  Two key ingredients to carry out inference on the copula of multivariate
observations are the empirical copula process and an appropriate resampling
scheme for the latter. Among the existing techniques used for i.i.d.
observations, the multiplier bootstrap of R\'{e}millard and Scaillet (J.
Multivariate Anal. 100 (2009) 377-386) frequently appears to lead to inference
procedures with the best finite-sample properties. B\"{u}cher and Ruppert (J.
Multivariate Anal. 116 (2013) 208-229) recently proposed an extension of this
technique to strictly stationary strongly mixing observations by adapting the
dependent multiplier bootstrap of B\"{u}hlmann (The blockwise bootstrap in time
series and empirical processes (1993) ETH Z\"{u}rich, Section 3.3) to the
empirical copula process. The main contribution of this work is a
generalization of the multiplier resampling scheme proposed by B\"{u}cher and
Ruppert along two directions. First, the resampling scheme is now genuinely
sequential, thereby allowing to transpose to the strongly mixing setting many
of the existing multiplier tests on the unknown copula, including nonparametric
tests for change-point detection. Second, the resampling scheme is now fully
automatic as a data-adaptive procedure is proposed which can be used to
estimate the bandwidth parameter. A simulation study is used to investigate the
finite-sample performance of the resampling scheme and provides suggestions on
how to choose several additional parameters. As by-products of this work, the
validity of a sequential version of the dependent multiplier bootstrap for
empirical processes of B\"{u}hlmann is obtained under weaker conditions on the
strong mixing coefficients and the multipliers, and the weak convergence of the
sequential empirical copula process is established under many serial dependence
conditions.


  We studied optical absorption of single-walled carbon nanotubes by varying
the dielectric environment. For the two different components of the broad UV
absorption feature conventionally referred to as the pi-plasmon, we find that
the component at 5.0 - 5.3 eV exhibits remarkable spectral changes, based on
which we attribute this to a dipolar radial surface plasmon. However, the
component at ~4.5 eV remains unchanged, raising a fundamental question as to
its conventional attribution. We discuss its relation with the absorption
feature at ~4.5 eV in graphite arising from an interband transition.


  The diagnostic capabilities of spectral lines in far ultraviolet (FUV) and
extreme ultraviolet (EUV) wavelength range are explored in terms of their Hanle
and Zeeman sensitivity to probe vector magnetic field in the solar corona. The
temperature range covered is log$_{10}(T)=5.5-6.3$. The circular polarization
signal due to longitudinal Zeeman effect is estimated for spectral lines in the
wavelength range of 500 to 1600 \r{A}. The Stokes $V/I$ signal for a FUV line
is found to be in the order of 10$^{-4}$ for a longitudinal field strength of
10 Gauss, which further reduces to 10$^{-5}$ for wavelengths below 1200 \r{A}.
Due to such low signals, the present study aims to find combination of spectral
lines having different Hanle sensitivity but with identical peak formation
temperature to probe coronal magnetic field vector. The combination of Hanle
sensitive lines is better suited because the Hanle signals are stronger by at
least an order of magnitude compared to Zeeman signals. The linear polarization
signals due to Hanle effect from at least two spectral lines are required to
derive information on the full vector. It is found from this study that there
is always a pair of Hanle sensitive lines for a given temperature range
suitable for probing coronal vector magnetic field and they are located in
close proximity with each other in terms of their wavelength.


  Human judgments obtained through Mean Opinion Scores (MOS) are the most
reliable way to assess the quality of speech signals. However, several recent
attempts to automatically estimate MOS using deep learning approaches lack
robustness and generalization capabilities, limiting their use in real-world
applications. In this work, we present a novel framework, NORESQA-MOS, for
estimating the MOS of a speech signal. Unlike prior works, our approach uses
non-matching references as a form of conditioning to ground the MOS estimation
by neural networks. We show that NORESQA-MOS provides better generalization and
more robust MOS estimation than previous state-of-the-art methods such as
DNSMOS and NISQA, even though we use a smaller training set. Moreover, we also
show that our generic framework can be combined with other learning methods
such as self-supervised learning and can further supplement the benefits from
these methods.


  The physics of peripheral collisions with relativistic heavy ions (PCRHI) is
reviewed. One- and two-photon processes are discussed.


  Massive dual spin zero fields are reconsidered in four spacetime dimensions.
A closed-form Lagrangian is presented that describes a field coupled to the
gradient of its own energy-momentum tensor.


  Accurate prediction of future prices of stocks is a difficult task to
perform. Even more challenging is to design an optimized portfolio of stocks
with the identification of proper weights of allocation to achieve the
optimized values of return and risk. We present optimized portfolios based on
the seven sectors of the Indian economy. The past prices of the stocks are
extracted from the web from January 1, 2016, to December 31, 2020. Optimum
portfolios are designed on the selected seven sectors. An LSTM regression model
is also designed for predicting future stock prices. Five months after the
construction of the portfolios, i.e., on June 1, 2021, the actual and predicted
returns and risks of each portfolio are computed. The predicted and the actual
returns indicate the very high accuracy of the LSTM model.


  We develop and analyze multilevel methods for nonuniformly elliptic operators
whose ellipticity holds in a weighted Sobolev space with an $A_2$--Muckenhoupt
weight. Using the so-called Xu-Zikatanov (XZ) identity, we derive a nearly
uniform convergence result, under the assumption that the underlying mesh is
quasi-uniform. We also consider the so-called $\alpha$-harmonic extension to
localize fractional powers of elliptic operators. Motivated by the scheme
proposed in [R.H. Nochetto, E. Otarola, and A.J. Salgado. A PDE approach to
fractional diffusion in general domains: a priori error analysis.
arXiv:1302.0698, 2013] we present a multilevel method with line smoothers and
obtain a nearly uniform convergence result on anisotropic meshes. Numerical
experiments reveal a competitive performance of our method.


  We study systematically the role of temperature in the optical response of
doped two-dimensional semiconductors. By making use of a finite-temperature
Fermi-polaron theory, we reveal a crossover from a quantum-degenerate regime
with well-defined polaron quasiparticles to an incoherent regime at high
temperature or low doping where the lowest energy "attractive" polaron
quasiparticle is destroyed, becoming subsumed into a broad trion-hole
continuum. We demonstrate that the crossover is accompanied by significant
qualitative changes in both absorption and photoluminescence. In particular,
with increasing temperature (or decreasing doping), the emission profile of the
attractive branch evolves from a symmetric Lorentzian to an asymmetric peak
with an exponential tail involving trions and recoil electrons at finite
momentum. We discuss the effect of temperature on the coupling to light for
structures embedded into a microcavity, and we show that there can exist
well-defined polariton quasiparticles even when the exciton-polaron
quasiparticle has been destroyed, where the transition from weak to strong
light-matter coupling can be explained in terms of the polaron linewidths and
spectral weights.


  We present UBVRcIc photometric study of three intermediate age open star
clusters NGC 381, NGC 2360, and Berkeley 68 (Be 68). We examine the cluster
membership of stars using recently released Gaia DR2 proper motions and obtain
a total of 116, 332, and 264 member stars in these three clusters. The mean
reddening of E(B - V) = 0.36+/-0.04, 0.08+/-0.03, and 0.52+/-0.04 mag are found
in the direction of these clusters where we observe an anomalous reddening
towards NGC 381. We fitted the solar metallicity isochrones to determine age
and distance of the clusters which are found to be log(Age) = 8.65+/-0.05,
8.95+/-0.05, and 9.25+/-0.05 yr with the respective distance of 957+/-152,
982+/-132, and 2554+/-387 pc for the clusters NGC 381, NGC 2360, and Be 68. A
two-stage power law in the mass function (MF) slope is observed in the cluster
NGC 381, however, we observe only a single MF slope in the clusters NGC 2360
and Be68. To study a possible spatial variation in the slope of MF we estimate
slopes separately in the inner and the outer regions of these clusters and
notice a steeper slope in outer region. The dynamic study of these clusters
reveals deficiency of low-mass stars in their inner regions suggesting the mass
segregation process in all these clusters. The relaxation times of 48.5, 78.9,
and 87.6 Myr are obtained for the clusters NGC 381, NGC 2360, and Be 68,
respectively which are well below to their respective ages. This suggests that
all the clusters are dynamically relaxed.


  Static and inflating brane world models are considered in $4+n$-dimensions
with a non zero bulk cosmological constant and with a hyper-spherically
symmetric topological defect residing in the $n$ extra dimensions. Several
vacuum solutions can be constructed explicitely when the bulk and inflating
constants are non zero. We study how these solutions are deformed by the
presence of a global monopole for generic values of $n$ and a local monopole
for $n=3$. New types of solutions, regular and periodic in the radial variable
relative to the extra dimensions, are constructed.


  The jet opening angle theta_jet and the bulk Lorentz factor Gamma_0 are
crucial parameters for the computation of the energetics of Gamma Ray Bursts
(GRBs). From the ~30 GRBs with measured theta_jet or Gamma_0 it is known that:
(i) the real energetic E_gamma, obtained by correcting the isotropic equivalent
energy E_iso for the collimation factor ~theta_jet^2, is clustered around
10^50-10^51 erg and it is correlated with the peak energy E_p of the prompt
emission and (ii) the comoving frame E'_p and E'_gamma are clustered around
typical values. Current estimates of Gamma_0 and theta_jet are based on
incomplete data samples and their observed distributions could be subject to
biases. Through a population synthesis code we investigate whether different
assumed intrinsic distributions of Gamma_0 and theta_jet can reproduce a set of
observational constraints. Assuming that all bursts have the same E'_p and
E'_gamma in the comoving frame, we find that Gamma_0 and theta_jet cannot be
distributed as single power-laws. The best agreement between our simulation and
the available data is obtained assuming (a) log-normal distributions for
theta_jet and Gamma_0 and (b) an intrinsic relation between the peak values of
their distributions, i.e theta_jet^2.5*Gamma_0=const. On average, larger values
of Gamma_0 (i.e. the "faster" bursts) correspond to smaller values of theta_jet
(i.e. the "narrower"). We predict that ~6% of the bursts that point to us
should not show any jet break in their afterglow light curve since they have
sin(theta_jet)<1/Gamma_0. Finally, we estimate that the local rate of GRBs is
~0.3% of all local SNIb/c and ~4.3% of local hypernovae, i.e. SNIb/c with
broad-lines.


