Papers

In this paper, we study logarithmic Donaldson-Thomas invariants for local log Calabi-Yau $4$-folds with simple normal crossing divisors. Using the family version of shifted Lagrangian classes announced by Khan-Kinjo-Park-Safronov, we construct relative and family logarithmic $\mathsf{DT}_4$-theories for logarithmic Hilbert schemes of curves, and prove a degeneration formula. For logarithmic Hilbert schemes of points, we construct virtual classes and prove a degeneration formula in Chow groups; in particular, it is independent of shifted Lagrangian classes. Finally, combining our degeneration formula with logarithmic cobordism, we explicitly compute the zero-dimensional logarithmic $\mathsf{DT}_4$-invariants for local surface snc pairs.

We show that microscopically inversion-asymmetric, permeable active fluid membranes are statistically flat and effectively inversion-symmetric at large scales. Their fluctuations are governed by an asymptotically exact linear hydrodynamic equation giving orientational long-range order and positional quasi-long-range order. At intermediate scales, their dynamics is described by a Kardar-Parisi-Zhang equation with spatially long-range noise, producing rough membranes with short-range translational and long-range orientational order described by exactly known scaling exponents. Active stresses can destabilize the membrane at long wavelengths, while sufficiently strong active permeation flow can drive finite-wavevector instabilities and pattern formation. These results reveal a novel activity-driven route to the destruction of flat fluid membranes.

We present psi4-cbo, an open-source extension of the Psi4 program for simulations within the cavity Born-Oppenheimer Approximation (CBOA). By treating the cavity photon mode on the same footing as the nuclear coordinates, psi4-cbo incorporates light-matter coupling into standard electronic structure workflows. These workflows include self-consistent field calculations, response theory, analytic gradients, joint Hessians, and geometry optimization. The package is designed for reproducibility and is documented with working examples for its main workflows. To evaluate the approximations inherent to the CBOA framework, we use an exact \gls{qedfci} reference. Resolving the correlation energy into electron-electron and electron-photon channels enables us to precisely determine the point at which the CBOA becomes quantitatively sufficient. Additionally, we highlight that, since self-consistent treatments dress the cavity modes, satisfying experimental resonance conditions is method-dependent. As a practical application, we investigate the chromophore acrolein under vibrational strong coupling and detail how to locate resonances on the dressed photon modes rather than the bare molecular bands.

Phononic frequency combs have been demonstrated experimentally and theoretically in the kHz-MHz regime under nonlinear driving; however, their spontaneous formation in the GHz-THz regime remains rare. We investigate the spontaneous formation of frequency combs in van der Waals solid CrGeTe$_3$, where combs of spacing $\sim$2 cm$^{-1}$ were experimentally proposed to occur in a flat phonon mode but are now reported to originate from isotopic distribution. Our spectral energy density calculations using machine-learning-augmented molecular dynamics simulations show comb-like features with reduced spacings of $\sim$0.1 and 0.6 cm$^{-1}$ in the same mode at 50 and 200 K. However, the spacings of the comb-like features are comparable to the phonon linewidth, making precise identification of the frequency comb challenging. From a comprehensive analysis of different modes of CrGeTe$_3$, we identified two conditions to distinctively observe the combs beyond the experimental resolution: (i) an intramolecular or isolated mode with reasonably large third- or higher-order anharmonicity from phonon self-interaction and (ii) limited phonon scattering channels. Our analysis of other van der Waals solids highlighted that these conditions are met for the nearly flat intramolecular $E_{2g}$ and $A_{2u}$ phonon modes of WSe$_2$. The detailed calculations showed the formation of a spontaneous frequency comb with spacings of 1.7 and 0.67 cm$^{-1}$ from coherent superposition of four and five-phonon eigenstates in the $E_{2g}$ and $A_{2u}$ phonon modes, respectively. Available Raman scattering data of the $E_{2g}$ mode in the literature provide preliminary, if not conclusive, evidence of comb formation. Our findings offer a deeper understanding and open avenues for engineering long-lived phononic frequency combs for various practical applications.

