Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) has become a cornerstone of knowledge-intensive applications, including enterprise chatbots, healthcare assistants, and agentic memory management. However, recent studies show that knowledge-extraction attacks can recover sensitive knowledge-base content through maliciously crafted queries, raising serious intellectual property and privacy concerns. While prior work has explored individual attack and defense techniques, the research landscape remains fragmented, spanning heterogeneous retrieval embeddings, diverse generation models, and evaluations based on non-standardized metrics and inconsistent datasets. To address this gap, we introduce the first systematic benchmark for knowledge-extraction attacks on RAG systems. Our benchmark covers broad attack/defense strategies, representative retrieval embedding models, open/closed-source generators, (non) graph-based indexing, all evaluated under a unified experimental framework with standardized protocols across multiple datasets spanning diverse languages. By consolidating the experimental landscape and enabling reproducible, comparable evaluation, this benchmark provides actionable insights and a practical foundation for developing privacy-preserving RAG systems in the face of emerging knowledge extraction threats.

In superconducting quantum processors, exploring diverse control methods could offer essential versatility and redundancy to mitigate challenges such as frequency crowding, spurious couplings, control crosstalk, and fabrication variability, thus leading to better system-level performance. Here we introduce a control strategy for fast entangling gates in a scalable fluxonium architecture, utilizing parametric modulation of the plasmon interaction. In this architecture, fluxoniums are coupled via a tunable coupler, whose transition frequency is flux-modulated to control the inter-fluxonium plasmon interaction. A bSWAP-type interaction is activated by parametrically driving the coupler at the sum frequency of the plasmon transitions of the two fluxoniums, resulting in the simultaneous excitation or de-excitation of both plasmon modes. This strategy therefore allow the transitions between computational states and non-computational plasmon states, enabling the accumulation of conditional phases on the computational subspace and facilitating the realization of controlled-phase gates. By focusing on a specific case of these bSWAP-type interactions, we show that a simple drive pulse enables sub-100ns CZ gates with an error below $10^{-4}$. Given its operational flexibility and extensibility, this approach could potentially offer a foundational framework for developing scalable fluxonium-based quantum processors.

Let $k$ be a field, $K/k$ a field extension, $X$ a connected scheme proper over $k$, $x_K\in X_K(K)$ lying over $x\in X(k)$, $\mathcal{C}_X$ and $\mathcal{C}_{X_K}$ the Tannakian categories whose objects consist of vector bundles on $X$ and $X_K$ respectively, $π(\mathcal{C}_X,x)$ and $π(\mathcal{C}_{X_K},x_K)$ the corresponding Tannaka group schemes respectively. We establish a unified criterion determining when the base change homomorphism $π(\mathcal{C}_{X_K},x_K)\rightarrow π(\mathcal{C}_X,x)_K$ is faithfully flat or an isomorphism. As applications, we recover and generalize base change results for the S, Nori, EN, F, EF, ét, Eét, Loc, ELoc, and unipotent-fundamental group schemes under different types of field extensions (e.g., separable, finite Galois, and algebraically closed extensions). Moreover, our approach provides a unified explanation for both positive and negative results, including previously known counterexamples.

Motivated by the recent near-threshold enhancement in top-quark pair production reported by CMS and ATLAS, we study the S-wave spectral structure of heavy-light systems containing a single top quark, namely $t\bar{q}$, $t\bar{c}$, and $t\bar{b}$, within the instantaneous Bethe-Salpeter formalism. Because the top quark decays on a timescale much shorter than the typical hadronization time, the discrete eigenvalues we obtain should be interpreted as model-dependent reference positions of possible quasi-bound heavy-light configurations, rather than as predictions for fully formed conventional hadrons. The numerical results indicate that the masses of these configurations lie close to the top-quark mass. For the $t\bar{b}$ system, the masses of the first four S-wave $0^{-}$ radial states are about $5.1$, $5.4$, $5.6$, and $5.7$~GeV above the top-quark mass, respectively. For the $t\bar{c}$ system, the corresponding values are about $1.9$, $2.2$, $2.5$, and $2.6$~GeV. We also briefly discuss possible production and decay patterns at a qualitative level, which may serve as a reference for future dedicated phenomenological studies or for experimental constraints.

