We demonstrate experimentally the simultaneous generation and detection of two types of continuous variable nonclassical states from one type-0 phase-matching optical parametric amplification (OPA) and subsequent two ring filter cavities (RFCs). The output field of the OPA includes the baseband ω₀ and sideband modes ω₀±nω_fsubjects to the cavity resonance condition, which are separated by two cascaded RFCs. The first RFC resonates with half the pump wavelength ω₀ and the transmitted baseband component is a squeezed state. The reflected fields of the first RFC, including the sideband modes ω₀±ω_f, are separated by the second RFC, construct Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen entangled state. All freedoms, including the filter cavities for sideband separation and relative phases for the measurements of these sidebands, are actively stabilized. The noise variance of squeezed states is 10.2 dB below the shot noise limit (SNL), the correlation variances of both quadrature amplitude-sum and quadrature phase-difference for the entanglement state are 10.0 dB below the corresponding SNL.

Quantum secure direct communication provides a direct means of conveying secret information via quantum states among legitimate users. The past two decades have witnessed its great strides both theoretically and experimentally. However, the security analysis of it still stays in its infant. Some practical problems in this field to be solved urgently, such as detector efficiency mismatch, side-channel effect and source imperfection, are propelling the birth of a more impeccable solution. In this paper, we establish a new framework of the security analysis driven by numerics where all the practical problems may be taken into account naturally. We apply this framework to several variations of the DL04 protocol considering real-world experimental conditions. Also, we propose two optimizing methods to process the numerical part of the framework so as to meet different requirements in practice. With these properties considered, we predict the robust framework would open up a broad avenue of the development in the field.

Laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) has been widely studied due to its unique advantages such as remote sensing, real-time multi-elemental detection and none-to-little damage. With the efforts of researchers around the world, LIBS has been developed by leaps and bounds. Moreover, in recent years, more and more Chinese LIBS researchers have put tremendous energy in promoting LIBS applications. It is worth mentioning that the application of LIBS in a specific field has its special application background and technical difficulties, therefore it may develop in different stages. A review summarizing the current development status of LIBS in various fields would be helpful for the development of LIBS technology as well as its applications especially for Chinese LIBS community since most of the researchers in this field work in application. In the present work, we summarized the research status and latest progress of main research groups in coal, metallurgy, and water, etc. Based on the current research status, the challenges and opportunities of LIBS were evaluated, and suggestions were made to further promote LIBS applications.

We study the stability of zero-vorticity and vortex lattice quantum droplets (LQDs), which are described by a two-dimensional (2D) Gross–Pitaevskii (GP) equation with a periodic potential and Lee– Huang–Yang (LHY) term. The LQDs are divided in two types: onsite-centered and offsite-centered LQDs, the centers of which are located at the minimum and the maximum of the potential, respectively. The stability areas of these two types of LQDs with different number of sites for zero-vorticity and vorticity with S = 1 are given. We found that the μ–N relationship of the stable LQDs with a fixed number of sites can violate the Vakhitov–Kolokolov (VK) criterion, which is a necessary stability condition for nonlinear modes with an attractive interaction. Moreover, the μ–N relationship shows that two types of vortex LQDs with the same number of sites are degenerated, while the zero-vorticity LQDs are not degenerated. It is worth mentioning that the offsite-centered LQDs with zero-vorticity and vortex LQDs with S = 1 are heterogeneous.

Relatively large measurement uncertainty severely hindered wide application for laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS), therefore it is of great importance to understand the mechanism of signal uncertainty generation, including initiation and propagation. It has been found that the fluctuation of plasma morphology was the main reason for signal uncertainty. However, it still remains unclear what mechanism leads to laser-induced plasma morphology fluctuation. In the present work, we employed three fast-imaging cameras to capture three successive plasma images from a same laser-induced Titanium alloy plasma, which enables us to understand more clearly of the plasma evolution process especially for the early plasma evolution stage when plasma and surrounding gases interact drastically. Seen from the images, the plasma experienced an increasing morphological fluctuation as delay time increased, transforming from a “stable plasma” before the delay time of 100 ns to a “fluctuating plasma” after the delay time of 300 ns. Notably, the frontier part of plasma showed a significant downward motion from the delay time of 150 ns to 200 ns and crashed with the lower part of the plasma, making the plasma flatter and later even splitting the plasma into two parts, which was considered as a critical process for the transformation of “stable plasma” to “unstable plasma”. By calculating the correlation coefficient of plasma image pairs at successive delay times, it was found that the higher the similarity between two plasma at early stage, the more similar at later stage; this implied that the tiny plasma fluctuation earlier than the critical delay time (150–200 ns) was amplified, causing a large plasma fluctuation at the later stage as well as LIBS measurement uncertainty. The initiation of slight fluctuation was linked with Rayleigh–Taylor Instability (RTI) due to the drastic material interpenetration at the plasma-ambient gas interface at earlier stage (before 50 ns). That is, the uncertainty generation of LIBS was proposed as: plasma morphology fluctuation was inevitably trigged by RTI at the early stage and the tiny fluctuation was amplified by the back pressed downward process of plasma frontier material, leading to severe morphology fluctuation as well as LIBS signal uncertainty.

