Papers

We study momentum-space correlators in minimal higher-spin gravity in $\mathrm{dS}_4$ using its holographic vector-model description. Connected $n$-point functions in this model are represented by three-dimensional one-loop integrals and are rational functions of the boundary kinematics. We show that the four-point function displays a nontrivial geometric feature: its physical singularity is governed by a Ptolemy relation for the dual momentum quadrilateral. At five points, the pentagon integral introduces an apparent leading Landau singularity, which we show is spurious and disappears once the Gram constraint is imposed. We derive a representation of the five-point function free of spurious singularities and organized in terms of graph-theoretic building blocks. We then verify the conformal invariance of these correlators and discuss their behavior in the soft, collapsed, and Ptolemy limits. This structure suggests a combinatorial bootstrap for higher-spin correlators at general multiplicity, in which conformal invariance and the physical singularities emerge from the underlying graph combinatorics.

Triangular-lattice quantum spin-liquid insulators are observed to undergo transitions to superconductivity under pressure or doping, and exhibit enhanced terahertz conductivity when driven by mid-infrared light. We present a general theoretical framework for the emergence of superconducting and charge-ordered phases from a U(1) Dirac spin liquid with fermionic spinons, as well as from its gapped $\mathbb{Z}_2$ and chiral descendants. Numerical studies have provided substantial evidence for these spin-liquid states. The spin-liquid phase hosts fractionalized Dirac spinons coupled to an emergent gauge field, whereas the superconducting and charge-ordered phases are conventional, with neither fractionalized excitations nor emergent gauge dynamics. The transition between these phases is driven by the Higgs condensation of spinless charge-$e$ bosonic chargons (“doublons” and “holons”). We show that the projective symmetry group of the Dirac spinons uniquely determines the symmetry and dispersion of the chargons, allowing us to construct an effective low-energy theory near the chargon band minima. Gauge-invariant composites of the chargon Higgs fields provide the order parameters characterizing the phases. The resulting phase diagram contains a rich variety of ordered states, including $d+id$ superconductivity, charge-density waves, bond-density waves, and pair-density waves.

Binary interaction in massive stars is expected to produce a large population of intermediate-mass ($2$-$8$ M$_\odot$) envelope-stripped stars, yet such objects have remained elusive in the Milky Way. We report the identification of an unambiguous Galactic example in a short-period ($P=5.94$ d), double-lined spectroscopic binary, discovered in the SDSS-V Milky Way Mapper survey. The system consists of a rapidly rotating O-type star and a hotter, lower-mass companion, which shows He II and N IV emission lines with large radial velocity variations, revealing its binary nature. Combined orbital constraints and joint spectroscopic and photometric modelling show that the companion is a hot ($T_\ast \approx 60$ kK), helium-rich star with a mass of $3.2$-$5.8$ M$_\odot$, placing it squarely in the intermediate-mass regime and below values typically inferred for classical Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars. The system's short period, negligible eccentricity, and rapidly rotating O-star point to a post-interaction configuration following efficient mass transfer and spin-up of the accretor. Comparison with binary evolution models suggests that the stripped star is observed in a brief inflated phase following mass transfer, which increases its optical flux contribution and facilitates its detection. The inferred mass-loss rate $\log \dot{M} = -6.3 \pm 0.1$ is in line with mass-loss rates observed for classical WR stars in the Milky Way and exceeds those measured for intermediate-mass stripped stars in the Magellanic Clouds, with the caveat that our target selection is biased towards systems with stronger emission features. As an unambiguous and well-characterised intermediate-mass stripped star, this system provides a key benchmark for models of binary evolution at solar metallicity, stripped-envelope supernova progenitors, and the formation of compact-object binaries.

