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Physics

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Friday 18 September

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics

Post-perihelion Photometric and Spectroscopic Monitoring of the Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS

Goldy Ahuja, Shashikiran Ganesh, K. Aravind et al. (+12 more)

The third interstellar object, comet 3I/ATLAS, was observed using various Indian telescopes during its post-perihelion evolution. We carried out imaging and spectroscopic observations of the comet at multiple epochs using the 0.5-m, 1.2-m, and 2.5-m telescopes of the Physical Research Laboratory and the 2-m Himalayan Chandra Telescope (HCT) operated by the Indian Institute of Astrophysics. Additionally, time-series photometry was obtained on 7 epochs using the 0.132-m refractor of Cepheid Observatory. The spectroscopic observations of 3I/ATLAS reveal signatures of molecular emission from CN, C$_2$, and C$_3$, as commonly observed in the emission spectra of solar system comets. The production rates and rate ratios indicate that the composition of the 3I/ATLAS transitioned from carbon-depleted (pre-perihelion) to carbon-typical (post-perihelion). The change in carbon composition could be due to exposure of fresh material from subsurface layers near perihelion. We also performed photometric observations to determine broadband colours and the spin period. The measured colours are $B-V=$ 1.03 $\pm$ 0.13 mag, $V-R=$ 0.59 $\pm$ 0.11 mag, $R-I=$ 0.08 $\pm$ 0.04 mag, $g-r=$ 0.52 $\pm$ 0.09 mag, and $r-i=$ 0.13 $\pm$ 0.08 mag. The colours are redder than the Long-Period Comets of the solar system and the Sun in $B-V$ and $V-R$, but near solar in $R-I$. The measured colours remain nearly constant throughout the observing period and are consistent with the reported pre-perihelion values. The colours and the reflectivity gradient match the photometric colours of the `ultrared-material rich' objects in the solar system. The nuclear radius derived from non-gravitational force lies between 0.45 and 0.65 km.
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All authors Goldy Ahuja, Shashikiran Ganesh, K. Aravind, Emmanuel Jehin, Bhavya Ailawadhi, Vikrant K. Agnihotri, B. Arvind, Pallavi Saraf, Alka Singh, Deekshya R. Sarkar, Sunil Chandra, Prithish Halder, Devendra Sahu, T. Sivarani, Anil Bhardwaj

Strongly Correlated Electrons

Structural and magnetic properties of TbCuAs$_2$ studied by X-ray and neutron scattering

M. G. Kim, T. Heitmann, S. Boney et al. (+8 more)

We investigated antiferromagnetic metal TbCuAs$_2$, which exhibits an anomalous resistivity upturn at low temperatures. This resistivity upturn has been proposed to originate from the material's magnetic ground state; however, the precise nature of the antiferromagnetic ordering in this compound has not been previously established. Here, we present a combined single crystal neutron diffraction, X-ray resonant magnetic scattering, and single crystal X-ray diffraction study of TbCuAs$_2$. These measurements unambiguously determine the Tb magnetic moment direction, the antiferromagnetic arrangement along high symmetry directions, the interplay between structure and magnetism, and their temperature dependence. Our observations are compared with previous studies on sister compounds in the rare-earth copper arsenide family ($R$CuAs$_2$, $R$ = Sm and Gd), which also displays resistivity anomalies. We suggest a common underlying physics governing the structural and magentic properties of rare-earth copper arsenides that exhibit low-temperature resistivity anomalies.
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All authors M. G. Kim, T. Heitmann, S. Boney, C. Neupane, R. Acevedo-Esteves, A. Sapkota, D. Evans, P. C. Canfield, C. Nelson, E. D. Mun, J.-W. Kim

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics

Hunting Thermal Relics in the DESI DR1 Ly$\alpha$ Forest

Emanuelly Silva, Artur Ladeira, Rafael C. Nunes et al. (+1 more)

We investigate constraints on additional relativistic species and thermal sterile neutrinos using the DESI DR1 one-dimensional Lyman-$\alpha$ forest power spectrum, combined with Planck 2018 CMB and DESI DR2 BAO measurements. We consider both the $\Lambda$CDM+$N_{\rm eff}$ extension and a thermal with a different-temperature sterile-neutrino (DTS) scenario, in which the sterile relic can be colder than the standard neutrino background. We first validate the DESI two-parameter $P_{\rm 1D}$ compression for the DTS model, finding that the residual cosmological dependence not captured by the compressed parameters remains below 0.15%. No significant evidence for additional radiation or a sterile component is found. For $\Lambda$CDM+$N_{\rm eff}$, we obtain $N_{\rm eff}<3.41$ at 95% credibility from CMB+DESI-BAO+DESI-$P_{\rm 1D}$. In the DTS scenario, the full CMB+DESI-BAO+DESI-$P_{\rm 1D}$ combination yields the stringent bound $m_s^{\rm eff}<0.061\,{\rm eV}$, highlighting the complementarity of BAO and Lyman-$\alpha$ information in constraining the massive sterile abundance. We further interpret the allowed $\Delta N_{\rm eff}$ in terms of thermal light relics, deriving lower limits on their decoupling temperatures that reach the QCD epoch.
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All authors Emanuelly Silva, Artur Ladeira, Rafael C. Nunes, Eleonora Di Valentino

Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics

Vanadium doping induced valley asymmetries in WS$_2$ monolayers

Frederico B. Sousa, Boyang Zheng, Elizabeth Grace Houser et al. (+10 more)

Transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) monolayers offer an innovative platform for encoding and manipulating information through the valley degree of freedom. While unique valley-related physical phenomena have been reported so far, practical applications still require advanced control over the valley polarization efficiency and the valley Zeeman effect. Recently, the introduction of spin-polarized metal atoms as substitutional defects was reported to break the time-reversal symmetry in TMD monolayers, consequently inducing a room-temperature ferromagnetic ordering and enhancing the valley-dependent optical responses. Here, we report valley asymmetries for vanadium-doped WS$_2$ monolayers. With a given magnetic polarization, one valley exhibits larger Zeeman slope and degree of circular polarization than the other valley. Additionally, the overall degree of circular polarization in the doped samples is approximately twice that of the pristine WS$_2$ monolayer. Density functional theory calculations in the doped structure show that different energy shifts in conduction band edges due to spin-dependent hybridization lead to different exciton energies between valleys, which is consistent with the experimental observations. Our results pave the way for valleytronic technologies based on defect-engineered two-dimensional materials.
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All authors Frederico B. Sousa, Boyang Zheng, Elizabeth Grace Houser, Paulo E. Faria Junior, Zhuohang Yu, Alessandra Ames, Gabriel A. D. Souza, Mingzu Liu, Gilmar Eugenio Marques, Leandro M. Malard, Mauricio Terrones, Vincent H. Crespi, Marcio D. Teodoro

Cellular Automata and Lattice Gases

Gliders on Aperiodic Monotilings: Cellular Automata on the Hat and Spectre

James Edmond

The hat and spectre monotiles, discovered in 2023, tile the plane only aperiodically. Cellular automata are studied here on patches generated by finite-state transducers, so that every experiment regenerates deterministically from a small record. Within edge-adjacency semi-totalistic rules, exhaustive and evolutionary searches find only mortal travelers: gliders are absent. Guided by a reproduction of the known Penrose-tiling glider, the rule space is extended to vertex neighborhoods and to priority-table rules whose non-quiescent states are visible to neighbors. Evolutionary search then discovers gliders on both monotilings; tracked by a sliding window that regenerates the patch along the flight, they travel one million rings at constant speed and heading. All headings are quantized, to millidegrees, onto a six-spoke compass: the fast axes of the tiling's graph metric. An ablation shows both rule-space extensions are individually necessary. All results replay exactly in an accompanying interactive essay.
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2609.22579 · 18 Sep · 32 pages, 11 figures, 8 tables. v2: priority claim withdrawn; a note added credits Trevorrow's HatLife (2023), whose worms are gliders in this paper's sense. Companion interactive essay (every result replayable live): https://offlattice.org/monotile/essay/ . Code and records: https://github.com/jamesedmond/monotile-ca (archived at doi:10.5281/zenodo.22836247)

