  We present closed-form analytic solutions to non-secular Bloch-Redfield
master equations for quantum dynamics of a V-type system driven by weak
coupling to a thermal bath. We focus on noise-induced Fano coherences among the
excited states induced by incoherent driving of the V-system initially in the
ground state. For suddenly turned-on incoherent driving, the time evolution of
the coherences is determined by the damping parameter
$\zeta=\frac{1}{2}(\gamma_1+\gamma_2)/\Delta_p$, where $\gamma_i$ are the
radiative decay rates of the excited levels $i=1,2$, and
$\Delta_p=\sqrt{\Delta^2 + (1-p^2)\gamma_1\gamma_2}$ depends on the
excited-state level splitting $\Delta>0$ and the angle between the transition
dipole moments in the energy basis. The coherences oscillate as a function of
time in the underdamped limit ($\zeta\gg1$), approach a long-lived quasi-steady
state in the overdamped limit ($\zeta\ll 1$), and display an intermediate
behavior at critical damping ($\zeta= 1$). The sudden incoherent turn-on
generates a mixture of excited eigenstates $|e_1\rangle$ and $|e_2\rangle$ and
their in-phase coherent superposition $|\phi_+\rangle =
\frac{1}{\sqrt{2\bar{r}}}(\sqrt{r_1} |e_1\rangle + \sqrt{r_2}|e_2\rangle)$,
which is remarkably long-lived in the overdamped limit (where $r_1$ and $r_2$
are the incoherent pumping rates). Formation of this coherent superposition
{\it enhances} the decay rate from the excited states to the ground state. In
the strongly asymmetric V-system where the coupling strengths between the
ground state and the excited states differ significantly, we identify
additional asymptotic quasistationary coherences, which arise due to slow
equilibration of one of the excited states. Finally, we demonstrate that
noise-induced Fano coherences are maximized with respect to populations when
$r_1=r_2$ and the transition dipole moments are fully aligned.


  Relational regularized autoencoder (RAE) is a framework to learn the
distribution of data by minimizing a reconstruction loss together with a
relational regularization on the latent space. A recent attempt to reduce the
inner discrepancy between the prior and aggregated posterior distributions is
to incorporate sliced fused Gromov-Wasserstein (SFG) between these
distributions. That approach has a weakness since it treats every slicing
direction similarly, meanwhile several directions are not useful for the
discriminative task. To improve the discrepancy and consequently the relational
regularization, we propose a new relational discrepancy, named spherical sliced
fused Gromov Wasserstein (SSFG), that can find an important area of projections
characterized by a von Mises-Fisher distribution. Then, we introduce two
variants of SSFG to improve its performance. The first variant, named mixture
spherical sliced fused Gromov Wasserstein (MSSFG), replaces the vMF
distribution by a mixture of von Mises-Fisher distributions to capture multiple
important areas of directions that are far from each other. The second variant,
named power spherical sliced fused Gromov Wasserstein (PSSFG), replaces the vMF
distribution by a power spherical distribution to improve the sampling time in
high dimension settings. We then apply the new discrepancies to the RAE
framework to achieve its new variants. Finally, we conduct extensive
experiments to show that the new proposed autoencoders have favorable
performance in learning latent manifold structure, image generation, and
reconstruction.


  Physical layer security (PLS) technologies are expected to play an important
role in the next-generation wireless networks, by providing secure
communication to protect critical and sensitive information from illegitimate
devices. In this paper, we propose a novel secure communication scheme where
the legitimate receiver use full-duplex (FD) technology to transmit jamming
signals with the assistance of simultaneous transmitting and reflecting
reconfigurable intelligent surface (STARRIS) which can operate under the energy
splitting (ES) model and the mode switching (MS) model, to interfere with the
undesired reception by the eavesdropper. We aim to maximize the secrecy
capacity by jointly optimizing the FD beamforming vectors, amplitudes and phase
shift coefficients for the ESRIS, and mode selection and phase shift
coefficients for the MS-RIS. With above optimization, the proposed scheme can
concentrate the jamming signals on the eavesdropper while simultaneously
eliminating the self-interference (SI) in the desired receiver. To tackle the
coupling effect of multiple variables, we propose an alternating optimization
algorithm to solve the problem iteratively. Furthermore, we handle the
non-convexity of the problem by the the successive convex approximation (SCA)
scheme for the beamforming optimizations, amplitudes and phase shifts
optimizations for the ES-RIS, as well as the phase shifts optimizations for the
MS-RIS. In addition, we adopt a semi-definite relaxation (SDR) and Gaussian
randomization process to overcome the difficulty introduced by the binary
nature of mode optimization of the MS-RIS. Simulation results validate the
performance of our proposed schemes as well as the efficacy of adapting both
two types of STAR-RISs in enhancing secure communications when compared to the
traditional selfinterference cancellation technology.


  Cyclotron-resonance (CR) measurements on two-dimensional (2D) electrons in
AlGaN/GaN heterojunctions reveal large splittings (up to 2 meV) of the CR line
for all investigated densities, $n_{2D}$, from 1 to $4\times 10^{12}cm^{-2}$
over wide ranges of magnetic field. The features resemble a level anti-crossing
and imply a strong interaction with an unknown excitation of the solid. The
critical energy of the splitting varies from 5 to 12 meV and as
$\sqrt{n_{2D}}$. The phenomenon resembles data from AlGaAs/GaAs whose origin
remains unresolved. It highlights a lack of basic understanding of a very
elementary resonance in solids.


  In this paper, we propose a novel controllable text-to-image generative
adversarial network (ControlGAN), which can effectively synthesise high-quality
images and also control parts of the image generation according to natural
language descriptions. To achieve this, we introduce a word-level spatial and
channel-wise attention-driven generator that can disentangle different visual
attributes, and allow the model to focus on generating and manipulating
subregions corresponding to the most relevant words. Also, a word-level
discriminator is proposed to provide fine-grained supervisory feedback by
correlating words with image regions, facilitating training an effective
generator which is able to manipulate specific visual attributes without
affecting the generation of other content. Furthermore, perceptual loss is
adopted to reduce the randomness involved in the image generation, and to
encourage the generator to manipulate specific attributes required in the
modified text. Extensive experiments on benchmark datasets demonstrate that our
method outperforms existing state of the art, and is able to effectively
manipulate synthetic images using natural language descriptions. Code is
available at https://github.com/mrlibw/ControlGAN.


  The recently discovered exoplanet Gl581d is extremely close to the outer edge
of its system's habitable zone, which has led to much speculation on its
possible climate. We have performed a range of simulations to assess whether,
given simple combinations of chemically stable greenhouse gases, the planet
could sustain liquid water on its surface. For best estimates of the surface
gravity, surface albedo and cloud coverage, we find that less than 10 bars of
CO2 is sufficient to maintain a global mean temperature above the melting point
of water. Furthermore, even with the most conservative choices of these
parameters, we calculate temperatures above the water melting point for CO2
partial pressures greater than about 40 bar. However, we note that as Gl581d is
probably in a tidally resonant orbit, further simulations in 3D are required to
test whether such atmospheric conditions are stable against the collapse of CO2
on the surface.


  Reading analysis can give important information about a user's confidence and
habits and can be used to construct feedback to improve a user's reading
behavior. A lack of labeled data inhibits the effective application of
fully-supervised Deep Learning (DL) for automatic reading analysis. In this
paper, we propose a self-supervised DL method for reading analysis and evaluate
it on two classification tasks. We first evaluate the proposed self-supervised
DL method on a four-class classification task on reading detection using
electrooculography (EOG) glasses datasets, followed by an evaluation of a
two-class classification task of confidence estimation on answers of
multiple-choice questions (MCQs) using eye-tracking datasets. Fully-supervised
DL and support vector machines (SVMs) are used to compare the performance of
the proposed self-supervised DL method. The results show that the proposed
self-supervised DL method is superior to the fully-supervised DL and SVM for
both tasks, especially when training data is scarce. This result indicates that
the proposed self-supervised DL method is the superior choice for reading
analysis tasks. The results of this study are important for informing the
design and implementation of automatic reading analysis platforms.


  Regardless of the formation mechanism, an exotic object, Double Degenerate
Star (DDS), is introduced and investigated, which is composed of baryonic
matter and some unknown fermion dark matter. Different from the simple White
Dwarfs (WDs), there are additional gravitational force provided by the unknown
fermion component inside DDSs, which may strongly affect the structure and the
stability of such kind of objects. Many possible and strange observational
phenomena connecting with them are concisely discussed. Similar to the normal
WD, this object can also experience thermonuclear explosion as type Ia
supernova explosion when DDS's mass exceeds the maximum mass that can be
supported by electron degeneracy pressure. However, since the total mass of
baryonic matter can be much lower than that of WD at Chandrasekhar mass limit,
the peak luminosity should be much dimmer than what we expect before, which may
throw a slight shadow on the standard candle of SNIa in the research of
cosmology.


  In this letter, we describe the stabilization of indium antimonide (InSb) in
the high-pressure orthorhombic phase (InSb-III) at ambient conditions. Until
now, InSb-III has only been observed above 9 GPa, or at around 3 GPa as a
metastable structure during the phase transition from cubic zinc blende
(InSb-I) to orthorhombic InSb-IV. The crystalline phase transition from InSb-I
to InSb-III was driven by an ultrashort, laser-generated, non-hydrostatic
pressure pulse. The transition occurred in preferred orientations locked to the
initial orientation of the InSb-I crystal, breaking the symmetry of the InSb-I
cubic cell to form the InSb-III orthorhombic cell.


  We present the discovery of a new highly compact quadruple star system, TIC
219006972, consisting of two eclipsing binary stars with orbital periods of 8.3
days and 13.7 days, and an outer orbital period of only 168 days. This period
is a full factor of 2 shorter than the quadruple with the shortest outer period
reported previously, VW LMi, where the two binary components orbit each other
every 355 days. The target was observed by TESS in Full-Frame Images in sectors
14-16, 21-23, 41, 48 and 49, and produced two sets of primary and secondary
eclipses. These show strongly non-linear eclipse timing variations (ETVs) with
an amplitude of $\sim$0.1 days, where the ETVs of the primary and secondary
eclipses, and of the two binaries are all largely positively correlated. This
highlights the strong dynamical interactions between the two binaries and
confirms the compact quadruple configuration of TIC 219006972. The two
eclipsing binaries are nearly circular whereas the quadruple system has an
outer eccentricity of about 0.25. The entire system is nearly edge-on, with a
mutual orbital inclination between the two eclipsing binary star systems of
about 1 degree.


