Papers

Linear Optical Quantum Computing (LOQC) is emerging as a promising technology in large-scale quantum computing. Corresponding devices, including linear optical circuits, are rapidly growing in size and fabrication precision. However, even with improved quality, the circuits still exhibit imperfections leading to photon loss or phase noise that vary across the circuit. Already small deficiencies can have a vast impact on both accuracy and efficiency. For computations that do not require the entire linear optical circuit, so-called subcircuits, one can choose where to perform the computation, opening optimization opportunities that are addressed by subcircuit compilation. Current compilers spread the subcircuit's computation across the entire circuit, connecting the same input and output ports, thereby failing to fully exploit the optimization opportunities. However, given the subcircuit's reduced size compared to the entire circuit, one can keep its implementation localized and intentionally route photons to connect good input and output ports. This, however, is a highly non-trivial task, as numerous options must be weighed against one another, and the quality of the solution is influenced by a wide range of hardware parameters. In particular, the reflectivities of imperfect beam splitters can lead to photon losses during routing, which must be traded off against losses at the input and output ports due to imperfect transmission rates. Since current compilers do not account for these effects, we propose the first efficient subcircuit compilation method that optimizes for the coincidence rate, the probability of successfully measuring all desired photons, by handling hardware imperfections. Our evaluations demonstrate significant improvement over existing methods in robustness against phase noise and significantly increased coincidence rates across all benchmarks of up to plus 33.2%.

We determine the conditions under which the nonlinear Maxwell-Cattaneo theory of charge transport admits a local Gaussian Schwinger-Keldysh embedding with a particular modified dynamical KMS symmetry. We show that treating the additional vector as intrinsically dissipative fundamentally modifies the entropy-current analysis: the hydrostatic generating functional no longer fixes all entropy-current improvements, which must instead be supplied independently. Subsequently we discuss the additional constraints not contained in the hydrodynamic analysis that are imposed by the modified KMS transformation becoming a symmetry of the action. We both interpret and supply the corresponding stochastic quasi-hydrodynamics.

We construct a class of integrable chiral fermionic quantum field theories with interactions that depend on both space and time. The construction starts from a unitary, regular, difference-form two-body scattering matrix satisfying braiding unitarity and the Yang–Baxter equation. Each freely moving right- or left-moving particle carries a characteristic coordinate that remains constant along its trajectory, and the scattering matrix depends on differences of these coordinates. The many-body amplitudes form a discrete connection over the coordinate-ordering sectors. The Yang–Baxter equation gives local path independence, while periodic winding on a spatial circle produces quantum Knizhnik–Zamolodchikov (qKZ) difference equations expressing global flatness. Once a reference amplitude satisfying the exchange and qKZ constraints is specified, these transport equations determine the exact wavefunction in every fixed-particle-number sector. Independent reparametrizations of the right- and left-moving characteristics give couplings that depend on both space and time. For the chiral $SU(2)$ Gross–Neveu realization, we solve the qKZ equations for this full characteristic family using off-shell Bethe vectors. The resulting amplitudes are written in the characteristic labels, and their pullbacks give exact many-body wavefunctions for the corresponding space-time-dependent couplings. The two-body amplitude is a ratio of Gamma functions that resums the phase shifts from successive scattering processes. Equal-slope affine maps give a spatially homogeneous specialization in which the coupling depends only on time, and the Bethe ansatz with constant coupling is recovered when the qKZ step vanishes.