We develop a fully covariant, analytic framework for Josephson phenomena in static curved spacetimes and specialize it to the Schwarzschild exterior. The formulation rests on two invariant elements: the gauge-invariant condensate momentum that governs phase dynamics and the conserved current whose hypersurface flux encodes transport for an observer at infinity. Using the timelike Killing field to relate proper and asymptotic quantities, we derive a redshifted AC Josephson law in which the asymptotic phase-evolution rate is proportional to the difference of redshifted voltage drops, i.e. to $V_i^\infty \equiv α_i V_i^{\rm proper}$; equivalently, it depends on $α_i V_i^{\rm proper}$ for local control. Under RF drive specified at infinity, the Shapiro-step loci are invariant (expressed in asymptotic voltages) while propagation phases set any apparent lobe translation. For DC transport, a short-junction solution on a static slice yields the proper current-phase relation; mapping to asymptotic observables gives a single-power redshift scaling of critical currents, $I_{c,\infty}\propto αI_c^{\rm proper}$, whereas power scales as $P_\infty\propto α^2 P_{\rm proper}$. In a "vertical" dc-SQUID with junctions at different radii, gravity does not shift the DC interference pattern at linear order; it produces a small envelope deformation and an amplitude rescaling. Gravity does not alter the local Josephson microphysics; it reshapes the clocks and energy accounting that define measurements at infinity. The resulting predictions are gauge- and coordinate-invariant, operationally stated in terms of an experimenter who can control (proper vs. asymptotic bias), and remain analytic from the weak-field regime to the near-horizon limit.

Tidal stress is a globally acting perturbation driven primarily by the gravitational forces of the Moon and the Sun. Understanding how tidal stresses can trigger seismic events is essential for constraining tectonic environments that are sensitive to small stress perturbations. Here, employing a spring-block model with rate-and-state friction, we investigate tidal triggering on velocity-weakening stable sliding faults with stiffness slightly exceeding the critical stiffness. We first apply a step and a boxcar with finite duration normal stress perturbation to demonstrate a resonance-like amplification of slip velocity for specific boxcar durations. Next, we perform nondimensional analyses and numerical simulations with harmonic perturbations to identify the key parameters controlling tidal triggering and their admissible ranges. Triggered slip events are further characterized using physically observable quantities, including radiation efficiency and tidal phase. Our results show that even small stress perturbations can trigger periodic as well as temporally complex slip events on stable sliding faults. The triggering behavior is primarily controlled by the normalized perturbation period and the normalized perturbation amplitude. An increase in the normalized period shifts event timing from the peak of tidal stress toward the peak of stress rate, whereas increasing the normalized amplitude promotes a transition from slow to fast events. This framework helps explain the period-dependent sensitivity and the observed phase preference between tidal stress and maximum slip velocity. Comparison between observed and model-predicted tidal correlation patterns may therefore help constrain the instantaneous frictional strength of the interface, as well as the characteristic slip distance for frictional weakening.

This analysis utilizes simulated data privately generated based on the High Luminosity Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC) configuration to investigate the angular distribution of high-mass dimuon pairs produced during the foreseen proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 14 TeV. The study focuses on the cos$θ_{CS}$ variable, which is defined in the Collins-Soper frame. In the Standard Model, the production of high-mass dimuon pairs is primarily governed by the Drell-Yan process, which demonstrates a significant forward-backward asymmetry. However, scenarios beyond the Standard Model suggest different shapes for the angular distribution (cos$θ_{CS}$). By observing excess events not predicted by the Standard Model, the angular distribution can help differentiate among these alternative models. Furthermore, we used a simplified Einstein-Cartan model to analyze the simulated data. This analysis established upper limits at the 95\% confidence level regarding the masses of various particles within the model, including a spin-2 dark neutral gauge boson and the torsion field.

Simultaneously transmitting and reflecting reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (STAR-RIS) enable full-space ($0^\circ$--$360^\circ$) signal coverage, making them a compelling platform for integrated sensing and communication in next-generation wireless networks. In this paper, we investigate gridless direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation across the full spatial domain in STAR-RIS-assisted systems operating with a single RF sensing chain. We show that the coupled reflection-transmission mechanism of STAR-RIS induces a multichannel finite-rate-of-innovation (FRI) structure in the received signal, which enables casting DOA estimation as a structured low-rank recovery problem without angular grid discretization. Building on this observation, we develop a proximal gradient descent algorithm with alternating projections onto a block-Hankel matrix set, enabling robust angle retrieval from limited measurements. Two practically relevant STAR-RIS configurations are addressed: element-wise uniform and nonuniform energy-splitting designs, each handled through a dedicated lifting strategy that preserves the underlying algebraic structure. A Ziv-Zakai bound is derived for the coupled full-space sensing model as a performance benchmark across the full SNR range. Numerical results show that the proposed methods consistently outperform grid-based baselines, achieving sub-degree accuracy within $\pm 60^\circ$ of boresight at comparable or lower computational cost.