  An explicit derivation of dispersion relations and spectra for periodic
Schr\"{o}dinger operators on carbon nano-structures (including graphen and all
types of single-wall nano-tubes) is provided.


  Recently, self-annihilation of dark matter particles is proposed to explain
the "WMAP Haze" and excess of energetic positrons and electrons in ATIC and
PAMELA results. If self-annihilation of dark matter occurs around the
recombination of cosmic plasma, energy release from self-annihilation of dark
matter delays the recombination, and hence affects CMB anisotropy. By using the
recent CMB data, we have investigated the self-annihilation of dark matter
particles. In this investigation, we do not find statistically significant
evidence, and impose an upper bound on <sigma v> / m_chi. The upcoming data
from Planck surveyor and the Fermi Gamma-ray telescope will allow us to break
some of parameter degeneracy and improve constraints on self-annihilation of
dark matter particles.


  Deformed ground state of $^{32}$Mg is investigated using the axially deformed
relativistic Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov (D-RHFB) model with the effective
Lagrangian PKA1, which provides coincident description with the experimental
measurements. It is illustrated that obvious breaking of the pseudo-spin
symmetry (PSS) given by PKA1, being consistent with the experimental
observation in nearby isotone $^{40}$Ca, is crucial for describing correctly
the deformed ground state by producing unique shape evolution of neutron orbit
$1/2_4^+$ in $^{32}$Mg. The PSS breaking is essentially determined by
characteristic in-medium balance between nuclear attractions and repulsions
that is manifested as unparalleled density dependent behaviors for coupling
strengths $g_\sigma$ and $g_\omega$ in dominant $\sigma$-scalar and
$\omega$-vector channels.


  In this talk we summarize the status of theoretical predictions for the
average number of charm quarks in a B-hadron decay.


  A brief review is given of some well-known and some very recent results
obtained in studies of two- and three-dimensional (2D and 3D) solitons. Both
zero-vorticity (fundamental) solitons and ones carrying vorticity S = 1 are
considered. Physical realizations of multidimensional solitons in atomic
Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) and nonlinear optics are briefly discussed
too. Unlike 1D solitons, which are typically stable, 2D and 3D ones are
vulnerable to instabilities induced by the occurrence of the critical and
supercritical collapse, respectively, in the same 2D and 3D models that give
rise to the solitons. Vortex solitons are subject to a still stronger splitting
instability. For this reason, a central problem is search for physical settings
in which 2D and 3D solitons may be stabilized. The brief review addresses one
well-established topic, viz., the stabilization of the 3D and 2D states, with S
= 0 and 1, trapped in harmonic-oscillator (HO) potentials, and another topic
which was developed very recently: the stabilization of 2D and 3D free-space
solitons, which juxtapose components with S = 0 and (+/-)1 (semi-vortices and
mixed modes), in a binary system with the spin-orbit coupling (SOC) between its
components. The former model is based on the single cubic nonlinear
Schroedinger/Gross-Pitaevskii equation (NLSE/GPE), while the latter one is
represented by a system of two coupled GPEs. In both cases, generic situations
are drastically different in the 2D and 3D geometries. In the 2D settings, the
stabilization mechanism creates a stable ground state (GS, which was absent
without the stabilization), whose norm falls below the threshold value at which
the critical collapse sets in. In the 3D geometry, the supercritical collapse
does not allow to create a GS, but metastable solitons can be constructed.


  In this paper, we derive error estimates of the backward Euler-Maruyama
method applied to multi-valued stochastic differential equations. An important
example of such an equation is a stochastic gradient flow whose associated
potential is not continuously differentiable, but assumed to be convex. We show
that the backward Euler-Maruyama method is well-defined and convergent of order
at least $1/4$ with respect to the root-mean-square norm. Our error analysis
relies on techniques for deterministic problems developed in [Nochetto,
Savar\'e, and Verdi, Comm.\ Pure Appl.\ Math., 2000]. We verify that our
setting applies to an overdamped Langevin equation with a discontinuous
gradient and to a spatially semi-discrete approximation of the stochastic
$p$-Laplace equation.


  Radio detection of extensive air showers initiated in the Earth's atmosphere
has made tremendous progress in the last decade. Today, radio detection is
routinely used in several cosmic-ray observatories. The physics of the radio
emission in air showers is well-understood, and analysis techniques have been
developed to determine the arrival direction, the energy and an estimate for
the mass of the primary particle from the radio measurements. The achieved
resolutions are competitive with those of more traditional techniques. In this
article, I shortly review the most important achievements and discuss the
potential for future applications.


  Compared with the conventional hand-crafted approaches, the deep learning
based methods have achieved tremendous performance improvements by training
exquisitely crafted fancy networks over large-scale training sets. However, do
we really need large-scale training set for salient object detection (SOD)? In
this paper, we provide a deeper insight into the interrelationship between the
SOD performances and the training sets. To alleviate the conventional demands
for large-scale training data, we provide a feasible way to construct a novel
small-scale training set, which only contains 4K images. Moreover, we propose a
novel bi-stream network to take full advantage of our proposed small training
set, which is consisted of two feature backbones with different structures,
achieving complementary semantical saliency fusion via the proposed gate
control unit. To our best knowledge, this is the first attempt to use a
small-scale training set to outperform state-of-the-art models which are
trained on large-scale training sets; nevertheless, our method can still
achieve the leading state-of-the-art performance on five benchmark datasets.


  We show that magnetic fluctuations can destroy the Hebel-Slichter peak in
conventional superconductors. The Hebel-Slichter peak has previously been
expected to survive even in the presence of strong electronic interactions.
However, we show that antiferromagnetic fluctuations suppress the peak at
$\bf{q}=0$ in the imaginary part of the magnetic susceptibility,
$\chi_{+-}''\left(\bf{q},\omega\right)$, which causes the Hebel-Slichter peak.
This is of general interest as in many materials superconductivity is found
near a magnetically ordered phase, and the absence of a Hebel-Slichter peak is
taken as evidence of unconventional superconductivity in these systems. For
example, no Hebel-Slichter peak is observed in the $\kappa$-(BEDT-TTF)$_2X$
organic superconductors but heat capacity measurements have been taken to
indicate $s$-wave superconductivity. If antiferromagnetic fluctuations destroy
the putative Hebel-Slichter peak in organic superconductors then the peak
should be restored by applying a pressure, which is known to suppress
antiferromagnetic correlations in these materials.


  We present results for tetraquark potentials of two static anti-quarks $\bar
b \bar b$ in the presence of two light quarks $u$ and/or $d$. We improve on
existing results by computing the static potential also for off-axis
separations, which increases the number of data points significantly. Moreover,
we compute for the first time $\bar b \bar b u s$ potentials.


  We propose to use T-odd momentum correlations as physical observables to
study T violation in $B\to K^{*}l^{+}l^{-} (l=e,\mu)$ decays. We show that
these observables are zero in the standard model but sizable at the level of
10% in the supersymmetric model. These large T violating effects are measurable
at the B-factories in KEK and SLAC and future hadron colliders. We also point
out that the T violating effects are insensitive to nonperturbative QCD
contributions.


  We present the catalogue of blended galaxy spectra from the Galaxy And Mass
Assembly (GAMA) survey. These are cases where light from two galaxies are
significantly detected in a single GAMA fibre. Galaxy pairs identified from
their blended spectrum fall into two principal classes: they are either strong
lenses, a passive galaxy lensing an emission-line galaxy; or occulting
galaxies, serendipitous overlaps of two galaxies, of any type. Blended spectra
can thus be used to reliably identify strong lenses for follow-up observations
(high resolution imaging) and occulting pairs, especially those that are a
late-type partly obscuring an early-type galaxy which are of interest for the
study of dust content of spiral and irregular galaxies. The GAMA survey setup
and its autoz automated redshift determination were used to identify candidate
blended galaxy spectra from the cross-correlation peaks. We identify 280
blended spectra with a minimum velocity separation of 600 km/s, of which 104
are lens pair candidates, 71 emission-line-passive pairs, 78 are pairs of
emission-line galaxies and and 27 are pairs of galaxies with passive spectra.
We have visually inspected the candidates in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
(SDSS) and Kilo Degree Survey (KiDS) images. Many blended objects are
ellipticals with blue fuzz (Ef in our classification). These latter "Ef"
classifications are candidates for possible strong lenses, massive ellipticals
with an emission-line galaxy in one or more lensed images. The GAMA lens and
occulting galaxy candidate samples are similar in size to those identified in
the entire SDSS. This blended spectrum sample stands as a testament of the
power of this highly complete, second-largest spectroscopic survey in existence
and offers the possibility to expand e.g., strong gravitational lens surveys.


  In this work we investigate the effect of the convolutional network depth on
its accuracy in the large-scale image recognition setting. Our main
contribution is a thorough evaluation of networks of increasing depth using an
architecture with very small (3x3) convolution filters, which shows that a
significant improvement on the prior-art configurations can be achieved by
pushing the depth to 16-19 weight layers. These findings were the basis of our
ImageNet Challenge 2014 submission, where our team secured the first and the
second places in the localisation and classification tracks respectively. We
also show that our representations generalise well to other datasets, where
they achieve state-of-the-art results. We have made our two best-performing
ConvNet models publicly available to facilitate further research on the use of
deep visual representations in computer vision.


  We introduce a general framework of stochastic online convex optimization to
obtain fast-rate stochastic regret bounds. We prove that algorithms such as
online newton steps and a scale-free 10 version of Bernstein online aggregation
achieve best-known rates in unbounded stochastic settings. We apply our
approach to calibrate parametric probabilistic forecasters of non-stationary
sub-gaussian time series. Our fast-rate stochastic regret bounds are any-time
valid. Our proofs combine self-bounded and Poissonnian inequalities for
martingales and sub-gaussian random variables, respectively, under a stochastic
exp-concavity assumption.


  The Standard Model fermion sector is enlarged by either one light singlet
vector-like down-type quark or one light vector-like lepton doublet, which
might be accommodated within a five-dimensional representation of SU(5). At low
energies the inclusion of these states affects precisely measured observables
in flavor physics, as well as electroweak precision measurements. These
experimental results strongly constrain couplings of vector-like states to the
Standard Model particles. Having these bounds, we investigate the impact of
vector-like fermions on the mass matrices for down-type quarks and charged
leptons in an SU(5) setting. We find that unitary transformations relating an
arbitrary flavor basis to the mass eigenstate basis depend only on three free
parameters. Then we discuss the parameter space constrained by low-energy data
assuming vector-like quark and vector-like lepton masses to be 800 GeV and 400
GeV, respectively. We demonstrate that these two scenarios generate unique
patterns for relevant proton decay widths. A further improvement of
experimental bounds on proton decay modes would thus differentiate the allowed
parameter space. We finally present two full-fledged SU(5) models that allow
for gauge coupling unification with light vector-like fermions under
consideration and discuss their viability.


