Papers

Observing the earliest stages of high-mass star formation in the mid-infrared (mid-IR) is challenging because the extinction is high and the resolution limited. Millimeter vibrationally and torsionally excited transitions of several molecules have been proposed as indirect probes of local mid-IR radiation fields around young stellar objects (YSOs). We investigate the excitation and spatial distribution of torsionally excited methanol ($\mathrm{CH_3OH}$) in 12 high-mass star-forming clumps in different evolutionary stages, assessing their potential as tracers of the mid-IR luminosity of embedded protostars. We analyzed rotational transitions of methanol within the same torsionally excited states $v_\mathrm{t}$$\geq$1 in the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) 890 $\mathrm{\mu m}$ observations and compared them with Spitzer 24 $\mathrm{\mu m}$ data by plotting line luminosities normalized by methanol abundance against mid-IR luminosities. The torsionally excited methanol emission is generally compact and systematically coincident with ALMA dust continuum peaks and 24 $\mathrm{\mu m}$ emission, even in faint sources. The only clump without an IR counterpart also shows no $v_\mathrm{t}$$\geq$1 emission, supporting radiative pumping as the dominant excitation mechanism. We found a promising power-law trend between $v_\mathrm{t}$$\geq$1 methanol lines and 24 $\mathrm{\mu m}$ luminosities, largely independent of the methanol abundance. $\mathrm{CH_3OH}$ $v_\mathrm{t}$$\geq$1 transitions appear to be promising tracers of local mid-IR radiation fields of embedded protostars, providing core-scale information even in highly extincted regions. As a pilot study, our results suggest that extending our study to a larger statistical sample is crucial for testing and improving this method.

The GlueX experiment in Hall D at Jefferson Lab enables studies of the light meson spectrum in $\gamma p$ interactions with a linearly polarized photon beam. GlueX aims in particular to search for hybrid mesons that have exotic quantum numbers and therefore cannot be classified as conventional hadrons. We present the search for the $\pi_1(1600)$ meson by means of a partial-wave analysis of the $\pi^{+}\pi^{-}\pi^{-}$ system produced off the $\Delta^{++}$-baryon. Data with the selected three-pion final state are fitted in bins of $m_{3\pi}$ as coherent sums of partial-wave amplitudes defined in the reflectivity basis. The properties of $a_{2}^{-}(1320)$ production are investigated through the extracted signal in the $\rho\,\pi^{-}$ $D$-waves. In this analysis, the overall $m_{3\pi}$ lineshape will be extracted for each of the model contributions. The main interest lies in establishing the existence of a resonant $1^{-+}$ contribution in the $\rho\,\pi^{-}$ $P$-wave configuration.

We formulate a class of systems of Euclidean correlation functions for compact $d$-dimensional conformal field theories which are not necessarily unitary. We also introduce conformal $d$-vertex algebras, $d$-dimensional analogues of full vertex algebras, and prove that such an algebra is obtained from every system of conformally covariant correlation functions. Finally, for each $d\geq 2$, we construct a family of examples satisfying these axioms, corresponding to generalized free scalar fields. For $d>2$, this family contains both unitary and non-unitary examples.

A droplet breaks up in tens of microseconds, and a recording captures perhaps a dozen frames. The states in between cannot be recovered without repeating the experiment, and simulating them is too costly to sweep an operating envelope. Yet they are present in the corpus as a whole: a campaign spanning a device's actuation range produces morphologies resembling those any single recording missed. Exploiting that requires a representation that is low-dimensional, invertible, and faithful to shape rather than to sampling. Proper orthogonal decomposition supplies the first two but measures distance in sampled coordinates; manifold learning supplies the third but no map back to a shape; elastic shape analysis supplies a shape metric but no reduced coordinates. SHROM composes all three. Interfaces are represented by their square-root velocity functions, a neighbour graph is built over that shape space, and an autoencoder is trained to reconstruct while penalising latents in which graph neighbours are not latent neighbours. The demonstration uses 301,539 inkjet droplet contours and four filmed break-up sequences. The graph term does not improve reconstruction. It determines whether position in the latent carries meaning: clustering the latent of an otherwise identical model recovers the shape-space partition at chance level (ARI = 0.063 +/- 0.059), and at 0.781 +/- 0.049 with the term active. Waveform parameters predict the full contour at R^2 = 0.878 +/- 0.026. Negative results are reported in the same terms. The graph metric proved immaterial across five choices, and interpolation error saturates at the reconstruction limit, so a plain autoencoder leads that task. The main limitation is interpolation across a topology change: no component of the regularised latent holds both a single-component and a post-break-up shape, whereas an unregularised autoencoder mixes them freely.

