Papers

Transient noise artifacts, or glitches, in gravitational wave strain data elevate the false alarm rate of astrophysical searches and degrade parameter estimation when overlapping a signal. No method previously identified a glitch's time boundary: existing detection and classification tools flag and label glitches without resolving their extent, forcing subtraction to run over padded windows that cost time and erase signal beyond the glitch itself. We present three boundary identification methods, AMPS (Amplitude-based Multi-glitch Pulse Segmenter), FLARE (Fitness-based Localization And Refinement Extractor), and CRISP (connected-region identification via spectrogram power), paired with three subtraction techniques, adaptive spline fitting, wavelet shrinkage, and their combination, across five glitches from the GravitySpy database spanning Advanced LIGO's first three observing runs. AMPS sets a boundary from a robust amplitude threshold, FLARE from the best fitness of a segmented spline fit, and CRISP from spectrogram power. Injecting a chirp signal on four broadband glitches, the combined technique recovers 95 to 97 percent of the injected signal-to-noise ratio, against roughly 64 percent for wavelet shrinkage alone. CRISP gives the most uniform boundary width across glitches; AMPS and CRISP both identify a boundary in a fraction of a second, two to three orders of magnitude faster than FLARE. For the glitch overlapping GW170817, a low-frequency residual persists under the default boundary, a deliberate tradeoff against removing signal power. Scattered light glitches remain untested and are the primary direction for future work.

Superconducting microwave cavities loaded with radio frequency fields are a powerful tool to search for weak forces or electromagnetic perturbations due to new physics. One source of such signals can be high-frequency gravitational waves emitted from cosmological or unknown astrophysical events. However, large sensitivity improvements are still necessary to reach the parameter space motivated by theoretical models. In this work, we present a formalism to guide the design of such detectors across a broad range of frequencies and signal forms. By incorporating the interdependencies of all relevant parameters and the back-action of the electromagnetic fields on the cavity structure, we describe how figures of merit can be derived for a broad class of relevant experimental setups. Using a two-dimensional model, we demonstrate this formalism and present examples for optimized cavity geometries. We find that the choice of geometry alone can increase the signal-to-noise power ratio by an order of magnitude compared to an existing prototype of the same size. We also show that different physics goals lead to different optimal cavities, thus proving the need to consider such figures of merit at an early stage when designing a new detector.

Superconducting high-kinetic inductance materials like granular aluminum (grAl) are a versatile part of the circuit quantum electrodynamics (cQED) toolbox, provided their losses at microwave frequencies are low enough. To further advance the use of grAl in quantum devices, it is indispensable to identify the dominant loss mechanisms. The standard approach pairs electromagnetic simulations of resonator geometry with measured temperature and power dependence of resonance frequency and loss rate. Most materials follow the phenomenological theory of two-level systems (TLSs) at low temperatures, resulting in an initial decrease of the resonance frequency with increasing temperature. In our work, we observe an opposite behavior at the lowest temperatures: The resonance frequency initially increases with both temperature and readout power, contradicting the standard TLS model predictions. We are able to explain a part of the data by an alternative mechanism associated with the effect of superconducting quasiparticles in a granular system with spatially-nonuniform gap. Yet, the observed change in the resonance frequency with temperature is not matched by a proportional change in the loss rate. We also observe anomalous positive frequency responses following high-energy events, characterized by several time scales. While anomalous behavior has been reported previously in grAl, the disagreement with standard models is particularly visible in our devices thanks to their exceptionally low loss rates.

This work investigates the original Penrose process (PP), as well as black hole (BH) thermodynamics, within the framework of conformal Weyl gravity. The theory is characterized by the dimensionful constants $\gamma$, which encodes the asymptotic rotational curvature of galactic rotation curves in an otherwise asymptotically flat spacetime, and $\kappa$, which is associated with the cosmological background constant $\Lambda$. We determine the locations of the event horizon and the extreme configurations for rotating BHs in this theory, and we provide both perturbative and exact expressions for the event horizon radius. The geodesic equations are restricted to the equatorial plane, and the corresponding dynamics, including energy extraction processes, are studied exclusively in this plane. As the principal results, we examine the feasibility and efficiency of the original PP, analyze BH deceleration mechanisms, and test the validity of the four laws of BH thermodynamics in the context of conformal Weyl gravity.