Abstract PDF

Physics Education

Artificial Intelligence Driven Physics Assignments using Context Prompts

Miguel Rodriguez and Peter Wulff

Generative artificial intelligence (Gen AI) is increasingly shaping how students access information and engage with physics content, yet many instructional approaches still assume a pre-AI classroom. In this paper, we describe a practical framework for integrating Gen AI into physics instruction through the use of context prompts: instructor-designed prompts that define the role, task, and boundaries of the AI interaction. We focus on AI-supported exploration assignments implemented in an asynchronous introductory physics course enrolling approximately 70 students. In these activities, students used AI as a guided tutor to explore selected topics, ask follow-up questions, request explanations and analogies, and connect physics concepts to their personal interests and everyday experiences. We argue that this structure can help move students beyond answer-seeking and toward more dialogic and personally meaningful engagement with course content. We also discuss reflection as a natural extension of the same framework, while distinguishing it from the implemented exploration activities described here. Finally, we highlight practical considerations that emerged in use, including uneven access to AI platforms, grading workload, the need to teach students how to engage AI conversationally, and the growing importance of AI literacy in physics education.
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High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena

Resolving the Galactic Center Region's Gamma-Ray Emission and Searching for its Neutrino Counterpart with HAWC and IceCube

S. Yun-Carcamo, R. Babu, for the HAWC et al. (+1 more)

The Galactic Center (GC) is a prime candidate for petaelectronvolt cosmic-ray acceleration, with gamma-ray emission observed by the High Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) Observatory extending beyond 100 TeV. We present an analysis of the GC using ~2860 days of HAWC data, with increased exposure and improved sensitivity relative to previous results. The best-fit gamma-ray emission model includes a point source (HAWC J1745-2857) and a Galactic diffuse emission component. Assuming a hadronic origin, we construct the corresponding neutrino signal template and search for it in 12 years of IceCube muon-track data. No significant neutrino excess is found, and we report the first upper limit on the high-energy neutrino flux associated with the multi-component spatial model of the GC derived from HAWC data. The limit is approximately 12 times the nominal neutrino flux predicted from the HAWC gamma-ray model under a hadronic interpretation, and therefore it does not yet test the optically thin hadronic scenario.
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All authors S. Yun-Carcamo, R. Babu, for the HAWC, IceCube collaborations

Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics

Diffusion-Based Super-Resolution of Adriatic Sea Oceanographic Fields

Rajat Srivastava, Muhammad Sarmad, Emanuele Mele et al. (+3 more)

High-resolution oceanographic fields are critical for resolving mesoscale and sub-mesoscale coastal dynamics, yet their generation remains constrained by both computational cost and observational sparsity. We present OcDiffSR, a conditional denoising diffusion probabilistic model (DDPM) for oceanographic super-resolution that reconstructs high-resolution sea-surface fields from coarse-resolution reanalysis inputs. The model is trained on ten years (2011-2020) of paired low-resolution (GLORYS12V1, 1/12) and high-resolution (Mediterranean Sea Physics Reanalysis, Med MFC, 1/24) data, and evaluated on an independent test year (2009) over the Adriatic Sea. OcDiffSR employs a conditional U-Net augmented with multi-scale low-resolution encoders, cross-attention bottleneck layers, and sinusoidal seasonal embeddings via Feature-wise Linear Modulation (FiLM), enabling joint super-resolution of sea-surface temperature (SST), salinity (SSS), and horizontal velocity components with visually coherent circulation patterns. Benchmarked against bilinear interpolation and the state-of-the-art residual diffusion model CorrDiff, OcDiffSR achieves substantially lower reconstruction errors for scalar fields (RMSESST=0.477 C, RMSESSS=0.346 psu), near-unity Pearson correlation (PCC >= 0.999), and high structural similarity (SSIM >= 0.964). For dynamical vector fields, OcDiffSR outperforms both baselines in absolute error and spatial coherence, though moderate correlation (PCC = 0.64) reflects the intrinsic stochasticity of oceanic velocity fields. Daily and monthly evaluations confirm temporal robustness across all seasons. These results establish OcDiffSR as a reliable framework for high-fidelity oceanographic downscaling and reanalysis enhancement, producing fields that are visually consistent with known ocean dynamics.
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All authors Rajat Srivastava, Muhammad Sarmad, Emanuele Mele, Massimo Cafaro, Marco Pulimeno, Italo Epicoco

Quantum Physics

Modular fault-tolerant quantum computing on a non-CSS code

Robert Freund, Friederike Butt, César Benito et al. (+6 more)

Modularization promises to break down the design and implementation complexity of large scale quantum processors into smaller manageable subtasks. In this approach, quantum channels, realized for instance through physical rerouting of qubits or quantum teleportation, connect multiple modules. Each of those modules hosts a subset of qubits, e.g. multiple logical qubits, and provides quantum operations on them. In this work, we implement for the first time all logical operations required for modular fault-tolerant universal quantum computing with a non-Calderbank-Shor-Steane (CSS) code, the perfect $[[5, 1, 3]]$ code, on a trapped-ion quantum computer. This code is the smallest quantum error-correcting (QEC) code capable of correcting any single-qubit error, making it a compact alternative to larger CSS codes. We demonstrate logical state teleportation and a full suite of fault-tolerant operations required for universal logical control, including logical state preparation, QEC with real-time feedback, logical measurements, magic-state preparation, logical entangling operations, and magic-state injection. Moreover, we characterize the logical spectator error picked up by idling logical qubits during quantum operations on distinct qubit registers and demonstrate a logical Pauli quantum process tomography that minimizes required sampling resources for logical tomography.
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All authors Robert Freund, Friederike Butt, César Benito, Ivan Pogorelov, Marcel Meyer, Alex Steiner, Alejandro Bermudez, Markus Müller, Thomas Monz

High Energy Physics (Phenomenology)

Probing light axion-like particles in vector boson fusion at CMS with data parking and scouting

Sena Durgut, Mariel Peczak, Gonzalo Alonso-Álvarez et al. (+4 more)

Axion-like particles (ALPs) with masses between 10 MeV and 10 GeV and moderately small couplings sit in an experimental blind spot. They decay too fast for intensity-frontier experiments and are too feebly coupled and too light for conventional collider searches. The LHC produces them at substantial rates through vector boson fusion (VBF), the dominant production mode for electromagnetically coupled ALPs, but two obstacles keep this signal out of reach. The events are soft, so trigger thresholds discard most of them, and the Lorentz boost merges the two decay photons into a single calorimeter deposit. We show that the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment can overcome both by combining its data-acquisition strategies with the tracker-based reconstruction of merged photon pairs. Data parking on the VBF jet topology in Run 3 (312 fb$^{-1}$) and trigger-level data scouting at the High-Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC, 3 ab$^{-1}$) remove the need for a threshold on the photons. Photons that convert to electron-positron pairs in the silicon tracker resolve the merged pair, since the tracker measures their direction far more finely than the calorimeter granularity. Reconstructing the ALP decay vertex from the conversion tracks removes the prompt backgrounds but not the long-lived $K_L\to\gamma\gamma$. In Run 3, where the full event is recorded, the merged diphoton invariant mass confines the $K_L$ to a narrow window around its own mass. In the scouting stream, where only trigger-level information survives, the diphoton $p_T$, the conversion tracks, and the hadronic activity in the event take over this role. We project that the parked Run 3 data, already recorded, reach a region of the $(m_a, g_{a\gamma\gamma})$ plane that no measurement has probed. Level-1 trigger data scouting at the HL-LHC extends that reach by roughly an order of magnitude in both coupling and mass.
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All authors Sena Durgut, Mariel Peczak, Gonzalo Alonso-Álvarez, Chiara Amendola, Matteo Cremonesi, Joerg Jaeckel, Matteo Marchegiani

Applied Physics

Boundary-condition identification from a scale-invariant frequency ratio in shear-deformable and nonlocal beams and plates

