Papers

Social influence can preserve errors that individuals would correct on their own. We study this possibility by representing opinions as directions in a semantic space. The formulation connects established models of personal preference, social agreement, and external influence. A common factual signal pulls every opinion toward a reference direction, individuals remain attached to their initial preferences, and connected individuals imitate one another. When the factual signal exceeds the preference strength, each isolated individual corrects, apart from an exactly opposite initial opinion. We prove that every finite undirected network then has a unique state of minimum total energy in which all opinions favor the factual direction. This state is the best overall compromise between factual alignment, personal preferences, and agreement with neighbors. Yet on a ring with planar opinions, sufficiently strong imitation can trap the same individuals in a different stable state that retains misinformation. We prove convergence to that state from the specified initial opinions. We also derive a network spectral condition that excludes competing stable states, and show how an additional semantic direction can destabilize the constructed planar pattern. Numerical maps reveal persistent error, history dependence, and coexisting outcomes, while comparisons across networks show differences that a single spectral scale does not remove. These results distinguish individual correctability from collective correction and identify how attractive social influence can obstruct the latter.

Metal-mediated growth provides an effective route to high-quality hexagonal boron nitride (hBN), but hBN formation on the metal does not necessarily ensure hBN formation on an adjoining dielectric substrate. Here, we investigate this distinction using a vertically stacked Ni–Cr/boron/sapphire configuration operated at 1550~$^\circ$C under atmospheric pressure, with the relative boron supply varied at fixed Ni:Cr = 8:2. hBN is detected by Raman spectroscopy on the gas-exposed alloy surface throughout the investigated Alloy:B range, whereas sapphire-side hBN appears only at the higher relative boron supplies of Alloy:B = 24:1 and 18:1, as confirmed by both Raman spectroscopy and XRD. The hBN (002) reflection further narrows as the boron supply increases from 24:1 to 18:1, corresponding to an increase in the apparent c-axis coherent length from approximately 86 to 143~nm. Additional crystalline reflections also emerge only under these higher-boron conditions. These results identify boron supply as a key parameter governing the transition from alloy-side hBN formation to concurrent sapphire-side hBN growth. Once formed, sapphire-side hBN occurs within a substantially reconstructed and chemically modified Al/O-rich sapphire environment rather than as a uniform film on an intact substrate. To our knowledge, this study provides the first demonstration of successful sapphire-side hBN formation by Ni–Cr-mediated growth.

We determine the preshared entanglement required for spatially separated parties, restricted to local operations and classical communication, to attain globally optimal probabilistic two-copy purification of arbitrary bipartite pure states under depolarizing noise. In every local dimension $d\ge 2$, one shared maximally entangled qubit pair suffices: local controlled-SWAP operations exactly reproduce the globally optimal successful transformation. Conversely, any finite-dimensional preshared resource state that attains the same benchmark, even under a positive-partial-transpose relaxation, must have entanglement of formation at least one ebit. For pure resources with one ebit, or for two-qubit resources including mixed states, attaining the benchmark is possible only for states with exactly two nonzero Schmidt weights, both equal to $1/2$, namely those locally unitarily equivalent to a maximally entangled qubit pair. These findings provide a benchmark for evaluating the entanglement demands of noise management in quantum networks and modular quantum computers.

We investigate whether the plasma disturbances generated by a charged debris object can be used to infer its position without directly sampling the object or its immediate sheath. A one-dimensional open-boundary electrostatic particle-in-cell (PIC) framework is used to model a continuously flowing electron-ion plasma containing an initially uncharged debris object. The debris charges self-consistently and produces an ion-ion counter-streaming instability (IICSI), which is sustained and reaches a statistically stationary state. A matching simulation without debris provides a controlled background against which debris-induced changes in different plasma fields are identified. The precursor and wake are examined through their spatial extent, fluctuation power, and frequency–wavenumber spectra. Weak-form sparse regression is then used as a supporting tool to recover reduced fluid and kinetic residuals and to learn an empirical relation connecting the precursor and wake disturbance envelopes to the equilibrium plasma flow, debris charge, and distance from the source. The predictive capability is examined by successively treating each simulation as an independent case. For each evaluation, the model is constructed from the remaining simulations, while the excluded simulation is used only to infer the debris position from its plasma response. For the idealized cold-ion regime considered here, the procedure successfully localizes the debris in transonic and supersonic flows, whereas the subsonic cases remain unresolved. These results demonstrate that debris-induced plasma disturbances possess a learnable spatial structure and provide a proof-of-principle route toward future remote localization using more realistic multidimensional models; they do not constitute an operational debris-detection scheme.