T-state cultivation is a resource-efficient protocol producing logical T states but recent benchmarks show that its logical error rate is considerably higher than intended i.e. than S-state cultivation, which is the analogous protocol for producing logical S states. In this paper, we explain this T-S discrepancy by analytically showing, under circuit-level depolarising noise, that distance-3 (-5) T-state cultivation has fault distance 2 (3) due to Pauli hook errors that propagate to coherent Clifford errors after its final double-check circuit; such errors remain Pauli in S-state cultivation, which consequently retains fault distance 3 (5). As part of our analysis we derive a general formula, and an $\mathcal O(n^3)$-time algorithm for fixed logical-qubit count, for the acceptance probability of a logical mixed state afflicted with a Clifford error, where $n$ is the physical qubit count. We then design flags that detect the malignant hook errors in cultivation, improving the pre-escape logical error rate from $\Theta(p^3)$ to $\Theta(p^5)$. At noise level $p =10^{-3}$, this is a 4.9$\times$ improvement, costing a 1.36$\times$ increase in attempts per accepted shot.

The detection of the Diffuse Supernova Neutrino Background (DSNB) is one of the main goals of the current and the next generation of neutrino experiments. Based on results published by the Super-Kamiokande (SK) collaboration, we study the sensitivity of current and future water Cherenkov detectors to the DSNB. We reproduce current constraints and estimate the sensitivity to the DSNB of ten years of SK data and of a next-generation water-Cherenkov detector like Hyper-Kamiokande (HK). We find that, even with increased exposure, SK's sensitivity is relatively modest, while HK has the potential to deliver a statistically significant discovery of the DSNB in ten years. Along the way, we perform a detailed study of the relevant atmospheric neutrino backgrounds and argue that an accurate treatment of neutrino oscillations and propagation is essential when it comes to properly inferring the sensitivity to the DSNB and measuring its flux.

The recently introduced concept of quantum-state texture (QST) has found applications ranging from the identification of unknown quantum gates to the study of quantum phase transitions and criticality, and has already been experimentally investigated. Here, we advance its resource-theoretic formulation in several directions. Our approach centers on the experimentally accessible grand sum–the sum of all matrix elements of a density operator in a given basis. We clarify several points raised in the recent literature, including the relation between texture distillation and a simple grand-sum-based QST monotone. We completely characterize free operations for a single qubit and study the resulting state-conversion order; classify relevant families of free operations in arbitrary dimensions; derive bounds relating the texture of composite systems to that of their subsystems; and introduce the basis-independent concept of set texture. Together, these results strengthen and broaden the resource theory of QST, providing a foundation for its further development and applications.

Recent modeling of the JWST spectra of the Y-dwarf CWISEPJ193518.59-154620.3 (Faherty et al. 2024; Suárez et al. 2025) and the T-dwarf SIMPJ013656.5+093347.3 (Nasedkin et al. 2025) indicates the presence of a thermal inversion in their atmospheres, implying an additional source of heating. Auroral energy deposition has been proposed as a potential mechanism. In this work, we model auroral energy deposition processes and the resulting atmospheric response to assess whether physically motivated auroral electron beam energy spectra can reproduce the inferred thermal inversions. We simulate the effects of several auroral electron beam energy spectra consistent with observations of the Jovian population of auroral electrons and scale them to the total electron flux expected for brown dwarfs. We find that auroral energy deposition alone cannot reproduce both the magnitude and pressure level of the inferred inversion in either object. While inversions are produced in our models, they occur at pressures that are too low compared to those required by the observations. These results suggest that the actual population of auroral electrons includes a stronger high-energy component than considered here, that additional heating mechanisms contribute to the observed thermal inversions, and/or that heterogeneous heating of the atmosphere is important for determining the observed emission.

Detection efficiency in gated-mode single-photon avalanche detectors recovers gradually after each gate edge, limiting attainable count rates, yet quantitative recovery models exist only for free-running operation. We extract the gated recovery time constant of a free-running InGaAs/InP detector at 1550 nm by sweeping the gate frequency from 100 kHz to 1 MHz and globally fitting count rates across four dead times, requiring neither a pulsed laser nor a time-to-digital converter. The recovery time decreases linearly with detection efficiency, from 301 to 161 ns between 10 % and 25 %, at 9.3 ns per percentage point. We further resolve a periodic count-rate modulation consistent with bias-dependent capacitive gate feedthrough.

