Papers

We prove a spectral gap inequality for Gaussian measures modified by singular attractive pair interactions. The spectral gap constant is explicit and uniform in the number of particles and the regularization parameter. As an application, we use a corresponding spectral gap inequality for a cutoff interaction weight to obtain two-sided bounds on the transition density of the attractive logarithmic gas.

As advanced physical cloning and cyber-extraction techniques proliferate, achieving absolute hardware-level information security has become a paramount global challenge. Conventional architectures systems are fundamentally vulnerable because deterministic memory and cryptographic hardware are physically decoupled, exposing sensitive data to interception. While physical unclonable functions (PUFs) offer robust authentication, integrating them with high-density data writing within a unified nanoscale medium remains elusive. Here, we present an intrinsically secure all-in-one architecture that inextricably fuses high-dimensional data encoding with multiscale physical encryption within single nanodiamonds (NDs). Through precise focused-electron-beam irradiation, we achieve single-nanoparticle defect engineering, enabling deterministic base-36 data writing within individual NDs. Crucially, this customized memory layer is permanently locked within the medium's inherent stochasticity, combining macroscopic spatial PUFs with strictly irreproducible atomic-scale quantum fingerprints extracted via optically detected magnetic resonance (ODMR). By seamlessly embedding deterministic memory into an unclonable physical environment, our approach intrinsically eliminates the vulnerabilities of separated hardware, providing an unconditionally secure solid-state foundation for tamper-proof memory chips, zero-trust networks and next-generation data vaults.

We investigate net-baryon number fluctuations in the high-density, low-temperature region of the QCD phase diagram using the parity-doublet model (PDM) under the mean-field approximation. We compute the fluctuation ratios up to sixth order around the nuclear liquid-gas (LG) phase transition, where the high-order ratios are particularly sensitive. To connect the results with heavy-ion experiments, we test several different scenarios of chemical freeze-out. We find that near the LG transition the extracted fluctuations depend strongly on the choice of freeze-out curve. We self-consistently determine four freeze-out points from preliminary results of the STAR Collaboration. Comparing the experimental data with the PDM results along these four points, we find that the model describes the low energy ($\sqrt{s_{NN}}\lesssim$ 4 GeV) data well. This suggests that nucleon interactions and the LG phase transition may contribute significantly to the fluctuations in low energy heavy-ion collisions.

The derivative-free loss method (DFLM) is a mesh-free neural network approach for solving partial differential equations by simulating stochastic walkers rather than computing derivatives directly. Although DFLM has previously been applied to the Navier–Stokes equations, extending it to turbulent flows reveals two limitations of its simplest implementation. The walkers do not account for the swirling, directionally stretching motion of the flow, and randomly sampling the walkers used to evaluate the target introduces noise into the learned solution. We address both limitations with an analytic approximation of the walkers' local motion that captures directional stretching and eliminates this sampling noise, while remaining computationally efficient. We study the resulting method as a non-intrusive multiscale solver capable of learning macroscopic flow behavior without resolving every scale on a fine grid or explicitly coupling coarse- and fine-scale models. For two turbulent two-dimensional flows, the proposed method reproduces the macroscopic energy spectrum of fully resolved reference simulations more accurately than the standard method, particularly where directional stretching is strongest, confirming DFLM's efficacy as a multiscale solver for turbulent fluid systems.

GG Tau $A$ is a young triple system with the close pair, $Ab_1$–$Ab_2$, and $Aa$, surrounded by a massive circumtriple disk with a large inner cavity difficult to explain in a binary framework. We aim to determine the orbital architecture and individual stellar masses of GG Tau $A$ and assess how the available astrometric and disk-based constraints restrict the range of admissible solutions. We performed a joint fit using Oracle, developed specifically for hierarchical stellar systems. All astrometric measurements were placed in a common reference frame, since the historical wide-orbit astrometry is given relative to the unresolved photocenter of the $Ab$ subsystem. The fit included one new wide-orbit astrometric epoch and a prior on the total stellar mass derived from disk kinematics. We then applied, in post-processing, an additional geometrical constraint based on the observed center of the circumtriple disk. The fit yields orbital solutions compatible with the available astrometric and disk-based constraints and provides estimates of the individual stellar masses. The additional wide-orbit epoch only marginally reduces the range of admissible solutions. By contrast, the disk-center constraint leaves the favored orbital architectures largely unchanged but significantly tightens the stellar-mass partition. This yields posterior masses of $0.521^{+0.069}_{-0.051}$, $0.106^{+0.017}_{-0.013}$, and $0.79^{+0.10}_{-0.10}$ $M_\odot$ for $Ab_1$, $Ab_2$, and $Aa$, respectively. The reported values are posterior medians with 16th–84th percentile intervals. A joint treatment of the two orbital levels is required to recover a physically meaningful architecture and constrain the individual stellar masses. The resulting solutions provide a basis for future dynamical modeling of the circumtriple disk and for testing whether the observed cavity can further constrain the system architecture.

