Papers

Multiple studies on active matter have shown that activity can induce or suppress a phase transition, or modify the critical behavior of a passive system. Here we investigate how activity affects the jamming transition which is a paradigmatic example of nonequilibrium phase transitions in passive systems. We consider a one-dimensional system of active particles with hardcore interactions and a direction of self-propulsion which can be reversed at a given switching rate. For a class of particle hop rates and infinite switching rate, our model reduces to a passive system which is known to exhibit a transition between a high-density fluid phase and a low-density jammed phase in the stationary state. Using Monte Carlo simulations and a mean field theory, we study how the mean mobility of the particle and the hole cluster distribution vary with density and finite switching rate. Our main result is that activity hinders the formation of jam and can even inhibit it; more precisely, we find that the jamming transition occurs at a critical density that decreases with decreasing switching rate, and at sufficiently small switching rate, the system exists only in the fluid phase.

We study the signal topologies of Higgs-pair production in the semi-constrained NMSSM at large lambda and low tan(beta) at the HL-LHC (sqrt(s) = 13.6 TeV, L = 3000 fb^-1), using four benchmark points drawn from a parameter scan in which the LHC Higgs-sector constraints were not applied. The benchmarks cover exotic h1h1 -> 4a1 -> 8b (BP1, BP3), boosted h1h1 -> 4a1 -> 8tau (BP2) and SM-like (BP4) final states. Signals are simulated with MadGraph5_aMC@NLO, Pythia 8.316 and Delphes 3, with 10^5 events per benchmark. Background yields are taken from published analyses and serve only as illustrative estimates. In this revised version (v2) we add an a posteriori check with NMSSMTools. All four benchmark points are flagged: BP1-BP3 have BR(h1 -> a1a1) > 99%, in conflict with the limits on undetected Higgs decays and with CMS searches for h -> aa -> 4tau and 4b, and BP4 deviates from the measured b- and tau-couplings by more than 2 sigma. The benchmarks therefore do not represent experimentally allowed parameter points, the signal yields apply to the stated branching fractions only, and the earlier statement of 5 sigma sensitivity is withdrawn. The signal rate scales as BR(h -> aa)^2, so a branching fraction compatible with current limits would reduce the yields by one to two orders of magnitude. The detector-level characterisation of the topologies remains of methodological interest. For BP2 (m_a1 = 8.2 GeV), 82.4% of same-a1 tau pairs satisfy Delta R(tau,tau) < 0.4 owing to the boost gamma ~ 7.5, which motivates dedicated boosted-a1 tagging.

We study the axisymmetric partial engulfment of a small rigid sphere by a fluid Helfrich membrane. When the size ratio $\eps$ between the particle and the membrane is small, the neck that joins the wrapped cap to the surrounding membrane is an elastic boundary layer, and we analyse it by matched asymptotic expansions. The leading inner surface is a catenoid, a minimal surface that stores no Helfrich energy, so that the energy of partial engulfment is carried by the first correction and appears only at order $\eps^{2}\ln(1/\eps)$. We obtain it by solving the inhomogeneous Jacobi equation of the catenoid, forced by the spontaneous curvature and by the ambient mean curvature that the neck must match, and we give its coefficient in closed form. The boundary layer can then be integrated out, and the neck replaced by a scalar self-energy carried at the pole, so that the outer field can be closed independently of the inner one. For a membrane coupled to a tension reservoir we derive the binding threshold, which turns out to be independent of both the tension and the spontaneous curvature, the complete-wrapping threshold, and the hysteresis of the envelopment transition. The neck self-energy law is confirmed against the full nonlinear shape equations.

