Papers

We present a spectroscopic study of argon electroluminescence (EL) light in a gaseous time projection chamber (TPC). Using a compact detector equipped with photomultiplier tubes with different spectral sensitivities, we measure the light emission in two nominal wavelength regions, approximately [110, 160] nm and [160, 650] nm, at different gas pressures. In addition to the well-known 128 nm emission of the second continuum, significant emission is observed in the [160, 650] nm band, with a prompt, nanosecond-scale response indicating that photon production closely follows the transit of drifting electrons across the high-field EL region. In contrast, the [110, 160] nm emission displays a markedly slower time evolution, dominated by excimer formation and de-excitation dynamics, with the light output governed primarily by the long-lived triplet component of the argon second continuum emission. We demonstrate that the full VUV pulse shape can be reproduced by convolving the fast UV3 response with excimer formation and decay functions, providing a coherent phenomenological interpretation of the observed signals. Our results provide new insights into the spectral and temporal properties of argon electroluminescence and have direct implications for the design and optimization of next-generation rare-event detectors based on gaseous TPCs. Further studies are underway to characterize this emission more precisely and to investigate its potential for particle discrimination.

Multiple-$Q$ magnetic orders combine continuous spin rotations with discrete crystalline sectors associated with translations and point-group transformations, producing a richer defect structure than conventional single-$Q$ magnets. We classify the bulk defects of all seven stable phases for $N=2$ and $3$ in the $M$-point triple-$Q$ Ginzburg–Landau theory with $(\Vfour\rtimes\Dthree)\times\OO(N)$ symmetry, where $\Vfour$ is the translation-generated Klein four-group. The atomic lattice is treated as a prescribed background, with lattice dislocations and disclinations excluded and the three Fourier fields retaining their physical $M$-point labels. The parent-group transformations continuously connected to the identity form $G_0=\{e\}\times\SO(N)$. For a reference-state stabilizer $H$, the connected component containing the reference state is $G_0/(H\cap G_0)$, not the quotient obtained by projecting $H$ onto spin space. This distinction gives the orthogonal triple-$Q$ phase the full manifold $\OO(3)$, with chirality walls and Abelian $\ZZ_2$ frame vortices rather than non-Abelian binary-polyhedral vortices. Every connected component of the $\OO(2)$ phases supports an integer $2\pi$ vortex, whereas fractional windings close only when attached to a discrete-domain wall and are linearly confined at nonzero wall tension. Translation symmetry further forbids cross-gradient bilinears, reducing the quadratic elastic sector to an isotropic and an $M$-point-locked anisotropic stiffness. The classification separates free internal defects, crystalline domain walls, and wall-bound composites in triple-$Q$ magnets.

Grokking is a striking phenomenon in neural network training, where a model can undergo a prolonged period of pure memorization before abrupt generalization. While previous works have attempted to interpret it through classical machine learning mechanisms like weight norm, recent research draws an analogy from statistical physics, framing grokking as a form of computational glass relaxation. This theory defines the initial memorization as a result of `fast cooling' where the training loss is reduced so quickly that a glass state is formed, followed by a `slow relaxation' towards final generalization. Although providing a unifying framework for representative grokking theories, this perspective has remained largely at the theoretical on macroscopic level without direct empirical validation on training dynamics. Here we introduce a three-component framework to directly characterize the training dynamics via parameter mobility (PM), and two representative measurements from glassy dynamics: replica correlation (RC) and fractal dimension (FD). We demonstrate that standard optimization presents clear signatures of glass dynamics and inherently traps the grokking network in a kinetic arrested memorization state with a collapsed mobility, strong history dependence, and channel-like motions. This quantitative agreement motivates us to introduce State-Aware Monte Carlo Parameter Swapping (SAM-Swap), an optimization plug-in that can accelerate generalization, inspired by swap Monte Carlo algorithm widely used in glass dynamics. Comparing SAM-Swap, weight decay, and Gaussian gradient noise, we find that accelerated generalization is consistently associated with random exploration in the parameter space, similar to diffusion in physics.