Working with a symmetry-preserving treatment of a vector*vector contact interaction (SCI), a largely algebraic three-body Faddeev equation treatment of the nucleon bound state problem is introduced and used to deliver results for all nucleon charge and magnetisation distributions and their flavour separation. A strength of the SCI treatment is that it provides for a transparent understanding of this three-body approach to developing predictions for baryon observables. Comparisons of SCI results with predictions obtained in realistic-interaction Faddeev equation studies reveal the sensitivities of a given observable to the pointwise behaviour of the quark-quark interaction and phenomena associated with the emergence of hadron mass.

Identifying which observables most effectively constrain model parameters can be computationally prohibitive when considering full likelihoods of many correlated observables. This is especially important for, e.g., hadronization models, where high precision is required to interpret the results of collider experiments. We introduce the High-Dimensional Sensitivity (HDSense) score, a computationally efficient metric for ranking observable sets using only one-dimensional histograms. Derived by profiling over unknown correlations in the Fisher information framework, the score balances total information content against redundancy between observables. We apply HDSense to rank a set observables in terms of their constraining power with respect to five parameters of the Lund string model of hadronization implemented in Pythia using simulated leptonic collider events at the $Z$ pole. Validation against machine-learning--based full-likelihood approximations demonstrates that HDSense successfully identifies near-optimal observable subsets. The framework naturally handles data from multiple experiments with different acceptances and incorporates detector effects. While demonstrated on hadronization models, the methodology applies broadly to generic parameter estimation problems where correlations are unknown or difficult to model.

Dense nucleonic matter is of vital importance for understanding compact stars and inferring the transition into deconfined quark phase. We present $\textit{ab initio}$ exact calculations of infinite nucleonic matter with the state-of-the-art full configuration-interaction quantum Monte Carlo (FCIQMC) method, enabling us to rigorously benchmark many-body methods and assess the degree to which the nucleonic matter is correlated. Our method has been numerically validated against exact diagonalization within a small model space. Calculations of nucleonic matter using chiral nuclear forces reveal that symmetric nuclear matter is strikingly strongly correlated, raising questions on previous $\textit{ab initio}$ calculations of nuclear matter with many-body expansion truncations and offering insights into simultaneous descriptions of finite nuclei and infinite nucleonic matter from first principles.

Pure lattice gauge theories in three dimensions are widely expected to confine. A rigorous proof of confinement for three-dimensional $\mathrm{U}(1)$ lattice gauge theory with Villain action was given by Göpfert and Mack. Beyond the abelian case, rigorous confinement results are comparatively scarce; one general mechanism applies when the gauge group has a central copy of $\mathrm{U}(1)$. Indeed, combining a comparison inequality of Fr{ö}hlich with earlier work of Glimm and Jaffe yields confinement with a logarithmically growing quark-antiquark potential for this class of theories. The purpose of this note is to give a short, self-contained proof of this classical result for three-dimensional Wilson lattice gauge theory: when $G\subseteq \mathrm{U}(n)$ contains the full circle of scalar matrices $\{zI:\ |z|=1\}$, rectangular Wilson loops obey an explicit upper bound of the form $\lvert\langle W_\ell\rangle\rvert \le n\exp\{-c(1+nβ)^{-1}T\log(R+1)\}$.

Time-delay embedding is a powerful technique for reconstructing the dynamics of nonlinear systems. However, the reconstruction map is not always an embedding, a condition rarely verified in practice. When the reconstruction map is non-injective, multiple latent states may map to the same reconstructed state, leading to multi-valued $n$-step evolution. Consequently, the induced system no longer admits a deterministic closure, and the dispersion of future trajectories leads to ambiguity. In this work, we establish a measure-theoretic framework to quantify the ambiguity induced by multi-valued evolution and introduce intrinsic stochasticity to quantify the ambiguity over a finite horizon. For numerical implementation, we use the $k$-nearest-neighbor estimator to approximate intrinsic stochasticity under finite-resolution and finite-sampling settings. Numerical experiments on the synthetic and real-world datasets are consistent with the expectation: reconstructions closer to deterministic closure tend to produce lower scores, and deterministic predictors that take reconstructions with lower empirical closure scores as input are associated with lower rollout errors, suggesting that intrinsic stochasticity provides a new perspective for understanding failures of reconstruction and serves as a diagnostic for selecting reconstruction maps.