Particle identification (PID) remains a key ingredient of the physics programmes of future collider experiments. While traditional collider detectors rely on calorimetry, tracking and muon systems for particle classification, the identification of charged hadrons requires dedicated measurements of particle velocity through Cherenkov radiation, ionisation or time-of-flight techniques. Future facilities such as FCC-ee and the Electron-Ion Collider place demanding requirements on momentum coverage, detector integration and material budget, motivating the development of novel PID concepts. This contribution reviews several approaches currently under investigation, including compact Ring-Imaging Cherenkov detectors, cluster-counting drift chambers, timing-enhanced Cherenkov detectors and precision timing systems based on advanced silicon sensors. The role of emerging photodetector technologies and radiation-tolerance considerations for future collider environments is also discussed. This contribution summarises the main topics presented in the invited LHCP 2026 talk and focuses on selected representative examples rather than a comprehensive review of the field.

Protected zero modes are a hallmark of topological phases of matter and are exponentially localized at sharp interfaces between distinct gapped phases. We investigate how this picture changes for smooth interfaces in a broad class of inhomogeneous Su-Schrieffer-Heeger (SSH) models. Combining an exact lattice solution with an inhomogeneous Dirac description, we show that the associated Jackiw-Rebbi zero mode becomes spatially extended. For arbitrary smooth hopping profiles, its lattice extension universally scales as the square root of the system size, independently of the microscopic details of the interface. This emergent length defines a mesoscopic critical region separating two gapped phases, within which correlations decay algebraically before crossing over to exponential decay. In addition, the entanglement entropy scales as the logarithm of the emergent length near the interface, confirming the interpretation of a mesoscopic critical region. Our results establish a universal critical length governing the low-energy physics of smooth topological interfaces.

We systematically investigate finite-difference (FD) derivative computation in Physics-Informed Neural Networks (PINNs) as an alternative to automatic differentiation (AD). On three benchmark PDEs we show that, with a properly calibrated step size, FD matches AD in accuracy on every problem while running faster across the full tested batch-size range and using substantially less GPU memory, and that a stochastic variant we propose outperforms AD on a stationary problem. We further show that for neural architectures with inter-sample dependencies (e.g. BatchNorm, self-attention) the standard PyTorch autograd idiom is silently incorrect; the correct per-sample alternative is computationally infeasible at PINN-relevant batch sizes, while FD provides a forward-only approximation that is empirically an order of magnitude closer to the true per-sample derivative.

The main difficulty in 3D gravity inversion is that surface observations lack vertical wavenumber information, making the problem underdetermined and depth resolution poor. Building on the author's spectral-domain pseudo-inverse theory for unitary diagonalizable systems, this paper presents a true 3D inversion method. Surface data are analytically continued upward via Laplace's equation to form a 3D data volume, providing the vertical wavenumber sampling for the 3D Fourier transform. A general analytical expression for the half-space spectrum is derived, separating the horizontal spectrum from the vertical propagation kernel. The Green's function of the 3D Poisson equation is unitarily diagonalized, yielding the forward spectral response $\lambda(\kk) = -i 4\pi G k_z / K^2$, and a stable inverse filter $q_\alpha(\lambda) = \bar{\lambda}/(|\lambda|^2 + \alpha)$ is constructed. This filter is proved to have bounded stability and consistency (reducing to the exact inverse as $\alpha \to 0^+$). Validation with a homogeneous sphere model shows correct recovery of the anomaly location and singular behavior at the source. The contributions are twofold: (1) upward continuation constructs a 3D volume from 2D surface data, which does not add physical observations but unfolds the 3D spatial variation information (data innovation) derived through the governing physical equation; (2) the inversion is reduced to one forward 3D Fourier transform, one spectral scaling, and one inverse transform. The framework extends to any linear potential-field inverse problem with a translation-invariant forward operator, including magnetic inversion.