  The Weil-Kostant integrality theorem states that given a smooth manifold
endowed with an integral complex closed 2-form, then there exists a line bundle
with connection on this manifold with curvature the given 2-form. It also
characterises the moduli space of line bundles with connection that arise in
this way. This theorem was extended to the case of p-forms by Gajer in [Ga]. In
this paper we provide a generalization of this theorem where we replace the
original manifold by a derived smooth Artin stack. Our derived Artin stacks are
geometric stacks on the \'etale (\infty,1)-site of affine derived smooth
manifolds. We introduce the notion of a n-shifted p-preplectic derived smooth
Artin stack in analogy with the algebraic case constructed by
Pantev-To\"en-Vaqui\'e-Vezzosi in [PTVV]. This is a derived smooth Artin stack
endowed with a complex closed (p+1)-form which has been cohomologically shifted
by degree n. It is a far reaching generalization of a p-preplectic manifold
which includes orbifolds and other highly singular objects. We then show that
when its n-shifted p-preplectic form is integral, then there exists a
(p+n-1)-gerbe with p-connection data and curvature corresponding to the
original p-preplectic form. We also provide the characterization of the moduli
stack of gerbes with connections arising in this context. We construct a
canonical functor from the (\infty,1)-category of integral n-shifted
p-preplectic derived smooth Artin stacks to the (\infty,1)-category of linear
(\infty,p+n-1)-categories. When n=0 and p=1, this functor can be thought of
like a cohomology functor in that it associates to a derived presymplectic
smooth Artin stack a linear invariant in the form of a differential graded
module. In the general case we obtain higher prequantum categories which
requires the machinery of linear (\infty,n)-categories.


  We explore the relative advantages in continuous-variable quantum
teleportation when non-Gaussian operations, namely, photon subtraction,
addition, and catalysis, are performed before and after interaction with a
noisy channel. We generate the resource state for teleporting unknown coherent
and squeezed vacuum states using two distinct strategies: (i) Implementation of
non-Gaussian operations on TMSV state before interaction with a noisy channel,
(ii) Implementation of non-Gaussian operations after interaction of TMSV state
with a noisy channel. The results show that either of the two strategies could
be more beneficial than the other depending on the type of the non-Gaussian
operation, the initial squeezing of the TMSV state, and the parameters
characterizing the noisy channel. This strategy can be utilized to effectively
improve the efficiency of various non-Gaussian continuous variable quantum
information processing tasks in a dissipative environment.


  In the type-I seesaw mechanism, both the light Majorana neutrinos (\nu_1,
\nu_2, \nu_3) and the heavy Majorana neutrinos (N_1, ..., N_n) can mediate the
neutrinoless double-beta (0\nu\beta\beta) decay. We point out that the
contribution of \nu_i to this 0\nu\beta\beta process is also dependent on the
masses M_k and the mixing parameters R_{ek} of N_k as a direct consequence of
the exact seesaw relation, and the effective mass term of \nu_i is in most
cases dominant over that of N_i. We obtain a new bound |\sum R^2_{ek} M_k| <
0.23 eV (or < 0.85 eV as a more conservative limit) at the 2\sigma level, which
is much stronger than |\sum R^2_{ek} M^{-1}_k| < 5 \times 10^{-8} GeV^{-1} used
in some literature, from current experimental constraints on the 0\nu\beta\beta
decay. Taking the minimal type-I seesaw scenario for example, we illustrate the
possibility of determining or constraining two heavy Majorana neutrino masses
by using more accurate low-energy data on lepton number violation and
non-unitarity of neutrino mixing.


  We study non-BPS D-branes in the type II string vacua with chiral space-time
SUSY constructed based on the asymmetric orbifolds of $\mbox{K3} \cong
T^4/{\Bbb Z}_2$ as a succeeding work of arXiv:1704.05262[hep-th]. We especially
focus on the fractional D-branes that contains the contributions from the
twisted sector of the ${\Bbb Z}_2$ orbifolding.
  We show that the cylinder partition functions for these fractional branes do
not vanish, as in the cases of ordinary non-BPS D-branes. This aspect is in a
sharp contrast with the bulk-type branes studied in arXiv:1704.05262[hep-th].
We then discuss the extensions of models by including the discrete torsion
depending on the spin structures, and investigate whether we obtain the
vanishing self-overlaps associated to the fractional branes. The
existence/absence of bose-fermi cancellations both in the closed and open
string spectra as well as the massless spectra in the twisted sectors crucially
depend on the discrete torsion. We find that some choices of the torsion indeed
realize the vanishing self-overlaps for the fractional branes, with keeping the
vanishing torus partition function intact.


  We prove the integrability of the short pulse equation derived recently by
Sch\"afer and Wayne from a hamiltonian point of view. We give its
bi-hamiltonian structure and show how the recursion operator defined by the
hamiltonian operators is connected with the one obtained by Sakovich and
Sakovich. An alternative zero-curvature formulation is also given.


  Mining frequent tree patterns has many applications in different areas such
as XML data, bioinformatics and World Wide Web. The crucial step in frequent
pattern mining is frequency counting, which involves a matching operator to
find occurrences (instances) of a tree pattern in a given collection of trees.
A widely used matching operator for tree-structured data is subtree
homeomorphism, where an edge in the tree pattern is mapped onto an
ancestor-descendant relationship in the given tree. Tree patterns that are
frequent under subtree homeomorphism are usually called embedded patterns. In
this paper, we present an efficient algorithm for subtree homeomorphism with
application to frequent pattern mining. We propose a compact data-structure,
called occ, which stores only information about the rightmost paths of
occurrences and hence can encode and represent several occurrences of a tree
pattern. We then define efficient join operations on the occ data-structure,
which help us count occurrences of tree patterns according to occurrences of
their proper subtrees. Based on the proposed subtree homeomorphism method, we
develop an effective pattern mining algorithm, called TPMiner. We evaluate the
efficiency of TPMiner on several real-world and synthetic datasets. Our
extensive experiments confirm that TPMiner always outperforms well-known
existing algorithms, and in several cases the improvement with respect to
existing algorithms is significant.


  Predicting the future interaction of objects when they come into contact with
their environment is key for autonomous agents to take intelligent and
anticipatory actions. This paper presents a perception framework that fuses
visual and tactile feedback to make predictions about the expected motion of
objects in dynamic scenes. Visual information captures object properties such
as 3D shape and location, while tactile information provides critical cues
about interaction forces and resulting object motion when it makes contact with
the environment. Utilizing a novel See-Through-your-Skin (STS) sensor that
provides high resolution multimodal sensing of contact surfaces, our system
captures both the visual appearance and the tactile properties of objects. We
interpret the dual stream signals from the sensor using a Multimodal
Variational Autoencoder (MVAE), allowing us to capture both modalities of
contacting objects and to develop a mapping from visual to tactile interaction
and vice-versa. Additionally, the perceptual system can be used to infer the
outcome of future physical interactions, which we validate through simulated
and real-world experiments in which the resting state of an object is predicted
from given initial conditions.


  Collective plasmon modes, riding on top of drifting electrons, acquire a
fascinating nonreciprocal dispersion characterized by $\omega_p(\bm{q}) \neq
\omega_p(-\bm{q})$. The {\it classical} plasmonic Doppler shift arises from the
polarization of the Fermi surface due to the applied DC bias voltage. Going
beyond this paradigm, we predict a {\it quantum} plasmonic Doppler shift
originating from the quantum metric of the Bloch wavefunction. We
systematically compare the classical and quantum Doppler shifts by
investigating the drift-induced nonreciprocal plasmon dispersion in generic
quantum systems. We demonstrate quantum nonreciprocal plasmons in graphene and
twisted bilayer graphene. We show that the quantum plasmonic Doppler shift
dominates in \moire systems at large wavevectors, yielding plasmonic
nonreciprocity up to 20\% in twisted bilayer graphene. Our findings demonstrate
the supremacy of plasmonic quantum Doppler shift in \moire systems, motivating
the design of innovative nonreciprocal photonic devices with potential
technological implications.


  In using data assimilation to import information from observations to
estimate parameters and state variables of a model, one must assume a
distribution for the noise in the measurements and in the model errors. Using
the path integral formulation of data assimilation~ cite{abar2009}, we
introduce the idea of self consistency of the distribution of stochastic model
errors: the distribution of model errors from the path integral with observed
data should be consistent with the assumption made in formulating the the path
integral. The path integral setting for data assimilation is discussed to
provide the setting for the consistency test. Using two examples drawn from the
1996 Lorenz model, for $D = 100$ and for $D = 20$ we show how one can test for
this inconsistency with essential no additional effort than that expended in
extracting answers to interesting questions from data assimilation itself.
\end{abstract}


  In this paper we will extend the product of spectral triples to a product of
semifinite spectral triples. We will prove that finite summability and
regularity are preserved under taking products. Connes and Marcolli constructed
for each $z\in(0,\infty)$ a type ${\rm II}_\infty$-semifinite spectral triple
which can be considered as a geometric space of dimension $z$. A small adaption
of their construction yields a type ${\rm I}$-semifinite spectral triple. We
will investigate the properties of these semifinite spectral triples. At the
same time we will also avoid the need for an infra-red cutoff to compute the
dimension spectrum. Using this collection of semifinite spectral triples and
the product of semifinite spectral triples one can construct a mathematical
tool for dimensional and zeta-function regularisation in quantum field theory.


  We report the discovery and characterization of two transiting planets around
the bright M1 V star LP 961-53 (TOI-776, J = 8.5 mag, M = 0.54+-0.03 Msun)
detected during Sector 10 observations of the Transiting Exoplanet Survey
Satellite (TESS). Combining the TESS photometry with HARPS radial velocities,
as well as ground-based follow-up transit observations from MEarth and LCOGT
telescopes, we measured for the inner planet, TOI-776 b, a period of 8.25 d, a
radius of 1.85+-0.13 Re, and a mass of 4.0+-0.9 Me; and for the outer planet,
TOI-776 c, a period of 15.66 d, a radius of 2.02+-0.14 Re, and a mass of
5.3+-1.8 Me. The Doppler data shows one additional signal, with a period of 34
d, associated with the rotational period of the star. The analysis of fifteen
years of ground-based photometric monitoring data and the inspection of
different spectral line indicators confirm this assumption. The bulk densities
of TOI-776 b and c allow for a wide range of possible interior and atmospheric
compositions. However, both planets have retained a significant atmosphere,
with slightly different envelope mass fractions. Thanks to their location near
the radius gap for M dwarfs, we can start to explore the mechanism(s)
responsible for the radius valley emergence around low-mass stars as compared
to solar-like stars. While a larger sample of well-characterized planets in
this parameter space is still needed to draw firm conclusions, we tentatively
estimate that the stellar mass below which thermally-driven mass loss is no
longer the main formation pathway for sculpting the radius valley is between
0.63 and 0.54 Msun. Due to the brightness of the star, the TOI-776 system is
also an excellent target for the James Webb Space Telescope, providing a
remarkable laboratory to break the degeneracy in planetary interior models and
to test formation and evolution theories of small planets around low-mass
stars.