Pairs of spheres sharing an acoustic trap sometimes spin intermittently despite having no self-propulsion, no obvious power source, and no symmetry-breaking mechanism, switching between rocking and spinning within a single trajectory. Nonreciprocal wave scattering powers this emergent activity, and drag shapes their dynamics by coupling rotations to translations. Mismatched pairs can pass through a supercritical Hopf bifurcation into a quasiperiodic torus on which the pair's orbit reverses regularly and, farther from equilibrium, into deterministic chaos. Experiments motivate this mechanism and share its qualitative signatures; simulations reveal a full noise-free route from passivity to chaos, and suggest how analogous dynamics can emerge in other active-matter systems.

We establish convergence of minimizers for a minimal one dimensional atomic-scale model for relaxation in moiré materials to those of a one-dimensional continuum limit functional analogous to those commonly used in practice to model relaxation. The atomic-scale model consists of two periodic chains containing $N$ and $N+1$ atoms per common cell and is exactly moiré-periodic at the atomic scale. Its energy combines harmonic nearest-neighbor intralayer interactions with nonlocal interlayer interactions generated by an even $C^2$ pair potential with polynomial decay. The associated continuum energy couples linear elasticity to a periodic misfit potential, obtained by periodizing the pair potential, which penalizes unfavorable local stackings.

We study the massive scalar quasinormal-mode spectral problem on a Schwarzschild background using an extended Chebyshev spectral method. The massive dispersion relation has a two-sheeted analytic structure, which we uniformise before discretisation. This converts the radial problem into a seventh-degree polynomial eigenvalue problem while incorporating the quasinormal-mode boundary conditions at the horizon and spatial infinity. The method yields stable spectra for low multipoles, high overtones, and frequencies on both sides of the nominal mass threshold, including regimes in which WKB and continued-fraction approaches become difficult to apply. For complex frequencies, the far-field behaviour cannot be classified from the real part of the frequency alone, but depends on the complex wavenumber and its Riemann sheet. We also identify stable families of purely imaginary roots with approximately uniform spacing in their damping rates, whose physical interpretation remains open. The Schwarzschild scalar problem is intended as a controlled benchmark for massive-field quasinormal-mode calculations rather than as a direct model of tensorial Kerr ringdown.

This study provides a data-driven analysis of a novel dataset of single-cell Anion Exchange Membrane water electrolyzers (AEMWE), operated under constant current load across multiple heterogeneous experimental campaigns. We train and evaluate a range of machine learning models with different complexity, including linear baselines, LSTMs and CNNs, to perform medium-term forecasting of the cell voltage degradation curve. The models are assessed within a rigorous training and evaluation framework specifically designed for heterogeneous industrial data.

Thermodynamic uncertainty relations bound the fluctuations of time-antisymmetric currents. Stochastic efficiency is not one: a ratio of two odd quantities, it is even under path reversal, and for the conventional ratio $-W/Q_h$ no moment exists. We work with the exergetic ratio $\eta=W/(W+T_0S)$, whose moments exist, and ask how much of its variance a finite perturbation of the dynamics can certify when linear response cannot. The question is specific to nonlinear observables: for every current, and every observable linear in transition counts and residence times, the multiparameter Cramér-Rao bound over rate and site perturbations already equals the variance. For $\eta$ it does not. The Cramér-Rao bound vanishes on a hyperplane of perturbation directions, while the Barankin multi-point bound, applied to tilted path measures, stays positive there and recovers 75% of the variance of $\eta$ in a three-state motor model where every linear-response bound is zero. The Gram matrix of tilted Markov-jump path measures is a Feynman-Kac matrix exponential whose potential is the Hellinger integrand of the jump intensities, and the cost of a perturbation is its $\chi^2$ divergence, which no dissipation bound controls. The bound captures 1.25-1.57 times the best linear-response bound, and the gain persists on networks of up to sixteen states. For an Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process the construction is exactly solvable: the optimal tilt scales as $T^{-1/2}$ and three test points nearly reach the supremum. Two limits are established. The gain is a short-window effect that disappears as the counts become Gaussian, and the bound cannot be turned into inference: coarse measurements bound $\chi^2$ only from below. The construction is a computational instrument for a model in hand, not an uncertainty relation.