The properties of O-type supergiant stars remain largely unexplored. By analysing their light variations, we can unravel underlying physical phenomena, such as binarity, stellar pulsations, and rotation modes. This study aims to analyse the TESS light curves of 3 O-type supergiants to identify periodic signatures and gain deeper insights into their internal dynamics and structure. Our primary goal is to search for the presence of rotational modulation and possible evidence of Rossby waves. A period search was performed and we explored phase diagrams and searched for rotational splitting. If the observed wave frequencies were consistent with the dispersion relation of global Rossby waves, we identified them as potential signatures of this mechanism. We used a graphical method to compare the observed and predicted frequencies. The analysed stars (HD 188001, HD 192639, and HD 159952) exhibit a comparable set of frequencies. We classify most of them as g-mode oscillations (either l=1 or l=2), in agreement with the evolutionary state of the objects. In all cases, we find evidence of rotational modulation. The remaining oscillation patterns may be consistent with Rossby modes, including both tesseral and sectoral configurations. The angle of inclination of the rotation axis was estimated using stellar parameters available in the literature, together with the rotational period derived in this work. We also discuss a possible connection between the observed low-frequency waves and the red-noise component commonly observed in the periodogram of photometric time series of massive supergiants. Our results provide evidence of g-mode oscillations modulated by rotation. In addition, we find that Rossby waves may be excited in rotating O-type supergiants, which suggests that these large-scale inertial oscillations could play a role in the observed low-frequency variability of such stars.

We consider the 1D Su-Schrieffer-Heeger (SSH) model. It was recently shown that, for the noninteracting model in its Dirac semimetal phase, the linear response of the axial charge density to an external electric field is proportional to the electrical conductivity in the presence of finite dissipation, with the proportionality factor determined by the coupling constants. This relation may be viewed as a manifestation of the chiral effect, which is a dimensional reduction of the 3D chiral magnetic effect. In the present work, we investigate the same model in the presence of two versions of local Hubbard-type interactions using numerical Quantum Monte Carlo simulations. We find, within the numerical resolution and for the parameters studied, that, even in the regime where sufficiently strong interactions drive the system into a Mott insulating phase, the proportionality between the induced axial charge density and the electrical conductivity remains unchanged. This result indicates that the chiral effect is not renormalized by local Hubbard interactions.

Classical identification via a noisy channel is a communication task in which the receiver is not required to reconstruct the full transmitted message, but only to decide whether it coincides with a message of interest. This relaxation allows the number of identifiable messages to grow doubly exponentially with the blocklength. For quantum channels, the resulting (doubly exponential) identification capacity $C_{\mathrm{ID}}$ can strictly exceed the ordinary (exponential) transmission capacity $C$. In this paper, we prove that the entanglement-assisted transmission capacity $C_E$ is a strong converse bound for this task: $C_{\mathrm{ID}}\leq C_E$. For sufficiently low-noise channels, this bound can also be achieved via the Hayden-Winter (quantum) identification + fingerprinting codes. This yields an exact characterization $C_{\mathrm{ID}}=C_E$ of identification capacity for such channels. However, for general channels, we prove that this upper bound can be strict. We exhibit an explicit family of transpose-depolarizing channels for which $C_{\mathrm{ID}}<C_E$. As a consequence, we also obtain the first example of strict superadditivity of the identification capacity $C_{\mathrm{ID}}$.

Stark acceleration and deceleration based techniques for generating particle ensembles with low velocity spread are useful in many experimental applications. For a given velocity distribution of a particle ensemble, these techniques accelerate or decelerate a small subset of the total population, with a low velocity uncertainty. However, narrowing the original velocity distribution by accelerating or decelerating the ensemble particles near the mean velocity is fundamentally limited and not yet explored. We present a numerical study of particle dynamics using neutral cesium atoms as an example. We investigate different interaction regimes, identify key limitations, and propose an interaction regime in which optical Stark deceleration can be used to narrow the velocity distribution of a propagating ensemble about its mean velocity. These findings have potential implications for optical manipulation and control, controlled collisions, and matter interferometry.