  Feature matters for salient object detection. Existing methods mainly focus
on designing a sophisticated structure to incorporate multi-level features and
filter out cluttered features. We present Progressive Feature Polishing Network
(PFPN), a simple yet effective framework to progressively polish the
multi-level features to be more accurate and representative. By employing
multiple Feature Polishing Modules (FPMs) in a recurrent manner, our approach
is able to detect salient objects with fine details without any
post-processing. A FPM parallelly updates the features of each level by
directly incorporating all higher level context information. Moreover, it can
keep the dimensions and hierarchical structures of the feature maps, which
makes it flexible to be integrated with any CNN-based models. Empirical
experiments show that our results are monotonically getting better with
increasing number of FPMs. Without bells and whistles, PFPN outperforms the
state-of-the-art methods significantly on five benchmark datasets under various
evaluation metrics.


  The thermodynamic and transport properties of intermetallic compounds with
Ce, Eu, and Yb ions are discussed using the periodic Anderson model with an
infinite correlation between $f$ electrons. The slave boson solution of the
periodic model shows that the Fermi liquid scale T$_0$ and the Kondo scale
T$_K$ depend on the shape of the conduction electrons density of states ($c$
DOS) in the vicinity of the chemical potential, that the details of the band
structure determine the ratio T$_0$/T$_K$, and that the crossover between the
high- and low-temperature regimes in ordered compounds is system-dependent.
  A sharp peak in the $c$ DOS yields T$_0 \ll$T$_K$ and explains the 'slow
crossover' observed in YbAl$_3$ or YbMgCu$_4$. A minimum in the $c$ DOS yields
T$_0 \gg$T$_K$, which leads to the abrupt transition between the high- and
low-temperature regimes in YbInCu$_4$. In the case of CeCu$_2$Ge$_2$ and
CeCu$_2$Si$_2$, where T$_0 \simeq T_K$, the slave boson solution explains the
pressure experiments which reveal sharp peaks in the T$^2$ coefficient of the
electrical resistance, $A=\rho(T)/T^2$, and the residual resistance. These
peaks are due to the change in the degeneracy of the $f$ states induced by the
applied pressure.
  We show that the low-temperature response of the periodic Anderson model can
be enhanced (or reduced) with respect to the predictions based on the
single-impurity models that give the same high-temperature behavior.


  We consider light propagation through a ballistic amplifying photonic
honeycomb lattice below the lasing threshold. Two sublattices of the system are
formed by the wave-guides with different complex dielectric permittivities,
which results in the non-Hermitian Dirac equation for electromagnetic field. We
reveal that there exists a critical length of the amplifying region for which
the photonic lattice exhibits an amplifier to generator transition. The
transmission and reflection probabilities at the normal angle of incidence are
strongly enhanced at a critical length of the system. We also comment on the
sensitivity of amplification to the direction of incident light and the
thickness of the amplifying region.


  The implications of the first AMS-02 $\bar p/p$ data for the propagation of
cosmic rays and the properties of dark matter (DM) are discussed. Using various
diffusive re-acceleration (DR) propagation models, one can derive very
conservative upper limits on the DM annihilation cross sections. The limits
turned out to be compatible with that from the Ferm-LAT gamma-ray data on the
dwarf spheroidal satellite galaxies. The flattening of the $\bar p/p$ spectrum
above $\sim 100$~GeV in the current data still leaves some room for TeV scale
DM particles. More antiproton data at high kinetic energies are needed to
constrain the properties of the DM particles.


  We derive the equations of motion of dyonic black hole binaries with electric
and magnetic charges and explore features of static orbits. By using a
Newtonian method with the inclusion of radiation reaction, we calculate the
total emission rate of energy and angular momentum due to gravitational
radiation and electromagnetic radiation for circular orbits. Moreover, we
obtain the evolutions of orbits and calculate merger times of dyonic binaries.
We show that electric and magnetic charges significantly suppress the merger
times of dyonic binaries. Our results provide rich information about dyonic
binaries and can be used to test black holes with magnetic charges.


  We propose WayEx, a new method for learning complex goal-conditioned robotics
tasks from a single demonstration. Our approach distinguishes itself from
existing imitation learning methods by demanding fewer expert examples and
eliminating the need for information about the actions taken during the
demonstration. This is accomplished by introducing a new reward function and
employing a knowledge expansion technique. We demonstrate the effectiveness of
WayEx, our waypoint exploration strategy, across six diverse tasks, showcasing
its applicability in various environments. Notably, our method significantly
reduces training time by 50% as compared to traditional reinforcement learning
methods. WayEx obtains a higher reward than existing imitation learning methods
given only a single demonstration. Furthermore, we demonstrate its success in
tackling complex environments where standard approaches fall short. More
information is available at: https://waypoint-ex.github.io.


  We study multi-photon effects in quantum electrodynamics in lepton
photo-production on heavy nuclei and nuclear medium at high energies. We are
interested in energy, charge density and nuclear geometry dependence of the
cross sections. We use the impact parameter representation that allows us to
reduce the problem of photo-production to the problem of propagation of
electric dipoles in the nuclear Coulomb field. In the framework of the Glauber
model we resum an infinite series of multiphoton amplitudes corresponding to
multiple rescattering of the electric dipole on the nucleus. We find that
unitarity effects arising due to multi-photon interactions are small and
energy-independent for scattering on a single nucleus, whereas in the case of
macroscopic nuclear medium they saturate the geometric limit of the total cross
section. We discuss an analogy between nuclear medium and intense laser beams.


  High perceptual quality and low distortion degree are two important goals in
image restoration tasks such as super-resolution (SR). Most of the existing SR
methods aim to achieve these goals by minimizing the corresponding yet
conflicting losses, such as the $\ell_1$ loss and the adversarial loss.
Unfortunately, the commonly used gradient-based optimizers, such as Adam, are
hard to balance these objectives due to the opposite gradient decent directions
of the contradictory losses. In this paper, we formulate the
perception-distortion trade-off in SR as a multi-objective optimization problem
and develop a new optimizer by integrating the gradient-free evolutionary
algorithm (EA) with gradient-based Adam, where EA and Adam focus on the
divergence and convergence of the optimization directions respectively. As a
result, a population of optimal models with different perception-distortion
preferences is obtained. We then design a fusion network to merge these models
into a single stronger one for an effective perception-distortion trade-off.
Experiments demonstrate that with the same backbone network, the
perception-distortion balanced SR model trained by our method can achieve
better perceptual quality than its competitors while attaining better
reconstruction fidelity. Codes and models can be found at
https://github.com/csslc/EA-Adam.


  Let $A$ be a symmetric $k$-algebra over a perfect field $k$. K\"ulshammer
defined for any integer $n$ a mapping $\zeta\_n$ on the degree 0 Hochschild
cohomology and a mapping $\kappa\_n$ on the degree 0 Hochschild homology of $A$
as adjoint mappings of the respective $p$-power mappings with respect to the
symmetrizing bilinear form. In an earlier paper it is shown that $\zeta\_n$ is
invariant under derived equivalences. In the present paper we generalize the
definition of $\kappa\_n$ to higher Hochschild homology and show the invariance
of $\kappa$ and its generalization under derived equivalences. This provides
fine invariants of derived categories.


  With increasing array size, it is increasingly important to control stray
radiation inside the detector chips themselves. We demonstrate this effect with
focal plane arrays of absorber coupled Lumped Element microwave Kinetic
Inductance Detectors (LEKIDs) and lens-antenna coupled distributed quarter
wavelength Microwave Kinetic Inductance Detectors (MKIDs). In these arrays the
response from a point source at the pixel position is at a similar level to the
stray response integrated over the entire chip area. For the antenna coupled
arrays, we show that this effect can be suppressed by incorporating an on-chip
stray light absorber. A similar method should be possible with the LEKID array,
especially when they are lens coupled.


  It is challenging to deal with censored data, where we only have access to
the incomplete information of survival time instead of its exact value.
Fortunately, under linear predictor assumption, people can obtain guaranteed
coverage for the confidence band of survival time using methods like Cox
Regression. However, when relaxing the linear assumption with neural networks
(e.g., Cox-MLP (Katzman et al., 2018; Kvamme et al., 2019)), we lose the
guaranteed coverage. To recover the guaranteed coverage without linear
assumption, we propose two algorithms based on conformal inference. In the
first algorithm WCCI, we revisit weighted conformal inference and introduce a
new non-conformity score based on partial likelihood. We then propose a
two-stage algorithm T-SCI, where we run WCCI in the first stage and apply
quantile conformal inference to calibrate the results in the second stage.
Theoretical analysis shows that T-SCI returns guaranteed coverage under milder
assumptions than WCCI. We conduct extensive experiments on synthetic data and
real data using different methods, which validate our analysis.


  The sine-Gordon equation, used as the representative nonlinear wave equation,
presents a bistable behavior resulting from nonlinearity and generating
hysteresis properties. We show that the process can be understood in a
comprehensive analytical formulation and that it is a generic property of
nonlinear systems possessing a natural band gap. The approach allows to
discover that sine-Gordon can work as an it ideal switch by reaching a
transmissive regime with vanishing driving amplitude.


  Using numerical arguments we find that for $N$ = 306 a tetrahedral
configuration ($T_h$) and for N=542 a dihedral configuration ($D_5$) are likely
the global energy minimum for Thomson's problem of minimizing the energy of $N$
unit charges on the surface of a unit conducting sphere. These would be the
largest $N$ by far, outside of the icosadeltahedral series, for which a global
minimum for Thomson's problem is known. We also note that the current
theoretical understanding of Thomson's problem does not rule out a symmetric
configuration as the global minima for N=306 and 542. We explicitly find that
analogues of the tetrahedral and dihedral configurations for $N$ larger than
306 and 542, respectively, are not global minima, thus helping to confirm the
theory of Dodgson and Moore (Phys. Rev. B 55, 3816 (1997)) that as $N$ grows
dislocation defects can lower the lattice strain of symmetric configurations
and concomitantly the energy. As well, making explicit previous work by
ourselves and others, for $N<1000$ we give a full accounting of
icosadeltahedral configuration which are not global minima and those which
appear to be, and discuss how this listing and our results for the tetahedral
and dihedral configurations may be used to refine theoretical understanding of
Thomson's problem.


  We describe the design of our federated task processing system. Originally,
the system was created to support two specific federated tasks: evaluation and
tuning of on-device ML systems, primarily for the purpose of personalizing
these systems. In recent years, support for an additional federated task has
been added: federated learning (FL) of deep neural networks. To our knowledge,
only one other system has been described in literature that supports FL at
scale. We include comparisons to that system to help discuss design decisions
and attached trade-offs. Finally, we describe two specific large scale
personalization use cases in detail to showcase the applicability of federated
tuning to on-device personalization and to highlight application specific
solutions.


