To enhance the phase sensitivity of Mach–Zehnder interferometers, we use a tunable phase shift before the light beams are injected into the interferometer. The analytical result of the optimal phase shift is obtained, which only depends on the initial input states. For a non-zero optimal phase shift, the phase sensitivity of the interferometers in the output ports is always enhanced. We can achieve this enhancement for most states, including entangled and mixed states. The optimal phase shift is exhibited in three examples. Compared to previous methods, this scheme provides a general way to improve phase sensitivity and could find wide applications in optical phase estimations.

Building blocks of quantum computers have been demonstrated in small to intermediate-scale systems. As one of the leading platforms, the trapped ion system has attracted wide attention. A significant challenge in this system is to combine fast high-fidelity gates with scalability and convenience in ion trap fabrication. Here we propose an architecture for large-scale quantum computing with a two-dimensional array of atomic ions trapped at such large distance which is convenient for ion-trap fabrication but usually believed to be unsuitable for quantum computing as the conventional gates would be too slow. Using gate operations far outside of the Lamb–Dicke region, we show that fast and robust entangling gates can be realized in any large ion arrays. The gate operations are intrinsically parallel and robust to thermal noise, which, together with their high speed and scalability of the proposed architecture, makes this approach an attractive one for large-scale quantum computing.

We propose a new method to evaluate residual stress based on the analysis of a portion of a Debye ring with two-dimensional synchrotron x-ray diffraction. The residual stress of a nickel-based alloy GH3535 evaluated by the proposed method is determined to be $-1149\pm34$ MPa based on the quantitative analysis of the deformation of the (200) reflection, and the residual stress obtained by analyzing THE (111) plane is $-933\pm 68$ MPa. The results demonstrate that the GH3535 alloy surface is highly compressive, as expected for a polishing surface treatment. The proposed method provides insight into the field of residual stress measurement and quantitative understanding of the residual stress states in GH3535.

Ion deceleration has played a critical role in ion-related research when the ions are produced in the form of a high-energy beam. We present a deceleration method combining electrostatic lens and ion trap technique, which can effectively decelerate ions to energy below the trapping potential of a typical ion trap. The experiments were performed on metastable $1s2s\,{}^{3}\!S_1\,{\rm Li}^{+}$ ions, and demonstrated that the kinetic energy could easily be reduced from $\sim$450 eV to a few eV, with the latter being confirmed using the Doppler-shifted fluorescence spectra.

We extract the 3D phase $\varDelta$ and the Stokes parameter $S_{3}$ of a transmissive anisotropic object spatially using an interferometric PolarCam. Four parallel interferograms with a phase shift of $\pi$/2 between the images are captured in a single snapshot and then reconstructed by the four-bucket algorithm to extract the 3D phase of the object. The $S_{3}$ is then calculated directly from the obtained 3D phase $\varDelta$. The extracted results of $\varDelta$ and $S_{3}$ were compared with those extracted from the non-interferometric PolarCam and the Thorlabs polarimeter, and the results match quite well. The merit of using the interferometric PolarCam is that no mechanical movement mechanisms are included, and hence the $\varDelta$ and $S_{3}$ of the object can be extracted, with high accuracy and within a part of a second (three times faster than non-interferometric PolarCam and Thorlabs polarimeter methods). Moreover, this method can be applied in the field of the dynamic spectro–interferometric PolarCam and can be implemented using swept-wavelength approaches.

We propose an experimental approach to directly detect the acoustic radiation induced static component (SC) of primary longitudinal (L) wave propagation in solids using an ultrasonic pitch-catch technique, where a low-frequency ultrasonic transducer is used to detect the SC generated by the co-propagating primary L-wave tone burst that is excited by a high-frequency ultrasonic transducer. Essentially, the experimental approach proposed uses a dynamic method to detect the SC generated. The basic requirement is that the central frequency of the low-frequency ultrasonic transducer needs to be near the center of the main lobe frequency range of the time-domain envelope of the primary L-wave tone burst. Under this condition, the main lobe of the frequency spectrum of the SC pulse generated adequately overlaps with that of the low-frequency ultrasonic transducer. This will enable the generated SC pulse to be directly detected by the low-frequency ultrasonic transducer. The performed experimental examination validates the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed approach for direct detection of the acoustic radiation induced SC generated by L-wave propagation in solids.