  Quantum field theory violates all the classical energy conditions of general
relativity. Nonetheless, it turns out that quantum field theories satisfy
remnants of the classical energy conditions, known as Quantum Energy
Inequalities (QEIs), that have been developed by various authors since the
original pioneering work of Ford in 1978. These notes provide an introduction
to QEIs and also to some of the techniques of quantum field theory in curved
spacetime (particularly, the use of microlocal analysis together with the
algebraic formulation of QFT) that enable rigorous and general QEIs to be
derived. Specific examples are computed for the free scalar field and their
consequences are discussed. QEIs are also derived for the class of unitary,
positive energy conformal field theories in two spacetime dimensions. In that
setting it is also possible to determine the probability distribution for
individual measurements of certain smearings of the stress-energy tensor in the
vacuum state.


  Exoplanet research is now target rich with a wide diversity of systems making
it difficult for high demand observatories to undertake follow up observations
over extended periods of time. We investigate the effectiveness of using
0.4m-class telescopes for monitoring transiting hot Jupiters and their host
stars. We consider two representative case studies: WASP-52b with 13 new
transits, and HAT-P-23b with 17 new transits and concurrent photometric
monitoring covering 78 days. We present updated system parameters and combine
our new transit times with previously published results to calculate new
ephemerides for both systems. Our analysis of transit mid-times for WASP-52b
results in a slight preference for a quadratic ephemeris ($\Delta\chi_{\nu}^2 =
0.07$, $\Delta BIC = 1.53$ over a linear ephemeris. We discuss the reality of
this quadratic ephemeris indicating a period change of $ \delta P / \delta t =
-38.6\pm4{\rm ms~yr^{-1}}$ and consider possible causes. WASP-52 is known to be
an active star with previous publications reporting many spot crossing events,
however no such events are seen in our new photometry. Our analysis shows that
WASP-52 is still active and that the latitude of the spots has likely migrated
away from the transit chord. We confirm the inflated nature and circular orbit
for HAT-P-23b. Our monitoring of HAT-P-23 reveals a periodicity of 7.015 days
with an amplitude of 0.011 mag which we interpret as the rotation period of
HAT-P-23. The photometric and transit timing precision achieved in the case
studies shows that this class of telescope is capable of precise
characterisation and long-term monitoring of transiting hot Jupiters in support
of dedicated ongoing and future ground and space based observations.


  In this paper, we present a mathematical and algorithmic framework for the
continuation of point clouds by persistence diagrams. A key property used in
the method is that the persistence map, which assigns a persistence diagram to
a point cloud, is differentiable. This allows us to apply the Newton-Raphson
continuation method in this setting. Given an original point cloud $P$, its
persistence diagram $D$, and a target persistence diagram $D'$, we gradually
move from $D$ to $D'$, by successively computing intermediate point clouds
until we finally find a point cloud $P'$ having $D'$ as its persistence
diagram. Our method can be applied to a wide variety of situations in
topological data analysis where it is necessary to solve an inverse problem,
from persistence diagrams to point cloud data.


  The many-parametric fit of the LEP2 data on e^+e^-\to e^+e^-, \mu^+\mu^-,
\tau^+\tau^- processes is performed to estimate signals of the Abelian Z'-boson
beyond the standard model. The model-independent relations between the Z'
couplings to the standard model particles allow to describe the Z' effects in
lepton processes by 4 independent parameters. No signal is found by the
complete LEP2 data set, and the 1.3\sigma signal is detected by the fit of the
backward bins. The Z' couplings to the vector and axial-vector lepton currents
are constrained. The comparisons with the one-parameter fits and with the LEP1
experiments are performed.


  We investigate the origin and physical properties of OVI absorbers at low
redshift (z = 0.25) using a subset of cosmological, hydrodynamical simulations
from the OverWhelmingly Large Simulations (OWLS) project. Intervening OVI
absorbers are believed to trace shock-heated gas in the Warm-Hot Intergalactic
Medium (WHIM) and may thus play a key role in the search for the missing
baryons in the present-day Universe. When compared to observations, the
predicted distributions of the different OVI line parameters (column density,
Doppler parameter, rest equivalent width) from our simulations exhibit a lack
of strong OVI absorbers. This suggests that physical processes on sub-grid
scales (e.g. turbulence) may strongly influence the observed properties of OVI
systems. We find that the intervening OVI absorption arises mainly in highly
metal-enriched (0.1 << Z/Z_sun < 1) gas at typical overdensities of 1 <<
rho/<rho> < 100. One third of the OVI absorbers in our simulation are found to
trace gas at temperatures T < 10^5 K, while the rest arises in gas at higher
temperatures around T =10^5.3 K. The OVI resides in a similar region of
(rho,T)-space as much of the shock-heated baryonic matter, but the vast
majority of this gas has a lower metal content and does not give rise to
detectable OVI absorption As a consequence of the patchy metal distribution,
OVI absorbers in our simulations trace only a very small fraction of the cosmic
baryons (<2 percent) and the cosmic metals. Instead, these systems presumably
trace previously shock-heated, metal-rich material from galactic winds that is
now cooling. The common approach of comparing OVI and HI column densities to
estimate the physical conditions in intervening absorbers from QSO observations
may be misleading, as most of the HI (and most of the gas mass) is not
physically connected with the high-metallicity patches that give rise to the
OVI absorption.


  We have determined the oxygen abundance of HE0107-5240 from UV-OH lines
detected in VLT/UVES spectra. Using a plane-parallel LTE model atmosphere, we
derive [O/Fe] = +2.4, and a similar analysis of CD -38 245 yields [O/Fe] =
+1.0. We estimate systematic errors due to 3D effects to be in the order of 0.3
to 0.4 dex. That is, our derived O abundances are likely overestimates: effects
from thermal inhomogeneities due to convection may require that the abundances
should be reduced by 0.3-0.4 dex or even more. Radial velocity data for
HE0107-5240 based on high-resolution spectra show that over a time span of 373
days the radial velocity was constant at 44.5 km/s, with a 1 sigma scatter of
the measurements of 0.5 km/s. However, it can not yet be ruled out that
HE0107-5240 is a very long period and/or low amplitude binary. These results
provide new constraints on scenarios for the origin of the abundance pattern of
HE0107-5240. In particular, it seems unlikely that the large overabundances of
CNO have been produced in a medium-mass AGB star which later evolved to a white
dwarf. The oxygen abundance of HE0107-5240 is significantly smaller than the
prediction of Umeda & Nomoto (2003) from calculated yields of a ~25 solar mass
Population III star exploding as a supernova of low explosion energy (E_exp = 3
x 10^50 erg) with mixing and fallback. The scenario of Limongi et al. (2003),
involving two Population III supernovae, predicts an oxygen abundance of [O/Fe]
= +4.1 for HE0107-5240, in strong contradiction with the observed value. In
conclusion, none of the above mentioned scenarios, in their present
realizations, can satisfactorly explain the abundance pattern of HE0107-5240.


  We investigate the effect of structural deformation on the magnetic
properties of orthorhombic CePdAl$_3$ in relation to its tetragonal polymorph.
Utilizing x-ray and neutron diffraction we establish that the crystal structure
has the $Cmcm$ space group symmetry and exhibits pseudo-tetragonal twinning.
According to density-functional calculations the tetragonal-orthorhombic
deformation mechanism has its grounds in relatively small free enthalpy
difference between the polymorphs, allowing either phase to be quenched and
fully accounts for the twinned microstructure of the orthorhombic phase.
Neutron diffraction measurements show that orthorhombic CePdAl$_3$ establishes
long-range magnetic order below $T_\mathrm{N}$=5.29 (5) K characterized by a
collinear, antiferromagnetic arrangement of magnetic moments. Magnetic
anisotropies of orthorhombic CePdAl$_3$ arise from strong spin-orbit coupling
as evidenced by the crystal-field splitting of the $4f$ multiplet, fully
characterised with neutron spectroscopy. We discuss the potential mechanism of
frustration posed by antiferromagnetic interactions between nearest neighbours
in the tetragonal phase, which hinders the formation of long-range magnetic
order in tetragonal CePdAl$_3$. We propose that orthorhombic deformation
releases the frustration and allows for long-range magnetic order.


  A comprehensive microscopic dynamical theory is presented for the description
of quantum fluids as they transform into glasses. The theory is based on a
quantum extension of mode-coupling theory. Novel effects are predicted, such as
reentrant behavior of dynamical relaxation times. These predictions are
supported by path integral ring polymer molecular dynamics simulations. The
simulations provide detailed insight into the factors that govern slow dynamics
in glassy quantum fluids. Connection to other recent work on both quantum
glasses as well as quantum optimization problems is presented.


  We investigate the nuclear and the quark matter at finite real chemical
potential ($\mu_\mathrm{R}$) and low temperature from the viewpoint of the
canonical sectors constructed via the imaginary chemical potential region.
Based on the large $N_\mathrm{c}$ estimation, where $N_\mathrm{c}$ is the
number of color, we can discuss the confinement-deconfinement nature at finite
$\mu_\mathrm{R}$ from the canonical sectors. We found the expectation that the
sharp change of canonical sectors at $\mu_\mathrm{R} \sim
M_\mathrm{B}/N_\mathrm{c}$, where $M_\mathrm{B}$ is the lowest baryon mass, is
happen in the large $N_\mathrm{c}$ regime, and it is matched with the
quarkyonic picture. In addition, we discussed the color superconductivity and
the chiral properties from the structure of canonical sectors. Even in the
present anatomy from the canonical sectors, we can have the suitable picture
for the dense QCD matter.


  We introduce a notion of inertial equivalence for integral $\ell$-adic
representation of the Galois group of a global field. We show that the
collection of continuous, semisimple, pure $\ell$-adic representations of the
absolute Galois group of a global field lifting a fixed absolutely irreducible
residual representation and with given inertial type outside a fixed finite set
of places is uniformly bounded independent of the inertial type.


  We study the Robinson-Trautman-Maxwell Fields in two closely related
coordinate systems, the original Robinson-Trautman (RT) coordinates (in a more
general context, often referred to as NU coordinates) and Bondi coordinates. In
particular, we identify one of the RT variables as a velocity and then from the
Bondi energy-momentum 4-vector, we find kinematic expressions for the mass and
momentum in terms of this velocity. From these kinematic expressions and the
energy-momentum loss equation we obtain surprising equations of motion for `the
center of mass' of the source where the motion takes place in the
four-dimensional Poincare translation sub-group of the BMS group.


