Synchrotron beamlines differ in hardware, technique, and workflow, making customized control interfaces necessary; bespoke per-beamline graphical user interfaces (GUIs) do not scale well, one-size-fits-all facility software forces compromises that leave most of the interface unused, and even recent component-library approaches keep per-scientist tweaks on a developer's queue. We present Lightfall, a control platform designed for facility-wide use, whose API-first architecture exposes every panel, device, and scan plan through a single uniform addressable interface. An embedded language-model agent drives experiments through that interface, from a single move-and-read to a Gaussian-process-driven autonomous scan, while beamline staff extend the interface during operation via skills: plugin modules the agent invokes to compose and modify panels in the running application. The result is a closed development loop: a beamline scientist authors a panel change in natural language, the agent emits and applies it, and the commit lands in the beamline's plugin repository as a side effect. The per-iteration cost of a scientist-driven change is then fixed in the scientist's own time rather than in developer hours the facility must supply. Lightfall is in testing at the COSMIC-Scattering beamline at the Advanced Light Source.

The hydrodynamic wall has traditionally been considered a featureless object, whose only role is to provide a boundary for fluid flow. Yet, there is now ample evidence that at nanometer scales, liquid flows are sensitive to the wall's internal -- in particular, electronic -- degrees of freedom. Here, after reviewing the experimental evidence for nanoscale liquid-electron couplings, we present the theoretical advances that have allowed for their quantitative understanding. We discuss how a quantum description of the liquid-solid interface reveals the influence of electron dynamics on classical fluid transport, in the form of the fluctuation-induced quantum friction effect. Quantum friction is at the root of liquid-electron coupled transport phenomena, that may be combined into a hydro-electronic transport matrix. We present analytical formulas for the hydro-electronic transport coefficients, that allow for their quantitative estimation in practical cases; we further outline the potential consequences of coupled liquid-electron transport for the water-energy nexus. Fluctuation-induced and quantum effects at liquid-solid interfaces represent an emerging interface between fluid dynamics and condensed-matter physics, and a largely uncharted territory for both theory and experiment.

Resonant photonic structures enable optical enhancement and spectral filtering and are essential for lasers, quantum emitters, transducers, or modulators. Photonic molecules, formed by mode hybridisation in two coupled resonators, break the equidistant frequency spacing of zero-dispersion resonators and provide control over their spectrum. Reconfigurability over these devices is a key asset, allowing to align photonic resonances to target frequencies on-demand. While electro-optic materials such as thin-film lithium niobate (TFLN) have enabled frequency tuning beyond traditional thermo-optic effects, they require continuous bias, posing challenges to scalability. Here we demonstrate an optically programmable, erasable, and rewritable photonic molecule realized within a single TFLN racetrack resonator. A long-lasting photorefractive grating induced through interference of co-propagating dark and bright transverse modes promotes their hybridisation, forming a single-ring photonic molecule. We observe GHz-scale hybrid-mode splitting over a 700 GHz-wide optical bandwidth and hour-long lifetimes, and show that their coupling strength can be programmed by the optical pump used to write the grating. By selectively pumping orthogonal hybridised modes, we further demonstrate multiple reversible all-optical write-erase-rewrite cycles of these gratings. Finally, we use this technique to realize single-sideband mmWave transduction around 107 GHz with a 5 GHz tuning bandwidth. These results establish photorefraction as a reliable mechanism for reconfigurable resonances in TFLN, and suggest a route towards tunable microwave-optical functionalities within a reduced footprint.