  The exclusive or (xor) function is one of the simplest examples that
illustrate why nonlinear feedforward networks are superior to linear regression
for machine learning applications. We review the xor representation and
approximation problems and discuss their solutions in terms of probabilistic
logic and associative copula functions. After briefly reviewing the
specification of feedforward networks, we compare the dynamics of learned error
surfaces with different activation functions such as RELU and tanh through a
set of colorful three-dimensional charts. The copula representations extend xor
from Boolean to real values, thereby providing a convenient way to demonstrate
the concept of cross-validation on in-sample and out-sample data sets. Our
approach is pedagogical and is meant to be a machine learning prolegomenon.


  Electrical control of magnetization is of crucial importance for integrated
spintronics devices. Spin-orbit torques (SOT) in heavy-metal/ferromagnetic
heterostructures have emerged as promising tool to achieve efficiently
current-induced magnetization reversal. However, the microscopic origin of the
SOT is being debated,with the spin Hall effect (SHE) due to nonlocal spin
currents and the spin Rashba-Edelstein effect (SREE) due to local spin
polarization at the interface being the primary candidates. We investigate the
electrically induced out-of-equilibrium spin and orbital polarizations in pure
Pt films and in Pt/3d-metal (Co, Ni, Cu) bilayer films using ab initio
electronic structure methods and linear-response theory. We compute
atom-resolved response quantities that allow us to identify the induced
spin-polarization contributions that lead to fieldlike SOTs, mostly associated
with the SREE, and dampinglike (DL) SOTs, mostly associated with the SHE, and
compare their relative magnitude, dependence on the magnetization direction, as
well as their Pt-layer thickness dependence. We find that both the FL and DL
components contribute to the resulting SOT at the Pt/Co and Pt/Ni interfaces,
with the former contributions being larger at the Pt interface layer and the
latter larger in the Co or Ni layers. Our calculations show that the
electrically-induced transverse orbital polarization is exceedingly larger than
the induced spin polarization and present even without spin-orbit coupling, in
contrast to the spin polarization.


  We describe a method, based on techniques used in molecular dynamics, for
simulating the inertialess dynamics of an elastic filament immersed in a fluid.
The model is used to study the "one-armed swimmer". That is, a flexible
appendage externally perturbed at one extremity. For small amplitude motion our
simulations confirm theoretical predictions that, for a filament of given
length and stiffness, there is a driving frequency that is optimal for both
speed and efficiency. However, we find that to calculate absolute values of the
swimming speed we need to slightly modify existing theoretical approaches. For
the more realistic case of large amplitude motion we find that while the basic
picture remains the same, the dependence of the swimming speed on both
frequency and amplitude is substantially modified. For realistic amplitudes we
show that the one armed swimmer is comparatively neither inefficient nor slow.
This begs the question, why are there little or no one armed swimmers in
nature?


  Accurately extracting structured data from structure diagrams in financial
announcements is of great practical importance for building financial knowledge
graphs and further improving the efficiency of various financial applications.
First, we proposed a new method for recognizing structure diagrams in financial
announcements, which can better detect and extract different types of
connecting lines, including straight lines, curves, and polylines of different
orientations and angles. Second, we developed a two-stage method to efficiently
generate the industry's first benchmark of structure diagrams from Chinese
financial announcements, where a large number of diagrams were synthesized and
annotated using an automated tool to train a preliminary recognition model with
fairly good performance, and then a high-quality benchmark can be obtained by
automatically annotating the real-world structure diagrams using the
preliminary model and then making few manual corrections. Finally, we
experimentally verified the significant performance advantage of our structure
diagram recognition method over previous methods.


  The TMT Detailed Science Case describes the transformational science that the
Thirty Meter Telescope will enable. Planned to begin science operations in
2024, TMT will open up opportunities for revolutionary discoveries in
essentially every field of astronomy, astrophysics and cosmology, seeing much
fainter objects much more clearly than existing telescopes. Per this
capability, TMT's science agenda fills all of space and time, from nearby
comets and asteroids, to exoplanets, to the most distant galaxies, and all the
way back to the very first sources of light in the Universe.
  More than 150 astronomers from within the TMT partnership and beyond offered
input in compiling the new 2015 Detailed Science Case. The contributing
astronomers represent the entire TMT partnership, including the California
Institute of Technology (Caltech), the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA),
the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences
(NAOC), the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ), the University
of California, the Association of Canadian Universities for Research in
Astronomy (ACURA) and US associate partner, the Association of Universities for
Research in Astronomy (AURA).


  We report a systematic investigation, together with a theoretical analysis,
of the resistivity and Hall effect in single crystals of
Ba(Fe$_{1-x}$Co$_{x}$)$_{2}$As$_{2}$, over a wide doping range. We find a
surprisingly great disparity between the relaxation rates of the holes and the
electrons, in excess of an order of magnitude in the low-doping,
low-temperature regime. The ratio of the electron to hole mobilities diminishes
with temperature and doping (away from the magnetically ordered state) and
becomes more conventional. We also find a straightforward explanation of the
large asymmetry (compared to cuprates) of the superconducting dome: in the
underdoped regime the decisive factor is the competition between AF and
superconductivity (SC), while in the overdoped regime the main role is played
by degradation of the nesting that weakens the pairing interaction. Our results
indicate that spin-fluctuations due to interband electron-hole scattering play
a crucial role not only in the superconducting pairing, but also in the normal
transport.


  We describe in geometric terms the map that is Gale dual to the linearisation
map for quiver moduli spaces associated to noncommutative crepant resolutions
in dimension three. This allows us to formulate Reid's recipe in this context
in terms of a pair of integer-valued matrices, one of which appears to satisfy
an attractive sign-coherence property. We provide some new evidence for a
conjecture, known to hold in the toric case, which implies that a minimal
generating set of relations between the determinants of the tautological
bundles encodes the supports of the images of the vertex simples under the
derived equivalence, and vice-versa.


  We examine the dependence of the mass-to-light (M/L) ratio of large-scale
structure on cosmological parameters, in models that are constrained to match
observations of the projected galaxy correlation function w(rp). For a sequence
of cosmological models with a fixed P(k) shape and increasing normalization
\sig8, we find parameters of the galaxy halo occupation distribution (HOD) that
reproduce SDSS measurements of w(rp) as a function of luminosity. Using these
HOD models we calculate mean M/L ratios as a function of halo mass and populate
halos of N-body simulations to compute M/L in larger scale environments,
including cluster infall regions. For all cosmological models, the M/L ratio in
high mass halos or high density regions is approximately independent of halo
mass or smoothing scale. However, the "plateau" value of M/L depends on \sig8
as well as \Omega_m, and it represents the universal mass-to-light ratio <M/L>
only for models in which the galaxy correlation function is approximately
unbiased, i.e., with \sig8 ~ \sig8_gal. Our results for cluster mass halos
follow the trend M/L = 577(\Omega_m/0.3)(\sig8/0.9)^{1.7} h Msun/Lsun. Combined
with Carlberg et al.'s (1996) mean M/L ratio of CNOC galaxy clusters, this
relation implies (\sig8/0.9)(\Omega_m/0.3)^{0.6} = 0.75 +/- 0.06. M/L ratios of
clusters from the SDSS and CAIRNS surveys yield similar results. This
constraint is inconsistent with parameter values \Omega_m ~ 0.3, \sig8 ~ 0.9
favored by recent joint analyses of CMB measurements and other large-scale
structure data. We discuss possible resolutions, none of which seems entirely
satisfactory. Appendices present an improved formula for halo bias factors and
an improved analytic technique for calculating the galaxy correlation function
from a given cosmological model and HOD. (Abridged)


  We address light propagation in couplers with longitudinal biharmonic
modulation of refractive index in neighboring channels. While simplest
single-frequency out-of-phase modulation allows suppression of coupling for
strictly defined set of resonant frequencies, the addition of modulation on
multiple frequency dramatically modifies the structure of resonances. Thus,
additional modulation on double frequency may suppress primary resonance, while
modulation on triple frequency causes fusion of primary and secondary
resonances.


  A search is performed for Higgs-boson-mediated flavor-changing neutral
currents in the decays of top quarks. The search is based on proton-proton
collision data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 19.7 inverse
femtobarns at a center-of-mass energy of 8 TeV collected with the CMS detector
at the LHC. Events in which a top quark pair is produced with one top quark
decaying into a charm or up quark and a Higgs boson (H), and the other top
quark decaying into a bottom quark and a W boson are selected. The Higgs boson
in these events is assumed to subsequently decay into either dibosons or
difermions. No significant excess is observed above the expected standard model
background, and an upper limit at the 95% confidence level is set on the
branching fraction B(t to Hc) of 0.40% and B(t to Hu) of 0.55%, where the
expected upper limits are 0.43% and 0.40%, respectively. These results
correspond to upper limits on the square of the flavor-changing Higgs boson
Yukawa couplings |lambda[tc]^H|^2 < 6.9E-3 and |lambda[tu]^H|^2 < 9.8E-3.


  Let $p$ be a prime number, and let $S$ be the numerical semigroup generated
by the prime numbers not less than $p$. We compare the orders of magnitude of
some invariants of $S$ with each other, e. g., the biggest atom $u$ of $S$ with
$p$ itself: By Harald Helfgott (arXiv:1312.7748 [math.NT]), every odd integer
$N$ greater than five can be written as the sum of three prime numbers. There
is numerical evidence suggesting that the summands of $N$ always can be chosen
between $\frac N6$ and $\frac N2$. This would imply that $u$ is less than $6p$.


  The proof of principle of the Laser Ion Source Trap (LIST) coupled to a gas
cell catcher system has been demonstrated at the Leuven Isotope Separator
On-Line (LISOL). The experiments were carried out by using the modified gas
cell-based laser ion source and the SextuPole Ion Guide (SPIG). Element
selective resonance laser ionization of neutral atoms was taking place inside
the cold jet expanding out of the gas cell catcher. The laser path was oriented
in longitudinal as well as transverse geometries with respect to the atoms
flow. The enhancement of beam purity and the feasibility for in-source laser
spectroscopy were investigated in off-line and on-line conditions.