  We establish the expressibility in fixed-point logic with counting (FPC) of a
number of natural polynomial-time problems. In particular, we show that the
size of a maximum matching in a graph is definable in FPC. This settles an open
problem first posed by Blass, Gurevich and Shelah, who asked whether the
existence of perfect matchings in general graphs could be determined in the
more powerful formalism of choiceless polynomial time with counting. Our result
is established by showing that the ellipsoid method for solving linear programs
can be implemented in FPC. This allows us to prove that linear programs can be
optimised in FPC if the corresponding separation oracle problem can be defined
in FPC. On the way to defining a suitable separation oracle for the maximum
matching problem, we provide FPC formulas defining maximum flows and canonical
minimum cuts in capacitated graphs.


  Automatic lip-reading (ALR) aims to automatically transcribe spoken content
from a speaker's silent lip motion captured in video. Current mainstream
lip-reading approaches only use a single visual encoder to model input videos
of a single scale. In this paper, we propose to enhance lip-reading by
incorporating multi-scale video data and multi-encoder. Specifically, we first
propose a novel multi-scale lip motion extraction algorithm based on the size
of the speaker's face and an Enhanced ResNet3D visual front-end (VFE) to
extract lip features at different scales. For the multi-encoder, in addition to
the mainstream Transformer and Conformer, we also incorporate the recently
proposed Branchformer and E-Branchformer as visual encoders. In the
experiments, we explore the influence of different video data scales and
encoders on ALR system performance and fuse the texts transcribed by all ALR
systems using recognizer output voting error reduction (ROVER). Finally, our
proposed approach placed second in the ICME 2024 ChatCLR Challenge Task 2, with
a 21.52% reduction in character error rate (CER) compared to the official
baseline on the evaluation set.


  We demonstrate that the results of the complete first order calculation of
the non-factorizable QED corrections to the single-inclusive cross-sections for
$e^+e^- \to W^+W^- \to 4$ fermions could be very well reproduced by a simple
physically motivated ansatz. The latter allows to take into account effectively
the screening role of the non-Coulomb radiative mechanisms by introducing a
dampening factor in front of the width-dependent part of the known first-order
Coulomb correction, the so-called screened-Coulomb ansatz.


  We show that the complex shape of the cosmic ray (CR) spectrum, as recently
measured by PAMELA and inferred from Fermi-LAT gamma-ray observations of
molecular clouds in the Gould belt, can be naturally understood in terms of
basic plasma astrophysics phenomena. A break from a harder to a softer spectrum
at blue rigidity R\simeq 10 GV follows from a transition from transport
dominated by advection of particles with Alfven waves to a regime where
diffusion in the turbulence generated by the same CRs is dominant. A second
break at R\simeq 200 GV happens when the diffusive propagation is no longer
determined by the self-generated turbulence, but rather by the cascading of
externally generated turbulence (for instance due to supernova (SN) bubbles)
from large spatial scales to smaller scales where CRs can resonate.
Implications of this scenario for the cosmic ray spectrum, grammage and
anisotropy are discussed.


  We present measurements of the branching fraction B and the longitudinal
polarization fraction fL for B0 -> a1(1260)+ a1(1260)- decays, with a1(1260)+/-
-> \pi- \pi+ \pi+/-. The data sample, collected with the detector BaBar at the
SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, represents 465 10^6 produced BBbar pairs.
We measure B(B0 -> a1(1260)+ a1(1260)-) x [B(a1(1260)+ -> \pi- \pi+ \pi+)]^2 =
(11.8 \pm 2.6 \pm 1.6) 10^{-6} and fL = 0.31 \pm 0.22 \pm 0.10, where the first
uncertainty is statistical and the second systematic. The decay mode is
measured with a significance of 5.0 standard deviations including systematic
uncertainties.


  We describe the hexagon function bootstrap for solving for six-gluon
scattering amplitudes in the large $N_c$ limit of ${\cal N}=4$ super-Yang-Mills
theory. In this method, an ansatz for the finite part of these amplitudes is
constrained at the level of amplitudes, not integrands, using boundary
information. In the near-collinear limit, the dual picture of the amplitudes as
Wilson loops leads to an operator product expansion which has been solved using
integrability by Basso, Sever and Vieira. Factorization of the amplitudes in
the multi-Regge limit provides additional boundary data. This bootstrap has
been applied successfully through four loops for the maximally helicity
violating (MHV) configuration of gluon helicities, and through three loops for
the non-MHV case.


  Motivated by the observation of non-exponential run-time distributions of
bacterial swimmers, we propose a minimal phenomenological model for taxis of
active particles whose motion is controlled by an internal clock. The ticking
of the clock depends on an external concentration field, e.g. a chemical
substance. We demonstrate that these particles can detect concentration
gradients and respond to them by moving up- or down-gradient depending on the
clock design, albeit measurements of these fields are purely local in space and
instantaneous in time. Altogether, our results open a new route in the study of
directional navigation, by showing that the use of a clock to control motility
actions represents a generic and versatile toolbox to engineer behavioral
responses to external cues, such as light, chemical, or temperature gradients.


  Unsupervised/self-supervised time series representation learning is a
challenging problem because of its complex dynamics and sparse annotations.
Existing works mainly adopt the framework of contrastive learning with the
time-based augmentation techniques to sample positives and negatives for
contrastive training. Nevertheless, they mostly use segment-level augmentation
derived from time slicing, which may bring about sampling bias and incorrect
optimization with false negatives due to the loss of global context. Besides,
they all pay no attention to incorporate the spectral information in feature
representation. In this paper, we propose a unified framework, namely Bilinear
Temporal-Spectral Fusion (BTSF). Specifically, we firstly utilize the
instance-level augmentation with a simple dropout on the entire time series for
maximally capturing long-term dependencies. We devise a novel iterative
bilinear temporal-spectral fusion to explicitly encode the affinities of
abundant time-frequency pairs, and iteratively refines representations in a
fusion-and-squeeze manner with Spectrum-to-Time (S2T) and Time-to-Spectrum
(T2S) Aggregation modules. We firstly conducts downstream evaluations on three
major tasks for time series including classification, forecasting and anomaly
detection. Experimental results shows that our BTSF consistently significantly
outperforms the state-of-the-art methods.


  Deep learning models for vision tasks are trained on large datasets under the
assumption that there exists a universal representation that can be used to
make predictions for all samples. Whereas high complexity models are proven to
be capable of learning such representations, a mixture of experts trained on
specific subsets of the data can infer the labels more efficiently. However
using mixture of experts poses two new problems, namely (i) assigning the
correct expert at inference time when a new unseen sample is presented. (ii)
Finding the optimal partitioning of the training data, such that the experts
rely the least on common features. In Dynamic Routing (DR) a novel architecture
is proposed where each layer is composed of a set of experts, however without
addressing the two challenges we demonstrate that the model reverts to using
the same subset of experts.
  In our method, Diversified Dynamic Routing (DivDR) the model is explicitly
trained to solve the challenge of finding relevant partitioning of the data and
assigning the correct experts in an unsupervised approach. We conduct several
experiments on semantic segmentation on Cityscapes and object detection and
instance segmentation on MS-COCO showing improved performance over several
baselines.


  Our aim in this report is to investigate the asymptotic behavior of
Mittag-Leffler functions. We give some estimates involving the Mittag-Leffler
functions and their derivatives.


  Coherence time and gate fidelities in Rydberg atom quantum simulators and
computers are fundamentally limited by the Rydberg state lifetime. Circular
Rydberg states are highly promising candidates to overcome this limitation by
orders of magnitude, as they can be effectively protected from decay due to
their maximum angular momentum. We report the first realization of
alkaline-earth circular Rydberg atoms trapped in optical tweezers, which
provide unique and novel control possibilities due to the optically active
ionic core. Specifically, we demonstrate creation of very high-$n$ ($n=79$)
circular states of $^{88}$Sr. We measure lifetimes as long as 2.55 ms at room
temperature, which are achieved via cavity-assisted suppression of black-body
radiation. We show coherent control of a microwave qubit encoded in circular
states of nearby manifolds, and characterize the qubit coherence time via
Ramsey and spin-echo spectroscopy. Finally, circular state tweezer trapping
exploiting the Sr$^+$ core polarizability is quantified via measurements of the
trap-induced light shift on the qubit. Our work opens routes for quantum
simulations with circular Rydberg states of divalent atoms, exploiting the
emergent toolbox associated with the optically active core ion.


  We have generalized the Edwards' method of collective description of dense
polymer systems in terms of effective potentials to polymer blends in the
presence of a surface. With this method we have studied conformationally
asymmetric athermic polymer blends in the presence of a hard wall to the first
order in effective potentials. For polymers with the same gyration radius $R_g$
but different statistical segment lengths $l_{A}$ and $l_{B}$ the excess
concentration of stiffer polymers at the surface is derived as $% \delta \rho
_{A}(z=0)\sim (l_{B}^{-2}-l_{A}^{-2}){\ln (}R_{g}^{2}/l_{c}^{2}{)%}$, where
$l_{c}$ is a local length below of which the incompressibility of the polymer
blend is violated. For polymer blends differing only in degrees of
polymerization the shorter polymer enriches the wall.


  Large knowledge graphs increasingly add value to various applications that
require machines to recognize and understand queries and their semantics, as in
search or question answering systems. Latent variable models have increasingly
gained attention for the statistical modeling of knowledge graphs, showing
promising results in tasks related to knowledge graph completion and cleaning.
Besides storing facts about the world, schema-based knowledge graphs are backed
by rich semantic descriptions of entities and relation-types that allow
machines to understand the notion of things and their semantic relationships.
In this work, we study how type-constraints can generally support the
statistical modeling with latent variable models. More precisely, we integrated
prior knowledge in form of type-constraints in various state of the art latent
variable approaches. Our experimental results show that prior knowledge on
relation-types significantly improves these models up to 77% in link-prediction
tasks. The achieved improvements are especially prominent when a low model
complexity is enforced, a crucial requirement when these models are applied to
very large datasets. Unfortunately, type-constraints are neither always
available nor always complete e.g., they can become fuzzy when entities lack
proper typing. We show that in these cases, it can be beneficial to apply a
local closed-world assumption that approximates the semantics of relation-types
based on observations made in the data.