The leading adiabatic response of a static black hole to a slowly evolving asymptotic modulus separates into a geometric problem and a functional-analytic one: the former identifies the tangent direction on the manifold of static solutions actually followed by the black hole, and the latter determines whether the resulting deformation admits a unique solution. We show that both can be characterized by explicit scalar criteria. Differentiating a smooth family of static solutions defines an intrinsic covector on its tangent space. When the family is parameterized by the asymptotic modulus and the static horizon-mass parameter, the kernel of this covector identifies a canonical tangent direction that coincides with the one selected by a slowly varying exterior modulus. Promoting the static family to a slowly evolving instantaneous representative does not solve the exact field equations; the resulting discrepancy defines a lag field governed, after elimination of the metric perturbations, by a single reduced radial operator. A representation convention separates the exact dynamical horizon from that of the instantaneous representative. A local slice then removes the remaining tangential ambiguity and induces a finite-rank perturbation of the reduced operator. The Fredholm index is preserved, and, whenever the finite-rank update is nontrivial, the canonical tangent zero mode is displaced from the kernel of the reduced operator. Under the transversality and Fredholm hypotheses, existence and uniqueness of the completed leading-order adiabatic boundary-value problem reduce to a single scalar matching condition on the resulting kernel generator. The construction depends only on a smooth non-extremal static solution manifold and the Fredholm properties of the reduced operator. A companion paper specializes the framework to the magnetic GHS family.

We determine the relative entropy of entanglement of a bipartite mixed state $\rho_{AB}$ obtained by tracing out one subsystem of a tripartite Haar-random pure state $|\psi\rangle_{ABC}$, finding $E_R(\rho_{AB})=\log\frac{d_Ad_B}{\max(d_A,d_B,d_C)}+O(1)$. Equivalently, the relative entropy of entanglement nearly saturates the smaller of the entanglement of formation $E_F(\rho_{AB})$ and the mutual information $I(A:B)$. The upper bound is achieved by an explicit separable state obtained through one-sided Schmidt dephasing, which is therefore approximately closest.

Mirbabayi and Villadoro have provided strong numerical evidence for a universal upper bound on the mass of the lightest scalar field in gravitational Kaluza–Klein (KK) theories. This bound states that the lightest KK graviton, with mass $m_{1}$, must couple to at least one scalar with mass $m_{\rm sc}$ such that $(m_{\rm sc} /m_{1})^2 \leq 4/3$. We give a proof of this bound using the approach of the conformal bootstrap applied to sum rules for massive spin-2 scattering amplitudes. We additionally show that each heavier KK graviton, with mass $m_n$, must couple to at least one scalar with mass $m_{\rm sc}$ such that $(m_{\rm sc} /m_{n})^2 < 36/25$.

We show that the tree-level amplitude for producing a monopole–antimonopole pair from an electrically charged pair cannot be constructed from the minimal one-photon couplings. Gluing the electric and magnetic three-point vertices gives a nonzero photon-pole contribution, but the resulting magnetic final state has the opposite discrete-symmetry eigenvalue from the electric initial state. Local four-point interactions cannot change the pole contribution fixed by the three-point couplings, so they cannot repair this mismatch. For fermions, the obstruction is specific to the minimal three-point coupling: an independent Pauli form factor supplies a spin-singlet three-point amplitude and allows the symmetry selection rule to be satisfied.

Bell experiments rule out local common-cause explanations of quantum correlations, yet they do not exclude hidden influences that travel faster than light while still having a finite speed in a preferred frame. Multipartite spacetime arrangements turn this possibility into a constraint: two late parties that are outside each other's hidden-influence cones must remain Bell-local once the earlier events are fixed. Here, we formulate this constraint as a projected-polytope separation problem for cluster-state correlations, using only marginal data containing at most one late party. From linear cluster states, we construct a four-qubit witness with the bound $S_4\le 6$ and quantum value $4+2\sqrt2$, and a five-qubit witness with $S_5\le 10$ and quantum value $6+4\sqrt2$. We certify that the exposed faces are facets of the corresponding projected hidden-influence polytopes. These results identify linear-cluster graph states as certifiable and experimentally friendly resources for finite-speed hidden-influence tests.

