The Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) is a prolific muon producer, making it an ideal location for studying dark sector particles produced in muon decays at rest. In this paper, we explore sub-GeV dark particle detection possibilities in a tons-scale, highly capable hydrocarbon scintillator ($HC^2$) detector at the SNS. We consider a search for $e^+e^-$ final states produced by decays of long-lived, $O(10-100)$ MeV axion-like particles and heavy neutral leptons. The $HC^2$ technology space, exemplified by the PROSPECT and Mobile Antineutrino Demonstrator detectors, offers strong rejection capabilities for the cosmic ray backgrounds that would normally dominate this search. By benchmarking on-surface cosmic ray signatures with data from PROSPECT at ORNL, we generate robust predictions for a multi-year SNS deployment of a range of $HC^2$ detector implementations. Results indicate the potential for order-of-magnitude improvements in sensitivity to axion-like particles and heavy neutral leptons in the 10-100 MeV mass regime compared to current global limits. We also comment on the neutrino detection possibilities of a $HC^2$ deployment at the SNS.

Jet production is the dominant high-$p_{\rm T}$ process at hadron colliders and provides a central testing ground for perturbative QCD, parton distribution functions and determinations of the strong coupling. This contribution summarises recent measurements of inclusive-jet, dijet and jet-multiplicity observables presented at DIS2026, with emphasis on the interplay between experimental precision, next-to-next-to-leading-order predictions, non-perturbative and electroweak corrections, and the treatment of correlated systematic uncertainties. Inclusive jet measurements from CMS and ATLAS constrain the gluon distribution at large Bjorken $x$ and enable extractions of $α_s(m_Z)$ compatible with the world average. Dijet measurements provide complementary sensitivity through the dijet invariant mass, rapidity separation and longitudinal boost, while ratios of inclusive jet multiplicities reduce several experimental and PDF uncertainties and directly probe additional QCD radiation. Recent progress in jet-energy calibration, together with new results from RHIC, ALICE and CMS on jet substructure and heavy-quark radiation, illustrates the breadth of current high-$p_{\rm T}$ jet physics and its relevance for Run~3 and future global PDF analyses.

The Large Hadron electron Collider (LHeC) would add a high-current Energy Recovery Linac to the HL-LHC, delivering electron-proton collisions at centre-of-mass energies around the TeV scale. This contribution summarises the QCD and parton-distribution-function (PDF) aspects of the recent LHeC bridge-project study. The combination of high luminosity, a very large lever arm in Bjorken $x$ and $Q^2$, and clean neutral- and charged-current deep-inelastic scattering measurements would enable a coherent determination of all proton PDFs in a single experiment. The resulting constraints would substantially reduce uncertainties in the gluon, valence, strange and heavy-flavour distributions, provide stringent tests of perturbative and small-$x$ QCD, and improve the parton luminosities that enter precision and discovery measurements at the HL-LHC and at future hadron colliders. The same programme gives competitive and complementary determinations of the strong coupling and weak mixing angle, including measurements of its running over a wide range of scales.

The gluon dominance model describes multiparticle production of secondary particles at high energies in lepton and hadron interactions, including annihilation processes and heavy quarkonium decays. According to this model, the multiparticle process is divided into two stages. The first stage describes the development of a quark-gluon cascade as a Markov branching process in the region of perturbation QCD. For the second stage, the transformation of quarks and gluons into observable hadrons (hadronization), a phenomenological scheme is proposed. It is universal and based on an experiment. The gluon dominance model demonstrates good agreement with data over a wide energy region. It testifies that in hadron interactions valence quarks remain in the leading particles, and gluons are the sources of secondary hadrons. Quantitative estimates of the model parameters confirm the fragmentation mechanism of hadronization in leptonic interactions and the recombination mechanism in hadronic ones. The model description of the experimental distributions on the number of neutral pions in proton interactions at 50 GeV beams in the high multiplicity region are presented for the first time. It is shown that the main contribution to this region is made by gluon fission. These results can be useful in planning of future experiments.