We theoretically propose a reconfigurable two-dimensional (2D) hexagonal sonic crystal with higher-order topology protected by the six-fold, $C_{6}$, rotation symmetry. The acoustic band gap and band topology can be controlled by rotating the triangular scatterers in each unit cell. In the nontrivial phase, the sonic crystal realizes the topological spin Hall effect in a higher-order fashion: (i) the edge states emerging in the bulk band gap exhibit partial spin-momentum correlation and are gapped due to the reduced spatial symmetry at the edges. (ii) The gapped edge states, on the other hand, stabilize the topological corner states emerging in the edge band gap. The partial spin-momentum correlation is manifested as pseudo-spin-polarization of edge states away from the time-reversal invariant momenta, where the pseudospin is emulated by the acoustic orbital angular momentum. We reveal the underlying topological mechanism using a corner topological index based on the symmetry representation of the acoustic Bloch bands.

We study the head-on collision of two solitary waves in a precompressed granular chain using the discrete element method. Our study takes the Toda chain solution as the initial condition for the simulations. The simulation covers the dynamical evolution of the collision process from the start of the incident wave to the end of the collision. The interaction has a central collision region of about five-grain width in which two solitary waves merge completely and share only one peak. Four stages, i.e., the pre-in-phase traveling stage, lag-phase collision state, lead-phase collision state, and post-in-phase traveling stage, are identified to describe the complex collision processes. Our results may be helpful for explaining the existence of long-lived solitary waves seen in the simulations by Takato and Sen [Europhys. Lett. 100 (2012) 24003].

The evolution of energy in subaerial and subaqueous granular column collapses is studied. Employing the refractive index matching method and planar laser-induced fluorescence technique, we obtain granular and liquid images simultaneously in a single experiment of subaqueous flow. Particle image velocimetry and particle tracking velocimetry are used to process the data for the fluid and granular phase. We find stepwise decreases in the total kinetic energy of the granular material. The stage of rapidly falling energy corresponds to large transverse changes in the direction of the massive granular particles. Moreover, in this stage, a major fraction of the granular kinetic energy transferred from the granular potential energy is lost or transferred. Interestingly, compared with dry granular flow, the existence of an ambient liquid seems to reduce the total dissipated energy, which may be the reason why previous studies observed similar granular runout distances in subaqueous and dry granular collapses.

Interface width effect on the spherical Rayleigh–Taylor instability in the weakly nonlinear regime is studied by numerical simulations. For Legendre perturbation mode $P_n$ with wave number $k_n$ and interface half-width $L$, the commonly adopted empirical linear growth rate formula $\gamma_n^{\rm em}(L)=\gamma_n/\sqrt{1+k_nL}$ is found to be sufficient in spherical geometry. At the weakly nonlinear stage, the interface width affects the mode coupling processes. The development of the mode $P_{2n}$ is substantially influenced by the interface width. Moreover, the nonlinear saturation amplitude increases with the interface width.

The hydrostatic pressure is expected to be an effective knob to tune the magnetostructural phase transitions of hexagonal MM'X alloys (M and M' denote transition metals and X represents main group elements). We perform magnetization measurements under hydrostatic pressure on an MM'X martensitic MnNi$_{0.77}$Fe$_{0.23}$Ge alloy. The magnetostructural transition temperature can be efficiently tuned to lower temperatures by applying moderate pressures, with a giant shift rate of $-151$ K/GPa. A temperature span of 30 K is obtained under the pressure, within which a large magnetic entropy change of $-23$ J$\cdot$kg$^{-1}$K$^{-1}$ in a field change of 5 T is induced by the mechanical energy gain due to the large volume change. Meanwhile, a decoupling of structural and magnetic transitions is observed at low temperatures when the martensitic transition temperature is lower than the Curie temperature. These results show a multi-parameter tunable caloric effect that benefits the solid-state cooling.