Periodically corrugated metal interfaces supporting surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) belong to the earliest nanoplasmonic platforms. Even simplest reliefs described by a few harmonics - plasmonic Fourier surfaces - display markedly different far-field signatures depending on the corrugation depth and symmetry: shallow reliefs exhibit a plasmonic bandgap (PBG) between two hybridized SPP standing waves, while deeper reliefs support asymmetry-induced single sharp resonances, termed over the last decade as quasi-bound states in the continuum (qBICs). Although these spectral features have long been observed experimentally and treated empirically, the underlying eigenmode evolution connecting the shallow and deep corrugation regimes has remained largely unexplored. Here we revisit this long-standing problem by analyzing it in terms of modern eigenstate formalism. Starting from the Rayleigh hypothesis, we develop a concise first-principle analytical description that explicitly captures how one eigenmode transforms from a dark bound state into an observable qBIC, while the other turns from bright into an overcoupled, unobservable state - thus unifying the SPP manifestations featuring PBG and qBIC within the same eigenmode framework. Finally, we demonstrate the practical relevance of the theory by showing how precise eigenstate engineering can enhance the SPP refractive index sensitivity.

We study static, spherically symmetric ultracompact objects in General Relativity with anisotropic stress. Using the covariant anisotropic equation of state and assuming homogeneous density, we construct a mostly analytical model admitting configurations beyond the Buchdahl limit and with compactness arbitrarily close to the black hole value. The solutions exhibit two regimes separated by a critical curve in the parameter space of compactness and anisotropy, associated with the divergence of the central pressure: regular anisotropic configurations with positive central pressure, and singular configurations with negative central pressure for arbitrary anisotropy. In the latter case, we show that introducing a thick shell removes the pressure divergence, yielding regular ultracompact gravastar configurations. We further construct both anisotropic and isotropic gravastar models using this thick-shell construction.

We show that the beam and field dynamics in high-energy electron-positron ($e^-e^+$) collisions are characterized by a new dimensionless parameter introduced as $\varepsilon$ in this study. The disruption effect deflects the particles transversely at angles equal to $\varepsilon$. The particles simultaneously undergo deceleration of longitudinal velocities (a “braking effect"). The deceleration scales as $\propto \varepsilon^2$. A longitudinal electric field is further provoked, whose amplitude scales as $\propto \varepsilon$. We identify $\varepsilon \gtrsim 1$ (with large-angle disruptions) as a novel extreme regime, where the transverse motion becomes strongly relativistic. The braking effect completely stops and further reverses the beam propagation. Our theoretical model is in excellent agreement with electromagnetic particle-in-cell simulations. The previous beam-beam studies, including legacy numerical codes, apply only to the $\varepsilon \ll 1$ regime. They fail to capture the correct beam features and collision luminosities, and overestimate beam-beam effects (including beamstrahlung and pair production) for considerable $\varepsilon$, thus demonstrating the need for fully electromagnetic particle-in-cell codes to study these regimes.

The vortices that appear in Hitchin's pioneering study of Higgs bundles are interpreted as a new version of the abelian Higgs vortices more familiar to theoretical physicists. Their conformal covariance is made explicit.

We investigate the fine-tuning of a tripartite dark matter (DM) scenario involving ultra-light primordial black holes (PBHs), whose evaporation before Big Bang Nucleosynthesis leaves Planck-mass relics and produces DM particles together with an independently produced DM component. We uniformly evaluate the parameter sensitivity required to reproduce the observed DM abundance, $\Omega_{\rm DM}$. Considering thermal WIMP freeze-out, freeze-in, and QCD axion misalignment, and assuming PBHs form via collapse of perturbations following horizon entry, we find that the fine-tuning is normally dominated by the structure of the PBH relic abundance calculation rather than by the particle DM candidate or the details of PBH evaporation. In radiation-dominated cosmologies, the DM abundance is highly sensitive to the primordial curvature power spectrum because the PBH formation fraction depends exponentially on density fluctuations. Although an early PBH-dominated era dilutes pre-existing abundances and reduces the apparent tuning of the PBH abundance, inflationary fine-tuning remains required to produce the required initial large amplitude perturbations. We further examine alternative PBH formation channels, including supercooled first-order phase transitions and collapsing domain walls, and find that they replace the inflationary fine-tuning with alternative exponential sensitivities. We conclude that a natural realization of an order unity PBH relic abundance is hard to motivate.