The Cool Copper Collider (C3) is a linear accelerator (LINAC) concept based on compact, high gradient, and normal conducting accelerator technology to support Higgs boson studies at 250 GeV and 550 GeV center of mass. The C3 accelerator is ten kilometers in scale and consist of 2,200 RF stations for 550 GeV center of mass. To maintain the stringent beam quality required by the collider across the LINACs, each of the cavities has a dedicated low-level RF (LLRF) system to stabilize the phase and amplitude of the field in the cavities from pulse to pulse and to compensate the fluctuation of the RF field within each pulse introduced by the beam loading process. To meet the design goals of being compact and affordable for future accelerators, we have designed the next generation LLRF (NG-LLRF) with a higher integration level based on radio frequency system-on-chip (RFSoC) technology. The NG-LLRF system samples RF signals directly and performs RF mixing digitally. The NG-LLRF has been characterized in loopback mode to evaluate the performance of the system and has also been tested with a standing-wave accelerating structure, a prototype structure for the C3 with peak RF power level up to 16.45 MW. This paper will focus on introducing the LLRF system design and timing system for C3 and the current NG-LLRF design. The high-power test results at different stages of the test setup with several pulse modulation schemes, including square pulse, pulse with phase reversals, and pulse trains, will be summarized, analyzed, and discussed.

Long-range interactions such as electrostatics and dispersion remain a central bottleneck for machine learning interatomic potentials (MLIPs), especially in ionic, polar and interfacial systems. Ewald-based reciprocal-space mechanisms provide a physically grounded route for capturing these nonlocal effects, but often require dense Fourier grids and can become memory-limited at scale. This problem is particularly pronounced in molecular dynamics, where high efficiency requirements make accurate long-range modelling particularly costly. Here we introduce PSWF-LR, an exponent-aware long-range framework based on prolate spheroidal wave functions (PSWFs) that can be easily incorporated into existing model architectures. Its core components are PSWF-based mollification and atom-grid spreading, which enable compact and efficient representation of arbitrary inverse-power channels $1/r^p$ while treating the decay exponent as a physical prior. Across diverse long-range benchmarks, PSWF-LR reduces Fourier-mode requirements, improves energy and force accuracy, accelerates production-level simulations by about threefold, and extends long-range MLIP simulations beyond the memory limits of conventional MLIPs.

Chirality lies at the heart of low-energy QCD, governing the symmetry structure that shapes hadron masses and strong interaction dynamics. Among the most compelling open questions tied to chiral dynamics and spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking is the longstanding $Λ$ polarization puzzle, in which $Λ$ hyperons produced in unpolarized hadronic collisions exhibit a surprisingly large transverse polarization that remains theoretically unexplained. This whitepaper presents the proposal for the Hyperon-Nucleon Spectrometer (H-NS) at the High-Intensity heavy-ion Accelerator Facility (HIAF). Leveraging the high energy and high intensity of HIAF's proton and heavy-ion beams, the H-NS experiment will perform systematic studies of hyperon polarization phenomena and their underlying mechanisms in proton-proton ($pp$), proton-nucleus ($pA$), and nucleus-nucleus ($AA$) collisions in the fixed target mode. A wide-range beam energy scan, including proton beams from 3 GeV up to 9.3 GeV (HIAF) and up to 32 GeV (upgraded HIAF), will be conducted to examine the dependence of polarization on collision energy. The spectrometer is designed with specialized detectors capable of high-precision reconstruction of final-state baryon polarizations. Among its many interesting and important measurements, H-NS will simultaneously measure hyperon and proton spin observables to explore the polarization mechanism in hadronic interactions and the spin structure of baryons. Furthermore, the use of $pA$ and $AA$ collisions will enable detailed investigations of cold and hot nuclear matter effects on spin polarization. Its physics program and detector development will significantly benefit the future Electron-ion Collider in China.

The internal carotid artery (ICA), especially its cervical segment (ICA-C1), holds significant importance in the diagnosis of cerebrovascular diseases. Traditional polynomial fitting methods often encounter problems such as order selection, overfitting, and oscillation. To address these issues, this paper proposes a fractional polynomial fitting model based on the effective order and Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC). Through statistical analysis, the high-frequency effective orders $\{1.1, 1.5, 2.0, 2.7, 3.4\}$ are determined to improve computational efficiency. The experimental results of 379 clinical cases show that the proposed method outperforms the traditional methods in terms of fitting accuracy, noise resistance and computational efficiency. It can achieve low-error fitting and accurately depict the complex spatial morphology of the ICA-C1 segment. Moreover, by optimizing the solution strategy and sequence selection mechanism, the running time of the algorithm has been reduced from 153.145 seconds to 23.054 seconds. Furthermore, the proposed model shows good application potential in predicting missing vascular segments in imaging tasks. The prediction results are overall stable, and in most cases, the error is small. The normalized mean square error (NMSE) is below 1.68\% in 90\% of the cases. This study presents a stable, efficient and clinically interpretable model approach for analyzing the morphology of cerebral vessels, opening up a new technological frontier for intelligent diagnosis of cerebral vascular diseases.

