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While the physics of disordered packing in non-growing systems is well understood, unexplored phenomena can emerge when packing takes place in growing domains. We study the arrangements of pigment cells (chromatophores) on squid skin as a biological example of a packed system on an expanding surface. We find that relative density fluctuations in cell numbers grow with spatial scale. We term this behavior ''hyperdisordered'', in contrast with hyperuniform behavior in which relative fluctuations tend to zero at large scale. We find that hyperdisordered scaling, akin to that of a critical system, is quantitatively reproduced by a model in which hard disks are randomly inserted in a homogeneously growing surface. In addition, we find that chromatophores increase in size during animal development, but maintain a stationary size distribution. The physical mechanisms described in our work may apply to a broad class of growing dense systems.

The loop quantization of the conformal Brans-Dicke cosmology is explored in the spatially flat and Bianchi-I setting. The scalar and conformal constraints governing the canonical model are quantized using the loop techniques. The physical Hilbert space of quantum spacetimes satisfying both quantum constraints is then obtained by incorporating the quantum geometric features. The Schr\"odinger cosmic evolutions are derived with the relational Heisenberg observables describing the dynamical degrees of freedom with respect to the chosen reference degrees of freedom, with the latter providing the physical coordinates for the spatial hypersurfaces and the conformal scales. We show that the emerging Schr\"odinger theories contain not only the loop quantum cosmology of GR, but also that of the so-called shape dynamics. The exact dictionary between the two theories is achieved via the underlying physical Hilbert space possessing the additional (loop-corrected) conformal symmetry., Comment: 16+1 pages, revised based on the published version

The identification of distinct charge transport features, deriving from nontrivial bulk band and surface states, has been a challenging subject in the field of topological systems. In topological Dirac and Weyl semimetals, nontrivial conical bands with Fermi-arc surface states give rise to negative longitudinal magnetoresistance due to chiral anomaly effect and unusual thickness dependent quantum oscillation from Weyl-orbit effect, which were demonstrated recently in experiments. In this work, we report the experimental observations of large nonlinear and nonreciprocal transport effects for both longitudinal and transverse channels in an untwinned Weyl metal of SrRuO$_3$ thin film grown on a SrTiO$_{3}$ substrate. From rigorous measurements with bias current applied along various directions with respect to the crystalline principal axes, the magnitude of nonlinear Hall signals from the transverse channel exhibits a simple sin$\alpha$ dependence at low temperatures, where $\alpha$ is the angle between bias current direction and orthorhombic [001]$_{\rm o}$, reaching a maximum when current is along orthorhombic [1-10]$_{\rm o}$. On the contrary, the magnitude of nonlinear and nonreciprocal signals in the longitudinal channel attains a maximum for bias current along [001]$_{\rm o}$, and it vanishes for bias current along [1-10]$_{\rm o}$. The observed $\alpha$-dependent nonlinear and nonreciprocal signals in longitudinal and transverse channels reveal a magnetic Weyl phase with an effective Berry curvature dipole along [1-10]$_{\rm o}$ from surface states, accompanied by 1D chiral edge modes along [001]$_{\rm o}$., Comment: 27 pages, 6 figures

The weak coupling loop quantum theory with Abelian gauge group provides us a new perspective to study the weak coupling properties of LQG. In this paper, the weak coupling theory of all dimensional loop quantum gravity is established based on a symplectic-morphism between the $SO(D+1)$ holonomy-flux phase space and the $U(1)^{\frac{D(D+1)}{2}}$ holonomy-flux phase space. More explicitly, the Gaussian, simplicity, diffeomorphism and scalar constraint operators in $SO(D+1)$ loop quantum gravity will be generalized to the $U(1)^{\frac{D(D+1)}{2}}$ loop quantum theory based on the symplectic-morphism, and the $U(1)^{\frac{D(D+1)}{2}}$ loop quantum theory equipped with these constraint operators gives the weak coupling $U(1)^{\frac{D(D+1)}{2}}$ loop quantum gravity, with the corresponding Hilbert space is composed by the $U(1)^{\frac{D(D+1)}{2}}$ heat-kernel coherent states which are peaked at the weak coupling region of the $U(1)^{\frac{D(D+1)}{2}}$ holonomy-flux phase space., Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:2209.01955