  The distinction between "healthy" and "unhealthy" patients is commonly based
on single, discrete values taken at an isolated point in time (e.g., blood
pressure or core temperature). Perhaps a more robust and insightful diagnosis
can be obtained by studying the functional interdependence of such indicators
and the homeostasis that controls them. This requires quasi-continuous
measurements and a procedure to map the data onto a parsimonious control model
with a degree of universality. The current research illustrates this approach
using glucose homeostasis as a target. Data were obtained from 41 healthy
subjects wearing over-the-counter glucose monitors, and projected onto a simple
proportional-integral (PI) controller, widely used in engineering applications.
The indicators quantifying the control function are clustered for the great
majority of subjects, while a few outliers exhibit less efficient homeostasis.
Practical implications for healthcare and education are further discussed.


  Let G be a rank 1 simple Lie group and M be a connected orientable aspherical
tame manifold. Assume that each end of M has amenable fundamental group. There
are several definitions of volume of representations of the fundamental group
of M into G. We give a new definition of volume of representations and
furthermore, show that all definitions so far are equivalent.


  Neural architecture search is a promising area of research dedicated to
automating the design of neural network models. This field is rapidly growing,
with a surge of methodologies ranging from Bayesian optimization,neuroevoltion,
to differentiable search, and applications in various contexts. However,
despite all great advances, few studies have presented insights on the
difficulty of the problem itself, thus the success (or fail) of these
methodologies remains unexplained. In this sense, the field of optimization has
developed methods that highlight key aspects to describe optimization problems.
The fitness landscape analysis stands out when it comes to characterize
reliably and quantitatively search algorithms. In this paper, we propose to use
fitness landscape analysis to study a neural architecture search problem.
Particularly, we introduce the fitness landscape footprint, an aggregation of
eight (8)general-purpose metrics to synthesize the landscape of an architecture
search problem. We studied two problems, the classical image classification
benchmark CIFAR-10, and the Remote-Sensing problem So2Sat LCZ42. The results
present a quantitative appraisal of the problems, allowing to characterize the
relative difficulty and other characteristics, such as the ruggedness or the
persistence, that helps to tailor a search strategy to the problem. Also, the
footprint is a tool that enables the comparison of multiple problems.


  Recent advances in large language models (LLMs) have promoted generative
error correction (GER) for automatic speech recognition (ASR), which aims to
predict the ground-truth transcription from the decoded N-best hypotheses.
Thanks to the strong language generation ability of LLMs and rich information
in the N-best list, GER shows great effectiveness in enhancing ASR results.
However, it still suffers from two limitations: 1) LLMs are unaware of the
source speech during GER, which may lead to results that are grammatically
correct but violate the source speech content, 2) N-best hypotheses usually
only vary in a few tokens, making it redundant to send all of them for GER,
which could confuse LLM about which tokens to focus on and thus lead to
increased miscorrection. In this paper, we propose ClozeGER, a new paradigm for
ASR generative error correction. First, we introduce a multimodal LLM (i.e.,
SpeechGPT) to receive source speech as extra input to improve the fidelity of
correction output. Then, we reformat GER as a cloze test with logits
calibration to remove the input information redundancy and simplify GER with
clear instructions. Experiments show that ClozeGER achieves a new breakthrough
over vanilla GER on 9 popular ASR datasets.


  Given a subset K of the unit Euclidean sphere, we estimate the minimal number
m = m(K) of hyperplanes that generate a uniform tessellation of K, in the sense
that the fraction of the hyperplanes separating any pair x, y in K is nearly
proportional to the Euclidean distance between x and y. Random hyperplanes
prove to be almost ideal for this problem; they achieve the almost optimal
bound m = O(w(K)^2) where w(K) is the Gaussian mean width of K. Using the map
that sends x in K to the sign vector with respect to the hyperplanes, we
conclude that every bounded subset K of R^n embeds into the Hamming cube {-1,
1}^m with a small distortion in the Gromov-Haussdorf metric. Since for many
sets K one has m = m(K) << n, this yields a new discrete mechanism of dimension
reduction for sets in Euclidean spaces.


  In proton therapy both the energy, which determines the range, and the distal
slope, which reflects the rate at which the protons decelerate, are of import
if we are to ensure accurate dose deposition and maximum tissue sparing. This
publication describes a Geant4 model and presents a two-dimensional polynomial
relationship between energy, the energy spread and the distal slope for beams
with Gaussian energy spectra for proton therapy. This simple polynomial
relationship will be useful for non-invasive or minimally invasive near
real-time monitoring of the energy and energy spread of a proton therapy beam.


  Spitzer IRAC mid-infrared photometry is presented for the globular cluster
(GC) systems of the NGC 5128 ("Centaurus A") and NGC 4594 ("Sombrero")
galaxies. Existing optical photometric and spectroscopic are combined with this
new data in a comprehensive optical to mid-IR colour catalogue of 260 GCs.
Empirical colour-metallicity relationships are derived for all optical to
mid-IR colour combinations.
  These colours prove to be very effective quantities to test the photometric
predictions of simple stellar population (SSP) models. In general, four SSP
models show larger discrepancies between each other and the data at bluer
wavelengths, especially at high metallicities. Such differences become very
important when attempting to use colour-colour model predictions to constrain
the ages of stellar populations. Furthermore, the age-substructure determined
from colour-colour diagrams and 91 NGC 5128 GCs with spectroscopic ages from
Beasley et al. (2008) are inconsistent, suggesting any apparent GC system
age-substructure implied by a colour-colour analysis must be verified
independently.
  Unlike blue wavebands, certain optical to mid-IR colours are insensitive to
the flux from hot horizontal branch stars and thus provide an excellent
metallicity proxy. The NGC 5128 GC system shows strong bimodality in the
optical R-band to mid-IR colour distributions, hence proving it is bimodal in
metallicity. In this new colour space, a colour-magnitude trend, a "blue tilt",
is found in the NGC 5128 metal-poor GC data. The NGC 5128 young GCs do not
contribute to this trend. [abridged]


  Direct proofs are given of Juhl's formulae for GJMS operators and
Q-curvatures starting from the original construction of GJMS.


  We present a pilot study to assess the potential of Hyper Suprime-Cam Public
Data Release 2 (HSC-PDR2) images for the analysis of extended faint structures
within groups of galaxies. We examine the intra-group light (IGL) of the group
400138 ($M_{\rm{dyn}}= 1.3 \pm 0.5 \times 10^{13} $M$_{\odot}$, $z\sim 0.2$)
from the Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA) survey using Hyper-Suprime Cam Subaru
Strategic Program Public Data Release 2 (HSC-PDR2) images in $g$, $r$, and $i$
bands. We present the most extended IGL measurement to date, reaching down to
$\mu_{g}^{\rm{lim}}=30.76$ mag arcsec$^{-2}$ ($3 \sigma$; $10 \times 10$
arcsec$^{2}$) at a semi-major axis of 275 kpc. The IGL shows mean colour values
of $g-i=0.92$, $g-r=0.60$, and $r-i=0.32$ ($\pm$0.01). The IGL stellar
populations are younger ($2-2.5$ Gyr) and less metal-rich ([Fe/H] $ \sim -$0.4)
than those of the host group galaxies. We find a range of IGL fractions as a
function of total group luminosity of $\sim 2-36 \%$ depending on the
definition of IGL, with larger fractions the bluer the observation wavelength.
The early-type to late-type galaxy ratio suggests that 400138 is a more evolved
group, dominated by ETGs, and the IGL fraction agrees with that of other
similarly evolved groups. These results are consistent with tidal stripping of
the outer parts of Milky Way-like galaxies as the main driver of the IGL
build-up. This is supported by the detection of substructure in the IGL towards
the galaxy member 1660615 suggesting a recent interaction ($<1$ Gyr ago) of
that galaxy with the core of the group.


  We theoretically study dissociative ionization of H$_2^+$ exposed to strong
linearly polarized few-cycle visible, near-infrared and midinfrared laser
pulses. We find rich energy-sharing structures in the combined electron and
nuclear kinetic energy spectra with features that are a priori at odds with
simple energy conservation arguments. We explain the structures as
interferences between wave packets released during different optical cycles,
and during the same optical cycle, respectively. Both inter- and intracycle
interference structures are clearly visible in the joint energy spectra. The
shapes of the interference structures depend on the dynamics leading to the
double continuum, and carry sub-femtosecond information.


  The properties (temperature, density, chemical composition, velocity) of hot
astrophysical plasma and the physical processes affecting them
(heating/cooling, turbulence, shocks, acceleration) can be probed by high
resolution X-ray spectroscopy, to be complemented by high spatial resolution
imaging. The paper presents a status of the ESA's Advanced Telescope for High
Energy Astrophysics (Athena) mission, particularly focusing on the science
performance of its two focal plane instruments for the studies of extended
X-ray sources: the Wide Field Imager (WFI) and the X-ray Integral Field Unit
(X-IFU). This paper then provides a brief summary of the breakthroughs expected
with Athena on the astrophysics of hot plasma, building on the vast heritage of
the discoveries and revolutionary results obtained by Chandra and XMM-Newton in
this field. As of November 12th, 2019, Athena successfully concluded its
feasibility study, and has since then moved into the definition phase, with a
launch date scheduled in the early 2030s.


  Let $tsp(G)$ denote the length of a shortest travelling salesman tour in a
graph $G$. We prove that for any $\varepsilon>0$, there exists a simple
$2$-connected planar cubic graph $G_1$ such that $tsp(G_1)\ge
(1.25-\varepsilon)\cdot|V(G_1)|$, a simple $2$-connected bipartite cubic graph
$G_2$ such that $tsp(G_2)\ge (1.2-\varepsilon)\cdot|V(G_2)|$, and a simple
$3$-connected cubic graph $G_3$ such that $tsp(G_3)\ge
(1.125-\varepsilon)\cdot|V(G_3)|$.


  This technical report details our systems submitted for Task 3 of the DCASE
2024 Challenge: Audio and Audiovisual Sound Event Localization and Detection
(SELD) with Source Distance Estimation (SDE). We address only the audio-only
SELD with SDE (SELDDE) task in this report. We propose to improve the existing
ResNet-Conformer architectures with Squeeze-and-Excitation blocks in order to
introduce additional forms of channel- and spatial-wise attention. In order to
improve SELD performance, we also utilize the Spatial Cue-Augmented
Log-Spectrogram (SALSA) features over the commonly used log-mel spectra
features for polyphonic SELD. We complement the existing Sony-TAu Realistic
Spatial Soundscapes 2023 (STARSS23) dataset with the audio channel swapping
technique and synthesize additional data using the SpatialScaper generator. We
also perform distance scaling in order to prevent large distance errors from
contributing more towards the loss function. Finally, we evaluate our approach
on the evaluation subset of the STARSS23 dataset.


