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Tuesday 29 September

Quantum Physics

Copy-scarce learning of ground states

Kaito Wada and Nobuyuki Yoshioka

Probing multiple properties of ground states is central to understanding quantum matter, yet conventional readout can be prohibitively costly because it consumes many independently prepared copies. Here, in copy-scarce regimes, we establish optimal trade-offs between the number of initial ground-state copies and elapsed Hamiltonian-evolution time required for estimating multiple observables or reconstructing a full classical description of a unique gapped ground state. We derive a unifying inequality that quantifies how well ground states can be distinguished using initial copies and controlled dynamics, even when all copies may be consumed. It yields worst-case lower bounds on elapsed Hamiltonian time that any protocol must incur to perform either task. We construct parallel catalytic readouts that return all initial copies nearly unchanged while attaining these bounds up to poly-logarithmic factors. Our protocols require no coherent preparation circuit or its inverse, and their elapsed Hamiltonian time depends only logarithmically on the inverse of the desired return error. Thus, optimal copy–dynamics trade-offs can be attained together with catalytic return. Numerical benchmarks further show substantial reductions in end-to-end elapsed Hamiltonian time relative to a task-specialized copy-consuming protocol, even under an optimistic preparation-cost model. Our results reveal a copy–dynamics resource landscape connecting copy-scarce learning to copy-only endpoints realized by known protocols for shadow tomography and pure-state tomography.
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Soft Condensed Matter

Measures of Chaotic Advection in Simulations of Active Nematics

Md Mainul Hasan Sabbir, Brandon Klein, Daniel A. Beller et al. (+1 more)

Active nematics are non-equilibrium fluids composed of rod-like self-propelled units that collectively generate large-scale coherent flows. Here, we focus on a canonical experimental system: an active nematic fluid in $2D$ driven by ATP, composed of densely packed, extended microtubule (MT) bundles cross-linked by kinesin motors. An intriguing feature of this system is the creation and annihilation of topological defects with topological charge $\pm1/2$, due to the fracturing of the material. Experiments confirm that the positive ($+1/2$) defects serve as "virtual stirring rods" that move around each other in a complex braiding pattern. This collective braiding motion of positive defects stretches and folds the fluid itself, i.e., produces macroscale chaotic advection. The degree of self-mixing due to the chaotic advection can be measured using topological entropy and the Lyapunov exponent. Our goal is to determine whether continuum models of MT-based active nematic fluid can reproduce these measurements. To this end, we use two continuum models: the traditional Beris-Edwards (BE) model and the more recently developed Beris-Edwards model with enhanced nematic locking (BENL). The difference between the two models is the adoption of the "nematic locking principle", which states that an individual MT bundle cannot rotate independently of its neighbors due to steric interactions among elongated dense MT bundles. This principle holds in the BENL model except in small localized areas of the material domain where the material fractures, specifically near the creation and annihilation of topological defects. We employ several numerical methods to estimate measures of chaotic advection using both models. Our study shows that the BENL model more accurately reproduces experimental measures of self-mixing driven by chaotic advection in MT-based active nematic fluids.
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All authors Md Mainul Hasan Sabbir, Brandon Klein, Daniel A. Beller, Kevin A. Mitchell

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena

Relativistic Spherical Accretion in Nonrotating Black Hole Spacetimes: Astrophysical Implications

David Barrero-González and Alejandro Cruz-Osorio

We present a systematic analysis of spherically symmetric accretion flows onto thirteen non-rotating black hole spacetimes, including charged and regular black holes, scalar and dilaton fields, dark energy, cosmological constants, modified gravity, and parametrized metrics. We generalize the Michel solution to arbitrary diagonal spacetimes and investigate the density, temperature, velocity, Mach number, mass accretion rate, and bremsstrahlung luminosity equilibrium profiles. Using the Schwarzschild solution as a reference, we find significant deviations in the accretion flow, with cosmological-constant and dark-energy models strongly suppressing accretion, while regular and Yukawa-like spacetimes generally enhance it. We provide fitting formulas for the accretion rates and luminosities as functions of the spacetime parameters. We then explore two astrophysical applications: accretion onto supermassive black holes, such as Sgr A* and M87*, and the inferred progenitor masses of the intermediate-mass black holes associated with the GW190521 gravitational wave event. We find that observational uncertainties may allow us to probe signatures of deviations from the Schwarzschild spacetime.
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Chaotic Dynamics

Anomalous Behavior in Systems with Delay

Tony Albers, David Müller-Bender, Lukas Hille et al. (+1 more)

In a recent letter [Phys. Rev. E 112, L042201 (2025)], we demonstrated the occurrence of anomalous diffusion, weak chaos, and weak ergodicity breaking in a certain class of time-delayed feedback systems with linear instantaneous and nonlinear delayed term. This anomalous behavior is caused by the trapping of chaotic solutions close to nonhyperbolic fixed-point solutions in function space. In this paper, we extend our previous study, present more detailed insights, and show surprising new results. We first investigate the case of a constant delay, where the dynamical behavior during such trapping events can be explained by center manifold theory. In the large-delay limit, the probability for the trapping events becomes small because of a high effective dimension of the chaotic phases. As a consequence, anomalous behavior is only observable on very large time scales. By introducing a periodic modulation of the delay time, trapping events become more probable with increasing modulation amplitude due to a reduction of the effective dimension and the occurrence of laminar chaos. For large values of the modulation amplitude, the anomalous behavior is more complex and the most relevant aspects can be reproduced by a two-dimensional iterated map and a stochastic model.
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All authors Tony Albers, David Müller-Bender, Lukas Hille, Martin Weigel