Quantum oscillations in resistivity and magnetization at high magnetic fields are a macroscopic fingerprint of the energy quantization due to the cyclotron motion of quasiparticles. In a thin Weyl semimetal, a unique thickness dependent Weyl-orbit quantum oscillation was proposed to exist, originating from a nonlocal cyclotron orbit via the electron tunneling between the top and bottom Fermi-arc surface states. Here, untwinned and high crystalline Weyl metal SrRuO$_3$ thin films with different thicknesses were grown on miscut SrTiO$_3$ (001) substrates. Magneto-transport measurements were carried out in magnetic fields up to 35 T, and quantum oscillations with different frequencies were observed and compared to the calculated band structure. In particular, we discovered a frequency $F \approx$ 30 T at low temperatures and above 3 T that corresponds to a small Fermi pocket with a light effective mass. Its oscillation amplitude appears to be at maximum for film thicknesses in a range of 10 to 20 nm, and the phase of the oscillation exhibits a systematic change with the film thickness. After isolating the well separated frequencies, the constructed Landau fan diagram shows an unusual concave downward curvature in the 1/$\mu_0H_n$-$n$ curve, where $n$ is the Landau level index. Based on the rigorous analysis of the thickness and field-orientation dependence of the quantum oscillations, the oscillation with $F \approx$ 30 T is attributed to be of surface origin, which is related to the Fermi-arc surface state originating from non-overlapping Weyl nodes projected on the film's surface plane. Those findings can be understood within the framework of the Weyl-orbit quantum oscillation effect with non-adiabatic corrections., Comment: 27 pages, 6 figures

The growth of SrRuO$_3$ (SRO) thin film with high-crystallinity and low residual resistivity (RR) is essential to explore its intrinsic properties. Here, utilizing the adsorption-controlled growth technique, the growth condition of initial SrO layer on TiO$_2$-terminated SrTiO$_3$ (STO) (001) substrate was found to be crucial for achieving a low RR in the resulting SRO film grown afterward. The optimized initial SrO layer shows a $c$(2 x 2) superstructure that was characterized by electron diffraction, and a series of SRO films with different thicknesses ($t$s) were then grown. The resulting SRO films exhibit excellent crystallinity with orthorhombic-phase down to $t \approx$ 4.3 nm, which was confirmed by high resolution X-ray measurements. From azimuthal X-ray scan for SRO orthorhombic (021) reflection, we uncover four structural domains with a dominant domain of orthorhombic SRO [001] along cubic STO [010] direction. The dominant domain population depends on $t$, STO miscut angle (${\alpha}$), and miscut direction (${\beta}$), giving a volume fraction of about 92 $\%$ for $t \approx$ 26.6 nm and (${\alpha}$, ${\beta}$) ~ (0.14$^{\rm o}$, 5$^{\rm o}$). On the other hand, metallic and ferromagnetic properties were well preserved down to $t \approx$ 1.2 nm. Residual resistivity ratio (RRR = ${\rho}$(300 K)/${\rho}$(5 K)) reduces from 77.1 for $t \approx$ 28.5 nm to 2.5 for $t \approx$ 1.2 nm, while ${\rho}$(5 K) increases from 2.5 $\mu\Omega$cm for $t \approx$ 28.5 nm to 131.0 $\mu\Omega$cm for $t \approx$ 1.2 nm. The ferromagnetic onset temperature ($T_c\prime$) of around 151 K remains nearly unchanged down to $t \approx$ 9.0 nm and decreases to 90 K for $t \approx$ 1.2 nm. Our finding thus provides a practical guideline to achieve high crystallinity and low RR in ultra-thin SRO films by simply adjusting the growth of initial SrO layer., Comment: 22 pages, 7 figures

To clarify the geometric information encoded in the $SO(D+1)$ spin-network states for the higher dimensional loop quantum gravity, we generalize the twisted-geometry parametrization of the $SU(2)$ phase space for $(1+3)$ dimensional loop quantum gravity to that of the $SO(D+1)$ phase space for the all-dimensional case. The Poisson structure in terms of the twisted geometric variables suggests a new gauge reduction procedure, with respect to the discretized Gaussian and simplicity constraints governing the kinematics of the theory. Endowed with the geometric meaning via the parametrization, our reduction procedure serves to identify proper gauge freedom associated with the anomalous discretized simplicity constraints and subsequently leads to the desired classical state space of the (twisted) discrete ADM data.

