By employing a combined method of density functional theory and dynamical mean field theory (DFT+DMFT) we investigate the effect of electronic correlations on the magnetic and superconducting properties of the iron-based parent compound LaFeAsO. We find that the static non-local susceptibility $χ({\bf q})$ exhibits a peak at the in-plane wave vector ${\mathbf Q}=(π,π)$, which is strongly enhanced upon inclusion of the vertex corrections in the ladder approximation, leading to magnetic instability. Considering the eigenfunctions of the Bethe-Salpeter equation with the vertex, obtained within the second order perturbation theory, as well as the ladder approach containing dynamic interaction vertices, in agreement with earlier weak-coupling-based studies of LaFeAsO, we obtain a close competition between $d$-wave and $s_{\pm}$ order parameters, dominating in the second-order and ladder approach, respectively. We argue that the dominating $s_{\pm}$ instability in the ladder DFT+DMFT approach is related to the reduced degree of magnetic frustration by itinerant degrees of freedom due to only partially formed local magnetic moments. Our study shows that dynamic correlation effects do not change the type of the leading superconducting instability in LaFeAsO.

We present a method to estimate non-Gaussian power spectrum covariance matrices by directly measuring the response of the small-scale power spectrum to long-wavelength perturbations via bispectrum and trispectrum estimators. Specifically, we derive estimators for the complete non-Gaussian matter power spectrum covariance, including the super-sample contribution, in terms of the squeezed bispectrum and collapsed trispectrum of the underlying density field. We apply these estimators to the Quijote simulations, and recover unbiased estimates of the small-scale ($k\gtrsim 0.15~h/{\rm Mpc}$) matter power spectrum covariance at the percent level using only 25 simulations - comparable to the precision of the sample covariance estimated using 5,000 simulations. This technique significantly reduces the number of simulations needed to estimate power spectrum covariances and opens the possibility of inferring power spectrum covariances directly from survey data, enabling stringent tests of simulations and, potentially, power spectrum analyses that do not rely on external covariance matrices.

The T16 project has produced a uniformly detrended and systematics-corrected set of 83,717,159 TESS Cycle 1 full-frame image light curves for stars observed by TESS in its primary mission down to T=16 mag, enabling sensitive transit searches beyond the official TESS pipelines. While most existing TESS planet searches focus on relatively bright targets, planet occurrence rates suggest that a substantial number of planets should exist around fainter stars. We therefore use the T16 light curves to conduct a semi-automated search for transiting exoplanets across the full Cycle 1 FFI sample, resulting in 11,554 planet candidates orbiting stars down to 16th magnitude in the TESS band with orbital periods between 0.5 and 27 days. Of these, 10,091 are new planet candidates, and 411 are single-transit events, for which we do not attempt to determine orbital parameters. The remaining 1,052 candidates are previously known TESS candidates. We validate our pipeline through Magellan/PFS radial-velocity follow-up measurements on one of our candidate hosts, TIC 183374187, a metal poor thick-disk star, confirming the signal as newly identified hot Jupiter. This detection demonstrates our pipeline's ability to identify real, previously undiscovered, transiting planets. Overall, this work shows that large-scale, machine learning-assisted transit searches of TESS full-frame images can significantly expand the census of transiting planet candidates, particularly around faint stars, providing a rich target set for future validation and follow-up efforts. Our findings more than double the number of known TESS exoplanet candidates.

We prove that, in the FK-percolation model, the probabilities of local events are uniformly analytic in the percolation parameter $p$ under suitable mixing assumptions on the measure, and satisfy a uniform exponential growth bound. This result allows us to prove that the magnetisation of the Potts model is analytic in a suitable range of parameters, including the Ising case in all dimensions $d \geq 3$ in the whole supercritical regime. We also provide a proof of the analyticity of the susceptibility of the Potts model with $q$ colours, for any $q \geq 2$ in the whole subcritical interval. Finally, we prove the analyticity of various quantities in the FK-percolation measure, including the multi-point and truncated multi-point connectivity probabilities.