Breaking of $SU(5)$ down to the Standard Model gauge group can be implemented by any non-trivial self-conjugate scalar representation with a suitable vacuum expectation value. The Georgi-Glashow model accomplishes this breaking with a 24-dimensional representation. That choice, although the most economical one, fails to unify the gauge coupling constants. Moreover, subsequent breaking of the Standard Model down to $SU(3) \times U(1)_\mathrm{em}$ with a $5$-dimensional representation fails to simultaneously provide viable masses for the down-type quarks and the charged leptons. We show that the substitution of the $24$-dimensional representation with a $75$-dimensional representation fixes the gauge coupling unification issue outrightly. We furthermore pin down, by computing the full mass spectrum of the multiplets in $75$-dimensional representation, the range of the unification scale $m_{\rm GUT}$ to be $10^{15}\,\text{GeV} \lesssim m_{\rm GUT} \lesssim 10^{16}\,\text{GeV}$. This unification window is partially excluded by Super-Kamiokande data and will be experimentally accessible at Hyper-Kamiokande. The second issue with the Georgi-Glashow model can be addressed, for example, with vectorlike fermions. The $24$-dimensional scenario admits three different types of vectorlike fermions that can properly account for the mismatch between the down-type quark and the charged lepton masses. The $75$-dimensional scenario, on the other hand, offers enhanced predictivity by allowing only a unique vectorlike addition of $10_F + \overline{10}_F$ that restores realistic charged fermion masses and modestly pushes the upper limit on the unification scale to $m_{\rm GUT} \lesssim 3\times10^{16}\,\text{GeV}$. The proposed framework with $75$-dimensional scalar representation can thus serve as a phenomenologically viable alternative to the standard Georgi-Glashow symmetry breaking paradigm.

We propose a framework for understanding the information loss paradox in the context of canonical quantum gravity. We first revisit several approaches to black hole evaporation that do not involve an event horizon. In these models, we assume that each time slice corresponds to a coherent state in the gravitational phase space. Due to this property, the quantum state associated with a given spatial configuration will have a nonzero overlap with another spatial configuration. We show how this property can account for both semi-classical dynamics and unitary time evolution. We introduce an explicit toy model that follows semi-classical time evolution at the coarse-grained level; in addition, its time evolution is unitary at the fine-grained level. The only price that one must pay is the violation of the entropy bound; we discuss reasons why this may be justifiable.

We extend the algebro-geometric construction of bifiltered affine schemes that encode both the Higgs branch and the Macdonald index of 4d $\mathcal{N}=2$ superconformal field theories to theories with non-trivial Higgs branches. For the Argyres–Douglas theories $\mathcal{D}_p(SU(N))$, we find that a universal potential, given by a function in the Casimir invariants of $\mathfrak{sl}(N)$, determines the scheme. The scheme is given by a `fattened' nilpotent orbit closure, encoding the OPE decoupling structure of the 4d theory. A procedure we call syzygy maximization fixes the precise potential in a broad range of examples, and the resulting schemes reproduce the 4d data. The underlying graded ring gives conjectural presentations of Zhu's $C_2$-algebra of the associated vertex operator algebra, while the bifiltration refines Arakawa's associated scheme by retaining the R-symmetry information. We find that Higgs branch renormalization group flows are realized by pulling back the same universal potential to the corresponding Slodowy slices, including flows for which the infrared Higgs branch is a point. In particular, our construction provides a systematic method for determining the Macdonald indices of the $\mathcal{D}_p(SU(N), O)$ theories, for which no general expressions were previously known.

We report an independent identification of the ultra metal-poor (UMP) star ($\rm[Fe/H] =-4.06$) $Gaia$ DR3 $\texttt{source_id}$ 4795913112968206720 (GDR3_479591) in the $Gaia$ mission's Blue and Red Photometer 'XP' spectro-photometric catalog. We combine multi-band photometry, astrometry, and high-resolution spectroscopy to confirm GDR3_479591 as a red giant-branch (RGB) star located at ${\sim} 6\,{\rm kpc}$ from the Sun. Abundance analysis under local thermodynamic equilibrium reveals significant enhancements, relative to the solar level, in carbon ($\rm[C/Fe] = +1.54$, after evolutionary correction for depletion in the RGB), nitrogen ($\rm[N/Fe] = +2.64$), and oxygen ($\rm[O/Fe] = +2.62$). The CNO-enhanced GDR3_479591 is thus one of only 5 UMP stars with a detected oxygen abundance. The CNO excess is accompanied by enhancements in several other light elements, such as Na, Mg, Al, and Si. We demonstrate that the chemical pattern of GDR3_479591 can be reproduced by the yields of a single Population~III 'faint' supernova with progenitor mass of $\sim$21-to-28$\,M_\odot$ and a low explosion energy of ($0.3 \leq E_{\rm SN}/(10^{51}\,{\rm erg}) \leq 0.9$). Additionally, we use literature metal-poor stars to show that, contrary to recent propositions for high-redshift galaxies, a mild enhancement in [C/O] does not automatically translate to the high [C/Fe] typically observed in UMP stars in the Milky Way and its satellites. GDR3_479591 could not be dynamically associated with any of the most relevant accreted substructures in the Galactic halo, and we speculate that it was formed in an ultra-faint dwarf galaxy environment that later merged with the Milky Way.

