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Carbon is one of the most important elements for both industrial applications and fundamental research, including life, physics, chemistry, materials, and even planetary science. Although theoretical predictions on the transition from diamond to the BC8 (Ia3[over ¯]) carbon were made more than thirty years ago, after tremendous experimental efforts, direct evidence for the existence of BC8 carbon is still lacking. In this study, a machine learning potential was developed for high-pressure carbon fitted from first-principles calculations, which exhibited great capabilities in modeling the melting and Hugoniot line. Using the molecular dynamics based on this machine learning potential, we designed a thermodynamic pathway that is achievable for the double shock compression experiment to obtain the elusive BC8 carbon. Diamond was compressed up to 584 GPa after the first shock at 20.5  km/s. Subsequently, in the second shock compression at 24.8 or 25.0  km/s, diamond was compressed to a supercooled liquid and then solidified to BC8 in around 1 ns. Furthermore, the critical nucleus size and nucleation rate of BC8 were calculated, which are crucial for nano-second x-ray diffraction measurements to observe BC8 carbon during shock compressions. The key to obtaining BC8 carbon lies in the formation of liquid at a sufficient supercooling. Our work provides a feasible pathway by which the long-sought BC8 phase of carbon can be reached in experiments.

Quantum simulation of different exotic topological phases of quantum matter on a noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) processor is attracting growing interest. Here, we develop a one-dimensional 43-qubit superconducting quantum processor, named Chuang-tzu, to simulate and characterize emergent topological states. By engineering diagonal Aubry-André-Harper (AAH) models, we experimentally demonstrate the Hofstadter butterfly energy spectrum. Using Floquet engineering, we verify the existence of the topological zero modes in the commensurate off-diagonal AAH models, which have never been experimentally realized before. Remarkably, the qubit number over 40 in our quantum processor is large enough to capture the substantial topological features of a quantum system from its complex band structure, including Dirac points, the energy gap's closing, the difference between even and odd number of sites, and the distinction between edge and bulk states. Our results establish a versatile hybrid quantum simulation approach to exploring quantum topological systems in the NISQ era.

Superconducting and superionic behaviors have physically intriguing dynamic properties of electrons and ions, respectively, both of which are conceptually important and have great potential for practical applications. Whether these two phenomena can appear in the same system is an interesting and important question. Here, using crystal structure predictions and first-principle calculations combined with machine learning, we identify several stable Li-Al compounds with electride behavior under high pressure, and we find that the electronic density of states of some of the compounds has characteristics of the two-dimensional electron gas. Among them, we estimate that Li_{6}Al at 150 GPa has a superconducting transition temperature of around 29 K and enters a superionic state at a high temperature and wide pressure range. The diffusion in Li_{6}Al is found to be affected by an electride and attributed to the atomic collective motion. Our results indicate that alkali metal alloys can be effective platforms to study the abundant physical properties and their manipulation with pressure and temperature.

Artificial spin ices are engineered arrays of dipolarly coupled nanobar magnets. They enable direct investigations of fascinating collective phenomena from their diverse microstates. However, experimental access to ground states in the geometrically frustrated systems has proven difficult, limiting studies and applications of novel properties and functionalities from the low energy states. Here, we introduce a convenient approach to control the competing diploar interactions between the neighboring nanomagnets, allowing us to tailor the vertex degeneracy of the ground states. We achieve this by tuning the length of selected nanobar magnets in the spin ice lattice. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our method by realizing multiple low energy microstates in a kagome artificial spin ice, particularly the hardly accessible long range ordered ground state-the spin crystal state. Our strategy can be directly applied to other artificial spin systems to achieve exotic phases and explore new emergent collective behaviors.

Although the transport and mixing of proteins and other molecules inside bacteria rely on the diffusion of molecules, many aspects of the molecular diffusion in bacterial cytoplasm remain unclear or controversial, including how the diffusion-temperature relation follows the Stokes-Einstein equation. In this study, we applied single-particle tracking photoactivated localization microscopy to investigate the diffusion of histonelike nucleoid structuring (HNS) proteins and free dyes in bacterial cytoplasm at different temperatures. Although the diffusion of HNS proteins in both live and dead bacteria increased at higher temperatures and appeared to follow the Arrhenius equation, the diffusion of free dyes decreased at higher temperatures, questioning the previously proposed theories based on superthermal fluctuations. To understand the measured diffusion-temperature relations, we developed an alternative model, in which the bacterial cytoplasm is considered as a polymeric network or mesh. In our model, the Stokes-Einstein equation remains valid, while the polymeric network contributes a significant term to the viscosity experienced by the molecules diffusing in bacterial cytoplasm. Our model was successful in predicting the diffusion-temperature relations for both HNS proteins and free dyes in bacteria. In addition, we systematically examined the predicted diffusion-temperature relations with different parameters in the model, and predicted the possible existence of phase transitions.

