Papers

Ultra-short period (USP) rocky planets are expected to be depleted of any substantial gaseous envelope due to the intense irradiation they receive from their host star, making the recent detection of an atmosphere around TOI-561~b particularly surprising. That finding was based on the planet's bulk density and dayside emission spectrum, but full-orbit phase curve observations offer a more comprehensive way to constrain the presence and characteristics of a planet's atmosphere. In this paper, we map TOI-561~b's 3-5~$\mu$m emission using JWST/NIRSpec multi-orbit spectroscopic phase curves, explicitly accounting for the curvature of the out-of-eclipse baseline and possible hotspot offsets. From a simple energy balance argument as well as comparing to general circulation models, we find the phase curve observations are best explained with high Bond albedo and moderate global heat transfer. Our 37-hour continuous observation provides a long baseline that allows us to model stellar granulation, the planetary phase curve, and dayside emission simultaneously, effectively disentangling these signals and yielding a dayside emission spectrum that is more robust against stellar variability and consistent with previous eclipse-only fits. Using general circulation model outputs, we constrain where clouds can plausibly form and test candidate compositions, finding that silicate clouds, such as SiO$_2$ and MgSiO$_3$, can form on the dayside near the terminator and explain the observed albedo. Our findings confirm that TOI-561~b appears to have a global reflective atmosphere, suggesting exchange of volatiles with the interior to maintain it.

With a view towards understanding flat space holography, we study the flat space limit of asymptotically $AdS_4$ black holes in gauged $\mathcal{N}=2$ supergravity. Using holographic renormalisation, we carefully analyse the flat space limit of the on-shell action of various black holes in this setting and make explicit the states that contribute to the partition function in this limit. We find several features: large black holes lead to a divergence in the partition function which can be understood as a thermodynamic volume divergence. Meanwhile, semiclassically, small black holes reproduce the partition function of their flat space counterparts, and we clarify the mapping between BPS, (near-)extremal or non-extremal black holes on both sides for charged and rotating solutions. Finally, by studying a suitable flat limit of the BPS Kerr-Newman-$AdS_4$ black hole in M-theory, we obtain a charged BPS solution in flat space. On the dual side, we determine a Carrollian-like limit on the known ABJM partition function on $S^1\times S^2$ at large $N$, and show that it reproduces the correct entropy of the BPS charged black hole in asymptotically flat space.

Systematic searches for ultra-faint Milky Way satellite galaxies typically combine local density estimators with colour-magnitude cuts, which are usually performed in 2D and have rarely, if ever, been extended to higher-dimensional spaces. These studies generally rely on $gri$ photometry, overlooking the shallower but metal-sensitive $u$ band. Entering the era of LSST, our study explores different $ugri$ combinations to determine which provides the best performance. We injected 36,000 dwarf galaxies into the simulated data from the LSST Data Challenge 2 (DC2) and attempted to recover them using EROSE, a new fast multi-band search algorithm designed to be easily applied to any survey and combination of photometric bands. We find that a multi-colour-magnitude space combining all three $gri$ photometric bands slightly outperforms, on average, the more commonly used colour-magnitude spaces combining only $gr$ or $ri$. The highest recovery fraction is achieved using a colour-magnitude space combining the $u$ and $g$ bands, recovering, on average, $64.1^{+6.3}_{-6.0}\%$ of the injected satellites. This improvement is particularly evident for the most extended systems, for which the additional colour information provided by the $u$ band improves our ability to isolate metal-poor member stars from contaminating foreground populations. We estimate that the LSST will discover $\sim 50$ new Milky Way dwarf galaxies, more than doubling the currently known number of satellites within its footprint. Combining the LSST photometric bands with a space-based star/galaxy separation could further improve these results, enabling the discovery of satellites at the low-mass end of the Milky Way's satellite galaxy luminosity function and providing valuable constraints on dark matter models.