We demonstrate numerically the existence of solutions of five-dimensional vacuum gravity describing the formation, in finite time, of an extremal rotating black hole from a pre-existing Schwarzschild black hole. This is the first example of a violation of the third law of black hole mechanics in vacuum gravity and demonstrates that the third law is false independently of any matter model. We also demonstrate the existence of solutions describing the formation, in finite time, of an extremal rotating black hole from vacuum initial data that does not contain a black hole.

Ce-pyrochlores, Ce$_2$X$_2$O$_7$ (X = Sn, Hf, Zr), have gained much recent attention as new quantum spin ice (QSI) ground state candidates. Although the nearest-neighbor (NN) XYZ model has been the prevailing theoretical framework, its adequacy has been questioned by bulk measurements on Ce$_2$Hf$_2$O$_7$ and Ce$_2$Zr$_2$O$_7$, suggesting the relevance of further-neighbor interactions at low temperatures. However, clearly disentangling their effects from structural disorder has been challenging with samples grown by conventional methods. Here, we overcome this limitation and report diffuse neutron scattering measurements on Ce$_2$Sn$_2$O$_7$ single crystals synthesized by hydrothermal methods, with substantially reduced structural disorder compared to our previous floating-zone-grown samples. Our results unambiguously demonstrate the inadequacy of the NN model by falsifying its central prediction for Ce$_2$Sn$_2$O$_7$ -- a transition to an all-in-all-out (AIAO) magnetic order. Importantly, we observe neither long-range nor short-range AIAO order near the predicted $\mathrm{T_N}$, indicating that further neighbor interactions must play a non-perturbative role in determining the low-temperature spin correlations in Ce$_2$Sn$_2$O$_7$. Notably, we find that the diffuse scattering in Ce$_2$Sn$_2$O$_7$ is nearly identical to that of the classical dipolar spin ice Dy$_2$Ti$_2$O$_7$, which provides key insights into the organizing principles of the low-energy manifold in the presence of such interactions.

We perform a data-driven test of the FLRW metric and the flatness of the Universe, independently of any Dark Energy model, and in light of the latest DESI DR2 results. We use Pantheon+ and DESY5 SNIa data to reconstruct the distance modulus, dimensionless comoving distance and Hubble parameter, using an iterative smoothing algorithm. Then, combining the various reconstructions with the recent BAO measurements from DESI DR2, we perform the $\mathcal{O}_k$ diagnostic, a litmus test of the FLRW metric and the flatness of the Universe. We obtain robust results that do not depend on Dark Energy models and test some of the underlying hypotheses of the concordance model. We find that when the reconstructed $\mathcal{O}_k$ diagnostic is consistent with the FLRW metric, then the median value of $Ω_{k,0}$ over all reconstructions that provide an improved fit relative to the flat $Λ$CDM model are: $Ω_{k,0}^\text{med} = 0.035 ^{+0.046}_{-0.079}\pm 0.037$ for the Pantheon+ \& DESI DR2 data combination, $Ω_{k,0}^\text{med} = 0.092 ^{+0.055}_{-0.132} \pm 0.064$ for the same data but with the Pantheon+ SNIa cut at redshift $z=1.13$, which is the maximum redshift of the DES~Y5 data, and $Ω_{k,0}^\text{med} = -0.119^{+0.113}_{-0.047}\pm 0.043$ for DES~Y5 \& DESI DR2. The first uncertainties correspond to the spread in $Ω_{k,0}$ over all reconstructions, followed by the median 1$σ$ error.

We discuss the consequence of excluding allowed RF-transition between substates of a field-dressed Rydberg manifold when predicting the spectrum that will be observed if the dressed system is probed in an optical EIT scheme.

A recent paper by Bhatia, Chin, Mani, and Mossel (2026) defined stochastic processes modeling the game of War for {\em two players} with $n$ cards. That paper showed that these models, assuming uniform random decks, are equivalent to the Gambler's Ruin problem and therefore have an expected termination time of $Θ(n^2)$. In this paper, we generalize these models to {\em any number of players} $m$. We prove that the game with $m$ players is equivalent to a simple sticky random walk on an $(m-1)$-simplex; therefore, the termination time is the same as the absorption time of the simple sticky random walk. Unlike Gambler's Ruin, this absorption time has not been analyzed before. We show that the absorption time of the walk and the termination time of the game are both $Θ(n^2)$ for any number of players.