We use the proton spectrum resolved by LHAASO across the knee to test superheavy dark matter in the nucleon channel at PeV energies. Both the hardening at $0.34$ PeV and the knee at $3.3$ PeV are reproduced by nucleons from a relic of mass $5\cdot 10^{7}$ GeV decaying in the Galactic halo, with the mass as the only shape parameter of the spectrum and the background index profiled under an independent prior on the proton slope below $0.1$ PeV. It works equally well in all three hadronic-interaction-model reconstructions. On the other hand, the photons of the same cascade rule out this interpretation by about two orders of magnitude against the photon fraction of the cosmic radiation, and by about one order of magnitude against the LHAASO diffuse Galactic emission.

Quantum imaginarity, as a critical resource metric for quantifying intrinsic nonreal coherence encoded in quantum states, exhibits nontrivial evolutionary behaviors in curved spacetime backgrounds. This work focuses on bipartite Dirac field reduced states in the quantum atmosphere of a static Schwarzschild black hole, aiming to explore the modulation of three mainstream imaginarity measures by Hawking thermal radiation. We reveal that the relative-entropy imaginarity, the geometric imaginarity and robustness of imaginarity, the fully accessible state presents a valley-shaped radial profile with a local minimum inside the quantum atmosphere, while the cross-coupling and fully inaccessible states follow opposite peak-shaped trends. Further analysis demonstrates that the Hartle-Hawking constant significantly strengthens the redistribution effect of imaginarity across both regions, whereas an increase in the event horizon radius weakens such redistribution and flattens the extremum features. These findings offer a new perspective for decoding the information structure of black hole quantum atmospheres and the intrinsic quantum nature of Hawking radiation.

Exceptional points are topological defects of complex band structures that are stable against weak perturbations, yet in two-band systems with bounded non-Hermitian couplings they are ultimately removed by a sufficiently strong Hermitian field. Here we demonstrate a striking exception in a two-dimensional subwavelength atomic array. Along a continuous square-to-triangular deformation at fixed magnetic field, the bulk passes between line-gapped topological regions with \textcolor{black}{band Chern numbers \( (C_1,C_2)=(2,-2) \)} through a gapless exceptional region. Within a finite interval of lattice deformation, increasing the magnetic field merely drives the exceptional points toward the light cone because of the singular radiative dipolar couplings. We further show that skin localization toward open boundaries responds non-monotonically to the same field. An intermediate field drives a bipolar skin localization, with bulk modes from different spectral branches accumulating at opposite boundaries, whereas stronger fields suppress boundary localization. Our results establish the interplay of lattice geometry, light-cone singularity, and Hermitian magnetic field as a route to engineering Chern and exceptional topology beyond the conventional strong-field limit.

We establish the sharp CFL condition for the piecewise constant sparse grid discontinuous Galerkin (DG) method with forward Euler time stepping, applied to transport equations with constant coefficients on periodic domains in arbitrary dimensions. For the transport velocity $\boldsymbol c=(c_1,\ldots,c_d)$ and a uniform mesh of size $h$, we prove that the scheme is $L^2$ stable if and only if $\Delta t \leq {h}/{\max_{1\leq \ell\leq d}|c_\ell|}$, whereas the corresponding full grid upwind scheme is well-known to require $\Delta t\leq h/\sum_{\ell=1}^d |c_\ell|$. The sparse grid discretization therefore enlarges the admissible time step by a factor of ${(\sum_{\ell=1}^d |c_\ell|)}/{(\max_{1\leq \ell\leq d}|c_\ell|)}$, which lies between $1$ and $d$ and reaches $d$ for isotropic transport. The proof of sufficiency relies on projection leakage identities for the multilevel Haar decomposition, which allow the mixed directional terms in the energy estimate to be absorbed by the energy discarded by the sparse grid projection. The proof of sharpness follows from alternating modes in one dimension at the finest level. As a by-product, we obtain explicit formulas for the $L^2$ operator norm and the spectral radius of the amplification operator. For spaces over general downward closed index sets, we derive an explicit sufficient CFL condition and a geometric criterion for its sharpness. Numerical experiments in two and four dimensions confirm the theoretical results.