  With the boom of edge intelligence, its vulnerability to adversarial attacks
becomes an urgent problem. The so-called adversarial example can fool a deep
learning model on the edge node to misclassify. Due to the property of
transferability, the adversary can easily make a black-box attack using a local
substitute model. Nevertheless, the limitation of resource of edge nodes cannot
afford a complicated defense mechanism as doing on the cloud data center. To
overcome the challenge, we propose a dynamic defense mechanism, namely EI-MTD.
It first obtains robust member models with small size through differential
knowledge distillation from a complicated teacher model on the cloud data
center. Then, a dynamic scheduling policy based on a Bayesian Stackelberg game
is applied to the choice of a target model for service. This dynamic defense
can prohibit the adversary from selecting an optimal substitute model for
black-box attacks. Our experimental result shows that this dynamic scheduling
can effectively protect edge intelligence against adversarial attacks under the
black-box setting.


  Recently the AGILE $\gamma$-ray telescope has reported the enhanced
$\gamma$-ray emission above 100 MeV from the direction of the Crab Nebula
during a period of a few days. This intriguing observation has been confirmed
by the Fermi-LAT telescope. This emission does not show evidences of pulsations
with the Crab pulsar. It seems that it originates at the shock region created
as a result of the interaction of the pulsar wind with the nebula. We propose
that such variable $\gamma$-ray emission originate in the region behind the
shock when the electrons can be accelerated as a result of the reconnection of
the magnetic field compressed by the decelerating pulsar wind. The natural
consequence of such interpretation is the prediction that the Crab Nebula
$\gamma$-ray spectrum produced by electrons as a result of the inverse Compton
scattering of soft radiation to multi-TeV energies should also show synchronous
variability on the time scales as observed at GeV energies by the AGILE and
Fermi-LAT telescopes. We calculate how the end of the IC component of the Crab
Nebula $\gamma$-ray spectrum should look like during the quiescent and the
flare GeV $\gamma$-ray emission. We conclude that the variability of the
multi-TeV $\gamma$-ray spectrum from the Crab Nebula might in principle be
responsible for the differences between the spectral features reported by the
HEGRA and HESS Collaborations at the multi-TeV energies.


  Often in the setting of human-based interactions, the existence of a temporal
hierarchy of information plays an important role in diffusion and opinion
dynamics within communities. For example at the individual agent level, more
recently acquired information may exert greater influence during
decision-making processes. To facilitate further exploration of this effect, we
introduce an efficient method for modelling temporally asynchronous opinion
updates, where the timing of updates depends on the timing of incoming opinion
states received from neighbours. The framework enables the introduction of
information arrival-time lag by means of lag-vectors. These are used to weight
the relevance of information received by agents, based on the delay between its
receipt and the subsequent opinion update. The temporal dynamics (i.e. the
times at which information is transmitted) are governed by an underlying
algebraic structure called max-plus algebra. We investigate the resulting
continuous opinion dynamics under the max-plus regime using a modified
Hegselmann-Krause model, replacing the conventional confidence-interval based
on the distance between opinions with one based instead on the recency of
information received by agents.


  Electronic states in two-dimensional layered materials can exhibit a
remarkable variety of correlated phases including Wigner-crystals, Mott
insulators, charge density waves, and superconductivity. Recent experimental
and theoretical research has indicated that ferromagnetic phases can exist in
electronically-doped transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) semiconductors, but
a stable magnetic state at zero magnetic field has eluded detection. Here, we
experimentally demonstrate that mesoscopic ferromagnetic order can be generated
and controlled by local optical pumping in monolayer WSe2 at zero applied
magnetic field. In a spatially resolved pump-probe experiment, we use
polarization-resolved reflectivity from excitonic states as a probe of
charge-carrier spin polarization. When the sample is electron-doped at density
$n_e = 10^{12} cm^{-2}$, we observe that a local, circularly-polarized,
microwatt-power optical pump breaks the symmetry between equivalent
ferromagnetic spin configurations and creates magnetic order which extends over
mesoscopic regions as large as 8 um x 5 um, bounded by sample edges and folds
in the 2D semiconductor. The experimental signature of magnetic order is
circular dichroism (CD) in reflectivity from the excitonic states, with
magnitude exceeding 20% at resonant wavelengths. The helicity of the pump
determines the orientation of the magnetic state, which can be aligned along
the two principle out-of-plane axes. In contrast to previous studies in 2D
materials that have required non-local, slowly varying magnetic fields to
manipulate magnetic phases, the demonstrated capability to control long-range
magnetism and corresponding strong CD with local and tunable optical pumps is
highly versatile. This discovery will unlock new TMD-based spin and optical
technologies and enable sophisticated control of correlated electron phases in
two-dimensional electron gases (2DEGs).


  We estimate the accuracy with which various cosmological parameters can be
determined from the CMB temperature and polarization data when various galactic
unpolarized and polarized foregrounds are included and marginalized using the
multi-frequency Wiener filtering technique. We use the specifications of the
future CMB missions MAP and PLANCK for our study. Our results are in
qualitative agreement with earlier results obtained without foregrounds, though
the errors in most parameters are higher because of degradation of the
extraction of polarization signal in the presence of foregrounds.


  We consider the influence of variation in the fine structure constant alpha
on a promising experiment proposed by DeMille et al. to search for variation in
the electron-to-proton mass ratio mu using diatomic molecules [DeMille et al.,
Phys. Rev. Lett. 100, 043202 (2008)]. The proposed experiment involves
spectroscopically probing the splitting between two nearly-degenerate
vibrational levels supported by different electronic potentials. Here we
demonstrate that this splitting may be equally or more sensitive to variation
in alpha as to variation in mu. For the anticipated experimental precision,
this implies that the alpha variation may not be negligible, as previously
assumed, and further suggests that the method could serve as a competitive
means to search for alpha variation as well.


  Recently the LHAASO Collaboration published the detection of 12
ultra-high-energy gamma-ray sources above 100 TeV, with the highest energy
photon reaching 1.4 PeV. The first detection of PeV gamma rays from
astrophysical sources may provide a very sensitive probe of the effect of the
Lorentz invariance violation (LIV), which results in decay of high-energy gamma
rays in the superluminal scenario and hence a sharp cutoff of the energy
spectrum. Two highest energy sources are studied in this work. No signature of
the existence of LIV is found in their energy spectra, and the lower limits on
the LIV energy scale are derived. Our results show that the first-order LIV
energy scale should be higher than about 10^5 times the Planck scale M_{pl} and
that the second-order LIV scale is >10^{-3}M_{pl}. Both limits improve by at
least one order of magnitude the previous results.


  The high efficiency of charge generation within organic photovoltaic blends
apparently contrasts with the strong "classical" attraction between newly
formed electron-hole pairs. Several factors have been identified as possible
facilitators of charge dissociation, such as quantum mechanical coherence and
delocalization, structural and energetic disorder, built-in electric fields,
nanoscale intermixing of the donor and acceptor components of the blends. Our
mesoscale quantum-chemical model allows an unbiased assessment of their
relative importance, through excited-state calculations on systems containing
thousands of donor and acceptor sites. The results on several model
heterojunctions confirm that the classical model severely overestimates the
binding energy of the electron-hole pairs, produced by vertical excitation from
the electronic ground state. Using physically sensible parameters for the
individual materials, we find that the quantum mechanical energy difference
between the lowest interfacial charge transfer states and the fully separated
electron and hole is of the order of the thermal energy.


  We give an estimation for the arithmetic genus of an integral space curve,
which are not contained in a surface of degree $k-1$. Our main technique is the
Bogomolov-Gieseker type inequality for $\mathbb{P}^3$ proved by Macri.


  Spin qubits offer one of the most promising routes to the implementation of
quantum computers. Very recent results in semiconductor quantum dots show that
electrically-controlled gating schemes are particularly well-suited for the
realization of a universal set of quantum logical gates. Scalability to a
larger number of qubits, however, remains an issue for such semiconductor
quantum dots. In contrast, a chemical bottom-up approach allows one to produce
identical units in which localized spins represent the qubits. Molecular
magnetism has produced a wide range of systems with tailored properties, but
molecules permitting electrical gating have been lacking. Here we propose to
use the polyoxometalate [PMo12O40(VO)2]q-, where two localized spins-1/2 can be
coupled through the electrons of the central core. Via electrical manipulation
of the molecular redox potential, the charge of the core can be changed. With
this setup, two-qubit gates and qubit readout can be implemented.


  Pansharpening aims to generate a high spatial resolution multispectral image
(HRMS) by fusing a low spatial resolution multispectral image (LRMS) and a
panchromatic image (PAN). The most challenging issue for this task is that only
the to-be-fused LRMS and PAN are available, and the existing deep
learning-based methods are unsuitable since they rely on many training pairs.
Traditional variational optimization (VO) based methods are well-suited for
addressing such a problem. They focus on carefully designing explicit fusion
rules as well as regularizations for an optimization problem, which are based
on the researcher's discovery of the image relationships and image structures.
Unlike previous VO-based methods, in this work, we explore such complex
relationships by a parameterized term rather than a manually designed one.
Specifically, we propose a zero-shot pansharpening method by introducing a
neural network into the optimization objective. This network estimates a
representation component of HRMS, which mainly describes the relationship
between HRMS and PAN. In this way, the network achieves a similar goal to the
so-called deep image prior because it implicitly regulates the relationship
between the HRMS and PAN images through its inherent structure. We directly
minimize this optimization objective via network parameters and the expected
HRMS image through iterative updating. Extensive experiments on various
benchmark datasets demonstrate that our proposed method can achieve better
performance compared with other state-of-the-art methods. The codes are
available at https://github.com/xyrui/PSDip.


  The nonlinearity is an important feature in the field of optomechanics.
Employing atomic coherence, we put forward a scheme to enhance the nonlinearity
of the cavity optomechanical system. The effective Hamiltonian is derived,
which shows that the nonlinear strength can be enhanced by increasing the
number of atoms at certain range of parameters. We also numerically study the
nonlinearity enhancement beyond the effective Hamiltonian. Furthermore, we
investigate the potential usage of the nonlinearity in performing quantum
nondemolition (QND) measurement of the bosonic modes. Our results show that the
present system exhibits synchronization, and the nonlinear effects provide us
an effective method in performing QND.


  We summarize the papers published by Einstein in the Annalen der Physik in
the years 1902-04 on the derivation of the properties of thermal equilibrium on
the basis of the mechanical equations of motion and of the calculus of
probabilities. We point out the line of thought that led Einstein to an
especially economical foundation of the discipline, and to focus on
fluctuations of the energy as a possible tool for establishing the validity of
this foundation. We also sketch a comparison of Einstein's approach with that
of Gibbs, suggesting that although they obtained similar results, they had
different motivations and interpreted them in very different ways.