Measuring field-aligned currents (FACs) using magnetic field observations provides a powerful means to probe the multi-scale interactions between the magnetosphere, ionosphere and thermosphere. In this study, we apply the curlometer technique to Swarm spacecraft observations and to simulations of the coupled magnetosphere-ionosphere system. We begin by correlating current density curlometer estimates derived from Swarm tetrahedra with varying spatial scales and barycentre locations. This confirms an apparent departure from stationarity for FACs at spatio-temporal scales below 100 km where measurements appear highly uncorrelated. We then analyse simulated magnetic perturbations, where true four-point measurements are available. This shows how, even at meso-scales of hundreds of kilometres, time-shifted FAC estimates can diverge significantly from this ground truth. In both observational and simulated data we find poor tetrahedral configurations can produce spurious perpendicular currents due to numerical instability in the inversion process. This can be mitigated using appropriate quality metrics and high-quality FAC reconstructions still achieved with a tetrahedral face well-aligned to the local magnetic field. These results highlight the dynamic nature of FACs at large as well as small scales, and underscore the substantial advantages of true four-point observations for their accurate analysis.

Preparing correlated quantum states is essential for emerging technologies, but remains challenging in many-body systems. Here we propose a dissipative protocol that engineers nonreciprocal, energy-selective transitions to steer dipolar quantum systems toward desired many-body states. This is realized by introducing two types of controllable dissipative auxiliary atoms that act as nonreciprocal excitation and de-excitation channels, respectively, enabling a directional walk in Hilbert space. This approach enables stabilization of states across the many-body spectrum, not limited to the ground state and requiring no \textit{a priori} knowledge of the Hamiltonian. Our approach is designed for neutral atoms in dipolar Rydberg arrays, but applies broadly to setups with similar capabilities, providing a flexible and scalable framework for state preparation in programmable platforms.

We present IncompressibleNavierStokes.jl, an open-source Julia package for solving the incompressible Navier--Stokes equations on staggered Cartesian grids. The package features matrix-free, hardware-agnostic kernels that are compiled from a single source for multi-threaded CPU or GPU execution, and hand-written adjoint kernels for all discrete operators, enabling efficient reverse-mode automatic differentiation through the entire solver. This differentiability allows neural network closure models to be trained a-posteriori while embedded in a large-eddy simulation. Memory optimizations permit double-precision direct numerical simulations at resolutions up to $840^3$ on a single GPU. The software design, numerical methods, hardware performance, and integration of neural network closure models are described, and results for turbulent channel flow are validated against reference data.

The fundamental difference between closed and open quantum dynamics lies in their environmental interaction: closed systems are perfectly isolated and evolve reversibly under unitary Hamiltonian dynamics, whereas open systems continuously couple to an external bath, resulting in irreversible dissipation and information loss. In this work, we show internal Hamiltonian dynamics can be "faked`` via external pure dissipation, i.e., Lindbladians without a coherent Hamiltonian part. More concretely, we show that, in a GKSL representation with zero explicit Hamiltonian term but nontraceless jump operators, bounded-norm dissipative generators can approximate Hamiltonian dynamics within $ε$ error in diamond norm using $\mathcal{O}(t^2/ε)$ evolution time. We further prove that for time-independent dynamics this $\mathcal{O}(t^2/ε)$ scaling is in the worst case, necessary and optimal from a geometric perspective, which captures the fundamental decoherence cost for catching up with the speed of Hamiltonian dynamics. Our construction leads to various implications, including the BQP-completeness of purely dissipative dynamics even before reaching approximate equilibrium, a Zeno-adjacent state-independent freezing effect, the no super-quadratic fast-forwarding theorem of a class of purely dissipative dynamics, and reducing Lindbladian simulation cost via gauge changing.