We study the correspondence between quasinormal modes (QNMs) and grey-body factors (GBFs) of higher-dimensional Reissner–Nordström black holes. Considering scalar, vector, and tensor gravitational perturbations, we systematically compute the QNMs and GBFs for each spacetime dimension and set of black-hole parameters to evaluate the analytical formula connecting them. QNMs are obtained by the continued fraction and the integration-through-midpoints methods depending on the singularity structure in the Frobenius series. We compare the GBFs determined by the correspondence using QNMs with those computed numerically. The correspondence performs well for scalar($+$), vector($+$), vector($-$), and tensor perturbations. For the scalar($-$) perturbation, the GBFs obtained by the correspondence deviate noticeably from the accurate GBFs for black holes with low to intermediate values of the charge in $D>6$. The correspondence recovers reasonable accuracy at higher charges, although the effective potential exhibits double peaks, contrary to the assumption underlying the Wentzel–Kramers–Brillouin (WKB)-based derivation of the correspondence. Whereas the accuracy decreases with increasing $D$ for other perturbation types, the correspondence for the scalar($-$) perturbation yields more accurate GBFs in $D=8$ than those in $D=7$. For near-extreme black holes, the correspondence offers a reliable approximation of GBFs for the vector($-$) perturbation, even though a double-peak potential occurs in $D>6$. These results suggest that the correspondence has a wider range of applicability than might be expected from the assumption of the WKB approach.

Open quantum systems offer a physical substrate for temporal information processing in quantum reservoir computing, yet the microscopic mechanisms linking their dynamics to computational performance remain unclear. Here we establish a microscopic response-to-performance framework that connects Liouvillian dynamics directly to task performance. We decompose observable Volterra weights as $W^{(q)}=BH^{(q)}$, separating internal input-history pathways from their readout visibility, and show that a dynamical response contributes to a task only if it is input-generated, readout-visible, target-correlated, and resolvable above the regularization scale. This framework reveals how Liouvillian modes govern the retention and propagation of task-relevant information, while symmetries determine which components remain visible to the readout. It further establishes how distinct covariance modes encode different temporal information structures and how system parameters and processing protocols can reshape their contributions to improve QRC performance. Thermalization drives the reservoir from processing that retains input history to a response dominated by the most recent input before regularization suppresses the residual information. We finally show that weak measurement can activate task-relevant covariance modes by lifting symmetry-imposed channel equivalence, whereas delayed feedback creates controlled return pathways for historical information. These results establish a microscopic connection between open-system dynamics and computational performance, providing principles for engineering task-relevant information flow in quantum reservoirs.

Dark matter substructure properties such as their mass function and spatial distribution depend on the nature of dark matter and are strong tests of the cosmological model. Like luminous matter, these dark matter substructures cause gravitational lensing affecting observables such as time delays. Given the millisecond-level timing precision achievable with current and future gravitational-wave (GW) detectors, gravitationally lensed GWs provide a powerful probe of dark matter substructure, especially, at the lower end of the mass function. In contrast, the optical (or electromagnetic) observations can provide a precision of a few hours and are thus, not sensitive to deflections from the less massive subhalos. In this work, we investigate the impact of realistic population of DM subhalos ($10^6-10^9 M_\odot$) on the lensing time delays for two of the typical strong lens configurations, a fold and a cusp, seen in quadruply lensed sources for a galaxy-scale lens. We find that the subhalos with NFW density profiles cause perturbations of the order of few hours to the lensing time delays between the macro-lensed images produced by the main lensing galaxy. These time delay "anomalies", if not accounted for, may affect the results of strong lens searches conducted on the GW data by the LIGO–Virgo–Kagra collaboration. Lastly, for the 200 realisations analysed per fold and cusp lens systems, we find that the NFW subhalos produced no additional images of their own called milli-images. Statistical studies are needed to better determine the expected impact on the lensed GW time delays and (non-)detection of milli-images.