Ak{\i}n Oktav

The ratio of a structure's first two natural frequencies depends on its boundary conditions but not on its size, material density, or absolute stiffness, which multiply every frequency equally and cancel in the quotient. We use this to identify the boundary conditions of a small-scale beam or plate from two ratio measurements, without knowing its exact dimensions or material. The paper first establishes how the ratio $r=\omega_2/\omega_1$, and the fractional shift $\Delta r$ it undergoes when a boundary condition changes, respond to the two effects that matter at small scale: transverse shear deformation, through Timoshenko beam and Mindlin plate theory, and small-scale elasticity, through Eringen's nonlocal Timoshenko model. Using a locking-free Rayleigh-Ritz beam solver and a finite-element Mindlin plate solver, each checked against benchmarks, we find an asymmetry. The absolute ratio moves appreciably with thickness, by 12 to 14 per cent over the shear-deformable range, and with orthotropy, by 6 to 9 per cent, but only weakly with nonlocality; the shift $\Delta r$, by contrast, varies by less than 0.2 per cent over the full nonlocal range and by a few per cent under thickness change. Because $\Delta r$ is largely independent of these details, a measured shift identifies which boundary-condition transition a deliberate change of support has produced, with a resolution we quantify and verify against molecular-dynamics data. Two spring continua then extend the method to estimating support compliance, with the non-uniqueness of the tip-support case stated explicitly. The method needs no value of the small-scale parameter or the material constants.
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Quantum Physics

Generating Dicke State Graphs

Rebekah Herrman

Graph theory is a powerful tool in quantum computing, with applications ranging from quantum circuit synthesis and optimization to entanglement mapping. Recent work has shown how one can use edge-colored graphs to model photonic experiments that generate GHZ and W states. However, the latter work also proved that verifying that a graph models a Dicke state experiment is coNP-complete. In this work, we provide families of graphs that generate $|D_{k}^a\rangle \otimes |0\rangle^{\otimes b }$, where $b = |a-2k|$ is the number of spectator modes. The graph setup consists of a doubled complete subgraph on $a$ vertices and a collection of auxiliary vertices. We prove that every coincidence carries exactly $k$ excitations, every weight-$k$ computational basis state on bitstrings of length $a$ is realized, and each of those bitstrings is realized exactly $(n/2)!$ times, where $n = a+b$. Since verifying the Dicke FORALL condition is coNP-complete in general, constructing explicit families that provably generate Dicke states is of interest.
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High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena

The chirping of Lense-Thirring precession in tidal disruption event accretion flows

Andrew Mummery and Eliot Quataert

Tidal disruption event X-ray light curves do not appear to show clear signs of periodic modulation. This is naively somewhat surprising since the stars that are disrupted originate at large scales in the galaxy where they cannot know about the orientation of the black hole spin axis. This should lead to the formation of a misaligned disk that precesses due to Lense-Thirring torques, modulating X-ray emission from the inner disk regions. We argue that in fact the properties which are required for solid-body precession, namely a thick $(H/R\sim {\mathcal O}(1))$ disk, naturally lead to rapid precession period change, with a per-period increase of $\Delta T_{\rm prec}/T_{\rm prec} \sim {\mathcal O}(1-10)$, as the disk spreads to larger radii to conserve angular momentum. In other words the precession of thick TDE disks is aggressively chirped, washing out any possibility of observing multiple cycles other than for fine tuned regions of parameter space. The global disk alignment timescale is equally strongly chirped by the exact same mechanism, meaning that TDE disks will not in general align with the black hole spin axis during a super-Eddington phase, and should generically show global quasi-steady warp profiles at the beginning of any thin disk phase. These results have important implications for interpreting timing features associated with TDE disks, including models for quasi-periodic X-ray eruption timing phenomenology, and the observational properties of TDE disks in the initial transition to the thin disk phase.
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Materials Science

Compressive Splitting in Brittle Solids: The Inverse of Wrinkling in Sheets

Maryam Khodadad, Francois Barthelat, John D. Clayton et al. (+2 more)

Axial splitting is the dominant failure mode of brittle solids under compression, yet its mechanical origin remains unclear. We show that clamped loading platens suppress lateral Poisson expansion, generating boundary-induced tensile stresses at the specimen interior – the compressive analog of wrinkling in stretched sheets. This mechanism provides a predictive strength law, relating axial splitting to tensile strength, geometry, and confinement pressure. This is validated against diverse materials ranging from rocks to ceramics, establishing axial splitting as a geometry-controlled elastic process rather than a stochastic flaw problem.
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All authors Maryam Khodadad, Francois Barthelat, John D. Clayton, George Gazonas, Kaushik Dayal

Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics

Initial modeling and testbed feasibility studies of WaveDriver: a laser guide star AO system for HWO

Dominic F. Sanchez, Benjamin L. Gerard, Peter Waswa et al. (+16 more)

The Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) will require $>100\times$ greater wavefront stability than achieved by JWST, pushing conventional telescope architectures to picometer-level performance limits. WaveDriver is a mission concept that relaxes these constraints by employing an external laser guide star (LGS) spacecraft flying in formation with HWO to enable wavefront sensing and control. Early results from the High Contrast Testbed demonstrate feasibility of required stability using coronagraphs, multiple deformable mirrors, and a suite of wavefront sensors. We report mission design analyses, initial testbed stability metrics, compare sensor performance, and present an optical model that quantifies LGS brightness, conjugation errors, and field errors arising from finite beacon separation.
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All authors Dominic F. Sanchez, Benjamin L. Gerard, Peter Waswa, Alex Geringer-Smith, Aditya Sengupta, Alexx Perloff, Michael Messerly, William Moore, Matthew Cook, Paul Pax, Cesar Laguna, Mathew DeMartino, Kevin Bundy, Rebecca Jensen-Clem, Aaron Lemmer, S. Mark Ammons, Megan Eckart, Lisa Poyneer, Eric Strang

High Energy Physics (Experiment)

First measurement of the forward rapidity dependence of $W$ boson transverse helicity fractions

LHCb collaboration: R. Aaij, M. Abdelfatah, A.S.W. Abdelmotteleb et al. (+1187 more)