AtomTwin$.$jl is an open-source Julia package for developing and simulating quantum protocols, hardware configurations and building digital twins for neutral-atom quantum processors and related atomic quantum devices. AtomTwin operates between mathematical models and physical devices; modeling atoms, optical tweezers, laser fields, atomic motion, interactions, and noise processes natively from physical geometry and parameters, without requiring users to define Hamiltonians manually. The package provides hardware-level instruction sequences, high-performance solvers for coupled quantum and classical dynamics, and a ready-to-use model for ytterbium-171 atoms in an extensible framework designed to accommodate a greater variety of atomic species and hardware components in the future. This paper describes the software architecture, performance benchmarks against existing toolboxes, and a demonstrated end-to-end application: preparation of a logical Bell state in the $[[4,2,2]]$ error-detecting code with four $^{171}$Yb atoms in moveable tweezers.

Nonreciprocity, a hallmark of nonequilibrium systems, can generate dynamics not possible near thermodynamic equilibrium, including oscillatory and rotating patterns. The onset of temporal oscillations is often evident in linearized dynamics, where nonreciprocity appears as complex eigenvalues of an asymmetric Jacobian. Here, we show that the topology of open, thermodynamically-consistent chemical reaction networks can result in oscillatory instabilities near nonequilibrium steady states. These instabilities arise from chemostat-induced breaking of Onsager reciprocity, while the local equilibrium hypothesis preserves the variational structure of the dissipative part of the dynamics. Numerical results confirm that such nonreciprocity in reaction-diffusion systems produces oscillatory dynamics that nevertheless minimize a free energy.

We analytically investigate the diffusive motion inferred from experimental observations of active particles driven by quantum vortices on the surface of superfluid helium. We first study the dynamical behavior of an active particle subject to a viscoelastic memory effect characterized by a power-law kernel. We then analyze the dynamics of an active particle under a uniform vortex force, thermal noise, and viscous dissipation subject to a power-law kernel. Next, by including a harmonic confining force, we obtain analytical solutions for the joint probability density in two distinct time regimes.

The spiked Wigner ensemble is a prototypical model for high-dimensional inference. We study the spectral properties of an inhomogeneous rank-one spiked Wigner model in which the variance of each entry of the noise matrix is itself a random variable. In the high-dimensional limit, we derive exact equations for the spectral edges, the outlier eigenvalue, and the distribution of the components of the outlier eigenvector. These equations determine the BBP transition line that separates the gapped phase, where the signal is detectable, from the gapless phase. In the gapped regime, the distribution of the outlier eigenvector provides a natural estimator of the spike. We solve the equations for a noise matrix whose variances are generated from a truncated power-law distribution. In this case, the BBP transition line is non-monotonic, showing that an inhomogeneous noise can enhance signal detectability.

We present a statistical census of the Na D-traced neutral interstellar medium (ISM) and outflows in 309 galaxies at $0.6<z<4$ using JWST/NIRSpec medium-resolution grating spectroscopy from the SMILES, JADES, Blue Jay, and Aurora surveys. After subtracting the stellar continuum, we model the Na D $λλ5890, 5896$ Åand detect neutral ISM absorption in 76 galaxies. Of the Na D-traced ISM detections, 85\% are found in massive galaxies ($\log(M_*/M_\odot)>10$), and only 15\% in lower-mass systems. In the massive regime, ISM absorption is seen in both star-forming and quiescent galaxies, whereas in lower-mass systems it is observed only in star-forming galaxies. In massive quiescent galaxies, Na D detectability appears linked to star formation history: it is preferentially detected in older systems with larger 4000 Åbreaks, as well as younger, rapidly quenching galaxies with strong Balmer absorption H$δ_A$. We identify Na D outflows in 26 galaxies, revealing a possible dichotomy in their driving mechanisms between star-forming and quiescent galaxies. In star-forming galaxies, outflow properties correlate with star-formation properties, consistent with a star-formation-driven origin. In quiescent galaxies, however, outflows are not associated with residual star formation and often require more energy than such star formation can provide. Together with the high AGN fraction among outflow-detected quiescent galaxies, this suggests that AGN dominate Na D-traced neutral outflows in cosmic noon quiescent systems. We further identify five quiescent galaxies with possible AGN fossil outflows, suggesting that AGN-driven outflows can persist beyond the active accretion phase and may help maintain quiescence.