JWST observations show that galaxies at $z>8$ exhibit a wide range of carbon-to-oxygen (C/O) ratios at fixed metallicity and systematically elevated nitrogen-to-oxygen (N/O) ratios compared to local galaxies. Proposed explanations include finely tuned star-formation histories (SFHs), differential or pristine inflows, top- or bottom-heavy initial mass functions, or enrichment from Wolf-Rayet stars, supermassive stars (SMSs), or Population III stars. The observed abundances reflect both in situ production tied to the SFHs and earlier pre-enrichment of the intergalactic and circumgalactic medium (IGM/CGM), which supply the gas inflow that fuels star formation. At such early epochs, SFHs are necessarily brief, and sustained star formation requires inflows to dominate over outflows, making the chemical state of the IGM/CGM especially important. We develop a chemical evolution model that incorporates (1) enrichment of the IGM/CGM by multiple sources and (2) the observed SFHs of high-redshift galaxies. Applying this model to eight galaxies at $z>8$, we find that only specific pre-enrichment scenarios reproduce their observed abundance ratios. For example, the low C/O and high N/O ratios measured in GN-z11 and CEERS-1019 require an IGM/CGM enriched by SMSs and pre-enriched to an oxygen metallicity of $\sim10^{-5}$ of the solar value. We also find that the log(N/O) vs. 12 + log(O/H) plane provides more stringent constraints on enrichment pathways than the log(C/O) vs. 12 + log(O/H) plane. Overall, our results highlight the crucial role of IGM/CGM chemical composition in chemical evolution models at $z>8$ and underscore the significant influence of SMSs on early carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen abundances.

Herbertsmithite is a prototypical candidate quantum spin liquid (QSL), believed to feature a long-range entangled ground state and deconfined fractionalised spinon excitations. Confirmation of these properties has been hindered by the presence of magnetic impurities (spin-1/2 Cu2+ spins substituted onto non-magnetic Zn2+ sites). Recently these impurities were reconceptualised as 'witnesses' of the QSL, inheriting long-range interactions and entanglement mediated by the QSL spinons, leading to spin glass formation amongst witnesses below 260 mK. Here we present a full theoretical account of this idea. Despite having only one free parameter (the witness-kagome spin coupling), our model captures the full range of experimental data, including: the formation of a spin glass amongst witnesses; the frequency and temperature dependence of the magnetic noise; a sharp peak in the DC magnetic susceptibility as a function of temperature; and the static neutron scattering structure factor at 2 K. Both candidate QSLs (Z2 and U(1)) give similar agreement with all data; however, our model predicts a qualitative difference between the Z2 and U(1) neutron scattering intensities below 260 mK, providing a long-sought definitive test to distinguish the two cases. We also predict phase diagrams as a function of temperature and witness concentration, finding a phase transition to different long-range ordered witness states for Z2 and U(1) at high concentration.

Precise measurement of the resonance frequencies of microwave and optical cavities is a foundational capability across quantum technologies. One of the highest-performance methods currently available is Pound-Drever-Hall (PDH) spectroscopy, which relies on a three-tone interrogation and eliminates sensitivity to path-length fluctuations. However, PDH is known to suffer from systematic offsets due to residual amplitude modulation and demodulation-phase errors. Here we leverage an optimal linear combination of the phases of the three interrogation tones to implement a method for robust cavity metrology which eliminates significant systematic-error sensitivities of PDH. We experimentally demonstrate robust cavity measurements in both the optical and microwave frequency regime, showing insensitivity to sideband imbalance and demodulation phase, as well as demonstrating single-shot readout of a cavity-coupled superconducting qubit.

We discuss aspects of the black hole-string transition as the angular velocity approaches the supersymmetric index $\beta \Omega = 2\pi i$. In this limit, the high-temperature Atick-Witten effective description breaks down. For Heterotic string theory, a new high-temperature description emerges near the index in terms of a Higgsed $SU(2)_L\times U(1)_R$ supergravity with a magnetic field profile. The Hagedorn instability manifests in the theory as Ambjorn-Olesen W boson condensation, due to the background magnetic field. For type II, a tower of winding strings becomes light near the index, which opens up a new dimension in the T-dual picture. In both cases, a string star solution is found, similar to the Horowitz-Polchinski solution, but decouples at the index $\beta \Omega = 2\pi i$. Considering charged solutions, the string star appears to interpolate between charged black holes and the free string phase. At the index, both the charged black hole and the charged string star phases decouple. This suggests a tension between a smooth black hole-string transition and the existence of a stringy BPS two-charge black hole.