We present methods for electromagnetic shower reconstruction and identification in the FASERnu emulsion detector using 100 GeV and 200 GeV electron test-beam data from the CERN SPS H4 beamline. The reconstruction employs a clustering-based algorithm without energy-dependent tuning to determine shower axes. A multi-level identification chain comprising track pre-selection, a cut-based selection, and a BDT classifier achieves combined background rejection rates of 99.99% (100 GeV) and 99.94% (200 GeV). The method reaches total reconstruction and identification efficiencies of 58.9% (100 GeV) and 70.8% (200 GeV) evaluated from simulated samples. Energy reconstruction using the total number of reconstructed segments as the calorimetric estimator yields relative biases of +0.6% (100 GeV) and -0.8% (200 GeV), with resolutions of 25.4% and 22.6%, respectively. Systematic uncertainties on the energy reconstruction are dominated by variations in emulsion film detection efficiency, contributing (+10.9%/-8.2%) at 100 GeV and (+10.3%/-6.9%) at 200 GeV. The methodology provides a validated framework for electron neutrino identification with the FASERnu detector at the LHC.

The large number of $Z \rightarrow ττ$ events expected during the TeraZ program at FCC-ee will allow for precision measurements and searches for physics beyond the Standard Model, requiring accurate reconstruction of hadronically decaying tau leptons. This reconstruction is particularly challenging due to the presence of undetected neutrinos and the diverse topology of hadronic tau decays, making the design of robust heuristic reconstruction algorithms challenging. In this work, we present the first fully machine learned hadronic tau reconstruction approach tuned for FCC-ee studies. The reconstruction is formulated as a set of complementary tasks, including tau identification, decay mode classification, charge reconstruction, and full four-momentum regression. The algorithms are evaluated on fully simulated electron--positron collision samples with realistic detector effects using the CLD detector setup. We compare dedicated task-specific models with a unified multi-task model and quantify their performance in a granular manner across all reconstruction tasks. Both approaches achieve per-mille-level tau mis-identification rates at high signal efficiency, decay mode classification F1 scores of up to 0.95 for the dominant channels, and sub-per-mille charge mis-identification rates, outperforming a conventional jet-charge estimator by up to two orders of magnitude. For the full kinematic reconstruction, the models achieve per-mille-level angular resolution and percent-level visible transverse momentum resolution, exceeding the performance of reconstruction-level jet observables. The resulting models provide a realistic high-performance solution for hadronic tau reconstruction at FCC-ee, offering identification, charge discrimination, decay mode analysis and full kinematic reconstruction.

We compute spectral functions of graviton modes in Lorentzian quantum gravity, interpolating between classical general relativity and an asymptotically safe ultraviolet fixed point. Using functional renormalisation adapted for theories in Lorentzian signature, and enhanced by new symmetry conditions to account for underlying Ward identities, we derive and solve flow equations directly for the Källén-Lehmann representation of propagators. Consistent results are found for several sets of renormalisation conditions yielding normalisable spectral functions for the graviton and the scalar graviton mode, in agreement with effective theory in the infrared. We further calculate the full quantum effective action to quadratic order in curvature, extract graviton-induced form factors, and discuss implications for unitarity of quantum gravity.

Black hole static Love numbers vanish, but their dynamical counterparts do not. We present the scheme-independent dynamical response $\bar{F}_{\ell,s}$ of a Schwarzschild black hole in closed form, to all orders, and for every spin $s$ and multipole $\ell$. The result is $\bar{F}_{\ell,s}/4πR_S^{2\ell+1}=Φ_{\ell,s}(\bar{y})-\tfrac12η\,Φ_{\ell,s}'(\bar{y})$ with $\bar{y}=-\tfrac12η^2τ$ and $η=iωR_S$. Here $Φ_{\ell,s}$ is simply the leading-log solution to the renormalization group equation, but lifting the running logarithm to $τ=\log(R_S/R)-2\sum_{k\ge2}ζ_k\,η^{k-1}$ resums it to all orders. This tower of Riemann zeta values is the Newtonian phase in disguise: it originates from the same far-zone $Γ(1-η)$ that governs long-range scattering, and is universal across multipole and spin. Our result exhibits a factorization pinned to three ingredients: the hard matching coefficient at the horizon, the anomalous dimension in the near zone, and the dressed log in the far zone. Using shell effective field theory, we independently verify our formula for scalar, electromagnetic, and gravitational perturbations, reaching $\mathcal O(G^{15})$.