We present an effective numerical method that can be used to straightforwardly calculate the full spectrum of primordial gravitational waves produced during inflation and reheating. Our method is based on the Bogoliubov approach with several key improvements to overcome its shortcomings such as numerical instabilities at high frequencies and issues with tachyonic modes. We also present a few useful analytical examples from which one can gain crucial insights into the numerical instabilities. The improved method allows us to demonstrate that anharmonicity of inflaton oscillations can leave interesting fingerprints on the high-frequency part of the GW spectrum. Our numerical code is publicly available on GitHub https://github.com/xunjiexu/Unified-Bogoliubov.git.

Technological progress towards next-generation electronics critically relies on achieving faster switching with reduced energy consumption. Because device operation speeds are fundamentally constrained by the intrinsic properties of constituent materials, identifying systems with inherently superior switching capabilities is essential. Here, we propose that semimetallic systems characterized by non-trivial quantum geometry, including quadratic band-touching semimetals and singular flat bands, can serve as a promising platform for ultrafast switching at voltages compatible with modern electronics. We show that, in such quantum geometric semimetals, an electric current is generated instantaneously upon application of a moderate external electric field, reaching its steady-state value. As a consequence, the current exhibits rapid and stable on-off switching behaviour under periodic optical pulse trains, demonstrating robustness under experimentally feasible conditions. In terms of switching speed, this quantum geometric semimetal outperforms conventional metals, semiconductors, and graphene. We identify the microscopic origin of this behaviour as interband coupling governed by the Hilbert-Schmidt quantum distance, together with a finite density of states at the band-touching point. This mechanism further leads to a universal classification of conductivity for both gapless and gapped quantum geometric semimetals. Finally, first-principles calculations suggest realistic material platforms, including bilayer graphene, cyclic graphene, monolayer bismuth and V3F8-in which the predicted instantaneous current switching can be directly realized, further supported by time-dependent density functional theory simulations performed for representative systems.

Minkowski spacetime exhibits infrared instability in projectable Ho\v rava gravity in (3+1) dimensions. To be phenomenologically viable, the instability should be either hidden by other time-dependent processes such as the Hubble expansion of the universe and the Jeans instability, or evolve into another static solution with low average curvature. While the former scenario leads to a phenomenological constraint on the infrared properties of the renormalization group flow, this paper explores the latter possibility. We study if the presence of higher derivative terms in the action can lead to existence of static, inhomogeneous (quasi-) periodic solutions with planar symmetry, similar to modulated phases in magnetic materials. We find that such solutions do not exist. In doing so, we classify all static homogeneous and isotropic solutions and solutions with planar symmetry. We provide arguments that none of them can serve as an endpoint for the evolution of the Minkowski instability. This motivates further study of the scenario where the instability is concealed by time evolution.

Axions produced copiously in core-collapse supernovae can convert into photons as they propagate through various astrophysical magnetic fields. The cumulative emission from the cosmic population of supernovae can therefore generate a diffuse gamma-ray signal through axion-photon conversion. In this work, we develop a comprehensive framework to compute the diffuse gamma-ray flux by modeling axion production in supernovae and, \textit{for the first time}, consistently accounting for their conversion into photons across all relevant magnetic field environments - progenitor, host galaxy, intergalactic medium, and the Milky Way - together with an updated cosmic star formation rate. Using measurements of the diffuse gamma-ray sky from COMPTEL, EGRET, and \textit{Fermi}-LAT, we derive competitive constraints on the axion-photon coupling over a wide range of axion masses. We further forecast the sensitivity of upcoming MeV gamma-ray telescopes to this diffuse signal using a Fisher forecast analysis.