Starting from the unitary evolution of a closed quantum system, we rigorously demonstrate that the projection of the global wavefunction onto an arbitrary local subsystem is governed by an exact, time-dependent non-Hermitian Schrödinger equation. Crucially, the derivation does not rely on conventional approximations such as the Born approximation, the Markov approximation, or the wide-band limit. The central quantity is the instantaneous self-energy, a time-dependent and generally non-Hermitian operator that encodes environmental backaction and, together with the subsystem Hamiltonian, forms the exact time-local generator of the projected dynamics. By benchmarking the conventional non-Hermitian approximation against this exact framework, we systematically expose its limitations. These results provide a rigorous microscopic foundation for the emergence of effective non-Hermitian dynamics in quantum systems.

Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is widely used to evaluate ventilation and contaminant transport in occupied buildings, but deployment at scale is limited by three bottlenecks: acquiring room geometry without costly scanning hardware or manual CAD modeling, decomposing the scene into individually manipulable objects, and reconfiguring those objects for alternative layouts without re-capturing the room. We present a semi-automated workflow that converts a single 360-degree video of a room into individually editable, simulation-ready geometry assets. A dense point cloud is reconstructed using Neural Radiance Fields (NeRF), and 2D instance masks from text-prompted SAM 3 segmentation are lifted to 3D using multi-view consensus and depth-band filtering. Points are separated into object instances with an octree, and occlusion gaps are healed with a connectivity graph. Chair templates are fitted by Iterative Closest Point (ICP) alignment, and table geometry is generated procedurally. A browser-based editor supports quality assurance and rapid construction of alternative layout configurations. A steady Reynolds-averaged OpenFOAM solution then drives transient passive-scalar transport; the setup is verified using a mesh-sensitivity study and validated against an IEA Annex 20 benchmark. We apply the workflow to two university classrooms and a tiered lecture-hall auditorium. The capture-to-geometry pass takes two to five hours per room on a consumer workstation. In a controlled obstruction sequence in one classroom, the modeled half-clearance time varies non-monotonically as furniture is added, and a cross-room comparison indicates that clearance behavior cannot be reliably extrapolated between rooms, motivating per-room geometry acquisition. By making that acquisition low-cost, the workflow makes geometry-resolved comparative ventilation studies practical for spaces such as classrooms.

The pair transverse momentum ($k_T$) and collision-energy ($\sqrt{s_{NN}}$) dependent difference between $\pi^{+}\pi^{+}$ and $\pi^{-}\pi^{-}$ femtoscopic correlations was observed by the HADES and STAR Collaborations. We investigate how much of the observed splitting can be accounted for by Coulomb dynamics in 0-10% central Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=2.42$-5.2 GeV. Using the UrQMD model and the CRAB programme, three transport scenarios that successively include baryon-baryon, baryon-meson, and meson-meson Coulomb interactions are considered. In a separate calculation based on the baryon-baryon reference, we reconstruct the time-dependent effective charge $Z_{\rm{eff}}(t)$ and radius $R_{\rm{eff}}(t)$ of the residual charged source and propagate each pion from its individual last strong-interaction point through the evolving field. The calculations reproduce the main $k_{T}$ and $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ dependences of the radii. Baryon–meson Coulomb interactions generate most of the additional charge splitting in the microscopic calculation. The residual-source treatment also enhances the longitudinal and sideward radius ratios relative to the reference, whereas the outward ratio changes little, and the enhancement generally decreases with increasing $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$. Within the present framework, this contribution does not fully account for the data, motivating further investigation of the charged-source geometry and its interplay with strong-interaction dynamics.