By consuming multiple copies of an unknown qubit state, one can modify its purity while preserving the direction of its Bloch vector. We determine the maximum linear rate at which qubit states of different purities can be interconverted, allowing a nonzero error, quantified, for instance, by the trace distance, provided that it vanishes in the limit of infinitely many copies. Interestingly, the optimal conversion rate is determined by the two eigenvalues of the complex right-logarithmic-derivative (RLD) Fisher information matrix associated with $\mathrm{SU}(2)$ rotations of the qubit state. When the output qubits have higher purity, corresponding to concentration, the optimal rate is given by the ratio of the maximum eigenvalues of the input and output RLD matrices. In contrast, when the output qubits have lower purity, corresponding to dilution, the optimal rate is given by the ratio of their minimum eigenvalues. Remarkably, both concentration and dilution can be implemented using SWAP tests as the only nontrivial two-qubit measurement primitive, together with ancillary qubits initially prepared in maximally mixed states, without requiring any additional two-qubit gates. Our work thus provides a novel operational interpretation of the full complex RLD Fisher information matrix. Crucially, its antisymmetric, purely imaginary part encodes geometric information beyond the statistical distance between density operators and plays an essential role in determining the optimal state-conversion rates.

The generalised quantum Stein's lemma is a key result in quantum hypothesis testing, and connects this fundamental primitive of quantum information processing with quantum resource manipulation, a task that is central for technological applications. Prior works have proved this statement in the idealised setting of independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) sequences of quantum states, and recent extensions consider also sources that are 'close' to i.i.d., according to the strict notion put forth by Mazzola, Sutter, and Renner. For several applications, however, one would need to consider yet more general sources. We establish a version of the generalised quantum Stein's lemma that is conceptually much simpler and general, as it applies to any source that is asymptotically close to an i.i.d. state with respect to the normalised quantum Wasserstein distance of order 1. As an immediate consequence, we solve the Stein exponent of a scenario where the null hypothesis is arbitrarily varying, expressing it in terms of i.i.d. Stein exponents corresponding to arbitrary states in the convex hull of the null hypothesis base set.

A system between a preparation and a post-selection has had no agreed state since 1964. With positivity as the criterion, a post-selection admits an interval of orderings around the symmetric one exactly when the subspace it forbids is spanned by eigenvectors of a full-rank filtered state. Otherwise it certifies contextuality, testable on a qubit. The averaged filtered state carries the entanglement spectrum of the record, so the smallest forbidden subspaces a symmetry allows are even-dimensional in the Haldane class and odd in the trivial one. That parity is the record's topological class.

Graphene nanoribbons (GNRs) obtained by on-surface synthesis combine a width-controlled band gap with atomic precision, making chemical decoration of their edges and interiors a practical route to designed electronic and optical behavior. Ullmann coupling of a phenazine-bearing precursor yields a nine-atom-wide armchair ribbon that is periodically perforated and carries two two-coordinated nitrogen atoms at every pore rim. Here we characterize this ribbon across the properties relevant to device operation, alongside the pristine and undoped porous ribbon, disentangling the roles of pore formation and nitrogen incorporation. Perforation primarily governs mechanical and thermal response, whereas nitrogen substitution predominantly controls electronic and optical properties. Perforation removes the atomic row carrying frontier states, opening the gap into the range measured by tunneling spectroscopy while substantially reducing stiffness and thermal conductivity. Substitution leaves the mechanical response essentially unchanged and contributes a secondary conductivity reduction through phonon spectrum reweighting. Its primary effect is electronic: it selectively narrows the conduction band, binds the lowest exciton by 414 meV, and displaces the absorption edge into the red. The effective phonon mean free path we obtain, 9.9 nm, matches the length to which the synthesis presently limits these ribbons, placing reported samples at the ballistic-to-diffusive crossover. Adsorption on Au(111), Ag(111), and Cu(111) is energetically nearly indistinguishable and remains van der Waals in character, accounting for the substrate tolerance observed experimentally. Finally, graphitic rather than pyrazinic nitrogen would make the ribbon metallic, except when two atoms occupy pore-rim sites, yielding a ferromagnetic semiconducting state having a magnetic moment of 2 mu_B per unit cell.