We use inelastic neutron scattering (INS) to determine the crystal electric field (CEF) excitations of Yb$^{3+}$ in the rare-earth hyperkagome magnet Yb$_3$Sc$_2$Ga$_3$O$_{12}$. Three nearly dispersionless magnetic excitations are observed near 58, 68, and 74~meV, corresponding to transitions from the ground-state Kramers doublet to the three excited doublets of the $J=7/2$ multiplet. A Stevens-operator analysis constrained by the local $222$ ($D_2$) symmetry reproduces the excitation energies and spectral weights and yields an Ising-type ground-state $g$ tensor. The first excited doublet lies approximately 58~meV above the ground state, establishing a well-isolated effective $J_{\mathrm{eff}}=1/2$ degree of freedom over the low-temperature regime relevant to collective magnetism. Notably, the directly measured CEF spectrum substantially revises the level scheme previously inferred from bulk measurements, while preserving the essential low-energy pseudospin description. Two independent fitting protocols give consistent excitation energies, ground-doublet wave functions, and $g$ tensors, despite the nonuniqueness of the individual CEF parameters. The resulting single-ion model also reproduces the characteristic susceptibility, magnetization, and field evolution of the Schottky anomaly in specific heat. These results establish the microscopic single-ion basis needed to construct an effective exchange Hamiltonian and to interpret future measurements of low-energy collective excitations in Yb$_3$Sc$_2$Ga$_3$O$_{12}$.

The ultra-compressed scotogenic regime, in which a 2\,GeV mass splitting between the charged inert scalar and the dark-matter fermion is motivated by and compatible with co-annihilation to the observed relic density for suitable choices of the remaining model parameters, produces decay leptons for which existing LHC displaced-lepton and disappearing-track searches retain only partial, unoptimised acceptance, leaving room for a dedicated timing-assisted strategy. We propose exploiting the 30\,ps timing resolution of the HL-LHC precision timing detectors as a fourth observable, converting the macroscopic scalar decay length of 100–1000\,mm into an arrival-time delay of 70–700\,ps—more than three orders of magnitude above the sub-picosecond delays of all prompt Standard Model backgrounds. Operating at the level of a low-$p_T$ disappearing-track stub matched to a delayed timing hit, without requiring full lepton reconstruction, our 4D timing strategy achieves signal efficiencies of 12–36% across the probed mass range (14% at the 200\,GeV benchmark) and zero background across $4.20\times10^6$ simulated prompt SM events, projecting 95%\,C.L.\ exclusion up to scalar masses of $\simeq\!670$\,GeV at 3000\,fb$^{-1}$ under conservative background assumptions. The scalar lifetime is set by the Yukawa coupling $y$ through $c\tau\propto y^{-2}$, while sub-eV neutrino masses constrain only the product $y^2\lambda_5$; the small couplings that place the charged scalar in the optimal timing window are therefore compatible with, though not uniquely fixed by, the radiative neutrino-mass mechanism, making the co-annihilation corridor—conventionally the most elusive regime—an accessible target for 4D spacetime tracking at the HL-LHC.

Researchers increasingly treat LLM survey responses as a proxy for human cultural values. This includes projecting model outputs onto instruments like the Inglehart-Welzel Cultural Map and drawing conclusions about which cultures a model resembles. While a model's answer to a value-laden questions may be interpreted as a cultural signal, it also carries sampling noise and, can be quite sensitive to question framing. In this paper, we separate survey responses, sampling noise and question framing for multiple LLMs. We decompose response variance from these models into variation across random seeds, prompt rewordings. We employ noise-to-signal ratio (NSR) to test whether a model's apparent cultural position is distinguishable from noise. When applied across a dozen models from four geographic origins, calibrated against 88 Integrated Values Survey countries, the answer is often no. NSR exceeds 1.0 on 49 of 117 valid model-question pairs (42%), reaching 5.56 in the worst case. Two models even refuse to answer sufficient number of survey questions outright. Our results corroborate previous findings that LLMs cluster toward Western, English-speaking cultural positions. However, what does not hold up in this study is the precision with which anyone can currently interpret a specific model's coordinates: prompt tone alone can shift a model by 2.4 map units, comparable to the distance between actual countries in the Inglehart-Welzel Cultural Map. These findings suggest that cultural attribution from LLM survey responses requires establishing the reliability of the underlying measurements before interpreting model coordinates as evidence of cultural representation.

