Papers

We study the emergence of Cosmological Frequency Combs (CFCs) in a quintessence cosmology with an exponential potential using a dynamical systems formulation. Expressing the evolution equations in expansion-normalized variables yields an autonomous nonlinear system that supports time-periodic attractors corresponding to limit cycles, producing comb like spectral structures in cosmological observables without external periodic forcing. Numerical simulations reveal transitions between single frequency, comb like and chaotic regimes controlled by the fundamental frequency, background equation of state parameter, and initial conditions. Coherent comb structures arise only within well defined dynamical windows, while very low frequencies and unfavorable initial conditions suppress phase locking. These results show that CFCs naturally emerge from nonlinear cosmological dynamics and motivate further study of their possible observational implications.

The free energy of the Ising model on the square lattice with alternating interactions in both horizontal and vertical directions is exactly derived. This model is distinct from the checkerboard Ising model. The result includes Onsager's free energy as a special case, and also includes Lee-Yang's free energy with an imaginary field, and relates these two solutions via continuous parameters. The result includes a generalization of Lee-Yang's result to cases with four different couplings. It is also derived that each imaginary magnetic field $i\pi/2$ applied to a lattice site corresponds to a single frustrated square in its dual lattice.

Quantum circuit optimizers face a fundamental limitation in how they tolerate temporary cost increases. At one extreme, greedy rule-based optimizers immediately apply any cost-reducing transformation, achieving high efficiency but quickly becoming trapped in local minima. At the other extreme, search-based optimizers accept cost-increasing moves to explore the circuit space and escape such minima. However, because search-based optimizers cannot determine within a reasonable time budget whether a given point is promising, that is, whether its neighborhood contains a deeper local minimum, they must blindly explore higher-cost regions. As a result, escaping the current basin to reach a promising point takes exponentially many steps. In this work, we show that this limitation can be overcome with a hybrid framework that interleaves the exhaustive exploration capabilities of search algorithms with the efficiency of rule-based optimization. We implement this framework as QALM, a novel optimizer designed to escape local minima without incurring the runtime penalties of pure search. Crucially, our results demonstrate that QALM does not merely strike a balance; it outperforms existing rule-based and search-based optimizers in circuit reduction rates while operating with the computational efficiency of rule-based systems. In a comprehensive evaluation across 248 circuits, QALM matches or exceeds the fidelity of the strongest baseline on 83.9% of these circuits, given the same time budget.

At a distance of 2.4kpc, W33 is one of the most prolific sources of molecular line emission, and it is an excellent research target for a centimeter spectral line search. We carried out a 1.3cm spectral line survey in the frequency range 18-26GHz. The lines we identified include 44 radio recombination lines (RRLs) and 24 molecular lines, excluding transitions from the main isotopolog of NH3. The RRLs are associated with the ionized gas from W33Main. Intensity ratios between RRL pairs with varying differences in the principal quantum number $n$ (i.e., $\Delta n$) from the same element at adjacent frequencies agree with ratios expected under conditions of local thermodynamical equilibrium. In spite of a resulting helium-to-hydrogen abundance ratio (equal emitting volumes assumed) of (10.7$\pm$1.8)%, which is consistent with expectations, helium shows broader turbulent line widths than hydrogen. The difference amounts to a few kilometers per second, hinting that the spatial distributions are slightly different. The molecular lines are attributed to nine different species (CH3OH, HC3N, SiS, c-C3H2, CH3CN, NH2D, HNCO, H2O and CCS). Rotation temperatures and column densities were derived from CH3OH transitions using rotational temperature diagram analysis. Maser emission produced by water vapor and methanol have been observed in W33Main, W33A, and W33B. Our survey discovered a CH3OH(10$_{2,8}$-10$_{1,9}$E) maser in W33Main. Toward W33B1, the fractionated deuterium-to-hydrogen ratio (D/H) deduced from para-NH2D/NH3 is estimated to be $\lesssim$(1.0$\pm$0.2)$\times$10$^{-3}$. For the other molecular W33-hotspots, 3$\sigma$ upper limits are (5.0$\pm$0.4)$\times$10$^{-3}$. At linear scales of (0.5pc), fractional abundances and excitation temperatures do not reach values close to those in well-established hot cores, but higher-resolution measurements may alter this picture.