Quantum Physics

Q-SPARSE: Quantum Subspace Projection for Near-Field Angle-Range Spectrum Estimation

Mostafizur Rahaman Laskar, Sajad Daei, Gabor Fodor et al. (+1 more)

Near-field wavefront curvature enables joint angle-range localization, but exploiting it entails repeated covariance-eigenspace tests over a two-dimensional spherical manifold. We propose a quantum subspace-projection algorithm (Q-SPARSE) for super-resolution estimation of parameters in the near field, employing spectral signature similar to MUSIC. Q-SPARSE prepares each spherical steering hypothesis as a quantum state, applies quantum phase estimation (QPE) to covariance-generated evolution, and converts the resolved spectral mass into a localization spectrum. The proposed method does not need the full classical preparation of the eigenstates, which is a major bottleneck of the QPE algorithm, the main subroutine in quantum variants of MUSIC algorithms. Under an ideal signal-noise partition, its score equals the classical signal-subspace overlap exactly and thus preserves the maximizer of normalized near-field MUSIC. For a finite q number of qubit phase registers, we derive the score from the complete QPE kernel, and propose a nearest-bin selection scheme with soft-thresholding based on Marchenko-Pastur-calibrated logistic weighting decision criteria. Numerical results on IBM's QISKIT software platform are demonstrated for near-field array processing.
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All authors Mostafizur Rahaman Laskar, Sajad Daei, Gabor Fodor, Mikael Skoglund

High Energy Physics (Theory)

Leading Logarithms in the Effective Theory of Gravity: corrections to the scalar mass

Diana V. Mysliaeva, Kirill M. Semenov-Tian-Shansky, Dmitrii V. Vasilev et al. (+1 more)

In a low-energy effective field theory (EFT), scaling logarithmic terms arise from the renormalization of higher-dimensional couplings that absorb divergences generated by loop integrals with lower-order vertices. Consequently, leading logarithms (LLs) are generated entirely by the leading-order Lagrangian, rendering them universal low-energy predictions. Adapting techniques developed for chiral perturbation theory, we analyze the series of LLs in the EFT of general relativity. As a concrete application, we compute LL corrections to the scalar pole mass up to three-loop order and demonstrate that they can be determined recursively to arbitrary loop order. To confirm the physical validity of our results, we carry out the calculation using a general gauge-fixing parameter and explicitly verify its complete cancellation in the physical observable.
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All authors Diana V. Mysliaeva, Kirill M. Semenov-Tian-Shansky, Dmitrii V. Vasilev, Alexey Vladimirov

Materials Science

Results of Classical and Nonclassical theories of nucleation for ordering transition in barium titanate

V. Sobolev and T. Liebsch

Results of classical and nonclassical approach to nucleation at the ordering phase transition in barium titanate are presented. A nonclassical nucleation model is applied to the first-order paraelectric cubic phase to ferroelectric tetragonal phase transition in barium titanate is considered.
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Materials Science

Stress-based structure optimization for a range-separated hybrid van der Waals density functional

Per Hyldgaard, Yunqi Shao, Raul Quintero-Monsebaiz et al. (+1 more)

Complex matter, often partly soft and pliable, is the generic form of material systems. We must therefore generally call on density functional theory (DFT) to first predict the atomic structure before we can use it to also characterize (expected) properties. A recent range-separated hybrid (RSH) van Waals density functional (vdW-DF), `vdW-DF2-ahbr' (abbreviated AHBR) [PRX 12, 041003 (2022)], shows promise as a high-accuracy predictor of both binding energies and structure, from molecules to solids. However, the present implementation in Quantum Espresso (QE) does not, in our experience, support robust stress-based unit-cell optimization of RSHs. Here we document and illustrate work enabling practical AHBR-based complex-matter discovery: We port the AHBR XC functional to the Vienna Ab Initio Simulation Package (VASP) where use of stress-based DFT optimization is already stable also for RSHs. We test the implementation by comparing high-accuracy AHBR-QE and AHBR-VASP predictions of non-covalent molecular interactions and for structure and cohesion of simple bulk structures. We also illustrate and test the use of the new AHBR-VASP implementation to predict and understand (atomic and anti-ferromagnetic) structure in distorted-rocksalt metal monoxides. Finally, we illustrate use for complex-soft-matter discovery by predicting motifs for layer stacking in the C2N covalent-organic framework (COF) system [Nat. Commun. 6, 6486 (2015)].
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All authors Per Hyldgaard, Yunqi Shao, Raul Quintero-Monsebaiz, Lars Öhrström

Mathematical Physics · Cross-listed from math.AP

Derivation of the Enskog–Enskog System from a Particle System

Zhe Chen

We formally derive a coupled Enskog system for a gas–particle mixture from the hard-sphere BBGKY hierarchy. The derivation retains the finite separation between colliding centres, includes collisions within and between species and explicitly states the direction of spatial shifts and the mass-dependent prefactors of the four collision operators. The resulting system provides a kinetic starting point for two-phase flows for which the volume effect cannot be ignored. For unit contact factors, we derive the corresponding gas and particle balance laws, and establish an entropy inequality under suitable regularity assumptions.
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Fluid Dynamics

Stable and Interpretable Multi-Mode Rheological Universal Differential Equations (mmRUDEs) for Data-Driven Constitutive Modeling