Cavities and extended defects formed in single crystalline and polycrystalline $\alpha$-SiC implanted with H$^{+}$ ions are compared. The samples are investigated by cross-sectional transmission electron microscopy. H$_{2}$ bubbles are formed during H implantation and H$_{2}$ molecules escape the sample to form cavities during thermal annealing at 1100℃. Microcracks and the extended defects prefer to nucleate in single crystalline $\alpha$-SiC, but not polycrystalline $\alpha$-SiC. Grain boundaries can account for the experimental results. The formation of cavities on grain boundaries is investigated.

Transport and structural properties of metallic glass-forming liquid Cu$_{50}$Zr$_{50}$ are investigated by molecular dynamics simulation, under high pressures from 1 bar to 70 GPa. The following results have been obtained: (i) reversals of component diffusion coefficients ($D_{\rm Cu}$ and $D_{\rm Zr}$) are observed at the reversion pressure. At low pressures below the reversion pressure, $D_{\rm Cu}/D_{\rm Zr}$ decreases from about 1.4 to 1.0. At high pressures above the reversion pressure, $D_{\rm Cu}/D_{\rm Zr}$ decreases more rapidly from 1.0 to about 0.7. (ii) Component diffusion coefficients decay exponentially with pressure up to reversion pressure, then the strength of the exponential dependence changes, while the pressure-dependent behavior of viscosity can be well described by a single exponential relation over the full range of pressure. (iii) The Stokes–Einstein relation (SER) works well at low pressures and starts to be violated at the breakdown pressure. For glass-forming liquid Cu$_{50}$Zr$_{50}$ along the 2000 K isotherm, the breakdown pressure equals the reversion pressure of component diffusion coefficients and is about 35 GPa. (iv) The pressure dependences of the ratio between component diffusion coefficients can be used to predict the breakdown pressure of SER along isotherm. The validity of SER and the reversals of component diffusion coefficients are found to be related to the pressure dependence of the relative total fractions of predominant Voronoi polyhedrons around individual components.

We present a high-pressure study of van der Waals ferromagnetic metal Fe$_{3}$GeTe$_{2}$ through electrical transport and Raman scattering measurements in diamond anvil cells at pressures up to 22.4 GPa. Upon compression, the ferromagnetic transition temperature $T_{\rm c}$ manifested by a kink in resistance curve decreases monotonically and becomes undiscernable around $P_{\rm c} = 10$ GPa, indicative of suppression of the itinerant ferromagnetism. Meanwhile, by fitting the low temperature resistance to the Fermi liquid behavior of $R =R_{0} + AT^{2}$, we found that $R_{0}$ shows a cusp-like anomaly and the coefficient $A$ diverges around $P_{\rm c}$. These transport anomalies imply a tricritical point as commonly observed in itinerant ferromagnets under pressure. Unexpectedly, the Raman-active $E_{2g}$ and $A_{1g}$ modes soften remarkably after an initial weak hardening and the peak widths of both modes broaden evidently on approaching $P_{\rm c}$, followed by complete disappearance of both modes above this critical pressure. A possible underlying mechanism for such anomalous lattice softening near $P_{\rm c}$ is discussed.

Layered black phosphorus (BP) has recently emerged as a promising semiconductor because of its tunable band gap, high carrier mobility and strongly in-plane anisotropic properties. One-dimensional (1D) BP materials are attractive for applications in electronic and thermal devices, owing to their tailored charge and phonon transports along certain orientations. However, the fabrication of 1D BP materials still remains elusive thus far. We herein report the successful synthesis and characterization of nanotube-like BP for the first time by a selective composite with hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) nanotubes under high pressure and high temperature conditions. The produced 1D BP/h-BN composites possess flexible diameter, length and thickness by adjusting the experimental synthesis parameters. Interestingly, it is important to notice that the stability of our BP sample has been significantly improved under the formation of heterostructures, which can actively promote their commercial applications. Our experimental work, together with first-principles calculations, presents a new scalable strategy of designing 1D tube-like BP/h-BN heterostructures that are promising candidates for flexible and high efficiency electronic platform.