Digital twins are often built under the assumption that greater model fidelity leads to better downstream performance. We show that this is not always the case: retaining weakly dependent or auxiliary degrees of freedom can increase the dimensionality of learning and control problems enough that a sparse stochastic surrogate outperforms even an exact high-dimensional model. To identify such structure, we introduce a framework for dependence discovery directly at the level of the full conditional law. The method combines conditional generative modeling with Gaussian-process distillation and kernel mode decomposition to quantify how strongly individual variables enter the conditional distribution, including through variability, tails, multimodality, and other features invisible to the conditional mean. The resulting dependence structure can be used both to construct sparse stochastic digital twins from data and to reduce known high-dimensional models for downstream tasks. In a modified Lunar Lander problem, an eight-dimensional sparse surrogate yields better control performance than the exact 109-dimensional simulator despite lower transition fidelity. A stochastic heat-equation example shows that the framework recovers sparse structure in a 102-dimensional data-driven setting and produces a more effective surrogate than one conditioned on all candidate inputs, while economic data demonstrate its use for identifying time-varying memory structure. These results show that model fidelity and downstream utility are distinct objectives, and that dependence discovery provides a practical route to sparse stochastic digital twins.

Stellar metallicity gradients ($\nabla[Z/H]$) provide a fossil record of the assembly history of galaxies. We present an analysis of $\nabla[Z/H]$ for 90 nearby low-mass galaxies using VLT/MUSE IFU spectroscopy, spanning stellar masses from $10^{6.5}$ to $10^{10} M_\odot$ (median $\sim 10^{8.5} M_\odot$) and significantly extending the mass coverage of existing IFU surveys into the classical dwarf regime. Our primary finding is a robust negative correlation between $\nabla[Z/H]$ and light-weighted stellar age ($|r|\gtrsim 0.7$) measured out to $\sim$ 2$\times$ effective radius: older dwarf galaxies have steeper (more negative) gradients. This holds regardless of stellar mass, structural compactness, or large-scale environment (group/field), and is strongest in the intermediate-mass regime ($8.2\lesssim\log M_\star/M_\odot\lesssim9.0$). The slope of the age-$\nabla[Z/H]$ relation is close to that in the FIRE-2 simulations, indicating that stellar radial migration driven by feedback-induced potential fluctuations may be fundamental in dwarf evolution. But this apparent consistency is likely coincidental given the simulations' overly efficient feedback and chemical mixing. On the other hand, the H\,i deficiency parameter, an indicator of past environmental stripping, shows a moderate yet highly significant correlation with $\nabla[Z/H]$, second only to stellar age in strength: galaxies with higher H\,i deficiency tend to have more negative gradients, strongly indicating that environment-driven outside-in quenching and the ensuing gradual truncation of metal enrichment re-shape the stellar metallicity distribution. Our analysis suggests that the chemical evolution of dwarf galaxies likely arises from a synergy of feedback-driven dynamical heating and external environmental processing, though only the latter has robust observational support.

Exact diagonalization of quantum lattice Hamiltonians returns floating-point eigenvalues whose accuracy is not certified: rounding error, eigensolver behaviour, and ill-conditioning can corrupt a result without warning. We present symveig, a pure NumPy/SciPy package that computes rigorous, machine-checkable enclosures of all eigenvalues of a Hermitian matrix, with an optional symmetry-sector decomposition. For a matrix that commutes with an abelian conserved quantity diagonal in the working basis (for example the total magnetization of a spin model), the package verifies each symmetry sector independently. Because each sector block is much smaller than the full matrix, this yields enclosures that are both tighter (by a factor of $3$-$9$ across system sizes $L = 4$-$12$) and dramatically faster (a wall-clock speedup of up to $130\times$ at $L = 12$) than verifying the full matrix, while never forming or diagonalizing it. Every enclosure half-width is a guaranteed upper bound on the distance from a computed eigenvalue to the nearest true eigenvalue under IEEE~754 round-to-nearest arithmetic, obtained by explicit floating-point error analysis with no heuristic slack. The implementation requires neither INTLAB nor MATLAB, bringing rigorously verified eigenvalue enclosure into the standard scientific-Python stack used in computational physics. We validate the package on $1$D Heisenberg (open and periodic), $J_1$-$J_2$ Heisenberg, and $2$D Heisenberg lattices, confirming that every computed eigenvalue is contained in its enclosure across all tested configurations.