Mohua Das, Nicholas King, Navid Azizan et al. (+1 more)

The Rheological Universal Differential Equation (RUDE) framework embeds neural networks within a frame-indifferent tensorial constitutive backbone and so enables data-driven discovery of complex material rheological behavior. However, the flexibility that makes the RUDE framework attractive also makes it difficult to deploy: the learned neural network correction can make the constitutive equation numerically stiff during training, distribute corrections across non-unique combinations of tensor-basis terms, and extrapolate poorly with increasing nonlinearity, especially for industrially relevant materials with broad relaxation spectra. We develop a stability- and reliability-focused multi-mode RUDE framework that addresses three key challenges: thermodynamic admissibility, out-of-distribution prediction, and interpretability. Logarithmic compression of the input invariants and a split-network architecture improve numerical conditioning during training, while a differentiable projection layer enforces the Clausius–Duhem inequality at every time step. We illustrate the framework with both synthetic (a multi-mode Giesekus model) and experimental data on an entangled silicone polymer melt. Both models were trained on LAOS; they remain stable and accurate under unseen flow conditions, including steady shear, transient stress growth, and extensional flows, for which the unconstrained models may diverge numerically. To aid in interpretation of the contributions of each learned correction to the rheological behavior, we introduce the rheome, a compact way of representing the dominant weighted tensor-basis contributions to the overall rheological behavior. These improvements to the RUDE framework lead to stable and interpretable trained models, paving the way for implementation in computational fluid dynamics simulations and for guiding the rational design of soft material processing operations.
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All authors Mohua Das, Nicholas King, Navid Azizan, Gareth H. McKinley

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics

Migration and Evolution of giant ExoPlanets (MEEP). III. Twenty-Nine Giant Planets from the TESS Mission

Jack Schulte, Joseph E. Rodriguez, David W. Latham et al. (+97 more)

We present the discovery and characterization of 29 hot and warm Jupiter systems transiting bright ($G < 12.8$) FGK stars using TESS data and ground-based photometry and spectroscopy. Through the use of high angular resolution imaging, we discovered three bound stellar companions, named TOI-3988 B, TOI-6171 B, and TOI-7266 B. The planets that we confirmed span an orbital period range of $1.28 - 16.9$ days, a mass range of $0.35 - 8.7$ $\mathrm{M}_{\mathrm{J}}$, and an orbital eccentricity range of $0 - 0.6$, and add to the growing self-consistent sample of hot and warm Jupiter systems detected using TESS and analyzed using the Markov-Chain Monte Carlo code EXOFASTv2. By performing two-sample Kolmogorov-Smirnov tests on a set of host star and planetary parameters, we find that this growing self-consistent sample of giant planets has a different distribution of host star masses, surface gravities, and metallicities, compared to the hot Jupiter and warm Jupiter systems in the literature, likely due to the additional constraint on the host star density from the planetary transits included in our global fits. We find that seven of the 29 newly confirmed planets have significant orbital eccentricity, and that one of these, TOI-3365 b, is in a system which likely hosts a massive outer companion. The continued confirmation of hot Jupiter and warm Jupiter systems and the follow-up RV monitoring on these systems to identify outer companions will pave the way for important investigations of giant planet migration.
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All authors Jack Schulte, Joseph E. Rodriguez, David W. Latham, Allyson Bieryla, Karen A. Collins, Samuel N. Quinn, Xian-Yu Wang, Rafael Brahm, Abdullah Al-Haji, Robert Aloisi, Caitlyn Altermatt, Nikola Antonov, David Baker, Pavel Balanutsa, Khalid Barkaoui, Özgür Baştürk, Slawomir Bednarz, Paul Benni, Krzysztof Bernacki, Mario Billiani, Ventsislav Bodakov, Pau Bosch-Cabot, Valerio Bozza, Ahmet Cem Kutluay, David R. Ciardi, Catherine A. Clark, Jerome de Leon, Jason D. Eastman, İpek Aleyna Ertürk, Thomas M. Esposito, Phil Evans, Miranda Felsmann, Raquel Forés-Toribio, Isaac Fournier, Akihiko Fukui, Tianjun Gan, Cristilyn Gardner-Watkins, Purvi Garg, Eric Girardin, Tateki Goto, Ferran Grau Horta, Thomas Henning, Eric G. Hintz, Keith Horne, Kai Ikuta, Jon M. Jenkins, Andrés Jordán, Jenson Keen, Adam Kraus, Valentina Kuzmina, Artem Kuznetsov, Adam Lark, Rodrigo Leiva, Vladimir Lipunov, Michael B. Lund, Franck Marchis, Joshua Margherone, Robert Massey, Kim McLeod, Edward Michaels, Mayuko Mori, J. A. Muñoz, Felipe Murgas, Norio Narita, Takaya Okada, Shane Painter, Enric Palle, Ivan Panchenko, Hannu Parviainen, Anastasiia Pechko, Adam Popowicz, Don Radford, Fabian Rodriguez Frustaglia, Sylvain Roux, Subhroja Roy, Matthew Ryno, Gülben Şanc{\i}, Richard P. Schwarz, Victor Senik, Lauren A. Sgro, Avi Shporer, Gregor Srdoc, Denise Stephens, Chris Stockdale, Ashley Stone, Ivan Strakhov, Marcelo Tala Pinto, Thiam-Guan Tan, Suzanne Taylor, Neil Thomas, Nataly Tiurina, Julian C. van Eyken, Songhu Wang, Noriharu Watanabe, Levi R. Webb, Francis P. Wilkin, Joe Williams, Selçuk Yalç{\i}nkaya, Mesut Y{\i}lmaz, Carl Ziegler