When irreducible representations occur with multiplicity, a family symmetry fixes the representation content of a Yukawa sector but need not fix its embedding in the space of generation tensors. We study the spectral consequences of this additional embedding data for complex-symmetric three-family tensors with the $S_3$ assignment $V=\mathbf{1}\oplus\mathbf{2}$. Since $\operatorname{Sym}^2V=2\,\mathbf{1}\oplus2\,\mathbf{2}$, three-dimensional invariant Yukawa subspaces of type $\mathbf{1}\oplus\mathbf{2}$ form a continuous $\mathbb{CP}^1\times\mathbb{CP}^1$ family, denoted $\mathcal L_{t,\kappa}$ on a finite affine chart. On the $\kappa=0$ branch, we solve the inverse singular-value problem and obtain necessary and sufficient conditions for any prescribed ordered positive mass spectrum. A fixed singlet embedding imposes a finite hierarchy bound, whereas varying the embedding accommodates every positive three-family spectrum. For general embeddings, $\mathcal L_{t,\kappa}$ contains a nonzero rank-one matrix if and only if $2t\kappa^2=1$; equivalently, these are precisely the finite-chart embeddings for which $\sigma_3/\sigma_2$ is unbounded. In a conventional complex-symmetric $S_3$ three-Higgs sector, the same condition becomes $y_2y_5^2=\sqrt{2}\,y_1y_3^2$, so order-one Yukawa coupling ratios can support arbitrarily large mass hierarchies. We then apply the result to a recent Clifford-algebraic construction and show that its family-resolved Yukawa tensors span $\mathcal L_{2,0}$, whose singular values obey $m_1+m_2\leq m_3\leq m_1+3m_2$. This excludes the observed charged-lepton hierarchy for arbitrary complex vacuum alignment within the existing Higgs directions. The resulting obstruction is therefore tied to the fixed multiplicity embedding rather than to the $S_3$ representation content alone.

Context. Phosphorus (P) is an essential element for life on Earth and a potential tracer of planet formation history. However, there has been no detection of P-bearing molecules in protoplanetary discs so far. Herbig Ae/Be stars constantly accrete matter from their pro- toplanetary disc, which alters the composition of the stellar photosphere due to their shallow convective, or fully radiative, envelope. The altered surface composition reflects the composition of the accreting matter, and thus that of the inner protoplanetary disc. This accretion contamination of stellar photosphere can persist after accretion has ended in young A and B-type stars (age < 50 Myr). Aims. We aim to quantify the fraction of P locked in dust (the refractory fraction of P) compared to gas in the inner protoplanetary disc around Herbig Ae/Be stars. Methods. We measure the stellar parameters and abundance of 5 Herbig Ae/Be stars using optical and UV spectra, to compare their P and Fe abundances. We also used a 20 Myrs old main sequence B-type star, which has P and Fe abundance estimated from optical spectrum. Fe is assumed to be completely locked in refractory reservoirs in the inner disc. A parameterised relationship between the stellar P and Fe abundance gives the fraction of P locked in refractory reservoirs. Results. We find the refractory fraction of P in the inner protoplanetary disc to be > 96 % within 95th percentile of the posterior distribution. Conclusions. Consistent with a previous finding in the HD 100546 system, we conclude most of the P in the inner protoplanetary disc is locked in dust, likely in refractory minerals like schreibersite or apatite. Our result, combined with the low cosmic abundance of P, is also consistent with the lack of infrared and mm-wavelength observations of P-bearing molecules in protoplanetary discs to date.

This paper studies global existence for the Cauchy problem of nonlinear Klein-Gordon equations in three space dimensions, strictly within the regularity regime of classical local existence. We prove it via higher-order and lower-order energy estimates. The proof relies on two key ingredients. The first is due to the work of Georgiev and Popivanov, which reduces quadratic nonlinearities to cubic terms plus ghost-energy-controllable terms, securing lower-order estimates. The second is a sharp Klainerman-Sobolev-type inequality without the scaling operator, established herein, which yields enough time decay for derivatives up to second order; integration by parts then controls derivative loss terms in the higher-order estimates.

Stellar X-ray emission serves as a direct diagnostic of coronal activity, which is fundamentally linked to coronal heating processes. It also strongly influences the atmospheres and long-term habitability of orbiting exoplanets. Investigating how this high-energy emission evolves is therefore essential for understanding the evolution of stellar magnetic dynamos and planetary atmospheres and habitability. In this work, we investigate the evolution of X-ray activity and XUV irradiation for a sample of F-M dwarf stars based on Chandra and XMM-Newton observations. We find that F- and G-type stars broadly follow the traditional evolutionary picture of an early saturated (or weakly declining) phase followed by a modest decline, whereas K- and M-type stars exhibit a clear three-phase evolution of a saturated phase, an intermediate phase of rapid decay, and a final modest decline phase. By combining X-ray, ultraviolet, and Ca II H&K bands, we show that coronal emission becomes increasingly dominant toward lower-mass stars. Based on the cumulative XUV emission calculated from our fitted relation, planets around F- and G-type stars experience relatively moderate XUV environments, while those around K- and M-type stars may exceed the empirical cosmic shoreline shortly after reaching the main sequence, though this conclusion depends on the adopted shoreline value.