A coupled lattice Boltzmann-large eddy simulation model is developed for modeling three-dimensional multiphase flows at large density ratios and high Reynolds numbers. In the framework of the lattice Boltzmann method, the model is proposed based on the standard Smagorinsky subgrid-scale approach, and a reconstructed multiple-relaxation-time collision operator is adopted. The conservative Allen-Cahn equation and Navier-Stokes equations are solved through the lattice Boltzmann discretization scheme for the interface tracking and velocity field evolution, respectively. Relevant benchmark cases are carried out to validate the performance of this model in simulating multiphase flows at a large density ratio and a high Reynolds number, including a stationary droplet, the process of spinodal decomposition, the Rayleigh-Taylor instability, the phenomenon of a droplet splashing on a thin liquid film, and the liquid jet breakup process. The maximum values of density ratio and Re number are 1000 and 10 240, respectively. The capability and reliability of the proposed model have been demonstrated by the good agreement between simulation results and the analytical solutions or the previously available results.

In this paper, the original discrete unified gas kinetic scheme (DUGKS) is extended to the arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) framework to enable simulation of low-speed continuum and rarefied flows with moving boundaries. For the proposed ALE-type DUGKS, the mesh motion velocity is introduced in the Boltzmann-BGK equation and a remapping-free scheme is used to discretize the governing equation. Under this coupling framework, the complex rezoning and remapping phases implemented in the traditional ALE method are avoided. In some application areas, large discretization errors are introduced in the simulation if the geometric conservation law (GCL) is not guaranteed. Therefore, three GCL-compliant approaches are discussed, and a uniform flow test case is conducted to validate these schemes. Further, to illustrate the performance of the proposed method, four test cases are simulated, including the continuum flow around an oscillating circular cylinder, the continuum flow around a pitching NACA0012 airfoil, a moving piston driven by a rarefied gas, and the rarefied flow caused by a plate oscillating in the normal direction. Finally, an extended test case considering the rarefied flow over an oscillating circular cylinder is also studied, as this condition is not sufficiently researched. Consistent and good results obtained from the above test cases demonstrate the capability of the proposed ALE-type DUGKS to simulate moving boundary problems in different flow regimes.

Discrete unified gas-kinetic scheme (DUGKS) is a multiscale numerical method for flows from continuum limit to free molecular limit, and is especially suitable for the simulation of multiscale flows, benefiting from its multiscale property. To reduce integration error of the DUGKS and ensure the conservation property of the collision term in isothermal flow simulations, a conserved-DUGKS (C-DUGKS) is proposed. On the other hand, both DUGKS and C-DUGKS adopt Cartesian-type discrete velocity space, in which Gaussian and Newton-Cotes numerical quadrature are used for calculating the macroscopic physical variables in low-speed and high-speed flows, respectively. However, the Cartesian-type discrete velocity space leads to huge computational cost and memory demand. In this paper, the isothermal C-DUGKS is extended to the nonisothermal case by adopting coupled mass and inertial energy distribution functions. Moreover, since the unstructured mesh, such as the triangular mesh in the two-dimensional case, is more flexible than the structured Cartesian mesh, it is introduced to the discrete velocity space of C-DUGKS, such that more discrete velocity points can be arranged in the velocity regions that enclose a large number of molecules, and only a few discrete velocity points need to be arranged in the velocity regions with a small amount of molecules in it. By using the unstructured discrete velocity space, the computational efficiency of C-DUGKS is significantly increased. A series of numerical tests in a wide range of Knudsen numbers, such as the Couette flow, lid-driven cavity flow, two-dimensional rarefied Riemann problem, and the supersonic cylinder flows, are carried out to examine the validity and efficiency of the present method.

We demonstrate strong magnon-photon coupling of a thin-film Permalloy device fabricated on a coplanar superconducting resonator. A coupling strength of 0.152 GHz and a cooperativity of 68 are found for a 30-nm-thick Permalloy stripe. The coupling strength is tunable by rotating the biasing magnetic field or changing the volume of Permalloy. We also observe an enhancement of magnon-photon coupling in the nonlinear regime of the superconducting resonator, which is attributed to the nucleation of dynamic flux vortices. Our results demonstrate a critical step towards future integrated hybrid systems for quantum magnonics and on-chip coherent information transfer.

We present a minimal bottom-up extension of the Chern-Simons bulk action for holographic translational symmetry breaking that naturally gives rise to pair density waves. We construct stationary inhomogeneous black hole solutions in which both the U(1) symmetry and spatially translational symmetry are spontaneously broken at a finite temperature and charge density. This novel solution provides a dual description of a superconducting phase intertwined with charge, current, and parity orders.