We compute the optical appearance of a maximally extended (eternal) Schwarzschild black hole surrounded by a geometrically thin accretion disk. Unlike astrophysical black holes formed by gravitational collapse, the eternal solution contains a white hole (WH) region connected to a past singularity. Following Markov's hypothesis of a limiting density of matter, we replace the past singularity with a spacelike "surface of last scattering" at $r=r_{\rm m}$ and assume that it emits black-body radiation with temperature $T$. Past-directed rays that cross the past horizon terminate on this surface, resulting in a bright spot at the center of the shadow of an eternal black hole. The radial profile of the spot is set by the gravitational frequency shift, with a blueshifted center when the spacelike surface is sufficiently close to the singularity. We use ray tracing to generate an image of the disk and the spot, and we derive a closed-form interferometric signature of the spot. Its visibility is a pure exponential in the baseline length, in contrast to the power-law envelopes of the disk and the photon ring. We constrain the product $r_{\rm m} T$ from the observed 230 GHz fluxes of M87* and Sgr A*. We also consider a Planck-star scenario in which the value of $r_{\rm m}$ is determined on dimensional grounds, and show that it is out of reach of any current or planned facilities. Nevertheless, the darkness of the observed shadows remains a test of whether these black holes are eternal.

It is often claimed Standard Model CP violation is insufficient for baryogenesis. We present a counterexample using minimal flavor violation (MFV) in which all CP-violating effects arise from the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa (CKM) matrix. Our scenario involves a leptoquark field with MFV-preserving interactions whose decays to Standard Model particles yield the observed baryon asymmetry in the early universe. Unlike previous efforts to realize baryogenesis through the CP violation of the CKM matrix, our scenario does not require any time-variation of model parameters.

Near-extremal black holes can amplify higher-derivative corrections to general relativity, making them sharp probes of the perturbative control of gravitational effective field theory. We study this question in quadratic gravity with a dynamical scalar degree of freedom, focusing on dynamical Chern-Simons and scalar Gauss-Bonnet gravity. Using pseudospectral methods, we construct rapidly rotating exterior solutions at fixed surface gravity and fixed horizon angular velocity, and follow this controlled family toward extremality. In dynamical Chern-Simons gravity, the sequence approaches an asymptotically flat extremal exterior whose near-horizon limit agrees with the dynamical-Chern-Simons-deformed near-horizon extremal Kerr geometry and inherits its enhanced $SO(2,1)\times U(1)$ symmetry. In scalar Gauss-Bonnet gravity, the same limiting procedure behaves differently: the scalar develops an unavoidable logarithmic singularity at the horizon, the exterior metric develops a small boundary layer near the horizon, and the scalar-Gauss-Bonnet-deformed near-horizon extremal solution is not connected to a regular asymptotically flat exterior. We then use curvature invariants and tidal forces to diagnose the breakdown of the perturbative effective-field-theory expansion. We find that scalar curvature invariants can remain finite at the horizon even when tidal forces measured by infalling observers diverge as inverse powers of the surface gravity. These results separate distinct notions of effective-field-theory breakdown near extremality and provide a perturbative validity estimate that can be compared with current bounds on the dynamical Chern-Simons and scalar-Gauss-Bonnet couplings.

One of the most puzzling discoveries since the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope is a numerous population of sources at high redshift nicknamed “Little Red Dots” (LRDs). Characterized by broad Balmer emission lines, compact morphologies and v-shaped spectral energy distributions (SEDs) in the rest-frame optical, the nature of LRDs remains elusive. A major challenge is the high redshift nature of LRDs, which makes observations very expensive and difficult. Finding local LRD analogues is a crucial step in unravelling the physical processes giving rise to LRDs, as cheaper observations with many facilities would become available. In this paper, we conduct a search for local LRD analogues by starting from an unbiased parent catalogue of all SDSS objects with broad H$\alpha$ or H$\beta$ emission lines (both galaxies and quasars) at $0 < z < 0.35$, complemented by archival photometry and spectroscopy. We find that among broad-line objects, $19\%$ show a v-shaped SED. We then select objects whose SED is well described by a modified black body (MBB), and identify nine local LRD analogues. After accounting for selection limitations we get an abundance of $0.08\%$ of all objects with broad lines. Among only objects which match the typical continuum and emission line luminosities of LRDs, $5\%$ display a v-shape and $0.37\%$ display a MBB-like SED. We recover one previously-identified local LRD analogue (the so-called “Egg”), validating our methodology. Among the other eight analogues, one (J0302$-$0101) shows all the hallmarks of an LRD despite being visibly embedded in the core of a galaxy; another object is ambiguous, and the remaining six may have alternative explanations for their peculiar SEDs. Our study highlights that LRDs are extremely rare at $z < 0.35$; we find very few objects with broad lines which have LRD-like SEDs, even without attempting to match the compactness of LRDs.