In spatially resolved X-ray diffraction experiments using narrow beams, diffraction patterns from polycrystalline materials often fall between two well-served regimes. Fine-grained, weakly textured microstructures produce smooth Debye-Scherrer rings suited to powder- and tensor-tomography methods, whereas coarse, weakly deformed grains produce isolated spots that can be indexed grain by grain. Many important polycrystalline materials, including plastically deformed metals, martensitic and ferroelastic materials containing complex twin microstructures, and geological aggregates with strong texture or heterogeneous grain size, produce spotty diffraction rings with broadened and overlapping peaks between these limits. Texture tomography addresses this regime by reconstructing spatial orientation distributions from diffraction data. Here, conventional texture tomography lacks the angular resolution needed for sharp distributions, while grain-by-grain indexing can introduce boundary artifacts and underestimate intragranular misorientation. This work introduces basis-adaptive texture tomography. Candidate orientations obtained from peak indexing replace the uniform orientation grid, achieving higher angular resolution. Like conventional texture tomography, it benefits from reconstructing a full orientation distribution function in each voxel, allowing voxels to retain contributions from multiple grains, subgrains or domains rather than being forced into a single orientation. Simulated aluminum polycrystals show improved delineation of grain and sub-grain boundaries accompanied by lower intragranular orientation errors compared with uniform-basis texture tomography and point-by-point scanning 3DXRD. An experimental demonstration on tensile-deformed aluminum shows that bulk grain and subgrain structures with orientation spreads of several degrees can be mapped.

Wall shear stress (WSS) is implicated in carotid atherosclerosis, and 4D flow MRI offers a non-invasive route to its estimation, but the agreement of MRI-derived plaque-surface WSS with computational fluid dynamics (CFD) has not been quantified in a large cohort. We compared peak-systolic velocity and WSS from 4D flow MRI and patient-specific CFD in 240 carotid arteries of 120 patients, with CFD geometries and boundary conditions derived from MRI. Velocity and circumferential WSS were compared at three standardized cross-sections, and plaque-surface WSS in 63 of 149 stenosed arteries with a reliably segmented plaque. Agreement was assessed with Bland-Altman analysis, Spearman correlation with stenosis degree, and exploratory multivariable regression of the plaque-surface discrepancy on hemodynamic and geometric variables. MRI reproduced the broad flow features but underestimated peak velocity, increasingly toward the distal internal carotid artery. WSS disagreement was location dependent: mean circumferential WSS showed little average bias in the common carotid artery, whereas MRI missed the high WSS at the bifurcation apex and underestimated plaque-surface mean and maximum WSS by $40.9 \pm 28.8\%$ and $44.5 \pm 26.8\%$; the difference in Pa increased with stenosis degree ($\rho = 0.47$ and $0.50$). In exploratory regression, the CFD-derived pressure drop across the plaque was the only significant correlate of the mean WSS discrepancy, whereas stenosis degree and geometric variables were associated with the maximum WSS discrepancy. Under the present protocol, MRI-derived plaque-surface WSS showed magnitude- and location-dependent disagreement with CFD, greater in more severely stenosed arteries and, in exploratory analyses, associated with factors beyond stenosis degree.

We present an open source Python package, ConteXtuAlity, for computing various quantities related to contextuality. This package features an interface to the sheaf-theoretic framework for contextuality, providing an implementation of measurement scenarios and empirical models as well as linear programs to compute the contextual fraction and the signalling fraction. In this work, we demonstrate the package's features and give examples of its use. We also provide benchmarks, demonstrating how performances scale with the size of measurement scenarios. The package is designed for both experienced theorists and newcomers to the field of contextuality alike, with an emphasis on flexibility and extensibility.