We present a reinforcement learning-optimized Rydberg electrometer based on the asymmetric blockade effect and achieve high-sensitivity electric field sensing in Rydberg arrays. Microwave dressing induces asymmetric blockade to suppress interactions between target atoms, while keeping the coupling between the central control atom and target atoms field-tunable near Förster resonance. The field-regulated blockade radius affects the detectable atomic population signals, thereby enabling electric field sensing via state-selective readout. In planar atomic arrays, classical Fisher information exhibits near-quadratic scaling with atom number and approaches the Heisenberg limit. Reinforcement learning-designed composite pulses greatly enhance quantum Fisher information by up to one order of magnitude compared with single $\pi$ pulses. We further establish a compact six-atom spherical configuration for vector electrometry, in which field orientation is extracted from calibrated axial populations, and weak bias fields eliminate dipole-dipole-induced sign and magic-angle ambiguities. Numerical tests against Rabi frequency deviation, positional error, residual inter-target coupling and projection noise demonstrate the reliability of this scheme. This work provides an experimentally viable approach to realize high-precision three-dimensional Rydberg electric field sensing.

Achieving joint quantum-enhanced precision in multiparameter sensing requires both high sensitivity and measurement compatibility. These two aspects are characterized by the quantum Fisher information matrix (QFIM) and the Uhlmann curvature matrix (UCM), respectively, with weak compatibility corresponding to the vanishing of the relevant UCM elements. Here, we develop a symmetry-projection framework that classifies phase generators into subspace-preserving and subspace-changing sectors. For probe states confined to a symmetry subspace, symmetry projection imposes a common block-diagonal structure on the QFIM and UCM, rendering cross-sector parameters simultaneously free from information cross-talk and measurement incompatibility. When the subspace-changing generators act as scalars within the occupied subspace, the corresponding QFIM block reduces to four times the symmetrized covariance matrix, even for mixed probe states. For parity-protected collective $\mathrm{SU}(2)$ systems, this structure singles out the transverse anti-squeezed quadrature and the longitudinal mean-spin direction as natural optimal sensing axes. Applied to a dissipative one-axis twisting model, the dynamically generated probe state exhibits identically vanishing UCM elements for transverse–longitudinal parameter pairs, while maintaining nearly balanced, Heisenberg-scaled QFIM components over a broad transient window. Our work opens a route to symmetry-protected, weakly compatible multiparameter sensing in interacting quantum many-body systems.

A volatile droplet gently deposited on a superheated substrate can sit on a thin film of its own vapour, which prevents contact between the drop and surface. This phenomenon is called the Leidenfrost effect. In this paper, through direct numerical simulations, we analyse characteristics of Leidenfrost water droplets with a single computational model over four decades of droplet radius, stitching together previous works in the limit of large and small droplets. Using the model, we show that the ambient humidity, an underappreciated factor in the Leidenfrost system, in combination with the flow in the drop has a significant impact on the geometry and drying kinetics. Our results imply the inadequacies of commonly made assumptions of a pure vapour phase and an isothermal droplet. When modelling large Leidenfrost droplets with an axisymmetric model, large discrepancies between experiments and the computational results occur. Through azimuthal stability analysis, we show that this is due to the unrealistic constraint of axisymmetry. This finding is supported by 3D simulations of a simplified model. Finally, some hypotheses are explored to account for the remaining discrepancies with experimental data.