We leverage the high resolution and spectral stability of the Keck Planet Finder (KPF) spectrograph to investigate macroturbulence broadening via the stellar cross-correlation function (CCF). As our calibration sample, we use main sequence benchmark slow-rotators v$\sin$i < 4 km/s where rotation rates were derived from the most robust asteroseismic mode splitting measurements, independent from spectral line broadening. We fit a linear relationship for macroturbulence as a function of derived $\nu_{max}$, the frequency of maximum power due to stellar oscillations, with an RMS scatter of 90 m/s. Previous studies have calibrated macroturbulence against T$_{eff}$, but we find $\nu_{max}$ to be a lower dispersion predictor by a factor of 4 indicating a deeper relationship between $\nu_{max}$and convective motions.

We study the complexity of quantum decomposable randomized encodings (QDRE). We establish a bi-directional connection between the QDRE model and the communication complexity model of quantum private simultaneous message protocols (QPSM), where classical communication is free, and quantum communication is the primary complexity measure. We show the following upper and lower bounds. (1) For every quantum channel mapping $n$ to $m$ qubits, we give a QPSM protocol with quantum communication $m$, using exponential pre-shared entanglement. In particular, constant-output channels have $O(1)$ quantum communication, and classical-output channels require no quantum communication. (2) With $O(n)$ pre-shared entanglement, every one-qubit-output channel has an $O(n)$-quantum-communication QPSM protocol. Conversely, there exists a channel and a constant $c>0$ for which any protocol with at most $cn$ pre-shared entanglement requires $\Omega(n)$ quantum communication. (3) In contrast, we identify a structured class of quantum channels, Clifford-induced channels, for which there exist QPSM protocols with $O(n)$ pre-shared entangled qubits and only $O(1)$ quantum communication complexity. Through our connection, we obtain analogous upper and lower bounds on the quantum encoding size of QDRE. Our results show that the amount of pre-shared entanglement plays a central role in quantum encoding size and quantum communication complexity.

The Hubble tension motivates careful scrutiny of the redshift-independent distances underpinning the local distance ladder. Water megamasers afford a purely geometric distance from orbital dynamics in an accretion disc. For five of the six Megamaser Cosmology Project (MCP) galaxies, we present a Bayesian forward model that infers the angular-diameter distance and warped Keplerian disc parameters jointly from the very long baseline interferometry quasi-observables: maser spot positions, velocities, and accelerations. We then constrain $H_0$ from these distances and the host redshifts, including a physical distance prior, modelling the galaxy sample selection and testing a linear and a non-linear peculiar-velocity reconstruction. Accounting for peculiar velocities with the non-linear Manticore reconstruction, we infer $H_0 = 71.6 \pm 3.7$ km/s/Mpc, where the uncertainty is statistical. Relative to ignoring peculiar velocities, the linear and non-linear reconstructions lower $H_0$ by $0.8$–$1.4$ and $1.6$–$2.1$ km/s/Mpc, respectively, whereas changing the selection variable alters it by less than $1$ km/s/Mpc. We analyse the sixth galaxy, NGC 4258, separately. Modelling its disc as eccentric and quadratically warped, we infer an angular-diameter distance of $7.558 \pm 0.073$ (stat.) Mpc, within $0.13\sigma$ of the published maser distance.