We introduce a self-adaptive Floquet system based on a quantum kicked rotor, in which the kicking strength itself becomes a dynamical variable generated self-consistently through cavity-mediated feedback. A superradiant transition gives rise to cavity-mediated kicking and two competing instability channels, symmetric and antisymmetric, which provide a unified organizing principle for the nonequilibrium Floquet phases. For resonant kicking, their competition produces double-kick dynamics that support resonant ballistic transport and an emergent antiresonance with period-quadrupled rotor evolution, arising from a balance between the two instability channels. Remarkably, for incommensurate kicking, the antisymmetric instability stabilizes a robust period-doubled localized phase with persistent subharmonic dynamics despite the underlying incommensurate driving, revealing localized temporal order absent in conventional kicked rotors. As the feedback strength increases, correlated temporal fluctuations progressively suppress quantum interference, driving crossovers from period-doubled localization to irregular localization and eventually to subdiffusive transport. Our results establish a general framework for self-adaptive quantum-chaotic dynamics and demonstrate how dynamical feedback can fundamentally reshape transport, localization, and temporal order in driven quantum systems.

Penning ionization allows in situ generation of ionic complexes to launch vibrational relaxation and dissociation dynamics for rare gas–H$_2^+$/HD$^+$ complexes. The ensuing translational kinetic energy release (TKER) spectra characterizing the diatomic cation are a particularly sensitive way to probe the long range part of the intermolecular interactions. TKER distributions from quasi-classical trajectory (QCT) simulations for the Ne–H$_2^+$ and Ne–HD$^+$ complexes quantitatively match measured positions and relative intensities of most experimentally observed features and are also on par with time-dependent quantum simulations. Specifically, the QCT-simulations allow to separate signatures arising from H$_2^+$/HD$^+$ relaxation into different final vibrational states, such as for $(v=2) \rightarrow (v' = 0/1 )$. Trajectory-resolved QCT analysis also provides mechanistic interpretations of the spatial and time-dependent dynamics underlying the TKER distributions. Rare gas–H$_2^+$/HD$^+$ complex lifetimes directly correlate with the final rotational quantum number $j'$ of the diatomic. Low-$j'$ products are associated primarily with an initial axial approach of the rare gas atom, whereas formation of higher-$j'$ states predominantly results from an initial T-shaped approach geometry.

We report 10 epochs of 22 GHz East Asia To Italy: Nearly Global VLBI (EATING VLBI) observations of the nearby radio galaxy 3C~111 obtained from 2020 to 2023. Combined with VLBA data at 15 and 43 GHz, these observations yield a 64-epoch, multi-frequency sequence of high-resolution radio images. We used high-resolution Bayesian Stokes~I imaging and Gaussian component modeling to derive light curves and knot kinematics. We find evidence that a faster, later-emitted knot catches up with a slower, earlier knot at a deprojected distance of about 10 pc from the central engine. The knot component responsible for this interaction propagated at relativistic speed and exhibited a rise-and-decay evolution over approximately six months. The Stokes~I flux evolution supports the internal shock interpretation, while archival polarization images reveal a temporary increase in fractional linear polarization in the interaction region near the Stokes~I flux maximum. The timing of the 2021 GeV flare suggests that this earlier high-energy event is more naturally associated with activity near the core. These results provide direct evidence for an internal shock in an active galactic nucleus jet and support a hybrid picture in which internal and standing shocks coexist in relativistic jets and may play different roles in their variability.

We develop a general framework for the scattering of a plane wave by a class of Gaudin kaleidoscope models: straight $\delta$-potential barriers intersecting at a common point. The projected Lippmann-Schwinger equations split into a singular part, a finite pole closure generated by a geometric moving rule, and a regular remainder, the outgoing state being an atomic measure on the circle. At the special angles $\pi/N$, where the intersecting barriers generate the dihedral group $D_N$, the number of channels stays fixed, whereas at generic angles channels are created and destroyed, opening smoothly from zero weight as a critical direction is crossed. This leaves no singular trace in the probabilities, being carried instead by the phase shifts, a quantum-classical correspondence beyond the reach of the coordinate Bethe ansatz. The same equations solve the quantum Galperin billiards exactly, the method of images reducing them to a single linear system whose phase shifts follow in closed form.