Large language model agents are increasingly being developed to control a wide range of scientific characterization tools including microscopes and synchrotron beamlines. Research into agentic control of physical infrastructure is nascent and there are few well-established paradigms for how to engineer an agentic system. There are many choices to make when designing a microscopy agent, including the choice of LLM, the number of agents to use, agent responsibilities and delegation rules, retrieval-augmented generation parameters, and more. When designing and optimizing an agentic microscope controller, researchers not only want to ensure that the agent can correctly perform known tasks but also that the agent can generalize to new tasks that it has not encountered before. In this study, we develop a benchmark and trace-logging framework that reveals a) how different choices of agent architecture impact performance at microscopy tasks and b) the limitations of benchmarks for predicting if a particular agent will perform well on unseen microscopy tasks. The framework was used to evaluate one-, two-, and three-agent graph topologies, five LLMs, RAG and context parameters, and operational constraints across 53 microscopy benchmark tests. In total, 105 agent configurations, 1,949 individual test runs, and 49,109 RAG retrievals were recorded. Direct comparisons showed clear differences in latency, token use, cost, and failure mode between configurations. However, surrogate models trained on agent architecture and test results did not reliably predict an agent's performance on new, unseen tasks. These results show that these benchmarks are useful for qualification, regression testing, diagnosis, and direct comparison, but the current heterogeneous test suite does not support a task-independent global configuration model.

Carbon-chain molecules serve as an important reservoir of reactive organic matter that will eventually be incorporated into protoplanetary disks, planets, and cometary material. Prestellar and starless cores are composed of cold (~ 10 K) and dense (~ 10$^5$ cm$^{-3}$) clumps of gas and dust within molecular clouds, and are nurseries for low-mass stars and planetary systems. Surveys of starless cores have focused on the study of complex organic molecules, COMs, whereas observations of carbon-chains in starless cores are limited. We analyze the carbon-chain inventories of 15 prestellar and starless cores in the Perseus Molecular Cloud. Using Yebes 40m single-dish observations, we detect CS, CCS, CCCS, HC$_3$N, DC$_3$N, and HC$_5$N in at least 10/15 cores and HC$_7$N in 4/15 cores. Our study also finds related isotopologues, where $^{13}$CS, C$^{34}$S, C$^{13}$CS, CC$^{34}$S, H$^{13}$CCCN, HC$^{13}$CCN, HCC$^{13}$CN, HC$^{13}$CCCCN, HCC$^{13}$CCCN, HCCC$^{13}$CCN, HCCCCC$^{15}$N, and DCCCCCN are detected. We report detection statistics, compare column density ratios with Taurus, Serpens, and protostar sources, examine DC$_3$N/HC$_3$N deuterium fractionation, and investigate the relative abundances and correlations between cyanopolyyne (HC$_n$N) and sulfur-bearing (C$_n$S) carbon-chains. The diverse suite of species detected reveals the richness of carbon-chain chemistry in Perseus and illustrates how local environmental conditions, such as density, temperature, and proximity to protostellar activity, shape each core's molecular inventory and relative evolutionary phase. Our findings provide a glimpse into the carbon-chain reservoir of starless and prestellar cores in Perseus, which may ultimately be inherited by emerging protoplanetary disks and later integrated into planetary systems and biologically relevant material.

Motivated by the study of the level lines of the $(2+1)$D Solid-On-Solid (SOS) model above a floor, near the corners of the box, we derive the limit law of an ensemble of $K$ curves from a $(1+1)$D SOS model, with an area tilt, and above a wedge-shaped floor in $\{-N,\ldots,N\}$. We show that there exist explicit critical points $\alpha_0=1>\alpha_1>\ldots>\alpha_K>0$ such that, for each $r \geq 1$, along the intervals $\pm(\alpha_{r} N,\alpha_{r-1} N)$, the bottom $K+1-r$ curves, rescaled by $(N^{2/3},N^{1/3})$, tend to the law of a Geometrically-Area-Tilted Ensemble of non-crossing Brownian paths (Brownian GATE), independently across those $2K$ intervals. All other curves, centered and rescaled by $(N,\sqrt{N})$, tend to a product of $K$ suitable Brownian bridges.