We study the set of Quantum Limits, and more generally, of semiclassical measures of sequences of eigenfunctions of perturbations of the Laplacian on the spheres $\mathbb{S}^{2}$ and $\mathbb{S}^{3}$ by point-scatterers. In the unperturbed case, it is known that the set of semiclassical measures coincides with the set of measures that are invariant under the geodesic flow; on the other hand, when the Laplacian is perturbed by a generic smooth potential, the set of semiclassical measures turns out to be strictly contained within that of invariant measures. In this article, we prove that the addition of a perturbation by a finite set of point-scatterers has a different effect: (i) all invariant measures are semiclassical measures for some sequence of eigenstates of the perturbed operator, and (ii) as soon as the set of scatterers contains a pair of antipodal points, it is possible to construct a sequence of eigenfunctions whose semiclassical measure is not invariant under the geodesic flow. We also show that this geometric condition is sharp: if the set of scatterers does not contain a pair of antipodal points, then the sets of invariant and semiclassical measures coincide.

In this paper, we extend several function-theoretic and geometric constructions to the realm of multi-variable operator theory. A commuting tuple of bounded linear operators on a Hilbert space, equipped with a cyclic vector, is abbreviated as a cyclic commuting tuple. We encode the complete information of such a tuple into a single positive compact operator on the Fock space. Drawing parallels with spectral geometry, we investigate how the spectral data of this positive compact operator -- its eigenvalues and eigenfunction -- reflect fundamental properties of the operator tuple. Our main contributions are threefold. First, we establish a Weyl-type approximation formula for certain operator tuples, demonstrating that the asymptotic behavior of eigenvalues carries geometric information about the vanishing variety. Second, we construct two kernel functions derived from the eigenvalues and eigenfunctions: the first extends the Bergman kernel, while the second extends the Fourier-Laplace transformation. We prove that the Fourier-Laplace kernel defines a reproducing kernel Hilbert space (RKHS) on which the coordinate differential operators are unitarily equivalent to the adjoint tuple. Consequently, we show that the convergence points of the Bergman-type kernel characterize the joint eigenvalues of the adjoint tuple. Finally, we obtain a Paley-Wiener-Schwartz type theorem for cyclic commuting tuples, characterizing cyclic commuting tuples whose associated Agler's linear functional are distributions. For tuples consisting of matrices, we obtains a more explicit characterization.

Gain-layer degradation from exposure to radiation limits the use of Low-Gain Avalanche Diodes (LGADs) in high energy particle physics detector experiments. Proper understanding of how the gain-layer is destroyed is not available on a defect level. Only measurements for materials with much lower effective doping concentrations are available. The direct study of the gain-layer is not possible with typical defect spectroscopy measurements like Thermally Stimulated Currents (TSC) and Deep-Level Transient Spectroscopy (DLTS). To combat this problem and gain a better understanding of the processes which degrade LGADs, the Gain-Layer Project was started. This project produced 19050 diodes with various Boron, Phosphorus, Oxygen and Carbon concentrations. The material used is low-resistivity p-type Silicon. The effective doping concentrations are in the order of a LGAD gain-layer. These diodes will serve the defect community in the coming years for various studies. This article introduces this project with detailed descriptions of the diodes, their flavours and their processing, and reports on results from I-V, C-V, SIMS and DLTS measurements on unirradiated diodes.

We report a galaxy overdensity candidate at $z\approx10.5$ in the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES). This overdensity contains 18 galaxies with consistent photometric redshifts within 8 comoving Mpc in projection. The galaxy number density is four times higher than the field expectation, accounting for one-third of comparably bright galaxies and nearly 50% of the total star formation rate at $10<z_\mathrm{phot}<12$ in the GOODS-S field. Galaxies in the overdensity more frequently have close companions or substructure, with one-third showing such features within 1 kpc at consistent photometric redshifts, implying enhanced interactions. Most galaxies have stellar masses of 0.6-3$\times10^8 M_\odot$, half-light radii of $\sim200$ pc, and star formation rates (SFRs) of $\sim5 M_\odot \mathrm{yr^{-1}}$. Their stellar masses and SFRs are slightly higher than those of field galaxies, but remain broadly consistent with typical high-redshift scaling relations. Two compact objects show possible Balmer breaks, suggestive of evolved stellar populations or little red dots (LRDs). We find tentative evidence for a spatially varying Ly$α$ transmission inferred photometrically, consistent with an emerging ionized bubble. This overdensity provides a rare opportunity for probing the environmental impact on galaxy evolution and the onset of cosmic reionization within the first 500 Myr.