Full quantum network nonlocality (FQNN) describes a scenario where all sources in a network are nonlocal. Existing criteria of FQNN can only be verified in star networks by violating a single Bell-like inequality. Here we propose a method that certifies FQNN in general quantum networks using only a single Bell-like inequality. We show that the topological obstacle to one-shot detection can be overcome by expanding the original network with a carefully chosen number of auxiliary local sources and parties. The correlations of the enlarged network are then tested with a single inequality; a violation implies that all original sources must be nonlocal. Our approach provides an efficient, experimentally friendly way to verify FQNN in any network topology.

We study how physical mobility, algorithmic exposure, and repulsive social influence interact in a stochastic multiplex model of opinion dynamics. Agents diffuse in physical space while a directed digital network rewires under a conserved attention budget, so digital exposure displaces rather than supplements local interaction. With purely assimilative bounded-confidence influence, opinion-blind long-range exposure reduces locality-induced fragmentation whereas homophilic recommendation preserves echo chambers. When a contested repulsive response to sufficiently distant opinions is activated, this ordering reverses at the reference parameters: a neutral platform reaches the maximal polarization permitted by the bounded opinion space, controversy-seeking curation drives faster initial separation but slows sharply near the boundary, and homophilic curation delays radicalization by suppressing cross-bloc exposure. In a late-stage symmetric two-bloc reduction, any curation kernel maps to a state-dependent cross-bloc exposure profile $p(y)$ and an exact quadrature for the radicalization time. Pointwise-ordered profiles inherit a global kinetic ordering; crossing profiles yield target- and horizon-dependent rankings. For similarity-driven curation the quadrature has a closed form involving the exponential integral. Simulations, finite-size scans to $N=1600$, structural controls, and a well-mixed particle comparison support the mechanism. Heavy-tailed influence strengths are not required for the inversion; in the well-mixed heavy-tail regime they additionally produce a non-self-averaging stable-weighted asymptotic description. Finally, opinion-independent Brownian mobility produces no detectable geographic opinion structure in the explored regime, whereas opinion-dependent drift produces spatial domains through a Péclet-controlled crossover near $\chi\ell/D \sim 1$.

We consider the coordinate-dependent definition of the radiation-reaction force at the third-and-a-half post-Newtonian order for general orbits. In order to (partially) determine its expression we refer to the balance method, involving the energy and angular momentum lost by the system, the Schott terms, and the energy and angular momentum fluxes at infinity. Only the latter are gauge-invariant quantities when passing from a coordinate system to another. The gauge dependence of both radiation-reaction force and Schott terms is encoded in a set of gauge parameters entering their definitions. We show how to relate the harmonic-coordinate losses of mechanical energy and angular momentum by the system with the radial and azimuthal components of the radiation-reaction force in a different coordinate system expressed in terms of phase-space variables in a Hamiltonian framework. The advantage of this approach is that only the coordinate transformation between harmonic coordinates and coordinates and momenta in the new coordinate system is needed, without solving again the balance equations. We derive such a transformation for both Arnowitt-Deser-Misner and Effective-One-Body coordinates. In the latter case we also discuss some simplifying choices of the gauge parameters adopted in current waveform models. Finally, we show how to obtain the solution for the radiation-reaction correction to the orbit in the new coordinate system simply by transforming the harmonic-coordinate solution known in the literature. This is a remarkable simplification, since one can avoid to solve again for the radiation-reacted dynamics.

