Articles in 2019

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  • This Perspective argues that ergodicity — a foundational concept in equilibrium statistical physics — is wrongly assumed in much of the quantitative economics literature. By asking the extent to which dynamical problems can be replaced by probabilistic ones, many economics puzzles are resolved in a natural and empirically testable fashion.

    • Ole Peters
    Perspective
  • In inertial confinement fusion experiments, the effect of the overlapping laser beams on the plasma is predicted to lead to a distortion of the electron distribution function, which has now been observed in experiments.

    • David Turnbull
    • Arnaud Colaïtis
    • Dustin H. Froula
    Letter
  • Qubits cannot exist without nonlinearity, but nonlinear elements in superconducting circuits lead to losses. A superconducting qubit has now been realized by nonlinearly coupling two microwave resonators, offering the promise of long coherence times.

    • Gerhard Kirchmair
    News & Views
  • A general method is proposed to calculate the out-of-time-ordered correlators (OTOCs) in one-dimensional systems. Motivated by the results obtained from its application to various systems, a universal form for the dynamics of OTOCs is conjectured.

    • Shenglong Xu
    • Brian Swingle
    Article
  • A flux-tunable inductive coupling between two microwave superconducting resonators allows the operation of one of them as a two-level system. The lifetime is limited by the oscillator’s quality factor, offering potential for highly coherent qubits.

    • Andrei Vrajitoarea
    • Ziwen Huang
    • Andrew A. Houck
    Article
  • Short pulses of light shift the balance between two competing charge density wave phases, allowing the weaker one to manifest transiently while suppressing the stronger one. This shows that competing phases can be tuned in a non-equilibrium setting.

    • Anshul Kogar
    • Alfred Zong
    • Nuh Gedik
    Letter
  • Finding ground states of given Hamiltonians is crucial for quantum simulation — a promising application of quantum computers. An algorithm now finds these states using minimal resources, making it implementable in near-term noisy devices.

    • Peter J. Love
    News & Views
  • High-energy-resolution spectroscopic measurements performed on the Kondo insulator SmB6 reveal the presence of correlation-driven heavy surface states—the heavy Dirac fermions—and shed light on the search for the correlated topological materials.

    • Harris Pirie
    • Yu Liu
    • Jennifer E. Hoffman
    Letter
  • The demonstration of a quantum computational advantage is a milestone worth celebrating.

    Editorial
  • Half of the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to James Peebles “for theoretical discoveries in physical cosmology” and the other half is shared by Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz “for the discovery of an exoplanet orbiting a solar-type star”.

    Editorial