The transverse helicity fractions of $W$ bosons are measured as a function of the $W$ boson rapidity, $y_{W}$, in the range $0 \leq y_{W} \leq 5$ using $W\to\mu\nu_{\mu}$ decays in $pp$ collisions at $\sqrt{s}$ = 13 TeV recorded by the LHCb experiment and corresponding to an integrated luminosity of $5.1$ fb$^{-1}$. The fractions are extracted from a template fit to the muon transverse momentum and pseudorapidity. The results show a strong rapidity dependence and agree with next-to-leading-order Standard Model predictions, providing the first determination of the transverse helicity fractions of $W$ bosons in the forward region.
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All authors LHCb collaboration: R. Aaij, M. Abdelfatah, A.S.W. Abdelmotteleb, C. Abellan Beteta, F. Abudinén, T. Ackernley, A.A. Adefisoye, B. Adeva, M. Adinolfi, P. Adlarson, C. Agapopoulou, C.A. Aidala, S. Akar, K. Akiba, H. Al Saleh, P. Albicocco, J. Albrecht, R. Aleksiejunas, F. Alessio, P. Alvarez Cartelle, A.A. Alves Jr, S. Amato, J.L. Amey, Y. Amhis, Z. Amos, L. An, L. Anderlini, P. Andreola, M. Andreotti, S. Andres Estrada, A. Anelli, D. Ao, C. Arata, F. Archilli, Z. Areg, M. Argenton, S. Arguedas Cuendis, L. Arnone, M. Artuso, E. Aslanides, R. Ataíde Da Silva, M. Atzeni, B. Audurier, J.A. Authier, D. Bacher, I. Bachiller Perea, S. Bachmann, M. Bachmayer, J.J. Back, M. Bai, Z.B. Bai, V. Balagura, A. Balboni, W. Baldini, Z. Baldwin, L. Balzani, H. Bao, J. Baptista de Souza Leite, C. Barbero Pretel, I.R. Barbosa, W. Barker, R.J. Barlow, M. Barnyakov, S. Baron, S. Barsuk, W. Barter, J. Bartz, S. Bashir, B. Batsukh, P.B. Battista, A. Bavarchee, A. Bay, A. Beck, M. Becker, F. Bedeschi, I.B. Bediaga, N.A. Behling, S. Belin, A. Bellavista, I. Belyaev, G. Bencivenni, E. Ben-Haim, J.L.M. Berkey, R. Bernet, A. Bertolin, L. Bertsch, F. Betti, J. Bex, O. Bezshyyko, S. Bhattacharya, M.S. Bieker, N.V. Biesuz, A. Biolchini, M. Birch, F.C.R. Bishop, A. Bitadze, A. Bizzeti, T. Blake, F. Blanc, J.E. Blank, S. Blusk, J.A. Boelhauve, O. Boente Garcia, T. Boettcher, A. Bohare, C. Bolognani, R.B. Bonacci, A. Bordelius, F. Borgato, S. Borghi, M. Borsato, J.T. Borsuk, E. Bottalico, S.A. Bouchiba, M. Bovill, T.J.V. Bowcock, A. Boyer, C. Bozzi, J.D. Brandenburg, A. Brea Rodriguez, N. Breer, C. Breitfeld, J. Brodzicka, J. Brown, E. Buchanan, M. Burgos Marcos, C. Burr, E. Butera, C. Buti, J.S. Butter, W. Byczynski, S. Cadeddu, H. Cai, Y. Cai, Y. Cai, A. Caillet, R. Calabrese, L. Calefice, M. Calvi, M. Calvo Gomez, P. Camargo Magalhaes, J.I. Cambon Bouzas, P. Campana, A. Campomagnani, A.C. Campos, A.F. Campoverde Quezada, Y. Cao, S. Capelli, M. Caporale, L. Capriotti, R. Caravaca-Mora, A. Carbone, L. Carcedo Salgado, R. Cardinale, A. Cardini, P. Carniti, L. Carus, R. Caspary, G. Casse, M. Cattaneo, G. Cavallero, V. Cavallini, S. Celani, I. Celestino, S. Cesare, A.J. Chadwick, M. Charles, Ph. Charpentier, E. Chatzianagnostou, R. Cheaib, M. Chefdeville, C. Chen, J. Chen, S. Chen, Z. Chen, A. Chen Hu, M. Cherif, S. Chernyshenko, X. Chiotopoulos, G. Chizhik, V. Chobanova, A. Christakakis, M. Chrzaszcz, Y. Chu, V. Chulikov, P. Ciambrone, X. Cid Vidal, P. Cifra, P.E.L. Clarke, M. Clemencic, H.V. Cliff, J. Closier, C. Cocha Toapaxi, V. Coco, A. Codovini, C.S. Codovini, J. Cogan, E. Cogneras, L. Cojocariu, S. Collaviti, P. Collins, T. Colombo, M. Colonna, A. Comerma-Montells, L. Congedo, J. Connaughton, A. Contu, N. Cooke, A. Corallo, G. Cordova, C. Coronel, I. Corredoira, A. Correia, G. Corti, G.C. Costantino, C. Cotirlan, J. Cottee Meldrum, B. Couturier, D.C. Craik, N. Crepet, M. Cruz Torres, M. Cubero Campos, E. Curras Rivera, R. Currie, C.L. Da Silva, X. Dai, J. Dalseno, C. D'Ambrosio, G. Darze, A. Davidson, O. De Aguiar Francisco, C. De Angelis, F. De Benedetti, J. de Boer, K. De Bruyn, S. De Capua, M. De Cian, U. De Freitas Carneiro Da Graca, F. De Gregorio, E. De Lucia, J.M. De Miranda, L. De Paula, A. De Robertis, E. De Santis, M. De Serio, P. De Simone, F. De Vellis, J.A. de Vries, F. Debernardis, D. Decamp, S. Dekkers, L. Del Buono, B. Demaire-Lepape, J. Deng, O. Deschamps, F. Dettori, B. Dey, P. Di Nezza, S. Ding, Y. Ding, L. Dittmann, J.F. Diverchy, A.D. Docheva, A. Doheny, C. Dong, F. Dordei, J. Dorta Moreno, A.C. dos Reis, J. Dos Santos Oliveira, A.D. Dowling, L. Dreyfus, W. Duan, P. Duda, L. Dufour, V. Duk, P. Durante, M.M. Duras, J.M. Durham, K. Duwe, A. Dziurda, S. Easo, E. Eckstein, U. Egede, S. Eisenhardt, E. Ejopu, L. Eklund, M. Elashri, D. Elizondo Blanco, J. Ellbracht, S. Ely, A. Ene, T. Evans, F. Fabiano, S. Faghih, L.N. Falcao, B. Fang, R. Fantechi, L. Fantini, M. Faria, K. Farmer, F. Fassin, D. Fazzini, L. Felkowski, C. Feng, M. Feng, A. Fernandez Casani, M. Fernandez Gomez, B. Fernandez Rodino, J. Fernandez-John, A.D. Fernez, F. Ferrari, F. Ferreira Rodrigues, R.A. Fini, R. Fiorenza, M. Fiorini, M. Firlej, D.S. Fitzgerald, C. Fitzpatrick, T. Fiutowski, F. Fleuret, A. Fomin, M. Fontana, M. Fontes Vaz, L.A. Foreman, R. Forty, D. Foulds-Holt, V. Franco Lima, M. Franco Sevilla, M. Frank, E. Franzoso, G. Frau, C. Frei, D.A. Friday, J. Fu, Y. Fu, Q. Führing, T. Fulghesu, M. Fulghieri, G. Galati, M.D. Galati, A. Gallas Torreira, D. Galli, S. Gambetta, M. Gandelman, P. Gandini, B. Ganie, H. Gao, R. Gao, T.Q. Gao, Y. Gao, Y. Gao, Y. Gao, L.M. Garcia Martin, P. Garcia Moreno, J. García Pardiñas, P. Gardner, L. Garrido, C. Gaspar, A. Gavrikov, J. George, E. Gersabeck, M. Gersabeck, T. Gershon, S. Ghizzo, Z. Ghorbanimoghaddam, F.I. Giasemis, V. Gibson, H.K. Giemza, A.L. Gilman, M. Giovannetti, A. Gioventù, L. Girardey, M.A. Giza, F.C. Glaser, V.V. Gligorov, A. Glioti, C. Göbel, L. Golinka-Bezshyyko, E. Golobardes, A. Golutvin, S. Gomez Fernandez, A.G. Gomez Mongui, W. Gomulka, F. Goncalves Abrantes, I. Gonçales Vaz, M. Goncerz, G. Gong, S. Gong, J.A. Gooding, C. Gotti, E. Govorkova, J.P. Grabowski, L.A. Granado Cardoso, R. Grande Quartieri, E. Graugés, E. Graverini, L. Grazette, G. Graziani, A.T. Grecu, N.A. Grieser, L. Grillo, C. Gu, M. Guarise, L. Guerry, M. Guittiere, A.-K. Guseinov, Y. Guz, T. Gys, K. Habermann, T. Hadavizadeh, C. Hadjivasiliou, G. Haefeli, C. Haen, S. Haken, G. Hallett, P.M. Hamilton, Q. Han, S. Han, X. Han, S. Hansmann-Menzemer, N. Harnew, T.J. Harris, L. Hartman, M. Hartmann, S. Hashmi, J. He, N. Heatley, A. Hedes, F. Hemmer, C. Henderson, R. Henderson, R.D.L. Henderson, A.M. Hennequin, K. Hennessy, A. Henrot, J. Herd, P. Herrero Gascon, J. Heuel, A. Heyn, A. Hicheur, G. Hijano Mendizabal, J. Horswill, R. Hou, Y. Hou, D.C. Houston, N. Howarth, W. Hu, X. Hu, W. Hulsbergen, R.J. Hunter, D. Hutchcroft, M. Idzik, P. Ilten, A. Iohner, S. Jacevicius, H. Jage, S.J. Jaimes Elles, S. Jakobsen, T. Jakoubek, E. Jans, A. Jawahery, C. Jayaweera, A. Jelavic, V. Jevtic, Z. Jia, E. Jiang, X. Jiang, Y. Jiang, Y.J. Jiang, E. Jimenez Moya, N. Jindal, M. John, A. John Rubesh Rajan, D. Johnson, C.R. Jones, S. Joshi, B. Jost, J. Juan Castella, N. Jurik, I. Juszczak, K. Kalecinska, D. Kaminaris, S. Kandybei, M. Kane, Y. Kang, C. Kar, A. Kauniskangas, J.W. Kautz, M.K. Kazanecki, F. Keizer, M. Kenzie, T. Ketel, B. Khanji, S. Kholodenko, V. Kholoimov, G. Khreich, F. Kiraz, T. Kirn, V.S. Kirsebom, N. Kleijne, A. Kleimenova, D. Klekots, K. Klimaszewski, M.R. Kmiec, T. Knospe, R. Kolb, S. Koliiev, L. Kolk, A. Konoplyannikov, P. Kopciewicz, P. Koppenburg, A. Korchin, I. Kostiuk, O. Kot, S. Kotriakhova, E. Kowalczyk, O. Kravcov, M. Kreps, W. Krupa, W. Krzemien, O. Kshyvanskyi, S. Kubis, M. Kucharczyk, A. Kupsc, A. Kurzina, V. Kushnir, B. Kutsenko, J. Kvapil, I. Kyryllin, D. Lacarrere, P. Laguarta Gonzalez, A. Lai, A. Lampis, D. Lancierini, C. Landesa Gomez, G. Lanfranchi, C. Langenbruch, T. Latham, F. Lazzari, C. Lazzeroni, R. Le Gac, H. Lee, R. Lefèvre, M. Lehuraux, C. Lemettais, E. Lemos Cid, O. Leroy, T. Lesiak, E.D. Lesser, B. Leverington, A. Li, C. Li, C. Li, H. Li, J. Li, K. Li, L. Li, L. Li, P. Li, P.