Since the discovery of dissipation dilution, silicon nitride (SiN) nanomechanical resonators have set the benchmark for ultracoherent mechanical systems, with geometry and strain engineering driving remarkable gains in the $f \cdot Q$ product. Surface loss, however, has remained the dominant and largely unaddressed dissipation channel. Here, we demonstrate a geometry-independent approach that directly targets surface loss: thermal treatment in ultrahigh vacuum. Treatment at 1000$^{\circ}$C enhances the intrinsic quality factor of dissipation-diluted SiN membrane resonators by up to a factor of 20, reduces the surface loss eightfold, and simultaneously increases the tensile stress. Photothermal infrared spectroscopy and $\textit{in situ}$ X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy trace the enhancement to thermally activated silanol condensation - the conversion of surface hydroxyl terminations into siloxane bridges - and the reversibility of both quality factor and stress under controlled humidity confirms the surface-chemical origin. These results establish surface chemistry as a tunable parameter for next-generation ultracoherent nanomechanical resonators.

Bistability, the existence of two alternative stable states with distinct basins of attraction, is common across ecology and many other biological, chemical, and physical systems. In spatially extended systems, the invasion of one state by the other proceeds through nucleation, the fluctuation-driven growth of a droplet beyond a critical size. Classical Nucleation Theory (CNT) quantifies this process using the energy landscape, but this description relies on detailed balance, the condition of microscopic reversibility that holds at equilibrium. Ecological dynamics generally violate detailed balance and are described not by a single scalar field but by several coupled, non-conserved abundances–a vector order parameter–for which no general nucleation theory exists. Here we derive such a theory for reaction-diffusion systems with a non-conserved vector order parameter, valid both close to the binodal, where invasion proceeds through propagating fronts, and close to the spinodal, where the metastable state loses stability. Extensive numerical computations of the quasipotential confirm the theory in both regimes. We show that the mathematical structure of CNT survives out of equilibrium, once energetic quantities are replaced by dynamical properties of fronts: the front speed plays the role of the bulk free-energy difference between phases, and the diffusivity that of the surface tension. Applied to the two-species Lotka-Volterra model, an archetypal system of bistable ecological antagonism, our theory shows that strong interspecific competition generates a pronounced depletion region within fronts, where the total abundance falls well below carrying capacity. This vectorial structure, invisible to a scalar description based on species frequency alone, makes invasion exponentially harder as competition strengthens at fixed competitive advantage–a prediction testable in microbial systems.

Classical waves in dispersive media naturally exhibit distinct phase and group velocities. Whether an analogous separation of velocities can emerge in matter waves under strong many-body interactions has remained experimentally unexplored. Here, we demonstrate the emergence of a velocity hierarchy in a strongly interacting lattice gas. Using quench spectroscopy together with time-resolved correlation measurements, we independently determine the sound, group, and phase velocities across the superfluid-to-Mott-insulator transition. These velocities are nearly degenerate close to the transition, but progressively separate as the Mott gap opens and the quasiparticle dispersion acquires a massive relativistic-like form. Strikingly, phase-coherence fronts propagate faster than the Lieb-Robinson velocity scale while remaining fully consistent with locality. The measured velocities satisfy a relativistic-like invariance relation in the insulating regime. Our results establish propagation-velocity hierarchies as emergent signatures of strongly correlated quantum dynamics.

One-bit post-training quantization represents each weight using only its sign, requiring all deployment contexts to share the same binary weight matrix even when their activation statistics favor different sign patterns. We study this shared-sign constraint and introduce Quantum Random Access Quantization (QRAQ). This framework encodes context-dependent signs in a quantum random-access code and retrieves them via context-matched Pauli measurements. Under an explicit fresh-copy logical readout model, QRAQ produces an unbiased, context-specific binary surrogate with a tractable shot-noise penalty. We prove a row-wise separation from shared-sign one-bit PTQ with signed per-row scales. When the optimal context-wise signs are incompatible, QRAQ achieves a strictly lower ideal reconstruction risk. We also derive finite-shot and calibrated-noise conditions under which this separation is retained. Fixed-readout quantum schemes are classically simulable, so the relevant resource in this model is measurement incompatibility rather than quantization alone. Finally, we characterize the role of scale granularity, provide finite-sample certificates, and evaluate the predicted ideal, finite-shot, noisy, and multi-context regimes in simulator experiments.