The foundational work by Bell led to an interest in understanding non-local correlations that arise from entangled states shared between distinct, spacelike-separated parties, which formed a foundation for the theory of quantum information processing. We investigate the question of maximal correlations analogous to the maximally entangled states defined in the entanglement theory of multipartite systems. In this work, we define the maximality of nonlocal correlation as being analogous to the absolutely maximally entangled state. To formalize this, we employ the sheaf-theoretic framework for contextuality, which generalizes non-locality. This provides a metric for correlations called contextual fraction (CF), which ranges from $0$ (non-contextual) to $1$ (maximally contextual). Using this, we have defined the absolutely maximal contextual correlations (AMCC), which are maximally contextual and have maximal marginals. The Popescu-Rohrlich (PR) box serves as the bipartite example, and we construct various extensions of such correlations in the tripartite case. An infinite family of various forms of AMCC is constructed using the parity check and the constraint satisfiability problem (CSP) construction. We also demonstrate the existence of maximally contextual correlations, which do not exhibit maximal marginals, and refer to them as non-AMCC. Furthermore, we showed that GHZ correlations in the $(n,2,2)$ setting give rise to AMCCs for the particular choice of measurement settings. The results are further applied to secret sharing and randomness extraction using AMCCs.

Identifying whether a mixed quantum state is uniquely determined among all states (UDA) by its local marginals is a basic problem in quantum information theory. We establish necessary and sufficient conditions under which several classes of multipartite mixed states are UDA by their $k$-partite marginals. We also prove structural properties based on ranges and marginals, and formulate a recursive procedure for the determination of UDA states. We show that sufficiently high rank rules out unique determination from fixed-order marginals, implying that almost all multipartite mixed states are not UDA from such marginals. Finally, we completely characterize the additivity of bipartite UDA states, three-qubit and several families of $n$-qubit product UDA states. These results clarify the boundary between UDA and non-UDA mixed states and provide a framework for local-marginal reconstruction and related certification tasks.

We present a pedagogical analysis of a fully connected three-state Markov process, focusing on the validity and limitations of the continuous-time approximation to discrete-time dynamics. While the correspondence between a discrete-time transition matrix and a continuous-time generator is often introduced formally, the conditions under which the approximation is accurate are rarely examined in detail. Using an exactly solvable three-state model, we derive both the discrete-time and continuous-time evolution operators and compare their transient behavior. We show explicitly that the continuous-time approximation is controlled by the relation between the time step and the characteristic relaxation time scales. The three-state model is the minimal example that can violate detailed balance, and thus provides a simple setting in which discrete and continuous dynamics may differ even though they share the same stationary distribution. The results provide a useful worked example for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses on stochastic processes and statistical physics.

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are bright, mostly millisecond-duration transients of extragalactic origin whose emission mechanisms remain unknown. As FRB signals propagate through ionized media, they experience frequency-dependent delays quantified by the dispersion measure (DM), a key parameter for inferring source distances and local plasma conditions. Accurate DM estimation is therefore essential for characterizing FRB sources and testing physical models, yet current dedispersion methods can be computationally intensive and prone to human bias. In this proof-of-concept study, we develop and benchmark three deep-learning architectures, a conventional convolutional neural network (CNN), a fine-tuned ResNet-50, and a hybrid CNN-LSTM model, for automated DM estimation. All models are trained and validated on a large set of synthetic FRB dynamic spectra generated using CHIME/FRB-like specifications. The hybrid CNN-LSTM achieves the highest accuracy and stability while maintaining low computational cost across the investigated DM range. Although trained on simulated data, these models can be fine-tuned on real CHIME/FRB observations and extended to future facilities, providing a pathway toward real-time, data-driven DM estimation in large FRB surveys with further development.