The young solar analog DS Tuc A (~45 million years old, spectral type G6V) serves as an excellent proxy to the Sun during early stages of the Earth's evolution. The young Sun's enhanced magnetic activity in the form of X-ray and extreme UV emission, stellar wind, and flares likely affected the magnetospheric and atmospheric environments of early Venus, Earth and Mars. Studies of DS Tuc A help constrain evolution of magnetospheric and atmospheric environments of early Venus, Earth, and Mars and create opportunities to study the impact of flares on the transiting exoplanet, DS Tuc Ab. We analyze ~11 hours of Far-ultraviolet (FUV; 1130 - 1450 $\mathring{A}$) observations taken by the Hubble Space Telescope Cosmic Origins Spectrograph during late 2023 and early 2024. We find DS Tuc A exhibited 26 flares over ~11.1 hours of observations in the transition region lines Si IV (1394 $\mathring{A}$ + 1402 $\mathring{A}$), with durations ranging 90 - 960 seconds and FUV absolute energies ranging ~ 10$^{29}$ - 10$^{31}$ erg over the observed bandpass. Si IV flares are accompanied by increases of other chromospheric and transition region lines, however the strongest Si IV flares show no enhanced coronal emission traced by Fe XXI 1354 $\mathring{A}$. We present an analysis of each detected flare, including X-ray and bolometric luminosities scaled from FUV flare energies, electron density measurements for the strongest flares, and the Far-UV continuum response to flaring. These results provide constraints on the frequency and energetics of flares comparable to X100-class solar flares and FUV-emitting regions in young solar analogs.

In Seesaw Cosmology, a scalar field reheats the Standard Model (SM) through right-handed neutrinos (RHNs), which generate tiny neutrino masses through the seesaw mechanism. When RHNs rapidly fill a restricted momentum-space region, expansion continually opens new fermionic states that are refilled by subsequent scalar decays, maintaining an approximately constant physical RHN density. This gives rise to a novel heating regime in which the SM temperature increases with the scale factor as $T \propto a^{+3/8}$, in sharp contrast to the conventional $T \propto a^{-3/8}$ scaling during matter-dominated reheating.

We report the serendipitous discovery of a dense, metal-enriched circumgalactic medium (CGM) absorber at z=7.03, together with its host galaxy, identified along the sightline toward a red quasar. The absorber exhibits the largest rest-frame equivalent widths and column densities observed to date at z>5, tracing a metal-enriched gaseous halo. Using deep JWST/NIRSpec and NOEMA observations, we characterize the absorber's physical properties and identify its host, ND1, as a vigorously star-forming galaxy at an exceptionally close impact parameter of ~16kpc, so heavily dust-obscured that it is detected only in the longest-wavelength NIRCam bands. Detections of [OIII]$\lambda$5007, H$\alpha$, and [CII]$\lambda 158\,\mu$m emission anchor the systemic redshift to z~7.0321, revealing a coherent ~50km/s blueshift of the absorbing gas relative to the host, suggesting outflow-driven metal transport into the halo. The outflow velocity, combined with the measured column density, implies an outflow rate of $\dot{M}_{\rm out}=64 M_\odot\,yr^{-1}$ and a mass loading factor $\eta=3$, indicating an energetic, chemically-enriched wind launched from a dust-obscured starburst. While the overall ionization state and [Mg/Fe] ratio align with empirical cosmic evolutionary trends, the absorber displays an enhanced carbon-to-oxygen ([C/O]) ratio. This abundance pattern suggests the nucleosynthetic yields of Population~III stellar explosions, and aligns with the host's star-formation history extending to $z \gtrsim 8$, potentially offering a rare fossil record of primordial metal enrichment. Our findings demonstrate that intense star-formation feedback can rapidly and efficiently pollute the CGM/IGM well into the Epoch of Reionization. The NIR-dark nature of the host further implies that rest-UV surveys may systematically miss the dusty sources that drive CGM- and IGM-scale metal enrichment in the early Universe.

We construct exact hairy black holes in Lovelock–Horndeski gravity and establish a relation between horizon topology, scalar hair and covariant charges. Rooted in the dimensional reduction of higher-curvature gravity, this framework connects scalar–tensor dynamics to the low-energy description of heterotic strings. In five dimensions, a single fixed theory admits a continuous planar family and two isolated hyperbolic black holes. The hyperbolic solutions share a locally AdS metric with distinct scalar dressings, while the planar family is Weyl curved and has a freely varying horizon scale. Both branches carry scalar hair regular on the future horizon. The hyperbolic construction extends above four dimensions; compatibility of the displayed planar profile selects five and seven dimensions. Time translations of the scalar act through a global shift, which enters the complete covariant charge balance. Along the planar family, a changing bulk shift-charge density supplies this balance despite zero radial flux and vanishing horizon charge variation. The hyperbolic roots admit no horizon-scale variation at fixed couplings.