Grounding systems operating under transient electromagnetic conditions exhibit highly nonlinear behavior influenced by electromagnetic propagation, soil conductivity variations, thermal diffusion, moisture transport, and ionization phenomena. Conventional grounding analyses generally rely on static resistance formulations that neglect the coupled dynamics governing advanced grounding technologies. In particular, rigorous dynamic models describing magneto-active grounding electrode (MAGE) systems remain practically nonexistent within the current scientific literature. A comprehensive nonlinear dynamic model for a MAGE system is therefore developed considering electromagnetic coupling, dynamic grounding impedance behavior, conductivity adaptation, electrothermal effects, moisture-dependent soil dynamics, and nonlinear ionization mechanisms. The proposed formulation was implemented in the MATLAB/Simulink environment and evaluated under combined step and impulsive transient excitation conditions. The obtained results demonstrate that the equivalent grounding impedance evolves dynamically according to environmental and electromagnetic operating conditions, confirming that grounding systems cannot be accurately represented through constant-parameter formulations under transient conditions. Furthermore, the simulations reveal stable nonlinear coupling among electromagnetic, conductive, thermal, and moisture-dependent phenomena. The proposed framework constitutes a proof-of-concept analytical basis for future transient analysis and optimization of advanced magneto-active grounding technologies.

The enthesis is the insertion site of tendon into bone and exhibits a high mechanical durability despite the large mismatch in material properties between the two tissues. This durability stems from gradients in composition, structure and organization on multiple hierarchical length scales. Despite extensive research on enthesis structure and mechanics, the local deformation mechanisms are poorly understood. Synchrotron scanning small- and wide-angle X-ray scattering was combined with in situ tensile testing of the mouse Achilles tendon enthesis to extensively map the mechanical response of the collagen fibrils and molecules as well as the hydroxyapatite mineral particles and crystals. Gradients in nano- and molecular scale structure and a stronger and more immediate deformation response towards the interface compared to further away were observed in both the soft and mineralized tissue. The strain decreased progressively across hierarchical levels; with an applied tissue strain of 20% the nanoscale fibrils were strained by ~1-2%, the collagen molecules by ~0.5% and the hydroxyapatite crystals by ~0.05%, thus following an approximate ratio of 1 : 0.1 : 0.01 : 0.001. These results show that load transfer across the enthesis is both spatially heterogeneous and hierarchy-dependent. This indicates that the graded attachment accommodates deformation through region-specific load sharing and hierarchical strain partitioning, consistent with a contribution from dissipation within the non-collagenous matrix. In doing so, the enthesis can mitigate stress concentrations and maintain mechanical integrity across the tendon-to-bone transition.

We formulate elastic and elasto-inertial turbulence in the Martin-Siggia-Rose path-integral formalism and develop a systematic source-extended symmetry algorithm to derive Ward identities directly from the Euler-Lagrange equations. These identities provide nonperturbative constraints and a principled foundation for constructing closure schemes. As a dimensionally reduced model for elastic turbulence, we propose an extended Burgers equation that preserves the characteristic coupling between the extra stress and velocity gradient, while remaining simple enough for first controlled calculations. In particular, we obtain an extended set of Ward identities that strongly constrains admissible closures and provides insight into the scaling behaviour near the fixed point.