We investigate the holographic dual of the extended bulk thermodynamics of dyonic dilaton AdS black holes by allowing both the cosmological constant and Newton's gravitational constant to vary. In the dual CFT thermodynamics, the central charge $C$ and chemical potential $\mu$ as its conjugate enter the thermodynamic relations, in addition to $(\tilde{T},\tilde{S})$, $(\tilde{Q},\tilde{\Phi})$, $(\tilde{P},\tilde{\Psi})$, $(\tilde{\mathcal{P}},\tilde{V})$. We consider sixteen different ensembles related to those five pairs of thermodynamic variables which we separate into fixed volume and pressure ensembles. Due to the symmetry on ($\tilde{Q},\tilde{P}$), we only need to analyze five ensembles each in fixed volume and pressure ensembles. In the fixed volume ensembles, it is found that the fixed ($\tilde{Q},\tilde{P},\tilde{V},\mu$) and ($\tilde{\Phi},\tilde{P},\tilde{V},\mu$) exhibit a zeroth-order phase transition. Interestingly, the fixed ($\tilde{\Phi},\tilde{\Psi},\tilde{V},C$) ensemble shows the zeroth- and first-order phase transitions at above and below critical potential $\tilde{\Upsilon}_c$, respectively. In the fixed pressure ensembles, it is found that richer structures appear where the sign of $\mu$ heavily influences phase space for several ensembles. For fixed ($\tilde{Q},\tilde{P},\tilde{\mathcal{P}},\mu$) and ($\tilde{\Phi},\tilde{P},\tilde{\mathcal{P}},\mu$), they show the zeroth-, first-, and second-order phase transitions. For the fixed ($\tilde{\Phi},\tilde{\Psi},\tilde{\mathcal{P}},\mu$) ensemble, there is only a zeroth-order phase transition occurs. The other ensembles which we do not mention eventually do not show any phase transition. These findings provide deeper insight into how bulk gravitational variations, particularly regarding the cosmological and gravitational constants, translate to exact critical phenomena and richer phase structures within CFT.

We study the spin-partitioned entanglement Hamiltonian of the one-dimensional repulsive Hubbard model. By combining bosonization with exact diagonalization, we show that tracing out one spin species produces a modular Luttinger liquid, whose properties fundamentally differ from those of the physical system. While the modular spectrum is fully dispersionless and possesses a momentum-independent entanglement gap, its eigenstates exhibit algebraic correlations governed by a single effective Luttinger parameter equal to the geometric mean of the charge and spin Luttinger parameters. The resulting entanglement spectrum displays a universal branching hierarchy in excellent agreement with exact diagonalization. We further demonstrate that the modular ground state is nearly identical to that of the spinless Luttinger liquid. These results uncover a universal modular structure in interacting one-dimensional fermionic systems.

In the framework of the Iyer-Wald formalism, the first law of black hole mechanics is examined within the context of conformal Einstein-power-Yang-Mills (CEPYM) theory. By comparing two inffnitesimally neighbouring stationary black hole solutions, we obtain the explicit analytical expression for the first law of black hole thermodynamics in CEPYM theory.

We propose a quantum dominant energy condition (QDEC) for the stress tensor in the context of quantum field theory in curved spacetimes. A rigorous proof is given for the case of Rindler wedges, and a heuristic discussion about possible generalizations to more general geometric setups, including curved spacetime, is provided. In Minkowski spacetime, we establish a connection with state recovery bounds. We illustrate the QDEC for coherent states of the free scalar field, where it turns out to be related to the ordinary DEC for the stress tensor of the classical solution that defines the coherent state.

Two-dimensional (2D) heterocrystals comprising molecules and semiconductors can serve as an ideal platform for studying interfacial excitons and for future optoelectronic applications, yet the energy and charge flow across these atomically sharp interfaces remain unclear. In this work, we investigated PTCDA-MoS2 as a prototypical 2D organic-inorganic heterostructure and revealed dual-mode exciton coupling between the constituent crystals. Monolayer-resolved PTCDA molecular crystals were grown on monolayer MoS2 via physical vapor assembly, and their crystallographic details, including the stacking angle, were determined by electron diffraction. Upon the formation of the heterostructures, PTCDA's photoluminescence was completely quenched because of organic-to-inorganic hole transfer, whereas that of MoS2 increased markedly with PTCDA thickness. Using differential reflectance and photoluminescence excitation spectroscopy, we found that the enhancement arises from two distinct mechanisms. Ground-state charge transfer injects holes into MoS2, which suppresses negative trion formation and enhances the radiative recombination of neutral excitons. In addition, resonant energy transfer, enabled by spectral overlap between PTCDA and MoS2, diverts excitation energy from PTCDA to MoS2. Our findings reconcile previously proposed mechanisms and establish a unified framework in which charge and energy transfer cooperate to govern exciton coupling at organic-inorganic interfaces.

