Understanding pairing in the strong-coupling regime of doped Mott insulators remains an open problem in the context of cuprate superconductors. We perform ultra-high resolution numerical simulations of spectral functions in the highly underdoped $t-J$ model and discover two coupled branches of hole pairs emerging at low energies in the largely unexplored two-particle spectrum. As spin anisotropy is tuned from the Ising limit to the $SU(2)$-symmetric Heisenberg regime, the lowest $d$-wave pair evolves from a single bipolaronic branch into two hybridized branches separated by an avoided crossing. We explain this behaviour using an effective two-channel model involving a tightly bound bipolaronic state and a second channel associated with two magnetic polarons. The model reproduces the qualitative low-energy spectra and implies near-resonant $d$-wave interactions in the $SU(2)$-symmetric $t-J$ model, consistent with proximity to an emergent Feshbach-type resonance. To probe these predictions experimentally, we propose a Raman spectroscopy scheme for the attractive Hubbard model that can be directly implemented using ultracold atoms in optical lattices. Our work establishes two-particle spectroscopy, beyond single-particle Green's functions, as a powerful tool for revealing the microscopic origins of unconventional superconductivity.

Antimony sulfide is an emerging phase change material for optical and electrical memory and computation elements. It has additionally been reported as a ferroelectric, with recent evidence from hysteresis in piezoresponse force microscopy. Here, we complete a rigorous set of piezoresponse force microscopy experiments on a congruently crystallized Sb2S3 glass-ceramic, where piezoelectric coupling should be forbidden in glassy Sb2S3. We replicate previous results and reveal that the behavior is absent in glassy Sb2S3 but show that the response originates primarily from non-piezoelectric contributions to the signal caused by an applied voltage. This hysteretic behavior in piezoresponse force microscopy is quite similar to some electrochemically active non-ferroelectric oxides, but uniquely, it appears here with a very clear spatial contrast that is decoupled from surface topography. This shows that the electromechanical signal reflects bulk-like properties and reveals differences in electrical behavior of crystalline and amorphous phases of Sb2S3.

Accurate band offsets are essential for predictive continuum modeling of nanostructures such as quantum wells and quantum dots formed in strained Si/Si1-xGex and Ge/Si1-xGex heterostructures. Experimental offset data for these systems remain sparse away from endpoint compositions, making composition-dependent design difficult. We use atomistic first-principles density functional theory to compute valence- and conduction-band offsets across the full range 0 <= x <= 1. Random alloying is treated with special quasirandom structures, interface lineup terms are extracted from macroscopically averaged local Kohn-Sham potentials in thick periodic superlattices, valence-band spin-orbit coupling is included through species-resolved Mulliken weights, and conduction-band edges are refined using the screened hybrid Heyd-Scuseria-Ernzerhof functional. The resulting offsets show pronounced composition nonlinearity beyond the linear models explored in previous works, agree with experimental benchmarks, and reproduce the high-Ge slope change in the relaxed-alloy band gap. Analytic fitting expressions are provided for direct use in simulations, facilitating practical design of modern quantum technology devices.

Measurements of the event-by-event correlation between elliptic flow ($v_2$) and the mean transverse momentum ($[p_{\rm T}]$) using the modified Pearson correlation coefficient $ρ(v_2^2,[p_{\rm T}])$ are reported in pp collisions at $\sqrt{s} = 13$ TeV, and in p-Pb and Pb-Pb collisions at a center-of-mass energy per nucleon pair $\sqrt{s_{\rm NN}} = 5.02$ TeV. This analysis is based on the full LHC Run 2 dataset recorded by ALICE and is performed for the first time in small collision systems with the ALICE detector. In Pb-Pb collisions, the $ρ(v_2^2,[p_{\rm T}])$ measurement shows a non-monotonic dependence on charged particle multiplicity ($N_{\rm ch}$); it first decreases and then increases with an increase in multiplicity. The decreasing trends of $ρ(v_2^2,[p_{\rm T}])$ with increasing multiplicity are also observed in p-Pb and pp collisions for the presented multiplicity range. All three systems show consistent values of $ρ(v_2^2,[p_{\rm T}])$ for $N_{\rm ch} \lesssim 80$. These measurements are also compared with theoretical model calculations, including PYTHIA, where no collectivity is generated, as well as AMPT and IP-Glasma + MUSIC + UrQMD, which produce collective effects in small systems. These comparisons offer unique insights into the origin of collectivity in small systems. They improve the understanding of the initial geometry, size, and their correlations. The comparison also allows an investigation of the role of initial momentum correlations predicted by the Color Glass Condensate framework. The new measurements could not be explained by current state-of-the-art models, offering insights into the initial stage of collisions in small systems and also imposing strong constraints on the existing theoretical models. This will significantly advance our understanding of the collective phenomena observed in small systems at the LHC.