Measurements of stellar-mass black hole spin probe accretion under strong gravity and constrain black hole formation and evolution. Intermediate states, in which thermal disk, coronal, and reflection emission all contribute significantly, are particularly complex environments for spin measurements and useful for probing spectral-modeling systematics. We investigate these effects using paired, non-simultaneous Swift/XRT and NuSTAR observations of GRS 1716-249 and GRS 1739-278. We jointly model the spectra with kerrbb and relxillCp, linking or separately varying their spin parameters, and explore the parameter space with a Markov Chain Monte Carlo analysis. Within the adopted model, GRS 1716 strongly favors a high spin, whereas the GRS 1739 data allow high- and low-spin solutions with nearly identical fit statistics. Parameter-stepping experiments show that coordinated changes among parameters allow substantially different physical configurations to produce nearly indistinguishable spectra. For these datasets and within the adopted model, energy-band tests show that the Fe band provides the strongest direct sensitivity to the inferred spin, while the Compton hump helps constrain reflection parameters and the soft X-ray band characterizes the underlying continuum. When both the disk continuum and reflection components are adequately constrained, their associated spin parameters can favor a common solution within the joint model. With weaker constraints, the model permits statistically comparable solutions spanning nearly the full range of spins. Robust joint continuum and reflection spin inference requires broadband coverage, independent binary constraints, physically self-consistent models, and thorough exploration of parameter space.

We introduce a general mechanism for engineering moment-selective temporal designs with hierarchically structured aperiodic drives. At special control settings where the driven dynamics is constrained by a finite symmetry group, lower-order moments can already reproduce Haar statistics while a selected higher-order deviation remains nonzero. A small static detuning from such a setting generically produces an exponentially long lifetime whose exponent scales inversely with the square of the detuning. We illustrate this mechanism in qubit systems through exact Fibonacci and silver-mean constructions with tetrahedral and icosahedral resonances, for which the first retained non-Haar moments occur at orders $3$ and $6$, respectively. We further show that stochastic control fluctuations produce a qualitatively different cutoff from coherent detuning. Finally, we propose a finite-time signature of the long-lived moment that can be measured without requiring observations over exponentially long times.

We perform a numerical conformal bootstrap study of the mixed system of correlation functions involving a spin-1 $\mathrm{U}(1)$ current $J$ and the stress-energy tensor $T$ in parity-preserving 3d CFTs. We find universal bounds on the stress-tensor two-point function $c_T$, which numerically reproduce the conformal collider bounds on $\langle JJT\rangle$ and $\langle TTT\rangle$, as well as bounds on the leading parity-even and parity-odd scalar operator dimensions. Under mild assumptions, we determine the values of the $\langle JJT\rangle$ and $\langle TTT\rangle$ three-point functions in the $\mathrm{O}(2)$ vector model. The $\langle TTT\rangle$ result is new and $\langle JJT\rangle$ is consistent with a previous result in the literature.

Many dark sector models predict the formation of dark objects, such as solitons and dark stars, which can be searched for through their gravitational lensing of gravitational waves (GWs). Although these objects vary widely in size and compactness, most GW lensing studies have focused on point-like lenses. The finite size of an extended lens is important when it exceeds its Einstein radius. We evaluate the frequency-dependent effects on GW waveforms from extended lenses and demonstrate that they can be probed with current and future GW data. While finite-size effects can weaken the bounds on the fraction of dark matter in these objects compared to the point-like limit, current GW data provides complementary constraints to other gravitational tests for lens masses between $10^2M_\odot$ and $10^5M_\odot$; future LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA data and next-generation observatories will surpass their sensitivity. As expected, we find that the finite-size effects are important when the lens radius exceeds $\sim \text{few} \times 10^{6}R_\odot (M_L/100 M_\odot)^{1/2}$. Interpreting these constraints within specific models (a simple dissipative dark sector and axion stars), we show that current and future observations probe significant portions of the microphysical parameter space.