Ultrafast control of magnetization through lattice excitation provides a route to manipulating magnetic order on short timescales, yet the role of transient strain in driving magnetization dynamics remains poorly understood. Here, single-shot pump-probe magneto-optical microscopy is used to resolve the structural and magnetic responses of cobalt-doped yttrium iron garnet to individual 5-ps mid-infrared pulses. The excitation generates a localized strain field together with an outward-propagating elastic wave. Concurrently, the magnetic contrast decreases following excitation and subsequently reverses on a timescale of approximately 1.5-2 ns before recovering to its initial state. The structural and magnetic responses exhibit closely correlated wavelength and pulse-energy dependences, indicating a common excitation pathway. Micromagnetic simulations incorporating transient strain reproduce the precessional reorientation of the magnetization within individual domains while largely preserving the labyrinthine domain morphology. These results identify transient lattice deformation as the link between single-pulse mid-infrared excitation and reversible precessional magnetization dynamics in Co-doped yttrium iron garnet.

Models where an axion-like inflaton is coupled to a $U(1)$ gauge field are theoretically well motivated and can display a rich phenomenology. The regime in which the quanta of the gauge field strongly backreact on the rolling inflaton has been studied for well more than a decade, and yet we cannot say that it is fully understood. In this paper we present an analytical study of the onset of the strong backreaction regime. Our formalism relies on a Laplace transform to convert a complicated integro-differential equation into the search of the poles of an analytic function. We confirm the existence, previously observed using a completely different formalism, of a stable region of strong backreaction. Our work provides, for the first time, analytical formulae that allow to study the evolution of the system as it transitions from the weak to the strong backreaction regime.

Three-dimensional conjugate simulations were conducted to investigate saturated flow boiling in a rectangular mini-channel, with particular emphasis on the role of inlet Reynolds number on boiling mode selection and transition. A C++ based open-source numerical framework was employed, incorporating a physically informed multi-site nucleation model by coupling a nucleation site density correlation with a Halton-sequence based spatial allocation strategy. Two distinct Re-dependent transition pathways were identified. At low Re, boiling transition is mainly associated with localized dryout development associated with upstream active boiling and progressive downstream liquid starvation. At high Re, the transition is characterized by convective stretching and reorganization of vapor structures, through which elongated vapor slugs evolve into localized vapor films and eventually approach full surface vapor coverage. The global heat transfer characteristics and peak heat transfer capacity are further interpreted in conjunction with boiling mode transition, clarifying the respective roles of wall dryout and volumetric vapor fraction in heat transfer deterioration. Among all cases, Re=2000 provides the most favorable overall thermal response. Overall, within the rectangular mini-channel configuration and operating range considered in this study, Re is closely associated with vapor organization, boiling transition, wall dryout, and global heat transfer performance.

We investigate timelike bound motion, resonant periodic orbits, and their gravitational-wave signatures in the rotating Konoplya-Zhidenko (KZ) black hole spacetime. Using the separability of the Hamilton-Jacobi equation, we parameterize eccentric and inclined bound orbits by $(p,e,z_1)$, derive the corresponding constants of motion $(E,L_z,Q)$, and use the orbital frequencies to identify resonant configurations. We study a range of resonances, including radial-polar resonances of inclined orbits and radial-azimuthal resonances of equatorial eccentric orbits. We further construct physically scaled quadrupole-kludge waveforms for representative equatorial resonant orbits and analyze their frequency-domain characteristics. Our results show that the KZ deformation shifts the resonance locations and modifies both the orbital trajectories and the resulting gravitational-wave signals. The corresponding characteristic strain lies predominantly in the millihertz band, placing these signals in the frequency range relevant to space-based gravitational wave detectors.