We investigate proton-rich systems beyond the proton drip line, focusing on the notably poorly known 13F and 15Ne and the yet unobserved 14Ne, whose structure properties remain weakly constrained. Using the Gamow shell model (GSM), which consistently incorporates both inter-nucleon correlations and couplings to the particle continuum, we study oxygen, fluorine, and neon isotopes with mass A=12-16. Taking 8C as an inert core, the GSM Hamiltonian based on an effective field theory nucleon-nucleon interaction is optimized for this proton-rich region. The constructed Hamiltonian reproduces the low-lying spectra and decay properties of fluorine and neon isotopes beyond the proton drip line. We quantify many-body configuration and average partial-wave occupancies to elucidate the structural evolution of the drip line nuclei 12-14O, 13-15F, and 14-16Ne. In particular, multi-proton separation energies and spectroscopic factors are analyzed in detail, leading to a prediction for the unresolved ground state of 13F. Furthermore, the candidate 4p emitter 14Ne is theoretically predicted for the first time, providing valuable guidance for future experimental investigations.

Nuclear decay properties are conventionally predicted assuming nuclei decay from their ground-state configurations. However, this often neglects a fundamental structural complexity which is the phenomenon of shape coexistence, where nuclei possess multiple competing configurations at nearly degenerate energies. When both parent and daughter nuclei can exist in different energy minima, multiple decay pathways become possible. We systematically investigate how shape coexistence influences nuclear decay for approximately 1500 even-even nuclei ($8 \leq Z \leq 118$, $8 \leq N \leq 184$) using the Nilsson-Strutinsky method and relativistic mean-field calculations with NL3$^*$, DD-ME2, and DD-PC1 functionals. We identify around 400 nuclei exhibiting competing energy minima separated by less than 1 MeV. For these shape-coexisting nuclei, we calculate $α$, $β^+$ and $β^-$ decay half-lives considering all possible transition pathways between the competing minima. Our results demonstrate that shape coexistence substantially impacts decay predictions, with half-lives showing variations up to nearly one logarithmic unit depending on which configurations participate in the transition. Comparison with experimental data from NUBASE2020 shows that pathways involving the second minimum sometimes reproduce measured lifetimes more closely than conventional ground-state to ground-state assumptions. Branching ratios exhibit even stronger sensitivity, with certain nuclei displaying complete inversions of the dominant decay mode depending on configuration choice. These pathway-dependent variations are not due to model uncertainties but reflect inherent structural effects. The correlation between the shape dynamics and nuclear stability establishes the shape coexistence as an essential component in predictive nuclear structure and astrophysics studies.

Alpha sticking is a major loss channel in deuterium--tritium muon-catalyzed fusion. We study whether an additional external-field-assisted stripping channel can reduce the residual sticking loss after conventional collisional reactivation. The external contribution is written as $R_X=f_XP_Xη_X$, where $f_X$ is the space--time overlap between the external field and the residual stuck $(αμ)^+$ population, $P_X$ is the microscopic stripping probability, and $η_X$ is the probability that the stripped $μ^-$ is returned to the $dμ/tμ\to dtμ$ fusion cycle before escape or decay. This gives $ω_S^{\rm eff}=ω_S^0(1-R_{\rm col})(1-R_X)$ and leads directly to a probability-level no-go condition, $η_X^{\rm crit}>1$, for any target improvement requiring more recycling than is probabilistically available. We construct an energy-resolved post-stripping rate network including slowing down, atomic capture, free escape, muon decay, atomic-stage loss, ordinary molecular formation, and an effective resonant $dtμ$ channel. Benchmark scans show that the useful regime is a transport window: the stripped muon must be confined and recycled efficiently. With the reference inputs used here, the best-performing scenario increases the cycle yield from $N_{\rm fus,μ}=112.6$ in the collision-only case to $N_{\rm fus,μ}=156.5$. Resonant molecular formation suppresses atomic-stage loss and broadens the high-recycling region, but it cannot compensate for prompt escape or poor field--population overlap. The rate network therefore identifies the transport and overlap conditions required for external-field-assisted reactivation to reduce residual alpha sticking.