  A modern Q-band low noise amplifier (LNA) front-end is being fitted to the
10.4 m millimeter-wave telescope at the Raman Research Institute (RRI) to
support observations in the 40-50 GHz frequency range. To assess the
suitability of the surface for this purpose, we measured the deviations of the
primary surface from an ideal paraboloid using radio holography. We used the
11.6996 GHz beacon signal from the GSAT3 satellite, a 1.2 m reference antenna,
commercial Ku-band Low Noise Block Convereters (LNBC) as the receiver
front-ends and a Stanford Research Systems (SRS) lock-in amplifier as the
backend. The LNBCs had independent free-running first local oscillators (LO).
Yet, we recovered the correlation by using a radiatively injected common tone
that served as the second local oscillator. With this setup, we mapped the
surface deviations on a 64 x 64 grid and measured an rms surface deviation of
~350 um with a measurement accuracy of ~50 um.


  First order phase transitions in finite systems can be defined through the
bimodality of the distribution of the order parameter. This definition is
equivalent to the one based on the inverted curvature of the thermodynamic
potential. Moreover we show that it is in a one to one correspondence with the
Yang Lee theorem in the thermodynamic limit. Bimodality is a necessary and
sufficient condition for zeroes of the partition sum in the control intensive
variable complex plane to be distributed on a line perpendicular to the real
axis with a uniform density, scaling like the number of particles.


  Since 2006 we have undertaken to describe the differences between 17th
century English and contemporary English thanks to NLP software. Studying a
corpus spanning the whole century (tales of English travellers in the Ottoman
Empire in the 17th century, Mary Astell's essay A Serious Proposal to the
Ladies and other literary texts) has enabled us to highlight various lexical,
morphological or grammatical singularities. Thanks to the NooJ linguistic
platform, we created dictionaries indexing the lexical variants and their
transcription in CE. The latter is often the result of the validation of forms
recognized dynamically by morphological graphs. We also built syntactical
graphs aimed at transcribing certain archaic forms in contemporary English. Our
previous research implied a succession of elementary steps alternating textual
analysis and result validation. We managed to provide examples of
transcriptions, but we have not created a global tool for automatic
transcription. Therefore we need to focus on the results we have obtained so
far, study the conditions for creating such a tool, and analyze possible
difficulties. In this paper, we will be discussing the technical and linguistic
aspects we have not yet covered in our previous work. We are using the results
of previous research and proposing a transcription method for words or
sequences identified as archaic.


  We develop an efficient algorithm, coordinate descent FCI (CDFCI), for the
electronic structure ground state calculation in the configuration interaction
framework. CDFCI solves an unconstrained non-convex optimization problem, which
is a reformulation of the full configuration interaction eigenvalue problem,
via an adaptive coordinate descent method with a deterministic compression
strategy. CDFCI captures and updates appreciative determinants with different
frequencies proportional to their importance. We show that CDFCI produces
accurate variational energy for both static and dynamic correlation by
benchmarking the binding curve of nitrogen dimer in the cc-pVDZ basis with
$10^{-3}$ mHa accuracy. We also demonstrate the efficiency and accuracy of
CDFCI for strongly correlated chromium dimer in the Ahlrichs VDZ basis and
produces state-of-the-art variational energy.


  In order to study the distribution of dense molecular gas and its relation to
the central activities (starburst and AGN) in galaxies, we have conducted an
imaging survey of HCN(1-0) and HCO+(1-0) emissions from nearby spiral galaxies
with the Nobeyama Millimeter Array. In starburst galaxies, we find that there
is good spatial coincidence between dense molecular gas and star-forming
regions. The ratios of HCN to CO integrated intensities on the brightness
temperature scale, R(HCN/CO), are as high as 0.1 to 0.2 in the starburst
regions, and quickly decrease outside of these regions. In contrast, we find a
remarkable decrease of the HCN emission in the post-starburst nuclei, despite
the strong CO concentrations there. The R(HCN/CO) values in the central a few
100 pc regions of these quiescent galaxies are very low, 0.02 to 0.04. A rough
correlation between R(HCN/CO) and Ha/CO ratios, which is an indicator of star
formation efficiency, is found at a few 100 pc scale. The fraction of dense
molecular gas in the total molecular gas, measured from R(HCN/CO), may be an
important parameter that controls star formation. In some Seyfert galaxies we
find extremely high R(HCN/CO) exceeding 0.3. These very high ratios are never
observed even in strong starburst regions, implying a physical link between
extremely high R(HCN/CO) and Seyfert activity.


  Knowledge distillation, a technique for model compression and performance
enhancement, has gained significant traction in Neural Machine Translation
(NMT). However, existing research primarily focuses on empirical applications,
and there is a lack of comprehensive understanding of how student model
capacity, data complexity, and decoding strategies collectively influence
distillation effectiveness. Addressing this gap, our study conducts an in-depth
investigation into these factors, particularly focusing on their interplay in
word-level and sequence-level distillation within NMT. Through extensive
experimentation across datasets like IWSLT13 En$\rightarrow$Fr, IWSLT14
En$\rightarrow$De, and others, we empirically validate hypotheses related to
the impact of these factors on knowledge distillation. Our research not only
elucidates the significant influence of model capacity, data complexity, and
decoding strategies on distillation effectiveness but also introduces a novel,
optimized distillation approach. This approach, when applied to the IWSLT14
de$\rightarrow$en translation task, achieves state-of-the-art performance,
demonstrating its practical efficacy in advancing the field of NMT.


  In this paper we give a detailed account of the first 3D relativistic
magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulations of Pulsar Wind Nebulae (PWN), with
parameters most suitable for the Crab Nebula. In order to clarify the new
features specific to 3D models, reference 2D simulations have been carried out
as well. Compared to the previous 2D simulations, we considered pulsar winds
with much stronger magnetisation, up to \sigma=3, and accounted more accurately
for the anticipated magnetic dissipation in the striped zone of these winds.
While the 3D models preserve the separation of the post termination shock flow
into the equatorial and polar components, their relative strength and
significance differ. Whereas the highly magnetised 2D models produce highly
coherent and well collimated polar jets capable of efficient "drilling" through
the supernova shell, in the corresponding 3D models the jets are disrupted by
the kink mode current driven instability and "dissolve" into the main body of
PWN after propagation of several shock radii. Our results show that contrary to
the expectations based on 1D analytical and semi-analytical models, our
numerical solutions with highly magnetized pulsar winds still produce
termination shocks with radii comparable to those deduced from the
observations. We present polarized synchrotron maps constructed from the 3D
simulations, showing that the wealth of morphological features observed with
Hubble and Chandra can well be reproduced with 3D-MHD models.


  Let $H$ be a Hopf algebra. We consider $H$-equivariant modules over a Hopf
module category $\mathcal C$ as modules over the smash extension $\mathcal C\#
H$. We construct Grothendieck spectral sequences for the cohomologies as well
as the $H$-locally finite cohomologies of these objects. We also introduce
relative $(\mathcal D,H)$-Hopf modules over a Hopf comodule category $\mathcal
D$. These generalize relative $(A,H)$-Hopf modules over an $H$-comodule algebra
$A$. We construct Grothendieck spectral sequences for their cohomologies by
using their rational $Hom$ objects and higher derived functors of coinvariants.


  Transition metal dichalcogenides like MoS2 can exist many phases like the
semiconducting 2H and the metallic 1T phases which have shown intriguing
properties for energy and electrocatalytic applications. However, the 2H and 1T
phases normally distribute coherently in a single-layered MoS2 sheet which is
accompanied with ubiquitous hetero-phase boundaries. In this work, by using
density functional theory and electrochemical measurement, we report strong
charge transfer ability between 2H/1T phase boundary of MoS2 and graphene which
accounts for a superb coexistence of gravimetric and volumetric capacitances of
272 F g-1 and 685 F cm-3. As a proof-of-concept application, a flexible
solid-state asymmetric supercapacitor based on MoS2/graphene is fabricated,
showing a remarkable energy and power densities (46.3 mWh cm-3 and 3.013
Wcm-3). Our work shows the promise of promoting the efficiency of charge flow
and energy storage through engineering phase boundary and interface in
phase-change materials.


  We study weak Harnack inequality and a priori H\"older regularity of harmonic
functions for symmetric nonlocal Dirichlet forms on metric measure spaces with
volume doubling condition. Our analysis relies on three main assumptions: the
existence of a strongly local Dirichlet form with sub-Gaussian heat kernel
estimates, a tail estimate of the jump measure outside balls and a local energy
comparability condition. We establish the robustness of our results, ensuring
that the constants in our estimates remain bounded, provided that the order of
the scale function appearing in the tail estimate and local energy
comparability condition, maintains a certain distance from zero. Additionally,
we establish a sufficient condition for the local energy comparability
condition.


  In 2013, R.L. Frank and E. Lenzmann [R.L. Frank, E. Lenzmann, Uniqueness of
non-linear ground states for fractional Laplacians in $\mathbb{R}$, Acta Math.
210 (2) (2013) 261-318] study the following problem:
  \begin{align*}
  (-\Delta)^su + u = u^{p-1} \quad \text{in } \mathbb{R}^N,
  \end{align*} where $s \in (0,1)$, $N = 1$, $p \in (2,2_s^*)$, and $2_s^*$ is
the critical fractional Sobolev exponent. They proved that the ground state is
unique (up to translations). Then in 2016, they, together with L. Silvestre
[R.L. Frank, E. Lenzmann, L. Silvestre, Uniqueness of radial solutions for the
fractional Laplacian, Comm. Pure Appl. Math. 69 (9) (2016) 1671-1726] showed
similar uniqueness results for high dimensions ($N \geqslant 2$), in which they
proposed a challenging open problem to extend their results about
non-degeneracy and uniqueness of ground states to nonlinearities $f(u)$ beyond
the pure-power case. To the best of our knowledge, this question is still
unresolved so far. In this paper, we aim to give a full affirmative answer to
this open issue for a large class of convex nonlinearities. In fact, we prove
the uniqueness of the positive solution.