The search for scalable, electrically controlled qubits remains a central challenge in quantum technology. We introduce gate-defined moiré quantum dots as a promising platform for valley-based qubits. Moiré engineering resolves the central conflict of valley physics: momentum-space separation protects the states, while the enlarged moiré length scale allows smooth gates to mix them controllably. Dot geometry and confinement strength program valley hybridization, while a displacement field controls detuning, providing two noncommuting electrostatic axes for qubit control.

Seismic reflection data collected at the Earth's surface carry information from every depth in the subsurface, including the internal multiples that conventional migration treats as noise or artefacts. The Marchenko method retrieves subsurface Green's functions directly from these single-sided measurements. The only model information it requires is a smooth macro-velocity model, used to estimate the direct-wave traveltime from the surface to a virtual point at depth. The method originates in one-dimensional quantum mechanical inverse scattering and has been generalised over the past two decades to three-dimensional acoustic media using acoustic reciprocity theorems, and to elastic and electromagnetic media using the corresponding elastodynamic and Maxwell reciprocity theorems. This review covers the classical Gelfand–Levitan–Marchenko equation and its derivation through the Schrodinger scattering formalism, the seismic interferometry results that motivated the multidimensional extension, and the coupled Marchenko equations for wave focusing in higher dimensions. On the application side it treats Marchenko redatuming, single- and double-sided imaging conditions, internal multiple elimination, target-oriented processing, and full-waveform inversion. Extensions to dissipative media, elastodynamics, electromagnetic fields, and plane-wave acquisition are also covered, along with practical topics such as least-squares implementations, GPU acceleration, compressive-sensing acquisition, and recent machine-learning approaches to predicting the focusing functions. Field-data results from marine, land, sub-salt, and time-lapse monitoring settings are summarised. The review closes with an assessment of current limitations and open problems, among them elastic multi-component extensions, joint inversion, and neural-network accelerators.

We investigate the exponential growth of uncertainty energy in 3D Navier-Stokes turbulence, emphasising the intermittent and highly localized amplification/production of uncertainty, a critical factor in understanding the predictability of turbulent systems. From the Navier-Stokes equations one can identify some key fields contributing to the growth/decay of uncertainty-production term $P_{\Delta}$: strain rate, vorticity, and vortex deformation. The dynamics of these fields are examined in the $Q-R$ plane, where $Q$ and $R$ are the second and third invariants of the velocity gradient tensor, to understand their role in the evolution of uncertainty-production term $P_{\Delta}$. We proceed by estimating committor functions across the entire spatiotemporal domain of direct numerical simulations (DNS) of turbulence in a periodic domain at different Reynolds numbers. Our estimates of the probability of rare extreme events of local uncertainty-production term as a function of uncertainty energy, strain rate, vorticity, and vortex deformation confirm the role of strain rate in driving uncertainty. Where strain rate and vorticity are too close to their space-average values, stable probabilistic forecasts appear impossible solely on the basis of the fields considered here.