We develop an entropy-stable and physical-constraint-preserving discontinuous Galerkin spectral element method for symmetry-reduced general-relativistic hydrodynamics on prescribed stationary spacetimes. Using a local orthonormal transformation, the fluid variables are expressed in a form for which the relativistic hydrodynamic algebra and the admissible set are independent of the spatial metric, while the spacetime geometry enters through stationary coefficients. This separation allows entropy-conservative special-relativistic fluxes to be combined with a compatible discretization of the geometric source terms. On affine tensor-product meshes, the resulting DGSEM is conservative and satisfies a semidiscrete entropy inequality, while the transformed variables provide a convex framework for physical-constraint preservation. For practical stabilization, we use a geometry-only causal speed that is sufficient for both classical local Lax–Friedrichs entropy dissipation and the physical-constraint-preserving Lax–Friedrichs splitting. The fully discrete method combines this stabilization with SSP Runge–Kutta time stepping, oscillation elimination, and conservative local-orthonormal-state scaling. Numerical experiments cover smooth and strongly shocked special-relativistic flows, an axisymmetric jet, stationary Michel accretion, Schwarzschild Bondi–Hoyle flow, and four Kerr accretion cases. The results demonstrate the designed high-order accuracy in smooth regimes and robust performance for demanding relativistic flows on curved stationary backgrounds.

We study a generalized Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process driven by a superposition of $K$ independent dichotomous noises with arbitrary fixed amplitudes and switching rates. Unlike the classical Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process driven by equilibrium Gaussian white noise, the present system is governed by bounded nonequilibrium fluctuations with finite correlation times. We obtain exact expressions for the stationary position distribution and all cumulants, and show that the stationary state possesses an unexpectedly rich structure, including compact support, algebraic branch-point singularities, edge divergences, and multiple extrema. We establish a mapping onto a heterogeneous random-flight process with bounded jumps, yielding a transparent probabilistic interpretation of the stationary measure. We further analyze several limiting regimes, including the crossover to Gaussian statistics for large numbers of noise sources. For ensembles with exponentially-distributed quenched amplitudes, we derive exact disorder-averaged stationary distributions and show that disorder fundamentally alters the stationary state, producing exponential tails decorated by algebraic prefactors with non-trivial exponents.

We study the one-loop renormalization group flow of the translation-invariant noncommutative pseudoscalar Yukawa theory on four-dimensional Euclidean Moyal space. The two inequivalent orderings of the Moyal-star Yukawa vertex give rise to two independent couplings $g_{1}$ and $g_{2}$, whose beta functions form a coupled nonlinear system; every one-loop divergence is absorbed by a counterterm already present in the action, establishing one-loop renormalizability of the theory. We solve the one-loop system analytically: it decouples in the variables $u=g_{1}^{2}+g_{2}^{2}$ and $v=g_{1}^{2}-g_{2}^{2}$, the quartic coupling is obtained by a Riccati reduction on the symmetric surface $g_{1}=g_{2}$, and the generic asymmetric flow is reduced to a single quadrature by the exact invariant $\mathcal{I}=(g_{1}g_{2})^{3}/(g_{1}^{2}-g_{2}^{2})^{4}$. Two dynamical consequences follow. The ratio $r=v/u$ has a UV-attractive symmetric surface $r=0$ and IR-attractive asymmetric directions $r=\pm1$, so that the flow restores the symmetry between the two Moyal orderings towards the ultraviolet and amplifies any initial ordering asymmetry towards the infrared, as a fractional power of the logarithm. In consequence the Yukawa-induced coefficient of the non-planar $1/(\theta^{2}p^{2})$ structure is dynamically suppressed towards $p\rightarrow 0$; the singularity itself is not removed, and remains the task of the IR-improving term. We also solve the dimensionful sector ($M^{2}$, $m$, $a^{2}$ and $b$) in closed form on the symmetric critical trajectory, and compare throughout with the commutative theory.

Inspired by holographic dark energy models, we extend the analysis performed in Ref.\cite{RGPC} taking into account Yukawa deformations on the different energy density (HDE) profiles. The profiles we have explored are: the Bekenstein-Hawking HDE, the Moradpour energy density, the Standard Renyi HDE and the Mixed Energy Density. With the help of an inhomogeneous Equation of State of the form $p_{r}(r)=\omega _{r}\left( r\right) \rho (r)$, we have considered Zero Tidal Forces. Differently from the original case, only a particular case of the family of the Bekenstein-Hawking HDE profiles distorted by the Yukawa term has developed a divergent $\omega _{r}\left( r\right) $ for $r\rightarrow \infty $. To cure such a divergence we have introduced a modification at large distances in order to have a finite result. This means that the Zero Tidal Forces can be imposed in a very large but limited region of the spacetime. Such modification did not change the behavior of the Equation of State close to the throat. For every proposal we have computed the components of the Stress-Energy Tensor. What we have found is that the Yukawa-Bekenstein-Hawking HDE is the only positive profile, while the Yukawa-Moradpour and the Yukawa-Renyi have a limited region where the energy density is positive. The remaining Yukawa-Mixed Energy Density is always negative. This means that the Yukawa distortion introduces a kind of negative energy density.