In our study, the dual time-stepping strategy of the gas-kinetic scheme is constructed and used for the simulation of unsteady flows. In comparison to the previous implicit gas-kinetic scheme, both the inviscid and viscous flux Jacobian are considered in our work, and the linear system of the pseudo-steady-state is solved by applying generalized minimal residual algorithm. The accuracy is validated by several numerical cases, the incompressible flow around blunt bodies (stationary circular cylinder and square cylinder), and the transonic buffet on the NACA0012 airfoil under hybrid mesh. The numerical cases also demonstrate that the present method is applicable to approach the fluid flows from laminar to turbulent and from incompressible to compressible. Finally, the case of acoustic pressure pulse is carried out to evaluate the effects of enlarged time step, and the side effect of enlarged time step is explained. Compared with the explicit gas-kinetic scheme, the proposed scheme can greatly accelerate the computation and reduce the computational costs for unsteady flow simulations.

We report direct atomic-force-microscope measurements of capillary force hysteresis (CFH) and relaxation of a circular moving contact line (CL) formed on a long micron-sized hydrophobic fiber intersecting a liquid-air interface. By using eight different liquid interfaces with varying solid-liquid molecular interactions, we find a universal behavior of the asymmetric speed dependence of CFH and CL relaxation. A unified model based on force-assisted barrier crossing is used to connect the mesoscopic measurements of CFH and CL relaxation with the energy barrier height E_{b} and size λ associated with the surface defects. The experiment demonstrates that the CL pinning (relaxation) and depinning dynamics are closely related and can be described by a common microscopic framework.

We report a systematic study of contact angle hysteresis (CAH) with direct measurement of the capillary force acting on a contact line formed on the surface of a long glass fiber intersecting a liquid-air interface. The glass fiber of diameter 1-2μm and length 100-200μm is glued onto the front end of a rectangular cantilever beam, which is used for atomic force microscopy. From the measured hysteresis loop of the capillary force for 28 different liquids with varying surface tensions and contact angles, we find a universal behavior of the unbalanced capillary force in the advancing and receding directions and the spring constant of a stretched meniscus by the glass fiber. Measurements of the capillary force and its fluctuations suggest that CAH on an ambient solid surface is caused primarily by two types of coexisting and spatially intertwined defects with opposite natures. The contact line is primarily pinned by the relatively nonwetting (repulsive) defects in the advancing direction and by the relatively wetting (attractive) defects in the receding direction. Based on the experimental observations, we propose a "composite model" of CAH and relevant scaling laws, which explain the basic features of the measured hysteresis force loops.

We report on direct atomic-force-microscope measurements of capillary force hysteresis (CFH) and relaxation of a circular moving contact line (CL) formed on a long micron-sized hydrophobic fiber intersecting a water-air interface. The measured CFH and CL relaxation show a strong asymmetric speed dependence in the advancing and receding directions. A unified model based on force-assisted barrier crossing is utilized to find the underlying energy barrier Eb and size λ associated with the defects on the fiber surface. The experiment demonstrates that the pinning (relaxation) and depinning dynamics of the CL can be described by a common microscopic framework, and the advancing and receding CLs are influenced by two different sets of relatively wetting and nonwetting defects on the fiber surface.

We show that, because of the inevitable twist and lattice mismatch in heterobilayers of transition metal dichalcogenides, interlayer excitons have sixfold degenerate light cones anomalously located at finite velocities on the parabolic energy dispersion. The photon emissions at each light cone are elliptically polarized, with the major axis locked to the direction of exciton velocity, and helicity specified by the valley indices of the electron and the hole. These finite-velocity light cones allow unprecedented possibilities for optically injecting valley polarization and valley current, and the observation of both direct and inverse valley Hall effects, by exciting interlayer excitons. Our findings suggest potential excitonic circuits with valley functionalities, and unique opportunities to study exciton dynamics and condensation phenomena in semiconducting 2D heterostructures.

We investigate the quantum anomalous Hall effect (QAHE) and related chiral transport in the millimeter-size (Cr(0.12)Bi(0.26)Sb(0.62))₂Te₃ films. With high sample quality and robust magnetism at low temperatures, the quantized Hall conductance of e²/h is found to persist even when the film thickness is beyond the two-dimensional (2D) hybridization limit. Meanwhile, the Chern insulator-featured chiral edge conduction is manifested by the nonlocal transport measurements. In contrast to the 2D hybridized thin film, an additional weakly field-dependent longitudinal resistance is observed in the ten-quintuple-layer film, suggesting the influence of the film thickness on the dissipative edge channel in the QAHE regime. The extension of the QAHE into the three-dimensional thickness region addresses the universality of this quantum transport phenomenon and motivates the exploration of new QAHE phases with tunable Chern numbers. In addition, the observation of scale-invariant dissipationless chiral propagation on a macroscopic scale makes a major stride towards ideal low-power interconnect applications.