Color graphs and their subgraphs, referred to as bubble graphs, correspond bijectively to the simplicial complexes of pseudomanifolds and their subsimplices, respectively. In this paper, we introduce matrix representations for colored graphs and their associated bubble graphs. By using this correspondence, we define simplicial-complex matrices and subsimplex matrices that encode the simplicial complexes of pseudomanifolds and their subsimplices. Moreover, we formulate mutation and crossover operations on colored graphs. Through the established correspondence among simplicial complexes, colored graphs, and simplicial-complex matrices, we extend these operations to simplicial complexes and simplicial-complex matrices. We further implement an algorithm generating simplicial-complex matrices and a genetic algorithm performing mutation and crossover of them to produce pseudomanifolds exhibiting diverse topologies. In addition, we implement procedures for decomposing the generated simplicial-complex matrices into simplex matrices, reconstructing the simplicial complexes of the associated pseudomanifolds from this information, and computing geometric quantities such as the volume, circumcenter, and dual-simplex volume of each simplex.

We investigate the thermodynamic stability and the stochastic thermal fluctuations of the warped black hole solution in three-dimensional General Massive Gravity. We demonstrate that the black hole is thermodynamically unstable and identify the nontrivial Davies phase-transition curves from the behavior of its admissible heat capacities. Going beyond the classical stability analysis, we study thermal fluctuations within a modified finite-time nonequilibrium extension of Ruppeiner's Hessian-based fluctuation theory. For a class of isentropic and isoenergetic processes, we derive exact on-shell angular momentum trajectories in the thermodynamic state space and compute the corresponding thermodynamic lengths. These quantities characterize relaxation processes between macrostates and provide an estimate of the associated relaxation times. Furthermore, we show that the thermodynamic geodesic equations do not admit constant-angular-momentum solutions, suggesting a continuous change of the black hole's angular momentum. Our results consistently reproduce the warped AdS$_3$ black hole limit of Topological Massive Gravity.

We elucidate the physical nature of ghosts above the multi-particle threshold by contrasting them with unstable particles in quantum field theory. We first consider the asymptotic formulation, where ordinary positive-norm one-particle states can be unstable and decay, whereas ghosts survive asymptotically without decaying, yet admit no particle interpretation due to interference with the multi-particle component which masks the negative-norm one-particle state. This distinction originates from two different analytic structures of the dressed propagator, whose complex conjugate poles lie in the first or second Riemann sheet in the ghost or ordinary case, respectively. Ghost resonances are, in principle, phenomenologically distinguishable from ordinary ones, being narrower and exhibiting weaker interference between positive- and negative-energy peaks. We then formulate the quantum field theory in a finite interval of time and, working within a suitable approximation for the dressed propagator, find that finite-time effects amplify differences in the resonant behavior and give rise to new features, such as higher peaks in ghost resonances. Distinct temporal regimes are also identified: for times shorter than the inverse width, an approximate free-particle description is valid, whereas at later times interactions and interference effects dominate, leading to decay or multi-particle masking. Complex poles in the dressed propagator emerge only at late times and become complex-conjugate pairs asymptotically, determining the asymptotic dynamics. This study supports the absence of freely propagating ghost particles in the asymptotic limit.

This paper generalizes the method used in the previous article 2512.09930 to black $p$-brane thermodynamics in arbitrary dimensions containing black holes and strings as special cases: thermodynamic quantities can be derived without constructing the corresponding black $p$-brane solutions. We further extend the discussion to black holes or $p$-branes involving a general scalar coset.

We derive an analytical approximation for the graviton propagator from Asymptotic Safety. We find neither extra poles nor indications of unitarity or causality violations in the spin-two sector. Our results strengthen the case that Asymptotic Safety does not introduce new degrees of freedom, and thus propagates the same field content as General Relativity. We also identify the underlying mechanism: the residues of spurious poles in finite-order derivative expansions approach zero as the order is increased.

We show that the near-horizon expansion of the linear polarization vector for synchrotron emission in a Kerr background admits a distinct analytic form. For emission from a stationary, axisymmetric, degenerate electromagnetic field, the leading-order polarization pattern depends only on the Kerr spin and the source polar angle, while the next-to-leading-order correction further encodes the geometric and rotational structure of the electromagnetic field. Our result extends the equatorial analysis of [Hou et al. (2024)] and the off-equatorial leading-order result of [Chael et al. (2026)]. Near-horizon polarization thus offers a potential probe of the fundamental properties of rotating black holes and of gravito-electromagnetic interactions.