We construct a radiative neutrino mass model that combines the scotogenic mechanism with modular $S_4$ flavour symmetry. The entire lepton flavour structure is governed by holomorphic modular forms of a single complex modulus $\tau$, eliminating the need for flavon fields. Beyond the Standard Model, the particle content consists of two right-handed Majorana fermions assigned to the $S_4$ doublet representation and an inert scalar doublet odd under a $\mathbb{Z}_2$ parity. Neutrino masses emerge at one loop through the scotogenic mechanism, and the lightest $\mathbb{Z}_2$-odd state serves as a dark matter candidate. A comprehensive scan of the parameter space demonstrates consistency with all five neutrino oscillation observables at the $3\sigma$ level. Having exactly two right-handed neutrinos forces the light neutrino mass matrix to rank two, leaving one neutrino massless and selecting normal ordering as the only viable option. The framework predicts a total neutrino mass in the narrow window $\Sigma m_\nu \simeq 0.059$–$0.06\,\mathrm{eV}$, well within current cosmological bounds, and an effective Majorana mass $m_{\beta\beta} \simeq (1.3$–$3.5)\times 10^{-3}\,\mathrm{eV}$ relevant for neutrinoless double beta decay searches. The modular structure of the right-handed Majorana mass matrix intrinsically produces a quasi-degenerate heavy neutrino spectrum, enabling flavoured resonant leptogenesis at $M_1 \sim 10^5\,\mathrm{GeV}$ without any fine-tuning. Integration of the full three-flavour Boltzmann equations confirms that the observed baryon asymmetry is reproduced, establishing that neutrino masses, leptonic mixing, and the baryon asymmetry of the Universe all find a common explanation within this framework.

This is a partial review of the bilinear method, focusing on the integrability based on the 3-soliton-solution condition and the transformations between $\tau$ functions. Dedicated to Jarmo Hietarinta's 80th birthday.

For strongly interacting or boosted dark matter, propagation through the Earth can involve sizable scattering and energy loss, reshaping the underground flux in energy, direction, and normalization. Scattered particles may still fall within the detector acceptance, so the detector-side signal depends on phase-space transport from the Earth's surface to the underground detector. In this work, we formulate this transport problem with the Boltzmann equation. Its integral solution organizes successive scattering effects as a deterministic expansion in scattering orders. We analyze the transport equation in flat-Earth and spherical-Earth geometries, and apply the method to Dirac dark matter with an isoscalar vector interaction. The iterative solution agrees well with the Monte Carlo spectrum.

Magic-state preparation is a central component of fault-tolerant quantum computing. Recent theoretical and experimental successes in code-switch-based magic-state preparation have underscored the promise of these methods for quantum error correction. Similarly, magic-state cultivation has likewise been demonstrated in both numerical and experimental settings. However, a thorough comparison between magic-state cultivation and code-switch-based magic-state factories is still missing. In this work, we carry out end-to-end simulations of magic-state preparation using code switching and compare its resource requirements and performance against magic-state cultivation. As part of this analysis, we develop a lattice-surgery protocol for transfer between the doubled color code and the rotated surface code. We extend the complete code-switching protocol to the $d=5$ doubled color code and perform the corresponding end-to-end simulations. Finally, we propose two fault-tolerant magic-state preparation protocols that combine phase-kickback checks with a transversal non-Clifford gate.

The discovery of superconductivity in bilayer La$_3$Ni$_2$O$_7$ under pressure has sparked tremendous attention on Ruddlesden-Popper (RP) nickelates. Recently, a higher superconducting transition temperature of 96 K was reported in Sm-doped La$_3$Ni$_2$O$_7$ single crystals at $\sim$ 22 GPa. Motivated by this experimental observation, we systematically explore the crystal structure and electronic properties of La$_3$Ni$_2$O$_7$ doped with different rare-earth elements in comparison to the undoped counterpart. As expected due to the effect of chemical pressure, we find that the volume of La$_{2}$$R$Ni$_2$O$_7$ ($R=$ Pr, Nd, Sm) progressively decreases with doping from Pr to Sm. We further find a pressure-induced structural transition to tetragonal symmetry that approximately coincides with the emergence of superconductivity in all cases. This transition is characterized by the emergence of flat $d_{z^2}$ bands at the Fermi level in the electronic structure. Despite subtle distinctions in the electronic structure between undoped and $R$-doped La$_3$Ni$_2$O$_7$, an increase in the dominant planar hopping is obtained as the $R$ size decreases. In contrast, the out-of-plane hopping decreases (in spite of the $c$ lattice constant compression), due to the decrease in the apical Ni-O$_{\rm rocksalt}$ bond length. Our findings provide further microscopic insights into the effects of $R$-doping in the electronic structure of RP nickelate superconductors in connection to $T_c$.