X-ray pulse-profile modeling can measure neutron-star radii, but its physical interpretation remains limited by the largely phenomenological description of the surface hotspots. Here we connect the X-ray hotspots directly to the pulsar magnetospheric structure and jointly infer the mass, radius, and magnetic geometry of the massive millisecond pulsar PSR J0740+6620 from NICER and XMM-Newton observations. Using a GPU-accelerated implementation, we compare two low-dimensional magnetic configurations that can produce non-antipodal emission: a centered axisymmetric dipole–quadrupole and a shifted dipole. The shifted-dipole model is decisively favored under the adopted priors, with $\Delta\ln Z=5.65$ (Bayes factor $\sim285$), and yields $M=2.059^{+0.068}_{-0.069}\,M_{\odot}$ and $R=13.28^{+1.47}_{-1.07}\,\mathrm{km}$, broadly consistent with previous phenomenological analyses, while requiring nearly symmetric heating of the two polar caps. Both the marginalized shifted-dipole posterior and the timing-compatible representative require an effective X-ray-emitting footprint much smaller than the nominal force-free polar cap calibrated for a centered dipole. This compact footprint is not reproduced by our exploratory photon-conversion estimates and instead points to missing physics in the mapping from magnetospheric currents to observable X-ray emission. Our results show that physically motivated hotspots can preserve the mass–radius inference while turning hotspot morphology into a probe of pulsar magnetospheric structure and emission physics.

A key objective in Weyl-semimetal (WSM) research is to identify phases built from minimal configurations of Weyl points (WPs), which provide the simplest settings for investigating the intrinsic physics of chiral topological charges. Pang et al. [Phys. Rev. Res. 8, 033304 (2026)] recently established that crystallographically realizable WSMs can be decomposed into linear combinations of 16 minimal "irreducible Weyl molecules" (IWMs). A fundamental question remains unresolved: which of these non-decomposable configurations can themselves form standalone crystalline phases? Here we introduce irreducible Weyl semimetals (IWSMs), in which two bands crossing near the Fermi level form an elementary symmetry-compatible complex whose complete Weyl-node configuration is charge neutral and crystallographically indivisible. Combining all 1651 magnetic space groups with Weyl-orbit multiplicities and band-compatibility relations, we classify IWSMs formed by crystalline-symmetry-protected twofold WPs. Only ten of the sixteen primitive inventories admit one-copy realizations, comprising four Pair, four Split, and two Mixed charge-node architectures. Remarkably, this classification uncovers five unconventional and previously unrecognized topological phases: the charge-three Pair IWSM {3, -3}; the Split IWSMs {3, -1, -1, -1}, and {4, -1, -1, -1, -1}; and the Mixed IWSMs {3, 1, -2, -2} and {3, 3, -2, -2, -2}. For all ten classes, symmetry-constrained lattice models verify the complete node inventories, Chern charges, and surface chiral-flow incidence. Our results establish crystalline irreducibility as a phase-level organizing principle beyond individual Weyl nodes and provide a symmetry-resolved framework for identifying minimal Weyl complexes in electronic, phononic, and photonic systems.

We study the query complexity of testing quantum juntas. Given an unknown $n$-qubit unitary or quantum channel, the goal is to decide whether it acts nontrivially on at most $k$ qubits or is $\varepsilon$-far from every such operation. For unitaries, we consider the forward-only model, where the tester has access to $U$, but not to $U^\dagger$ or controlled-$U$. We give tight bounds for both unitary and channel junta testing. For sufficiently large $k$, $n \ge 2k$, and a broad range of $\varepsilon$, both problems have query complexity $\Theta\left(k/(\varepsilon^2\log k)\right)$. Our upper bounds are achieved by simple nonadaptive testers using product inputs and single-qubit measurements. For junta channels, this closes the gap by Bao and Yao (COLT 23, TPAMI 2025) between an $\widetilde{O}(k)$ upper bound and a $\widetilde{\Omega}(\sqrt{k})$ lower bound at constant $\varepsilon$, establishing the optimal $\Theta(k/\log k)$ query complexity. At the heart of both bounds is a strong connection between quantum junta testing and classical support-size testing. For the upper bounds, we reduce quantum junta testing to a generalized support-size problem for distributions over random subsets, and develop a new tester with improved sample complexity. For the lower bounds, we proceed in the reverse direction, reducing classical support-size testing to quantum junta testing through a phase-masked hard ensemble and showing that forward quantum queries can be exactly classicalized on average. Together, these reductions identify support-size testing as the classical core of quantum junta testing and yield matching lower bounds. At constant $\varepsilon$, they also give a separation between $\Theta(k/\log k)$ forward queries and $\widetilde{O}(\sqrt{k})$ queries with inverse access.