Soft Condensed Matter

Morphodynamics of lipid vesicles under osmotic forcing

Nicholas Broussinos and David Saintillan

We investigate the dynamics of spherical lipid vesicles subjected to an osmotic shock using continuum simulations of a permeable, area-incompressible fluid membrane with bending elasticity and surface viscosity. The dynamics are governed by a single dimensionless parameter $\varGamma$, which measures the relative strength of osmotic pressure and bending forces. Osmotic forcing drives a three-stage evolution comprising rapid buckling and collapse, smoothing of the resulting wrinkles and ridges, and slow folding into an invaginated morphology resembling the precursor to experimentally observed vesicle-in-vesicle structures. Linear stability analysis predicts the wavelength and growth rate of the initial buckling instability and shows that the dimensionless buckling time scales as $\varGamma^{-2}$, in quantitative agreement with simulations. At longer times, the energy budget reveals a reversal in elastic energy transfer: bending energy accumulated during buckling is released during relaxation and dissipated by membrane viscosity. A scaling analysis of the folding dynamics predicts that the dimensionless folding time scales as $\varGamma^{-2/3}$, again in excellent agreement with simulations. These results provide a continuum description of the mechanisms and widely separated timescales governing osmotically driven membrane collapse and invagination.
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General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Explicit Analytical Representations for the Schwarzschild Radial Equation via Hypergeometric and Frobenius Expansions

J. G. R. Valangelis, Ailton C. Nascimento and Helder A. S. Costa

The massive Klein-Gordon equation on the Schwarzschild exterior reduces to a radial differential equation of confluent-Heun type. We present its exact reduction by rigorously retaining a subleading centrifugal term that preserves the horizon indicial exponents but critically shifts the accessory parameters. Within the Svartholm–Schmidt hypergeometric-expansion framework, we derive the three-term recurrence relation and establish the corrected continued-fraction compatibility condition matching the minimal tail to the lower-end recurrence. Crucially, we demonstrate that the physical compactification coordinate $z=(r-1)/r$ shifts the irregular singular point to $z=1$, inherently transforming the hypergeometric expansion into a five-term recurrence that cannot degenerate to three terms. To circumvent this obstruction, we construct the horizon-normalized physical branch via a direct Frobenius series at $z=0$. This representation exhibits high-order convergence and near-precision-floor residuals against the exact radial ODE, while clarifying why quasinormal-mode spectral selection remains a connection problem at the irregular singular endpoint.
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Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics

Toward Detecting the Moving Lens Effect with Optical Spectroscopy

David Wittman, Rodrigo Stancioli and Christopher Hopp

Relativity predicts that sky-plane motion of a gravitational lens changes the wavelengths of lensed photons. This moving lens effect is orders of magnitude smaller than cosmological and Doppler effects on the same photons, but can be isolated by comparing different strongly lensed images of a given source. With a massive, fast-moving lens such as a galaxy cluster falling into another cluster, lensed spectra of a given source could differ in wavelength by up to 1 part in $10^6$. We examine the feasibility of detecting this effect with optical spectroscopy, using Keck/Deimos data on the merging cluster RM J001938.7+033557.3 as a case study. We also quantify the predicted sky-plane motions of systems likely to be identified as merging clusters in a $\Lambda$CDM cosmology, and investigate how information on sky-plane motions could help constrain merger models. We find that measurement of the moving lens effect would disambiguate between models in which the subclusters are outbound after first pericenter and those in which the subclusters have returned to the same separation after first apocenter.
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Quantum Physics

Quantum Secure Non-Interactive Reductions

Maxwell Gold, Sarah Hagen, Daniel Alabi et al. (+1 more)

Efficient models for secure computation often rely on offline preprocessed correlations, which subsequently enable private online computation from minimal assumptions. Within these models, the study of secure non-interactive reductions (SNIR) formalizes when one classical correlation can be non-interactively transformed into another, while guaranteeing information-theoretic simulation-based privacy. In this work, we introduce quantum secure non-interactive reductions (QSNIR), a natural extension of SNIR, in which the source and target resource are each a bipartite quantum state. Specifically, when the target resource is classical, our framework enables us to analyze the problem of disseminating private correlations from entanglement, in addition to classical resources. Our primary technical result is that QSNIR privacy in this context can be computed exactly via a semidefinite program (SDP) pair that quantifies an error operationally rooted in a simulation-based cheating advantage. We prove that QSNIR privacy is lower-bounded by a decision problem related to minimum-error state discrimination (MED), and use both definitions to compute exact one-shot privacy errors for universal two-party computation (2PC) preprocessing correlations.
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All authors Maxwell Gold, Sarah Hagen, Daniel Alabi, Eric Chitambar

Materials Science

Ab initio calculated diamagnetic and paramagnetic susceptibility of carbonate minerals

Jaroslav Hamrle, Matěj Machek, Vladimír K. Kusbach et al. (+1 more)