Human societies tend to evolve toward increasing scale and complexity, often followed by stagnation and decline. Historical empires provide a prominent example of this trajectory; however, existing quantitative models capture expansion and rarely account for decline within a unified framework. Here, we introduce a minimal dynamical model that describes both growth and collapse in a single formalism. The model yields a closed-form trajectory that generalizes the Gompertz law and admits equivalent maximum-entropy and optimal-control formulations. We show that this functional form captures the rise and fall of fourteen diverse empires across widely varying time scales. Despite substantial historical heterogeneity, all cases follow a common asymmetric rise-peak-decline pattern governed by a small number of interpretable parameters. We identify the mechanism driving this behavior as the chronophage: an exponentially accumulating burden of administrative and coordination costs that offsets the gains of expansion. These findings uncover a general quantitative principle, yielding new insights into how increasing complexity constrains large-scale social systems.

Quantum key distribution (QKD) guarantees information-theoretic security by the laws of physics, but deployment at scale requires compact, manufacturable photonic terminals. Continuous-variable QKD (CV-QKD) is well suited for this transition through telecom-compatible, room-temperature coherent detection. However, unifying full on-chip core terminal integration, room-temperature operation, high loss tolerance, and composable end-to-end security in long-distance QKD remains a key bottleneck. Here we report a fully integrated CV-QKD platform in which two hybrid III–V/Si$_3$N$_4$ integrated lasers, a silicon transmitter, and a silicon coherent receiver implement the core terminal functions, operating with a local local oscillator (LLO) over fibre links of 25–150 km. A Bayesian machine-learning algorithm maintains robust phase lock throughout the long records required for composable security, consistently outperforming the conventional unscented Kalman filter, while rate-matched multidimensional reconciliation approaches the Shannon limit. The system certifies a composable finite-size secret-key rate of 29.3 kbps at 100 km from a 140-billion-symbol block, with 12.9 kbps at 125 km under finite-size analysis and 9.17 kbps at 150 km under asymptotic analysis. By establishing the longest finite-size and asymptotic reaches and the highest secret-key rate per symbol reported for integrated CV-QKD, this work advances the development of practical chip-based quantum networks.

Star formation takes place in varied environments, from isolated clumps to massive molecular cloud complexes. However, whether the environment in which a star forms has any effect on the formation process remains a matter of debate. The molecular outflows, launched during the formation of protostars present a more easily accessible way to study star formation in different environments. The DR21 ridge, in the Cygnus-X high-mass star-forming complex, hosts a high number of massive dense cores and embedded protostars with outflows. We aim to identify molecular outflows associated with dense molecular cores along the DR21 ridge, and investigate whether the extended environment impacts the formation process of stars within it. We identified molecular outflows along the DR21 ridge using HCO+ J=1-0, H13CO+ J=1-0, and SiO J=2-1 observations obtained with the IRAM 30m telescope and NOEMA as part of the CASCADE program. We calculated outflow properties and performed statistical comparisons between the DR21 ridge sources and a literature sample of low- to high-mass outflow sources. Based on the morphology of HCO+, H13CO+ and SiO, we identify molecular outflows in 14 out of 34 dense cores (41%) along the DR21 ridge. Despite the high density of star formation in DR21, the resulting outflow properties are found to be in good agreement with the established correlations between outflow and source properties. Little variation is seen in the outflow properties of sources along the ridge, with the exception of sources located at the intersection of the DR21 ridge with large-scale (~1 pc) accretion filaments. These sources are found to drive the most powerful outflows. Overall, our results indicate that protostellar outflow properties, even when driven by sources forming in an extreme and clustered region, such as the DR21 ridge, remain largely unaffected.