Two-dimensional electron gases (2DEGs) at the surfaces of KTaO3 have become an exciting platform for exploring strong spin-orbit coupling, Rashba physics, and low-carrier-density superconductivity. Yet, a large fraction of reported KTaO3-based 2DEGs has been realized through chemically complex overlayers that both generate carriers and can obscure the native electronic structure, making spectroscopic access to the underlying 2DEG challenging. Here, we demonstrate a simple and direct method to generate a superconducting 2DEG on KTaO3(111) using Mg-induced surface reduction in molecular-beam epitaxy (MBE). Mg has an extremely low sticking coefficient at elevated temperatures, enabling the formation of an ultrathin (less than 1-2 monolayers) MgO layer that is transparent to soft x-ray photoemission spectroscopy (XPS) and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES). This allows direct measurement of the surface chemistry and low-energy electronic structure of the pristine reduced surface without the need for a several-nanometer-thick capping layer. XPS shows clear reduction of Ta5+ to lower oxidation states, while ARPES reveals a parabolic Ta 5d conduction band with an approximately 150 meV bandwidth and additional subband features arising from quantum confinement. Transport measurements confirm a superconducting transition below 0.7 K. Together, these results demonstrate a chemically straightforward and controllable pathway for fabricating spectroscopically accessible superconducting 2DEGs on KTaO3(111), and provide a powerful new platform for investigating the mechanisms underlying orientation-dependent superconductivity in KTaO3-based oxide interfaces.

Extensive theoretical and experimental work has established high-fidelity electron shuttling in Si/SiGe systems, whereas demonstrations in Si/SiO2 (SiMOS) remain at an early stage. To help address this, we perform full 3D simulations of conveyor-belt charge shuttling in a realistic SiMOS device, building on earlier 2D modelling. We solve the Poisson and time-dependent Schrodinger equations for varying shuttling speeds and gate voltages, focusing on potential pitfalls of typical SiMOS devices such as oxide-interface roughness, gate fabrication imperfections, and charge defects along the transport path. The simulations reveal that for low clavier-gate voltages, the additional oxide screening in multi-layer gate architectures causes conveyor-belt shuttling to collapse to the bucket-brigade mode, inducing considerable orbital excitation in the process. Increasing the confinement restores conveyor-belt operation, which we find to be robust against interface roughness, gate misalignment, and charge defects buried in the oxide. However, our results indicate that defects located at the Si/SiO2-interface can induce considerable orbital excitation. For lower conveyor gate biases, positive defects in the transport channel can even capture passing electrons. Hence we identify key challenges and find operating regimes for reliable charge transport in SiMOS architectures.

In this work, we investigate how short-range correlations affect relativistic hadronic models at high densities, with direct consequences for the structure of neutron stars, both with and without dark matter content. Two versions of the model are examined: one with vector self-interactions up to second order ($ω_0^2$) and another including a fourth-order term ($ω_0^4$). We show that SRC tend to soften the equation of state when only the quadratic term is present, but produce a noticeable stiffening once the $ω_0^4$ term is included. The corresponding Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkoff solutions for pure neutron stars indicate that short-range correlations reduce the maximum mass in the first case but increase it in the second. Extending the analysis to stars containing a fermionic dark matter component, within the two-fluid formalism, we verify that the same features appear in the respective mass-radius diagrams. In particular, the decrease of the maximum mass with increasing dark matter fraction is partly compensated by the SRC effects in the hadronic sector for the model with the fourth-order term. In all cases, the resulting parametrizations are consistent with recent astrophysical constraints, including the joint NICER-XMM-Newton analyses of the pulsars PSR J0030+0451 and PSR J0740+6620, as well as the gravitational-wave event GW190425.

The linear stability of two exact stationary solutions of the parametrically driven, damped nonlinear Dirac equation is investigated. Stability is ascertained through the resolution of the eigenvalue problem, which stems from the linearization of this equation around the exact solutions. On the one hand, it is proven that one of these solutions is always unstable, which confirms previous analysis based on a variational method. On the other hand, it is shown that sufficiently large dissipation guarantees the stability of the second solution. Specifically, we determine the stability curve that separates stable and unstable regions in the parameter space. The dependence of the stability diagram on the driven frequency is also studied, and it is shown that low-frequency solitons are stable across the entire parameter space. These results have been corroborated with extensive simulations of the parametrically driven and damped nonlinear Dirac equation by employing a novel and recently proposed numerical algorithm that minimizes discretization errors.