The solution of large-scale eigenvalue problems is crucial in nuclear many-body theory, where Hamiltonian matrices often reach extremely large dimensions. Quantum computing opens new perspectives for addressing such demanding problems. Although the Quantum Phase Estimation algorithm offers, in principle, a systematic route to matrix diagonalization, its practical deployment demands levels of coherence and error correction that current quantum hardware cannot yet support. A viable near-term strategy is instead to exploit quantum annealing, which enables the recasting of eigenvalue problems into quadratic unconstrained binary optimization formulations that can be addressed by existing annealing-based processors. Here, we propose a hybrid quantum-classical algorithm that combines quantum annealing and classical deflation to iteratively extract the full eigenspectrum of both standard and generalized eigenvalue problems. We benchmark this method on eigenvalue problems arising from the Equation of Motion Phonon Method performing calculations on real quantum hardware. Our approach illustrates the capabilities and limitations of near-term quantum devices in addressing nuclear eigenvalue problems.

Microscopic modeling of low-energy spectroscopy in medium-heavy and heavy odd-$A$ nuclei is an outstanding open problem in nuclear physics. We propose a novel spectra-generating collective model for odd-$A$ nuclei constructed by means of the nuclear energy density functional theory and the interacting boson-fermion model. The bosonic Hamiltonian for an even-even nucleus, which is treated as a core, and the strength parameters for the interactions between the core and an odd nucleon are completely determined by using as microscopic inputs the potential energy curves and deformed single-particle spectra obtained from the self-consistent mean-field calculations. In applications to odd-$A$ Eu, Sm, La, and Ba isotopes, we demonstrate the validity of the proposed method in reproducing reasonably the observed low-energy spectra and shape phase transitions in the general cases of the quadrupole collective states, that is, nearly spherical, strongly deformed, and $γ$-soft shapes, in the presence of an odd nucleon in a single-$j$ orbit.

Breaking of fundamental symmetries is a ubiquitous phenomenon in physics, underlying the origin of mass and the emerging structure in the universe. The charge symmetry of $Λ$ hyperon-nucleon interactions can be probed through the difference in the $Λ$ binding energy ($B_Λ$) between mirror hypernuclei. In this paper, the $B_Λ$ of mirror hypernuclei with atomic mass number $A$ = 4, $\rm ^4_ΛH$ and $\rm ^4_ΛHe$, are measured in Au+Au collisions at the center-of-mass energy of $\sqrt{s_{\rm NN}}$ = 3 GeV with the STAR experiment at RHIC. For the ground states, we obtain $B_Λ$($\rm ^4_ΛH$) = 2.24 $\pm$ 0.02 (stat.) $\pm$ 0.04 (syst.) MeV and $B_Λ$($\rm ^4_ΛHe$) = 2.39 $\pm$ 0.05 (stat.) $\pm$ 0.05 (syst.) MeV, yielding a charge-symmetry breaking (CSB) effect at the level of 0.15 $\pm$ 0.05 (stat.) $\pm$ 0.04 (syst.) MeV. In combination with previous measurements of $γ$-ray transitions from their $1^+$ excited states, the CSB in excited states is determined to be $-$0.17 $\pm$ 0.05 (stat.) $\pm$ 0.04 (syst.) MeV. These measurements provide a precise determination of CSB in the hypernuclear system, and establish that the $Λ$ binding energy differences in ground and excited states are comparable in magnitude but opposite in sign, offering new insight to the CSB effect in $Λ$-nucleon interactions.

Jet probes have been used extensively to gain insights into QGP properties, with substantial modifications to jet yields and internal structures seen across multiple measurements, compared against $p$+$p$ results. Despite apparent medium-induced changes to jet fragmentation patterns and strong modifications of particle production at intermediate momenta ($2.0 < p_{\rm{T}} < 5.0$ GeV/$c$) in heavy ion collisions, RHIC hadron-hadron correlation results indicate that jet-related baryon-to-meson ratios remain similar to those of $p$+$p$ measurements and are significantly different from those of the QGP bulk. To look for possible medium effects on jet fragments at RHIC, we employ jet-track correlation and particle identification to perform the first measurement of in-jet proton-to-pion yield ratios for charged-hadrons with $2.0 < p_{\rm{T}} < 5.0$ GeV/$c$. We present the first in-cone (within a radial distance of $R$ from the determined jet axis direction) baryon-to-meson yield ratios associated with reconstructed charged-particle jets from Au+Au and $p$+$p$ collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}} = 200$ GeV using the STAR detector at RHIC. The measured in-jet ratios are found to be consistent within uncertainties between the two systems for the selected kinematic regime, despite significant differences between inclusive ratios for the same systems.