We investigate the dynamics of a quadratically coupled system under the influence of an external drive applied to the second oscillator, where the coupling facilitates a high-order synchronization with phase-locking emerging in the form of 2:1 between the oscillators. Our analysis reveals a synchronization blockade in the first oscillator, characterized by the complete suppression of conventional 1:1 phase-locking with the drive. In contrast, we observe that the directly driven second oscillator synchronizes with the drive, showing 1:1 phase-locking but notably at second harmonic frequency. A classical mean-field analysis of the corresponding equations of motion reproduces this asymmetric phase-locking geometry which demonstrates that the phase-locking structure itself can be understood from the nonlinear classical dynamics. The quantum analysis, however, reveals the microscopic origin of the synchronization blockade. Furthermore, we show that the system exhibits mutual synchronization when both the oscillators satisfies the resonance condition, enabling coherent energy exchange facilitated by nonlinear quadratic coupling. The mutual synchronization shows synchronized regimes and also subtle suppression of synchronized regimes near resonance occurring due to spectral splitting of the energy states. Using perturbation analysis of the master equation within the low excitation subspace, we analyze steady-state phase distribution and synchronization measures, supported by population statistics and spectral responses. We also propose possible experimental realizations in trapped-ions and optomechanical setups. These findings highlight the crucial role of quadratic coupling in enabling nonclassical synchronization phenomena, offering deeper insights for quantum control strategies and the development of quantum information platforms.

We investigate the sensitivity of DUNE-like facilities to flavor-changing neutral-current interactions between down and strange quarks through inclusive deep-inelastic neutrino scattering. In the framework of a general low-energy effective Lagrangian for Dirac and Majorana neutrinos, we evaluate projected sensitivities for CP- and $\tau$-optimized beam configurations. The strongest bounds on the dimensionless Wilson coefficients, defined relative to the Fermi constant $G_F$, reach $\mathcal{O}(10^{-3})\text{--}\mathcal{O}(10^{-2})$ at the near detector, whereas far-detector limits are roughly one order of magnitude weaker. When systematic uncertainties are included, the near-detector sensitivity is dominated by the background-rate uncertainty, while the far-detector sensitivity is limited primarily by the signal-rate uncertainty. At the far detector, the dependence of the projected bounds on the neutrino mass ordering and the Dirac CP-violating phase $\delta_{\mathrm{CP}}$ is largely confined to coefficients involving the electron flavor.

Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly adopted as closed-loop controllers in physical multi-agent systems, yet their emergent collective dynamics remain incompletely characterised. We deploy 22 LLM agents as direct, real-time target-speed controllers (per 0.5 s cycle, with IDM as collision-avoidance clamp) on a 230 m ring road under the Sugiyama 2008 paradigm, reproducing human-like stop-and-go waves. Six matched controls spanning stochasticity (white noise, OU noise, temperature), population variance, and dynamical instability (delay, OV model) are systematically excluded. The surviving phenomenon, termed Sustained Heterogeneity (SH), is the persistent, approximately temperature-insensitive (approx. 8 percent across a 6x T sweep), per-cycle divergence in LLM-chosen target-speed adjustments, propagating through a three-stage cascade of drift, gap erosion, and nonlinear braking. Across four traffic densities, the critical LLM penetration fraction p_c decreases monotonically from no transition at density 43.5 veh/km to p_c approx 0.23 at density 95.7 veh/km, consistent with an initiation-threshold model governed by trigger distance, stochasticity, and fleet size. Chain-of-thought analysis of 39,600 decisions across three seeds shows agents engage in multi-factor safety reasoning, yet systematic divergence persists, implying stability must be enforced at the dynamics layer. This is the first study to identify a previously uncharacterised collective mechanism in LLM-controlled traffic and map a density-dependent phase boundary p_c(rho).

Superpositions of macroscopically distinct coherent states, or cat states, are a key resource for quantum technologies. In particular, two-mode binomial cat states can give rise to exact quantum error correction in continuous-variable quantum computing. However, their preparation typically requires non-Gaussian initial states, such as Fock or NOON states, which are challenging to realize experimentally. Here, we propose a protocol to generate two-mode binomial cat states where the only requirements are Gaussian initial states in combination with heralded heterodyne measurements. Our approach utilizes cross-Kerr interactions between bosonic modes commonly realizable in superconducting circuit architectures. We show that by adjusting the input state parameters, our protocol remains robust to dissipation under realistic experimental conditions. Our work provides a practical route to realizing multinomial cat states in current experimental platforms without requiring non-Gaussian initial resources, overcoming a key limitation of existing preparation schemes.