Recent LHC measurements of electroweak single top-quark and top-quark associated Higgs boson production show a number of rate shifts, while related multiboson channels remain close to their Standard Model predictions. Gauge symmetry relates these processes such that deviations can be organised as the low-energy imprint of a common ultraviolet origin. A Standard Model Effective Field Theory (SMEFT) analysis of these rates together with $Z$-pole observables identifies the pattern: a weak top dipole and a triple-gauge deformation carry the largest pulls, accompanied by a positive left-handed top-quark current. An acceptable fit is also obtained with the pure triple-gauge coefficient set to zero. We then ask whether a gauge-invariant model can produce this set of operators and still pass the numerous constraints from experimental data. Within weakly coupled renormalisable matching, no single scalar, vector or vector-like-quark multiplet is sufficient to reproduce the full pattern. A minimal possibility is a multi-threshold vector-like-quark sector (a singlet, a doublet and two triplets) whose currents arise at tree level, while the dipole requires additional loop dynamics that the current sector does not fix. A representative realisation, confronted with direct, indirect and flavour constraints, points to correlated measurements of electroweak single top-quark production, improved $tH$ and $t \bar t H$ sensitivity, and updated searches for vector-like quarks.

Calibrated learned uncertainties are a key requirement also for generative neural networks in LHC physics. For a toy model with an explicit likelihood we show how a heteroscedastic and a Bayesian normalizing flow learn the systematic and statistical uncertainties on the underlying phase space density. Without an explicit likelihood we train the heteroscedastic loss on a classifier-reweighted approximate generative network. We illustrate our comprehensive approach for top pair events and show how a conditional heteroscedastic flow propagates calibrated uncertainties to all phase space directions.

The heat capacity of a system quantifies how it energetically responds to changes in temperature at equilibrium. Whilst this quantity is positive and even additive for non-interacting systems, self-gravitating systems such as stars or subsystems of strongly interacting quantum systems are known to have negative or anomalous specific heat capacities. In this work, we investigate how the presence of entanglement at equilibrium can influence how an interacting system responds energetically to changes in temperature. We examine the local heat capacity of interacting quantum systems providing an analytical understanding for when anomalies occur. Most interestingly, we find a connection between local heat capacity anomalies and entanglement by deriving a separability bound based on the fluctuations of local and interaction energies. We illustrate our results with two examples (i) a nearest neighbour spin-1/2 chain and (ii) two coupled quantum harmonic oscillators. Lastly, we provide an information-theoretic formula connecting mutual information and athermality to the non-additivity of the heat capacity. Our results provide model-independent thermodynamic entanglement detection bounds and insight into the relationship between quantum correlations and the heat capacity of quantum systems.

We formulate planetary sustainability as a minimal nonequilibrium problem for coupled finite stocks and fluxes, using the operational language of closed life-support systems: inventories, flux balances, recycling efficiencies, processing capacities, reserve times and failure thresholds. Rather than asserting that waste is universally more limiting than resources, we propose a reserve-time principle: the binding constraint is whichever buffer becomes critical first. A nonlinear model coupling a regenerative resource stock, an accumulated waste stock and an activity variable exhibits a soft threshold, where waste suppresses growth while processing remains formally capable, and a hard threshold, where waste production exceeds maximal processing capacity. With immediate waste feedback, activity settles globally at the soft threshold; the hard threshold is crossed only transiently or under exogenous forcing. A resource-side threshold completes the picture. We extend the model to recycling and to multiple resource and waste classes, give a numerical example, situate the four-function description of life against the origin of life, viruses and aging, contrast the biosphere's two long-term failure modes, and relate the approach to Spaceship Earth, planetary boundaries, Limits to Growth, System Dynamics and stock-pollution economics.

All-optical tuning of van der Waals heterostructures with coherent radiation offers a promising path toward ultrafast memory and optoelectronic devices. In the first-principles framework of real-time time-dependent density functional theory, we predict the induction of a persistent, long-lived out-of-plane polarization in MoS$_2$/WSe$_2$ heterobilayers, resonantly driven by intense ultrafast pulses. While weak fields preserve the intrinsic type-II band alignment, intermediate intensities trigger a four-fold enhancement of interlayer charge transfer. By analyzing the high-harmonic generation spectrum, we identify a transition from the perturbative to the strong-field regime inducing photoinduced interfacial polarity. We additionally show that lattice strain, ubiquitously present in heterobilayers, can be used as additional knob to adjust the resonant condition without compromising the permanent dipole induction. Our findings provide a theoretical blueprint for the all-optical manipulation of polar phases in low-dimensional heterostructures at the femtosecond scale.