  Recently, Chau et al. [Phys. Rev. A 95, 022311 (2017)] reported a
quantum-key-distribution (QKD) scheme using four-dimensional qudits.
Surprisingly, as a function of the bit error rate of the raw key, the secret
key rate of this scheme is equal to that of the (qubit-based) six-state scheme
under one-way classical communication using ideal apparatus in the limit of
arbitrarily long raw key length. Here we explain why this is the case in spite
of the fact that these two schemes are not linearly related to each other. More
importantly, we find that in terms of the four-dimensional dit error rate of
the raw key, the Chau et al.'s scheme can tolerate up to 21.6% using one-way
classical communications, which is better than the Sheridan and Scarani's
scheme [Phys. Rev. A 82, 030301(R) (2010)]. In addition, we argue the
experimental advantages of the Chau et al. implementation over the standard
six-state scheme and report a corresponding proof-of-principle experiment using
passive basis selection with decoy states. We also compare our experiment with
the recent high secret key rate implementation of the Sheridan and Scarani's
scheme by Islam et al. [Sci. Adv. \text{3}, e1701491].


  An effective field theory for the three-body system with large scattering
length is applied to three-body recombination to a weakly-bound s-wave state in
a Bose gas. Our model independent analysis demonstrates that the three-body
recombination constant alpha is not universal, but can take any value between
zero and 67.9 \hbar a^4/m, where a is the scattering length. Other low-energy
three-body observables can be predicted in terms of a and alpha. Near a
Feshbach resonance, alpha should oscillate between those limits as the magnetic
field B approaches the point where a -> infinity. In any interval of B over
which a increases by a factor of 22.7, alpha should have a zero.


  Extensions of the standard models of particle physics and cosmology often
lead to long-range fifth forces with properties dependent on gravitational
environment. Fifth forces on astrophysical scales are best studied in the
cosmic web where perturbation theory breaks down. We present constraints on
chameleon- and symmetron-screened fifth forces with Yukawa coupling and
megaparsec range -- as well as unscreened fifth forces with differential
coupling to galactic mass components -- by searching for the displacements they
predict between galaxies' stars and gas. Taking data from the Alfalfa HI
survey, identifying galaxies' gravitational environments with the maps of
Desmond et al. (2018a) and forward-modelling with a Bayesian likelihood
framework, we set upper bounds on fifth-force strength relative to Newtonian
gravity from $\Delta G/G_N < \text{few} \: \times 10^{-4}$ for range $\lambda_C
= 50$ Mpc, to $\Delta G/G_N \lesssim 0.1$ for $\lambda_C = 500$ kpc. In $f(R)$
gravity this requires $f_{R0} < \text{few} \: \times \: 10^{-8}$. The analogous
bounds without screening are $\Delta G/G_N < \text{few} \: \times 10^{-4}$ and
$\Delta G/G_N < \text{few} \times 10^{-3}$. These are the tightest and among
the only fifth-force constraints on galaxy scales. We show how our results may
be strengthened with future survey data and identify the key features of an
observational programme for furthering fifth-force tests beyond the Solar
System.


  A novel interaction mechanism in MOSFET structures and $GaAs/AlGaAs$
hetero-junctions between the zone electrons of the two-dimensional (2D) gas and
the charged traps on the insulator side is considered. By applying a canonical
transformation, off-diagonal terms in the Hamiltonian due to the trapped level
subsystem are excluded. This yields an effective three-particle attractive
interaction as well as a pairing interaction inside the 2D electronic band. A
type of Bethe- Goldstone equation for three particles is studied to clarify the
character of the binding and the energy of the three-particle bound states. The
results are used to offer a possible explanation of the Metal-Insulator
transition recently observed in MOSFET and hetero-junctions.


  We investigate TE-wave propagation in a hollow waveguide with a graded
dielectric layer, described using a hyperbolic tangent function. General
formulae for the electric field components of the TE-waves, applicable to
hollow waveguides with arbitrary cross sectional shapes, are presented. We
illustrate the exact analytical results for the electric field components in
the special case of a rectangular waveguide. Furthermore, we derive exact
analytical results for the reflection and transmission coefficients valid for
waveguides of arbitrary cross sectional shapes. Finally, we show that the
obtained reflection and transmission coefficients are in exact asymptotic
agreement with those obtained for a very thin homogeneous dielectric layer
using mode-matching and cascading. The proposed method is tractable since it
gives analytical results that are directly applicable without the need of
mode-matching, and it has the ability to model realistic, smooth transitions.


  We study differential-difference equation of the form $$
\frac{d}{dx}t(n+1,x)=f(t(n,x),t(n+1,x),\frac{d}{dx}t(n,x)) $$ with unknown
$t(n,x)$ depending on continuous and discrete variables $x$ and $n$. Equation
of such kind is called Darboux integrable, if there exist two functions $F$ and
$I$ of a finite number of arguments $x$, $\{t(n\pm k,x)\}_{k=-\infty}^\infty$,
${\frac{d^k}{dx^k}t(n,x)}_{k=1}^\infty$, such that $D_xF=0$ and $DI=I$, where
$D_x$ is the operator of total differentiation with respect to $x$, and $D$ is
the shift operator: $Dp(n)=p(n+1)$. Reformulation of Darboux integrability in
terms of finiteness of two characteristic Lie algebras gives an effective tool
for classification of integrable equations. The complete list of Darboux
integrable equations is given in the case when the function $f$ is of the
special form $f(u,v,w)=w+g(u,v)$.


  High resolution spin- and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy
(spin-ARPES) was performed on the three-dimensional topological insulator
Bi$_2$Se$_3$ using a recently developed high-efficiency spectrometer. The
topological surface state's helical spin structure is observed, in agreement
with theoretical prediction. Spin textures of both chiralities, at energies
above and below the Dirac point, are observed, and the spin structure is found
to persist at room temperature. The measurements reveal additional unexpected
spin polarization effects, which also originate from the spin-orbit
interaction, but are well differentiated from topological physics by
contrasting momentum and photon energy and polarization dependencies. These
observations demonstrate significant deviations of photoelectron and
quasiparticle spin polarizations. Our findings illustrate the inherent
complexity of spin-resolved ARPES and demonstrate key considerations for
interpreting experimental results.


  In the scenario of single-field inflation, this field is done in terms of
Jacobian elliptic functions. This approach provides, when constrained to
particular cases, analytic solutions already known in the past, generalizing
them to a bigger family of analytical solutions. The emergent cosmology is
analysed using the Hamilton-Jacobi approach and then, the main results are
contrasted with the recent measurements obtained from the Planck 2015 data.


  Patnaik and Immerman introduced the dynamic complexity class DynFO of
database queries that can be maintained by first-order dynamic programs with
the help of auxiliary relations under insertions and deletions of edges
(Patnaik and Immerman 1997). This article confirms their conjecture that the
Reachability query is in DynFO.
  As a byproduct it is shown that the rank of a matrix with small values can be
maintained in DynFO(+,x). It is further shown that the (size of the) maximum
matching of a graph can be maintained in non-uniform DynFO, another extension
of DynFO, with non-uniform initialisation of the auxiliary relations.


  The velocity field and the height at the surface of a dynamic ice sheet are
observed. The ice sheets are modeled by the full Stokes equations and shallow
shelf/shelfy stream approximations. Time dependence is introduced by a
kinematic free surface equation which updates the surface elevation using the
velocity solution. The sensitivity of the observed quantities at the ice
surface to parameters in the models, for example the basal topography and
friction coefficients, is analyzed by first deriving the time dependent adjoint
equations. Using the adjoint solutions, the effect of a perturbation in a
parameter is obtained showing the importance of including the time dependence,
in particular when the height is observed. The adjoint equations are solved
analytically and numerically and the sensitivity of the desired parameters is
determined in several examples in two dimensions. A closed form of the
analytical solutions to the adjoint equations is given for a two dimensional
grounding line migration problem in steady state under the shallow shelf
approximation.


  B-spline functions have been widely used in computational atomic physics.
Different from the traditional B-spline basis (a simple product of two
B-splines), the recently developed correlated B-spline basis functions(C-BSBF),
in which the interelectronic coordinate $r_{12}$ is included explicitly, have
greatly improved the computational accuracy of polarizability [S. J. Yang
\textit{et al}., Phys. Rev. A \textbf{95}, 062505 (2017)] and bethe logarithm [
S. J. Yang \textit{et al}., Phys. Rev. A \textbf{100}, 042509 (2019)] for
singlet states of helium. Here, we report the extension of the C-BSBF to the
leading relativistic and QED correction calculations for energy levels of the
$1\,^1S$, $2\,^1S$, $2\,^3S$, and $3\,^3S$ states of helium. The relativistic
kinetic term $p_{1}^{4}$, contact potential $\delta^{3}(r_{1})$,
$\delta^{3}(r_{12})$ and Araki-Sucher correction $\langle 1/r_{12}^{3} \rangle$
are calculated by using the global operator method, in which $r_{12}^n$ and
$r_{12}^n\ln r_{12}$ involved are calculated with the generalization of
Laplace's expansions. The obtained values for the ground state are $\delta
E_{rel}/\alpha ^{2}=-$1.951 754 7(2) and $\delta E_{QED}/\alpha^{3}=$57.288
165(2), consistent with previous results, which opens the possibility of
calculating higher-order relativistic and QED effects using the C-BSBF.


  We survey recent developments on mapping class groups of surfaces of infinite
topological type.


  This paper presents the first certifiably correct algorithm for distributed
pose-graph optimization (PGO), the backbone of modern collaborative
simultaneous localization and mapping (CSLAM) and camera network localization
(CNL) systems. Our method is based upon a sparse semidefinite relaxation that
we prove provides globally-optimal PGO solutions under moderate measurement
noise (matching the guarantees enjoyed by state-of-the-art centralized
methods), but is amenable to distributed optimization using the low-rank
Riemannian Staircase framework. To implement the Riemannian Staircase in the
distributed setting, we develop Riemannian block coordinate descent (RBCD), a
novel method for (locally) minimizing a function over a product of Riemannian
manifolds. We also propose the first distributed solution verification and
saddle escape methods to certify the global optimality of critical points
recovered via RBCD, and to descend from suboptimal critical points (if
necessary). All components of our approach are inherently decentralized: they
require only local communication, provide privacy protection, and are easily
parallelizable. Extensive evaluations on synthetic and real-world datasets
demonstrate that the proposed method correctly recovers globally optimal
solutions under moderate noise, and outperforms alternative distributed
techniques in terms of solution precision and convergence speed.