The kinematics of tau lepton decay products depend on the tau spin, giving access to the spin correlations and CP structure of the process that produced them. The optimal spin observable is the polarimetric vector, which points along the most likely direction of the tau spin. Determining it requires the momenta of the neutrinos produced in the tau decays, which escape detection and must therefore be inferred. We present TauPolaris, a tool for reconstructing tau polarimetric vectors by estimating the undetected neutrino momenta with a conditional normalizing flow. Rather than performing a point regression, the method models the full conditional density of the neutrino kinematics, providing both the most likely configuration for each event and an estimate of its uncertainty. The resolution of the reconstructed spin observables improves on that obtained from networks trained with a mean-squared-error loss. Using simulated LHC proton-proton collisions, including detector resolution effects, we demonstrate the method in three applications. For tau leptons produced in Higgs boson decays, we show that the presence of quantum entanglement can be distinguished from its absence with a significance of at least $4.3\sigma$ at the High-Luminosity LHC. We demonstrate an 18% improvement in the sensitivity to CP violation in $H\rightarrow\tau\tau$ decays. Finally, we introduce new variables for suppressing the $Z\rightarrow\tau\tau$ background in Higgs boson searches.

The altermagnetic spin-splitter effect converts an electric field into a transverse pure spin current, with no net magnetization and no charge-Hall counterpart. In established materials this function is tied to crystal-fixed spin-split bands that lock the polarization axis to the lattice. We show that the noncoplanar counter-spiral ground state of a frustrated honeycomb magnet instead carries the altermagnetic operation through a $\mathbf Q$-locked helicity mirror $g$. The mirror selects the spin-current polarization and forbids the perpendicular one, while an antitranslation $\Theta$ forbids even-parity spin splitting. Band splitting and spin-splitter response therefore rest on different symmetry elements. Either element alone enforces the charge-Hall zero—a redundancy absent from other spin–orbit-free noncollinear routes—and a charge Hall appears only when both elements are removed. Hole doping then realizes a spin splitter without spin-split bands—the symmetry-allowed odd-parity residual below $2\times10^{-7}$ of the hopping $t$ at the Fermi level—with $\sigma_H^{(s_y)}=0.082\,e^2/h$ without spin–orbit coupling and with zero charge Hall response. Selecting among the three degenerate $\mathbf{Q}$ orientations rotates the polarization axis in exact $120^\circ$ steps at fixed magnitude and charge-Hall zero; the selection rules persist in a $32$-site cell accessible to programmable photonic and circuit lattices.

Nucleon energy correlators (NECs) and fracture functions provide novel tools for probing nucleon and nuclear structure at small $x$ through measurements in the target fragmentation region (TFR) of deep inelastic scattering (DIS). We investigate gluonic NECs and fracture functions using the Color Glass Condensate effective theory at eikonal accuracy. We find that only the unpolarized and linearly polarized gluon components in an unpolarized target are nonvanishing at this order, and that both are determined by the adjoint dipole $S$-matrix. Furthermore, we show that the linearly polarized gluonic NEC $h_{1}^{t,g}$ generates a characteristic $\cos 2\phi$ azimuthal asymmetry in the DIS energy pattern in the TFR. Unlike analogous observables in the current fragmentation region, this asymmetry is governed by the ratio of the linearly polarized gluon NEC $h_{1}^{t,g}$ to the unpolarized quark NEC $f_{1}^{q}$, making it particularly sensitive to the saturation scale. Our numerical analysis shows that this asymmetry exhibits substantial nuclear suppression, providing a novel window into the onset of gluon saturation at the future Electron-Ion Collider.

In this paper, we study the Couette-Taylor instability of a viscous fluid between two rotating cylinders in the small-gap, slow rescaled rotation rate, high Reynolds number regime, focusing on the very counter-rotating case $\mu < \mu_c \approx -0.8$ where the primary instability is non-axisymmetric. Starting from the Navier-Stokes equations, we derive a limit system that captures the leading-order dynamics and compute the critical Taylor number $T_c(\mu)$ together with the critical axial and azimuthal wavenumbers. Near criticality, the weakly nonlinear behaviour is governed by a system of two coupled complex Ginzburg-Landau equations. All coefficients of this amplitude system including the cubic nonlinear terms are evaluated numerically from the linearised eigenfunctions and the associated adjoint problem. The reduced equations admit helicoidal waves (travelling in both the axial and azimuthal directions) and ribbon waves (standing axially, travelling azimuthally), and their existence and stability criteria are discussed. We also examine more exotic spatially modulated solutions that satisfy a third-order dynamical system, whose complete classification remains an open challenge.