We study nonequilibrium signatures of tilt-induced localization in a one-dimensional Bose-Einstein condensate loaded in a shallow optical lattice. The tilt strength acts as a control parameter for the localization-delocalization crossover. We also consider the effects of repulsive interactions, which tend to delocalize the condensate. We first characterize localized and delocalized regimes through sudden quenches of the interaction strength and the external tilt. The resulting dynamics is analyzed using the survival probability and its power spectral density. Localized condensates exhibit strong memory retention, pronounced revivals, regular dynamics and a narrow spectral response, whereas delocalized condensates show suppressed recurrences, irregular dynamics and a broader distribution of spectral weight over many frequencies. We then investigate finite-rate ramps of the tilt strength across the localization threshold. Using the localization length and the Bogoliubov excitation gap, we extract the relevant critical exponents and perform Kibble-Zurek scaling analysis in the driven dynamics. Our results establish quench response and finite-rate scaling as complementary dynamical probes of localization in interacting Bose gases, with direct relevance to cold-atom experiments in tilted optical lattices.

Differential-equation (DE) discovery tends to break down precisely where much of physics begins. Fields are coupled, governing laws are nonlinear in the state, amplitudes, coordinates, or operators of interest, yet derivatives must remain consistent across fields, channels, and differentiation orders. NestyNet-DE addresses this via two complementary DE search strategies, both employing analytic derivatives from segmented neural surrogates: a sparse-library route linear in the outer coefficients, and a new operator-factorized route that searches directly over equation structure rather than a fixed library, recovering compositional laws the sparse route misses. The recovered laws can be strongly nonlinear in states, fields, coordinates, and their couplings. The framework also handles multi-dataset shared-support discovery, complex and vector laws, and Hamiltonian discovery from phase-space trajectories. Beyond a law's form, the same data yield its geometry, the Lie point symmetries of the recovered equation. We apply the pipeline to 30 years of daily ephemerides of $308$ main-belt asteroids and recover the reduced-Kepler hierarchy (areal law, inverse-square force, and reduced Hamiltonian), where a discovered rotational symmetry fixes the centrifugal coefficient rather than fitting it. We also present a benchmark of 57 real-valued ODEs and 26 complex-valued systems, including the Schrödinger and Dirac equations, with Maxwell's equations as a coupled vector-PDE case study. Here, discovery is not shackled to a fixed library, nor does it end at the equation. It composes laws that no dictionary anticipated, and closes the loop from data, to a law chosen by nothing in advance, to the geometry that explains and integrates it.

We study the local electrostatic response of a charged superfluid in the presence of a cylindrically symmetric vortex, allowing both the particle density and the thermodynamic compressibility to vary with the radial coordinate. Starting from the electrostatic charge response obtained from the phase-only Popov action, we introduce a local-density extension and derive the regular near-axis expansion of the scalar potential. The constant, quadratic, and quartic coefficients are obtained explicitly in terms of the local screening response and of the leading nonuniform contribution to the vortex density profile. For a three-dimensional unitary Fermi equation of state, the density dependence of the compressibility generates a definite thermodynamic contribution to the quartic coefficient. The resulting decomposition separates this equation-of-state contribution from the ordinary constant-screening and charge-source terms that occur at the same order. This provides a compact analytical connection between vortex-core thermodynamics and the local electrostatic profile of a charged superfluid.

We describe in detail and provide computer code for constructing optimal geometric braids of three strands from algebraic data encoding the braiding pattern. Our optimality criterion uses the known interpretation of braids as homotopy classes (rel endpoints) of paths in $SL_2(\mathbb{R})$ joining the identity $I$ to some $A \in SL_2(\mathbb{Z})$, i.e., elements of the fundamental group of $SL_2(\mathbb{R})/SL_2(\mathbb{Z})$, a quotient equivalent to the unit tangent bundle of the classical modular surface $\mathbb{H}/PSL_2(\mathbb{Z})$. The main technical result finds the length minimizing geodesic in a prescribed homotopy class. From another perspective, of independent interest, this amounts to shooting the shortest geodesic that connects, with a prescribed number of spins en route, two given unit tangent vectors to the Poincaré (half-)plane $\mathbb{H}$. The length is measured by a Riemannian metric from a family of deformed Sasaki metrics, sometimes called Kaluza-Klein metrics, whereby unit tangent vectors can be interpreted as infinitesimal rotors, called spinners, and the ratio of the mass to the moment of inertia is the deformation parameter. At the universal covering level $\widetilde{SL}_2(\mathbb{R})$, the geometry is one of Thurston's eight model 3D geometries. In the vanishing mass limit, it converges to the better understood Carnot-Carathéodory contact geometry, where our geodesic shooting extends known formulas. The finite mass case is more delicate, requiring numerical solution of a targeting equation. The characterization of the length minimizing geodesics (No-multiplicity Theorem) and the resulting targeting equation are the main original contribution. The exposition is complete and multi-pronged, aimed at a broad spectrum of readers. (Numerous figures are the backbone of the narrative and should be viewed in color.)