We consider one-loop QCD corrections to Higgs-boson production via vector-boson fusion at hadron colliders. As an input for future exact NNLO computations, we derive the one-loop helicity amplitudes to higher orders in the dimensional regulator. We present a direct calculation of the amplitudes with spinor-helicity techniques and different $\gamma_5$ schemes. In addition, we compare this approach to a projector-based calculation. In order to derive analytical results to higher orders in $\epsilon$, we calculate the pentagon master integrals by the method of $\epsilon$-factorised differential equations and express them in terms of an algebraically independent set of basis functions.

Superflares are frequently observed on magnetically active stars, particularly on active M-dwarfs, thereby influencing the habitability of nearby exoplanets. However, the causes of superflares remain unclear. Here, combining FAST and TESS, we detected a finely structured decimetric radio burst appearing as groups of spikes during a white-light superflare (total bolometric energy $\sim 10^{33} \ \mathrm{erg}$) on the M-dwarf binary EQ Peg on September 8th, 2022. The most significant ones appeared near the peak time of the optical flare and lasted for about $100 \ \mathrm{s}$. The radio spikes present extremely high brightness temperatures ($\gtrsim 10^{13} \ \mathrm{K}$) and high degrees of circular polarization ($\sim 0.84 \pm 0.16$), indicating the origin of a coherent emission process, most likely the electron cyclotron maser. Based on Zeeman-Doppler Imaging measurements of EQ Peg, we further locate the sources of the radio spikes, including their heights and latitudes, under the assumption of a large-scale dipolar magnetic field configuration. The results provide strong evidence for finely structured decimetric radio bursts generated by stellar flares and shed light on the origin of superflares.

The Tile Calorimeter (TileCal) is a sampling hadronic calorimeter covering the central region of the ATLAS experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC). It employs steel as the absorber material and plastic scintillators as the active medium. The High-Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC), scheduled to start operation in 2030, will deliver instantaneous luminosities significantly exceeding the baseline LHC design, imposing more stringent requirements on detector readout and trigger systems. Consequently, TileCal has to be capable of reliable operation under increased radiation levels and very high particle flux, while maintaining full compatibility with the upgraded ATLAS trigger architecture. During the Long Shutdown period (2026-2030), the TileCal readout electronics will be entirely replaced with radiation-tolerant systems designed to handle data rates approximately an order of magnitude higher than those of the baseline LHC configuration. The photomultiplier tubes (PMTs) in the most highly irradiated regions will also be replaced with improved devices exhibiting enhanced stability and radiation tolerance. To meet these challenges, the system design has been correspondingly optimized to ensure improved performance, efficiency and robustness in high-radiation environments, and an extensive irradiation testing program has been carried out. This contribution presents the resulting design developments of the TileCal system, together with the results obtained from the irradiation tests.

Efficient end-to-end entanglement distribution in quantum information networks requires routing under limited resources and fidelity constraints. We study entanglement routing as a fidelity-constrained unsplittable multicommodity flow problem that maximizes the number of admitted requests. As a proof of concept, we integrate neutral-atom quantum optimization into a hybrid classical–quantum column-generation framework. A classical restricted master problem selects routes, while a pricing problem generates fidelity-feasible paths. We formulate this NP-hard constrained shortest-path pricing problem as a quadratic unconstrained binary optimization (QUBO) problem and address it with hardware-aware register embedding and instance-driven pulse shaping. To our knowledge, this is the first study of neutral-atom quantum optimization as a pricing oracle for fidelity-constrained entanglement routing. On small benchmark instances evaluated with neutral-atom processor emulators, the method, combined with warm-start and post-processing, achieves an optimality gap below 1% across all tested sizes; the selected simulated-annealing route-generation baseline exhibits gaps of up to 6%. These results indicate that the generated bitstrings can provide useful candidate routes for classical refinement within column generation. This proof of concept does not establish quantum utility or scalability; further evaluation on larger instances, against stronger classical baselines, and on quantum hardware is needed.