Micron-sized particles moving through a fluid are subject to viscous resistance and thermal fluctuations. Beyond steady Stokes friction, colloids also exhibit hydrodynamic memory effects arising from conservation laws of the surrounding fluid. Although fluid-flow problems in complex geometries and confinements are often highly involved, numerical or approximate solutions can be obtained; translating these solutions into closed-form equations of motion for individual colloids, however, is rarely possible. Here, we develop a theoretical framework that provides both underdamped and overdamped colloidal dynamics from the solution of an arbitrary flow problem: (i) Using the Lorentz reciprocal theorem, we express the colloidal equation of motion in terms of the geometry's Green's function and the fluid-flow profile. This formulation yields both the corresponding Stokes drag as well as a Basset-like hydrodynamic memory contribution. (ii) As colloid inertia is often negligible, we furthermore derive the corresponding overdamped (colloid-inertia-less) limit, which inherits the Stokes and Basset-like resistances and additionally gives rise to a spurious drift. We propose applications of this framework to passive and active particles subject to involved confinements and problem geometries.

Micron-sized colloid particles diffusing through a fluid experience hydrodynamic inertial and memory effects, the latter causing velocity autocorrelation to decay as a power law. At the same time, many theoretical descriptions treat colloidal diffusion in a fluid using overdamped Langevin dynamics for its convenience, eliminating velocity, omitting inertia, but also ignoring the power-law memory. In this Letter, we show that hydrodynamic memory survives in the overdamped (colloid-inertialess) limit. By identifying the dimensionless parameter controlling the crossover between early- and late-time dynamics, we derive in closed form the overdamped Langevin equation in the presence of hydrodynamic memory. This provides a theoretical framework for realistically describing colloidal dynamics in a fluid, and establishes a rigorous basis for the positional memory observed in high-resolution experiments. Our theory predicts that hydrodynamic memory becomes increasingly pronounced for smaller particles and under stronger external forcing, and offers experimental probes for the crossover from conventional exponential relaxation to memory-dominated power-law dynamics.

The galaxy–electron cross-power spectrum $P_{ge}(k)$ measures the small-scale distribution of gas around galaxies, the quantity reshaped by feedback. We measure $P_{ge}$ from the kinetic Sunyaev–Zel'dovich (kSZ) signal of the photometric DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys luminous red galaxies, cross-correlating a velocity-weighted galaxy momentum template with the CMB temperature from ACT DR6 and, for the first time, SPT-3G. The absolute normalization of the cross-spectrum is fixed by a surrogate-field Monte Carlo that propagates the survey mask, lightcone evolution, and photometric-redshift weights, converting the measured pseudo-spectrum into $P_{ge}(k)$ in physical units. We detect $P_{ge}$ at $11.7\sigma$ with ACT and $8.4\sigma$ with SPT-3G, and at $12.3\sigma$ combining SPT-3G with the ACT northern cap, which it does not overlap. The two surveys have independent optics, beams, filtering and noise and share about two thirds of the SPT-3G galaxies; their amplitudes agree channel by channel, the largest difference being $0.7\sigma$. All $26$ null tests on the adopted night maps are consistent with zero signal, among them the six ACT frequency differences, the three SPT-3G frequency differences, and the four ACT cap differences of the main selection. Turning the amplitude into a gas fraction requires the host halo masses of the sample, which the cross-spectrum does not itself measure; taking them from its measured number density and from a published CMB-lensing calibration of the same galaxies, the gas within the virial radius is $25$–$33\%$ of the cosmic baryon budget of the halo.