The anisotropy of magnetic susceptibility (AMS) is a widely used tool to infer rock fabrics, yet quantitative interpretation is limited by sparse single-crystal magnetic properties for rock-forming minerals and by the difficulty of separating intrinsic diamagnetism from impurity-related magnetism. Here we use density-functional theory (DFT) combined with perturbation theory to compute the diamagnetic susceptibility and AMS of calcite-group carbonates (calcite, magnesite, and dolomite) and to quantify the additional paramagnetic contribution from transition-metal doping. For pure calcite, the calculated susceptibility and its anisotropy are in good agreement with published single-crystal measurements, validating the ab initio approach for diamagnetic phases. We provide improved intrinsic diamagnetic reference values for magnesite and dolomite, for which experimental susceptibilities are commonly affected by magnetic impurities. To address impurity effects explicitly, we model Fe and Mn substitution in calcite using supercells. The computed spin moments reproduce expected high-spin states (Fe$^{2+}$, $S=2$; Mn$^{2+}$, $S=5/2$) and yield a susceptibility anisotropy per Fe concentration that matches the experimental slope. The strong anisotropy is primarily governed by an orbital contribution tied to the crystallographic $c$-axis rather than by spin-orbit coupling, highlighting orbital magnetisation as a key but numerically challenging ingredient for modelling of paramagnetic AMS in carbonates.
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All authors Jaroslav Hamrle, Matěj Machek, Vladimír K. Kusbach, Zuzana Roxerová

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics

Space Journey Beyond Earth: Exploring the properties of exoplanets and multi-planetary systems

Alexandra Muresan

In contrast to the observed exoplanet diversity, planets within many multi-planetary systems exhibit intra-system similarities in their radii, masses, and orbital spacings. This thesis investigates the planetary properties and system architectures, focusing on the intra-system similarities, the inferred planetary interior compositions, and the differences between single- and multi-planetary systems. Paper A shows that planets within the same system tend to have similar orbital spacings even when their sizes or masses differ. The spacing similarity is more pronounced in orbital period ratios than in mutual Hill separations, while the period ratios are more strongly correlated with the masses than with the radii of adjacent planets. These results indicate that uniform orbital spacings represent a common architectural property and are not necessarily associated with similarities in planetary size or mass. Paper B compares transiting planets in observed single- and multi-planetary systems. After excluding hot Jupiters, the distributions of planet types and radii of singles and multis orbiting FGK stars show no significant differences, suggesting a common underlying planet population. Around FGK host stars, however, an overabundance of multis is identified within a specific planet radius range. Paper C finds that non-gas-giant planets in systems hosting detected gas giants are, on average, larger, more massive, and more irregularly spaced than planets in systems without detected gas giants. Adjacent planets exhibit significant similarities in radius, mass, and bulk density, whereas their inferred core and water mass fractions show substantial scatter and no strong correlations. These results indicate that similarities in bulk properties do not necessarily translate into similarities in compositions. These studies place new constraints on the processes governing planet formation and evolution.
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Quantum Physics

Classical Verifier Position Verification from Non-Local Games

Wen Yu Kon, Fatih Kaleoglu and Kaushik Chakraborty

Secure position verification certifies that a remote prover occupies a claimed location, a task that is provably impossible with classical resources alone against colluding adversaries. Most existing quantum position verification schemes require transmitting quantum states between verifiers and provers, and the resulting photon loss makes long-distance verification impractical. Classical verifier position verification (CVPV) schemes with classical verifier-prover communication exist, but rely on complex quantum processes that generate certifiable randomness, placing them outside the reach of near-term hardware. Here we introduce a general compiler that maps any complete-support non-local game with the required quantum advantage into a multi-prover CVPV protocol. This addresses both limitations, with entirely classical verifier-prover communication and all quantum resources confined to shared entanglement and local measurements on the prover devices. Instantiating with the CHSH game enables near-term implementation on existing experimental platforms. We prove finite-size security in the quantum random oracle model for both simultaneous verification of multiple provers and verification of a single prover with multiple prover devices. Notably, security in the multi-prover setting is governed not by the certified randomness of the joint provers' outputs, but by certified blind local randomness that depends critically on the spatial arrangement of provers and verifiers.
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Plasma Physics

A Pre-trained Variational Autoencoder for Gyrokinetic Plasma Turbulence Surrogate Modeling

Minglei Yang, Marshall Nicholson, Diego Del-Castillo-Negrete et al. (+2 more)

Machine learning surrogate models offer a promising path toward accelerating plasma turbulence simulations. We present PreVAE-Turb, a surrogate modeling framework that leverages pre-trained variational autoencoders (VAEs) from the Stable Diffusion image generation model for efficient spatial compression of turbulence fields. The pre-trained VAE is fine-tuned on turbulence data using a physics-informed loss function that includes a spectral loss operating in Fourier space to enforce spectral accuracy across scales. The VAE is combined with convolutional long short-term memory (ConvLSTM) networks to learn temporal dynamics in latent space, with a manifold consistency error metric that monitors encode–decode consistency during autoregressive rollouts. We validate the framework on two-dimensional Hasegawa-Wakatani drift-wave turbulence and extend it to gyrokinetic turbulence from the GENE code, where a four-channel adaptation simultaneously predicts electrostatic potential, density, and parallel/perpendicular temperature fluctuations without requiring architecture redesign. Once trained, inference generates thousands of time steps in seconds on a single GPU, providing substantial computational acceleration compared to direct numerical simulation. The pre-trained approach offers a transferable methodology broadly applicable to various turbulence simulation codes.
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All authors Minglei Yang, Marshall Nicholson, Diego Del-Castillo-Negrete, David Hatch, Guannan Zhang

High Energy Physics (Phenomenology)