The geometry of the Einstein Telescope, the proposed next-generation European gravitational-wave observatory, is yet to be finalized. Two competing designs are under consideration: a nested triangular configuration (ET-Δ) and two separated L-shaped detectors (ET-2L). Extensive prior comparisons of ET designs established the scientific landscape using the Fisher-information-matrix formalism and identified that duty-cycle-induced single-detector operation is precisely the regime where this approximation becomes less reliable, underscoring the need for a refined, principled treatment of the duty cycle. In this manuscript, we build on that foundation by revisiting the comparison with full Bayesian parameter estimation of gravitational-wave signals from binary black-hole mergers, projected onto a simulated Einstein Telescope that incorporates a refined duty cycle modelled via continuous-time Markov chains and testing different detector maintenance strategies. We find that the redundancy inherent in the ET-Δ design enables it to maintain at least two operational detectors for the majority of the observing time, whereas the ET-2L configuration is often limited to a single detector. Crucially, we show that, during partial network operation, ET-Δ often outperforms ET-2L, and that the increased multi-detector uptime translates into tighter constraints on the luminosity distance and source-frame component masses. Notably, this remains true even when gravitational-wave events have a lower signal-to-noise ratio in ET-Δ than in ET-2L.

Kiselev solution is a metric that describes black holes immersed in a quintessence-like dark energy background. By introducing a dynamic state parameter $w_q$, the Kiselev solution is supposed to help comprehend the effect of quintessential matter on black holes. In this work, we study the evaporation behaviors of Kiselev black holes. By varying the state parameter $w_q$, we find that the decreasing state parameter lowers the non-final stage temperature and markedly prolongs the evaporation lifetime. We also find that the ultra-slow evaporation mechanism of Kiselev black holes differs vastly from the perfect fluid dark matter (PFDM) black holes and Horndeski black holes, which share the analogous ultra-long lifetime. These results illuminate the effects of dynamic dark energy background on black hole evaporation, provide a potential laboratory to constrain the value of $w_q$, and may complement cosmological and astrophysical observations, e.g., the DESI's preference for thawing dark energy and the observation of exploding black holes based on ultra-slow evaporation.

We propose an alternative interpretation of dark matter effects within the framework of General Relativity. In particular, we suggest that, in astrophysical and cosmological contexts, different initial assumptions about a system inevitably lead to different interpretations of the same phenomena. As a concrete example, we examine self-gravitating systems composed of an axially symmetric rotating dust fluid and show that effects typically attributed to the presence of additional matter, can instead be reproduced through an appropriate choice of initial and boundary conditions for the equations governing the system.

The Ashtekar-Lewandowski (AL) volume operator of loop quantum gravity is central to the Hamiltonian constraint, but its vertex action is usually obtained from dense spectral decompositions of finite recoupling matrices, obstructing numerical analysis on large kinematical Hilbert spaces or high-valence vertices. We formulate a matrix free action of the $SU(2)$ AL vertex volume operator in standard recoupling basis, making use of the Brunnemann-Thiemann expression for the oriented AL volume density $Q_{v}$ whose matrix elements can be generated locally from recoupling theory without forming the full matrix. Based on the Balakrishnan-Stieltjes representation of $(Q_{v}^{2})^{1/4}$ we approximate the volume by shifted-resolvent quadrature (SRQ). The resulting action uses only repeated applications of $Q_{v}$ and shifted positive linear solves, making it compatible with multi-shift Krylov methods. We prove exact preservation of the volume kernel, provide operator-norm and residual error estimates, discuss sector-wise scaling bounds, and validate the method on an embedded $K_{5}$ graph at small spin cutoffs against exact dense local-block operators. Numerical simulations show rapid convergence of vertex expectation values, controlled dependence on bound parameters, and exact preservation of zero-volume modes. We further demonstrate matrix free Monte Carlo estimates at doubled-spin cutoff $2j=250000$ beyond dense materialisation, and show that SRQ can be combined with stochastic Lanczos quadrature to estimate fixed-sector volume spectral measures without dense volume matrices.