The flat DHS connection $\mathcal J_{\mathrm{DHS}}$ constructed in arXiv:2602.01461 is smooth on the configuration space of $n$ points on a fixed compact Riemann surface $\Sigma$ of arbitrary genus $h$, takes values in an infinite-dimensional Lie algebra $\hat{\mathfrak t}_{h,n}$ and is invariant under the modular group $\mathrm{Sp}(2h,\mathbb Z)$. This paper is the first in a series for a program whose goal is to extend the connection $\mathcal J_{\mathrm{DHS}}$ to a global flat connection on the Teichmüller space $\mathcal T_{h,n}$ valued in the Lie algebra of derivations of $\hat{\mathfrak t}_{h,n}$. Upon the choice of local coordinates adapted to the map $\mathcal T_{h,n}\to \mathcal T_h$, such a connection splits into three pieces: $\mathcal J_{\mathrm{DHS}}$, a piece $\mathcal L$ corresponding to holomorphic directions of $\mathcal T_h$ and a third piece corresponding to anti-holomorphic directions in $\mathcal T_h$. In this paper, we isolate the system of equations satisfied by $\mathcal L$ and obtain its solution locally and explicitly. The construction of a global extension of $\mathcal J_{\mathrm{DHS}}$ to $\mathcal T_{h,n}$ and the extension of the meromorphic connection of arXiv:1112.0864 to $\mathcal T_{h,n}$, are relegated to future publications in this series.

Synchronization is conventionally understood as the emergence of a phase-locked collective state among interacting dynamical units. However, extending this notion to systems whose dynamical variables are defined on higher-dimensional simplices introduces fundamentally new constraints arising from the topology of the underlying simplicial complex. In the simplicial Kuramoto model, nontrivial topological cycles give rise to a higher dimensional harmonic subspace that is unaffected by the coupling and can therefore drift indefinitely, preventing a globally synchronized state. To resolve this we employ Hodge decomposition on simplicial Kuramoto dynamics and investigated the components. Despite this topological obstruction, we show that the simplicial Kuramoto model admits fixed-point states in the exact and coexact sectors of the Hodge decomposition above critical coupling strengths, which we derive analytically for both sectors. This decomposition provides a generalized notion of synchronization in which the non-harmonic components converge to fixed states. We further investigate the robustness of these fixed-point states to external perturbations. Excluding the drifting and non-interacting harmonic component, the perturbation response is governed by the spectrum of weighted Laplacian and recovers a Kirchhoff index dependence analogous to standard Kuramoto case. In contrast, the harmonic sector is non-dissipative, and consequently the fragility of the system increases with the dimension of this topological subspace. We characterize this effect numerically using triangulated tori with varying first Betti number and find a superlinear scaling relation between system fragility and the dimension of the harmonic sector.

Quantifying ultrafast orbital pumping and transport remains challenging because spin and orbital currents contribute coherently to terahertz emission. Here, we combine spintronic terahertz emission spectroscopy with wedge-sample thickness control to disentangle these contributions in Fe, Co and Ni heterostructures with Ta, W and Nb. Their opposite spin Hall and orbital Hall polarities enable quantitative determination of relative pumping strengths and propagation lengths. We find that orbital pumping increases from Fe to Ni, with inferred orbital-to-spin current ratios reaching several tens of percent in Ni, exceeding current microscopic predictions. Remarkably, Nb exhibits an orbital diffusion length of ~1.5 nm, substantially longer than in Ta and W and beyond the sub-nanometre scale predicted by recent orbital-relaxation calculations. These findings provide quantitative experimental benchmarks for ultrafast orbital pumping and transport.

In cold molecular clouds, gas freeze-out onto dust grains initiates interstellar ice formation, yet sticking probabilities of heavy species are often assumed to be near unity at low temperature. Recent laboratory measurements on realistic grain analogues show that this assumption can fail. Using CO as a prototype, we investigate how nanoscale surface morphology controls adsorption and ice growth at 10 K on highly oriented pyrolytic graphite and carbon soot. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, low-temperature scanning tunneling microscopy, kinetic Monte Carlo simulations, and a thermodynamic description are combined to relate molecular retention to local surface structure. CO does not adsorb with unit sticking on graphite: adsorption proceeds through monolayer growth, a reduced-retention crossover near monolayer completion, and delayed multilayer growth. STM shows that CO remains highly mobile on graphite terraces and is stabilized mainly at island edges and terrace steps. On soot, the same sequence occurs at much higher exposures and with substantially lower sticking coefficients, while simulations show preferential retention in concave regions and poor wetting of convex asperities. These results indicate that low-temperature sticking is governed by post-impact exploration and competition between stabilization and escape. Nanoscale morphology amplifies this mechanism, reducing effective sticking probabilities and delaying gas freeze-out on realistic dust grains.