Imprints of Left-Right Symmetry breaking in Gravitational Wave Spectroscopy: A non-minimal case study

Abdul Rahaman Shaikh, Nandini Das, Rathin Adhikari et al. (+1 more)

We investigate the dynamics of cosmological phase transition in the framework of a non-minimal version of Left-Right symmetric gauge model. At a high energy scale, this framework having the symmetry $SU(2)_L \otimes SU(2)_{R} \otimes U(1)_R \otimes U(1)_L$, is stemmed out from the Grand Unifying group $E_6$. Rich scalar sector of this model offers interesting opportunity for studying first order phase transition which can be the source of stochastic gravitational waves. Taking into account the theoretical and experimental constraints applicable to this model, we look for benchmark parameters where first order phase transition could be observed during the breaking of $SU(2)_{R} \otimes U(1)_R \otimes U(1)_L$ down to $U(1)_Y$, at an energy scale of tens of TeVs or higher. Our investigation reveals the possibility of strong first order phase transition over a large region of parameter space. We also discuss the production of stochastic gravitational waves arising from such strong first order phase transition. Our results present clear, testable predictions that fall directly within the sensitivity bands of ongoing and next-generation gravitational-wave observatories like LISA, DECIGO, AEDGE and $\mu$ARES.
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All authors Abdul Rahaman Shaikh, Nandini Das, Rathin Adhikari, Anindya Datta

Astrophysics of Galaxies

Cosmic Collisions I: Optical Morphologies for MIRI-selected galaxies from the PRIMER survey

Gregory Troiani, Allison Kirkpatrick, Leyna Bajaj et al. (+7 more)

We present the first results of visual morphology classifications from the Cosmic Collisions project, comprising 14,657 galaxies from the JWST Public Release IMaging for Extragalactic Research (PRIMER) survey. The sample consists of galaxies detected with MIRI F770W and spans the epoch of peak cosmic star formation (1<z<3). We produce rest-frame optical and observed-frame mid-IR images and enlisted citizen science volunteers through the Zooniverse platform to classify galaxy morphology, surface features, and interactions. The project accumulated 304,524 classifications from more than 4,700 volunteers. We find that mid-IR selected galaxies have significantly different morphologies relative to optical and near-IR selected galaxies, favoring dust-rich disk galaxies at z<2 and compact systems at z>2. This inverts findings from optical selection, which shows galaxies becoming more bulge-dominated and elliptical over cosmic time. In addition, we identify a population of galaxies with disk-like optical morphologies and luminous mid-IR point-source cores that may represent obscured AGN candidates, offering a promising path to identify AGNs based on imaging alone. Comparison with visual classifications from HST imaging demonstrates the impact of JWST's improved sensitivity and resolution on the identification of galaxy structure and interactions, with systems previously identified by HST as compact, smooth, or featureless showing significant extended and internal structure in JWST. These results provide a foundation for future investigations into the connection between morphology, dust structure, star formation, and AGN activity.
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All authors Gregory Troiani, Allison Kirkpatrick, Leyna Bajaj, Joseph Havens, Jackson Stephens, Anton M. Koekemoer, James S. Dunlop, Adriano Fontana, Norman Grogin, Pablo G. Pérez-González

Biological Physics

Packaged DNA genome sets the long-range electrostatic anisotropy of a virus

Jeffrey C. Everts, Anže Božič and Rudolf Podgornik

Viruses are among the most highly charged objects in biology, and electrostatic interactions permeate nearly every stage of their life cycle. At the same time, an empty icosahedral capsid is almost isotropic as far as the surrounding electrolyte is concerned—its charge distribution is anisotropic only at high multipole order, and electrostatic screening removes such anisotropy long before it can be probed at a distance. Here, we show that the packaged genome of a filled virus imparts a long-range electrostatic anisotropy that extends throughout the surrounding medium, which is not present for empty capsids. We support these findings with a novel Poisson–Boltzmann continuum theory where the orientational order of dsDNA enters through an anisotropic dielectric tensor and an inhomogeneous volume-charge distribution, which is coupled to a charge-regulating shell containing ionizable amino acid residues of the capsid proteins. The resulting electrostatic potential profiles show that DNA packed in an inverse-spool geometry imprints a highly inhomogeneous potential distribution on the outer capsid surface, whose angular structure is a direct result of the DNA-free axial void. At high salinity, the multipole spectrum of this distribution persists at large distances, whereas at low salt concentration, higher-order multipoles decay more rapidly away from the surface. The surviving quadrupole renders virus–wall and virus–virus interactions orientation dependent at the $k_\mathrm{B}T$ level, with a preferred orientation controlled by the sign of the external charge and the pH. Using phage $\lambda$ as a model system and checking robustness of our results on two other phages, we find the same behavior across a range of pH and ionic strengths. This identifies the packaged genome, rather than the symmetry of the capsid, as the origin of the long-range electrostatic anisotropy of a filled virus.
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Fluid Dynamics

Catheter-modulated transient solute dispersion in micropolar annular flow with a retentive and absorptive arterial wall

Sohel Ahmed, Nanda Poddar, Kajal Kumar Mondal et al. (+1 more)