We participated in the BIC-MAC Challenge with a multimodal 3D patch-based U-Net for pseudo-CT generation from NAC-PET, MRI, and 2D topograms. By using separate PET and MR encoders, multi-scale feature fusion, and FiLM-based topogram conditioning at the bottleneck, we obtain a model that integrates complementary cross-modal information while reducing reliance on precise voxel-wise correspondence between modalities. Our final submission can be found: https://github.com/rrr-uom-projects/BIC-MAC-MICCAI2026

Future radio telescopes will generate data volumes that are increasingly difficult to analyse using traditional statistical methods, motivating the adoption of machine-learning techniques. In this work, we present YOLO-Chars (YOLO-based Detection and Characterisation of Radio Sources), a two-stage deep-learning framework for the automated detection and characterisation of radio galaxies in survey images. The framework is developed and evaluated using the Square Kilometre Array Science Data Challenge 1 (SKA SDC1) dataset. In the first stage, customised YOLO-based multi-scale detection models are used to localise compact and extended sources across large sky maps. In the second stage, a dedicated source-characterisation network estimates the physical properties of the detected sources. We focus on three key parameters: flux density, angular size, and position angle. Our results show that YOLO-Chars achieves competitive detection and characterisation performance on the SKA SDC1 benchmark, demonstrating its potential as a scalable framework for next-generation radio continuum surveys.

Quantum electrodynamics (QED) predicts that the vacuum should behave as a non-linear medium. For many schemes aimed at verifying this fundamental prediction, the signal consists of one or more photons in a certain mode (determined by polarization $\sigma$ and wave-number $\boldsymbol{k}$) which would be empty in the absence of a QED vacuum non-linearity. Here we consider modifying these schemes by sending in a classical or non-classical (e.g., squeezed) photon state instead of the initial vacuum state in that mode. We find that the detectability can be improved significantly.

The quantum memory burden effect can suppress the late-time Hawking evaporation of primordial black holes (PBHs), allowing PBHs below the standard evaporation threshold of approximately $10^{15}\,\mathrm{g}$ to survive until the present epoch and potentially contribute to the dark matter abundance. We investigate primary and secondary neutrino emission from memory burdened Bardeen and Kerr PBHs, including Galactic and extragalactic fluxes and the effects of memory suppression, Bardeen regularization, and Kerr rotation. We constrain their abundance using observations from IceCube, Super-Kamiokande, and ANTARES, together with the projected sensitivities of IceCube-Gen2, GRAND200k, and Hyper-Kamiokande. We find that Bardeen regularization and Kerr rotation produce qualitatively different effects. Increasing the Bardeen parameter suppresses the Hawking temperature and neutrino flux, thereby weakening the abundance constraints. In contrast, rapidly rotating Kerr PBHs that retain a significant residual spin at the onset of the memory burdened phase can exhibit enhanced neutrino emission and substantially stronger constraints. Increasing the memory burden suppression index $k$ reduces the flux normalization but also allows lighter and hotter PBHs to survive, shifting the relevant signal toward higher energies. Consequently, HESE provides the leading sensitivity for weak suppression, whereas IceCube-Gen2 and GRAND200k become particularly important for stronger suppression. These results demonstrate the complementarity of current and future neutrino observations in probing memory burdened PBHs and the effects of regular geometry and rotation on their evaporation.

Velocity-selective Raman transitions are widely used in atom interferometers to prepare atomic ensembles with narrowly defined momentum distributions. However, differential light shifts between atomic energy levels generate velocity distributions that are correlated with the Raman beam intensity, and therefore with the position of the atoms within the laser beam. We show that these spatially inhomogeneous velocity distributions interact with detuning-dependent systematic effects in a Bragg diffraction-based simultaneous conjugate Ramsey-Bordé interferometer. These interactions can induce systematic phase shifts of order 10 milliradians in the interferometer phase. We further identify a "magic" detuning for velocity selection and show that operating at this detuning suppresses the systematic phase shift. Magic velocity selection eliminates systematic errors arising from correlations between atom velocity and position, facilitating high-resolution atom interferometry experiments targeting sub-part-per-billion accuracy.