We consider a gradient, speed-change, symmetric exclusion process on the discrete torus $T^d_n$, $d\le 3$, whose empirical measure evolves, on the diffusive scale, according to a non-linear parabolic equation. We prove that, starting from a sequence of initial states whose relative entropy with respect to the inhomogeneous product measure associated with the initial profile is $o(n^{d/2})$, and whose density fluctuation field converges, the density fluctuation field converges, in $L^1(0,T; H_{- r})$, to the solution of a linear stochastic partial differential equation with time-dependent coefficients driven by a conservative space-time white noise.

We introduce chiral rotational wavepackets: coherent superpositions of a few low-lying rotational states of a molecule for which the expectation value of a molecular axis traces a three-dimensional chiral trajectory in the laboratory frame. The handedness is a dynamical property of the quantum state rather than of the equilibrium structure, and we show that it can be imprinted on linear rotors as well as on spherical and symmetric tops. We derive the action of space inversion, time reversal, and their product on such wavepackets in the Wigner $D^J_{MK}$ basis, and define the rotational enantiomers of a given wavepacket. To quantify their handedness we introduce two derivative-based pseudoscalar measures: a geometrical measure built from the curvature and torsion of the trajectory, which is even under time reversal, and a dynamical measure, which is odd under time reversal. The latter is shown to be proportional to the geodesic curvature of the trajectory projected onto the unit sphere, which links it, via the Gauss–Bonnet theorem, to the solid angle enclosed by the projected trajectory and to the parallel-transport holonomy of a molecule-fixed vector. Finally we show that a nonzero geometrical measure is a sufficient condition for the wavepacket to exhibit true chirality through its orientation trajectory in the sense of Barron.

We report an improved measurement of neutrino oscillation parameters at the Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) and the consequent indication of neutrino mass ordering. The analysis is based on 207.2 live days of data, comprising 8,294 inverse beta-decay candidates collected at an average reactor baseline of 52.5 km. A world-leading precision of approximately 1% was achieved for the atmospheric neutrino mass splitting $\Delta m^2_{31}$, with $\Delta m^2_{31}=+2.509^{+0.027}_{-0.025}\times10^{-3}\,\mathrm{eV}^2$ for normal ordering and $\Delta m^2_{31}=-2.482^{+0.025}_{-0.026}\times10^{-3}\,\mathrm{eV}^2$ for inverted ordering, using the Daya Bay constraint in the fit to resolve the correct physical minimum under each mass-ordering hypothesis. We further improved the world's most precise measurements of the solar oscillation parameters, obtaining $\sin^2\theta_{12}=0.3036\pm0.0064$ and $\Delta m^2_{21}=(7.388\pm0.078)\times10^{-5}\,\mathrm{eV}^2$, corresponding to relative precisions of 2.1% and 1.1%, respectively. Incorporating constraints on $\Delta m^2_{31}$ from long-baseline accelerator neutrino experiments into our analysis favored normal ordering over inverted ordering, with a one-sided significance of at least $2.1\sigma$ across all possible CP-violating phases; a Bayesian analysis yielded a Bayes factor of 10.18 in favor of normal ordering.

Optical anapoles have attracted significant interest as a promising platform for enhancing light-matter interactions at the nanoscale. An ideal anapole is a localized excitation of electromagnetic fields that does not produce any far-field radiation. In practice, anapoles are not ideal due to the parasitic scattered fields associated with higher-order multipoles. Here, we use the recently established exact current multipole expansion and the exact anapole condition to design an ideal anapole in which radiation due to the multipole orders up to the electric and magnetic octupoles is either eliminated or strongly suppressed, reducing the total radiated power by orders of magnitude. We also propose and study realistic photonic structures in which such anapoles can be excited by a uniform linearly polarized plane wave through second-harmonic generation that involves the off-diagonal elements of the second-order susceptibility tensor. In this case, the anapole condition is reached off-resonantly by adjusting the polarization angle of the incident field, which allows for the anapoles to be excited over a wide spectral range in scatterers of different sizes. Using this approach, we achieve scattering suppression on the order of $10^{-4}$ in photonic structures that are half a wavelength in size. The method offers the possibility to realize localized electromagnetic excitations that are truly isolated from the surroundings.