We consider the two species (electrons and positive charged ions) Vlasov-Poisson system linearized around BGK waves. We formulate the problem as an equivalent Vlasov-Ampère system, that we write as a system of Schrödinger type in an appropriate Hilbert space, and with a selfadjoint Vlasov-Ampère operator as a Hamiltonian. We develop a complete stationary scattering theory. We identify the absolutely continuous spectrum and the singular spectrum of the Vlasov-Ampère operator, we construct the generalized Fourier maps, we prove that the wave operators exist, are complete, satisfy Birman's invariance principle, and that the stationary formulae hold. Using these results we prove that the BGK waves are asymptotically stable. We obtain a precise description of the large time behaviour of the solutions to the Vlasov-Ampère system Namely,for large times the phase-space densities of electrons and ions are asymptotic to the phase-space densities of solutions of the unperturbed Vlasov-Ampère system. This implies that they follow the trajectories of solutions to Newton's equations for electrons and ions with the potential of the BGK wave, in the sense that they are transported along these trajectories. Furthermore, we prove that Landau damping holds, that is to say, the electric field tends to zero in pointwise sense for large times.

We construct an infinite-lattice discrete Calderón projection for the Helmholtz equation by convolution with the lattice Green's function (LGF), and apply it to active noise shielding and confinement on Cartesian grids with arbitrary geometry. The LGF fixes the outgoing radiation condition and removes the geometry-dependent auxiliary Helmholtz problem and artificial outer boundary from the projection and control synthesis; its finite numerical tabulation depends only on $(h,k)$ and is reusable across geometries. We prove idempotence, characterize the range as the trace space of interior lattice-Helmholtz solutions, and establish range equivalence with a well-posed Tsynkov-type projection. The two projectors coincide as operators when the auxiliary problem reproduces the exact lattice radiation condition. A capacity-matrix realization yields closed-form shielding and confinement densities supported on the exterior and interior sublayers of a single lattice boundary strip, respectively. For pure-noise shielding, exterior-sublayer measurements suffice under explicit invertibility assumptions; preservation of an unknown wanted interior field requires the full strip trace. Experiments on circular, L-shaped, and star-shaped regions verify machine-precision cancellation for LGF-consistent sources and near-second-order convergence for analytic plane waves and point sources. Conditioning and measurement noise tests quantify the configuration dependence of the reconstruction.

We present a new data release from the Rapid ASKAP Continuum Survey (RACS), a widefield snapshot radio survey conducted with the Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP). This data release contains the second RACS epoch to make use of ASKAP's low-frequency band, centred on 887.5 MHz with a bandwidth of 288 MHz, referred to as RACS-low2. This RACS-low2 data release includes both Stokes I and V imaging and catalogue data products covering the whole sky up to a declination of ~+48 degrees. RACS-low2 largely follows the observation footprint of the first low-band epoch, though includes additional coverage in the Northern Hemisphere. The observation scheduling and data processing follow previous RACS epochs, making use of autonomous scheduling and holography-derived primary beam models. The Stokes I and V catalogues are derived from images with a median point-spread function (PSF) of 14.2" times 11.8", and have median root-mean-square noise properties of 195 and 163 micro-Jy/PSF, for the Stokes I and V images, respectively. The consolidated Stokes I catalogue contains 3922151 sources. We also constructed a catalogue of Stokes V sources by measuring Stokes V images at the Stokes I source positions. For the 221 Stokes V measurements above the estimated leakage and detection thresholds we provide likely identifications, including detections of 61 radio stars, 85 pulsars, 43 AGN (many likely to be residual leakage), and one source that is not associated with a known astronomical object. These data products, including calibrated visibilities, images, source lists, and consolidated catalogues, are made publicly available through the CSIRO ASKAP Science Data Archive (CASDA).