Bottomonium transport is studied in heavy-ion collisions at RHIC and the LHC by implementing a kinetic rate equation into (3+1)D viscous hydrodynamic simulations of an expanding quark-gluon plasma (QGP). The two main transport parameters are the inelastic reaction rates and equilibrium limits for each individual bottomonium state, $Y$. The former are taken from the thermodynamic $T$-matrix formalism with recent constraints from lattice-QCD and including interference effects and in-medium binding energies, resulting in large rates characteristic of a strongly coupled QGP. The equilibrium limits are evaluated from pertinent in-medium bottomonium and bottom-quark masses. The calculation of observables includes a total of nine $Y$ states (up to 3$S$ and 2$P$) with a feed-down matrix estimated from vacuum branching fractions. At the LHC, the large reaction rates rapidly suppress the initial population of excited states, rendering regeneration their main source even in rather peripheral collisions, while for the more strongly bound ground state $\Upsilon(1S)$, a significant primordial component survives in central collisions. On the other hand, at RHIC energies, regeneration is overall a smaller effect. Together with effects from nuclear absorption, this offers an explanation for the experimental observation that $\Upsilon(1S)$ production at RHIC and the LHC is of comparable magnitude despite the significantly higher temperatures reached in the QGP at the LHC.

Virtual distillation is a powerful near-term error-mitigation primitive, but it is also a spectral filter: it amplifies the dominant eigenvector component already present in the noisy density matrix. We show that, for a finite-band variational state, this filtering cannot create new concentration inside a set of accepted measurement outcomes. The asymptotic success probability after distillation is bounded by the leading eigenvalue of a Slepian concentration operator built from a specified variational band and that outcome window. Moreover, the number of robust high-success spectral components is limited by the Slepian active dimension. \rev{For bit-string outcome windows, an explicit Walsh-band realization has a Krawtchouk kernel on the Boolean hypercube. Finite-size noisy-QAOA calculations for 2-regular Max-Cut illustrate both the in-band improvement and the out-of-band failure modes predicted by the branch-resolved result.

Producing very large unweighted event samples for high-multiplicity processes is limited by expensive matrix-element evaluations and low unweighting efficiencies. We present the first end-to-end GPU-resident event-generation workflow that integrates normalizing-flow proposals with the parton-level event generator Pepper. Helicity-conditioned coupling flows are trained using online updates supplemented by sample replay and deployed across all subprocesses of complete proton–proton collision processes with many final-state jets. In this workflow, a Python-based control layer and Pepper exchange flow-generated phase-space points and the corresponding target-density evaluations directly in device memory. The control layer performs flow sampling, proposal-density evaluation, and unweighting, while Pepper evaluates the matrix elements, PDFs, and phase-space factors defining the target density and writes the accepted events in standard formats. We compare subprocess-specific flows, with one flow per partonic subprocess, to grouped conditional flows that share parameters among subprocesses with related parton content. The workflow is benchmarked for $pp \to e^+e^- + 4j$, $pp \to e^+e^- + 5j$, $pp \to t \bar t + 4j$, $pp \to 4j$, and $pp \to 5j$ production. On four H100 GPUs, we generate $10^9$ unweighted events for each benchmark process. Including the cost of flow training, the workflow achieves end-to-end speedups of up to two orders of magnitude over standalone Pepper event generation and turns a multi-week task into a sub-day computation. It thereby makes billion-event production more practical and offers a pathway to alleviating the Monte Carlo statistics bottleneck in high-multiplicity collider physics.

Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithms can be viewed as feedback devices that compare a proposed move with the target distribution and then accept or reject it. In this paper the Maxwell demon is identified with the acceptance module: it measures a proposed edge, stores the outcome in the accept/reject bit, and uses that bit to shape the probability current. The decision bit carries a genuine Shannon mutual information about the proposal, whereas only its directional part is converted into a cooling information flow. The relative-entropy relaxation rate obeys $v(t)=\dot{\mathcal I}_{\rm cool}(t)+\dot S(t)$, which separates useful cooling from housekeeping circulation in nonreversible chains.