We report a Monte Carlo study of the magnetocaloric effect (MCE) in two-dimensional ferromagnetic Ising models on square, honeycomb, and triangular lattices with monolayer and bilayer configurations. Using Binder cumulant analysis, we determine the critical temperature ($T_c$) of each structure and find that $T_c$ increases with coordination number, from the honeycomb ($r=3$) to the triangular ($r=6$) lattice. In contrast, the magnetic entropy change ($-\Delta S_M$) decreases with coordination number, reaching its maximum for the honeycomb lattice. After normalization by their peak values and appropriate temperature scaling, both $-\Delta S_M$ and the field exponent $n$ collapse onto universal master curves for different magnetic fields and across all six lattice structures at a fixed low field. This demonstrates universal MCE scaling independent of coordination number and layer count. Critical scaling analysis further supports the observed universality and power-law behavior. Unlike $-\Delta S_M$, the adiabatic temperature change ($\Delta T_{ad}$) increases with coordination number, whereas the magnetic Grüneisen parameter ($\Gamma_M$) follows the same trend as $-\Delta S_M$. Although the peak value of $-\Delta S_M$ decreases with coordination number, the relative cooling power and cooling capacity remain nearly unchanged due to compensating broadening of the $-\Delta S_M$ curves. The field dependence of $-\Delta S_M$, relative cooling power, and cooling capacity follows power laws up to $\sim2.6$ T (assuming $J\approx1$ meV). Hysteresis analysis shows that lattices with lower coordination numbers exhibit a faster reduction in loop width with increasing temperature. These results establish the universal scaling behavior of the magnetocaloric effect in two-dimensional monolayer and bilayer magnetic lattices and provide guidelines for designing magnetic refrigerants.

Foam scraping exhibits a dynamic transition between a slip state, in which the foam moves beneath a plate, and a scraping state, in which the foam is expelled from the confined region. Although this transition has been associated with the propagation of local T1 rearrangements, the physical parameter controlling their propagation remains unclear. Here, we investigate the dependence of the critical scraping velocity on the liquid fraction, bulk viscosity, and surfactant system. For all examined conditions, the critical capillary number follows $\mathrm{Ca}_c\propto\phi^{-1}$, apart from a solution-dependent prefactor. We propose a local fluid–structure-coupling model in which viscous work transmitted through the Plateau-border network competes with the effective energetic cost required for one T1 event to trigger the next. The observed scaling implies an effective energetic cost governed by the Laplace pressure and is consistent with a small local compressive component of the bubble deformation. These results identify local coupling between interstitial flow and bubble deformation as a mechanism controlling the macroscopic slip–scraping transition.

We investigate how the gluon condensate modifies the thermal spectral functions and melting patterns of heavy vector mesons, specifically charmonium and bottomonium, using an improved soft-wall AdS/QCD model. The framework is extended to finite temperature via a dilaton black hole geometry that consistently incorporates the backreaction from the gluon condensate. We numerically track the evolution of spectral resonance peaks as functions of both temperature and gluon condensate strength. Our calculations reveal that increasing temperature systematically broadens and suppresses spectral peaks, signaling in-medium dissociation. In contrast, a stronger gluon condensate considerably mitigates peak broadening and enhances the spectral weight of both ground and excited states. This behavior indicates that the gluon condensate hinders thermal dissociation, thereby stabilizing heavy quarkonia within the quark-gluon plasma. These findings are consistent with existing studies and provide new holographic evidence for the stabilising role of the gluon condensate from the perspective of thermal spectral functions.

I derive the impedance response of an ideal electrolyte containing an arbitrary number of mobile ionic species between blocking planar electrodes, described by the Poisson–Nernst–Planck equations. By transforming the linearized equations to a charge–salt basis, the response is written in terms of a multi-component diffusion–migration matrix and its eigenvalues/eigenvectors. When all diffusivities are equal, the charge mode decouples from the neutral concentration subspace and the classical binary-electrolyte result is recovered. In contrast, unequal diffusivities couple charge relaxation to one or more neutral composition modes. For a ternary electrolyte with two cations and one anion, this coupling produces additional diffusive features and broadens the crossover between resistive and capacitive regimes. The results found in this paper provide a minimal continuum explanation for why mixed electrolytes can display impedance spectra that cannot be interpreted as a simple binary electrolyte with an averaged diffusion coefficient.