This is the second paper in a series where we examine archival far-ultraviolet spectroscopy of 29 massive elliptical galaxies from the Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE) with modern methods. In the first paper, we performed SED modeling with aperture-matched photometry and analyzed the young and old stellar populations in these galaxies. In this paper, we report extinction-corrected O VI $\lambda\lambda$1032,1038 $\mathring{\rm A}$ fluxes and upper limits for each galaxy, which we use to infer the rate at which gas is cooling through $10^{5.5}$ K via multiphase condensation of the galaxy's CGM ($\dot{M}_{\rm O\,VI}$) under the assumption of steady radiative cooling. By considering both Galactic and intrinsic extinction, we overwhelmingly find $\dot{M}_{\rm O\,VI}$ to be larger than values found previously in the literature by a median of $\sim 80\%$. Additionally, we quantify correlations between $\dot{M}_{\rm O\,VI}$ and star formation rates, classical luminosity-based X-ray cooling rates, and X-ray spectroscopic cooling rates. The results suggest that the efficiency of cooling from the $\gtrsim 10^7$ K circumgalactic medium evolves with host mass, being suppressed by a factor of $\sim 4$-$5$ more at the cluster scale than it is at the group and elliptical scales. In contrast, under the steady cooling assumption, cooling from $10^{5.5}$ K to the molecular phase appears to be suppressed by an order of magnitude, independent of mass, requiring turbulent mixing layers, thermal conduction, multiphase recycling, a bottom-heavy initial mass function, or some other additional physics to explain.

Future quantum communication networks will conceivably support cryptographic tasks that require entanglement among more than two users. Quantum secret sharing is a prime example where entanglement provides a direct means to coordinate untrusted parties with security from eavesdropping in a multi-party setting. However, the canonical GHZ-based protocols can be vulnerable to participant attacks, in which untrusted parties try to learn the secret without collaborating. Here, we experimentally evaluate a discrete-variable $(n,n)$-threshold quantum secret-sharing protocol whose finite-key analysis provides composable security against general attacks, including participant attacks. Using two domain-engineered entangled photon pair sources, we generate 4-qubit GHZ states at rates above $5\times10^3$ fourfold events per second and a maximum asymptotic secret key rate of $750 \pm 10$ bits per second. We then distribute the state through a 4-arm star network comprising 20k̃m of fibre in total. From the measured event rates and error statistics, we infer that a randomised 24-hour execution with the optimised basis probability would yield a composable finite-key lower bound of 8.7 Mbits, under the assumption that the measured source and device statistics remain stationary.

Flavor plays a crucial role in the structure of the Standard Model. As such, many important collider physics measurements incorporate the flavor information of detected hadrons. Recent progress in the study of energy correlators has enabled collider physics measurements of energy flux to be reformulated as operator statements. In this Letter, we introduce flavor flux correlators, which measure the angular distribution and correlations of flavor quantum numbers. We emphasize a unique feature of heavy flavor flux correlators as compared to correlators of other charges, namely the $b$ and $c$ flavor quantum numbers are gapped at the heavy quark mass scale, making them a particularly clean perturbative observables, with $\mathcal{O}(\Lambda_{\text{QCD}}/m_Q)$ suppressed non-perturbative power corrections. As an application, we reformulate the heavy quark forward-backward asymmetry as a macroscopic consequence of a mixed electroweak anomaly of the heavy-quark flavor current. Using the relation to the anomaly, we compute the flavor flux correlator analytically at next-to-next-to-next-to-leading order and verify using parton shower simulations that non-perturbative corrections are suppressed, as expected from the gapped nature of the heavy flavor quantum numbers. Flavor flux correlators can be measured using archival electron-positron collision data, as well as at Belle II and future colliders.

We describe the implementation and use of colour_tensors: a Mathematica package built for the concrete construction of explicit colour tensors involving arbitrarily charged particles in any gauge theory. These can be used to directly determine linear relations among colour tensors and compute a number of otherwise difficult, representation-theoretic quantities relevant to scattering amplitudes such as colour-interference between partial amplitudes.