Pulsar timing arrays (PTAs) detect nanohertz gravitational waves through spatial correlations between the timing residuals of different pulsars. For an isotropic, unpolarized stochastic background in general relativity, the ensemble-mean correlation follows the Hellings–Downs (HD) curve; measuring this angular pattern tests the gravitational-wave origin of the signal. Standard bin-by-bin reconstructions optimize the weights within each angular bin separately. We reconstruct the curve jointly using the full pulsar-pair covariance, retaining a free amplitude in every bin. The resulting all-angle best linear unbiased estimator minimizes the variance of every bin value and every linear combination of bins. Applied to the public NANOGrav 15 yr data products, our method reduces the bin standard deviations by up to 12.9%, with a median reduction of 9.5%. For a future Square Kilometre Array Observatory (SKAO)-like PTA, the predicted reduction reaches 36.4%, with a median of 29.6%, enabling significantly more precise measurements of the gravitational-wave background.

We study the hydrodynamics of a charged fluid with spin degrees of freedom. We argue that, in a conformal field theory in 3+1 dimensions, the spin density is related to a linear combination of standard second-order transport coefficients, and an additional term quadratic in the gauge- and mixed gauge-gravitational anomaly coefficients. We compute the spin density in several free and holographic theories and compare the results.

In this paper we prove in full detail the isomorphism between the solvable group $\mathcal{S}_{2,2+p}$, metric equivalent to the Calabi Vesentini symmetric space $\mathrm{SO(2,2+p)/SO(2)\times SO(2+p)}$, and the solvable group $\mathcal{S}_{\mathrm{L}(-1,p)}$ supporting the Kähler metric of the homogeneous non symmetric special manifold L$(-1,p)$. From an Alekseevskyan point of view the two spaces simply correspond to two different quadratic forms on the same solvable Lie algebra that we present and compare in detail. Furthermore considering the full group of isometries $\mathrm{Iso}_{\mathrm{L}(-1,p)}$ of L$(-1,p)$ we show that $\mathrm{Iso_{L(-1,p)}}\subset \mathrm{SO}(2,2+p)$ is a non-semisimple subgroup of the simple isometry group of Calabi-Vesentini manifolds. Altogether the Special Kähler manifold L$(-1,p)$ can be seen as a coset manifold $\mathrm{Iso_{L(-1,p)}}/\mathrm{H}$ where $\mathrm{H}=\mathrm{U(1)}_L\times \mathrm{SO(p)}$, the generator of $\mathrm{U(1)}_L$ being in $\so(2,2+p)$, yet not in the canonical $\so(2)\oplus\so(2+p)$ subalgebra. The action of $\mathrm{Iso}_{\mathrm{L}(-1,p)}$ on the solvable coordinates of the CV manifold can be constructed directly. This identification provides a valuable tool for Cartan Neural Networks, introducing additional non linear transformations in every map from one layer to the next one of an $r=2$ Neural Network based on the CV Tits Satake universality class; in perspective, this new tool increases expressivity.

Electrides, ionic crystals in which excess electrons are delocalized within interstitial voids rather than bound to specific atomic sites, exhibit exotic physicochemical behaviors, yet their potential as electrochemical energy-storage hosts remains largely unexplored. Here, using comprehensive first-principles calculations, we demonstrate that the quasi-one-dimensional subnitride electride Ba$_3$N offers a compelling route to overcome the long-standing performance trade-offs in sodium-ion battery anodes. Spontaneous Na intercalation into the open interchain channels establishes thermodynamically stable phases, generating an exceptionally flat low-potential plateau that avoids the high-potential sloping losses of hard carbon while preserving an essential safety margin against dendrite formation. Crucially, the itinerant interstitial anionic electron sea dynamically flattens the potential landscape by suppressing site-specific orbital interactions, enabling ultrafast Na ion transport with an exceptionally low migration barrier. This work establishes a design paradigm for harnessing electride chemistry to achieve ultrafast battery electrodes.

Consider an $N\times N$ random band matrix $H$ with bandwidth $W$ with centered real Gaussian entries. We prove that, under the (almost) sharp assumption $W^2\ll N/\log N$, the bulk local statistics of $H$ are asymptotically a Poisson point process. Combined with the bulk universality results from arXiv:2501.01718 and arXiv:2506.06441, this establishes the Poisson-RMT transition of the local statistics of random band matrices, and complements the results about the localization-delocalization transition of the bulk eigenvectors previously established in arXiv:2501.01718 and arXiv:2506.06441, and arXiv:2508.05802. The key technical inputs are: (1) the fractional moment estimates from arXiv:2508.05802; (2) a novel estimate for the density of states, obtained from the local laws in arXiv:2501.01718 and arXiv:2506.06441.