We introduce a validation process that harnesses engineered many-body relaxation to control and calibrate quantum hardware. On two independently developed neutral-atom processors, we realize the many-body quantum Mpemba effect in an open system for the first time. Initial-state engineering creates fast and slow relaxation pathways: the fast pathway opens access to unreachable mixed-state physics before hardware noise obscures the target dynamics, whereas the slow pathway amplifies hidden imperfections in preparation and control. Computational-basis measurements directly and independently benchmark dynamical reliability, revealing each processor's actual operating window as a many-body simulator. The processors are thus judged by the very dynamics they are built to reproduce. Complementary responses disentangle control errors and drive an adaptive, time-resolved scheme that supplies hardware developers directly actionable corrections, enhancing faithful reproduction of the target dynamics. These results establish many-body relaxation as a transferable validation and calibration tool for programmable quantum processors.

The high-extinction cross-polarization measurement of a paraxial laser beam results in a Hermite-Gaussian ($\text{HG}_{11}$)-like four-lobes with a dark-centered cross pattern. The azimuthally spin-separated mode pattern is understood to result from the spin-orbit interaction of light. The perfect dark region at the beam center, due to extreme cross-polarization extinction (EXE), is used here to accurately determine the on-axis residual polarization of the laser beam and, using it, the residual elliptical birefringence of optical crystals. By propagating the laser beam through uniaxial optical crystals with their optic axis cut either parallel or perpendicular to the beam propagation direction and performing the EXE measurement, we demonstrate a simple approach to precisely quantify the residual elliptical birefringence of crystals, which are otherwise assumed to be absent, to a high degree of extinction of 1 part in $10^{-8}$. The experimental results are interpreted using Jones-matrix-based calculations for a paraxial laser beam and upon its propagation through the optical crystals. The high sensitivity and high accuracy of the EXE technique make it well-suited for measuring and characterizing anisotropy and its dispersion of monolayers, ultrathin films, and 2D materials.

Spin Hall effect is one of the primary sources of pure spin current in spintronic devices, observed in spin-orbit coupled materials. In this work, we investigate linear and non-linear pure spin currents in the hexagonally warped surface states of topological insulators like $\rm Bi_2Te_3$, using the formalism of conserved spin transport. The hexagonal warping effect enables the application of this formalism by providing a well-defined Berry curvature without breaking the time-reversal symmetry. The absence of in-plane spin currents in the linear response motivates the extension of the formalism to the non-linear regime, by combining the perturbation of Bloch states with the Boltzmann transport equation. The second-order response exhibits both intrinsic and extrinsic in-plane spin currents induced by the spin-weighted Berry curvature, Berry connection polarizability (BCP) dipole and Berry curvature dipole (BCD) respectively. The band anisotropy due to the $C_{3v}$ symmetry of the material ($\rm Bi_2Te_3$) propagates through the spin textures and the band geometric quantities, resulting in the selection of certain components of the spin conductivity tensors.

Metallenes have appealing properties, but stabilizing them in a monolayer phase poses synthesis challenges. A recent experiment showed that the van der Waals squeezing method can stabilize certain metallenes in a MoS2 sandwich. This pioneering work motivates systematic studies, but such studies are experimentally impractical, while first-principles modeling remains prohibitive. Here, using universal machine-learning interatomic potentials, we constructed 1620 metallene sandwich heterostructures containing 6 different sandwich layers and 45 metals. We performed phonon calculations, which revealed 1208 dynamically stable structures and narrowed them to 331 after structural filtering. We found that Se-based transition-metal dichalcogenides stabilize metallenes effectively. Specifically, hexagonal and buckled hexagonal crystal lattices exhibit the greatest stability. We further evaluated the thermal stability of selected heterostructures with density-functional theory molecular dynamics simulations at room temperature. By uncovering the physical and chemical factors that govern metallenes stabilization, our results provide systematic insights to guide and accelerate synthesis for future applications.