We investigate the steady-state phase transition in a one-dimensional hybrid contact process. We implement the single-site and cluster mean-field approximations based on the effective fields and present all the possible steady states of the system. We show the existence of the stable absorbing and active phases, and the bistable region in the long-time limit. The saddle-node bifurcation is observed at the boundary between the absorbing phase and the bistable region, suggesting a discontinuous phase transition. While the absorbing to active phase transition is continuous. To characterize the nonclassical scaling behavior of the continuous phase transition, we extract the true critical points and exponents by means of the coherent anomaly method.

The spectrum of a quasar consists of a few emission lines whose wavelengths are shifted by similar redshifts and numerous absorption lines whose wavelengths are shifted by different redshifts. Hence each quasar is characterised by an emission line redshift and the absorption lines redshifts are all less than the emission line redshift. The distribution of observed absorption line redshifts ($z_{abs}$) with respect to emission line redshift ($z_{em}$) for a large sample of quasars shows a systematic trend as pointed out by \citet{2016arXiv160901593K}. They noticed that increase in $z_{em}$ is accompanied by a monotonic increase in the lowest detected value of $z_{abs}$ and inferred that the emission and absorption lines were all formed in the quasar. This study focuses on modeling the systematic trend in the observed $z_{em} \rightarrow z_{abs}$ distribution. We considered the redshift data of absorption lines of singly ionized magnesium (denoted by MgII) and triply ionized carbon (denoted by CIV) for a large sample of quasars. We find that the envelope of data points defining the lowest value of the MgII absorption line redshift (which we denote by $z_{MgIImodel}$) for a given $z_{em}$ satisfies $z_{MgIImodel} = (0.418 \pm 0.008) z_{em} - (0.482 \pm 0.02)$ with an $R^2$ value of 0.99. The model can be used to predict the lowest expected MgII absorption line redshift for any $z_{em}$. We find a similar model for the lowest expected redshift of triply ionized carbon lines for any $z_{em}$ which is $z_{CIVmodel} = 0.845 (\pm 0.0002) z_{em} - 0.153 (\pm 0.0006)$.

Atomic nuclei are strongly correlated quantum many-body systems, and how their shell structure evolves with increasing neutron excess remains a central open question in nuclear physics. Calcium isotopes are an ideal testing ground: alongside the traditional magic numbers $N=20,28$, new shell closures have been proposed at $N=32,34$ ($^{52,54}\mathrm{Ca}$). While the charge radius rises rapidly towards $N=32$, further moments and radii in the isotopic chain have remained inaccessible due to the low production yield of a few ions per second. Here we apply a highly sensitive collinear laser spectroscopy technique, which reveals a strikingly simple behaviour: adding one neutron to $^{52}\mathrm{Ca}$ yields a pure single-particle magnetic dipole moment in $^{53}\mathrm{Ca}$, while the charge-radius slope towards $^{54}\mathrm{Ca}$ exceeds that towards $^{52}\mathrm{Ca}$. This provides strong evidence for a robust $N=32$ shell closure and stringently constrains nuclear structure models.

Two-photon blockade (TPB) besides the conventional one-photon blockade can control the photon at the level of individual quanta in the input-output measurements of light-matter coupling systems. Apart from conventional TPB (C-TPB) with opened cascade decay channel, unconventional TPB (U-TPB) with closed cascade decay channel may open novel avenues for manipulation of TPB. However, currently found U-TPB in linear coupling is limited in a narrow coupling window and the blockade strength is weak, which would hinder its applications. In the present work we propose to enhance the U-TPB by the Stark nonlinear coupling. Indeed, the introduction of the Stark nonlinear coupling to the linear coupling enables tuning of both cascade energy level and the anharmonicity which play key roles in the formation of TPBs. By investigating photon correlation functions and extracting phase diagrams in dissipation, we demonstrate that our scheme not only dramatically broadens the window of U-TPB to cover the entire strong-coupling regime but also deepens the blockading degree of the U-TPB by two orders. The cascade decay rates, state populations and the anharmonicity, are examined to identify and track the U-TPB and C-TPB. In the overview of phase diagrams we also reveal a broad U-TPB in ultrastrong couplings, with a crossover to the C-TPB. Since the Stark nonlinear coupling is realizable and tailorable, our proposal may pave a practical way for manipulation of the TPB.