The interplay between polar and altermagnetic orders remains largely unexplored in the broader landscape of correlated electron systems. Density functional theory (DFT) within the PBEsol + $U$ treatment propose Ca$_{3}$Ru$_{2}$O$_{7}$ as a polar altermagnet, reliant on the transformation of the experimentally reported $Bb2_{1}m$ phase to a lower symmetry $Pn2_{1}a$ structure. Here, we perform a targeted search for the $Pn2_{1}a$ phase using synchrotron X-ray diffraction on single crystals of Ca$_{3}$Ru$_{2}$O$_{7}$ and Ca$_{3}$(Ru$_{0.99}$Ti$_{0.01}$)$_{2}$O$_{7}$. No diffraction signature of the $Pn2_{1}a$ structure is detected down to 20 K within experimental limits. Through diffraction simulations, we translate this result into a quantitative upper bound on the symmetry breaking distortion amplitude, which we find to be significantly smaller than the DFT predicted distortion. Our DFT calculations further motivate dilute Ti substitution ($\lesssim 2\%$) as an alternative route to stabilize the low symmetry phase, for which we again find no clear evidence for this putative $Pn2_{1}a$ structure that hosts altermagnetism. Our findings indicate that PBEsol + $U$ over-stabilizes a $Pn2_{1}a$ distortion, and the measured bounds provide benchmark for future calculations. Ti substitution exceeding $\sim$3% reveals a chemically tunable polar altermagnetic phase within the $Bb2_{1}m$ structure and we theoretically demonstrate that the spin-splitting can be tuned by Ti substitution. By combining DFT, diffraction simulations and synchrotron X-ray measurements, our study demonstrates a general methodology to quantify subtle structural distortions that underlie emergent electronic and magnetic phases.

128$^\circ$Y-cut lithium niobate (LN) laterally field-excited higher-order antisymmetric bulk acoustic resonators (XBARs) have attracted interest for high-frequency acoustic devices thanks to their high electromechanical coupling coefficient ($k^2$), high quality factor ($Q$) from low metal coverage ratio, and thickness-defined resonant frequency. So far, the in-plane orientation of these resonators is commonly chosen to maximize $k^2$, thereby maximizing bandwidth. More recently, in-plane-rotated XBARs in 128$^\circ$Y-cut LN have been built to provide greater design flexibility in filter synthesis. However, the in-plane anisotropy of $Q$ has been far less explored. This leaves an important gap in understanding whether the propagation direction that determines $k^2$ also affects $Q$. In this work, we investigate the anisotropic $Q$ of higher-order antisymmetric modes (namely, A$_3$, A$_5$, and A$_7$) in 500-nm-thick 128$^\circ$Y-cut LN on Si. By characterizing resonator performance in various in-plane orientations, we observe that both Bode $Q$ and $Q_{\mathrm{3dB}, f_p}$ show minimum values at 90$^\circ$ to the material x-axis and maximum values around 0$^\circ$, following a trend similar to $k^2$. The A$_3$, A$_5$, and A$_7$ modes around 10.4, 17, and 24 GHz exhibit averaged Bode $Q$/$Q_{\mathrm{3dB}, f_p}$ values of 735/556, 204/149, and 59/37, respectively. At 90$^\circ$, the average Bode $Q$ values are reduced to 66, 9, and 12. Finite element analysis (FEA) results suggest that the orientation-dependent degradation of $Q$ near 90$^\circ$ is associated with stronger transverse displacement near the inactive and anchor regions, resulting in enhanced energy leakage. These results reveal an orientation-dependent loss pathway in 128$^\circ$Y-cut LN XBARs and provide design guidance for jointly optimizing $k^2$ and $Q$.

Fluid and charge flow through interstitial volumes among impermeable randomly placed grains in porous materials ceases to occur at a critical concentration where networks of void volumes are disrupted at macroscopic scales. This critical density for void percolation can be difficult to calculate due to the irregular shape of the void regions. We develop and implement a geometrically exact method, scaling only linearly in the system volume, for identifying the shape and size of contiguous voids. In this manner, we calculate percolation thresholds for both grain cluster percolation (where system spanning networks of overlapping grains begin to appear with increasing density) and void percolation at much higher grain concentrations where networks of interstitial volumes no longer exist on macroscopic scales. For both the former and the latter, we calculate critical concentrations for inclusions in the shape of the Platonic solids (as well as truncated icosahedra) for both aligned and randomly oriented grains. In the case of critical densities for void percolation, the accuracy of our results is significantly improved relative to prior benchmarks. We also incorporate structural disorder of inclusions by considering impermeable grains in the form of cubes subject to a series of randomly placed and oriented fracture planes to mimic aggressively fractured inclusions found in nature. As the number of sustained slices becomes large, we find that the critical porosity for void percolation tends to 5%

We explore signatures of a massive right-handed neutrino (RHN) in angular distributions of $\bar{B} \to D^* (\to D \pi) \tau (\to \pi \nu_\tau ) \bar X$ decays, where $X$ is an invisible state. We assume the new physics is described by the standard model effective field theory extended with an RHN in the MeV-GeV mass range. We calculate for the first time the full differential distributions in terms of the visible final states, including the decay of the $\tau$ lepton. We evaluate the sensitivity of various distributions to the new physics operators.

