  Prospects of parametric x-rays (PXR) application for the development of a
tuneable quasi-monochromatic x-ray source for medical imaging are discussed.
Analysis of basic requirements for electron accelerator shows that it must be
relatively low-energy and high-current linac. In comparison with known
ultra-relativistic cases, at low energies PXR properties will be modified to a
great extent by multiple scattering of the electrons. PXR intensity dependence
on target thickness and beam energy are calculated taking multiple scattering
into account. It is concluded that PXR source based on real medical
accelerators is feasible and can provide x-ray flux needful for obtaining high
quality medical images.


  A class of linear parabolic equations are considered. We give a posteriori
error estimates in the maximum norm for a method that comprises extrapolation
applied to the backward Euler method in time and finite element discretisations
in space. We use the idea of elliptic reconstructions and certain bounds for
the Green's function of the parabolic operator.


  It is shown that the hypothesis of the axion mechanism for solar luminosity
variations suggesting that the solar axion particles are born in the core of
the Sun and may be efficiently converted back into $\gamma$-quanta in the
magnetic field of the solar overshoot tachocline is physically relevant. As a
result, it is also shown that the intensity variations of the $\gamma$-quanta
of axion origin, induced by the magnetic field variations in the tachocline via
the thermomagnetic Ettingshausen-Nernst effect, directly cause the Sun
luminosity variations and eventually characterize the active and quiet states
of the Sun.
  Within the framework of this mechanism estimations of the strength of the
axion coupling to a photon ($g_{a \gamma} = 4.4 \cdot 10^{-11} GeV^{-1}$) and
the hadronic axion particle mass ($m_a \sim 3.2 \cdot 10^{-2} eV$) have been
obtained. It is also shown that the claimed axion parameters do not contradict
any known experimental and theoretical model-independent limitations.


  We study $3$rd family Yukawa unification in the context of supersymmetric
(SUSY) $\mathrm{SO}(10)$ GUTs and $\mathrm{SO}(10)$-motivated boundary
conditions for the SUSY-breaking soft terms. We consider $\mu<0$ such that the
SUSY loop-threshold effects enable a good fit to all third family masses of the
charged Standard Model (SM) fermions. We find that fitting the third family
masses together with the mass of the SM-like Higgs particle, the scenario
predicts the masses of the superpartner particles and of the extra Higgs states
of the MSSM: while the sparticles are predicted to be comparatively heavy
(above the present LHC bound but within reach of future colliders), the
spectrum has the characteristic feature that the lightest new particles are the
extra MSSM Higgses. We show that this effect is rather robust with respect to
many deformations of the GUT boundary conditions, but turns out to be sensitive
to the exactness of top-bottom Yukawa unification. Nevertheless, with moderate
deviations of a few percent from exact top-bottom Yukawa unification (stemming
e.g.\ from GUT-threshold corrections or higher-dimensional operators), the
scenario still predicts extra MSSM Higgs particles with masses not much above
$1.5\,\mathrm{TeV}$, which could be tested e.g.\ by future LHC searches for
ditau decays $H^0/A^{0}\to\tau\tau$. Finding the extra MSSM Higges before the
other new MSSM particles could thus be a smoking gun for a Yukawa unified
$\mathrm{SO}(10)$ GUT.


  A supersymmetric extension of the $U(1)\times U(1)^{\prime }$-Higgs bosonic
superconducting cosmic string model is considered,and the constraints imposed
upon such a model due to renormalizability, supersymmetry, and gauge invariance
are examined. For a simple model with a single $U(1)$ chiral superfield and a
single $% U(1)^{\prime }$ chiral superfield, the Witten mechanism for bosonic
superconductivity (giving rise to long range gauge fields outside of the
string) does not exist. The simplest model that can accommodate the requisite
interactions requires five chiral supermultiplets. This superconducting cosmic
string solution is investigated.


  The Nile problem by Ronald Fisher may be interpreted as the problem of making
statistical inference for a special curved exponential family when the minimal
sufficient statistic is incomplete. The problem itself and its versions for
general curved exponential families pose a mathematical-statistical challenge:
studying the subalgebras of ancillary statistics within the $\sigma$-algebra of
the (incomplete) minimal sufficient statistics and closely related questions of
the structure of UMVUEs.
  In this paper a new method is developed that, in particular, proves that in
the classical Nile problem no statistic subject to mild natural conditions is a
UMVUE. The method almost solves an old problem of the existence of UMVUEs. The
method is purely statistical (vs. analytical) and works for any family
possessing an ancillary statistic. It complements an analytical method that
uses only the first order ancillarity (and thus works when the existence of
ancillary subalgebras is an open problem) and works for curved exponential
families with polynomial constraints on the canonical parameters of which the
Nile problem is a special case.