We prove the existence of spontaneous symmetry breaking in suitably low-energy eigenstates of certain gapless and frustrated many-body quantum systems, namely symmetric quantum perturbations to classical models which exhibit spontaneous symmetry breaking of a finite group at some positive temperature. Additionally, the classical model need not be local in space, as long as it satisfies a quantum analogue of the Peierls condition. As an example of our technique, we establish robust ferromagnetism in random-bond Ising models in $d= 2$ dimensions with sufficiently biased random couplings, with weak transverse field. Our mathematical technique is based on establishing quantum bottlenecks, similar to a "many-body WKB" method for evaluating tunneling rates. Using these same methods, we provide new proofs of metastability and the slow decay of the false vacuum, applicable to gapless metastable states. Our work represents a first step towards a rigorous classification of stable gapless quantum phases.

For most chemists, Kramers' degeneracy refers to the fact that for any radical system, every potential energy surface is at least doubly degenerate (with spin up and spin down, time-reversed solutions) for all nuclear positions $\mathbf{X}$. That being said, as is well-known to the community of spin chemists, one can experimentally detect a splitting of almost every rotational energy level for a doublet system -- highlighting the fact that nuclear motion breaks the spin degeneracy of such BO electronic states. Thus, as far as predicting experimental spectra, the implications of BO degeneracy are very limited unless one further includes a complete treatment of nuclear-electronic entanglement in a robust fashion; indeed, understanding radical molecules (and the degeneracy of their stationary states) can be extremely non-intuitive within the paradigm of Born-Oppenheimer potential energy surfaces. Now, as an alternative to BO theory, recent theory has suggested characterizing radical potential energy surfaces as functions of both nuclear position $\mathbf{X}$ and nuclear momentum $\mathbf{P}$, an approach which has been shown to recover a host of observables outside of BO theory, e.g., vibrational circular dichroism, Raman optical activity, and lambda doubling. Here, we show that such a technique predicts that different spin states will follow different (nondegenerate) potential energy surfaces and that the differences in these spin-dependent surfaces is quantitatively consistent with experimental spin-rotation couplings -- all without any contradiction with regard to Kramers' degeneracy. Thus, the present finding suggests there is still a great deal to learn about spin-resolved molecular reactivity, demanding a conceptual shift in our understanding of coupled spin-nuclear motion, especially in the context of chiral molecules and materials where spin-separation is known to arise.

Penrose's weak cosmic censorship conjecture asserts that spacetime singularities produced by gravitational collapse are generically hidden behind event horizons, thus preventing them from causally influencing distant observers and preserving the predictability of the exterior region. In this work, we probe this conjecture in a setup that deliberately violates one of its central assumptions - the dominant energy condition - by considering the spherical collapse of a phantom scalar field with negative energy density. In principle, such a field could produce a Schwarzschild geometry with negative mass and therefore no event horizon. Our aim is to assess whether, once the dominant energy condition is abandoned, the fully coupled evolution of matter and geometry can dynamically generate or expose naked singularities, thereby probing the robustness of cosmic censorship. To this end, we perform high-accuracy numerical relativity simulations based on fourth-order finite-difference schemes. Starting from smooth, asymptotically flat initial data representing regular phantom scalar wave packets, we follow their fully nonlinear evolution through collapse or dispersion. While an ordinary (positive-energy) scalar field exhibits the standard Choptuik critical behavior at the threshold of black-hole formation, the phantom field displays qualitatively different dynamics. For all amplitudes considered, we find no evidence for trapped surfaces, naked singularities, or alternative stationary end states. Instead, the phantom scalar field always disperses, suggesting that cosmic censorship remains dynamically preserved even in the presence of negative-energy matter.