A theoretical study on the structural dynamics of the temporal behavior of Bragg diffraction is presented and compared with experimental results obtained via ultrafast electron crystallography. In order to describe the time-dependent lattices and calculate the Bragg diffraction intensity, we introduce the basic vector offset matrix, which can be used to quantify the shortening, lengthening and rotation of the three lattice vectors (i.e., lattice deformation). Extensive simulations are performed to evaluate the four-dimensional electron crystallography model. The results elucidate the connection between structural deformations and changes in diffraction peaks, and sheds light on the quantitative analysis and comprehensive understanding of the structural dynamics.

We study the formation of quantum droplets in the mixture of a single-component Bose–Einstein condensate (BEC), and a two-species Fermi superfluid across a wide Feshbach resonance. With repulsive boson-boson and attractive boson-fermion interactions, we show that quantum droplets can be stabilized by attractive fermion-fermion interactions on the Bardeen–Cooper–Schrieffer (BCS) side of the resonance, and can also exist in the deep BEC regime under weak boson-fermion interactions. We map out the phase diagram for stable droplets with respect to the boson-boson and boson-fermion interactions, and discuss the role of different types of quantum fluctuations in the relevant regions of the BCS-BEC crossover. Our work reveals the impact of fermion pairing on the formation of quantum droplets in Bose–Fermi mixtures, and provides a useful guide for future experiments.

Due to the lack of surface dangling bonds in graphene, the direct growth of high-$\kappa$ films via atomic layer deposition (ALD) technique often produces the dielectrics with a poor quality, which hinders its integration in modern semiconductor industry. Previous pretreatment approaches, such as chemical functionalization with ozone and plasma treatments, would inevitably degrade the quality of the underlying graphene. Here, we tackled this problem by utilizing an effective and convenient physical method. In detail, the graphene surface was pretreated with the deposition of thermally evaporated ultrathin Al metal layer prior to the Al$_{2}$O$_{3}$ growth by ALD. Then the device was placed in a drying oven for 30 min to be naturally oxidized as a seed layer. With the assistance of an Al oxide seed layer, pinhole-free Al$_{2}$O$_{3}$ dielectrics growth on graphene was achieved. No detective defects or disorders were introduced into graphene by Raman characterization. Moreover, our fabricated graphene top-gated field effect transistor exhibited high mobility ($\sim $6200 cm$^{2}$V$^{-1}$s$^{-1}$) and high transconductance ($\sim $117 μS). Thin dielectrics demonstrated a relative permittivity of 6.5 over a large area and a leakage current less than 1.6 pA/μm$^{2}$. These results indicate that Al oxide functionalization is a promising pathway to achieve scaled gate dielectrics on graphene with high performance.

Hybrid structures of two distinct materials provide an excellent opportunity to optimize functionalities. We report the realization of wide quantum Hall plateaus in graphene field-effect devices on the LaAlO$_{3}$/SrTiO$_{3}$ heterostructures. Well-defined quantized Hall resistance plateaus at filling factors $v=\pm2$ can be obtained over wide ranges of the magnetic field and gate voltage, e.g., extending from 2 T to a maximum available magnetic field of 9 T. By using a simple band diagram model, it is revealed that these wide plateaus arise from the ultra-large capacitance of the ultra-thin LAO layer acting as the dielectric layer. This is distinctly different from the case of epitaxial graphene on SiC substrates, where the realization of giant Hall plateaus relies on the charge transfer between the graphene layer and interface states in SiC. Our results offer an alternative route towards optimizing the quantum Hall performance of graphene, which may find its applications in the further development of quantum resistance metrology.