The Loop Current is the dominant circulation feature of the Gulf of Mexico and exhibits pronounced variability associated with northward extension, retraction, and eddy shedding. Despite decades of study, the extent to which this variability admits a reduced dynamical description remains unclear. We investigate this question using delayed-coordinate representations constructed from satellite-altimetry observations of Loop Current extension. Ridge regression, multilayer perceptron forecasting, and Sparse Identification of Nonlinear Dynamics (SINDy) are applied to learn delayed evolution maps from the extension time series. Forecast skill consistently exceeds persistence at lead times of 30--90 days while requiring only a small number of delayed coordinates. Ridge regression reveals saturation with delayed-state dimension, indicating that much of the predictive information is contained within a compact representation. Neural-network forecasts provide modest additional improvements, while delayed SINDy identifies sparse evolution maps involving intraseasonal memory scales, from approximately two weeks to a few months, that remain stable under recursive iteration. Physical diagnostics associated with Yucatan Channel inflow, Florida Straits outflow, gateway geometry, and northern Caribbean vorticity contain predictive information but do not provide additional independent state information once the delayed Loop Current state is included. These results support the interpretation of Loop Current extension as an observable evolving on an effective low-dimensional delayed dynamical system. A substantial fraction of the predictable variability can be reconstructed from a small number of delayed observations and represented through compact delayed evolution maps.

An information theoretic analysis is done for the isotropic harmonic oscillator potential within the Dunkl-Schrödinger framework in spherical coordinates. Starting from the exact analytical eigensolution, various quantum information measures such as Shannon entropy, Rényi information, Tsallis entropy are derived. Besides, their relative measures like relative Shannon, relative Rényi, relative Tsallis as well as corresponding divergences (Jensen-Shannon, Jensen-Rényi, Jensen-Tsallis) are also obtained. In order to get Shannon entropy, a novel factorization method is introduced. This is facilitated through the use of well-known weighted Lebesgue measure. The results from the Dunkl case agree exactly with the non-Dunkl scenario, when Dunkl parameters vanish. The reflection operators and Dunkl parameters considerably influence the above measures. These are portrayed in graphical forms.

In this paper we review some analytic results on the dynamics of the FPU system. In the first part of the paper, having in mind that the FPU Hamiltonian and the Toda Hamiltonian are close each other, we present some results on the action angle variables of the Toda system and deduce some stability properties for the dynamics of the FPU system. We first focus on the case of finitely many particles and then we study the limit $N\to\infty$. We present also some results on the continous limit of the Toda chain showing that it is well described by a couple of KdV equations. Then we study directly the dynamics of the function interpolating the FPU system and show that the dynamics is Hamiltonian and that the Hamiltonian is very close to a function of the first three Hamiltonians of the KdV hierarchy. In the second part of the paper we present some results valid in the thermodynamic limit, according to which the time autocorrelation functions of some suitably constructed observables decay slowly implying lower bounds on the thermalization times of the system.

Rational Heun operators on the $q-$linear grid are presented. They are second-order $q-$difference operators $W_q$ constructively defined from the requirement that they have a raising action on rational functions of type $[n/n]$, namely $W_q: [n/n] \rightarrow [n+1/n+1]$, with poles on $q-$linear grids. It will be observed that these operators are related to one family of the Ruijsenaars-van Diejen-Takemura Hamiltonians. A distinguished subclass of $W_q$ called classical which shifts the pole structure while preserving the rational function type and a prescribed basis is also characterized.