We present a fully nonlinear relativistic description of the observed pulsar timing modulations, defined through the ratio of the proper-time intervals between two successive emissions of radio pulses and their observations by a pulsar timing array. Working in the limit of a vanishing emission interval, we derive the observed pulsar timing modulation to second order in relativistic perturbation theory around a Minkowski background, without fixing a gauge and retaining the full scalar, vector, and tensor content of the metric perturbations. Although the derivation naturally introduces several gauge-dependent intermediate quantities, we explicitly demonstrate that they combine into a coordinate-independent expression. Moreover, we explicitly show that the second-order timing modulation from two neighboring radio pulses coincides with the observed redshift, defined as the fractional change in wavelength along a single geodesic. The agreement represents a nontrivial second-order realization of the exact nonlinear equivalence proven in Magi & Yoo 2026.

We assess whether electromagnetically identified supermassive black hole (SMBH) binary candidates populate the rare, high-amplitude tail of the gravitational wave (GW) amplitude distribution. Using an SMBH binary population model fitted to the NANOGrav 15-year data, we find that 3C~66B and Mrk~501 are likely to stand out from the GW background, making them promising targets for individual-source searches. Furthermore, we show that individual detections can probe the binary hardening mechanism, as models with strong environmental hardening predict a higher abundance of individually resolvable binaries than purely GW-driven models. Applying the same population fits and accounting for the confusion noise from the unresolved population, we forecast that the Square Kilometre Array Observatory (SKAO) will resolve tens of individual binaries, with 3C~66B robustly detectable.

Quantum kernels promise exponentially large feature spaces, but expressive circuits render their Gram matrices uninformative, bandwidth tuning collapses them toward classical RBF, and the practical consensus is that quantum kernels add nothing on classical data. We answer another productive question, an architectural one: whether the structure of an encoding circuit can carry an inductive bias that tuned classical kernels lack. We introduce AeRot, a quantum kernel fusing amplitude encoding of l2-normalized delay windows with a grouped single-qubit rotation layer that assigns contiguous temporal blocks to each qubit, making the circuit delay-window-aware. On Lorenz-63 kernel ridge regression with cross-validated bandwidths over 100 seeds, AeRot outperforms tuned RBF and Matern-5/2, the advantage emerging at physical horizons >= 0.15 tu and reaching +0.137 mean R^2 at 0.25 tu (5 qubits, window 32). Linear-stability analysis of the window tail localises the advantage to the unstable saddle-approach regime: AeRot wins 83% of windows in the most unstable decile, with the win rate rising monotonically with tail instability and a sign flip at the local stability boundary. The difficulty is fold-branch ambiguity: trajectories approaching the saddle are locally diverging, and Euclidean kernels struggle to resolve which lobe the trajectory will commit to. Structural diagnostics confirm Gram matrices structurally distinct from tuned RBF, with strictly higher target-kernel alignment at every horizon. The gain is architectural: a finite-sample inductive-bias effect of temporally structured encoding on a folded attractor, with no computational-separation claim attached. To our knowledge this is the first mechanistic localisation of quantum-kernel advantage to a specific dynamical regime of a classical system.

We formulate and prove existence of pure quasifree Hadamard states for the Klein–Gordon field with Dirichlet boundary condition on a globally hyperbolic spacetime with timelike boundary. The microlocal condition is imposed on the one-particle Hilbert-space-valued distribution $p\circ G_D$ rather than on the two-point function. This is expressed by a $b$-wave-front set condition on the compressed future cone. The analysis on the manifold with corners $\bar M\times\bar M$ is then almost completely avoided. We prove that our version of the Hadamard condition is universal in the class of quasi-free Hadamard states. We also prove a propagation theorem for positive-energy microlocal splittings which uses only a microlocal splitting in the small $b$-calculus and well-posedness of the Dirichlet problem, and in particular requires no propagation theorem for reflected or gliding rays; combined with an explicit computation in the ultrastatic case and a Fulling–Narcowich–Wald deformation argument this yields the construction of a pure quasi-free Dirichlet–Hadamard state.