-R. Li, Q. Li, T. Li, T. Li, W. Li, Y. Li, Y. Li, Y. Li, Z. Li, Z. Lian, Q. Liang, X. Liang, Z. Liang, S. Libralon, A. Lightbody, J. Lin, S. Lin, T. Lin, R. Lindner, H. Linton, R. Litvinov, D. Liu, F.L. Liu, G. Liu, K. Liu, S. Liu, W. Liu, X. Liu, Y. Liu, Y. Liu, Y.L. Liu, G. Loachamin Ordonez, I. Lobo, A. Lobo Salvia, A. Loi, T. Long, F.C.L. Lopes, J.H. Lopes, A. Lopez Huertas, C. Lopez Iribarnegaray, Q. Lu, C. Lucarelli, D. Lucchesi, M. Lucio Martinez, Y. Luo, A. Lupato, M. Lupberger, E. Luppi, K. Lynch, J. Lyu, S. Lyu, X.-R. Lyu, H. Ma, S. Maccolini, F. Machefert, F. Maciuc, B. Mack, I. Mackay, L.M. Mackey, L.R. Madhan Mohan, M.J. Madurai, D. Magdalinski, J.J. Malczewski, S. Malde, L. Malentacca, G. Manca, C. Mancuso, R. Manera Escalero, A. Mangalasseri, F.M. Manganella, R. Mangrulkar, D. Manuzzi, S. Mao, D. Marangotto, J.F. Marchand, R. Marchevski, U. Marconi, L. Mareso, E. Mariani, S. Mariani, C. Marin Benito, J. Marks, A.M. Marshall, L. Martel, G. Martelli, G. Martellotti, L. Martinazzoli, M. Martinelli, C. Martinez, A. Martinez Armas, D. Martinez Gomez, D. Martinez Santos, F. Martinez Vidal, A. Martorell i Granollers, A. Massafferri, R. Matev, A. Mathad, C. Matteuzzi, K.R. Mattioli, L. Matzner, A. Mauri, E. Maurice, J. Mauricio, P. Mayencourt, J. Mazorra de Cos, M. Mazurek, D. Mazzanti Tarancon, M. McCann, N.T. McHugh, A. McNab, R. McNulty, B. Meadows, S.E.R. Medaer, D. Melnychuk, D. Mendoza Granada, P. Menendez Valdes Perez, F.M. Meng, M. Merk, A. Merli, L. Meyer Garcia, D. Miao, H. Miao, S. Mico, M. Mikhasenko, D.A. Milanes, A. Minotti, E. Minucci, B. Mitreska, D.S. Mitzel, R. Mocanu, A. Modak, L. Moeser, R.D. Moise, E.F. Molina Cardenas, T. Mombächer, M. Monk, T. Monnard, S. Monteil, A. Morcillo Gomez, G. Morello, M.J. Morello, M.P. Morgenthaler, A. Moro, J. Moron, W. Morren, A.B. Morris, A.G. Morris, R. Mountain, Z. Mu, N. Muangkod, E. Muhammad, F. Muheim, M. Mulder, K. Müller, V. Mytrochenko, P. Naik, T. Nakada, R. Nandakumar, G. Napoletano, I. Nasteva, M. Needham, N. Neri, S. Neubert, N. Neufeld, J. Nicolini, D. Nicotra, E.M. Niel, L. Nisi, Q. Niu, B.K. Njoki, P. Nogarolli, P. Nogga, J. Nombela Royo, C. Normand, A. Novo Cal, J. Novoa Fernandez, G. Nowak, H.N. Nur, A. Oblakowska-Mucha, T. Oeser, O. Okhrimenko, R. Oldeman, N. Oldman, F. Oliva, E. Olivart Pino, M. Olocco, R.H. O'Neil, J.S. Ordonez Soto, D. Osthues, J.M. Otalora Goicochea, P. Owen, A. Oyanguren, O. Ozcelik, F. Paciolla, A. Padee, K.O. Padeken, B. Pagare, T. Pajero, A. Palano, L. Palini, L. Palombini, M. Palutan, C. Pan, X. Pan, S. Panebianco, S. Paniskaki, L. Paolucci, A. Papanestis, M. Pappagallo, L.L. Pappalardo, C. Pappenheimer, C. Parkes, D. Parmar, G. Passaleva, D. Passaro, A. Pastore, M. Patel, J. Patoc, C. Patrignani, A. Paul, C.J. Pawley, A. Pellegrino, J. Peng, X. Peng, M. Pepe Altarelli, S. Perazzini, H. Pereira Da Costa, M. Pereira Martinez, C. Perez, A. Perez Casas, P. Perret, A. Perrevoort, A. Perro, M.J. Peters, A. Petkovic, K. Petridis, A. Petrolini, S. Pezzulo, J.P. Pfaller, H. Pham, L. Pica, E. Picatoste Olloqui, M. Piccini, L. Piccolo, F. Piernas Diaz, B. Pietrzyk, R.N. Pilato, D. Pinci, F. Pisani, M. Pizzichemi, V.M. Placinta, M. Plo Casasus, T. Poeschl, F. Polci, M. Poli Lener, A. Poluektov, I. Polyakov, E. Polycarpo, S. Ponce, D. Popov, K. Popp, K. Prasanth, C. Prouve, D. Provenzano, V. Pugatch, A. Puicercus Gomez, G. Punzi, J.R. Pybus, Q. Qian, W. Qian, N. Qin, R. Quagliani, R.I. Rabadan Trejo, B. Rachwal, R. Racz, J.H. Rademacker, M. Rama, M. Ramírez García, V. Ramos De Oliveira, M. Ramos Pernas, G. Ramsey, M.S. Rangel, G. Raven, M. Rebollo De Miguel, F. Redi, J. Reich, F. Reiss, Z. Ren, P.K. Resmi, M. Ribalda Galvez, R. Ribatti, G. Ricart, D. Riccardi, S. Ricciardi, K. Richardson, M. Richardson-Slipper, F. Riehn, K. Rinnert, P. Robbe, G. Robertson, E. Rodrigues, A. Rodriguez Alvarez, E. Rodriguez Fernandez, J.A. Rodriguez Lopez, E. Rodriguez Rodriguez, J. Roensch, A. Rogovskiy, D.L. Rolf, P. Roloff, A. Romano, V. Romanovskiy, A. Romero Vidal, G. Romolini, F. Ronchetti, T. Rong, W. Rose, M. Rotondo, M.S. Rudolph, G. Ruggiero, M. Ruiz Diaz, J. Ruiz Vidal, J. Ruz Armendariz, J.J. Saavedra-Arias, J.J. Saborido Silva, D. Sahoo, N. Sahoo, B. Saitta, M. Salomoni, I. Sanderswood, R. Santacesaria, C. Santamarina Rios, M. Santimaria, L. Santoro, E. Santovetti, A. Saputi, A. Sarnatskiy, G. Sarpis, M. Sarpis, C. Satriano, A. Satta, M. Saur, H. Sazak, F. Sborzacchi, A. Scarabotto, S. Schael, S. Scherl, M. Schiller, H. Schindler, M. Schmelling, B. Schmidt, N. Schmidt, S. Schmitt, H. Schmitz, O. Schneider, A. Schopper, N. Schulte, H. Schumacher, M.H. Schune, G. Schwering, B. Sciascia, A. Sciuccati, G. Scriven, I. Segal, S. Sellam, M. Senghi Soares, A. Sergi, N. Serra, L. Sestini, B. Sevilla Sanjuan, Y. Shang, D.M. Shangase, R.S. Sharma, L. Shchutska, T. Shears, S. Shelton, J. Shen, Z. Shen, S. Sheng, B. Shi, J. Shi, Q. Shi, W.S. Shi, E. Shmanin, R. Silva Coutinho, G. Simi, S. Simone, M. Singha, I. Siral, N. Skidmore, T. Skwarnicki, M.W. Slater, E. Smith, M. Smith, M. Smith, L. Soares Lavra, M.D. Sokoloff, F.J.P. Soler, A. Solomin, K. Solovieva, N.S. Sommerfeld, R. Song, Y. Song, Y. Song, Y.S. Song, F.L. Souza De Almeida, G. Souza De Castro, B. Souza De Paula, K.M. Sowa, E. Spadaro Norella, E. Spedicato, J.G. Speer, P. Spradlin, F. Stagni, M. Stahl, S. Stahl, S. Stanislaus, M. Stefaniak, O. Steinkamp, F. Suljik, J. Sun, L. Sun, M. Sun, D. Sundfeld, P. Svihra, V. Svintozelskyi, J. Swallow, K. Swientek, F. Swystun, A. Szabelski, T. Szumlak, Y. Tan, Y. Tang, Y.T. Tang, M.D. Tat, J.A. Teijeiro Jimenez, F. Terzuoli, F. Teubert, E. Thomas, D.J.D. Thompson, A.R. Thomson-Strong, R. Thornton, H. Tilquin, V. Tisserand, S. T'Jampens, M. Tobin, T.T. Todorov, L. Tomassetti, G. Tonani, X. Tong, T. Tork, L. Torlai, L. Toscano, D.Y. Tou, G. Tuci, N. Tuning, L.H. Uecker, A. Ukleja, A. Upadhyay, B. Urbach, A. Usachov, U. Uwer, V. Vagnoni, A. Vaitkevicius, A. Valassi, V. Valcarce Cadenas, G. Valenti, N. Valls Canudas, J. van Eldik, H. Van Hecke, E. van Herwijnen, C.B. Van Hulse, R. Van Laak, M. van Veghel, P. Varrella, R. Vazquez Gomez, P. Vazquez Regueiro, C. Vázquez Sierra, S. Vecchi, J. Velilla Serna, J.J. Velthuis, M. Veltri, A. Venkateswaran, M. Verdoglia, M. Vesterinen, W. Vetens, D. Vico Benet, P. Vidrier Villalba, M. Vieites Diaz, X. Vilasis-Cardona, E. Vilella Figueras, A. Villa, P. Vincent, B. Vivacqua, F.C. Volle, D. vom Bruch, K. Vos, C. Vrahas, J. Wagner, J. Walsh, N. Walter, E.J. Walton, G. Wan, A. Wang, B. Wang, C. Wang, C. Wang, C. Wang, G. Wang, H. Wang, J. Wang, J. Wang, J. Wang, J. Wang, M. Wang, N.W. Wang, X. Wang, X. Wang, X. Wang, X.W. Wang, Y. Wang, Y. Wang, Y. Wang, Y.H. Wang, Z. Wang, Z. Wang, J.A. Ward, M. Waterlaat, N.K. Watson, D. Websdale, Y. Wei, Z. Weida, J. Wendel, B.D.C. Westhenry, A.S. White, C. White, M. Whitehead, E. Whiter, A.R. Wiederhold, D. Wiedner, M.A. Wiegertjes, C. Wild, G. Wilkinson, M.K. Wilkinson, M. Williams, M.J. Williams, M.R.J. Williams, R. Williams, S. Williams, Z. Williams, F.F. Wilson, M. Winn, W. Wislicki, M. Witek, L. Witola, T. Wolf, E. Wood, G. Wormser, S.A. Wotton, H. Wu, J. Wu, T. Wu, X. Wu, Y. Wu, Z. Wu, K. Wyllie, S. Xian, Z. Xiang, Y. Xie, T.X. Xing, A. Xu, L. Xu, M. Xu, R. Xu, Z. Xu, Z. Xu, Z. Xu, Z. Xu, S. Yadav, K. Yang, X. Yang, Y. Yang, Y. Yang, Z. Yang, Z. Yang, H. Yeung, H. Yin, X. Yin, C.Y. Yu, J. Yu, K. Yu, X. Yuan, Y Yuan, S. Zalambani, J.A. Zamora Saa, F. Zangari, M. Zavertyaev, M. Zdybal, F. Zenesini, C. Zeng, M. Zeng, S.H Zeng, C. Zhang, C. Zhang, D. Zhang, J. Zhang, L. Zhang, Q.Z. Zhang, R. Zhang, S. Zhang, S.L. Zhang, Y. Zhang, Z. Zhang, J. Zhao, M. Zhao, Y. Zhao, A. Zhelezov, S.Z. Zheng, X.Z. Zheng, Y. Zheng, T. Zhou, X. Zhou, V. Zhovkovska, L.Z. Zhu, X. Zhu, X. Zhu, Y. Zhu, V. Zhukov, J. Zhuo, T. Zies, D. Zuliani, X. Zuo