While the superposition of quantum evolutions is known to produce interference effects, the interference between evolutions with regular and chaotic classical limits remains largely unexplored. Here, we use a Mach-Zehnder interferometer to investigate the superposition of two quantum evolutions, implemented via post-selection, and to compare it with the corresponding classical mixture. The quantum kicked top provides a natural platform for this study, as its classical dynamics ranges from regular to mixed to fully chaotic depending on the Hamiltonian parameters. We show that when a regular evolution is superposed with a chaotic one, the resulting subsystem entropy can exceed that of the classical mixture, provided the contribution of the chaotic branch dominates in the superposed quantum evolution. We further demonstrate that entropy production in such superpositions is strongly influenced by the structure of the underlying classical phase space. We further show that increased entropy generation can occur for purely regular dynamics at small values of the chaos parameter, given an appropriate choice of post-selection. These results reveal a nontrivial interplay between classical chaos and quantum interference in superposed quantum dynamics

We investigate the impact of spatial curvature, $Ω_k$, and dynamical dark energy on the cosmological constraints of the neutrino mass sum, $\sum m_ν$. Using a joint analysis of the latest CMB (Planck and ACT DR6), BAO (DESI DR2) and SNe Ia (DESY5 and DES-Dovekie) datasets, we perform an exploration of the neutrino mass parameter space. To mitigate prior-driven biases near the physical boundary, we implement a symmetric extension wrapper that allows for effective negative masses. We find that the inclusion of spatial curvature significantly modifies the posterior distributions, exhibiting a smooth transition across the $\sum m_ν= 0$ threshold. In the $Λ$CDM + $Ω_k$ + $\sum m_{ν,\mathrm{eff}}$ framework, we obtain $\sum m_{ν,\mathrm{eff}} = -0.011^{+0.052}_{-0.050}$, reducing the tension with the terrestrial lower limit of 0.06 eV from $2.59σ$ for the $Λ$CDM + $\sum m_{ν,\mathrm{eff}}$ model to $1.17σ$. For the most flexible scenario $w_0 w_a$CDM + $Ω_k$ + $\sum m_{ν,\mathrm{eff}}$, we find $\sum m_{ν,\mathrm{eff}} = -0.07 \pm 0.11$ with a tension of $1.13σ$, illustrating how the increased parameter freedom notably degrades the precision of the mass estimate compared to simpler extensions. Our results demonstrate that current cosmological bounds on $\sum m_ν$ are heavily influenced by boundary effects and geometric degeneracies.

The brief (10 nanoseconds) transient radio emission from cosmic ray air showers carries key information about the energy and mass composition of high energy cosmic rays, but anthropogenic radio frequency interference has historically prevented radio-based cosmic ray studies from being carried out independently from other types of detectors. We describe a cosmic ray detection system for the Owens Valley Radio Observatory Long Wavelength Array that searches for radio emission from cosmic ray air showers without relying on an external trigger, and runs alongside the other observing modes of the array. The OVRO-LWA, located in Eastern California, recently completed an expansion to 352 dual-polarization antennas and new signal processing infrastructure. In order to detect cosmic rays in the presence of radio frequency interference (RFI), initial event classification and RFI rejection is performed on Field Programmable Gate Array boards, which each process a sampled voltage timeseries from both polarizations of a subarray of 32 antennas. Each board uses dedicated RFI veto antennas outside the air shower radio footprint to reject RFI events. We present the trigger design, RFI flagging strategy, and candidate cosmic rays.

This paper presents the measurement of $π^{\pm}$, K$^{\pm}$, and p($\bar{\text{p}}$) production in high-multiplicity proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s} = 13$ TeV at midrapidity ($|y| < 0.5$) using the ALICE detector at the LHC. The transverse-momentum ($p_{\rm T}$) spectra of these particles are reported for three high-multiplicity classes. The results show a mass- and multiplicity-dependent hardening of the $p_{\rm T}$ spectra and an enhancement of the p/$π$ ratio at intermediate $p_{\rm T}$. These features are similar to those observed in heavy-ion collisions, where quark-gluon plasma formation is expected. The new measurements have extended the highest average charged-particle multiplicity density per unit of pseudorapidity achieved in pp collisions, roughly a factor five higher than that in average inelastic pp collisions, thereby reducing the multiplicity gap between small and large collision systems. In addition, the results are further compared with previously published measurements and with model calculations obtained using distinct tunes of the PYTHIA 8 Monte Carlo generator, as well as with predictions from the EPOS4. The comparison of the $p_{\rm T}$-integrated K/$π$ and p/$π$ ratios across different collision systems and energies suggests that particle production scales with charged-particle multiplicity, rather than with collision energy or system size. While the PYTHIA 8 tunes and the EPOS4 model are able to reproduce some of these measurements, either quantitatively or qualitatively, none of them consistently describes all observed features of the data.