  We consider the dynamics of a three-species system incorporating the Allee
Effect, focussing on its influence on the emergence of extreme events in the
system. First we find that under Allee effect the regular periodic dynamics
changes to chaotic. Further, we find that the system exhibits unbounded growth
in the vegetation population after a critical value of the Allee parameter. The
most significant finding is the observation of a critical Allee parameter
beyond which the probability of obtaining extreme events becomes non-zero for
all three population densities. Though the emergence of extreme events in the
predator population is not affected much by the Allee effect, the prey
population shows a sharp increase in the probability of obtaining extreme
events after a threshold value of the Allee parameter, and the vegetation
population also yields extreme events for sufficiently strong Allee effect.
Lastly we consider the influence of additive noise on extreme events. First, we
find that noise tames the unbounded vegetation growth induced by Allee effect.
More interestingly, we demonstrate that stochasticity drastically diminishes
the probability of extreme events in all three populations. In fact for
sufficiently high noise, we do not observe any more extreme events in the
system. This suggests that noise can mitigate extreme events, and has
potentially important bearing on the observability of extreme events in
naturally occurring systems.


  Asymptotic behavior of the scattering amplitude for two scalar particles by
scalar, vector and tensor exchanges at high energy and fixed momentum transfers
is reconsidered in quantum field theory. In the framework of the
quasi-potential approach and the modified perturbation theory a systematic
scheme of finding the leading eikonal scattering amplitudes and its corrections
are developed and constructed. The connection between the solutions obtained by
quasi-potential and functional approaches is also discussed. The first
correction to leading eikonal amplitude is found.


  Consider an asynchronous network in a shared-memory environment consisting of
n nodes. Assume that up to f of the nodes might be Byzantine (n > 12f), where
the adversary is full-information and dynamic (sometimes called adaptive). In
addition, the non-Byzantine nodes may undergo transient failures. Nodes advance
in atomic steps, which consist of reading all registers, performing some
calculation and writing to all registers.
  This paper contains three main contributions. First, the clock-function
problem is defined, which is a generalization of the clock synchronization
problem. This generalization encapsulates previous clock synchronization
problem definitions while extending them to the current paper's model. Second,
a randomized asynchronous self-stabilizing Byzantine tolerant clock
synchronization algorithm is presented.
  In the construction of the clock synchronization algorithm, a building block
that ensures different nodes advance at similar rates is developed. This
feature is the third contribution of the paper. It is self-stabilizing and
Byzantine tolerant and can be used as a building block for different algorithms
that operate in an asynchronous self-stabilizing Byzantine model.
  The convergence time of the presented algorithm is exponential. Observe that
in the asynchronous setting the best known full-information dynamic Byzantine
agreement also has expected exponential convergence time, even though currently
there is no known reduction between the two.


  We study a finite-horizon two-person zero-sum risk-sensitive stochastic game
for continuous-time Markov chains and Borel state and action spaces, in which
payoff rates, transition rates and terminal reward functions are allowed to be
unbounded from below and from above and the policies can be history-dependent.
Under suitable conditions, we establish the existence of a solution to the
corresponding Shapley equation (SE) by an approximation technique. Then, by the
SE and the extension of the Dynkin's formula, we prove the existence of a Nash
equilibrium and verify that the value of the stochastic game is the unique
solution to the SE. Moreover, we develop a value iteration-type algorithm for
approaching to the value of the stochastic game. The convergence of the
algorithm is proved by a special contraction operator in our risk-sensitive
stochastic game. Finally, we demonstrate our main results by two examples.


  The prior knowledge of the gravitational waveform from compact binary systems
makes matched filtering an attractive detection strategy. This detection method
involves the filtering of the detector output with a set of theoretical
waveforms or templates. One of the most important factors in this strategy is
knowing how many templates are needed in order to reduce the loss of possible
signals. In this study we calculate the number of templates and computational
power needed for a one-step search for gravitational waves from inspiralling
binary systems. We build on previous works by firstly expanding the
post-Newtonian waveforms to 2.5-PN order and secondly, for the first time,
calculating the number of templates needed when using P-approximant waveforms.
The analysis is carried out for the four main first-generation interferometers,
LIGO, GEO600, VIRGO and TAMA. As well as template number, we also calculate the
computational cost of generating banks of templates for filtering GW data. We
carry out the calculations for two initial conditions. In the first case we
assume a minimum individual mass of $1 M_{\odot}$ and in the second, we assume
a minimum individual mass of $5 M_{\odot}$. We find that, in general, we need
more P-approximant templates to carry out a search than if we use standard PN
templates. This increase varies according to the order of PN-approximation, but
can be as high as a factor of 3 and is explained by the smaller span of the
P-approximant templates as we go to higher masses. The promising outcome is
that for 2-PN templates the increase is small and is outweighed by the known
robustness of the 2-PN P-approximant templates.


  (Abridged) We present an analysis of the X-ray spectrum of the Galactic
shell-type supernova remnant (SNR) G347.3-0.5 (RX J1713.7-3946). By performing
a joint spectral analysis of data from observations made of G347.3-0.5 using
the ROSAT PSPC, the ASCA GIS and the RXTE PCA, we have fit the spectra of
particular regions of this SNR (including the bright northwestern and
southwestern rims, the northeastern rim and the interior diffuse emission) over
the approximate energy range of 0.5 through 30 keV. Based on the parameters of
the best fit to the spectra using the SRCUT model, we estimate the maximum
energy of cosmic-ray electrons accelerated by the rims of G347.3-0.5 to be
19-25 TeV, assuming a magnetic field strength of 10 microGauss. We present a
broadband (radio to gamma-ray) photon energy flux-spectrum for the northwestern
rim of the SNR, using a synchrotron-inverse Compton model with a variable
magnetic field strength to fit the spectrum. Our fit derived from this model
yields a maximum energy of only 8.8 TeV for the accelerated cosmic-ray
electrons and a magnetic field strength of 150 microGauss. However, our derived
ratio of volumes for TeV emission and X-ray emission (approximately 1000) is
too large to be physically acceptable. We argue that neither non-thermal
bremsstrahlung nor neutral pion decay can adequately describe the TeV emission
from this rim, and therefore the physical process responsible for this emission
is currently uncertain. Finally, we compare the gross properties of G347.3-0.5
with other SNRs known to possess X-ray spectra dominated by non-thermal
emission.


  Though general awareness around it may be low, space cyberattacks are an
increasingly urgent problem given the vital role that space systems play in the
modern world. Open-source or public discussions about it typically revolve
around only a couple generic scenarios, namely satellite hacking and signals
jamming or spoofing. But there are so many more possibilities.
  The report offers a scenario-prompt generator -- a taxonomy of sorts, called
the ICARUS matrix -- that can create more than 4 million unique
scenario-prompts. We will offer a starting set of 42 scenarios, briefly
describing each one, to begin priming the imagination-pump so that many more
researchers can bring their diverse expertise and perspectives to bear on the
problem.
  A failure to imagine novel scenarios is a major risk in being taken by
surprise and severely harmed by threat actors who are constantly devising new
ways, inventive and resourceful ways, to breach the digital systems that
control our wired world. To stay vigilant, defenders likewise need to be
imaginative to keep up in this adversarial dance between hunter and prey in
cybersecurity.
  More than offering novel scenarios, we will also explore the drivers of the
space cybersecurity problem, which include at least seven factors we have
identified. For instance, the shared threat of space debris would seem to push
rational states and actors to avoid kinetic conflicts in orbit, which weighs in
favor of cyberoperations as the dominant form of space conflicts.
  Outer space is the next frontier for cybersecurity. To guard against space
cyberattacks, we need to understand and anticipate them, and imagination is at
the very heart of both cybersecurity and frontiers.


  We present a theoretical study of spin-3/2 hole transport through mesoscopic
rings, based on the spherical Luttinger model. The quasi-one-dimensional ring
is created in a symmetric two-dimensional quantum well by a singular-oscillator
potential for the radial in-plane coordinate. The quantum-interference
contribution to the two-terminal ring conductance exhibits an energy-dependent
Aharonov-Anandan phase, even though Rashba and Dresselhaus spin splittings are
absent. Instead, confinement-induced heavy-hole - light-hole mixing is found to
be the origin of this phase, which has ramifications for magneto-transport
measurements in gated hole rings.


  We study the scheduling of flows on a switch with the goal of optimizing
metrics related to the response time of the flows. The input to the problem is
a sequence of flow requests on a switch, where the switch is represented by a
bipartite graph with a capacity on each vertex (or port), and a flow request is
an edge with associated demand. In each round, a subset of edges can be
scheduled subject to the constraint that the total demand of the scheduled
edges incident on any vertex is at most the capacity of the vertex. Previous
work has essentially settled the complexity of metrics based on {\em completion
time}. The objective of average or maximum {\em response time}, however, is
much more challenging.
  We present approximation algorithms for flow scheduling over a switch to
optimize response time based metrics. For the average response time metric,
whose NP-hardness follows directly from past work, we present an offline $O(1 +
O(\log(n))/c)$ approximation algorithm for unit flows, assuming that the port
capacities of the switch can be increased by a factor of $1 + c$, for any given
positive integer $c$. For the maximum response time metric, we first establish
that it is NP-hard to achieve an approximation factor of better than 4/3
without augmenting capacity. We then present an offline algorithm that achieves
{\em optimal maximum response time}, assuming the capacity of each port is
increased by at most $2 d_{max} - 1$, where $d_{max}$ is the maximum demand of
any flow. Both algorithms are based on linear programming relaxations. We also
study the online version of flow scheduling using the lens of competitive
analysis, and present preliminary results along with experiments that evaluate
the performance of fast online heuristics.


  We report the detection of Cepheids and a new distance to the spiral galaxy
NGC 2541, based on data obtained with the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 on
board the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). A total of 25 exposures (divided into
13 epochs) are obtained using the F555W filter (transformed to Johnson V), and
nine exposures (divided into five epochs) using the F814W filter (transformed
to Cousins I). Photometric reduction of the data is performed using two
independent packages, DoPHOT and DAOPHOT II/ALLFRAME, which give very good
agreement in the measured magnitudes. A total of 34 bona fide Cepheids, with
periods ranging from 12 to over 60 days, are identified based on both sets of
photometry. By fitting V and I period-luminosity relations, apparent distance
moduli are derived assuming a Large Magellanic Cloud distance modulus and mean
color excess of 18.50 +/- 0.10 mag and E(B-V) = 0.10 mag respectively. Adopting
A(V)/E(V-I)=2.45, we obtain a true distance modulus to NGC 2541 of 30.47 +/-
0.11 (random) +/- 0.12 (systematic) mag (D = 12.4 +/- 0.6 (random) +/- 0.7
(systematic) Mpc), and a total (Galactic plus internal) mean color excess
E(B-V) = 0.08 +/- 0.05 (internal error) mag.