In order to make the right empirical predictions Bohmian mechanics requires a special statistical boundary condition – the distribution postulate – but it is unclear how best to understand this condition. We show how one might use the theory of algorithmic randomness to formulate the distribution postulate as an objective constraining law. The framework requires us to say something about admissible quantum-mechanical states and measurements. In return, algorithmic Bohmian mechanics (aBM) guarantees the standard Born statistics for a collection of canonical quantum experiments in the limit, not just with high probability. The algorithmic distribution postulate provides a sharp typicality condition, clarifies the status of quantum probabilities in the deterministic theory, and provides a concrete example of how notions provided by the theory of algorithmic randomness can aid in specifying the content of a physical law.

Hybrid lipid block copolymer membranes are promising for many applications in drug delivery, single molecule detection, in-membrane protein folding, and synthetic cells. However, rational design is difficult due to the many design parameters which determine the nano- and micron-scale morphology and properties. In this work, we propose a physically-informed framework which incorporates chemical immiscibility, hydrophobic thickness mismatch and geometric constraints to predict the morphology of hybrid membranes. For this purpose, we extend existing theory for amphiphilic monolayers to model the thickness of diblock copolymer bilayers, demonstrating that both the hydrophobic and hydrophilic block lengths determine the thickness. We identify and rationalize the four primary membrane morphologies observed: mixed, laterally phase-separated, unzipped (thick-thin coexistence), and polymer-rich. Specifically, chemical immiscibility differentiates mixed membranes from laterally phase separated membranes, and hydrophobic mismatch drives transitions to unzipped or polymer-rich morphologies. Areal density, finally, determines the crossover between unzipped and polymer-rich states. We validate our theoretical predictions using coarse-grained molecular dynamics across a broad parameter space, including multiple lipid species (DOPC, DPPC), polymer species (1,4 PBD-b-PEO, 1,2 PBD-b-PEO, PE-b-PEO), block lengths, temperatures, and compositions. The resulting phase maps unify previously reported experimental and simulation observations and enable a generic and mechanistic understanding for the effect of system parameters on the nanoscale morphology.

Although interactions are known to generate exotic phases in pseudospin-1/2 flat-band Dirac materials, it remains an open question whether higher-pseudospin Dirac cones continue to govern low-energy interaction-driven orders even without a well-defined valley degree of freedom. Here, we demonstrate a new form of inter-Dirac-cone coherence beyond the valley framework, which is realized through a staggered virtual-loop-current (SVLC) order in a partially filled pseudospin-1 Dirac flat band. Remarkably, the SVLC order continues to be driven by coherence between the pseudospin-1 Dirac cones even after the conventional valley-based description ceases to apply. The virtual loop currents are shown to originate from interaction-driven quantum fluctuations of charge densities and are found to exhibit an alternating circulation between the neighboring triangular plaquettes. The resulting spontaneous time-reversal symmetry breaking induces finite intrinsic anomalous Hall conductivity and orbital magnetization. The SVLC order is shown to be the lowest-energy solution in restricted real-space Hartree-Fock calculations in the weakly interacting regime. Our study establishes inter-Dirac-cone coherence as the organizing principle for interaction-driven orders in higher-pseudospin Dirac systems and identifies these systems as a new platform for driving exotic emergent phases beyond the valley framework.

Photonic computing provides ultrahigh bandwidth, low latency and intrinsic parallelism, making it a promising route beyond the scaling limits of electronic computing. However, existing on-chip photonic computing systems remain constrained by persistent trade-offs among high-speed modulation, energy efficiency and large-scale integration, limiting their system-level advantages. Here we present a spatiotemporally interleaved homodyne photonic tensor core implemented on a thin-film lithium niobate (TFLN) platform. By integrating a homodyne photonic matrix with a bus-readout time-integrating array, this architecture scales down the high-speed digital-to-analog and electro-optic interconversion hardware overhead required for photonic matrix operations from O(n^2) to O(n), thereby unlocking system-level scalability. Moreover, the architecture employs orthogonal horizontal and vertical crossbars to route data and weight signals independently, eliminating the intrinsic beam combining loss while enabling ultrahigh-speed synchronous updates of both data and weights. Collectively, these features provide a scalable and hardware-efficient foundation for high-bandwidth photonic processors targeting general-purpose artificial intelligence (AI) computing.