Given a correlation generated by a (possibly quantum) communication network, we study the amount of shared randomness required to generate it. We develop a novel upper bound for approximating distributions generated by arbitrary networks and showcase instances where it significantly outperforms the best-known upper bounds for the exact case. This demonstrates that one can have substantial savings in resources if small perturbations are acceptable. We derive our bound using Hoeffding's inequality and apply it to various commonly-used communication networks such as the Bell scenario and triangle scenario.

The global 21-cm signal provides a powerful probe of early-Universe astrophysics, but its detection is hindered by Galactic foregrounds that are orders of magnitude brighter than the signal and distortions introduced by beam chromaticity. These challenges require accurate foreground modelling, rigorous Bayesian model comparison, and robust validation frameworks. In this work, we substantially accelerate global 21-cm inference by exploiting GPU architectures, enabling likelihood evaluations to achieve near-constant wall-clock time across a wide range of model dimensionalities and data volumes. Combined with algorithmic parallelisation of Nested Sampling, this reduces the total inference runtime of this work from hundreds of CPU-years to approximately two GPU-days, corresponding to a cost reduction of over two orders of magnitude. Leveraging this capability, we advance the physically motivated forward-modelling approach, in which foregrounds are represented by a discrete set of sky regions by introducing a novel, observation-dependent sky-partitioning scheme that defines regions using the antenna beam-convolved sky power of a given observing window. We show that this scheme improves modelling performance in three ways: firstly, by enforcing a strictly nested region hierarchy that enables clear identification of the Occam penalty in the Bayesian evidence, facilitating principled optimisation of model complexity; secondly, by enabling more accurate recovery of spatially varying spectral indices, with posterior estimates centred within physically plausible ranges; and thirdly, by allowing complex foregrounds to be modelled for robust global 21-cm signal inference using substantially fewer parameters. Overall, this approach achieves validated recovery at lower region counts, corresponding to an approximate 40% reduction in foreground-model dimensionality.

The MAMBO mock galaxy catalogue, based on the Millennium Simulation with empirically assigned galaxy properties, provides predictions of FIR fluxes and physical parameters of Euclid-detectable galaxies. Predicted FIR flux distributions confirm that only the brightest Euclid sources will be detectable in existing FIR surveys. We employ stacking to measure the mean dust properties as a function of stellar mass and redshift. We find dust temperatures and infrared luminosities increase with redshift across all mass bins, while dust masses remain roughly constant. FIR number counts from MAMBO show overall good agreement with observations, and the total infrared luminosity function reproduces published estimates across most redshift ranges, extending to z~10. Comparing the Euclid Wide and Deep Surveys, we find that the EDS recovers the total IRLF to fainter luminosities and higher redshifts (up to z~6 in $I_E$), although its detectability falls below 80% at z>4, whereas the EWS becomes strongly incomplete beyond z~2. We also examine the dependence of the IRLF on environment. Schechter fits indicate that the faint-end slope $α$ flattens with redshift for cluster and protocluster galaxies, while remaining approximately constant for field populations. Imposing additional detection limits from Herschel-PACS and SPIRE shows that only the most luminous ($L_{IR}$ > $10^{12.5}$ $L_{\odot}$) galaxies remain detectable at z~4, but the limited MAMBO area (3.14$deg^2$) is inadequate for statistically robust (>3$σ$) constraints. Survey areas at least 30 times larger are required. Overall, the MAMBO FIR extension reproduces key number count and IRLF trends, provides realistic predictions for FIR-detected Euclid galaxies, and highlights the importance of synergies with current and future FIR/sub-mm facilities to probe environmental dependence with sufficient depth and area.