  In this work we develop and investigate mathematical and computational models
that describe drug delivery from a contact lens during wear. Our models are
designed to predict the dynamics of drug release from the contact lens and
subsequent transport into the adjacent pre-lens tear film and post-lens tear
film as well as into the ocular tissue (e.g. cornea), into the eyelid, and out
of these regions. These processes are modeled by one dimensional diffusion out
of the lens coupled to compartment-type models for drug concentrations in the
various accompanying regions. In addition to numerical solutions that are
compared with experimental data on drug release in an in vitro eye model, we
also identify a large diffusion limit model for which analytical solutions can
be written down for all quantities of interest, such as cumulative release of
the drug from the contact lens. We use our models to make assessments about
possible mechanisms and drug transport pathways through the pre-lens and
post-lens tear films and provide interpretation of experimental observations.
We discuss successes and limitations of our models as well as their potential
to guide further research to help understand the dynamics of ophthalmic drug
delivery via drug-eluting contact lenses.


  Quasi-Monte Carlo (QMC) method is a useful numerical tool for pricing and
hedging of complex financial derivatives. These problems are usually of high
dimensionality and discontinuities. The two factors may significantly
deteriorate the performance of the QMC method. This paper develops an
integrated method that overcomes the challenges of the high dimensionality and
discontinuities concurrently. For this purpose, a smoothing method is proposed
to remove the discontinuities for some typical functions arising from financial
engineering. To make the smoothing method applicable for more general
functions, a new path generation method is designed for simulating the paths of
the underlying assets such that the resulting function has the required form.
The new path generation method has an additional power to reduce the effective
dimension of the target function. Our proposed method caters for a large
variety of model specifications, including the Black-Scholes, exponential
normal inverse Gaussian L\'evy, and Heston models. Numerical experiments
dealing with these models show that in the QMC setting the proposed smoothing
method in combination with the new path generation method can lead to a
dramatic variance reduction for pricing exotic options with discontinuous
payoffs and for calculating options' Greeks. The investigation on the effective
dimension and the related characteristics explains the significant enhancement
of the combined procedure.


  Accurate subtyping of renal cell carcinoma (RCC) is of crucial importance for
understanding disease progression and for making informed treatment decisions.
New discoveries of significant alterations to mitochondria between subtypes
make immunohistochemical (IHC) staining based image classification an
imperative. Until now, accurate quantification and subtyping was made
impossible by huge IHC variations, the absence of cell membrane staining for
cytoplasm segmentation as well as the complete lack of systems for robust and
reproducible image based classification. In this paper we present a
comprehensive classification framework to overcome these challenges for tissue
microarrays (TMA) of RCCs. We compare and evaluate models based on domain
specific hand-crafted "flat"-features versus "deep" feature representations
from various layers of a pre-trained convolutional neural network (CNN). The
best model reaches a cross-validation accuracy of 89%, which demonstrates for
the first time, that robust mitochondria-based subtyping of renal cancer is
feasible


  We consider a Gaussian MISO wiretap channel, where a multi-antenna source
communicates with a single-antenna destination in the presence of a
single-antenna eavesdropper. The communication is assisted by multi-antenna
helpers that act as jammers to the eavesdropper. Each helper independently
transmits noise which lies in the null space of the channel to the destination,
thus creates no interference to the destination. Under the assumption that
there is eavesdropper channel uncertainty, we derive the optimal covariance
matrix for the source signal so that the secrecy rate is maximized subject to
probability of outage and power constraints. Assuming that the eavesdropper
channels follow zero-mean Gaussian model with known covariances, we derive the
outage probability in a closed form. Simulation results in support of the
analysis are provided.


  We discuss the duality theorem, which provides a relation between loop
integrals and phase space integrals. We rederive the duality relation for the
one-loop case and extend it to two and higher-order loops. We explicitly show
its application to two- and three-loop scalar master integrals and discuss the
structure of the occurring cuts.


  We consider complex saddle points in QCD at finite temperature and density,
which are constrained by symmetry under charge and complex conjugations. This
approach naturally incorporates color neutrality, and the Polyakov loop and the
conjugate loop at the saddle point are real but not identical. Moreover, it can
give rise to a complex mass matrix associated with the Polyakov loops,
reflecting oscillatory behavior in color-charge densities. This aspect of the
phase structure appears to be sensitive to the origin of confinement, as
modeled in the effective potential.


  We demonstrate in theory that it is possible to all-electrically manipulate
the RKKY interaction in a quasi-one-dimensional electron gas embedded in a
semiconductor heterostructure, in the presence of Rashba and Dresselhaus
spin-orbit interaction. In an undoped semiconductor quantum wire where
intermediate excitations are gapped, the interaction becomes the short-ranged
Bloembergen-Rowland super-exchange interaction. Owing to the interplay of
different types of spin-orbit interaction, the interaction can be controlled to
realize various spin models, e.g., isotropic and anisotropic Heisenberg-like
models, Ising-like models with additional Dzyaloshinsky-Moriya terms, by tuning
the external electric field and designing the crystallographic directions. Such
controllable interaction forms a basis for quantum computing with localized
spins and quantum matters in spin lattices.


  In Deep Learning, a well-known approach for training a Deep Neural Network
starts by training a generative Deep Belief Network model, typically using
Contrastive Divergence (CD), then fine-tuning the weights using backpropagation
or other discriminative techniques. However, the generative training can be
time-consuming due to the slow mixing of Gibbs sampling. We investigated an
alternative approach that estimates model expectations of Restricted Boltzmann
Machines using samples from a D-Wave quantum annealing machine. We tested this
method on a coarse-grained version of the MNIST data set. In our tests we found
that the quantum sampling-based training approach achieves comparable or better
accuracy with significantly fewer iterations of generative training than
conventional CD-based training. Further investigation is needed to determine
whether similar improvements can be achieved for other data sets, and to what
extent these improvements can be attributed to quantum effects.


  We show that if S is a finite type orientable surface of genus g and p
punctures where 3g+p > 4, then EL(S) is (n-1)-connected and (n-1)-locally
connected where dim(PML(S))=2n+1=6g+2p-7. Furthermore, if g=0, then EL(S) is
homeomorphic to the p-4 dimensional Nobeling space.


  We survey our recent results on classifying complete constant mean curvature
1 (CMC-1) surfaces in hyperbolic 3-space with low total curvature. There are
two natural notions of "total curvature"-- one is the total absolute curvature
which is the integral over the surface of the absolute value of the Gaussian
curvature, and the other is the dual total absolute curvature which is the
total absolute curvature of the dual CMC-1 surface. Here we discuss results on
both notions (proven in two other papers by the authors), and we introduce some
new results (with proofs) as well.


  We provide an upper bound on the Lagrangian Hofer distance between equators
in the cylinder in terms of the barcode of persistent Floer homology. The bound
consists of a weighted sum of the lengths of the finite bars and the spectral
distance.


  While Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies are progressing fast,
compliance costs have become a huge financial burden for AI startups, which are
already constrained on research & development budgets. This situation creates a
compliance trap, as many AI startups are not financially prepared to cope with
a broad spectrum of regulatory requirements. Particularly, the complex and
varying regulatory processes across the globe subtly give advantages to
well-established and resourceful technology firms over resource-constrained AI
startups [1]. The continuation of this trend may phase out the majority of AI
startups and lead to giant technology firms' monopolies of AI technologies. To
demonstrate the reality of the compliance trap, from a field deployment
perspective, we delve into the details of compliance costs of AI commercial
operations.


  Laser-induced ultrafast demagnetization is a phenomenon of utmost interest
and attracts significant attention because it enables potential applications in
ultrafast optoelectronics and spintronics. As a spin-orbit coupling assisted
magnetic insulator, $\alpha$-$RuCl_3$ provides an attractive platform to
explore the physics of electronic correlations and related unconventional
magnetism. Using time-dependent density functional theory, we explore the
ultrafast laser-induced dynamics of the electronic and magnetic structures in
$\alpha$-$RuCl_3$. Our study unveils that laser pulses can introduce ultrafast
demagnetizations in $\alpha$-$RuCl_3$, accompanied by an out-of-equilibrium
insulator-to-metal transition in a few tens of femtoseconds. The spin response
significantly depends on the laser wavelength and polarization on account of
the electron correlations, band renormalizations and charge redistributions.
These findings provide physical insights into the coupling between the
electronic and magnetic degrees of freedom in $\alpha$-$RuCl_3$ and shed light
on suppressing the long-range magnetic orders and reaching a proximate spin
liquid phase for two-dimensional magnets on an ultrafast timescale.


  Impulsive gravitational plane waves, which have a delta-function singularity
on a hypersurface, can be obtained by squeezing smooth plane gravitational
waves with Gaussian profile. They exhibit (as do their smooth counterparts) the
Velocity Memory Effect: after the wave has passed, particles initially at rest
move apart with non vanishing constant transverse velocity. A new effect is
that, unlike to the smooth case, (i) the velocities of particles originally at
rest jump, (ii) the spacetime trajectories become discontinuous along the
(lightlike) propagation direction of the wave.


  Stability of power electronic converters connected to power grids is commonly
assessed by using the impedance criterion. On the contrary, stability of power
grids is typically analysed by using network state-space representation and
system eigenvalues. It has been already reported in the literature that the
impedance criterion may lead to erroneous results if the dynamics of the grid
frequency is not taken into consideration. Meanwhile, the eigenvalue analysis
is still considered as a reliable method for finding instabilities. However,
the equivalence between these two methods (impedance criterion with frequency
dynamics included and eigenvalue analysis) has not been thoroughly studied
before. In this paper, the impedance method with frequency dynamics included is
compared with the conventional eigenvalue analysis for a system fully based on
electronic interfaces. Analytical expressions that link both methods are
provided, showing that they are identical under certain conditions. Then, both
methods are applied to a system based on a grid-forming and a grid-following
converter. The results obtained from real-time simulations performed in OPAL-RT
are used to validate the theoretical developments and main contributions of
this work.


  A new constant of motion for helically symmetric equilibria in the vicinity
of the magnetic axis is obtained in the framework of Vlasov theory. In view of
this constant of motion the Vlasov theory is compared with drift kinetic and
gyrokinetic theories near axis. It turns out that as in the case of
axisymmetric equilibria [H. Tasso and G. N. Throumoulopoulos, Phys. Plasmas 18,
064507 (2011)] the Vlasov current density thereon can differ appreciably from
the drift kinetic and gyrokinetic current densities. This indicates some
limitation on the implications of reduced kinetic theories, in particular as
concerns the physics of energetic particles in the central region of
magnetically confined plasmas.


  We show how effective-potential path-integrals methods, stemming on a simple
and nice idea originally due to Feynman and successfully employed in Physics
for a variety of quantum thermodynamics applications, can be used to develop an
accurate and easy-to-compute semi-analytical approximation of transition
probabilities and Arrow-Debreu densities for arbitrary diffusions. We
illustrate the accuracy of the method by presenting results for the
Black-Karasinski and the GARCH linear models, for which the proposed
approximation provides remarkably accurate results, even in regimes of high
volatility, and for multi-year time horizons. The accuracy and the
computational efficiency of the proposed approximation makes it a viable
alternative to fully numerical schemes for a variety of derivatives pricing
applications.