Multireference electronic-structure calculations remain difficult to automate because critical workflow decisions, including active-space selection, state averaging, convergence recovery, and state identification, traditionally rely on expert judgment. Here, we investigate whether an autonomous large language model (LLM) agent can perform these tasks without human intervention. The agent selects active spaces using literature-grounded analogies or explicitly documented chemical reasoning, generates and submits ORCA calculations, analyzes outputs, and records all decisions in an auditable reasoning log. Benchmarking against 558 vertical transition energies (VTEs) from QUESTDB shows that an unguided baseline agent achieves 24.9% coverage with a mean absolute error (MAE) of 0.373 eV. Introducing a structured decision ladder increases coverage to 44.1% while reducing the MAE to 0.339 eV. The largest gains are observed for double and Rydberg excitations, demonstrating that expert-informed procedural guidance substantially improves active-space construction and state identification. When provided with complete workflow information, the agent successfully reproduces published QUEST calculations with an MAE of only 23 meV, resolving 75% of target configurations within seven attempts. These results demonstrate that contemporary LLM agents can autonomously execute and reproduce complex multireference quantum-chemical workflows, while highlighting the importance of structured reasoning frameworks for achieving reliable high-throughput and high-fidelity electronic-structure calculations.

Metallic nanostructures in combination with femtosecond lasers are a well-suited platform for the control of photoelectrons by strong and nano-localized driving fields, with high relevance for ultrafast, coherent electron emitters and petahertz electronics. Photoelectron spectroscopy resolves such photoelectron dynamics, but lacks nanoscale spatial resolution, making it only suited for single emitters or homogeneous arrays. We report the first strong-field experiment combining both photoemission electron microscopy and momentum microscopy, two complementary techniques providing spatial and momentum resolution within the same instrument. We apply this new methodology to a double-hole nanoantenna with sub-10 nm apex radii, demonstrating the potential of this approach for the control of photoelectrons in heterogeneous nanostructured samples using few-cycle light fields. Our measurements reveal distinct signatures of two classes of electron trajectories in the near-field. Quiver trajectories result in directed, angularly more focused emission, whereas subcycle trajectories give rise to a broader transverse momentum distribution. Surprisingly, this observation disagrees with previously reported emission characteristics from nanotip emitters, which we classify as a special case of a broader class of curved emitter surfaces driven by ultrashort light fields. This demonstrates both the impact of sophisticated electron detection methods and the potential of strong-field control of electrons in nanoscale geometries.

PiMiX (Physics-informed Meta-instrument for eXperiments) was introduced for multi-instrument, multi-experiment, and simulation-experiment data fusion in radiographic imaging and tomography (RadIT). Here we present PiMiX 2.02 as an evolving AI-enhanced cyber-physical meta-instrument integrating imaging sensors, near-sensor computing, data fusion, physics-informed inference, and human-supervised AI workflows across X-ray, neutron, and other modalities. Demonstrated capabilities include multimodal CMOS radiation imaging, simulation-assisted sub-pixel neutron localization, and edge-deployed optical-neural-network (ONN) inference; GPU and ONN implementations achieved greater than 96% precision for neutron-event detection with sub-micron localization. A further advance is human-in-the-loop agentic-AI co-analysis of X-ray and neutron images from inertial-confinement-fusion experiments. Beyond conventional preprocessing, the workflow generates competing feature hypotheses, ranks contours using physics-informed evidence, estimates confidence, and presents alternatives for human review. The same architecture adapts to different physics: X-ray analysis emphasizes dark, nonuniform ring structures using deformable closed paths and multi-scale evidence, whereas neutron analysis targets bright emission envelopes using fractional-emission levels, intensity gradients, and cross-filter persistence. We also highlight automated comparison of an as-designed stereolithography model with an X-ray CT reconstruction of an additively manufactured metal lattice. Together, these examples show progression from AI assistance in specific processing tasks to multi-task, multi-domain scientific co-analysis. PiMiX 2.0 further provides a pathway toward PRISM, a RadIT scientific foundation model, and tighter integration of diagnostics, digital representations, inference, and experimental control.