Axion dark matter (DM) is predicted to convert into radio waves in neutron star magnetospheres. We assess the detectability of this signal using a 5 m radio telescope to be installed at the Fan Mountain Observatory, operating in the UHF, L- and S-bands from 0.5 to 4~GHz. We demonstrate that such a telescope can search new parameter space for axion-like particles over a broad range from $2\,μ\text{eV}<m_a<17\,μ\text{eV}$ for axion-photon couplings $g_{aγγ} \gtrsim 2\times 10^{-12}\text{ GeV}^{-1}$ with a three year observing period assuming the standard halo model -- improving neutron star observations by more than an order of magnitude. The search is broadband and is thus complementary to other techniques in the same frequency range. We describe in detail our neutron star population model, noise model, and proposed observing strategy. Most constraining power comes from neutron stars at the Galactic centre, where the smooth DM halo is densest. If a DM spike exists at the Galactic centre, the search is sensitive in the QCD axion model band. UHF and L-band observations (0.5 to 2~GHz) represent the pathfinder phase of a wider program we call ``Axion Search with Telescope for Radio Astronomy'' (ASTRA). Future higher mass searches aimed at discovery potential for the post-inflation axion require further hardware development to cover S, C, X and Ku bands (2 to 18~GHz).

While large language models (LLMs) have transformed AI agents into proficient executors of computational materials science, performing a hundred simulations does not make a researcher. What distinguishes research from routine execution is the progressive accumulation of knowledge -- learning which approaches fail, recognizing patterns across systems, and applying understanding to new problems. However, the prevailing paradigm in AI-driven computational science treats each execution in isolation, largely discarding hard-won insights between runs. Here we present QMatSuite, an open-source platform closing this gap. Agents record findings with full provenance, retrieve knowledge before new calculations, and in dedicated reflection sessions correct erroneous findings and synthesize observations into cross-compound patterns. In benchmarks on a six-step quantum-mechanical simulation workflow, accumulated knowledge reduces reasoning overhead by 67% and improves accuracy from 47% to 3% deviation from literature -- and when transferred to an unfamiliar material, achieves 1% deviation with zero pipeline failures.

This article presents a comparison of various implementations of the Lattice Discrete Particle Model (LDPM) for the numerical simulation of concrete and other heterogeneous quasibrittle materials. The comparison involves the use of transient implicit and explicit solvers and steady-state (static) solvers and implementations for Central Processing Unit (CPU) as well as Graphics Processing Unit (GPU). The various implementations are compared on the basis of a set of benchmarks tests describing behaviors of increasing computational complexity. They include elastic vibrations, confined strain-hardening compressive response, tensile fracture, and unconfined strain-softening compressive response. Metrics of interest extracted from the simulations include macroscopic stress versus strain responses, computational times, number of iterations, and energy balance error. Pairwise comparison of final crack patterns is provided through the correlation coefficient and normalized root mean square error of the crack opening vectors. Moreover, for the most numerically challenging case of unconfined compression with sliding boundary conditions, the stability of the strain-softening response is tested by perturbing the solutions as well as changing the convergence criteria and time step size. Attached to this paper is the complete input data of the benchmark tests; this will allow researchers to run the examples and compare them with their own implementations. In addition, most of the reported implementations are publicly available in open source packages.

In the early fault-tolerant regime, where quantum resources remain limited, hybrid quantum-classical strategies offer one possible route toward quantum advantage. We introduce CANOE, the Classically Assisted Non-Orthogonal Eigensolver, as such an approach, distributing Rayleigh-Ritz basis states between quantum and classical hardware. This approach leverages the expressive power of quantum states, which are costly to reproduce classically, while augmenting them with a large pool of classically generated basis states that can be incorporated at negligible computational cost. We validate this through numerical simulations of a 76-qubit chromium atom system, quantifying how each additional quantum basis state enhances ground-state representability and how the inclusion of classical states further amplifies this improvement. Such a hybrid basis framework necessarily requires an efficient protocol on quantum hardware for evaluating overlaps between quantum and classical states in the resulting generalized eigenvalue formulation. We address this by introducing a histogram-based protocol and demonstrate through numerical simulations that it can approach chemical accuracy at moderate sampling cost. To solve the resulting generalized eigenvalue problem stably, CANOE incorporates a Schur-complement-based stabilization procedure that mitigates ill-conditioning caused by linear dependencies in the hybrid basis. Taken together, these results position CANOE as a practical framework for combining limited quantum resources with expansive classical resources for early fault-tolerant quantum simulations.