The exploration of exotic quantum phenomena in mesoscale materials, such as moire superlattices, is fundamentally bottlenecked by the prohibitive cubic scaling barrier of conventional electronic structure methods. Here, we introduce a scalable tight binding framework that achieves a near linear empirical complexity, successfully bridging the scale gap between local first principles accuracy and macroscopic quantum simulations. By transforming the complex Hermitian Bloch Hamiltonian into an equivalent real symmetric form, our method bypasses dense diagonalization by coupling sparse LDL decomposition with Sylvester's law of inertia for direct spectral slicing and global rank calibration. This elegant mathematical reformulation enables unprecedentedly fast band structure calculations for large scale systems, solving magic angle twisted bilayer graphene in minutes on a standard laptop and scaling seamlessly to 1.5 million atoms within days on a single workstation. Applying this framework to the previously inaccessible ultra low twist angle regime incorporating atomistic strain relaxation, we unveil robust, isolated flat bands that persist down to 0.09 degree. Our framework establishes a versatile, high performance computing platform, opening a practical route toward the systematic, data driven discovery of quantum materials at experimental length scales.

Imbalanced datasets remain a major challenge in industrial condition monitoring and fault diagnosis, often causing machine-learning models to favor majority classes while underrepresenting minority fault conditions. This work investigates the Quantum Synthetic Minority Oversampling Technique (QSMOTE) through three stages: (i) baseline evaluation on the original imbalanced datasets, (ii) assessment after QSMOTE-based balancing, and (iii) analysis of QSMOTE under quantum-inspired perturbations. Unlike conventional robustness studies, the considered noise channels are injected directly into the compact-swap-test-based similarity estimation process used during synthetic sample generation, influencing overlap estimation, angle computation, and the generated minority samples. Experiments are conducted on four multi-class datasets: the Solar Panel Image Dataset (SPID), the CWRU Bearing Dataset (CWRUBD), the Engine Failure Detection Dataset (EFDD), and the Industrial Fault Detection Dataset (IFDD). Performance is evaluated using Random Forest (RF), Support Vector Machine (SVM), Decision Tree (DT), Logistic Regression (LR), and Naive Bayes (NB) classifiers. The results show that QSMOTE effectively reduces class imbalance and substantially improves the performance of non-linear classifiers, with gains of up to 170% on EFDD and accuracies exceeding 0.99 on IFDD. Further analysis under bit-flip, phase-flip, bit-phase-flip, depolarizing, amplitude damping, and phase damping channels demonstrates how perturbations introduced during similarity estimation propagate through synthetic sample generation and influence downstream classification performance. The proposed framework provides a practical approach for studying both imbalance mitigation and noisy quantum-inspired oversampling in industrial and energy-system applications.

Under certain conditions, the oscillating inflaton condensate filling the Universe after inflation can fragment and form so-called oscillons. These long-lived soliton-like field configurations can dominate the Universe for several $e$-folds of expansion, leading to an early matter-dominated phase preceding the standard radiation era. In this paper we show how the rapid final decay of the oscillons leads to an enhanced production of induced gravitational waves, whose energy density can saturate the observational bound on the effective number of relativistic species. We leverage this bound to constrain the inflaton mass, cubic, and quartic self-coupling in generic models that admit oscillon formation, providing novel and complementary constraints in regions of parameter space that are inaccessible with cosmic microwave background observations alone.

Quantum embedding methods, such as dynamical mean-field theory (DMFT), provide a powerful framework for investigating strongly correlated materials. A central computational bottleneck in DMFT is in solving the Anderson impurity model (AIM), whose exact solution is classically intractable for large bath sizes. In this work, we develop and benchmark a quantum-classical hybrid solver tailored for DMFT applications, using the variational quantum eigensolver (VQE) to prepare the ground state of the AIM with shallow quantum circuits. The solver uses a unified ansatz framework to prepare the particle and hole excitations of the ground-state from parameter-shifted circuits, enabling the reconstruction of the impurity Green's function through a continued-fraction expansion. We evaluate the performance of this approach across a few bath sizes and interaction strengths under noisy, shot-limited conditions. We compare three optimization routines (COBYLA, Adam, and L-BFGS-B) in terms of convergence and fidelity, assess the benefits of estimating a quantum-computed moment (QCM) correction to the variational energies, and benchmark the approach by comparing the reconstructed density of states (DOS) against that obtained using a classical pipeline. Our results demonstrate the feasibility of Green's function reconstruction on near-term devices and establish practical benchmarks for quantum impurity solvers embedded within self-consistent DMFT loops.