Plasma Physics

Proton Heating Rates in the Inner Heliosphere: Helios Observations

Alaa Fayad, Anna Tenerani and Chadi Salem

Solar wind protons exhibit a temperature anisotropy that deviates from the double-adiabatic prediction, suggesting an additional energy source. To investigate solar wind heating mechanisms, we analyze Helios 1 and 2 data and characterize the radial evolution of the adiabatic invariants and anisotropic heating rates of fast wind protons, considering both the bulk population and its core and beam components separately. Unlike previous studies, we account for proton heat fluxes and deviations from the Parker spiral caused by large-amplitude fluctuations, which causes significant differences in the parallel heating rates compared to earlier results. Although earlier work has questioned the reliability of power laws to estimate heating rates and proposed as a more robust approach the investigation of the radial evolution of adiabatic invariants, we show that the two approaches yield consistent results when applied to the same dataset. Our analysis shows that all proton populations considered require net perpendicular heating, consistent with earlier studies. In contrast, the parallel energy evolution differs between populations. Core protons require parallel heating, whereas beam protons undergo parallel cooling although the total proton population undergoes a net parallel cooling. This behavior is consistent with the combined action of turbulence and core-beam kinetic instabilities, which together can drive preferential perpendicular heating while simultaneously produce parallel cooling in the fast solar wind. Core proton parallel heating could instead be a signature of Alfvén wave decay.
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Astrophysics of Galaxies

The Deep Learning Halo Definer: A Multimodal Framework for Halo Mass and Gas Fraction Inference on Galaxy Groups and Clusters