The inverse Faraday effect (IFE) refers to the generation of a DC magnetization by circularly polarized light through the transfer of optical angular momentum to electronic degrees of freedom. In conducting systems, this response can arise from two microscopic channels - spin polarization of itinerant electrons and orbital magnetization generated by circulating charge currents. However, the orbital contribution to the inverse Faraday effect in spin-orbit-coupled conducting systems remains largely unexplored. We present a theoretical analysis of the IFE in disordered two-dimensional electron systems with Rashba spin-orbit coupling using both the quantum kinetic equation and Green's-function diagrammatics. We find that in a noninteracting Rashba metal the orbital magnetization is strongly modified by spin-orbit coupling and can become comparable to, or exceed, the spin magnetization for realistic parameter regimes. When the radiation frequency approaches the Rashba spin splitting, both spin and orbital magnetizations exhibit resonant enhancement. These results clarify the microscopic origin of light-induced magnetization and highlight the interplay of spin and orbital mechanisms in optically driven magnetization dynamics in low-dimensional electronic systems.

The dynamics of Saturn's satellite system offer a rich framework for studying orbital stability and resonance interactions. Traditional methods for analysing such systems, including Fourier analysis and stability metrics, struggle with the scale and complexity of modern datasets. This study introduces a machine learning-based pipeline for clustering approximately 22,300 simulated satellite orbits, addressing these challenges with advanced feature extraction and dimensionality reduction techniques. The key to this approach is using MiniRocket, which efficiently transforms 400 timesteps into a 9,996-dimensional feature space, capturing intricate temporal patterns. Additional automated feature extraction and dimensionality reduction techniques refine the data, enabling robust clustering analysis. This pipeline reveals stability regions, resonance structures, and other key behaviours in Saturn's satellite system, providing new insights into their long-term dynamical evolution. By integrating computational tools with traditional celestial mechanics techniques, this study offers a scalable and interpretable methodology for analysing large-scale orbital datasets and advancing the exploration of planetary dynamics.

We theoretically investigate a readout scheme of the quantum state of a superconducting qubit based on time delay of a single flux quantum (SFQ), also known as a fluxon, propagating in a Josephson transmission line (JTL). We concretely study the time-delay readout based on capacitive coupling between a transmon qubit and a JTL, and we evaluate the time delay depending on the qubit state. We also reveal a feature of the absence of fluxon pinning and exponential suppression of nonadiabatic transitions caused by the propagating fluxon, which is advantageous for the time-delay readout. We extend the analysis to a multi-level transmon as well. Owing to the spectral gap in the JTL, the radiative decay of the qubit mediated by the JTL is exponentially suppressed, and thus the transmission line itself also serves as a filter protecting the qubit. The readout scheme requires neither complicated wiring to low-temperature stages nor bulky microwave components, which are bottlenecks for integration of a large-scale superconducting quantum computer.

The spatial distribution of the chemical reservoirs in protoplanetary disks is key to elucidate the composition of planets, especially habitable ones. However, the partitioning of the main elements among the refractory and volatile phases is still elusive. Key parameters such as the carbon-to-oxygen C/O elemental ratio and the ionization fraction remain poorly constrained, with the latter potentially orders of magnitude lower than in the interstellar medium. Moreover, the thermal structure of the gas is also poorly known, despite its deep influence on gas-phase chemistry. In this context, ortho-to-para ratios could provide selective and sensitive probes. Recent ALMA observations have measured the spatially resolved column density of ortho-and para-H2CO in the transition disk orbiting TW Hya and derived the radial profile of the ortho-to-para ratio. Yet, current disk models do not include the nuclear-spin-resolved chemistry required to interpret these observations. The present work aims to fill this gap, by combining a parametric disk physical model of TW Hya with the UGAN network, updated to include a comprehensive description of the nuclear-spin-resolved chemistry of formaldehyde. This new model reproduces the observed column density of H2CO to within a factor of 2, as well as the measured ortho-to-para ratio which varies from 1.5 in the outer disk to 3 inside 90au. In particular the low value of this ratio beyond 90au is well explained by our model. However, the statistical value of 3 measured below 70au cannot be reproduced, suggesting that additional processes involving ices may be involved. Our parameter space exploration shows that the abundance of H2CO is highly sensitive to the C/O elemental ratio and to the cosmic-ray ionization rate. Future observations of ortho-and para-H2CO, based on well selected rotational transitions, in a large sample of disks, appear highly desirable.