A recent paper [¹] by the group of Prof. Zhe Wang, Beijing, China reveals the physical mechanism responsible of the signal fluctuations in laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy analysis.

Addition of lattice potentials helps to produce new species of stable fundamental and vortical quantum droplets in two dimensions.

Carbon has three hybridization forms of sp⁻, sp²⁻ and sp³⁻, and the combination of different forms can obtain different kinds of carbon allotropes, such as diamond, carbon nanotubes, fullerene, graphynes (GYs) and graphdiyne (GDY). Among them, the GDY molecule is a single-layer two-dimensional (2D) planar structure material with highly π-conjugation formed by sp⁻ and sp²⁻ hybridization. GDY has a carbon atom ring composed of benzene ring and acetylene, which makes GDY have a uniformly distributed pore structure. In addition, GDY planar material have some slight wrinkles, which makes GDY have better self-stability than other 2D planar materials. The excellent properties of GDY make it attract the attention of researchers. Therefore, GDY is widely used in chemical catalysis, electronics, communications, clean energy and composite materials. This paper summarizes the recent progress of GDY research, including structure, preparation, properties and application of GDY in the field of catalysts.

A Monte Carlo simulated-annealing algorithm was used to study the magnetic state in an in-plane helimagnet layer on triangular lattice that exchange couples to an underlayer with strong out-of-plane anisotropy. In the single helimagnet layer with in-plane anisotropy (K), the formation of labyrinthlike domains with local spin spirals, instead of parallel stripes, is favored, and these domains rapidly transform into dense skyrmion crystals with increasing interfacial exchange coupling (J′), equivalent to a virtual magnetic field, and finally evolve to an out-of-plane uniform state at large enough J′. Moreover, with increasing K, the skyrmion crystal state can vary from regular 6-nearest-neighboring circular skyrmion arrangement to irregular squeezed skyrmions with less than 6 nearest neighbors when the in-plane anisotropy energy is higher than the interfacial exchange energy as the skyrmion number is maximized. Finally, we demonstrated that the antiferromagnetic underlayer cannot induce skyrmions while the chirality inversion can be achieved on top of an out-of-plane magnetization underlayer with 180◦ domain walls, supporting the experimental findings in FeGe thin film. This compelling advantage offers a fertile playground for exploring emergent phenomena that arise from interfacing magnetic skyrmions with additional functionalities.

In this short review we elaborate the significance of resummation in k_T factorization theorem, and summarize the recent progresses in the calculations of the next-to-leading order contributions to B meson decays from the perturbative QCD (PQCD) approach. We also comment on the current status of the PQCD approach and highlight some key issues to develop it in the near future for more phenomenological applications.

In this review we study the nuclear pastas as they are expected to be formed in neutron star crusts. We start with a study of the pastas formed in nuclear matter (composed of protons and neutrons), we follow with the role of the electron gas on the formation of pastas, and we then investigate the pastas in neutron star matter (nuclear matter embedded in an electron gas).

Nuclear matter (NM) at intermediate temperatures (1 MeV ≲ T ≲ 15 MeV), at saturation and sub-saturation densities, and with proton content ranging from 30% to 50% was found to have liquid, gaseous and liquid–gas mixed phases. The isospin-dependent phase diagram was obtained along with the critical points, and the symmetry energy was calculated and compared to experimental data and other theories. At low temperatures (T ≲ 1 MeV) NM produces crystal-like structures around saturation densities, and pasta-like structures at sub-saturation densities. Properties of the pasta structures were studied with cluster-recognition algorithms, caloric curve, the radial distribution function, the Lindemann coefficient, Kolmogorov statistics, Minkowski functionals; the symmetry energy of the pasta showed a connection with its morphology.