  We analyze the structure of multiloop supergraphs contributing to the
effective Lagrangians in 4d supersymmetric gauge theories and in the models
obtained from them by dimensional reduction. When d=4, this gives the
renormalization of the effective charge. For d < 4, the low-energy effective
Lagrangian describes the metric on the moduli space of classical vacua. These
two problems turn out to be closely related. In particular, we establish the
relationship between the 4d nonrenormalization theorems (in minimal and
extended supersymmetric theories) and their low--dimensional counterparts.


  After having defined a 3-strings midpoint-inserted vertex for the bc system,
we analyze the relation between gh=0 states (wedge states) and gh=3 midpoint
duals. We find explicit and regular relations connecting the two objects. In
the case of wedge states this allows us to write down a spectral decomposition
for the gh=0 Neumann matrices, despite the fact that they are not commuting
with the matrix representation of K1. We thus trace back the origin of this
noncommutativity to be a consequence of the imaginary poles of the wedge
eigenvalues in the complex k-plane. With explicit reconstruction formulas at
hand for both gh=0 and gh=3, we can finally show how the midpoint vertex avoids
this intrinsic noncommutativity at gh=0, making everything as simple as the
zero momentum matter sector.


  We study the Out-of-Distribution (OOD) generalization in machine learning and
propose a general framework that provides information-theoretic generalization
bounds. Our framework interpolates freely between Integral Probability Metric
(IPM) and $f$-divergence, which naturally recovers some known results
(including Wasserstein- and KL-bounds), as well as yields new generalization
bounds. Moreover, we show that our framework admits an optimal transport
interpretation. When evaluated in two concrete examples, the proposed bounds
either strictly improve upon existing bounds in some cases or recover the best
among existing OOD generalization bounds.


  A new estimate is presented of the dileptonic $B$ decays
$B\to\pi\ell^+\ell^-(\ell=e,\mu,\tau)$ in naive factorization within the
standard-model (SM) framework. Using a combination of several approaches, we
investigate the behavior of the $B\to \pi$ form factors in the entire region of
the momentum transfer squared $q^2$. For the vector and scalar form factors, we
employ the light cone sum rule (LCSR) with a chiral current correlator to
estimate, at twist-2 next-to-leading order (NLO) accuracy, their shapes in
small and intermediate kinematical region. Then a simultaneous fit to a
Bourrely-Caprini-Lellouch (BCL) parametrization is performed of the sum rule
predictions and the corresponding lattice QCD (LQCD) results available at some
high $q^2$'s. The same approach is applied for the tensor form factor, except
that at large $q^2$ we use as input the LQCD data on the corresponding $B\to K$
form factor in combination with a $SU_F(3)$ symmetry breaking ansatz. Employing
the fitted BCL parameterizations, we evaluate, as an illustrative example,
several of the observables of the charged decay modes
$B^-\to\pi^-\ell^+\ell^-$, including the dilepton invariant mass distribution
and branching ratio. For the dielectron and dimuon modes, the branching ratios
are estimated at
$\mathcal{B}(B^-\to\pi^-e^+e^-)=(2.263^{+0.227}_{-0.192})\times10^{-8}$ and
$\mathcal{B}(B^-\to\pi^-\mu^+\mu^-)=(2.259^{+0.226}_{-0.191}) \times10^{-8}$.
The latter shows an excellent agreement with the recent experimental
measurement at LHCb and hence puts a stringent constraint on the contribution
from possible new physics. We arrive at, for the ditau mode,
$\mathcal{B}(B^-\to\pi^-\tau^+\tau^-)=(1.017^{+0.118}_{-0.139})\times10^{-8}$,
which is one order of magnitude larger than the existing theoretical
predictions.


  A new type of exact solutions of the full 3 dimensional spatial Helmholtz
equation for the case of non-paraxial Gaussian beams is presented here. We
consider appropriate representation of the solution for Gaussian beams in a
spherical coordinate system by substituting it to the full 3 dimensional
spatial Helmholtz Equation. Analyzing the structure of the final equation, we
obtain that governing equations for the components of our solution are
represented by the proper Riccati equations of complex value, which has no
analytical solution in general case. But we find one of the possible exact
solution which is proved to satisfy to such an equations for Gaussian beams.
Decreasing of the amplitude A of presented solution up to the zero (at the
appropriate meaning of angle parameter) could be associated with the existence
of an optical vortex at this point. Optical vortex (also known as a
"dislocation in wave trains") is a zero of an optical field, a point of zero
intensity.


  Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and Transformers have shown advanced
accuracy in crack detection under certain conditions. Yet, the fixed local
attention can compromise the generalisation of CNNs, and the quadratic
complexity of the global self-attention restricts the practical deployment of
Transformers. Given the emergence of the new-generation architecture of Mamba,
this paper proposes a Vision Mamba (VMamba)-based framework for crack
segmentation on concrete, asphalt, and masonry surfaces, with high accuracy,
generalisation, and less computational complexity. Having 15.6% - 74.5% fewer
parameters, the encoder-decoder network integrated with VMamba could obtain up
to 2.8% higher mDS than representative CNN-based models while showing about the
same performance as Transformer-based models. Moreover, the VMamba-based
encoder-decoder network could process high-resolution image input with up to
90.6% lower floating-point operations.


  We experimentally investigate the flow of a viscoelastic fluid in a parallel
shear geometry at low Reynolds number. As the flow becomes unstable via a
nonlinear subcritical instability, velocimetry measurements show non-periodic
fluctuations over a broad range of frequencies and wavelengths, consistent with
the main features of elastic turbulence. Using the same experimental setup, we
compare these features to those in the flow around cylinders, which is upstream
to the parallel shear region; we find significant differences in power spectra
scaling, intermittency statistics, and flow structures. We propose a simple
mechanism to explain the growth of velocity fluctuations in parallel shear
flows based on polymer stretching due to fluctuations in streamwise velocity
gradients.


  Nonlinear biophysical properties of individual neurons are known to play a
major role in the nervous system. Earlier electrophysiological studies have
made use of piecewise linear characterization of voltage clamped neurons, which
consists of a sequence of linear admittances computed at different voltage
levels. In this paper, the linear approach is extended to a piecewise quadratic
characterization in two different ways. First, an analytical model is derived
with power series following the work pionneered by Fitzhugh. Second, matrix
calculus is developed to provide a novel quantitative analysis not dependent on
differential equations. This method provides an assessment of quadratic
responses for both data recorded from individual neurons and their
corresponding models.


  We present deep Hubble Space Telescope Wide Field Camera 3 slitless
spectroscopic observations of the distant cluster Cl J1449+0856. These cover a
single pointing with 18 orbits of G141 spectroscopy and F140W imaging, allowing
us to derive secure redshifts down to m_140~25.5 AB and 3sigma line fluxes of
5*10^(-18) erg/s/cm^2. In particular, we were able to spectroscopically confirm
12 early-type galaxies in the field up to z~3, 6 of which in the cluster core,
which represents the first direct spectroscopic confirmation of passive
galaxies in a z=2 cluster environment. With 140 redshifts in a ~6 arcmin^2
field, we can trace the spatial and redshift galaxy distribution in the cluster
core and background field. We find two strong peaks at z=2.00 and z=2.07, where
only one was seen in our previously published ground-based data. Thanks to the
spectroscopic confirmation of the cluster ETGs, we can now re-evaluate the
redshift of Cl J1449+0856 at z=2.00, rather than z=2.07, with the background
overdensity being revealed to be sparse and "sheet"-like. This presents an
interesting case of chance alignment of two close yet unrelated structures,
each one preferentially selected by different observing strategies. With 6
quiescent or early-type spectroscopic members and 20 star-forming ones, Cl
J1449+0856 is now reliably confirmed to be at z=2.00. The identified members
can now allow for a detailed study of galaxy properties in the densest
environment at z=2.


  Discrete Abelian symmetries ($\mathbb{Z}_N$) are a common "artifact" of
beyond the standard model physics models. They provide different avenues for
constructing consistent scenarios for lepton and quark mixing patterns,
radiative neutrino mass generation as well as dark matter stabilization. We
argue that these symmetries can arise from the spontaneous breaking of the
Abelian $U(1)$ factors contained in the global flavor symmetry transformations
of the gauge invariant kinetic Lagrangian. This will be the case provided the
ultra-violet completion responsible for the Yukawa structure involves scalar
fields carrying non-trivial $U(1)$ charges. Guided by minimality criteria, we
demonstrate the viability of this approach with two examples: first, we derive
the "scotogenic" model Lagrangian, and second, we construct a setup where the
spontaneous symmetry breaking pattern leads to a $\mathbb{Z}_3$ symmetry which
enables dark matter stability as well as neutrino mass generation at the 2-loop
order. This generic approach can be used to derive many other models, with
residual $\mathbb{Z}_N$ or $\mathbb{Z}_{N_1}\times \cdots \times
\mathbb{Z}_{N_k}$ symmetries, establishing an intriguing link between flavor
symmetries, neutrino masses and dark matter.


  As pointed out by several scholars, current research on hate speech (HS)
recognition is characterized by unsystematic data creation strategies and
diverging annotation schemata. Subsequently, supervised-learning models tend to
generalize poorly to datasets they were not trained on, and the performance of
the models trained on datasets labeled using different HS taxonomies cannot be
compared. To ease this problem, we propose applying extremely weak supervision
that only relies on the class name rather than on class samples from the
annotated data. We demonstrate the effectiveness of a state-of-the-art
weakly-supervised text classification model in various in-dataset and
cross-dataset settings. Furthermore, we conduct an in-depth quantitative and
qualitative analysis of the source of poor generalizability of HS
classification models.


  We show a simple explicit construction of an $2^{\Tilde{O}(\sqrt{\log n})}$
Ramsey graph. That is, we provide a $\poly(n)$-time algorithm to output the
adjacency matrix of an undirected $n$-vertex graph with no clique or
independent set of size $2^{\e \sqrt{\log n}\log\log n}$ for every $\e>0$.
  Our construction has the very serious disadvantage over the well-known
construction of Frankl and Wilson \cite{FranklWi81} that it is only explicit
and not very explicit, in the sense that we do \emph{not} provide a
poly-logarithmic time algorithm to compute the neighborhood relation. The main
advantage of this construction is its extreme simplicity. It is also somewhat
surprising that even though we use a completely different approach we get a
bound which essentially equals the bound of \cite{FranklWi81}. This
construction is quite simple and was obtained independently by others as
well\footnote{P.~Pudlak, personal communications, July 2004.} but as far as we
know has not been published elsewhere.