Superconducting qubits are artificial atoms whose spectra and interactions can be engineered through appropriate circuit design, a versatility that can be exploited for quantum simulation. We theoretically investigate a linear array of capacitively coupled transmons, effectively described by a Bose-Hubbard Hamiltonian with attractive interaction. We revisit the discrete-soliton nature of the lowest-energy band of the spectrum, and identify spatially localized quantum solitons. The solitonic character of these states is revealed through their time evolution, which displays a quantum interference pattern, or quantum walk, highlighting their composite nature. We discuss protocols for preparing spatially localized quantum solitons that are compatible with current state-of-the-art tunable-transmon circuits. Our results demonstrate that superconducting circuits provide a promising and experimentally accessible platform for the investigation of quantum soliton physics.

In a previous work, the topology of inversion-symmetric one-dimensional periodic media was characterized through the pole-zero pattern of an impedance-like function associated with Bloch waves. This construction reproduces the Berry--Zak invariant and provides a criterion for topological interface states. In the present work, we give a geometric interpretation of this formalism. We show that poles and zeros arise naturally from the action of inversion symmetry on the projectivized space of Cauchy data. The corresponding Dirichlet and Neumann states are identified with the two fixed points of the induced $\mathbb Z_2$ action on the Riemann sphere. The key observation is that Bloch eigenvectors are naturally constructed on the universal covering of the Brillouin circle. The topology of the associated Real eigenline bundle is encoded in the action of the deck transformation group on lifted eigenvectors. This action is described by a monodromy sign $ρ\in\{\pm1\}$, determined by the inversion representations carried by the band at the fixed points of the Brillouin zone. We show that this monodromy defines a natural rank-one local system over the Brillouin circle. The corresponding Real line bundle is classified by its first Stiefel--Whitney class, which coincides with the associated $\mathbb Z_2$ pole-zero invariant. This establishes a geometric connection between the pole-zero formalism, Berry--Zak phases, Real bundles and local coefficient systems.

We develop an operator-algebraic framework for boundary conditions and bulk-boundary correspondence in one-dimensional gapped phases with categorical symmetry. Working directly in the thermodynamic limit, we construct half-infinite fusion spin chains and commuting-projector boundary Hamiltonians from a unitary fusion category $\mathcal{C}$, an indecomposable semisimple right $\mathcal{C}$-module category $\mathcal{M}$, a Q-system $Q\in\mathcal{C}$ specifying the bulk phase, and a right $Q$-module $K\in\mathcal{M}_{Q}$, regarded as an object of $\mathcal{M}_{Q}^{\mathrm{op}}$, specifying the boundary. We prove that these Hamiltonians have unique ground states and that the resulting realization functor $\mathcal{M}_{Q}^{\mathrm{op}}\to\mathrm{BCond}$ is an equivalence, so simple boundary conditions are classified by simple objects of $\mathcal{M}_{Q}$ and general boundary conditions by their finite direct sums. We also give a microscopic formulation of the boundary symmetry topological field theory using DHR bimodules of the boundary quasi-local algebra. For a half-infinite fusion spin chain, the boundary DHR category is monoidally equivalent to $(\mathcal{C}_{\mathcal{M}}^{\vee})^{\mathrm{rev}}$, and the canonical action of the bulk DHR category on it agrees with the categorical action of $Z_1(\mathcal{C}^{\mathrm{rev}})$. Finally, we identify the action of the boundary DHR category on boundary conditions with the categorical action of $(\mathcal{C}_{\mathcal{M}}^{\vee})^{\mathrm{rev}}$ on $\mathcal{M}_{Q}^{\mathrm{op}}$. This yields a one-dimensional bulk-boundary correspondence: the enriched monoidal category describing the bulk is the enriched center of the enriched category describing the boundary.

Out-of-time-ordered correlators (OTOCs) have emerged as a diagnostic of information scrambling and quantum chaos in many-body systems. We investigate the imprints of chaos in the dynamics of OTOCs in the Heisenberg spin-$1/2$ chain with random fields. The system is parameterized to exhibit a crossover from integrable to chaotic dynamics. We demonstrate numerically that the approach to saturation of the OTOC can distinguish between integrable and chaotic regimes, with a power-law $(1/t)$ relaxation for integrable systems and a higher-degree power-law decay $(1/t^α; α\ge 1)$ followed by an exponential relaxation for the chaotic regime. We further show that long-range spectral statistics, such as the number variance, are more effective in characterizing quantum chaos in the regime near saturation of OTOC. We also demonstrate that the relaxation and initial scrambling regimes exhibit distinct and universal features, with the former being sensitive and the latter being robust against different realizations of random-fields. The long-time saturation of OTOC also fluctuates with different realizations, and its exact expression is derived through the Eigenstate Thermalization Hypothesis.