Several alkali chlorides and alkaline-earth oxides adopt the B1 structure at ambient conditions and transform to B2 under compression, allowing to change coordination number and cation-anion distance independently across chemically distinct hosts. The change in anion polarizability under high pressure dominates the optical response of these prototypical ionic solids, yet its dependence on local structure and cation chemistry remains experimentally unconstrained at high pressure. Here we report refractive indices of NaCl, KCl, CaO, and SrO to ~100, ~100, ~120, and ~60 GPa, each in both the B1 and B2 structures, complemented by published MgO-B1 indices to 140 GPa and DFT calculations. Lorentz-Lorenz analysis yields pressure-independent strain polarizability parameters $\Lambda$ ranging from 0.34$\pm$0.05 for KCl-B1 to 1.57$\pm$0.02 for MgO-B2. Our results establish coordination number and cation-anion distance as separable predictors of anion polarizability in both B1 and B2 structures. Increasing anion coordination from six to eight at fixed cation-anion distance lowers the polarizability of both $Cl^{-}$ and $O^{2-}$ by ~0.34-0.40 $\mathring{A}^3$ and ~0.38-0.47 $\mathring{A}^3$ respectively. Our results suggest that the polarizability of $O^{2-}$ is transferable to within ~0.06 $\mathring{A}^3$ between MgO-B1 and CaO-B1 at fixed cation-anion distance, and that this transferability possibly extends to SrO-B1 and the B2 oxides. In contrast, the polarizability of $Cl^{-}$ is not transferable between NaCl-B2 and KCl-B2: the difference between them varies with cation-anion distance, from ~0.2 $\mathring{A}^3$ at 2.65 $\mathring{A}$ to 0 at ~2.5 $\mathring{A}$. The results show that the change of the strain polarizability parameters across the B1-B2 transition is governed by the decreasing and increasing sensitivities of $O^{2-}$ and $Cl^{-}$ polarizabilities to densification, respectively.

Two-dimensional tungsten-based transition metal dichalcogenides exhibit a rich emission spectrum with distinct lines of exciton and biexciton states, neutral and charged, which are typically considered as independent entities. Here, we present a study of the emission kinetics of a WS$_2$ monolayer, demonstrating that these states together form a single interacting ensemble, with their population and depletion mutually coordinated with temperature. Dark trions make a long-lived contribution to the bright trion on a time scale of 200-300 picoseconds, and replenishment from dark states promotes intense luminescence of charged biexcitons. The developed self-consistent rate equation model reproduces the temperature dependence of the kinetics well, opening the way to controlling exciton states in such materials.

Standards bodies report cryptographic security as a single number of bits, but this value depends on the adversary cost model used to price time, memory, and quantum resources. Different conventions can therefore produce different rankings of cryptographic schemes. GAUGE represents security as a function over admissible cost models, called a security profile. Comparisons then become comparisons between profiles, and ranking reversals become an explicit structural property rather than a measurement error. We formalize price functionals over a cone of adversary cost models, show that security profiles are piecewise-linear and concave, and prove a rating trilemma: when two profiles cross, no rating can simultaneously be faithful to underlying costs, total over comparable pairs, and independent of the chosen cost model. We provide a polynomial-time linear-programming procedure that certifies whether the ranking of two schemes is robust, reverses under admissible models, or is genuinely incomparable. We extend GAUGE with a two-layer risk measure combining stochastic cryptanalytic decay with uncertainty over the appropriate cost model. We evaluate the framework on NIST post-quantum standards, classical anchors, and a 25-year chronology of cryptanalytic breaks. The analysis certifies a ranking reversal for ML-KEM-512 versus AES-128 from a 4-5% shift in memory pricing, and measures a lattice-sieving cost drift of 9.79 bits per year over eight years. A hybrid X25519 + ML-KEM-768 handshake reduces combined-break probability twenty-fold at a 2.3 kilobyte cost. The artifact reproduces all tables and figures in under seven seconds. GAUGE provides an explicit and auditable framework for reporting cryptographic security under competing cost models.