We compute the tail-of-tail contribution to the conservative dynamics of eccentric, non-spinning compact binaries to relative 1PN order and to $\mathcal O(e_t^{12})$. Using the $1$PN quasi-Keplerian dynamics in harmonic coordinates, we derive the Delaunay-averaged Hamiltonian at $5.5$PN and $6.5$PN order and match it to the effective-one-body description, allowing us to determine the corresponding contributions to the non-geodesic EOB $Q$ potential through the $\mathcal{O}(p_r^{12})$, including the dependence on the symmetric mass ratio up to $\mathcal{O}(\nu^2)$. The terms linear in the mass ratio reproduce the available first-order self-force results, while the quadratic terms provide qualitatively new eccentric second-order self-force predictions arising from the tail-of-tail terms. We independently rederive the averaged Hamiltonian using a Fourier–Bessel decomposition of the hereditary interaction. Applying the first law at fixed orbital frequencies, we recover the known first-order self-force redshift through $\mathcal O(e^{12})$ and obtain the complete tail-of-tail contribution to the second-order inverse redshift at $5.5$PN and $6.5$PN through $\mathcal O(e^{10})$.

We study the number of copies needed to estimate the root Uhlmann fidelity between an unknown quantum state and a classically known reference, under collective measurements. If the unknown state has rank at most $s$, we give an estimator using $O(s^2/\varepsilon^2)$ copies, uniformly in the ambient dimension and reference rank. The estimator applies a random-purification channel and a covariant pure-state measurement, then rescales the observed amplitude before evaluating a weighted nuclear norm. Combined with the lower bound established independently in our first version and in concurrent work of Wang, this determines the worst-case complexity under rank bounds $r,s$ as $\min\{r,s\}^2/\varepsilon^2$ up to logarithmic factors in the smaller rank. The same estimator gives the upper bound $O(r(\operatorname{tr}\sqrt{\sigma})^2/\varepsilon^2)$ for a rank-$r$ reference $\sigma$. We combine spectral truncation with lower bounds obtained by embedding hard instances for the maximally mixed reference into spectral subspaces. For spectra $\lambda_i\propto i^{-\alpha}$ with fixed $1<\alpha\le2$, as $\varepsilon\downarrow0$ with $r\ge C_\alpha\varepsilon^{-2/(\alpha-1)}$, the bounds determine the complexity as $\widetilde\Theta_\alpha(\varepsilon^{-4/(\alpha-1)})$. In particular, inverse-square spectra have accuracy exponent four. The lower-bound construction uses exact moment matching and an explicitly computable Schur measure.

Based on the Generator Coordinate Method (GCM), we use a Quantum GCM (QuGCM) within a hybrid quantum-classical framework to simulate low-lying eigenstates of nuclear systems on quantum devices. The generator basis states are constructed from Hartree-Fock (HF) reference states, excited via symmetry-adapted unitary coupled-cluster (UCC) operators. These states are prepared as non-orthogonal quantum circuits and measured pairwise to compute the required overlap and Hamiltonian kernels. The resulting data is processed using a classical generalized-eigenvalue solver, following the GCM formalism, to extract the system's energy spectrum. To enhance efficiency and reduce circuit depth, we apply the Adaptive Generator Coordinate Inspired method (ADAPT-GCIM), which iteratively selects generator excitations based on energy gradients, thereby avoiding the need to explore the full Hilbert space. Our implementation is applied to nuclear systems, specifically the deuteron with the Reid68 potential and shell-model Hamiltonians of $^6$Li and $^{38}$Ar. For each system, both the QuGCM and ADAPT-GCIM methods produce energy spectra in agreement with classical diagonalization results, demonstrating robustness even under noise and limited-depth constraints. Additionally, we compare fermionic encoding strategies, specifically Jordan-Wigner (JW) transformations of one-hot (OH) encoding and Gray code (GC) mappings, and show that GC encoding reduces circuit complexity and improves fidelity during multi-reference state preparation. Our findings indicate that QuGCM and ADAPT-GCIM provide a practical and scalable path toward simulating correlated quantum systems, with lesser vulnerability to noise and better compatibility with the limitations of current quantum hardware.