Multicomponent methods treat both electrons and nuclei quantum mechanically using the standard machinery of electronic structure theory. Previous work has demonstrated that quantitatively describing electron-nuclear correlation in multicomponent many-body perturbation theory methods requires large electronic basis sets with high-angular momentum atomic orbitals, and calculations on large systems can therefore become impractical. Similarly, the slow convergence of the electron-electron correlation energy with respect to highest atomic-orbital angular momentum is a well-known issue in standard electronic structure theory in which only the electrons are treated quantum mechanically, and numerous explicitly correlated methods have been introduced to mitigate this poor convergence. Motivated by the success of single-component explicitly correlated methods, we generalize the single-component MP2-F12/3C(FIX) approach for electron-electron correlation to electron-proton correlation to reduce the need for large electronic basis sets in multicomponent calculations. We also implement the complementary auxiliary basis set (CABS) singles correction for the electrons and protons. Our calculations show that the multicomponent MP2-F12 electron-proton correlation energy is within a few percent of the complete-basis-set (CBS) estimate obtained by QZ-5Z inverse-cubic extrapolation with PB4-D held fixed at every electronic basis-set cardinality tested, with the aug-cc-pVDZ basis set recovering 96-98% of the extrapolated CBS electron-proton correlation energy and exceeding the conventional multicomponent MP2 value at the aug-cc-pV5Z level. These results indicate that explicitly correlated methods can substantially reduce the electronic basis-set requirements of multicomponent calculations.

Demonstrating quantum advantage on current quantum hardware is a central goal of quantum computing, and random quantum circuits underpin many leading proposals. Yet sampling-based demonstrations are often difficult to verify, while observable-based approaches face a different challenge: concentration can suppress differences between circuit instances. Recent experiments have put forward the estimation of out-of-time-order correlators (OTOCs) in random circuits as a promising task for verifiable quantum advantage, yet whether their circuit-to-circuit fluctuations survive concentration as system size grows has remained open. Here we show that they do. For broad classes of local random circuits in any fixed spatial dimension, we prove inverse-polynomial fluctuations of fixed-order OTOCs at system-scale depths. In one-dimensional Haar-random brickwork circuits, we further show that macroscopically many gates contribute to these fluctuations, yet in each layer they remain confined to a sublinear-width region. As a byproduct, we develop a classical algorithm exhibiting the first rigorous improvement over brute-force classical simulation of OTOCs in 1D. Although classical hardness remains open, our results rule out strong concentration as an obstruction to OTOC-based proposals for verifiable quantum advantage.

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are ubiquitous in the interstellar medium and are among its smallest carbonaceous grains. Their infrared emission bands trace this small-grain population together with the interstellar radiation field that excites it, and are widely used to diagnose photodissociation regions, dust processing and star formation. We present full-sky maps of the integrated radiance of the 3.3 $\mu$m aromatic C-H stretch and the adjacent 3.4-3.5 $\mu$m aliphatic complex, from SPHEREx QR2 Level-2 data. Existing all-sky PAH tracers are broadband, so the band emission can only be inferred as an excess over stellar and continuum emission; SPHEREx samples the spectrum finely enough for the bands to be fitted directly. We mask flagged detector pixels, subtract the per-pixel zodiacal-light model, subtract point sources with an empirically derived PSF, and coadd the results into inverse-variance-weighted HEALPix maps at 2.6' FWHM and Nside=4096 in 102 narrowband channels across Detector 4 (2.42-3.82 $\mu$m). At every sky pixel we fit a continuum and the two bands. The combined band radiance is the primary product; its decomposition into the aromatic and aliphatic components is released alongside it as an estimate, with its modelling systematic stated. These are the first full-sky maps of PAH band emission, resolving the 3.3 and 3.4-3.5 $\mu$m bands spectrally, and the first full-sky PAH maps from SPHEREx to be released. Because the 3.3 $\mu$m band is emitted preferentially by the smallest PAHs, the maps trace directly a grain population, including the candidate carriers of anomalous microwave emission, that broadband PAH proxies reach only indirectly. The maps and their associated products, including a reliability mask, are publicly available with an explanatory supplement at https://research.iac.es/proyecto/radioforegroundsplus/pages/data-products/spherex-pahs.php.

Adsorption and desorption redistribute soluble surfactant between a liquid film and its free surface, but cannot change the total inventory in a closed periodic domain. We audit this requirement in nonlinear weighted-residual models for soluble-surfactant-laden falling films. Although a previous correction restores conservation of the nonlinear surface Marangoni flux, a separate inconsistency remains in the depth-integrated bulk diffusion. We derive the resulting mass imbalance and construct explicit positive periodic concentration fields that exhibit it. The missing contribution arises from the streamwise concentration gradient appearing in the normal diffusive flux at a sloping interface. Including this contribution restores local conservation of the coupled bulk-surface transport system while leaving the hydrodynamic equations, the leading-order adsorption-desorption closure, and the linear stability properties of the uniform equilibrium unchanged. In an independent no-slip calculation using the parameters of an earlier travelling-wave study, the reference model loses $0.0228832\%$ of its initial surfactant mass by $t=4500$, whereas the corrected run has an absolute relative mass change of $1.2\times10^{-15}$. The main hump and capillary ripples remain closely comparable at $t\approx4500$. This benchmark therefore shows that agreement with travelling-wave calculations does not, by itself, guarantee that a reduced model respects the conservation laws inherited from the underlying transport problem. Although the drift is small in this case, the corrected equations conserve the reduced total inventory for every smooth periodic solution. We also distinguish this exact conservation property from higher-order compatibility with the full curved-interface boundary conditions.