Caleb Ogle, Kalvyn N. Poncelet Adams, Benjamin D. Oppenheimer et al. (+5 more)

Accurately inferring dark matter halo properties like the total halo mass (M_{halo}) and gas fractions (f_{gas}) remains particularly challenging at group scales, where low member counts, shallow potential wells, and AGN feedback-driven baryon expulsion introduce significant observational scatter. As large-scale surveys begin to provide unprecedented multi-wavelength data, there is a pressing need for methods that can jointly leverage diverse observables to overcome these uncertainties. We introduce the Deep Learning Halo Definer (DLHD), a multimodal deep learning framework that simultaneously processes galaxy catalogues and X-ray imaging through the combination of a Deep Sets and a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) to improve M_{halo} and f_{gas} estimation for galaxy groups and clusters. Using mock datasets derived from the IllustrisTNG300 hydrodynamic simulation, we demonstrate that the DLHD outperforms each of its component networks individually, achieving RMSE improvements in M_{halo} of 1.9x over Deep Sets and 1.3x over the CNN alone. For the gas fraction enclosed within R_{200c}, DLHD reduces RMSE by 2.0x relative to Deep Sets and 1.1x relative to the CNN alone, with consistent improvements across other apertures. These results highlight a novel ability to leverage multi-band information inaccessible to single-modality methods, positioning DLHD as a promising tool for next-generation survey analyses.
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All authors Caleb Ogle, Kalvyn N. Poncelet Adams, Benjamin D. Oppenheimer, Naomi Gluck, Matthew Ho, Daisuke Nagai, Joseph N. Burchett, Mohammadreza Ayromlou

Statistical Mechanics

Intermittency in Wind-Driven Fires

Laurent Hébert-Dufresne, Aanjaneya Kumar and S. Redner

We construct a wind-driven forest-fire model in one dimension in which a fire can jump gaps between trees to ignite disjoint downwind forests. The size of a gap that a fire can jump depends on the fire intensity, which increases as the fire propagates through trees and diminishes as the fire jumps gaps. Trees grow on empty sites at rate $r$ and lightning strikes each site with rate $f$. When $f\ll r/L$, where $L$ is the system length, lightning is sufficiently rare that quasi-deterministic dynamics arises where all trees are consumed when a lightning-induced fire occurs. For $f\gg L^{-\mu}$ with $\mu\approx 0.8$, lightning is sufficiently frequent that a steady state is reached, but with unexpected behaviors for the forest- and gap-size distributions. Intermittency arises in between these regimes, with coexisting temporal domains of deterministic and chaotic dynamics.
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Optics

Ultrafast light-sheet optical tweezers for in situ parallelized biomechanical characterization of cells and soft tissues

Krishangi Krishna, Gannon Lemaster, Jieyi Xu et al. (+8 more)

Quantitative characterization of the mechanical properties of cells and tissues is essential for understanding disease progression and tissue regeneration. Optical tweezers (OT) enable the direct application of biologically relevant forces; however, OT has been limited to single axial indentations of cells, thereby restricting throughput. Furthermore, the use of quadrant photodiodes is insufficient for assessing the large displacements required for biomechanical characterization of tissues. We present light-sheet optical tweezers as a force transducer (LOFT), an approach that improves the throughput by at least 3x through simultaneous multiparticle trapping and parallelized characterization under sub-nN forces. LOFT is achieved by uniquely integrating light-sheet illumination for extended trapping, femtosecond-pulsed lasers to augment the optical gradient force, and videography-based particle tracking for observation of force transduction. The platform is validated through single-cell indentation experiments. We then apply LOFT to myocardial tissue, revealing significant biomechanical differences between healthy and infarcted regions; the interpretation of which is further supported by quantitative multiphoton imaging using the same optical source and platform. This work represents the first demonstration of OT for the mechanical testing of intact soft tissues, and establishes LOFT as a versatile, multifunctional platform for high-throughput, minimally invasive, mechanical characterization of complex biological systems in situ.
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All authors Krishangi Krishna, Gannon Lemaster, Jieyi Xu, Zhaowei Jiang, Carlonia G. Casas, Zahra Ahmed, Stephanie Roser, Kareen L. K. Coulombe, Anita Shukla, Vikas Srivastava, Kimani C. Toussaint Jr

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics

Axio-Dilaton Dark Energy: A Dynamical Systems and Bayesian Inference Analysis

Mario Ramos-Hamud, Gabriela García-Arroyo, Fernando Quevedo et al. (+1 more)

We initiate a systematic cosmological investigation of an axio-dilaton system governed by a curved field-space metric as generically motivated by supergravity and string compactifications. The scalar sector consists of a light scalar dilaton field evolving along an asymptotically exponential potential and a pseudoscalar field spanning an essentially flat direction, kinetically coupled through an exponential field-space metric. Deviations from the asymptotic regime are incorporated by introducing a generalised Albrecht-Skordis potential containing a polynomial factor. Utilising a dynamical systems approach alongside numerical evolution and Bayesian inference, we constrain the model using Type Ia Supernovae (SNe Ia), Baryon Acoustic Oscillations (BAO) and Planck 2018 distance-prior data. We identify a parameter degeneracy indicating that steeper potentials demand stronger field-space kinetic couplings to sustain late-time cosmic acceleration. Finally, a joint likelihood analysis reveals that while the model successfully accounts for dark energy dynamics, it is only slightly statistically favoured over $\Lambda$CDM by current observations.
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All authors Mario Ramos-Hamud, Gabriela García-Arroyo, Fernando Quevedo, J. Alberto Vázquez

Strongly Correlated Electrons

Approaching the Inverse Neutron Scattering Problem with Neural Networks

Jingyi Luo, Fletcher Williams, Ang-Kun Wu et al. (+3 more)

Determining the microscopic Hamiltonian of a quantum magnet from inelastic neutron scattering measurements remains a central challenge in condensed matter physics. While the dynamical spin structure factor contains, in principle, sufficient information about the underlying interactions, extracting Hamiltonian parameters from experimental spectra constitutes a highly nontrivial inverse problem due to the large parameter space and the presence of experimental noise. Here we demonstrate that neural networks can efficiently solve this inverse problem for a broad class of quantum magnets. As a benchmark, we consider an eight-parameter family of honeycomb lattice Heisenberg spin models in the fully polarized phase, where the dynamical spin structure factor can be computed exactly within linear spin-wave theory. Using a large synthetic dataset of neutron scattering spectra, we train neural networks to infer the underlying Hamiltonian parameters directly from the dynamical response. We compare the performance of three different architectures—fully connected neural networks (FCNNs), one-dimensional convolutional neural networks (CNN1Ds), and two-dimensional convolutional neural networks (CNN2Ds)—and find that all achieve high predictive accuracy. Remarkably, the trained models remain robust in the presence of substantial experimental uncertainty, reliably recovering the Hamiltonian parameters even when the input spectra are contaminated by random noise with amplitudes reaching $10\%$ of the signal intensity. Our results establish machine learning as a powerful framework for quantitative Hamiltonian reconstruction from neutron scattering data and provide a practical route toward automated characterization of quantum magnetic materials.
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All authors Jingyi Luo, Fletcher Williams, Ang-Kun Wu, David Dahlbom, Cristian D. Batista, Hao Zhang

Soft Condensed Matter

Two-Stage Ordering Kinetics in Binary Mixtures of Ellipsoidal Particles

Parameshwaran A, Sanjay Puri and Bhaskar Sen Gupta

We investigate the nonequilibrium phase-ordering kinetics of a binary mixture of uniaxial ellipsoidal particles interacting via the anisotropic Gay-Berne potential using large-scale molecular dynamics simulations. Following a temperature quench from the isotropic and homogeneous phase into the coexistence region, the system exhibits two distinct ordering processes occurring on different time scales. At first, rapid orientational ordering leads to the formation and coarsening of nematic domains, characterized by dynamical scaling, generalized Porod-law behavior, and a growth law $\ell(t) \sim t^{1/2}$ consistent with nonconserved order-parameter dynamics. Later, the system undergoes binary phase separation driven by compositional fluctuations. This compositional ordering process shows a transition from diffusive growth $\ell(t) \sim t^{1/3}$ to hydrodynamic regimes, with finite-size scaling analysis indicating asymptotic viscous growth $\ell(t) \sim t$. Despite the presence of global orientational order, the phase-separation kinetics remains effectively isotropic. These results demonstrate a clear separation between orientational and compositional ordering dynamics, governed by distinct conservation laws, and provide a unified framework for understanding phase ordering in anisotropic particle systems.
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Solar and Stellar Astrophysics

