surprise an antiferromagnetic behavior with a N\'eel temperature of 12 K. Such a finding provides extra clues for a better understanding of magnetism in these low dimension compounds. Finally, the easiness of preparing novel Li-based 2D magnetic materials by chemical/electrochemical means opens wide the opportunity to design materials with exotic properties.

A kinematically complete quasi-free $(p,pn)$ experiment in inverse kinematics was performed to study the structure of the Borromean nucleus $^{17}$B, which had long been considered to have neutron halo. By analyzing the momentum distributions and exclusive cross sections, we obtained the spectroscopic factors for $1s_{1/2}$ and $0d_{5/2}$ orbitals, and a surprisingly small percentage of 9(2)$\%$ was determined for $1s_{1/2}$. Our finding of such a small $1s_{1/2}$ component and the halo features reported in prior experiments can be explained by the deformed relativistic Hartree-Bogoliubov theory in continuum, revealing a definite but not dominant neutron halo in $^{17}$B. The present work gives the smallest $s$- or $p$-orbital component among known nuclei exhibiting halo features, and implies that the dominant occupation of $s$ or $p$ orbitals is not a prerequisite for the occurrence of neutron halo., Comment: Accepted for publication in Physical Review Letters,8 pages, 4 figures