Complex chemical systems often contain multiple components or large molecules, giving rise to substantial chemical and conformational complexity. Modeling the structures of these systems is crucial for mechanistic understanding of chemical processes and rational design, but remains highly challenging for both conventional theoretical approaches and machine learning. Here, we introduce physical-interaction-coupled diffusion models (PICDiff), a framework that couples independently trained diffusion models for subsystems of a complex system through explicit bonded and nonbonded interactions during inference. PICDiff reduces the difficulty of applying generative models to chemically and conformationally complex systems by decomposing them into smaller subsystems that are less complex and more amenable to machine-learning-based modeling. Using peptide-polymer binding and polymer conformation sampling as examples, we demonstrate that PICDiff can quantitatively sample conformations and model the thermodynamics of complex chemical systems. These results show that PICDiff provides a general and practical approach for modeling complex chemical systems by combining learned models of simpler molecular subsystems through physical interactions.

Dwarf spheroidal galaxies (dSphs) represent prime targets for indirect dark matter (DM) searches due to their substantial DM content and low astrophysical backgrounds. In this work, we conduct a comprehensive search for neutrino signals originating from memory-burdened primordial black holes (PBHs) as DM candidates, utilizing 10 years of publicly available muon-track data from the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. We systematically compile $\mathcal{D}$-factor measurements from four independent literature sources, resulting in a robust sample of 14 dSphs with well-characterized DM distributions. For each dSph, we perform an unbinned maximum-likelihood analysis to evaluate the significance of potential PBH neutrino emission, incorporating $\mathcal{D}$-factor uncertainties through a profile likelihood framework. No significant excess over the background-only hypothesis is detected. Building upon these null results, we derive upper limits on the PBH abundance fraction, assuming a monochromatic mass distribution. Our analysis demonstrates that constraints obtained in the $k=1$ case exhibit significant improvement compared to previous studies, while the $k=2$ case yields less restrictive limits due to limited sensitivity of IceCube in the relevant energy range. Furthermore, our combined analysis of 14 dSphs achieves substantially enhanced sensitivity, as the independent error treatment effectively reduces statistical uncertainties.

We present an angular-resolved Doppler spectroscopy study of nonradiative electron capture in relativistic collisions of bare Xe54+ ions with Kr and Xe gas targets at the HIRFL-CSR storage ring. The energy spectra and angular distributions of X-rays emitted from fast-moving down-charged projectiles were measured at five observation angles of 35{\deg}, 60{\deg}, 90{\deg}, 120{\deg}, and 145{\deg} and three collision energies of 95, 146, and 197 MeV/u by employing the effect of Doppler shift. The transition intensities of Xe53+ ions with small energy differences were precisely determined. In symmetric Xe54+ \to Xe collisions, the transition intensities of Xe53+ and Xe52+ ions were identified when X-rays emitted by projectiles overlapped with K X-rays arising from target ionization. The anisotropy parameters of the K{\alpha_1}(+M2) transition were derived from the angular emission patterns of the corresponding spectral lines. The relative populations of the L, M, and N-shell excited levels of Xe53+ and Xe52+ were further deduced from the intensity ratios of I(Ly-{\beta})/I(Ly-{\alpha}), I(Ly-{\gamma})/I(Ly-{\alpha}), and I(K{\alpha})/I(Ly-{\alpha}). The energy dependence of the population of excited projectile levels was obtained for both targets. Furthermore, the experimental results were compared with theoretical calculations of nonradiative single- and double-electron capture based on the relativistic eikonal approximation and the independent-electron approximation. These findings provide valuable insights into the magnetic-sublevel population and n-resolved state-selective population of excited states produced in relativistic collisions of highly charged heavy ions with multi-electron atoms.