Recent observations of atmospheric escape from planets orbiting early-type stars indicate that planets with higher Roche filling factors have significantly higher mass loss rates. For three of these planets, full-orbit observations have revealed the presence of large leading and trailing tails of escaping planetary material. These 3D outflow geometries encode information about the underlying outflow physics, and can also be used to constrain their stellar wind properties and to predict their long-term orbital evolution. We present new evidence for extended H$\alpha$ and H$\beta$ absorption from escaping hydrogen for a fourth planet, WASP-12 b. We observed WASP-12 b with the Keck Planet Finder on Keck I over a period of approximately eight hours centered on the transit. We find a H$\alpha$ and H$\beta$ absorption signal in the stellar rest frame that is strongest during the transit (H$\alpha$ amplitude: $2.66\pm0.25\%$, H$\beta$ amplitude: $2.88\pm0.43\%$), with evidence of both pre- and post-transit absorption. This measurement is consistent with outflow models where the escaping gas overflows the planet's Roche lobe and is advected into the stellar rest frame before being tidally sheared into extended tails. This outflow behavior is qualitatively similar to previous H$\alpha$ observations of this planet as well as observations of extended outflows from other gas giants orbiting early-type stars.

Transdimensional Bayesian inference is becoming a key ingredient in gravitational-wave astronomy. In many relevant applications, the number of components needed to describe the data is not known a priori and must be inferred jointly with their parameters. We present a transdimensional Sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) framework designed to exploit massive parallelism. The method evolves a population of particles through a sequence of tempered distributions and uses the No-U-Turn Sampler for the exploration of fixed-dimensional parameter space while reversible-jump birth and death moves allow the number of components to vary. The same SMC construction also enables posterior samples obtained from a shorter data segment to be updated as additional data become available, enhancing the overall efficiency of the analysis. We validate the approach on two proof-of-concept problems: the recovery of a sequence of Gaussian pulses and a simplified LISA Galactic-binary inference problem. In both cases, the method recovers the injected number of components and produces consistent posterior estimates. These results indicate that the proposed method is a promising avenue toward scalable and parallel Bayesian transdimensional inference for current and future gravitational-wave astronomy.

In the first paper of the Chandra Lensing-cluster Ultradeep Extragalactic Survey (CLUES), we present an ultradeep 2 Ms X-ray survey of the Abell 2744 field constructed from 101 archival Chandra ACIS-I observations. With an exposure comparable to the Chandra Deep Fields and further boosted by strong-lensing magnification from the Abell 2744 cluster at $z=0.3$, this field represents the third deepest extragalactic X-ray survey of the sky and also has rich synergy with extensive coverage by the Hubble Space Telescope and James Webb Space Telescope. We present the Chandra data reduction and detect sources in the soft (0.5-2 keV), hard (2-7 keV), and full (0.5-7 keV) bands over a total area of $369~\mathrm{arcmin^2}$. We perform dedicated image fitting with Chandra point spread functions to optimize point-source detections and improve X-ray positions and further screen the detections to address the impact of the central bright, structured intracluster medium. A total of 327 X-ray point sources are detected and cataloged, including their X-ray photometry and basic spectral properties. Detailed simulations are also conducted, based on which the expected 50% flux completeness reaches $6.3\times10^{-16}$, $2.8\times10^{-16}$, and $4.9\times10^{-16}~\mathrm{erg~cm^{-2}~s^{-1}}$ in the full, soft, and hard bands, respectively. The source number density as a function of flux is consistent with those in blank-field surveys within a factor of $\approx2$, with a slight excess above $\approx10^{-14}~\mathrm{erg~cm^{-2}~s^{-1}}$. All X-ray data products are publicly released, including the catalog, X-ray images, exposure maps, background maps, and sensitivity maps.

Weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) constitute one of the best-motivated dark matter (DM) candidates. In this study, we consider a simple extension of the WIMP paradigm in which WIMPs are coupled to a heavier particle that interacts only with them and can decay into WIMPs. In the early Universe, when WIMPs are in thermal equilibrium with the Standard Model (SM) bath, they serve as a portal to populate the heavy partner through inverse decays. Depending on the lifetime of the partner particle, its eventual decay into WIMPs can significantly alter the WIMP abundance. If the partner decays into WIMPs before their freeze-out from equilibrium, the standard thermal history remains unchanged. When the decay occurs after WIMP freeze-out, however, the injected non-thermal population of WIMPs can result in an overproduction of DM, therefore requiring a larger WIMP annihilation cross section relative to the standard scenario without the partner. For a given partner lifetime and WIMP annihilation cross section, freeze-out may be delayed due to re-annihilation or followed by a freeze-in phase. By solving the Boltzmann equations both semi-analytically and numerically, we explore these thermal histories and study the required enhancement in the WIMP annihilation cross section compared to the canonical value. This enhancement, which can reach up to three orders of magnitude, leads to stronger annihilation signals in the late Universe. As a result, current and upcoming indirect detection experiments are able to probe the lifetime of the partner particle. We briefly explore possible connections between our scenario and the baryon asymmetry of the Universe. As an example, we show that the Next-to-Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (NMSSM) can provide a realization of our scenario, with the possibility of accommodating light higgsino DM with the correct relic abundance.

The proton temperature anisotropy in the solar wind is bounded by the thresholds of pressure-anisotropy-driven kinetic instabilities, and the distance at which the plasma settles from these thresholds is thought to be regulated by compressive fluctuations through the fluctuating anisotropy effect. We test whether the level of Alfvénicity is associated with this distance in the slow solar wind. Using five years of Wind/SWE bi-Maxwellian proton measurements (2004–2008), we separate slow-wind intervals into Alfvénic and non-Alfvénic populations on the basis of normalized cross helicity and residual energy. We compare their magnetic compressive fraction and normalized compressive amplitude, and measure their proximity to marginal stability in the plane of parallel proton beta and temperature anisotropy using the maximum growth rate over the scanned parallel wavenumbers, $\gamma_{\parallel,\max}$, from a Vlasov dispersion solver. At low matched parallel beta, the Alfvénic slow wind has lower normalized field-strength fluctuation amplitude and reaches the parallel-mode marginal-stability criterion more often than the non-Alfvénic slow wind. This association is consistent with a weaker fluctuating-anisotropy effect in the Alfvénic slow wind, but does not establish a causal relation.

The impact of projective measurements on a many-body quantum state is tightly linked to its underlying entanglement structure. Critical states are particularly sensitive, as long-range entanglement allows local measurements to have global consequences. This has been extensively studied in the context of critical states described by a conformal field theory (CFT), where measurements can alter critical properties in post-measurement quantities ('measurement-altered criticality') and induce long-range entanglement with universal features ('measurement-induced entanglement'). By contrast, little is known about the role of measurements on critical states with quenched disorder, which admit no CFT description. Here, we develop a theory of measurements on one-dimensional critical states governed by infinite-randomness fixed points (IRFPs), focusing on two closely related examples: the random XXZ chain and the random transverse-field Ising model. We show that the measurement-induced entanglement decays as a power-law with universal exponent $(3-\sqrt{5})/2$ in both models, and that the minimum number of measurements required to establish this entanglement obeys a universal scaling form. When only a finite density of measurements is made, we show that the critical properties of the state are remarkably robust: `measurement-altered criticality' is absent, with measurements either preserving the critical exponents, or destroying the criticality entirely. These results establish IRFPs as an analytically tractable arena for measurements on critical states, complementary to the CFT case. The outcome randomness that necessitates replica methods in clean systems becomes trivial at infinite randomness, with the universal response governed by the statistics induced by the quenched disorder.

Using thermal analyticity, we derive directional large-frequency bounds on the smooth functions entering full eigenstate thermalization in continuum quantum field theory. The strongest directions reproduce the scales previously identified for lattice systems, while the complete analyticity domain reveals a broader asymmetric multifrequency structure. In thermal two-dimensional conformal field theory, exact two- and three-point functions saturate the corresponding bounds. At fourth order, where genuine dynamical information first appears, we show that the holographic CFTs studied here saturate the strongest full-ETH bounds. These results establish a direct connection between full ETH, free cumulants, and gravitational scrambling, and are consistent with the emergence of asymptotic freeness realized by the gravitational scrambling algebra.