The energy band alignment at the atomic layer deposited Al$_{2}$O$_{3}/\beta$-Ga$_{2}$O$_{3}$ interface with CHF$_{3}$ treatment was characterized by x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS). With additional CHF$_{3}$ plasma treatment, the conduction band offset increases from 1.95${\pm}$0.1 eV to 2.32${\pm}$0.1 eV; and the valence band offset decreases from 0.21${\pm}$0.1 eV to $-$0.16${\pm}$0.1 eV. As a result, the energy band alignment changes from type I to type II. This energy band alignment transition could be attributed to the downshift of the core-level of Ga $3d$, resulting from the Ga–F bond formation in the F-rich interfacial layer, which is confirmed by the SIMS results.

An ultra-thin Co$_{2}$MnSi(0.5 nm)/MnGa(1.5 nm) bilayer capped with Pt (5 nm) has been successfully grown by molecular-beam epitaxy. It is a potential candidate of synthetic antiferromagnets due to antiferromagnetic coupling between Co$_{2}$MnSi and MnGa, which is a promising skyrmion-racetrack-memory medium without skyrmion Hall effect after capping with a Pt layer. Unusual humps in transverse Hall resistance loops are clearly observed in the temperature range from 260 to 400 K. This anomaly is generally attributed to topological Hall effect, but other than that, we prove that non-uniform rotation of magnetic moments in the bilayer with magnetic field sweeping is also a possible mechanism contributed to the unusual hump.

The dynamical axion field is a new state of quantum matter where the magnetoelectric response couples strongly to its low-energy magnetic fluctuations. It is fundamentally different from an axion insulator with a static quantized magnetoelectric response. The dynamical axion field exhibits many exotic phenomena such as axionic polariton and axion instability. However, these effects have not been experimentally confirmed due to the lack of proper topological magnetic materials. Combining analytic models and first-principles calculations, here we predict a series of van der Waals layered Mn$_2$Bi$_2$Te$_5$-related topological antiferromagnetic materials that could host the long-sought dynamical axion field with a topological origin. We also show that a large dynamical axion field can be achieved in antiferromagnetic insulating states close to the topological phase transition. We further propose the optical and transport experiments to detect such a dynamical axion field. Our results could directly aid and facilitate the search for topological-origin large dynamical axion field in realistic materials.

We investigate the interface between a three-dimensional Dirac semimetal Cd$_3$As$_2$ and a normal metal via soft-point contact spectroscopy measurement. The superconducting gap features were detected below 3.8 K and 7.1 K in the case of Cd$_3$As$_2$ single crystals sputter-coated with the Pt and Au films, respectively, in the differential conductance $dI/dV$–$V$ plots of the point contacts. As the applied magnetic field increased, the drop in the zero-bias contact resistance shifted toward lower temperatures. The topologically non-trivial band structure of Cd$_3$As$_2$ is considered to play a crucial role in inducing the superconductivity. Apart from realizing superconductivity in topological materials, our creative approach can be used to investigate possible topological superconductivity and exhibits a high application potential in electronic devices.

The ternary topological insulators Bi$_2$Se$_{3-x}$Te$_x$ have attracted a great deal of attention due to their exotic physical and chemical properties. While most of the studies focus on the properties of these ternary TIs, limited research was performed to investigate the dynamic atomic stack of its crystal structure. We prepared high-quality Bi$_2$Se$_{3-x}$Te$_x$ thin films on GaAs(111)B substrates using molecular beam epitaxy, characterized with Raman spectroscopy, x-ray diffraction and photoelectron spectroscopy. It is found that when Se is replaced by Te, the preferred substituting sites are the middle layer at $0 < x < 1$, and this is also valid for Se substituting Te at $2 < x < 3$. In the middle region, the substituting atoms prefer to go to the first and the fifth layer.