We improve the description of pion-photon interactions in the radiative return process $e^+e^-\to π^+π^-γ$ at the next-to-leading order by including the pion form factor in the Feynman rules. We present a general calculation of the new amplitudes, and provide an implementation easy to interface with any Monte Carlo generator. We incorporate this framework into the event generator $\texttt{Phokhara}$ and study several experimental configurations. Overall, we find percent-level effects appearing in angular differential cross section distributions at colliders whose centre-of-mass energies lie near the peak of the pion form factor. By contrast, total cross sections and distributions in charge-even variables show effects only at the permille level, or no visible differences at all. Finally, we compare the new predictions with KLOE measurements of the forward-backward asymmetry in order to assess the predictive power of the modifications.

The unprecedented accuracy of JWST has led to the detection of silicate clouds in exoplanet atmospheres, allowing for the first time to probe cloud formation in extreme environments. While parametrized cloud descriptions can fit these observations, the results do not fully agree with microphysical models. To bridge this gap, we developed Nimbus, a fast microphysical cloud model that can constrain cloud formation processes from observations and utilize Virga, an equilibrium condensation model balancing gravitational settling and diffusion. Using both models, we investigate WASP-107 b, WASP-17 b, VHS-1256 b, and YSES-1 c to determine their cloud structure and constrain cloud formation processes. Our results show that all four planets have cluster-sized silicate particles (r ~ 1 nm) at high altitudes. Within Nimbus and Virga, these particles can only be explained by highly inefficient cloud particle settling (fsed < 0.1) or by inefficient growth rates due to low sticking coefficients (s < 0.0001). Our results also show that the sticking coefficient is directly linked to the vertical extent of clouds and can therefore be constrained using the broad shape of the spectral energy distribution. The sticking coefficients found for VHS-1256 b and YSES-1 c are in agreement with expectations from laboratory experiments under Earth-like conditions (0.01 < s < 0.3). Panchromatic observations were crucial to achieve these constraints. Future cloud studies should therefore aim to combine observational data from 1 micron to 10 micron whenever possible.

The development of laser materials with absorption/emission spectra in the atmospheric transparency band 2-5 microns is of great interest for modern applications. Triple-doped zinc selenide crystals activated with chromium, cobalt, and iron ions were grown by the vertical Bridgman method under high argon pressure. Comparative X-ray diffractometry, infra-red spectroscopy, and other studies of grown crystals were conducted. Features of their growth, morphology, and optical properties related to the crystal structure were discovered.

Towers of quantum many-body scars are sets of highly-excited eigenstates of nonintegrable Hamiltonians whose dynamics shows athermal behavior and persistent oscillations in time. The preparation of such states is, however, challenging due to their entanglement content. In this work, we show that local properties of such states can be prepared by interspersing the scarred dynamics with stochastic resets to much simpler unentangled product states. Stochastic resetting amounts to reinitializing the many-body wavefunction of the system at random times to a predefined state, which we choose to be in the scarred subspace. We derive several analytical results for the ensuing dynamics, e.g., for the time evolution of the fidelity and of local observables. Resetting damps the scarred oscillations and generates spatial off-diagonal long-range order in the ensuing stationary state. The latter shows mixedness that scales logarithmically as a function of the system size, which follows from the structure of the scarred eigenstates. We prove that such stationary states are locally equivalent, in the sparse-resetting limit, to a single pure scarred eigenstate, which is determined by the reset state. This protocol thereby might represent a route to the experimental preparation of the local properties of correlated and entangled states through resetting.

(See paper for full abstract) This study reports on the benchmarking of a protocol for the adjustment of the parameters of a local leading-order (LO) T=1 (like-particle) pairing EDF that consists in adjusting the density-dependence of the 1S0 pairing gap at the chemical potential in infinite nuclear matter (INM). When using a suitably chosen reference calculation, this protocol leads to consistent results for the odd-even staggering of masses of spherical and heavy deformed nuclei and also for the rotational moments of inertia calculated in a time-reversal-breaking cranked HFB approach. The implementation of the HFB solver for infinite matter at arbitrary isospin asymmetry used for this study is sketched in appendices. Additional points that are discussed concern (i) the illustration that the gaps at the chemical potential are not necessarily sufficient to completely characterise the pairing interaction in infinite matter, and that adjusting LO pairing EDF to reproduce gaps obtained from finite-range pairing interactions in HFB or from more microscopic calculations can lead to unrealistic predictions for finite nuclei; (ii) the finding that some regions of the parameter space for the density dependence of the T=1 LO pairing EDF lead to a spurious transition to a Bose-Einstein condensate of di-nucleons in spite of producing realistic pairing correlations for well-bound nuclei; (iii) the correlation between effective mass and the parameters of the LO pairing EDF that control the form factor of the density dependence when reproducing pairing gaps in infinite matter, (iv) the significant impact on the odd-even staggering of masses made by either including or not the spin-gradient terms in the particle-hole part of the Skyrme EDF; (v) the sizeable impact of keeping or not the contribution from the density-dependent LO pairing EDF to the mean fields on the odd-even staggering of radii.