  We study the diffusion of gas molecules through a two-dimensional network of
polymers with the help of Monte Carlo simulations. The polymers are modeled as
non-interacting random walks on the bonds of a two-dimensional square lattice,
while the gas particles occupy the lattice cells. When a particle attempts to
jump to a nearest-neighbor empty cell, it has to overcome an energy barrier
which is determined by the number of polymer segments on the bond separating
the two cells. We investigate the gas current $J$ as a function of the mean
segment density $\rho$, the polymer length $\ell$ and the probability $q^{m}$
for hopping across $m$ segments. Whereas $J$ decreases monotonically with
$\rho$ for fixed $\ell$, its behavior for fixed $\rho$ and increasing $\ell$
depends strongly on $q$. For small, non-zero $q$, $J$ appears to increase
slowly with $\ell$. In contrast, for $q=0$, it is dominated by the underlying
percolation problem and can be non-monotonic. We provide heuristic arguments to
put these interesting phenomena into context.


  In this paper, we simulate sample paths of a class of symmetric
$\alpha$-stable processes using their series expression. We will develop a
result in the approximation of shot-noise series. And finally, we will get a
convergence rate for the approximation.


  We show that if a hyperbolic group acts geometrically on a CAT(0) cube
complex, then the induced boundary action is hyperfinite. This means that for a
cubulated hyperbolic group the natural action on its Gromov boundary is
hyperfinite, which generalizes an old result of Dougherty, Jackson and Kechris
for the free group case.


  Recent theoretical and experimental results have brought renewed interest and
focus on the topic of fission fragment angular momentum. Measurements of
neutrons and $\gamma$ rays in coincidence with fission fragments remain the
most valuable tool in the exploration of fission physics. To achieve these
scientific goals, we have developed a system that combines a state-of-the-art
fission fragment detector and $n$-$\gamma$ radiation detectors. A new twin
Frisch-gridded ionization chamber has been designed and constructed for use
with a spontaneous fission source and an array of forty \textit{trans}-stilbene
organic scintillators (FS-3) at Argonne National Laboratory. The new ionization
chamber design we present in this work aims at minimizing particle attenuation
in the chamber walls, and provides a compact apparatus that can be fit inside
existing experimental systems. The ionization chamber is capable of measuring
fission fragment masses and kinetic energies, whereas the FS-3 provides neutron
and gamma-ray multiplicities and spectra. The details of both detector assembly
are presented along with the first experimental results of this setup. Planned
event-by-event analysis and future experiments are briefly discussed.


  Starting from relativistic mass-less Madelung fluid, we shall develop a class
of typical wave functions by imposing it to maximize Shannon entropy given its
finite average quantum potential. We show that there is a class of solutions in
which the wave function is spatiotemporally localized with finite spacetime
support, uniformly moving hence stationary. It turns out that the quantum
amplitude satisfies Klein-Gordon equation with emergent mass term proportional
to the square root of average quantum potential. We show that there is physical
time uncertainty which decreases as the mass increases. We also rederive the
classical energy-momentum relation provided the de Broglie-Einstein relation
holds. In this case, the time uncertainty is proportional to the inverse of
classical energy.


  As a generalization of slant Riemannian maps (Sahin), semi-slant Riemannian
maps (Park), almost h-slant submersions (Park 2012), and almost h-semi-slant
submersions (Park 2011), we introduce the notion of almost h-semi-slant
Riemannian maps from almost quaternionic Hermitian manifolds to Riemannian
manifolds. We investigate the integrability of distributions, the harmonicity
of such maps, the geometry of fibers, etc. We also deal with the condition for
such maps to be totally geodesic and study some decomposition theorems.
Moreover, we give some examples.


  Phase Fresnel lenses have the same imaging properties as zone plates, but
with the possibility of concentrating all of the incident power into the
primary focus, increasing the maximum theoretical efficiency from 11% to close
to 100%. For X-rays, and in particular for gamma-rays, large,
diffraction-limited phase Fresnel lenses can be made relatively easily. The
focal length is very long - for example up to a million kms. However, the
correspondingly high `plate-scale' of the image means that the ultra-high
(sub-micro-arc-second) angular resolution possible with a diffraction limited
gamma-ray lens a few metres in diameter can be exploited with detectors having
\~mm spatial resolution.
  The potential of such systems for ultra-high angular resolution astronomy,
and for attaining the sensitivity improvements desperately needed for certain
other studies, are reviewed and the advantages and disadvantages vis-a-vis
alternative approaches are discussed.
  We report on reduced-scale 'proof-of-principle tests' which are planned and
on mission studies of the implementation of a Fresnel telescope on a space
mission with lens and detector on two spacecraft separated by one million km.
Such a telescope would be capable of resolving emission from super-massive
black holes on the scale of their event horizons and would have the sensitivity
necessary to detect gamma-ray lines from distant supernovae.
  We show how diffractive/refractive optics leads to a continuum of possible
system designs between filled aperture lenses and wideband interferometric
arrays.