Colloidal quantum dots that simultaneously offer room-temperature single-photon purity and high photoluminescence quantum yield are sought for quantum optics, but remain elusive in environmentally benign materials. We introduce a thermodynamic-kinetic decoupling strategy that transforms defect-tolerant CuInS2 quantum dots into bright, narrowband, and photostable single-photon emitters. Zn2+ alloying strains the lattice, thermodynamically suppressing native copper vacancies and narrowing the emission from a broad defect band of approximately 300 meV to an excitonic line of approximately 120 meV. Ga3+ incorporation then kinetically pins the cation sublattice against Cu+ migration, preventing defect regeneration during ZnS shell growth. The resulting Cd-free core/shell dots achieve near-unity quantum yield of approximately 98% while retaining narrow excitonic emission. Critically, room-temperature single-dot spectroscopy reveals homogeneous linewidths as low as approximately 58 meV, strongly suppressed blinking, and high-purity single-photon emission with g2(0) = 0.06. This stabilized excitonic emission directly reduces reabsorption losses in luminescent solar concentrators, yielding an external optical efficiency of 12.68%. Our work establishes a generalizable framework to unlock intrinsic excitonic photophysics in ion-mobile, defect-prone semiconductors, opening a viable path toward high-performance heavy-metal-free emitters for quantum light sources.

The path integral of the Dirac fermion with vector and axial gauge backgrounds is analyzed near the infrared limit in the presence of residual irrelevant current-current interaction. After integrating out fermions, a semiclassical low-energy effective action is obtained, written in terms of currents. Its expression is found to correspond to the hydrodynamic action previously proposed for perfect barotropic fluids with anomalies at zero temperature. This approach also leads to two further hydrodynamic actions to be associated, respectively, with the Weyl fermion, and the Dirac fermion having independent vector and axial currents. These actions feature four- and five-dimensional bulk-boundary terms, owing to anomaly inflow, which are identified as being the so-called transgression forms. These are generalizations of Chern--Simons forms that involve two gauge fields: the dynamical field and the background field. The path-integral argument provides a ``microscopic'' explanation for several ingredients of the action formulation of hydrodynamics that are necessary to incorporate anomalies. It also clarifies the infrared reduction required to pass from the effective field theory to a local hydrodynamic description. This reduction is implemented by considering restricted variations of the action, familiar from hydrodynamics, which at the same time lead to four-dimensional equations of motion from the five-dimensional transgression terms.

The self-averaging of the replica overlap is proven in the Edwards-Anderson (EA) model under random field almost everywhere in the coupling constant space in any dimension. The EA order parameter is represented in terms of the derivative of the free energy density with respect to the random field strength, regardless of boundary conditions. Tasaki's correlation inequality for finite-dimensional spin glass models shows that the expectation of the squared replica overlap is bounded by the squared EA order parameter. These simple evaluations enable us to prove that the variance of the replica overlap vanishes in the infinite-volume limit. The self-averaging of the replica bond overlap is proven also in the EA model with Gaussian exchange interaction without random field. Short-range spin glass models have been shown to behave differently from mean-field spin glass models with RSB phase.

We present a holographic dual of a two dimensional conformal field theory with non-hermitian but Parity-Time (PT) symmetric boundary conditions, by applying the AdS/BCFT duality and by introducing an imaginary valued scalar field localized on an end-of-the-world brane. We find that as we increase the strength of the non-hermitian PT symmetric interactions, the system experiences a spontaneous PT symmetry breaking. We also consider its Wick rotated setup as a new quantum quenched state and show that its growth of entanglement entropy can be larger than the standard results obtained from standard Cardy states.