We propose a new treatment of the quantum simplicity constraints appearing in the general ${SO(D+1)}$ formulation of loop quantum gravity for the ${(1+D)}$-dimensional space-time. Instead of strongly imposing the constraints, we construct a specific form of weak solutions by employing the spin net-work states with specific ${SO(D+1)}$ coherent intertwiners. These states weakly satisfy the quantum simplicity constraint via the vanishing expectation values, and the quantum Gaussian constraints can be imposed strongly. Remarkably, those specific ${SO(D+1)}$ coherent intertwiners used to construct our solutions have natural interpretations of the $D$-dimensional polytopes, commonly viewed as basic units of the discrete spatial geometry. Therefore, while the strong imposition of the quantum simplicity constraints leads to an over-constrained solution space, our weak solution space for the constraints may contain the correct semiclassical degrees of freedom for intrinsic geometry of the spatial hypersurfaces. Moreover, some concrete relations are established between our construction and other existing approaches in solving the simplicity constraints in all dimensional loop quantum gravity, providing valuable insights into this unresolved important issue.

We propose an algorithm of extracting Schr\"odinger theories under all viable physical time from the Einstein-Hilbert path integral, formulated as the timeless transition amplitudes $\hat{\mathbb{P}}:\mathbb{K} \to \mathbb{K}^*$ between the boundary states in a kinematic Hilbert space $\mathbb{K}$. Each of these Schr\"odinger theories refers to a certain set of quantum degrees of freedom in $\mathbb{K}$ as a background, with their given values specifying moments of the physical time. Restricted to these specified background values, the relevant elements of $\hat{\mathbb{P}}$ are transformed by the algorithm into the unitary propagator of a corresponding reduced phase space Schr\"odinger theory. The algorithm embodies the fundamental principle of quantum Cauchy surfaces, such that all the derived Schr\"odinger theories emerge from one timeless canonical theory defined by $\hat{\mathbb{P}}$ as a rigging map, via the relational Dirac observables referring to the corresponding backgrounds. We demonstrate its application to a FRW loop quantum cosmological model with a massless Klein-Gordon scalar field. Recovering the famous singularity-free quantum gravitational dynamics with the background of the scalar field, we also obtain in another reference frame a modified Klein-Gordon field quantum dynamics with the background of the spatial (quantum) geometry., Comment: Updated journal version

We explicitly solved the anomaly-free quantum constraints proposed by Tomlin and Varadarajan for the weak Euclidean model of canonical loop quantum gravity, in a large subspace of the model's kinematic Hilbert space which is the space of the charge network states. In doing so, we first identified the subspace on which each of the constraints acts convergingly, and then by explicitly evaluating such actions we found the complete set of the solutions in the identified subspace. We showed that the space of solutions consists of two classes of states, with the first class having a property that involves the condition known from the Minkowski theorem on polyhedra, and the second class satisfying a weaker form of the spatial diffeomorphism invariance., Comment: 17 pages, this version with improved descriptions and clarifications

For a Dirac theory of quantum gravity obtained from the refined algebraic quantization procedure, we propose a quantum notion of Cauchy surfaces. In such a theory, there is a kernel projector for the quantized scalar and momentum constraints, which maps the kinematic Hilbert space $\mathbb K$ into the physical Hilbert space $\mathbb H$. Under this projection, a quantum Cauchy surface isomorphically represents $\mathbb H$ with a kinematic subspace $\mathbb V \subset\mathbb K$. The isomorphism induces the complete sets of Dirac observables in $\mathbb D$, which faithfully represent the corresponding complete sets of self-adjoint operators in $\mathbb V$. Due to the constraints, a specific subset of the observables would be "frozen" as number operators, providing a background physical time for the rest of the observables. Therefore, a proper foliation with the quantum Cauchy surfaces may provide an observer frame describing the physical states of spacetimes in a Schr\"odinger picture, with the evolutions under a specific physical background. A simple model will be supplied as an initiative trial., Comment: 27 pages