We revisit the possibility of detecting the Odderon exchange through high-energy neutral-kaon regeneration, focusing on the in-matter $K^0_L\to K^0_S$ conversion of $(\sim\!0.2-2)$~TeV $K^0_L$ mesons originating from $pp$ collisions at $\sqrt{s}=13.6$~TeV, and on the practical constraints of realizing such a measurement in the very-forward region of an LHC interaction point. The analysis has two complementary parts. First, we reproduce the original coherent-forward-regeneration estimates for a liquid-hydrogen regenerator and extend them to realistic C, Cu and Pb regenerators of an LHC-compatible geometry, including neutral-kaon attenuation. We show that an Odderon-induced regeneration phase produces a measurable distortion of the $K^0\to\pi^0\pi^0$ decay-vertex distribution at TeV kaon energies, but that the survival of primary $K^0_S$ mesons from the interaction point imposes severe baseline requirements, while a competing electromagnetic $C=-1$ (photon-exchange) amplitude limits the interpretation of the coherent mode as a clean Odderon measurement. Second, we examine non-forward (diffractive) regeneration at lower kaon energies of $0.2-0.8$~TeV, where the primary-$K^0_S$ contamination is naturally suppressed, and estimate the competing Odderon, Pomeron–Odderon-cut, $\omega$-Reggeon and photon-exchange contributions to the regeneration amplitude. We identify neutron-induced neutral-only strangeness production and inelastic Regge backgrounds as the dominant limitations, quantify the background suppression required for an observable Odderon signal, and formulate the ingredients of an active double-regenerator subtraction strategy.

We theoretically predict and experimentally demonstrate that a reduced spatial-mode demultiplexing (SPADE) measurement using only the two lowest-order Hermite-Gaussian modes exhibits remarkable robustness against background noise in discriminating between a single source and two incoherent point sources. We establish a theoretical framework incorporating uniform background noise and derive an analytical Chernoff exponent expression, showing that SPADE consistently outperforms direct imaging (DI) across all source separations. Experimental results confirm that SPADE-based hypothesis testing approaches the quantum limit even when the background-to-signal photon ratio per pixel is 0.11. This advantage stems from SPADE's ability to concentrate source information into minimal detection modes, reducing the cumulative background noise impact. Our findings provide a practical detection scheme for applications where background noise is inevitable, such as astronomical observations and quantum sensing.

Energy correlators probe how the strong interaction shapes the energy distribution within jets. Here, we study the jet-by-jet fluctuations of the energy-energy correlator (EEC). Each jet's EEC is described by a vector of densities in angular shells. Using an ensemble of these vectors, we construct the covariance matrix $C$ and Pearson correlation matrix $R$ to quantify fluctuation amplitudes and correlations between angular shells. Reconstructed jets in CMS Open Data at $\sqrt{s}=7$ TeV show positive correlations between nearby outer-angle bins and negative correlations between separated angular regions. We compare PYTHIA jets at the parton, undecayed-hadron, and final-particle stages to identify correlations already present in the shower and study how hadronization and decays reshape the angular fluctuations. PYTHIA is then coupled to linear Boltzmann transport (LBT) to study medium effects on jet-by-jet EEC fluctuations and their angular correlations. These results open a route to probing the stochastic evolution of QCD jets through jet-by-jet EEC fluctuations.