Data acquisition (DAQ) systems at future particle physics experiments stand to benefit from the extremes of AI/ML development: large-scale foundation models can enhance the performance of feature extraction algorithms, and small-scale on-detector deployments can enable real-time intelligent data handling. This work provides the first fine-tuning of an industrial foundation model for particle physics DAQ. Starting from the backbone of Google Research's TimesFM (Time Series Foundation Model), we demonstrate fine-tuning on real-time regression tasks for drift chamber trackers and dual-readout calorimeters. Furthermore, the fine-tuned TimesFM model is distilled into a student and co-designed with FPGA implementation to enable these models to run in real-time at future colliders. The fine-tuned distillations meet or exceed the performance of previously published AI/ML solutions for each task. Further, the pipeline of distillation and model compression from TimesFM is generic and can be easily adapted to a variety of 1D waveform tasks across domains.

We introduce the temporal quadrupole moment and leverage its nonreciprocal frequency-converting topological corner states to experimentally realize a magnet-free transceiving circulator in a topological time-modulated microwave metasurface. Under periodic driving, the temporal quadrupole moment evolves the corner charge of a bulk-gapped lattice over the drive cycle, generating two distinct families of topologically protected corner states: a corner mode at quasienergy $\varepsilon=0$ and a purely dynamical period-doubled mode at $\varepsilon=\pi/T$ that exists only under periodic driving. We show that the relative phase between the two time-modulated coupling channels that generate it acts as a synthetic gauge field, breaking time-reversal symmetry while leaving the corner-mode topological protection intact. Specifically, a signal launched into the metasurface at TX port at frequency is up-converted and radiated into free space, while a free-space wave at is preferentially captured and routed — at the same frequency, unconverted — to RX port rather than back to TX port; the reverse itinerary is forbidden by the same broken symmetry. We confirm the temporal quadrupole moment, its associated Floquet corner states, and the resulting nonreciprocal frequency conversion through spatial field-intensity and angle-resolved radiation measurements of the time-modulated array on a fabricated microwave prototype.

We investigate how the exceptional-point structure of a dissipative cavity optomechanical system is inherited by experimentally accessible dynamical, spectral, and quantum-statistical observables. At optical-mechanical resonance, the effective non-Hermitian first-moment dynamics exhibits a second-order exceptional point, where two eigenvalues and their eigenvectors coalesce and the eigenvalue splitting follows the characteristic square-root dependence on perturbations. We show that the same square-root feature also governs transient photon and phonon populations, first-order coherence, spectral poles, and second-order intensity correlations. Below the exceptional point, the dynamics is non-oscillatory, whereas above it damped oscillations emerge together with frequency splitting of the spectral poles. At the exceptional point, the Jordan-block structure produces polynomial-exponential relaxation and a second-order spectral pole. Using the quantum regression theorem and Gaussian moment factorization, we further show that the stationary fluctuations satisfy the Siegert relation linking first- and second-order correlations. Although the zero-delay autocorrelations retain their thermal value, the finite-delay intensity correlations exhibit clear exceptional point signatures. This finding connects non-Hermitian mode coalescence with measurable dynamical and correlation observables in cavity optomechanics.

We present a non-perturbative Ward-identity prescription for determining the flowed quark field renormalization factor $Z_\chi$, avoiding the computational difficulties of the conventional ringed prescription. The method is based on vector-current normalization and ratios of flowed and unflowed meson two-point functions. We determine the resulting $\mathring{Z}_{\chi}^{V}(t_f,a)$ on five $2+1$-flavor clover ensembles and validate it in the pseudoscalar, scalar, axial-vector, and tensor channels. Renormalized matrix elements obtained through sequential continuum and zero-flow-time extrapolations agree with independent RI/MOM and RI/SMOM determinations. The finite-lattice-spacing bilinear renormalization factors show differences that decrease toward finer lattices, reflecting the different discretization effects of the renormalization methods. The cross-channel agreement demonstrates the viability of the proposed prescription; together, the method and its systematic validation establish a robust foundation for the non-perturbative renormalization of flowed fermionic operators in future lattice calculations.