We study transient solute dispersion in pressure-driven micropolar flow through a concentric annulus representing a catheterized artery. The catheter is impermeable to solute, whereas the arterial wall combines irreversible removal with reversible surface retention. The exact steady micropolar velocity field is coupled to the Gill-Sankarasubramanian generalized-dispersion framework; the resulting bulk-surface hierarchy is advanced with Rannacher-damped Crank-Nicolson time stepping to determine $K_0(t)$, $K_1(t)$ and $K_2(t)$. The exchange coefficient is independent of the micropolar parameters and satisfies $-K_0(0^+)=2(\beta+\theta Da)/(1-\lambda^2)$, whereas $K_2-Pe^{-2}\sim\sigma_v^2t$ initially, so the leading short-time dispersion is hydrodynamic and independent of wall kinetics. In the weak-reaction regime, micropolarity modifies convection approximately linearly and shear dispersion quadratically through the velocity-amplitude factor. A narrow-gap analysis with $\varepsilon=1-\lambda$ gives $\bar v\sim(2-N_c)\varepsilon^2/6$ and $K_2-Pe^{-2}\sim(2-N_c)^2\varepsilon^6/7560$ for a fixed pressure gradient, revealing a sixth-power suppression of shear dispersion as the catheter approaches the arterial wall. Increasing $\lambda$ from $0.01$ to $0.30$ reduces effective convection by about a factor of $2.45$, while chemically passive shear-induced dispersion falls by a factor of $24$. The coupled formulation also yields the exact partition $\Phi_m+\Phi_s+\Phi_a=1$, separating mobile, reversibly retained and irreversibly absorbed solute. The reconstructed field quantifies reaction-modulated transverse non-uniformity, while the results distinguish hydrodynamic effects of confinement and microrotation from kinetic wall effects.
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All authors Sohel Ahmed, Nanda Poddar, Kajal Kumar Mondal, Subham Dhar

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics

AdS - de Sitter transition in interacting dark energy models

Yifei Zhao, Jailson Alcaniz, Humberto A. Borges et al. (+2 more)

Recent cosmological results, including the persistent $H_0$ tension and indications of dynamical dark energy, have raised the possibility that the standard $\Lambda$-Cold Dark Matter ($\Lambda$CDM) model may be incomplete. At the same time, theoretical developments based on swampland conjectures indicate that the realization of a stable de Sitter vacuum within string theory is challenging. Motivated by these observational and theoretical considerations, we investigate an interacting $\Lambda$ scenario characterized by a general linear coupling in the dark sector. At the background level, this model naturally allows the dark energy density to evolve from negative to positive values, opening the possibility of a transition from an anti-de Sitter-like phase to the de Sitter-like phase inferred by current observations. We derive the analytic background solutions and perturbation equations, discuss the physically acceptable region of parameter space, and constrain the model with DES-Dovekie type Ia supernovae, DESI BAO and CMB data. Our analysis suggests a parameter space allowing the dark energy density to change sign while maintaining positive dark matter density, motivating further investigation of an interaction-driven anti-de Sitter to de Sitter transition.
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All authors Yifei Zhao, Jailson Alcaniz, Humberto A. Borges, Saulo Carneiro, Rodrigo von Marttens

Materials Science

Energy-Efficient Non-Volatile Photonic Switching via Composition-Engineered Sn-Doped GST

Xingyu Zhang, Daniel Vaz, Chi-Yi Kao et al. (+5 more)

Integrated phase-change photonics allows non-volatile optical switching with no static power draw, but the electrical energy needed to reversibly switch the material's state limits practical scaling. Efforts to improve energy efficiency have mostly focused on device optimization, such as redesigning the integrated microheater or waveguide. Here, we take a different, materials-centered approach by alloying Sn to Ge$_2$Sb$_2$Te$_5$ (GST) without altering the device structure or CMOS compatibility. We explore Sn concentrations ranging from 0 at.% to 20 at.% on waveguide-integrated PN and PIN heaters and observe a reduction in both the amorphization and crystallization energies in the 5–10 at.% range. At higher Sn content this trend reverses and the switching energy increases, which is suggestive of phase segregation when combined with TEM compositional analysis. A 10 at.% Sn device continues to switch over 1000 cycles, with observable degradation in the extinction ratio from 4.5 $\pm$ 0.3 dB to 2.4 $\pm$ 0.3 dB. Post-cycling imaging shows PCM migration and void formation which we believe can be further improved by enhanced encapsulation. Overall, Sn alloying offers a route to lower programming energy in integrated phase-change photonics without negatively affecting the switching speed relative to un-doped GST.
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All authors Xingyu Zhang, Daniel Vaz, Chi-Yi Kao, Marcus Tamura, Xiong Feng, Carlos A. Rios Ocampo, Bhavin J. Shastri, Nathan Youngblood

Quantum Physics

Advantage of Sample Complexity in Quantum PAC Learning Requires Inverse Access to State-Preparation Unitaries

Natsuto Isogai, Satoshi Yoshida and Mio Murao

Whether quantum computation can reduce the amount of data sampled from an unknown probability distribution required to learn a prediction rule is a fundamental question in quantum machine learning. Quantum PAC learning studies this question using quantum data as a quantum state whose squared amplitudes encode the unknown distribution from which classical learning data are sampled. With only copies of such quantum data, the optimal worst-case sample complexity asymptotically matches that of classical PAC learning. In contrast, access to both a state-preparation unitary for this state and its inverse can improve the query-complexity dependence on the accuracy parameter in realizable learning. However, it has remained unclear whether forward-only access allows such an improvement. In this work, taking the worst case over compatible state-preparation unitaries and their finite ambient dimensions, we show that the optimal forward-only query complexities of realizable and agnostic learning are, respectively, $\Theta((d+\log(1/\delta))/\varepsilon)$ and $\Theta((d+\log(1/\delta))/\varepsilon^2)$, where $d$ is the VC dimension of the concept class, $\varepsilon$ the accuracy parameter, and $\delta$ the failure probability. These bounds match the optimal sample complexities with classical data or quantum data copies. To prove them, we establish a reduction using $q$ copies of the prepared state to approximate the Haar-averaged output of any $q$-query forward-only algorithm. These results show that forward-only access cannot provide an asymptotic query-complexity advantage over learning from classical data or quantum data copies in this worst-case setting, and establish the essential role of inverse access in the known realizable-setting improvement. Our reduction also provides a new framework for analyzing limitations of forward state-preparation access via state-copy lower bounds.
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Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics

Fisher and DALI posterior approximations for testing gravity with gravitational waves

Felipe A. da Silva Barbosa, Davi C. Rodrigues, Josiel Mendonça Soares de Souza et al. (+1 more)

We investigate the accuracy and computational efficiency of posterior approximations for gravitational-wave (GW) parameter estimation based on Fisher Matrix and its higher-order extension, the Derivative Approximation for LIkelihoods (DALI), in the context of tests of General Relativity using parameterized deviations in the inspiral waveforms (the TIGER formalism). We adopt the IMRPhenomD waveform and compare the exact posterior sampling to the following approximations in increasing order of complexity: the traditional Fisher Matrix, the Fisher sampling (singlet-DALI), the doublet-DALI and the triplet-DALI. We find that both singlet and doublet-DALI are significantly faster than the exact posterior by factors between 20 and 1000, depending on the inspiral SNRs – larger gains correspond to larger SNRs. These gains are considerably larger for more complete waveforms, such as IMRPhenomHM. To evaluate the accuracy of the approximations, we use Jensen-Shannon divergence. We conclude that both singlet and doublet-DALI systematically improves over the standard Fisher Matrix approximation, while triplet-DALI shows large variability, limiting its practical advantage. We also introduce a code with a new implementation of Fisher and DALI analysis (Symbolic DALI, SymDALI) which computes derivatives symbolically via Wolfram Language.
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All authors Felipe A. da Silva Barbosa, Davi C. Rodrigues, Josiel Mendonça Soares de Souza, Miguel Quartin

Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics

PTED: A multi-dimensional two-sample test for scientific inference and generative machine learning

Connor Stone

Two-sample tests are widely applicable in inference and generative modelling, yet users frequently fall back on heuristics and visual inspection due to lack of an accessible test that operates in multiple dimensions. I present Permutation Test using the Energy Distance (PTED), a Python implementation of a powerful two-sample test described in Székely and Rizzo [2004]. The test statistic is the energy distance, a metric on probability distributions that admits a natural sample estimator built from pairwise distances. A permutation test is run on energy distances to produce an exact two-sample test. Because the statistic depends on the data only through pairwise distances, the test applies in high dimensions, on learned feature representations, at large or small or imbalanced sample sizes, and to any data type on which a distance can be defined. An approximation to the formula allows PTED to scale linearly with both number of dimensions and samples while retaining most discriminative power. I highlight a number of instructive sensitivity tests on PTED alongside other multi-dimensional two-sample tests for comparison. PTED is the only method that is sensitive to all tests, though conventional Maximum Mean Discrepancy is identical for all but an over-fitting test.
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Quantum Physics

On Removing Interaction from Quantum Proofs

Nicholas Spooner and Max Tromanhauser

An important open question in quantum cryptography is the construction of publicly-verifiable NIZKs for QMA. Classically, one can construct NIZKs for NP in the random oracle model (and sometimes in the standard model) by compiling an honest-verifier ZK (HVZK) $\Sigma$-protocol for NP using the Fiat-Shamir transformation. Broadbent and Grilo introduced a quantum analog of a $\Sigma$-protocol (which they call a $\Xi$-protocol) in which the prover's first message is quantum, and show that HVZK $\Xi$-protocols exist for QMA. However, it is not clear how to compile such protocols into NIZKs in the (Q)ROM, because the Fiat-Shamir transformation seems to be incompatible with quantum messages. In this work we give formal evidence that this is indeed the case: we show that if generic "Fiat-Shamir-like" compilers for quantum protocols exist in the QROM (with small completeness and soundness error) then QMA = BQP.
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Mathematical Physics

Reachable sets under Kolmogorov dynamics in the probability simplex

Alfonso Fernández de Bobadilla, Mykhailo Hontarenko, Guillem Müller-Rigat et al. (+1 more)

The finite-time reachability problem - whether two probability vectors can be transformed in a time t through a generator from a given set - is a key question in Markovian dynamics. We address this problem for normalized Kolmogorov generators with tools from differential geometry. The shortest time T connecting an ordered pair of states defines an (asymmetric) quasi-distance in the probability simplex, which distinguishes between outgoing and incoming reachable sets, and captures the inherent irreversibility of Markov dynamics. The Finsler metric corresponding to normalized generators with bounded diagonal entries is characterized, and time-independent evolutions that saturate speed limits are presented. Analytical boundaries of both reachable sets are derived and the ratio of their corresponding volumes assess the bounds obtained. The asymmetry with respect to the uniform probability vector is shown to be related to the Kullback-Leibler relative entropy.
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All authors Alfonso Fernández de Bobadilla, Mykhailo Hontarenko, Guillem Müller-Rigat, Karol Życzkowski