Quantum processors have crossed the one-hundred-qubit mark, but noise continues to limit circuit performance, while full quantum error correction remains too costly for routine use. Error suppression and mitigation therefore play an important role in extracting value from current hardware, yet independent comparisons of commercial solutions on identical workloads and devices remain scarce. We benchmark IBM Qiskit Runtime, Q-CTRL Performance Management, and Qedma QESEM on IBM Pittsburgh, a 156-qubit IBM Quantum Heron r3 processor. For Sampler workloads, we run Bernstein-Vazirani, quantum phase estimation, GHZ-state preparation, and randomized mirror circuits with up to 100 measured qubits, comparing raw execution, IBM measurement twirling, and Q-CTRL. For Estimator workloads, we measure chain-averaged magnetization and correlation observables of an eight-layer transverse-field Ising circuit at 25, 50, and 75 qubits against an exact matrix-product-state reference, comparing IBM raw execution, IBM TREX plus twirling, Q-CTRL, and QESEM. Q-CTRL produced the best results on the three structured Sampler workloads while keeping reported QPU times within the same order as the IBM configurations. Across six Ising observable and system-size cases, aggregate mean absolute error was 0.0883 for IBM raw execution, 0.0807 for IBM TREX plus twirling, 0.0285 for Q-CTRL, and 0.0188 for QESEM. Relative to raw execution, Q-CTRL and QESEM reduced aggregate error by factors of 3.10 and 4.70, respectively, while QESEM used 7.5 to 11.1 times the reported QPU time of Q-CTRL. These results show that managed error suppression and mitigation can substantially improve current hardware performance, but with distinct accuracy and execution-time tradeoffs.

Mapping anisotropies in the gravitational-wave background (GWB) requires choosing a basis to represent the sky intensity, such as pixel and spherical harmonic bases. Each introduces a truncation—e.g., a number of pixels or a maximum multipole l_max—often set by a naive counting argument that relate the number of measurable modes to the number of independent cross-correlations, N_pair, in a pulsar timing array (PTA). However, such truncations can lead to reconstruction artefacts, as they do not reflect the true information content of the PTA response. Increasing the value of truncation parameters spans the observable space better but reveals poorly constrained modes, making the inverse problem ill-conditioned and requiring regularization. A natural approach is to restrict the reconstruction to a well-measured subspace via principal maps, defined by the dominant eigenmodes of the detector response (or Fisher) matrix. However, these maps are not a fundamental parameterization of the sky, but rather, are derived from an underlying representation—such as a pixelization or a spherical harmonic expansion. While their explicit form depends on basis choice, they can span the same subspace when the underlying representation is sufficiently complete. Here, we show that reconstructed anisotropy maps via different bases are equivalent, provided they retain the same information content, i.e., span the same principal subspace. As illustrative cases, we consider a toy model for PTA configuration and several GWB anisotropy shapes: point source, an extended source with deterministic anisotropy, and a statistical isotropic background, along with its summary statistic—the angular power spectrum. Although the reconstructions are equivalent, their computational costs can differ. We conclude with brief comments on the construction of principal maps for ground-based interferometers.

The strong CP problem and the origin of neutrino masses are among the clearest motivations for physics beyond the Standard Model. The Peccei-Quinn mechanism offers an elegant dynamical solution to the strong CP problem, predicting the QCD axion, while neutrino masses point to new degrees of freedom or interactions beyond the Standard Model. We explore the possibility that these two phenomena arise from a common origin by identifying the Peccei-Quinn symmetry-breaking scale with the scale responsible for neutrino mass generation. We perform a systematic and unified analysis of this connection in both DFSZ and KSVZ realizations of the Peccei-Quinn mechanism, considering the Type-I, Type-II, and Type-III seesaw mechanisms, the Zee radiative model, and the colored seesaw. For each scenario, we determine the axion couplings to photons and neutrinos and examine their phenomenological consequences. A robust prediction of all the frameworks considered is the existence of axion-neutrino couplings. We show that these interactions can significantly affect the axion decays. If the QCD axion makes up the observed dark matter, these couplings also lead to a large monochromatic neutrino flux from axion decays, opening a complementary path to test these theories in future neutrino experiments.

Distributing entanglement between distant qubits is a crucial element of scalable quantum computing. Here, we describe a scalable quantum interconnect that generates remote entanglement at rates approaching those compatible with two-qubit gates of current neutral-atom quantum processors. The proposed approach exploits the strong dipole-dipole interactions between atomic Rydberg states to generate entanglement between stationary qubits and propagating photons, without the need for an optical cavity. We provide a thorough description of the optimal conditions for the developed entanglement-generation protocol for realistic experimental parameters and demonstrate that entanglement-generation rates $\gtrsim 3\times 10^5$ s$^{-1}$ can be achieved using Rydberg states of ytterbium atoms. Given the inherent scalability and design flexibility of the proposed interconnect, our results suggest a promising approach towards distributed networks based on neutral-atom quantum architectures.

