Spontaneous rotational symmetry breaking in KTaO3_3 interface superconductors

Strongly correlated electrons could display intriguing spontaneous broken symmetries in the ground state. Understanding these symmetry breaking states is fundamental to elucidate the various exotic quantum phases in condensed matter physics. Here, we report an experimental observation of spontaneous rotational symmetry breaking of the superconductivity at the interface of YAlO$_3$/KTaO$_3$ (111) with a superconducting transition temperature of 1.86 K. Both the magnetoresistance and upper critical field in an in-plane field manifest striking twofold symmetric oscillations deep inside the superconducting state, whereas the anisotropy vanishes in the normal state, demonstrating that it is an intrinsic property of the superconducting phase. We attribute this behavior to the mixed-parity superconducting state, which is an admixture of $s$-wave and $p$-wave pairing components induced by strong spin-orbit coupling. Our work demonstrates an unconventional nature of the pairing interaction in the KTaO$_3$ interface superconductor, and provides a new platform to clarify a delicate interplay of electron correlation and spin-orbit coupling.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figure

Cellular network based multistatic integrated sensing and communication systems

A novel multistatic integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) system based on cellular network is proposed. It can make use of widespread base stations (BSs) to perform cooperative sensing in wide area. This system is important since the deployment of sensing function can be achieved upon the mobile communication network at low complexity and cost without modifying the architecture of BSs for full duplexing. In this work, the topology of sensing cell is first provided, which can be duplicated to seamlessly cover the cellular network. Each sensing cell consists of a single central BS transmitting signals and multiple neighboring BSs receiving reflected signals from sensing objects. Then an estimating approach is described for obtaining position and velocity of sensing objects that locate in the sensing cell. Joint data processing with an efficient optimization method is also provided. In addition, key issues in the cellular network based multistatic ISAC system are analyzed. Simulation results show that the multistatic ISAC system can reduce interference power by over 10 dBm and significantly improve position and velocity estimation accuracy of objects when compared with the monostatic ISAC system, demonstrating the effectiveness and promise of implementing the proposed system in the mobile network

The structure and function of the global citrus rhizosphere microbiome

Citrus is a globally important, perennial fruit crop whose rhizosphere microbiome is thought to play an important role in promoting citrus growth and health. Here, we report a comprehensive analysis of the structural and functional composition of the citrus rhizosphere microbiome. We use both amplicon and deep shotgun metagenomic sequencing of bulk soil and rhizosphere samples collected across distinct biogeographical regions from six continents. Predominant taxa include Proteobacteria, Actinobacteria, Acidobacteria and Bacteroidetes. The core citrus rhizosphere microbiome comprises Pseudomonas, Agrobacterium, Cupriavidus, Bradyrhizobium, Rhizobium, Mesorhizobium, Burkholderia, Cellvibrio, Sphingomonas, Variovorax and Paraburkholderia, some of which are potential plant beneficial microbes. We also identify over-represented microbial functional traits mediating plant-microbe and microbe-microbe interactions, nutrition acquisition and plant growth promotion in citrus rhizosphere. The results provide valuable information to guide microbial isolation and culturing and, potentially, to harness the power of the microbiome to improve plant production and health

Infinite Lifetime of Underwater Superhydrophobic States

Submerged superhydrophobic (SHPo) surfaces are well known to transition from the dewetted to wetted state over time. Here, a theoretical model is applied to describe the depletion of trapped air in a simple trench and rearranged to prescribe the conditions for infinite lifetime. By fabricating a microscale trench in a transparent hydrophobic material, we directly observe the air depletion process and verify the model. The study leads to the demonstration of infinite lifetime (>50 days) of air pockets on engineered microstructured surfaces under water for the first time. Environmental fluctuations are identified as the main factor behind the lack of a long-term underwater SHPo state to date

Effects of water stress on starch synthesis and accumulation of two rice cultivars at different growth stages

Rice is a water intensive crop and soil water conditions affect rice yield and quality. However, there is limited research on the starch synthesis and accumulation of rice under different soil water conditions at different growth stages. Thus, a pot experiment was conducted to explore the effects of IR72 (indica) and Nanjing (NJ) 9108 (japonica) rice cultivars under flood-irrigated treatment (CK, 0 kPa), light water stress treatment (L, -20 ± 5 kPa), moderate water stress treatment (M, -40 ± 5 kPa) and severe water stress treatment (S, -60 ± 5 kPa) on the starch synthesis and accumulation and rice yield at booting stage (T1), flowering stage (T2) and filling stage (T3), respectively. Under LT treatment, the total soluble sugar and sucrose contents of both cultivars decreased while the amylose and total starch contents increased. Starch synthesis-related enzyme activities and their peak activities at mid-late growth stage increased as well. However, applying MT and ST treatments produced the opposite effects. The 1000-grain weight of both cultivars increased under LT treatment while the seed setting rate increased only under LT3 treatment. Compared with CK, water stress at booting stage decreased grain yield. The principal component analysis (PCA) showed that LT3 got the highest comprehensive score while ST1 got lowest for both cultivars. Furthermore, the comprehensive score of both cultivars under the same water stress treatment followed the trend of T3 > T2 > T1, and NJ 9108 had a better drought-resistant ability than IR72. Compared with CK, the grain yield under LT3 increased by 11.59% for IR72 and 16.01% for NJ 9108, respectively. Overall, these results suggested that light water stress at filling stage could be an effective method to enhance starch synthesis-related enzyme activities, promote starch synthesis and accumulation and increase grain yield

Search for the decay J/ψ→γ+invisibleJ/\psi\to\gamma + \rm {invisible}

We search for $J/\psi$ radiative decays into a weakly interacting neutral particle, namely an invisible particle, using the $J/\psi$ produced through the process $\psi(3686)\to\pi^+\pi^-J/\psi$ in a data sample of $(448.1\pm2.9)\times 10^6$ $\psi(3686)$ decays collected by the BESIII detector at BEPCII. No significant signal is observed. Using a modified frequentist method, upper limits on the branching fractions are set under different assumptions of invisible particle masses up to 1.2 $\mathrm{\ Ge\kern -0.1em V}/c^2$. The upper limit corresponding to an invisible particle with zero mass is 7.0$\times 10^{-7}$ at the 90\% confidence level

Search for the reaction e+e−→χcJπ+π− and a charmoniumlike structure decaying to χcJπ± between 4.18 and 4.60 GeV

We search for the process e+e-→χcJπ+π- (J=0, 1, 2) and for a charged charmoniumlike state in the χcJπ± subsystem. The search uses datasets collected with the BESIII detector at the BEPCII storage ring at center-of-mass energies between 4.18 GeV and 4.60 GeV. No significant χcJπ+π- signals are observed at any center-of-mass energy, and thus upper limits are provided which also serve as limits for a possible charmoniumlike structure in the invariant χcJπ± mass