Previous works [1,2,3] expose a synthetic, Riemannian geometrization of electromagnetism that emerges naturally from the experimental bases provided by the Lorentz force and the Maxwell equations. Since the components of the associated space-time metric tensor depend on the four-vector velocity, Riemannian geometry does not fully describe the space-time geometry. The present work aims to provide a suitable geometrical basis for the problem, applying a pseudo-Finsler geometry – a Finsler geometry with a non-homogeneous norm.

We compute all stringy invariants, encoding orbifold cohomology numbers, of (the normalization of) the identity component of $G$-character varieties of free abelian groups and of moduli spaces of $G$-Higgs bundles on abelian varieties, for all complex connected reductive groups $G$. As an application, we provide a direct proof of a topological mirror symmetry statement: the equality of the stringy invariants for Langlands dual groups. In the framework of Ginzburg–Kaledin local resolutions, we discuss the meaning of these stringy invariants, showing that symplectic resolutions of these moduli spaces can only exist in the cases of groups of Dynkin type $A$, $B$, or $C$. When such resolutions exist, the computed stringy Hodge numbers agree with the actual Hodge numbers of the resolution.

Understanding interparticle radiation forces between spherical and nonspherical particles is crucial for the trapping of micro- and nano-objects in acoustophoresis. Most theoretical and numerical models treat spherical particles as identical to estimate interparticle forces, owing to their symmetry. Here, we elucidated interparticle radiation forces between three particles with different shapes and material contrast using experimentally validated numerical models. We performed a frequency sweep of the full acoustic device, accounting for viscous effects in a two-dimensional model, to predict the system's resonance. The pressure field obtained at the resonant frequency was then fitted to a 1D sinusoidal wave and used in a three-dimensional model based on the perturbation technique and tensor integral method to calculate the interparticle forces on the particles due to scattering and re-scattering of the acoustic field. Our results revealed a shape-dependent reversal of interparticle forces, even for positive-contrast materials. We found that for spherical particles, the interparticle forces are independent of material properties when the particles are positioned on the nodal plane. However, material contrast and particle asymmetry significantly affect interparticle forces when particles are placed outside the nodal plane. Finally, we studied the effects of the orientation of the asymmetric particle placed outside the nodal plane on the interparticle radiation forces. Interestingly, for the orientation angle of 0 degrees, the interparticle force is maximum for the asymmetrical particle and then gradually decreases to zero as we increase the orientation angle to 90 degrees. The detailed analysis presented in the paper will facilitate a better understanding of shape-based acoustic manipulation of microparticles.

Computing matrix inverses (or, e.g., left inverses) using known algorithms is in general computationally prohibitive in high dimension, such as in an operational weather forecasting context. In this article, a swift, scalable algorithm to calculate the left inverse (through singular values decompositions techniques) of a square root of a horizontally localized ensemble covariance matrix is introduced. In this algorithm, calculations involving model variables located in different grid vertical columns can be performed separately. This is the aspect that makes this algorithm scalable by allowing for parallel computing. The algorithm is developed in the case when the number of ensemble members equals the number of model variables in each grid vertical column (this number is of order $10^3$ for current high-resolution models). The algorithm is tested in a synthetic experiment on a three-dimensional grid, and it is found to have very good accuracy. Additionally, a version of the algorithm outputting the left-multiplication of a generic vector by that above-mentioned left inverse is also introduced. For operational applications, if executed on a single processor, that version of the algorithm is already $9$ orders of magnitude faster than a traditional algorithm, and, with multiple, parallel processors, it scales until the number of processors reaches the order of $10^6$. In addition, an application of the algorithm is pointed out: performing the transform from model variables to an alternative set of variables, defined herein as standardized variables, being climatologically uncorrelated and each having unit climatological error variance. Furthermore, it is pointed out that the standardized variables allow constructing a new Hybrid covariance model, which is positive definite and climatologically unbiased, and it features a geographically dependent climatological error covariance matrix.