Pulsar timing arrays are a powerful tool for probing low-frequency gravitational phenomena and physics beyond the Standard Model. We establish a general, gauge-invariant framework for the timing residual by identifying the measurable quantity as the proper time interval between consecutive pulse arrivals at Earth. In linearized general relativity, we derive a general expression for this proper time shift and show that it decomposes into Doppler, Shapiro, and Einstein delay contributions whose sum is gauge invariant, similar to frameworks that have been developed for other gravitational-wave detectors such as laser and atom interferometers. We also provide a recipe for computing the resulting timing residual for any specified perturbation, and we illustrate the method with several physically well-motivated sources, recovering known results where they exist in the literature. This recipe can be directly applied to search for new physics from real pulsar timing data using existing numerical software.

JWST has revealed that galaxies during the Epoch of Reionization are composed of compact stellar clumps spanning more than two orders of magnitude in mass and size. We present an analytical framework that connects the global properties of high-redshift galactic disks to the formation, dynamical evolution and visibility of these systems. Starting from the classical Toomre instability, we derive analytical mass-size and surface density-size relations together with, for the first time, the intrinsic clump mass spectrum obtained by integrating over the entire unstable branch of the dispersion relation. The observed clumps are naturally reproduced for turbulent velocity dispersions $\sigma\simeq 10-80\,{\rm km\,s^{-1}}$, while their location along the mass-size relation is determined by the compactness of the parent disk. The intrinsic spectrum extends over nearly two decades in mass, $5.5\lesssim\log(M_{\rm cl}/M_\odot)\lesssim7.3$, and is transformed by gas dynamical friction, which suppresses the high-mass tail ($t_{\rm df}\propto M_{\rm cl}^{-1}$) and reproduces the observed clump mass-function slope, $dN/dM\propto M^{-1.89}$. Supernova feedback is insufficient to clear the dense natal gas, whereas radiation pressure provides a robust clearing mechanism: Ly$\alpha$ trapping dominates in dust-poor clumps and infrared trapping takes over as they become enriched. The results provide the first self-consistent analytical framework connecting the formation, statistical properties and visibility of stellar clumps in super-early galaxies.

We study the representation theory of the three-dimensional extended corner symmetry group associated with a circular corner. Using induced representation techniques, we construct families of representations of the infinite-dimensional corner symmetry group and analyze their unitarity and irreducibility. We also determine the maximal central extension of the symmetry group and construct the corresponding projective representations. The analysis is motivated by the role that corner symmetries play in quantum gravity, where boundary degrees of freedom — acted upon by the corner transformations — are expected to encode aspects of the quantum structure of spacetime. In three dimensions, the representation-theoretic structures that emerge are closely related to symmetry groups and quantum theories that already appeared as central to the study of gravity. This work provides a first step toward a systematic description of quantum gravitational corner degrees of freedom in three dimensions.

The origin of the stellar-mass binary black holes (BBHs) observed in gravitational wave (GW) events by the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK) detectors remains uncertain. One promising formation pathway is the active galactic nucleus (AGN) channel, in which BBHs embedded in AGN accretion discs experience enhanced merger rates and may produce rapidly spinning black holes in the upper mass gap. Previous constraints on the AGN contribution to the LVK merger population have relied either on spatial correlations between GW localisations and AGN catalogues or on modelling the intrinsic properties of GW sources. We develop a hierarchical Bayesian framework that unifies these approaches within a single likelihood for the fraction of AGN-hosted GW events, $f_{\rm agn}$. This framework, combined with the latest gravitational wave transient catalogue GWTC-5.0 and the electromagnetic Quaia AGN catalogue, cannot exclude an AGN contribution to the observed merger rate. For unobscured AGN in the optical and infrared bands with bolometric luminosities $L_{\rm bol}\geq\{10^{44.5},10^{45.5},10^{46.5}\}\,\mathrm{erg\,s^{-1}}$, we exclude $f_{\rm agn} \geq \{0.52,0.41, 0.61\}$ at the 95 percent credible level under our fiducial model. The methodology and results presented in this work lay down the pathway for combining the full GW posterior with electromagnetic observations to infer the properties of GW populations and AGN discs.