Two-dimensional (2D) ferromagnetic materials have been exhibiting promising potential in applications, such as spintronics devices. To grow epitaxial magnetic films on silicon substrate, in the single-layer limit, is practically important but challenging. In this study, we realized the epitaxial growth of MnSn monolayer on Si(111) substrate, with an atomically thin Sn/Si(111)-$2\sqrt 3 \times 2\sqrt 3$-buffer layer, and controlled the MnSn thickness with atomic-layer precision. We discovered the ferromagnetism in MnSn monolayer with the Curie temperature ($T_{\rm c}$) of ${\sim} 54$ K. As the MnSn film is grown to 4 monolayers, $T_{\rm c}$ increases accordingly to ${\sim} 235$ K. The lattice of the epitaxial MnSn monolayer as well as the Sn/Si(111)-$2\sqrt 3 \times 2\sqrt 3$ is perfectly compatible with silicon, and thus an sharp interface is formed between MnSn, Sn and Si. This system provides a new platform for exploring the 2D ferromagnetism, integrating magnetic monolayers into silicon-based technology, and engineering the spintronics heterostructures.

We successfully overcome the problem of cross-talk in multiplexed metasurface design and realize the multiplexed metasurface with five printing images in both theoretical and experimental aspects, by employing the coherent pixel design considering coherent superposition of all the sub-elements. Compared with most previous studies where the integrated printing images were usually no more than three, our study shows obvious improvement. More importantly, in our approach all the sub-elements, which were crystalline silicon nanobricks with the size of $320\times 80\times 230$ nm$^{3}$, were arranged in a square space of $1.45 \times 1.45$ μm$^{2}$ following the closest packing way, enabling our multiplexed metasurface to have a potential of effective physical information capacity of printing image reaching the optical diffraction limit. Our study not only enlarges the information capacity of metasurfaces by expanding the integrated number of printing image in one metasurface, but also can promote metasurface applications in various fields such as information storage and encoding.

A spintronics neuron device based on voltage-induced strain is proposed. The stochastic switching behavior, which can mimic the firing behavior of neurons, is obtained by using two voltage signals to control the in-plane magnetization of a free layer of magneto-tunneling junction. One voltage signal is used as the input, and the other voltage signal can be used to tune the activation function (Sigmoid-like) of spin neurons. Therefore, this voltage-driven tunable spin neuron does not necessarily use energy-inefficient Oersted fields and spin-polarized current. Moreover, a voltage-control reading operation is presented, which can achieve the transition of activation function from Sigmoid-like to ReLU-like. A three-layer artificial neural network based on the voltage-driven spin neurons is constructed to recognize the handwritten digits from the MNIST dataset. For the MNIST handwritten dataset, the design achieves 97.75% recognition accuracy. The present results indicate that the voltage-driven adaptive spintronic neuron has the potential to realize energy-efficient well-adapted neuromorphic computing.

Intracellular diffusion is critical for molecule translocation in cytoplasm and mediates many important cellular processes. Meanwhile, the diffusion dynamics is affected by the heterogeneous cytoplasm. Previous studies on intracellular diffusion are mainly based on two-dimensional (2D) measurements under the assumption that the three-dimensional (3D) diffusion is isotropic. However, the real behaviors of 3D diffusion of molecules in cytoplasm are still unclear. Here, we have built a 3D single-particle tracking (SPT) microscopy and studied the 3D diffusion of quantum dots (QDs) in adherent A549 cells. Notably, we found that the intracellular diffusion of QDs is quasi-2D, with the axial motion being severely confined. Further investigations demonstrated that disrupting the cytoskeleton component or endoplasmic reticulum (ER) does not alter the quasi-2D diffusion pattern, although ER reduces the diffusion rates and slightly relieves the constraint in the axial diffusion. The preferred quasi-2D diffusion is quite robust and attributed to the complex cytoarchitectures in the flat adherent cells. With the aid of 3D SPT method, the quasi-2D diffusion in cells was revealed, shedding new light on the physical nature of cytoplasm.