The macroscopic instability of soft materials undergoing extreme deformations is traditionally viewed as a pure structural or mechanical failure. Driven by the quest to uncover universal principles across disparate physical systems, we bridge two vibrant yet seemingly disconnected research frontiers: macroscopic finite-strain solid mechanics and quantum-like topological physics. Here, we demonstrate that the classical elastic surface instability of a deformed hyperelastic manifold is not merely a mechanical bifurcation, but fundamentally a topological phase transition. By incorporating Lie group metric evolution into a generalized Stroh formalism, we map the highly nonlinear geometric frustration onto an algebraic surface impedance matrix $\mathbf{H}$. For a semi-infinite hyperelastic half-space under finite compression, we analytically map the system to a one-dimensional Dirac Hamiltonian, where the macroscopic mechanical stretch acts as a tunable knob for the Dirac mass. We reveal that the onset of surface wrinkles marks a topological transition from a trivial to a non-trivial phase characterized by a quantized step in the winding number, naturally giving rise to a robust, macroscopically localized zero-energy edge state. This fundamental linkage unifies macroscopic symmetry breaking with the topological paradigm, opening a new theoretical pathway for programmable smart soft matter.

We consider the problem of identifying a topological order based on bulk entanglement of the ground-state wavefunction. Previous work showed that some universal information can be extracted from multi-entropy measures, a class of multipartite entanglement measures obtained by applying permutation operators exchanging the degrees of freedom between different replicas of the wavefunction. It remains an open question to what extent such entanglement measures can be used to extract any universal information from the ground state. Here we show that the topological partition function $Z(M)$ of a manifold $M$ can be extracted provided that $M$ satisfies a topological condition which we term ``local achirality". We show that locally-achiral manifolds can be used to extract universal properties of 2+1d topological phases that go beyond the $S$ and $T$ matrices. As a first step towards classifying locally-achiral manifolds, we show that, in four dimensions, such manifolds have vanishing Pontryagin number. We relate this property to the existence of beyond-cohomology time-reversal symmetry protected topological order (T-SPT) in four dimensions. Finally, we present an entanglement measure that detects this nontrivial T-SPT.

Quantum systems governed by unitary and reversible microscopic dynamics may nevertheless exhibit equilibration, in the sense that some effective description becomes time-independent. Standard equilibration results usually consider two separate situations: system-environment structures, in which the composite system evolves unitarily while the system of interest equilibrates, and restricted measurements, such as coarse-grained POVMs and observables, in which the measurement statistics equilibrate. Here, we bring these descriptions into a common state-level framework using the concept of generalized subsystems, where the accessible effective state appears as the output of a quantum channel acting on the microscopic state. We derive bounds showing that generalized subsystems equilibrate when their dimension is small compared with the effective dimension of the discarded microscopic information. We further show that this condition is met for typical initial states in large subspaces and that the resulting equilibrium description is largely insensitive to microscopic initial details. The framework recovers the usual equilibration bounds for ordinary subsystems and finite families of POVMs. As an example, we also introduce a finite-resolution energy channel that maps unresolved microscopic energy levels into effective energy levels, thereby making residual effective coherences explicit and showing how spectral multiplicities constrain those coherences while strengthening equilibration. Our results provide a unified state-level formulation of quantum equilibration under general forms of limited accessible information.

We study signatures of quantum chaos in finite-loop truncations of the planar dilatation operator in the $\mathfrak{su}(2)$ sector of $\mathcal N=4$ super Yang-Mills and its $β$-deformation. These truncations define holographically motivated long-range deformations of the nearest-neighbour XXX spin chain. At one-loop the model is integrable, while the all-loop planar theory is expected to again be integrable. Finite-loop truncations therefore provide a natural setting for investigating how chaotic behaviour emerges between these two integrable limits. We analyse this question using spectral statistics, eigenvector diagnostics and spread complexity. We find that the two- and four-loop truncations develop GOE-like level statistics at sufficiently large coupling but with features characteristic of weak integrability breaking. The integrability breaking at four-loops is weaker than at two-loops and the critical coupling at which chaos occurs is larger, at least for long spin chains. The three-loop truncation does not show the same onset of chaos in the range studied. Eigenvector diagnostics show that the corresponding eigenstates remain less random than GOE vectors, indicating weak ergodicity and multifractality. Finally, we can identify signatures of the eigenvalue and eigenvector chaos in the Krylov-space data. Namely, we demonstrate a correlation of the level spacing statistics with the peak of spread complexity and disorder on the Krylov chain. The delocalisation of the initial state in the Hamiltonian eigenbasis is shown to strongly affect the saturation of complexity. Our results suggest that finite-loop dilatation operators are not generic long-range spin chain Hamiltonians, but already display patterns consistent with the restoration of integrability in the all-loop planar theory.