In epsilon-near-zero (ENZ) materials, the vanishing real linear permittivity results in the leading-order contribution to the displacement field being nonlinear in the electric field, making conventional canonical quantization approaches highly non-trivial. Existing treatments generally quantize the linear modes first and introduce nonlinear interactions subsequently, an ordering that becomes inadequate in the ENZ regime. Here, we provide, to our knowledge, the first effective single-excitation quantization in which the near-zero linear response, leading nonlinearity, and loss jointly determine the elementary excitation. Using a solvable microscopic atomic system as a theoretical scaffold, we find that this excitation is a polariton: a dressed quasiparticle with partly field and partly material excitations whose coefficients can be parameterized by macroscopic susceptibilities. While this work considers a leading-order $\chi^{(3)}$ nonlinearity, the framework could be generalized to include other nonlinear corrections, including a controllable second-order susceptibility $\chi^{(2)}$ and systematic higher-order contributions $\chi^{(n)}$, $n>2$. Our findings pave the way toward practical applications in quantum photonics, such as single-photon non-demolition detection, by leveraging the strong nonlinearities intrinsic to zero-index materials.

We study the implications of a recent measurement of the primordial helium fraction from the Large Binocular Telescope for cosmological inference from the cosmic microwave background. We show that LBT establishes the robustness of cosmological parameters to theoretical assumptions about big bang nucleosynthesis: its empirical calibration of the helium fraction enables constraints on cosmology and inflation that are agnostic to BBN but as precise as those that instead enforce standard BBN predictions. Future CMB surveys require at most a marginal improvement in precision over LBT to maximize their BBN-agnostic constraining power when the radiation density is free (and no more than a factor of two improvement across all cases we consider). We then apply the LBT measurement to a number of scenarios that feature new physics in BBN and the CMB. First, we constrain nonstandard radiation sectors (interacting and free-streaming) and search for evolution of the radiation abundance between nucleosynthesis and recombination. We then test models that alleviate the Hubble tension and the tension between CMB and baryon acoustic oscillation data, including self-interacting light relics and varying fundamental constants; LBT precludes most but not all of the models we consider via their effect on BBN. Finally, we use the LBT measurement as an indirect but independent test of the neutron lifetime anomaly, inferring values that are consistent with "bottle" experiments and $2.4 \sigma$ below "beam" experiments.

Screened hybrid functionals such as HSE06 improve the description of band gaps, charge localization, and redox energetics relative to semilocal approximations, but their explicit Hartree-Fock exchange term is computationally costly for large, periodic systems, especially in plane-wave basis set calculations. Here we present RS-CIDER, a machine-learned non-local exchange functional that approximates the short-range Hartree-Fock exchange term in HSE06 by explicitly fitting both ground-state energies and single-particle energy levels. RS-CIDER combines scale-invariant semilocal and non-local density descriptors and can be evaluated self-consistently without explicitly applying the short-range Hartree-Fock exchange operator. RS-CIDER shows close agreement with HSE06 for molecular reaction energies and solid-state band gaps. Further tests across distinct materials show agreement between RS-CIDER and HSE06 for local magnetism, Cu-O phase competition, polaron localization, and neutral-defect energetics. For an Fe olivine, chemistry-specific fine-tuning recovers the HSE06 Li intercalation voltage. A timing benchmark shows that RS-CIDER reduces the measured per-SCF-step wall time by more than an order of magnitude relative to HSE06. Together, these molecular and solid-state results establish RS-CIDER as an efficient self-consistent machine-learned surrogate for HSE06.

We introduce a new family of trickledown theorems, a.k.a., local to global technique to bound the spectral gap of the Glauber dynamics for multi-state spin systems. In this technique instead of upper-bounding the influence matrix of a link of co-dimension 2 by $\lambda I$ (where $\lambda$ is the second eigenvalue of the link), we upper-bound the influence matrix after a carefully chosen rank-1 shift. The rank-1 shift allows for a significantly smaller upper-bound but it comes at the cost of bounding the average loss due to rank-1 perturbations. As an application we use this method to show that the natural Glauber dynamics mixes in polynomial time to generate samples from the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick model for $\beta\leq \tfrac{1}{2}+\varepsilon$, for an absolute constant $\varepsilon>0$. At the heart of the proof we manage to bound the loss due to rank-1 perturbations by averaging over all links of co-dimension 2.