When only local observables of a many-body quantum system are of interest, it is desirable to formulate a reduced description within the Hilbert space of the corresponding subsystem, with the remaining degrees of freedom traced out and acting as an environment. Assuming initially uncorrelated states and Gaussian environments, we develop a framework for reconstructing the local dynamical generator of noninteracting quantum chains, with polynomial computational complexity. As an application, we consider two representative models: a bipartitioned Kitaev chain and a Kitaev chain boundary-coupled to a fully connected free-fermion environment. In both models, strong subsystem-environment coupling leads to non-Markovian dynamics characterized by ballistic spreading of the Lindblad dissipator support within the subsystem. On the other hand, weak coupling to a fully connected environment yields predominantly boundary-localized, Markovian dissipation. Our work highlights the implications of subsystem-environment correlations on the generator of local dynamics, beyond the conventional weak-coupling approximations.

A first-principles and device-level study of the quasi-two-dimensional transition-metal chalcogenide Mo$_2$SeTe$_3$ is performed. The material is found to be a weak topological semiconductor with a finite bulk band gap and symmetry-protected Dirac surface states, indicating strong potential for next-generation low-power quantum electronic devices. An SOC-driven band inversion accompanied by an indirect semiconducting gap of approximately 0.75 eV is observed. Topological nontriviality is rigorously confirmed through Wannier charge-center evolution and $\mathbb{Z}_2$ invariant analysis, yielding weak topological indices of $(0;001)$, while iterative Green's-function surface-state calculations corroborate Dirac-cone conducting states traversing the bulk gap on symmetry-preserving surfaces. Mo$_2$SeTe$_3$ additionally exhibits exceptional dynamical and mechanical stability, pronounced optical anisotropy, high dielectric polarizability, broad infrared-to-visible optical absorption, a large static dielectric constant, and substantial birefringence, making it favorable for photonic and optoelectronic applications. Thermoelectric transport analyses further reveal enhanced carrier mobility and a competitive figure of merit under $n$-type doping near room temperature. A dual-source tunnel field-effect transistor (TFET) is implemented via TCAD simulations with nonlocal band-to-band tunneling, yielding subthreshold switching below the thermionic limit, a high ON/OFF current ratio, and enhanced tunneling efficiency driven by SOC-induced orbital hybridization and topologically enhanced interband coupling. The concurrent realization of nontrivial bulk-boundary correspondence, robust transport properties, and steep-slope switching characteristics establishes Mo$_2$SeTe$_3$ as a multifunctional quantum material platform for topological and next-generation energy-efficient nanoelectronic devices.

In this paper we investigate the behavior of localized solutions, specifically solitons, in a system of three coupled waveguides. The nonlinearity is modeled by a quasi-periodic modulation influencing the interaction between the waveguides. We analyze the evolution of the soliton profiles and their dynamics under varying modulation parameters, highlighting distinct behaviors such as attraction and repulsion among solitons. Our findings reveal that the system exhibits complex behaviors, depending on the interplay between the quasi-periodic modulation and the waveguide parameters. The study contributes to understanding the impact of quasi-periodic nonlinearity on soliton dynamics in coupled waveguide systems, laying the groundwork for potential applications in nonlinear optics and photonic devices.

Unlike second-order phase transitions, a first-order transition has a stage, in which a system is trapped in a metastable state. The decay of this state leads to abundant excitations over the ground state. We present a field theory for kinetics of defects emerging during quantum annealing computations. This theory predicts several power laws for the error generation rate during quantum annealing either though or near the first-order phase transition. Sharp changes between the power exponents are predicted for continuous parameter changes. Observation of this behavior would be a signature of first-order critical points and could help identify and avoid them for better computations. The driven Lipkin-Meshkov-Glick model (LMGm) serves as the minimal model of interacting Ising spins that demonstrates this behavior.

We develop a formalism for extracting relativistic classical dynamics from the S-matrix, in which massive bodies are described on phase space while massless radiation is kept in the Fock space. Our formalism relies on the Stratonovich-Weyl (SW) correspondence between the operator and phase-space formulations of quantum mechanics, as implemented covariantly by the SW quantizer. For localized incoming states, classical observables are given by SW symbols of the appropriate operators evaluated on incoming asymptotic trajectories. In combination with the exponential form of the S-matrix, the observables are naturally given by nested mixed Dirac/commutator brackets involving Magnus amplitudes. The latter are the matrix elements of the logarithm of the S-matrix, and we provide a straightforward algorithm for computing the combinatorial Murua coefficients that control the placement of retarded propagators inside Magnus-amplitude diagrams. This picture is well-suited for gravitational-wave physics applications.