Quantum algorithms for selecting a subspace of Hamiltonians to diagonalize have emerged as a promising alternative to variational algorithms in the NISQ era. So far, such algorithms, which include the quantum selected configuration interaction (QSCI) and sample-based quantum diagonalization (SQD), have been formulated in second-quantization in Fock space, which leads to inefficient usage of qubit resources. We introduce the first QSCI algorithm developed in the CI-matrix (CIM) framework, which is known to have optimal qubit scaling of exactly $\lceil \log_2 (N_{CSF}) \rceil$ where $N$ is the size of the CIM. In addition, we introduce a novel single-bit flip error mitigation which comes at the overhead of a single qubit and we combine this with a stochastic approximate Trotterization evolution adapted from qDRIFT. Simulating benchmark N$_2$ and naphthalene molecules on quantum hardware, our results achieved similar accuracy as SQD methods but with significantly less quantum resources. However, our CIM-QSCI algorithm and SQD methods could not match the performance of classical heat-bath CI (HCI) for the same task. Hence, we introduce an augmented version of QSCI called quantum selected heat-bath CI (QSHCI). This variant replaces classical heat-bath sampling with quantum sampling from QSCI to achieve performance comparable to HCI. We note that a current drawback of our approach is the preprocessing cost of $\mathcal{O}(N^2\log N)$ for constructing the CIM and performing the Pauli decomposition. This can be further improved by considering efficient CIM access models for the stochastic Trotter evolution.

The exoALMA Large Program has revealed a wealth of substructures in the dust and molecular line emission of several protoplanetary discs, suggesting that planet formation may unfold within highly dynamic environments. Using synthetic observations of planet-disc interactions and disc instabilities, we demonstrate how the origin of these substructures can be investigated through a tomographic study of molecular lines, extending the scope of the analysis beyond line-centroid kinematics alone. Our results indicate that with only a few hours of ALMA integration at moderate angular resolution ($0.15''-0.30''$), it is possible to identify the key signatures driven by planets more massive than 0.1% of the stellar mass. These signatures manifest not only as deviations from Keplerian motion but also as localized line broadening, enabling accurate constraints on the orbital radius and azimuthal location of the planets. We further show that a diagnostic based on line skewness in spectrally resolved observations can help distinguish between planetary and instability-driven signatures, owing to the distinct degrees of velocity coherence associated with each mechanism. Finally, we apply this tomographic analysis to exoALMA CO line data for the discs of HD 135344B and MWC 758. In HD 135344B, we identify strongly localized velocity and line-width perturbations, suggesting the possibility of three massive planets embedded in the disc: one at $R=95$ au, exterior to the continuum substructures, and two within dust gaps at $R=41$ au and $R=73$ au. For MWC 758, the dominance of vertical-velocity spirals over localized signatures is consistent with predictions from models of moderate disc eccentricities or warps, potentially induced by a substellar companion in the inner regions of the system.

Thermal Kinetic Inductance Detectors (TKIDs) inherently combine the phonon-limited noise performance of traditional bolometers with the array scalability and responsivity of superconducting kinetic inductance detectors. Using a superconducting resonator as the thermally sensitive element provides high responsivity and tunable dynamic range, with phonon noise set by the cryogenic operating temperature of the free-standing membrane. In this work, MgB$_2$-based TKIDs are demonstrated operating from below 1 K up to 20 K with characterized noise-equivalent power (NEP) using integrated on-membrane heaters. A comprehensive characterization of electrical, thermal, and noise properties is presented. Phonon noise-limited performance is demonstrated from 4 to 8 K.