Neutron star matter (NSM) is nuclear matter embedded in an electron gas. The electron gas is included in the calculation by the inclusion of an screened Coulomb potential. To connect the NM pastas with those in neutron star matter (NSM), the role the strength and screening length of the Coulomb interaction have on the formation of the pastas in NM was investigated. Pasta was found to exist even without the presence of the electron gas, but the effect of the Coulomb interaction is to form more defined pasta structures, among other effects. Likewise, it was determined that there is a minimal screening length for the developed structures to be independent of the cell size.

Neutron star matter was found to have similar phases as NM, phase transitions, symmetry energy, structure function and thermal conductivity. Like in NM, pasta forms at around T ≈ 1.5 MeV, and liquid-to-solid phase changes were detected at T ≈ 0.5 MeV. The structure function and the symmetry energy were also found to depend on the pasta structures.

Nuclear clusters or voids in the inner crust of neutron stars were predicted to have various shapes collectively nicknamed nuclear pasta. The recent review in Ref. [1] by López, Dorso and Frank summarized their systematic investigations into properties especially the morphological and thermodynamical phase transitions of the nuclear pasta within a Classical Molecular Dynamics model, providing further stimuli to find more observational evidences of the predicted nuclear pasta in neutron stars.

Recently the AMS-02 reported the precise measurements of the energy spectra of medium-mass compositions (Neon, Magnesium, Silicon) of primary cosmic rays, which reveal different properties from those of light compositions (Helium, Carbon, Oxygen). Here we propose a nearby source scenario, together with the background source contribution, to explain the newly measured spectra of cosmic ray Ne, Mg, Si, and particularly their differences from that of He, C, O. Their differences at high energies can be naturally accounted for by the element abundance of the nearby source. Specifically, the abundance ratio of the nearby source to the background of the Ne, Mg, Si elements is lower by a factor of ∼ 1.7 than that of the He, C, O elements. Such a difference could be due to the abundance difference of the stellar evolution of the progenitor star or the acceleration process/environment, of the nearby source. This scenario can simultaneously explain the high-energy spectral softening features of cosmic ray spectra revealed recently by CREAM/NUCLEON/DAMPE, as well as the energy-dependent behaviors of the large-scale anisotropies. It is predicted that the dipole anisotropy amplitudes below PeV energies of the Ne, Mg, Si group are smaller than that of the He, C, O group, which can be tested with future measurements.

In this paper, we visit the thermodynamic criticality and thermodynamic curvature of the charged AdS black hole in a new phase space. It is shown that when the square of the total charge of the charged black hole is considered as a thermodynamic quantity, the charged AdS black hole also admits a van der Waals-type critical behavior without the help of thermodynamic pressure and thermodynamic volume. Based on this, we study the fine phase structures of the charged AdS black hole with fixed AdS background in the new framework. On the one hand, we give the phase diagram structures of the charged AdS black hole accurately and analytically, which fills up the gap in dealing with the phase transition of the charged AdS black holes by taking the square of the charge as a thermodynamic quantity. On the other hand, we analyse the thermodynamic curvature of the black hole in two coordinate spaces. The thermodynamic curvatures obtained in two different coordinate spaces are equivalent to each other and are also positive. Based on an empirical conclusion under the framework of thermodynamic geometry, we speculate that when the square of charge is treated as an independent thermodynamic quantity, the charged AdS black hole is likely to present a repulsive between its molecules. More importantly, based on the thermodynamic curvature, we obtain a universal exponent at the critical point of phase transition.

There are some similarities between bursts of repeating fast radio bursts (FRBs) and giant pulses (GPs) of pulsars. To explore possible relations between them, we study the cumulative energy distributions of these two phenomena using the observations of repeating FRB 121102 and the GPs of Crab pulsar. We find that the power-law slope of GPs (with fluence≥130 Jy·ms) is 2.85±0.10. The energy distribution of FRB 121102 can be well fitted by a smooth broken power-law function. For the bursts of FRB 121102 above the break energy (1.22 ×10³⁷ erg), the best-fitting slope is {2.90}_{-0.44}^{+0.55}, similar to the index of GPs at the same observing frequency (∼1.4 GHz). We further discuss the physical origin of the repeating FRB 121102 in the framework of the super GPs model. And we find that the super GPs model involving a millisecond pulsar is workable and favored for explaining FRB 121102 despite that the magnetar burst model is more popular.