In a tidal disruption event (TDE), a black hole (BH) tears apart a star, whose bound debris returns over many orbits to form an accretion disk. We present a framework built on the GPU-accelerated finite-volume code AthenaK that follows these stages in a single simulation with self-gravity throughout. We extend AthenaK with a moving frame, restart remapping between domains, an adaptive-mesh multigrid Poisson solver, a tabulated hydrogen–helium equation of state including recombination, a dual-energy update for the cold supersonic debris stream, a moving BH potential with excision, and localized adaptive time stepping (LAT), which speeds up the production run more than threefold. Each component is validated separately and in combination: the gravity solver maintains an isolated Lane–Emden sphere to a density error of $2.0\times10^{-3}$ over 16.3 dynamical times, and dual-energy recovery reduces the pressure error of a Mach $7.75\times10^7$ entropy wave from 15.7 to $4.0\times10^{-12}$. We demonstrate the framework with a Newtonian $\beta=1$ disruption of a $1\,M_\odot$, $1\,R_\odot$ star by a $10^3\,M_\odot$ BH. The debris has the expected energy spread, insensitive to the self-gravity update interval, splits evenly into bound and unbound material, and yields a fallback rate approaching $t^{-5/3}$ at late times. At the pericenter nozzle, the thermal energy gained in the high-resolution run matches the vertical kinetic energy lost to within 6%, whereas the fiducial run, with 4–8 times coarser cells, overheats the thinnest early stream through numerical dissipation. Their heating agrees to 10% once the returning stream thickens. Multifrequency LTE post-processing produces synthetic images and luminosities.

The compressible MHD energy cascade in the solar wind is shaped by Alfvénicity, plasma fluctuations, and proton temperature, yet how these factors regulate the relative weight of compressible and incompressible energy transfer across heliocentric distances remains poorly understood. We apply compressible and incompressible exact relations to a large sample of 2-hour intervals from WIND (1~au), Parker Solar Probe ($<0.25$~au), and Solar Orbiter (0.3–1~au), classifying intervals as Alfvénic ($|\sigma_c|>0.75$) or non-Alfvénic ($|\sigma_c|<0.25$) and by wind speed, and examine the Yaglom-like and purely compressible components of the compressible cascade. Velocity fluctuation amplitude is the strongest predictor of the compressible cascade rate $\langle|\varepsilon_c|\rangle$, followed by density and magnetic field fluctuations. $\langle|\varepsilon_c|\rangle$ and $\langle|\varepsilon_i|\rangle$ are tightly correlated in all regimes, with their ratio organized by Alfvénicity and wind speed: non-Alfvénic and Alfvénic fast winds cluster along $\langle|\varepsilon_c|\rangle=\langle|\varepsilon_i|\rangle$, while Alfvénic slow wind shows a systematic excess consistent with internal energy contributions. The largest $\langle|\varepsilon_c|\rangle$ systematically occur in hotter intervals, with a two-decade increase from cool to hot events in Alfvénic slow and non-Alfvénic wind, a trend carried mainly by the purely compressible term, while the dominant Yaglom-like term controls the overall cascade magnitude. Alfvénicity and wind speed thus govern the efficiency of turbulent energy transfer across heliocentric distances, and the tight coupling between compressible and incompressible rates points to the need for compressible, multi-fluid descriptions of the solar wind dissipation budget.