We study the ultimate precision limits of a spin chain, strongly coupled to a heat bath, for measuring a general parameter and report the results for specific cases of magnetometry and thermometry. Employing a full polaron transform, we derive the effective Hamiltonian and obtain analytical expressions for the quantum Fisher information (QFI) of equilibrium states in both weak coupling (WC) and strong coupling (SC) regimes for a general parameter, explicitly accounting for finite-size (FS) effects. Furthermore, we utilize Hill's nanothermodynamics to calculate an effective QFI expression at SC. Our results reveal a potential advantage of SC for thermometry at low temperatures and demonstrate enhanced magnetometric precision through control of the anisotropy parameter. Crucially, we show that neglecting FS effects leads to considerable errors in QFI calculations. This work also highlights the inadequacy of phenomenological approaches in describing the metrological capability and thermodynamic behavior of systems at SC.

The paper is concerned with deformed Wigner random matrices. These matrices are closely related to Deep Neural Networks (DNNs): weight matrices of trained DNNs could be represented in the form $R + S$, where $R$ is random and $S$ is highly correlated. The spectrum of such matrices plays a key role in rigorous underpinning of the novel pruning technique based on Random Matrix Theory. In practice, the spectrum of the matrix $S$ can be rather complicated. In this paper, we develop an asymptotic analysis for the case of full rank $S$ with increasing number of outlier eigenvalues.

Non-stabilizerness, or magic, is a resource for universal quantum computation in most fault-tolerant architectures; access to states with non-stabilizerness allows for non-classically simulable quantum computation to be performed. Quantifying this resource for unknown states is therefore essential to assessing their utility in quantum computation. The Stabilizer Rényi Entropies have emerged as a leading tool for achieving this, having already enabled one efficient algorithm for measuring non-stabilizerness. In addition, the Stabilizer Rényi Entropies have proven useful in developing connections between non-stabilizerness and other quantum phenomena. In this work, we introduce an alternative algorithm for measuring the Stabilizer Rényi Entropies of an unknown quantum state. Firstly, we show the existence of a state, produced from the action of a channel on $α$ copies of some \ben{state $ρ$}, that encodes the $α$-Stabilizer Rényi Entropy of $ρ$ into its purity. We detail several methods of applying this channel, and then, by employing existing purity-measuring algorithms, provide an algorithm for measuring the $α$-Stabilizer Rényi Entropies for all integers $α>1$. This algorithm is benchmarked for qubits and the resource requirements compared to other known algorithms. Finally, a non-stabilizerness/entanglement relationship is shown to exist in the algorithm, demonstrating a novel relationship between the two resources, before an instance of resource hiding is found.

Time reversal symmetry breaking is an important facet of controlling nonreciprocal responses. Here, we propose a method of photo-control over superconducting diode-like nonreciprocities, where time reversal symmetry breaking is achieved via photon exchange with chiral cavity modes. We reveal the origin of the nonreciprocal superconducting response as the embedding of chirality in a many-body ground state through photon induced orbital magnetization. With twisted bilayer graphene (TBG) as an example, we demonstrate the general principles of photo-control of diode responses, which are valid for a wide range of superconductors and cavity designs. The cavity control of superconducting nonreciprocities, particularly in the microwave regime, offers a non-invasive means of exploring new functionalities in quantum circuits with ultrafast switching and on-chip integration. This control method can serve as an important contribution to the toolbox for nonreciprocal models in circuit quantum electrodynamics, primed to be harnessed for scalable and modular quantum devices.