We apply a machine learning framework to search for Lax connections in two-dimensional non-linear sigma models using local current data. For the $SU(2)$ principal chiral model and the symmetric coset $S^2 = SU(2)/U(1)$, the method successfully recovers the full spectral-parameter families without using the known spectral curves as training targets. For the non-symmetric coset $T^{1,1}$, the optimization converges to reproducible low-loss maps that distill into a compact block-diagonal ansatz. However, analytic verification shows that this candidate is a “fake Lax” connection which satisfies on-shell flatness but fails to encode the two-dimensional equations of motion, whereas its point-particle reduction yields a genuine mechanical Lax pair. These results demonstrate that machine learning can effectively propose candidate ansätze and identify spectral structures, but low flatness loss alone does not certify genuine integrability, underscoring the necessity of analytic validation.

Non-Abelian anyons arise as exotic excitations in fractional quantum Hall (FQH) matter and have proved very elusive to realize in conventional platforms. In this work, we show that on a programmable quantum hardware platform, the more exotic FQH excitations are the less costly ones to prepare: clustered non-Abelian FQH states admit parallel quantum preparation circuits whose two-qubit depth is independent of system size, while constructing the more common Abelian Laughlin state requires a sequential circuit chain with linear depth. The centerpiece of this work is our new systematic framework for cataloging possible FQH states and preparing them on quantum circuits at unprecedented scale and variety. Our prepared parafermionic Read–Rezayi $\mathbb{Z}_3$ state holds depth 3 from 8 to 118 qubits, and full root sampling extends to a 154-qubit, 104-electron Read–Rezayi $\mathbb{Z}_4$ state. In all, our demonstrated 18-family catalog of prepared FQH states extends to all 156 qubits of an IBM Heron processor, limited only by existing hardware scale. Measurements on the prepared states recover the expected fractional quasihole charges, with the charge estimator exact in every symmetry-selected shot for the clustered states, and braiding data of the non-Abelian $e/4$ quasihole measured via interferometric extensions. Our work establishes a scalable route to studying FQH physics on quantum processors and opens new avenues for preparing and probing non-Abelian topological matter far beyond the reach of conventional platforms.

Antifreeze materials prevent ice-formation by disrupting the ice-formation by binding to certain ice-planes. Cellulose, the most abundant biopolymer, has shown the ability to bind to ice-planes but the exact mechanism of this binding is far from being understood. Molecular dynamics simulations are used to investigate the hydration water of chains of cellulose-type glycans and its significance in the expression of the antifreeze behavior of sugar-derivatives found in some antifreeze materials. We find that glycans are able to prevent water from freezing near its surface by preventing their rearrangement to achieve a highly tetrahedral structure at temperatures well-below the freezing point of water. This validates our hypothesis on the role of tetrahedral coordination based on previous $\textit{ab initio}$ calculations that demonstrated cellulose prefers to bind to ice basal and prismatic planes using a tetrahedral geometry. Our findings suggest that the tetrahedral ordering of water around glycans is the key to understanding and designing cellulose-based antifreeze materials.

We present the design and development of a novel, compact integrated on-chip spectrometer operating at millimeter (mm) and submillimeter (sub-mm) wavelengths. The Superconducting Waveguide Integrated Submillimeter Spectrometer (SWISS) promises significant improvements in spectral resolution, optical efficiency, and frequency coverage over current mm-wave spectrometers by using a free-space rectangular waveguide architecture. Light is coupled in through the antenna front end, which separates the two polarizations and passes them to the waveguide spectrometer through a contactless metamaterial transition. Each waveguide spectrometer consists of a feedline coupled to a series of filters based on single-pole cavity resonators with varying resonant frequencies. To maximize packing density, the filter banks are oriented out of the focal plane, and an E-plane bend in the output from the cavity filters enables a planar and scalable construction. The output of each filter is coupled to a kinetic inductance detector (KID) to enable high multiplexing factors. The spectrometer is fabricated using stacks of silicon wafers etched with a deep reactive-ion etch (DRIE) and metallized. In these proceedings, we discuss current development on a SWISS prototype including measurements on a prototype antenna front end contactless transition and fabrication a prototype waveguide spectrometer.