We introduce and study a unified framework for density-functional theory and its variants for quantum systems on finite-dimensional Hilbert spaces. These theories seek to reduce the complexity inherent in the many-body quantum problem by describing ground states through reduced variables. The central ingredients of our unified framework are a generalized choice of basic observables, whose expectation values define precisely those reduced variables, and a fixed part of the Hamiltonian characterizing the class of quantum systems under consideration. It is this minimal structure, which we call the scope of a functional theory, that is necessary and sufficient for the formulation of a functional theory. In particular, it allows one to define the universal functionals, establish their convexity and differentiability properties, address representability questions, and prove a Hohenberg-Kohn-type uniqueness result. A purification construction also relates ensemble and weighted-ensemble functionals to the pure-state variant. Particular emphasis is placed on functional theories with Lie-algebra observable structures, connecting the variational framework to symplectic geometry. The result of this work is a systematic mathematical formulation in which structural results can be proved once and applied across a broad class of finite-dimensional functional theories.

In this article, we study the sine-Gordon model with logarithmic correlations in arbitrary dimension $d \ge 1$. The model is defined as a Euclidean field theory whose interaction term in the classical action is \[ S_{\mathrm{int}}(φ) := 2z \int_Λ \cos(\sqrtβ\,φ)\,\dx, \] where $φ$ is a logarithmically correlated Gaussian field on a compact domain $Λ\subset \mathbb{R}^d$ that coincides with the Gaussian free field when $d=2$, and where $z \in \mathbb{R}$ and $β>0$. We treat both the massive and massless cases, with the main emphasis on the massless regime. We construct the field without imposing boundary conditions, together with its charge and gradient correlation functions, and we show that the partition function is renormalizable. The results are non-perturbative, holding for all $z \in \mathbb{R}$. If $d=1$, our results are valid for the full subcritical range $β\in (0,4π)$ and if $d\geq 2$, the results are valid for $β\in (0,(d+1)2π)$. Our analysis is carried out directly in the continuum: we perform renormalization via a scale decomposition and control the partition function by controlling the renormalized potential that arises in this procedure, using the iterated Mayer expansion of Brydges and Kennedy~\cite{BrKe87a}.

We extend the study of boundary criticality in the Gross-Neveu-Yukawa universality class beyond leading order. Using the hyperbolic space formulation of boundary conformal field theories, we compute the first subleading corrections at large $N$ to the free energies of the ``normal", ``ordinary" and ``special" boundary universality classes. We also determine the order $1/N$ correction to the dimension of the boundary fermion at the normal fixed point. In the Gross-Neveu-Yukawa theory in $d=4-ε$, we perform a higher-order analysis of the boundary free energy, and use it to extract estimates for the boundary central charge in $d=3$. The large $N$ and $ε$-expansion results are shown to be precisely consistent in overlapping regimes, providing nontrivial consistency checks for the identification of the boundary universality classes. Our calculations rely on a combination of AdS harmonic analysis and boundary conformal field theory techniques.

In this paper, the large N behavior of a supersymmetric matrix model is compared with its exact continuum description. We concentrate on the large N limit of a supersymmetric matrix model describing a supermembrane with central charge on a toroidally compactified target space. We analyze, on the one hand, the supermembrane model formulated on a differentiable compact torus without boundary, with structure group given by the area-preserving diffeomorphisms, and, on the other hand, the associated regularized $SU(N)$ model. We emphasize in our analysis the structure of the constraints of the regularized model, which generate the $SU(N)$ algebra and reproduce the area-preserving diffeomorphism algebra in the large N limit, together with the topological information associated with the central charge of the model. We explain the role of the central charge in the compactified supermembrane and how it allows a top-down $SU(N)$ regularization. It is known that the regularized model has discrete spectrum. We prove, in the semiclassical approximation of the models, that in the large N limit the eigenvalues of the Hamiltonian of the supersymmetric matrix model are in one to one correspondence with, and converge exactly to, the eigenvalues of the Hamiltonian of the supermembrane (M2-brane) with central charge. Finally, we discuss some physical consequences of this result.