Smith homomorphisms are maps between bordism groups that change both the dimension and the tangential structure. We give a completely general account of Smith homomorphisms, unifying the many examples in the literature. We provide three definitions of Smith homomorphisms, including as maps of Thom spectra, and show they are equivalent. Using this, we identify the cofiber of the spectrum-level Smith map and extend the Smith homomorphism to a long exact sequence of bordism groups, which is a powerful computation tool. We discuss several examples of this long exact sequence, relating them to known constructions such as Wood's and Wall's sequences. Furthermore, taking Anderson duals yields a long exact sequence of invertible field theories, which has a rich physical interpretation. We developed the theory in this paper with applications in mind to symmetry breaking in quantum field theory, which we study in a companion paper.

We introduce a new scheme for quantum circuit design called controlled gate networks. Rather than trying to reduce the complexity of individual unitary operations, the new strategy is to toggle between all of the unitary operations needed with the fewest number of gates. We present the general theory of controlled gate networks and show that, under quite general conditions, it can significantly reduce the number of two-qubit gates needed to produce linear combinations of unitary operators. The first example we consider is a variational subspace calculation for a two-qubit system. The second example is estimating the eigenvalues of a two-qubit Hamiltonian via the rodeo algorithm using operators that we call controlled reversal gates. We use the Quantinuum H1-2 and IBM Perth devices to realize the quantum circuits. The third example is the application of controlled gate networks to the controlled time evolution of a free nucleon on a three-dimensional lattice. For all of the examples, we show very substantial reductions in the number of two-qubit gates required. Our work demonstrates that controlled gate networks are a useful tool for reducing gate complexity in quantum algorithms for quantum many-body problems such as those relevant to nuclear physics.

We investigate Pauli-consistent ensemble Monte Carlo simulations of graphene with explicit intraband electron-electron scattering. To reduce the cost of electron-electron proposal-rate evaluation, we introduce a sampled-partner approximation that replaces the full partner-cell sum by uniform sampling from the instantaneous ensemble, while leaving the event-level collision step unchanged. Comparison with the full-sum reference shows close agreement together with a substantial reduction in computational cost, enabling large-ensemble low-noise simulations. In this regime, systematic oscillatory components become clearly resolved in ensemble-averaged time traces. We show that these oscillations are numerical and originate from deterministic drift on the discretized momentum-space grid. We also discuss a procedure for reducing their impact in recorded observables without modifying the underlying Monte Carlo dynamics.

We reevaluate the vacuum polarization functions for electroweak gauge bosons at three loops in QCD, employing state-of-the-art perturbative techniques. We apply these results to determine the ${\mathcal{O}}(αα_s^2)$ corrections to the electroweak radiative parameters $Δρ$, $Δr$ and $Δκ$. We improve the accuracy of the calculation at this perturbative order, compared to the existing literature, and present some phenomenological implications of these results. We find a shift in the prediction of the $W$ boson mass, significant in view of the FCC precision targets. We improve the prediction of the $\overline{\mathrm{MS}}$ electric charge at $q^2=m_Z^2$ with the inclusion of these ${\mathcal{O}}(αα_s^2)$ corrections.

A linearly polarized Gaussian beam, carrying zero net spin angular momentum, is conventionally not expected to exert optical torque or induce rotational motion in birefringent microparticles. When such a beam is tightly focused, the constituent left- and right-circular polarization components separate spatially due to spin-orbit interaction, commonly known as the spin Hall effect of light. However, this separation is at wavelength scales and is also axially symmetric, resulting in zero net spin angular momentum, and concomitantly no optical torque near the focal plane. Here, we demonstrate that this limitation can be overcome using several commonly encountered asymmetric illumination modalities that break the axial symmetry of the focusing system, thereby disrupting the symmetric separation of the spin components for the same linearly polarized Gaussian beam. As a consequence, trapped microparticles experience a tunable optical torque and exhibit rotational motion with distinct rotational frequencies at the same input power. The particles also undergo controlled reversal of the rotation direction simply by rotating the incident plane of polarization using a half-wave plate. Despite their apparent diversity, all these methods share the same physical origin rooted in asymmetric illumination. These results establish an experimentally accessible and minimal strategy for realizing controllable optical rotation devices exploiting spin-orbit optomechanics without requiring intrinsic angular momentum in the light.