We present an equivalent-circuit analysis that simultaneously considers the photoluminescence and electrical responses of valley photovoltaic devices. Valley photovoltaics (VPV) are a novel concept for hot-carrier solar cells, where intervalley scattering of electrons in the absorbing material helps maintain the conduction-band electron populations at metastable satellite valleys, which are at energies higher than the conduction-band minimum. We measure intensity- and voltage-dependent photoluminescence and electrical signals of a VPV device, which has previously shown S-shaped current-voltage characteristics and thus low efficiency. We present an equivalent circuit that captures the S-shaped current-voltage curves and simultaneously describes our photoluminescence and electric measurements. The equivalent-circuit model indicates that a reverse diode causes inefficient extraction of electrons and thus the S shape. We use a Poisson/drift-diffusion model to demonstrate that the reverse diode can be either explained by the valley-scattering process itself or a heterojunction barrier. The reverse diode must be eliminated before VPV devices can achieve high efficiency.

Correlations between optical modes, ranging from classical fluctuations to quantum entanglement, are a cornerstone of modern optics and emerging quantum technologies. However, probing these correlations on the natural timescale of electronic motion - the attosecond regime - remains a major challenge. Here, we generate and characterize correlated attosecond extreme-ultraviolet (XUV) emission by perturbing gas-phase high-harmonic generation with two-mode bright squeezed vacuum. The signal and idler fields imprint their correlated amplitude and phase fluctuations onto two families of harmonics, thereby transferring these correlations from the infrared to broadband XUV modes. Even harmonics serve as an intrinsic attosecond phase-sensitive probe of these correlations through interference between indistinguishable XUV pathways. Shot-resolved covariance measurements reveal the amplitude correlations, while even-harmonics resolve the phase correlations with sub-cycle precision. Time-domain reconstruction of the correlated emission reveals a transition from maximal fluctuations to near-silence within only 30 as. Whereas the signal and idler driven attosecond pulse trains exhibit excess fluctuations individually, their joint reconstruction shows strongly suppressed fluctuations, reflecting their shared correlations. These results establish a framework for generating and probing quantum correlations on attosecond timescales, opening the door to quantum attosecond science.

We report a comprehensive high temperature structural investigation of the B-site ordered double perovskite SrLaCoNbO$_6$ using combined Raman spectroscopy and x-ray diffraction (XRD) over the range 25–900~$^\circ$C. Two distinct temperature-driven anomalies are identified at $T_\mathrm{OD} = 300\pm 25~^\circ$C and $T_\mathrm{PT} = 750\pm 25~^\circ$C through pronounced renormalizations in the phonon frequency and linewidth, accompanied by the evolution and suppression of characteristic XRD reflections. The low-temperature anomaly at $T_\mathrm{OD}$ is associated with an isostructural octahedral distortion within the monoclinic $P2_1/n$ phase. At $T_\mathrm{OD}$, the radial and angular distortion parameters of the CoO$_6$ and NbO$_6$ octahedra decrease to near-zero values before reversing upon further heating due to an inversion of the in-plane Co–O and Nb–O bond-length hierarchy. The high-temperature anomaly at $T_\mathrm{PT}$ corresponds to a symmetry-breaking structural phase transition from $P2_1/n$ to the monoclinic $I2/m$ phase, confirmed by group-theoretical analysis and Rietveld refinement. These results demonstrate that integrating temperature-dependent Raman spectroscopy with laboratory-based XRD, complemented by quantitative octahedral distortion analysis, provides a robust approach to disentangle isostructural octahedral distortions from symmetry-breaking phase transitions in complex double perovskite oxides without recourse to synchrotron or neutron diffraction facilities.

Understanding and controlling charge transfer at graphene-semiconductor interfaces is essential for the integration of two-dimensional materials into silicon-compatible technologies. Here, we combine ultraviolet photoelectron spectroscopy (UPS), Kelvin probe force microscopy (KPFM), angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES), scanning tunneling spectroscopy (STS) and density functional theory (DFT) to resolve work-function modulation and electronic coupling in graphene grown on Ge(001)/Si(001). UPS and KPFM reveal a spatially non-uniform work-function landscape correlated with the nanofaceted morphology of the substrate. ARPES and DFT calculations for the pristine interface consistently indicate n-type doping and electron transfer from Ge to graphene. In contrast, modeling of the oxidized interface predicts a reversal to p-type doping, providing a plausible explanation for the different doping polarities reported in the literature. Machine-learning-assisted classification of the STS data resolves distinct local electronic regimes, ranging from nearly free-standing graphene on nanofacet tops to more strongly coupled inter-facet regions and nanoribbon-like regions with distinct local electronic responses. By identifying the mechanisms governing local graphene-substrate interactions and charge transfer, our study provides guidelines for tailoring the synthesis process and minimizing defect formation during delamination. These insights support the production of high-quality graphene layers for electronic devices and for transfer as protective coatings for air-sensitive materials.