  Isotopic enrichment offers cutting-edge properties of materials opening
exciting research and development opportunities. In semiconductors, reached
progress of ultimate control in growth and doping techniques follows nowadays
the high level isotopic purification. This requires deep understanding of
isotopic disorder effects and techniques of their effective determination.
Isotopic content of both crystal lattice and impurity centers cause the
effects, which can be examined by different optical techniques. While disorder
in the host lattice can be straight forward evaluated by inelastic light
scattering or by SIMS measurements, determination of isotopic contributions of
many orders less presented impurities remains challenging and usually observed
in high-resolution photoluminescence or optical absorption spectra. Boron-doped
diamonds exhibit complex infrared absorption spectra while boron-related
luminescence remains unobserved. Boron, as a most light element acting as a
hydrogen-like dopant in elemental semiconductors, has a largest relative
difference in its isotope masses, and by this, cause the largest isotopic
disorder in semiconductors, including diamond, an elemental semiconductor with
the lightest atomic mass of a host lattice. This enables an access to the
isotopic constitution of boron in diamond by infrared absorption spectroscopy.
By comparison of low-temperature absorption spectra of a natural (20% of 10B
and 80% of 11B isotopes) and 11B enriched (up to 99%) doped diamonds we
differentiate the intracenter transitions related to 10B and to 11B isotopes.
We have found that the isotopic spectral lines of the same boron intracenter
transition are separated with the energy of about 0.7 meV. This is the largest
impurity isotopic shift ever observed in semiconductors doped by hydrogen-like
impurity centers.


  We perform the first study of holographic heat engines where the working
material is a rotating black hole, obtaining exact results for the efficiency
of a rectangular engine cycle. We also make general considerations in the
context of benchmarking these engines on circular cycles. We find an exact
expression that is valid for black holes with vanishing specific heat at
constant volume and derive an upper bound, below the Carnot efficiency and
independent of spacetime dimension, which holds for any black hole of this
kind. We illustrate our results with applications to a variety of black holes,
noting the effects of spacetime dimension, rotation, and higher curvature
corrections on the efficiency of the cycle.


  We study the structure of the Fourier coefficients of low degree multivariate
polynomials over finite fields. We consider three properties: (i) the number of
nonzero Fourier coefficients; (ii) the sum of the absolute value of the Fourier
coefficients; and (iii) the size of the linear subspace spanned by the nonzero
Fourier coefficients. For quadratic polynomials, tight relations are known
between all three quantities. In this work, we extend this relation to higher
degree polynomials. Specifically, for degree $d$ polynomials, we show that the
three quantities are equivalent up to factors exponential in $d$.


  Theoretical predictions for the decay width of Standard Model Higgs boson
into bottom quarks and tau-leptons, in the case when M_H< 2M_W, are briefly
reviewed.
  The effects of higher order perturbative QCD (up to alpha_s^4-level) and QED
corrections are considered. The uncertainties of the decay width of Higgs boson
into bb and tau+tau- are discussed.


  We consider $X(3872)$ and $Y(4140)$ as the vector tetraquark states of
$X_c^0\equiv c\bar c u\bar u(d\bar d)$ and $c\bar c s\bar s$, respectively. By
connecting $\Lambda_b\to X_c^0\Lambda$ to $B^-\to X_c^0 K^-$, we predict that
the branching ratios of $\Lambda_b\to \Lambda(X(3872)^0\to) J/\psi \pi^+\pi^-$
and $\Lambda_b\to \Lambda(Y(4140)\to) J/\psi \phi$ are $(5.2\pm 1.8)\times
10^{-6}$ and $(4.7\pm 2.6)\times 10^{-6}$, which are accessible to the
experiments at the LHCb, respectively. The measurements of these $\Lambda_b$
modes would be the first experimental evidences for the $XYZ$ states in
baryonic decays.


  We calculate the entanglement entropy using a SU(3) quenched lattice gauge
simulation. We find that the entanglement entropy scales as $1/l^2$ at small
$l$ as in the conformal field theory. Here $l$ is the size of the system, whose
degrees of freedom is left after the other part are traced out. The derivative
of the entanglement entropy with respect to $l$ hits zero at about $l^{\ast} =
0.6 \sim 0.7$ [fm] and vanishes above the length. It may imply that the
Yang-Mills theory has the mass gap of the order of $1/l^{\ast}$. Within our
statistical errors, no discontinuous change can be seen in the entanglement
entropy. We discuss also a subtle point appearing in gauge systems when we
divide a system with cuts.


  We investigate the cool gas absorption in galaxy clusters by
cross-correlating MgII absorbers detected in quasar spectra from Data Release
16 of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) with galaxy clusters identified in
the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) survey. We find significant
covering fractions ($1-5\, \%$ within $r_{500}$, depending on the chosen
redshift interval), $\sim 4-5$ times higher than around random sightlines.
While the covering fraction of cool gas in clusters decreases with increasing
mass of the central galaxy, the total MgII mass within $r_{\rm 500}$ is
nonetheless $\sim 10$ times higher than for SDSS luminous red galaxies (LRGs).
The MgII covering fraction versus impact parameter is well described by a power
law in the inner regions and a exponential function at larger distances. The
characteristic scale of the transition between these two regimes is smaller for
large equivalent width absorbers. Cross-correlating MgII absorption with
photo-z selected cluster member galaxies from DESI reveals a statistically
significant connection. The median projected distance between MgII absorbers
and the nearest cluster member is $\sim200$ kpc, compared to $\sim500$ kpc in
random mocks with the same galaxy density profiles. We do not find a
correlation between MgII strength and the star formation rate of the closest
cluster neighbour. This suggests that cool gas in clusters, as traced by MgII
absorption, is: (i) associated with satellite galaxies, (ii) dominated by cold
gas clouds in the intracluster medium, rather than by the interstellar medium
of galaxies, and (iii) may originate in part from gas stripped from these
cluster satellites in the past.


  Successive ranks of a partition, which were introduced by Atkin, are the
difference of the $i$th row and the $i$th column in the Ferrers graph.
Recently, in the study of singular overpartitions, Andrews revisited successive
ranks and parity blocks. Motivated by his work, we investigate partitions with
prescribed successive rank parity blocks. The main result of this paper is the
generating function of partitions with exactly $d$ successive ranks and $m$
parity blocks.


  We numerically study the spin-1/2 antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model on the
kagom\'{e} lattice using the density-matrix renormalization group (DMRG)
method. We find that the ground state is a magnetically disordered spin liquid,
characterized by an exponential decay of spin-spin correlation function in real
space and a magnetic structure factor showing system-size independent peaks at
commersurate antiferromangetic wavevectors. We obtain a spin triplet excitation
gap $\Delta E(S=1)=0.055\pm 0.005$ by extrapolation based on the large size
results, and confirm the presence of gapless singlet excitations. The physical
nature of such an exotic spin liquid is also discussed.


  We study certain small supersymmetry-breaking perturbations of a large class
of strongly coupled four-dimensional R-symmetric renormalization group (RG)
flows between superconformal field theories in the ultraviolet (UV) and the
infrared (IR). We analyze the conditions under which these perturbations scale
to zero at leading order in the deep IR, resulting in accidental supersymmetry.
Furthermore, we connect the emergence of IR supersymmetry in this context with
a quantity that was recently conjectured to be larger at the UV starting points
of the underlying supersymmetric flows than at the corresponding IR endpoints,
and we propose a bound on emergent supersymmetry. Along the way, we prove a
simple and useful non-perturbative theorem regarding the IR behavior of global
flavor currents. Our results suggest general ways in which light stop particles
can emerge and potentially influence physics at the Large Hadron Collider.


  The precise recognition of food categories plays a pivotal role for
intelligent health management, attracting significant research attention in
recent years. Prominent benchmarks, such as Food-101 and VIREO Food-172,
provide abundant food image resources that catalyze the prosperity of research
in this field. Nevertheless, these datasets are well-curated from canteen
scenarios and thus deviate from food appearances in daily life. This
discrepancy poses great challenges in effectively transferring classifiers
trained on these canteen datasets to broader daily-life scenarios encountered
by humans. Toward this end, we present two new benchmarks, namely DailyFood-172
and DailyFood-16, specifically designed to curate food images from everyday
meals. These two datasets are used to evaluate the transferability of
approaches from the well-curated food image domain to the everyday-life food
image domain. In addition, we also propose a simple yet effective baseline
method named Multi-Cluster Reference Learning (MCRL) to tackle the
aforementioned domain gap. MCRL is motivated by the observation that food
images in daily-life scenarios exhibit greater intra-class appearance variance
compared with those in well-curated benchmarks. Notably, MCRL can be seamlessly
coupled with existing approaches, yielding non-trivial performance
enhancements. We hope our new benchmarks can inspire the community to explore
the transferability of food recognition models trained on well-curated datasets
toward practical real-life applications.


  Given a field $k$ of characteristic different from $2$ and an integer $d \geq
3$, let $J$ be the Jacobian of the "generic" hyperelliptic curve given by $y^2
= \prod_{i = 1}^d (x - \alpha_i)$, where the $\alpha_i$'s are transcendental
and independent over $k$; it is defined over the transcendental extension $K /
k$ generated by the symmetric functions of the $\alpha_i$'s. We investigate
certain subfields of the field $K_{\infty}$ obtained by adjoining all points of
$2$-power order of $J(\bar{K})$. In particular, we explicitly describe the
maximal abelian subextension of $K_{\infty} / K(J[2])$ and show that it is
contained in $K(J[8])$ (resp. $K(J[16])$) if $g \geq 2$ (resp. if $g = 1$). On
the way we obtain an explicit description of the abelian subextension
$K(J[4])$, and we describe the action of a particular automorphism in
$\mathrm{Gal}(K_{\infty} / K)$ on these subfields.


  The present status of theoretical and experimental investigations of the
decay rate of a positronium is considered. The increasing interest to this
problem has been caused by the disagreement of the calculated value of
$\Gamma_3 (o-Ps)$ and the recent series of precise experiments. The necessity
of new calculations on the basis of the quantum field methods in bound state
theory is pointed out with taking into account the dependence of the
interaction kernel on relative energies.


  The theoretical physicist and mathematician Aristophanes Dimakis passed away
on July 8, 2021, at the age of 68, in Athens, Greece. We briefly review his
life, career and scientific achievements.


  This paper provides new conditions for dynamic optimality in discrete time
and uses them to establish fundamental dynamic programming results for several
commonly used recursive preference specifications. These include Epstein-Zin
preferences, risk-sensitive preferences, narrow framing models and recursive
preferences with sensitivity to ambiguity. The results obtained for these
applications include (i) existence of optimal policies, (ii) uniqueness of
solutions to the Bellman equation, (iii) a complete characterization of optimal
policies via Bellman's principle of optimality, and (iv) a globally convergent
method of computation via value function iteration.