We consider double Wick rotation in field theories, which analytically continues the time coordinate, and then reinterprets one of the spatial directions as the new Lorentzian time. We show that if Lorentz-invariance is absent, Wick-connected theories are no longer necessarily equivalent. Focusing on flat spacetime, we study the propagating modes, unitarity and renormalizability of such Wick-connected theories, and provide criteria for when such notions fail to translate.

We study quantum anomalies associated with $U(1)$ 1-form symmetries from the perspective of invertible phases and bordism. We compute the oriented and spin bordism groups of the Eilenberg-Mac Lane space $K(\mathbb{Z},3)$ up to degree 8 using the Atiyah-Hirzebruch spectral sequence, resolving the relevant extension problems by geometric arguments and identifying both bordism invariants and geometric generators. We then relate these invariants to perturbative and global anomalies, and discuss physical examples and top-down constructions of the corresponding anomaly terms. For 5-dimensional theories, we find a new mixed perturbative anomaly between the $U(1)$ 1-form symmetry and spacetime diffeomorphisms, while for 7-dimensional theories we find a new $\mathbb{Z}_2$-valued discrete anomaly intrinsic to the $U(1)$ 1-form symmetry. We also discuss their boundary realizations and give new physical interpretations of these anomalies.

In AdS/CFT at finite N, black holes are described by ordinary quantum systems with finite entropy and discrete spectra, while semiclassical bulk effective field theory treats the near-horizon region as an ideal continuum. We reconsider the brick-wall model as a simple effective description of the finite N departure from the semiclassical near-horizon continuum in AdS/CFT. A Dirichlet wall is reflecting; however, once the regulated near-wall modes are replaced by interacting stretched-horizon degrees of freedom, the exterior simple sector can look absorptive and black-hole-like. If these degrees of freedom are thermally populated while the exterior incoming modes are in their vacuum, they radiate as an ordinary hot object, and this gives Hawking radiation. Furthermore, we show that finite N prevents the near-horizon sector from being an ideal continuum absorber; the brick-wall model is a simple effective representation of this limitation, where the failure of perfect absorption appears as residual reflection or echoes. Such return effects will not be suppressed as $e^{-S_{\rm BH}}$, although their detailed amplitude is model-dependent. We also discuss brick-wall-like models in which the effective inner boundary arises dynamically from a regular matter core rather than from an imposed boundary condition.

We study one-point functions of composites of charge $e$ operators in the presence of a monodromy defect for a $U(1)$ global symmetry with monodromy $β$. We first compute these in free massless and massive theories, recovering in the former case the known $\sin(eπβ)$ dependence and obtaining in the latter a $\sin^2(eπβ)$ dependence. We then turn to holography and compute 1-point functions for operators $O$ of charge $J=Δ$ in $\mathfrak{su}(N)$ $\mathcal{N}=4$ SYM in the presence of a monodromy defect for a $U(1)\in SO(6)_R$. From a WKB analysis in large $Δ$ we recover the structure of standard and anchored saddles previously found in the literature, finding that, to subleading order in $1/Δ$, the anchored regime is resolved by a boundary layer effect. Finally, using heat kernel methods, we determine the monodromy dependence of the induced 1-point function for the composite $O^{\dagger}O$, finding a smooth $\sin^2(Jπβ)$ behavior.

We compute the disk one-point function, the disk two-point function, and the annulus one-point function of the cosmological constant operator in the type 0A and type 0B minimal superstring theories with (1,1) ZZ instanton boundary conditions. The moduli-space integrals appearing in the disk two-point function and the annulus one-point function have divergences associated with open-string-channel degenerations, which must be regulated using open-closed string field theory. The definition of the string field theory interaction vertices requires a choice of locations for the picture-changing operators, which we specify in detail. After carefully taking into account all contributions, including those from vertical integration, we find that the results precisely match the expectations from DDK-KPZ scaling. Our technical results on the detailed construction of interaction vertices are a first step toward understanding the analogous quantities in the ten-dimensional type IIB superstring, where one also needs to understand how to treat the bosonic and fermionic collective coordinates at subleading order.