Recent measurements of two-particle transverse-momentum correlations, $C_{p_T}$, in Au+Au collisions have revealed a statistically significant non-monotonic beam-energy dependence over the range $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=3.0$–$7.7$~GeV that has been interpreted as potentially indicative of critical phenomena associated with a critical end point (CEP) in the QCD phase diagram. This interpretation is assessed in light of the absence of a controlled framework establishing $C_{p_T}$ as a quantitative proxy for the underlying critical response. The implications of this limitation are examined by considering the expected finite-size and finite-time modification of critical fluctuations, substantial non-critical dynamical contributions, the lack of demonstrated critical scaling, and the sizeable discrepancy between the CEP region inferred from the observed $C_{p_T}$ non-monotonicity and that constrained by susceptibility-based measurements and finite-size scaling analyses. Taken together, these considerations indicate that the observed $C_{p_T}$ non-monotonicity does not, by itself, establish a critical origin nor provide reliable quantitative constraints on the existence or location of a possible CEP.

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are bright, millisecond-duration transient radio signals of extragalactic origin with unknown source and emission mechanisms. While several thousand FRBs have been discovered at frequencies above 400 MHz, detections at lower frequencies have been exceptionally rare. Contributing to their rarity are the magnified dispersive delay, in the tens of seconds, and signal scattering that make low-frequency searches with established techniques computationally prohibitive. In particular, the only confirmed detection below 300 MHz came from a Low-Frequency Array observing campaign targeted at FRB 20180916B, a source already known to emit at higher frequencies. Here we present the first non-targeted detection of an FRB below 300 MHz, achieved in a wide-field, imaging-based survey with the Murchison Widefield Array. The implied FRB rate is consistent with that observed at higher frequencies, demonstrating that non-targeted wide-field surveys can uncover an unbiased, large low-frequency FRB population. This result challenges models invoking severe scattering or absorption to explain previous non-detections, and strengthens the case of low-frequency observations as promising avenue to study the local environment of FRBs.

PyExoCross is a Python-based spectroscopic post-processing framework for converting large atomic and molecular line lists into scientifically useful quantities, including partition function, specific heats, cooling functions, lifetimes, oscillator strengths, line intensities, stick spectra, and absorption and emission cross sections. It is intended for applications in astrophysics, planetary atmospheres, laboratory spectroscopy, and other high-temperature environments where large modern databases require efficient and reproducible computational treatment. The new release provides both a configuration-file-driven command-line interface (CLI) and a Python application programming interface (API) within a unified computational framework. The original input file workflow is retained, while the Python API enables direct use in scripts, notebooks, and automated pipelines. The version PyExoCross 2.0 also adds explicit support for non-local thermodynamic equilibrium (non-LTE) calculations, including two-temperature models and user-defined density and population treatments for both absorption and emission spectra. In addition, database compatibility has been expanded beyond ExoMol, HITRAN, and HITEMP line lists to include high-resolution molecular database ExoMolHR and atomic database ExoAtom. GPU acceleration is also introduced for computationally intensive intensity and cross-section calculations and is available for all currently supported database formats. These developments improve workflow flexibility, reproducibility, and integration with modern data-analysis environments, while extending the physical modelling capabilities of the code. PyExoCross therefore provides a more general and extensible platform for large-scale spectroscopic simulations based on modern atomic and molecular databases.

We present a comprehensive ab initio study of the effect of higher-order anharmonicity and polymorphism on the lattice thermal conductivity, ${\bm \kappa}$, of single-layer transition metal dichalcogenides. We show that four-phonon processes are responsible for an additional suppression of ${\bm \kappa}$ ranging from 15% to 35% in the ground-state 2H phase. Conversely, their effect is almost negligible on the thermodynamically competitive \1Tp\ phase. The ${\bm \kappa}$ difference between the 2H higher-conductivity phase and the \1Tp\ lower-conductivity phase can be exploited for the design of thermal switches that may find applications in thermal management and in the development of phonon-based logic elements, particularly in the case of tellurides, where field-controlled ultrafast and reversible phase transitions have already been demonstrated experimentally.

We present a complete calculation of the non-singlet splitting functions in four-loop quantum chromodynamics.