We measure the galaxy stellar mass function at $z = 0-2$ using 28M galaxies from the KiDS DR4 which spans an effective survey area of 676.9 deg$^2$. Combining nine-band photometry ($u$–$K_s$) and redshifts derived using deep learning photometry, we use five SED fitting configurations, CIGALE/LePhare and CB19/BC03/M05 Stellar Population Synthesis (SPS). We present the impact of the systematics related to the code, SPS modeling and Star formation History (SFH) , which combined can introduce systematics of $\sim 0.6$ dex. The GSMFs outlined in this work agree well with previous studies (within the uncertainties introduced by systematics) that typically are able to cover measurements for the GSMF only up to $\log(M_*/M_\odot)\sim 11.75$, due to their limited volume. The large KiDS area and galaxy counts, allows us to gain some insights on the “extreme" high-mass end, and our GSMFs imply that possibly there are more massive galaxies than we would expect, from a simple exponential cut-off, at $\log(M_*/M_\odot)>11.75$. However, we heed caution that despite advances done both in redshift estimation techniques and SPS, future studies are required to confirm this behavior. We consider the effects of Eddington-bias (EB) to our observations via two different methods and compare our results with the predictions of semi-analytic models and hydrodynamical simulations. We use the Mean Absolute Difference (MAD) of residuals as a diagnostic metric. Due to inconsistencies ($> 0.5$ dex) between observations and Eddington biased simulations found, especially at the high mass end, we suggest that some theoretical models would achieve better performance once parameter tuning takes into account the effects of EB prior to the tuning of the uncertain parameters involved related to stellar physics and feedback.

Changing solvent inertia changes the kinetic part of a molecular Hamiltonian and hence its flow in phase space, without requiring a change in the potential energy surface (PES). We study how this affects product probability in a solute-solvent model with two degrees of freedom. Initial conditions are chosen at the same total energy for each solvent mass. For this family, the deterministic outcome changes from reaching products to returning to reactants at a threshold mass. The initial condition at that mass belongs to the stable manifold of the transition-state periodic orbit. Weak Gaussian forcing of the solvent momentum replaces the abrupt change in outcome by a continuous change in product probability over a mass interval proportional to the square root of the noise strength. The deterministic threshold and a linear response calculation predict the position and width of this probability change without fitting the stochastic simulations. Monte Carlo results at three noise strengths agree with the prediction within sampling uncertainty. The calculation connects solvent inertia to product probability through the geometry of the full Hamiltonian flow, rather than through a change in the PES.

FORM is a domain-specific symbolic manipulation language widely used in particle physics for processing the very large algebraic expressions arising from multi-loop Feynman diagram calculations. Despite its central role in precision theoretical physics, no artificial-intelligence tooling exists, to our knowledge, for assisting physicists in writing FORM code. We show that contemporary large language models (LLMs), including frontier models with hundreds of billions of parameters, achieve a zero-percent execution pass rate on our instruction-following and tutorial-style FORM tasks without documentation in a single attempt, establishing FORM as a genuine zero-shot language for LLMs at the time of writing. We then present a verification-driven data generation pipeline that uses the FORM binary itself as an execution oracle to produce and validate a corpus of 4,633 training examples spanning deterministic computations, open-ended programs, tutorial code, and knowledge question-answer pairs. Fine-tuning a compact open-weights model (Qwen3-8B) with quantized low-rank adaptation (QLoRA) yields a specialist that, evaluated on four complementary benchmarks (840 tasks, single attempt each), decisively outperforms frontier models with up to 756B parameters in execution rate and in strict, FORM-verified output matching on the larger benchmarks, and remains statistically indistinguishable from them on the smaller, harder ones. General reasoning and coding capabilities are preserved within 2.6 percentage points.