Chromospheric sensitivity of stellar spectral lines: an unsupervised machine learning classification

Juan I. Peralta and Mariela C. Vieytes

Stellar magnetic activity alters thousands of spectral lines, limiting high-precision radial-velocity measurements, abundance analyses, and planetary characterization. We present a preliminary classification of 6403 atomic lines in synthetic visible spectra from a sequence of NLTE semi-empirical dG2 atmospheric models with increasing chromospheric heating. Principal-component analysis shows that the dominant component traces overall response amplitude, while the second distinguishes early from late responders. DBSCAN applied in the full nine-dimensional response space identifies a dense stable core and an activity- sensitive non-core group comprising about 11% of the lines. The stable core provides candidate lines for activity-insensitive measurements, while sensitive lines provide candidate activity diagnostics. Sensitive transitions tend to have low lower-level energies, although the populations overlap, making lower-level energy a statistical discriminator rather than a line-by-line predictor. A spectral sensitivity map shows that small average variations can hide nonlinear or compensating responses, demonstrating the value of the complete line-response trajectory for classification.
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Optics

All-optical spin-selective control and shaping of frequency conversion pathways

Xiaoxi Xu, Mai Tal, Danielle Ben-Haim et al. (+1 more)

The interplay between optical spin and crystal symmetry provides a powerful mechanism to control light-matter interaction, enabling advances in imaging, holography, sensing, signal processing, and more. Here we reveal that this interplay can also be exploited as a programmable mechanism for selecting and shaping nonlinear frequency-conversion pathways. Using a z-cut lithium niobate thin film, we experimentally demonstrate spin-selective switching between complementary three-wave mixing pathways, where co- and cross-circular-polarization excitations activate sum- and difference-frequency generation, respectively. We further generalize this concept to establish a quantitative spin-to-frequency mapping, that encodes the pump spin composition into the generated frequencies, and enables the reverse retrieval of the pump spin state. Finally, we leverage this concept also to demonstrate mapping of spin patterns to a combination of frequency-dependent real space images, and Fourier-space diffraction patterns. These results pave the way for all-optical programable frequency-conversion and spatiotemporal nonlinear signal manipulation in free-space and integrated photonic systems.
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All authors Xiaoxi Xu, Mai Tal, Danielle Ben-Haim, Tal Ellenbogen

Statistical Mechanics

Diffusion with stochastic resetting in the presence of a delta killing trap: Drift-controlled survival regimes

Alain Mazzolo

We study a one-dimensional diffusive particle subject to stochastic resetting to its initial position, in the presence of an imperfect, localized target that can absorb (kill) the particle, modeled by a delta-function killing rate. The central question is how stochastic resetting competes with drift-induced transience and the target's finite reactivity. Exact Laplace-space expressions are derived for the non-normalized propagator and survival probability, for arbitrary diffusion coefficient $D$, resetting rate $r$, and killing strength $k$, first in the absence of drift and then under a constant drift. The long-time behavior separates into distinct regimes. Without resetting, unbiased diffusion exhibits the recurrent algebraic survival law $S(t)\sim t^{-1/2}$, whereas any nonzero drift renders the motion transient with respect to the target and leaves a nonzero ultimate survival probability. By contrast, any $r>0$ and $k>0$ repeatedly renews encounters with the target and restores eventual absorption, yielding an exponential survival law $S(t)\sim A e^{-\theta t}$. The decay rate $\theta$ is given by the dominant (rightmost) pole of the Laplace transform, and the surviving density converges after normalization to an explicit quasi-stationary profile. The driftless and perfectly absorbing limits recover standard resetting results. These formulas provide a unified description of the crossover between recurrence-controlled, transience-controlled, and renewal-controlled survival.
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High Energy Physics (Theory)

External Sources in Pseudo-Quantum Electrodynamics

L.H.C. Borges, A.A. Nogueira and F.A. Barone

In this letter, we investigate the interaction between stationary point-like external sources within the framework of Pseudo-Quantum Electrodynamics (PQED). Besides ordinary electric charges, we consider configurations involving Dirac points and generalized topological sources. For the configurations analyzed, we compute the corresponding interaction energies, forces, torques, and electromagnetic field configurations. Furthermore, we compare the results obtained in PQED with those arising in ordinary planar Maxwell electrodynamics, showing that the nonlocal character of PQED gives rise to physical effects with no counterpart in the conventional local planar theory. In particular, our results show that topological sources induce intrinsically anisotropic and non-central interactions, leading to the emergence of nontrivial torques between the interacting objects. The directional character of these interactions suggests possible applications in the effective description of topological defects and anisotropic phenomena in planar condensed matter systems.
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General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Flexible numerical characteristic gluing to extremal Reissner-Nordström black holes

Junwoo Lee

Recent work has used the method of characteristic gluing to construct spacetimes violating the third law of black hole mechanics. This paper uses numerical methods to investigate two aspects of the gluing construction of solutions describing the gravitational collapse of a charged scalar field to form an extremal Reissner-Nordström black hole. First, for a massless scalar field, we improve significantly the lower bounds on the size of the final black hole for which gluing is possible. Second, for a massive scalar field, it is known that the formation of an extremal Reissner–Nordström black hole is impossible if the mass-to-charge ratio of the scalar field exceeds unity. We present strong evidence that this bound is sharp by constructing gluing solutions with a scalar field mass-to-charge ratio just below unity.
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Solar and Stellar Astrophysics

An Open Cluster Origin for Most Solar-Type Binaries in the Solar Neighborhood and Implications for Primordial Planet Stability

Anna C. Childs and Aaron M. Geller

We present the first Gaia-calibrated estimate of the contribution of dynamically processed open clusters (OCs) to the nearby solar-type field binary population and investigate the implications for primordial planet stability. We combine Gaia DR3 observations, empirical models of cluster formation and dissolution, and direct N-body simulations to constrain the fraction of field FGK-type binaries within 1 kpc that originated in OCs over the past 5 Gyr. We find that at least ~53% of solar-type field binaries formed in OCs with initial masses > 200 M_Sun, where dynamical processing becomes significant. We quantify the effects of stellar encounters and binary orbital evolution on the stability of both circumbinary and circumstellar planets by deriving empirical prescriptions for circumbinary planet destabilization as a function of binary separation and for the fractional reduction of stable circumstellar coplanar phase space. These results provide a framework for evaluating how OC dynamical evolution may influence the stability of planets in binary systems and therefore contribute to observed exoplanet demographics.
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Soft Condensed Matter

Acoustic dip in the effective temperature of hot Brownian motion

Mayank Srivastava and Dipanjan Chakraborty

A hot Brownian particle is driven by thermal fluctuations from a nonuniformly heated solvent and therefore obeys a fluctuation-dissipation relation with a frequency-dependent effective temperature. Existing theories assume an incompressible solvent. We show that finite sound speed qualitatively changes this effective temperature in the kinetic regime. Solving the compressible fluctuating-hydrodynamic problem for a heated sphere, we find that the effective noise temperature develops a pronounced acoustic dip when the sound wavelength becomes comparable to the particle radius. The dip occurs because weakly attenuated longitudinal modes carry mechanical energy away from the heated surface before it is dissipated, so that the dissipation is weighted by colder regions of the temperature field. Its position is set by $a\omega/c=\mathcal{O}(1)$, while its depth is controlled by the dimensionless viscous-acoustic attenuation length $a_c/a$. The result identifies an acoustic window in hot Brownian motion in which compressibility lowers, rather than raises, the kinetic noise temperature.
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