Cosmological collider signals are usually discussed for isolated massive particles, whose exchange produces characteristic logarithmic oscillations in primordial correlators. In this work, we study how this signal is modified when the exchanged states form a continuous mass spectrum. We first develop a spectral representation for inflationary correlators mediated by a continuum field. In the soft limit, the non-analytic part of the seed function is expressed as a Fourier–Laplace transform of the spectral weight with respect to logarithmic momentum variables. This representation shows that a continuum superposes clock signals with different frequencies and can dephase the sharp oscillation associated with a single massive particle. We then realize this mechanism in an RS2-like inflationary braneworld, where the inflaton is localized on a de Sitter brane in a five-dimensional AdS bulk. The tensor sector contains a localized massless graviton and a continuum of Kaluza-Klein gravitons starting at \(m=3H/2\). We derive the KK wavefunctions and identify the brane spectral weight fixed by the continuum wavefunction on the brane. Applying this weight to the inflaton four-point function, we find a smooth seed function rather than a persistent logarithmic clock oscillation. This behavior follows from the fact that the continuum starts at zero clock frequency, while the KK spectral weight vanishes near threshold. Our results provide a concrete higher-dimensional example in which deviations from the standard cosmological collider signal encode the structure of a continuum high-energy spectrum.

The existence of an ideal MagnetoHydroDynamic (MHD) equilibrium does not guarantee its stability. Finite toroidal mode number (n) instabilities degrade performance in both tokamaks and stellarators and differentiable stability optimization tools to date have operated only in the infinite-n limit. We present AGNI (Analysis of Global Normal modes in Ideal MHD), a GPU-accelerated, automatically differentiable finite-n ideal MHD stability solver and optimizer. AGNI discretizes the ideal MHD energy principle pseudospectrally in real space using differentiation matrices and geometric coefficients from a DESC equilibrium, giving a variational eigenvalue problem for the plasma displacement, and efficiently finds the most unstable modes. Built on jax, AGNI yields reverse-mode gradients of the growth rate with respect to boundary-shape and profile parameters without re-solving the equilibrium. We benchmark AGNI against the initial-value code NIMSTELL for a modified Landreman-Bulle-Drevlak quasi-helically symmetric stellarator and a DSHAPE tokamak,recovering the dominant mode with agreement in terms of growth rate and eigenfunction structure, and verify the automatic differentiation gradients against central finite differences. We quantify CPU and GPU cost for eigenvalue and gradient evaluation, establish the finite-precision limit on resolving near-marginal eigenvalues, and present a numerical scheme to impose incompressibility, compatible with gradient-based optimization. AGNI will allow us to optimize tokamaks, stellarators, and mirrors against ideal MHD instabilities.

In this study, we present multipartite entanglement results for the Ca and Ti isotopic chains obtained from nuclear shell-model wavefunctions. Our investigation focuses on the first excited $2^+_1$ states, which exhibit signatures of shell closures at $N=28$ and $N=32$. We calculate the 4- and 6-tangles, together with their corresponding network representations, providing a detailed picture of the underlying many-body correlations among nucleons. The primary objective of this work is to investigate the influence of shell closures on higher-order $n$-tangles, thereby gaining insight into the evolution of multipartite entanglement in medium-mass nuclei.

Magnonic systems are a promising resource for quantum technologies because of their ability to couple significantly disparate quantum platforms and the generation of nonclassical magnon states through magnon blockade has attracted growing attention. In practice, however magnon blockade relies on a destructive interference that is easily spoiled by fabrication-induced coupling asymmetries. Here we show that the relative phase between two magnon drives acts as an active compensation knob that restores this interference even when the couplings are mismatched. We study two Kittel magnon modes in a hybrid system in which a superconducting qubit coupled to a common cavity mode mediates the inter-mode interaction and we find that tuning the drive phase produces both magnon blockade and a strong violation of the classical Cauchy–Schwarz inequality. We derive the analytic condition for the phase that compensates a given coupling asymmetry and confirm it against exact numerical simulations. The drive phase thereby serves as a control knob that switches the system between classical and quantum regimes. Our results enable phase-controlled magnonic quantum information processing.

We show that the quantum entanglement between the conformal field theories (CFTs) living on the future and past boundaries in the de Sitter/conformal field theory (dS/CFT) correspondence can be described by Wick rotating to a geometry with two timelike directions. We propose a new realization of the dS/CFT correspondence in which quantum gravity on this two-time geometry is holographically dual to a CFT defined on a Lorentzian torus. We show that this duality reproduces key features of dS holography, including the dS entropy, correlation functions, and pseudoentropy. Finally, by extending the framework of path-integral optimization, we explain how dS spacetime emerges from the CFT on the Lorentzian torus.