We present a machine-learning-accelerated plasma simulation scheme that combines learned time jumps with ordinary physics evolution. A neural network corrects a low-cost physics forecast over multiple time steps, while the original solver reconstructs the state and advances it between jumps through short reanchoring intervals. The scheme is implemented in PASCHEN-1D, a one-dimensional drift-diffusion-Poisson solver, achieving up to $4.70 \times$ CPU rollout speedup relative to the ordinary solver for nanosecond pulsed nitrogen discharges. The simulations capture pre-breakdown evolution, rapid sheath formation, expansion and collapse under pulsed-voltage excitation, and post-pulse afterglow. Bulk densities and electric fields agree closely with the ordinary-solver reference, while cathode sheath width, gap voltage, and discharge current reproduce the principal temporal features. The largest spatial discrepancies occur in the cathode sheath during fast transients. A sweep of the physics-reanchoring duration reveals a trade-off between accuracy, acceleration, and numerical stability over the tested 500 ns simulation interval. A model trained on simulations with 1000 grid points also shows useful transfer to 500- and 1500-point meshes without retraining. These results demonstrate a practical route to accelerating plasma simulations by augmenting an established physics solver with machine learning.

We study the instability of the naked singularities arising in the spherically symmetric self-similar collapsing of the Einstein–Euler system under gravitational perturbations. We show that small $C^{1,\alpha}$ perturbations (without any symmetries) of the initial conformal metric lead to trapped surface formation. One key point is that the speed of sound is strictly slower the the speed of light, so the gravitational radiation can become sufficiently concentrated to form a trapped surface before the fluid develops any singularity.

We study the self-adjoint extension of the Sierra–Rodríguez-Laguna (SR) $H=xp$-type Hamiltonian $\widehat H_{SR}$. Its discrete spectrum is fixed by the equation $\mathrm{Re}\!\left[e^{-i\theta/2}K_{1/2+iE/2}(2\pi)\right]=0$. We solve this equation numerically for $\theta=1.417\pi$ and obtain the first 606 eigenvalues $E_n$. We compare them, one by one, with the ordinates $\gamma_n$ of the first 606 nontrivial zeros of the Riemann zeta function. Using the steepest-descent (saddle-point) method for the modified Bessel function, together with the Riemann–von Mangoldt formula, we derive a closed-form prediction for $E_n-\gamma_n$ in terms of the Lambert-$W$ function: $E_n-\gamma_n\simeq(\theta-\pi/4)/[1+W(n/e)]$, which decays only like $1/\ln n$. Here the $n$-th numerical root corresponds to the $(n-2)$-th root of the asymptotic quantization condition. The leading-order phase of $K_{1/2+iE/2}(2\pi)$ agrees with a known rigorous asymptotic formula for modified Bessel functions of large imaginary order. The prediction is checked against the first $10^5$ tabulated zeta zeros (A.~Odlyzko): the measured coefficient of $1/[1+W(n/e)]$ is $3.666$ (mean) and $3.667$ (median) for $n\ge10^3$, in agreement with $\theta-\pi/4=3.666$. The scatter of $E_n-\gamma_n$ around this smooth curve comes from the fluctuating term $S(T)$ of the zero-counting function, which the spectrum $E_n$ does not contain.

We develop an effective radial framework for analyzing new field-modified potential function of a charged spinless particle in collinear electric and magnetic fields. Using the weak- magnetic field approximation, we neglect the diamagnetic term and other angular projections under an explicit smallness condition $\ll \Delta E$, where $E$ is the electric field, and the replacement of the angular factor by $C=\cos\theta$ in the spherical coordinates. The resulting equation is therefore a field-aligned radial model whose validity is limited to angularly localized states. Within this setting, we apply the indirect mode (or search mode) of Tridiagonal representation approach in the Laguerre and Jacobi bases. In the Laguerre basis, the tridiagonal constraint generates linear-plus-inverse and linear-plus-quadratic radial potentials, and the coefficient recurrences are connected with Meixner–Pollaczek and Meixner polynomial type structures, therefore yielding the analytic spectra and expansion wavefunctions. In the Jacobi basis, the mapping of the radial half-line to a finite interval produces a singular confining effective potential and a three-term recurrence that is treated through a truncated generalized eigenvalue problem. The formulation provides analytically and numerically tractable benchmark models for field-modified potential functions, while keeping the assumptions, parameter restrictions, endpoint behavior, and convergence tests explicit. In the Laguerre basis the resultant spectra are obtained in closed form and are independent of the orientation and of the electric field, which enter through the shape of the effective central potential, whereas in the Jacobi basis the spectrum is obtained numerically from a new three-term recurrence; in all cases the magnetic field enters through a linear Zeeman shift.