We discuss the phenomenological use of the next-to-leading order (NLO) eigenfunctions of the Balitsky-Fadin-Kuraev-Lipatov (BFKL) kernel. We first recall the BFKL representation of high-energy scattering amplitudes and the role played by the eigenfunctions in the spectral representation of the Green's function. We then compare two equivalent representations of the next-to-leading logarithmic approximation (NLLA) amplitude, respectively based on the leading-order (LO) and NLO eigenfunctions. The two formulations are equivalent within NLLA, while differing by terms beyond this accuracy which could influence the phenomenological stability of high-energy observables. The aim is to test the possible role of NLO eigenfunctions-induced terms in improving this stability, discussing the amplitude dependence on the renormalization and energy scales. As an application, we consider first the forward electroproduction of two light vector mesons and then we comment on preliminary applications to Mueller-Navelet jet production.

Entanglement in indistinguishable particle systems can be characterized by the impossibility of unambiguously attributing a complete set of physical properties to the individual constituent particles. In this work, we introduce a geometric quantifier of the incompatibility of such simultaneous property attribution for pure states of $N$ indistinguishable bosons. Using the Majorana stellar representation, any symmetric multi-qubit state can be expressed as the symmetrization of constituent single-particle states, allowing the associated single-particle properties to be directly linked with the corresponding Majorana stars. This establishes a direct connection between the geometry of the Majorana representation on the Bloch sphere and the entanglement criterion based on the attribution of single-particle properties in systems of identical two-level bosons. We then generalize this geometric approach to higher-dimensional bosons, extending the quantifier from qubits to qudits, while retaining a geometric interpretation of property-attribution incompatibility in terms of Fubini-Study angles.

We prove the cohomological Gopakumar-Vafa/Pandharipande-Thomas correspondence for the local plane and quadric in every effective curve class and Euler characteristic. The strict supports of the simple perverse constituents of the stable pair vanishing cycle direct images are closures of loci of transverse unions of smooth connected curves. Wall-crossing and duality leave a finite range of Euler characteristics to consider. In this range, a commutation relation for point modifications on bounded stacks of surface pairs excludes all other supports. Applying the family Macdonald formula on the reduced locus gives the correspondence as an identity of semisimplified perverse direct images on the Chow variety.

Numerous attempts to detect glycine, a simple amino acid and a key building block of proteins in all life on Earth, in the interstellar medium have so far been unsuccessful in spite of the fact that it is present in meteorites, comets and asteroids. Glycine is conformationally diverse, existing in eight different forms, and the aim is to show that interconversions, in the dark, are governed by quantum mechanical tunnelling at temperatures from 300 K down to 10 K and to compute the rate at which these changes occur resulting in recommendations to maximise a successful outcome.

We present a palm-scale (65 mm, 34 g) swim-and-breach robot platform. Two vertically stacked propellers provide both propulsion and differential-thrust pitch control under a proportional-integral-derivative (PID) loop, and a tail rudder adds yaw control. The hull, evaluated by flow simulation, reduces the drag five-fold relative to an equivalent cuboid, and the propellers are optimized using B-series modeling validated by dynamometer measurements. The current robot swims at 13.9 body lengths per second and turns at 209 deg per second, corresponding to the upper limits reported for underwater robots. In free swimming, the pitch loop turns the body to any commanded nose-up pitch angle, and, with the rudder stabilizing the exit, the current robot leaps 1.6 body lengths high and 3.7 long in a seamless cruise-leap-cruise sequence. The platform can be used to build small-scale robots that cross barriers and dry gaps between pools for inspection in streams, flooded structures, and industrial systems.

When a classical Brownian particle is subjected to a temperature gradient it can undergo thermophoresis, i.e., the particle gets transported towards the colder regions of the environment, which bears relevant consequences to nonequilibrium self-organization. Here, we investigate how the quantum Brownian motion is affected by a temperature gradient. We employ a recently proposed generalized system-plus-reservoir model, where one assumes a continuum field of thermal baths. As our main result, we obtain the quantum influence functional, within the Feynmann-Vernon path integral approach. To test convergence, we derive an effective Langevin equation for the center of mass of the quantum wavepacket, and show that it coincides with the classical Langevin equation at high temperatures. Both the fully quantum (low temperatures) and the semiclassical (high temperature) limits show signatures of quantum thermophoresis in the quantum Brownian motion, a so far unexplored effect.