This is a review paper intended to illustrate a few critical issues concerning Dirac, Weyl and Majorana fermions and their differences. The first part consists in basic introductions to fermions, and more in detail to fermions in 4d, focusing in particular in what differentiate the three type of fermions: chirality, helicity, mass, field equations, properties under discrete symmetry transformations, Actions, Observables. On this basis we tackle a series of challenging and sometime controversial problems: the non-existence of Weyl fermion propagators, and the ways to circumvent it; the regularizations for Weyl fermion amplitudes, in particular the appropriateness of using the PV regularization; the definition of a functional integral for Weyl fermion, the difference between Weyl and massless Majorana fermions and the difference between the Dirac and Majorana mass terms. Most notably we come to the conclusion that the trick of replacing the non-existing Weyl fermion propagator with a massless Dirac one, although it may yield in some cases correct results, is flawed at the very origin by a logical loophole. We then show which is the correct way to proceed in this case. We consider also the topic of applying the Wick rotation at the classical Action level for Weyl fermions and conclude that this procedure leads to a nonequivalent theory. Finally, although anomalies are not the central focus here, we have deemed it useful to summarily review the relation, and its cohomological basis, that exists between the lack of a Weyl fermion propagator (non-invertibility of the Weyl-Dirac operator) and the appearance of dangerous anomalies in the theory.

There is a growing demand for minimally invasive methods to analyze intracellular processes and signaling activities in individual living cells, including the identification of tumorigenic cell subpopulations. However, most conventional analytical methods require cell lysis, precluding repeated measurements in the same cell over time, or rely on exogenous labels and reporters that may perturb cellular function. Various applications based on vertical nanotubes have been developed that enable live cell monitoring and analysis by electroporation with low voltages. However, the extent and duration of membrane permeability and kinetics of membrane repair remain elusive. Here, we built a plasmonic platform with the capacity of surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) to monitor the electroporation-induced membrane permeability dynamics in individual live cells attached onto 100-nm diameter nanotubes of 2 um height. Fibronectin was employed as extracellular matrix (ECM)-coating to facilitate cell attachment onto nanotubes. Using fluorescent-dye delivery as an independent validation method, we show that the fabricated nanostructures induce localized electrical permeabilization of the plasma membrane and enable monitoring of its subsequent recovery. We further use SERS to track molecular changes at the membrane during permeabilization and resealing. The SERS spectra provide molecular-level insight into changes in membrane-associated components and the ECM during electroporation and subsequent membrane recovery. Real time monitoring of pulse induced molecular changes holds great promise for characterizing intracellular signaling, cellular states, and cellular heterogeneity at the single cell level, including the identification of tumorigenic subpopulations. This capacity could facilitate the development of novel biosensing assay.

We study pure disjoint $(r,\delta)$-quantum locally recoverable codes (qLRCs) without assuming a stabilizer structure. We formulate local Knill–Laflamme conditions for recovery from up to $\delta-1$ erasures within a recovery block, and introduce blockwise Shor–Laflamme and unitary weight enumerators that capture how error weight is distributed across recovery sets. We establish several properties of these enumerators and use them to derive a Singleton-like bound that strengthens the known bound for disjoint $(r,\delta)$-qLRCs under a purity assumption, as well as a linear-programming upper bound on the code dimension. These results provide a non-stabilizer, weight-enumerator-based approach to the study of pure disjoint $(r,\delta)$-qLRCs.