Inverse materials design starts from target functionality and searches for structures that can realize it. Its value in closed-loop discovery depends not only on prediction performance, but also on whether expensive first-principles results are independently validated, provenance-recorded, and admitted as feedback only when evidence is sufficient. This is especially important for composite properties such as carrier mobility, where a final scalar value hides intermediate quantities, fit quality, convergence history, and workflow assumptions. Here we present InvDesMobility, a reliability-gated first-principles feedback framework that integrates multi-agent automated DFT, evidence stratification, generative structure proposal, acquisition ranking, and auditable release. Using 516 2DMatPedia-derived candidates, the workflow produced 280 QC-passed materials and 573 retained carrier-direction seed channels after channel-level reliability gating. These records were split into two feedback objects: relaxed structures updated the generative model, while retained mobility channels trained the acquisition model and set validation priority. Over multiple iterations, InvDesMobility screened 2.4 x 10^6 structures, submitted 102 candidates for DFT validation, and retained 86 reliability-gated generated channels across 41 formulas. Overall, the main contribution is not a fixed list of high-mobility materials, but a transferable feedback contract that makes closed-loop inverse design both useful and auditable when learning from expensive calculated properties. All source data, retained feedback records, and workflows are available at https://github.com/DreamLufei/invDesMobility, with an accompanying evidence website at https://dreamlufei.github.io/invDesMobility/.

To improve the prediction accuracy of $\alpha$-decay half-lives in heavy and superheavy nuclei, a physics-guided residual-correction framework combining the effective liquid drop model (ELDM) with machine-learning methods is proposed. The ELDM is first used as the macroscopic baseline for describing the barrier-penetration process, and XGBoost and TabPFN models are then employed to learn the residual deviations between ELDM predictions and experimental data. To incorporate microscopic nuclear-structure information, several physically motivated descriptors are constructed, including deformation-related quantities, Geiger–Nuttall-related features, and minimum orbital angular momentum. The results show that machine-learning residual correction significantly improves the predictive performance of the ELDM baseline. Among all models, TabPFN-term3 achieves the best accuracy, reducing the RMSE and MAE to 0.348 and 0.248, corresponding to improvements of 38.60% and 40.46%, respectively. Residual-distribution and feature-ablation analyses further indicate that the corrected predictions are closer to experimental values and that physically motivated descriptors play an important role in learning nonlinear residual structures. Overall, the proposed ELDM-based residual-correction framework can effectively compensate for missing microscopic nuclear-structure effects while preserving physical interpretability, providing a feasible strategy for high-precision $\alpha$-decay half-life prediction.

The intrinsic magnon thermal transport in the altermagnet $\alpha$-MnTe is studied by solving the three-dimensional linearized Boltzmann transport equation with the four-magnon collision matrix. Diagonalizing the collision matrix gives direct access to the relaxation eigenmodes beyond the relaxation-time approximation. We show that Umklapp scattering lifts the momentum-related zero modes of the Normal-only collision operator and substantially modifies the low-lying relaxation spectrum. Using the same collision matrix, we compute the magnon thermal conductivity tensor. The full linearized Boltzmann transport equation result exceeds the relaxation-time approximation by more than an order of magnitude at low temperature and reveals a strong transport anisotropy, with the out-of-plane thermal conductivity remaining larger than the in-plane component over the studied temperature range. A mode-resolved analysis shows that the dominant heat-carrying modes retain momentum-like character inherited from the Normal-only zero modes, and that the larger out-of-plane conductivity mainly originates from the stronger out-of-plane group-velocity contribution, rather than from a large difference in relaxation lifetimes.

We investigate Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) transitions in one-dimensional Rydberg chains, where commensurate critical regimes associated with the melting of crystalline orders with period larger than five and incommensurate floating phases are both described by Luttinger liquid theory. The central quantity is the Luttinger liquid parameter $K$, which characterizes the universal low-energy theory and controls the relevance of perturbations driving BKT transitions. We extract $K$ using Friedel oscillations and the recently developed crosscap method introduced in Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 076501 (2025). As benchmarks, we first apply the crosscap method to a $\mathbb{Z}_3$ dual hard-core boson chain and a spin-1 XY chain with single-ion anisotropy, obtaining BKT transition points consistent with previous results after finite-size extrapolation. We then compute $K$ in the Rydberg chain along lines with fixed correlation-oscillation period near BKT transitions. Along the commensurate period-five line, the critical values of $K$ predicted by sine-Gordon theory reveal two BKT transitions separating the disordered phase, the critical phase, and the $\mathbb{Z}_5$ crystalline phase. The results from Friedel oscillations and the crosscap method agree with each other and are further supported by energy-gap scaling and Binder-cumulant analysis. To obtain reliable values of $K$ from Friedel oscillations, we use a multi-harmonic fitting scheme throughout the analysis. Along incommensurate lines, the BKT points obtained from Friedel oscillations agree with those extracted from entanglement entropy. Finally, we show that the values of $K$ obtained from the two methods are mutually consistent inside the incommensurate floating phase.