  Quartic vertices provide a window into one of the most important problems in
particle physics; the understanding of electroweak symmetry breaking. I survey
the various processes that have been proposed to study quartic gauge boson
couplings at future $e^+e^-$, $e\gamma$, $\gamma\gamma$, $e^-e^-$, and $pp$
colliders. For the lowest dimension operators that do not include photons, it
appears that the LHC will provide the most constraining measurements. However,
precision measurements at high energy $e^+e^-$ colliders involving $W^+W^-$
rescattering are also quite sensitive to the effects of a strongly interacting
weak interaction. For quartic couplings involving photons, $\gamma\gamma$
collisions appear to be the best place to measure these couplings. Measurements
using gauge boson production in $e\gamma$ collisions are almost as precise as
the $\gamma\gamma$ processes with $e^+e^-\to VVV$ about an order or magnitude
less sensitive.


  Aims. Our goal is to find a converged cooling limit for fragmentation in
self-gravitating disks. This is especially interesting for the formation of
planets, brown dwarfs or stars and the growth of black holes. While
investigating the limit, we want to give a clear criterion for the state of
convergence.
  Methods. We run two-dimensional shearingsheet simulations with the
hydrodynamic package Fosite at high resolutions. Thereby resolution and
limiters are altered. Subsequently, we investigate the spectra of important
physical quantities at the length scales where fragmentation occurs. In order
to avoid prompt fragmentation at high resolutions we start these simulations
with a fully developed gravitoturbulent state obtained at a lower resolution.
  Results. We show nearly converged results for fragmentation with a critical
cooling timescale $t_{\mathrm{crit}} \sim 10\,\Omega^{-1}$ . We can backtrace
this claim by investigating the spectra of relevant physical variables at
length scales around and below the pressure scale height. We argue that well
behaved results cannot be expected if counteracting quantities are varying too
much on these critical length scales, either by change of resolution or
numerical method. A comparison of fragmentation behaviour with the related
spectra reveals that simulations behave similar, if the spectra are converged
to the length scales where self-gravity leads to instabilities. Observable
deviations in the results obtained with different numerical setup are confined
to scales below these critical length scales.


  A smooth function of the second moments of $N$ continuous variables gives
rise to an uncertainty relation if it is bounded from below. We present a
method to systematically derive such bounds by generalizing an approach applied
previously to a single continuous variable. New uncertainty relations are
obtained for multi-partite systems which allow one to distinguish entangled
from separable states. We also investigate the geometry of the "uncertainty
region" in the $N(2N+1)$-dimensional space of moments. It is shown to be a
convex set for any number continuous variables, and the points on its boundary
found to be in one-to-one correspondence with pure Gaussian states of minimal
uncertainty. For a single degree of freedom, the boundary can be visualized as
one sheet of a "Lorentz-invariant" hyperboloid in the three-dimensional pace of
second moments.


  The supersingular K3 surface X in characteristic 2 with Artin invariant 1
admits several genus 1 fibrations (elliptic and quasi-elliptic). We use a
bijection between fibrations and definite even lattices of rank 20 and
discriminant 4 to classify the fibrations, and exhibit isomorphisms between the
resulting models of X. We also study a configuration of (-2)-curves on X
related to the incidence graph of points and lines of IP^2(IF_4).


  Theory of computer calculations strongly depends on the nature of elements
the computer is made of. Quantum interference allows to formulate the Shor
factorization algorithm turned out to be more effective than any one written
for classical computers. Similarly, quantum wave packet reduction allows to
devise the Grover search algorithm which outperforms any classical one. In the
present paper we argue that the quantum incoherent tunneling can be used for
elaboration of new algorithms able to solve some NP-hard problems, such as the
Traveling Salesman Problem, considered to be intractable in the classical
theory of computer computations.


  We present an analysis of the structures and dynamics of the merging cluster
Abell~1201, which has two sloshing cold fronts around a cooling core, and an
offset gas core approximately 500kpc northwest of the center. New Chandra and
XMM-Newton data reveal a region of enhanced brightness east of the offset core,
with breaks in surface brightness along its boundary to the north and east.
This is interpreted as a tail of gas stripped from the offset core. Gas in the
offset core and the tail is distinguished from other gas at the same distance
from the cluster center chiefly by having higher density, hence lower entropy.
In addition, the offset core shows marginally lower temperature and metallicity
than the surrounding area. The metallicity in the cool core is high and there
is an abrupt drop in metallicity across the southern cold front. We interpret
the observed properties of the system, including the placement of the cold
fronts, the offset core and its tail in terms of a simple merger scenario. The
offset core is the remnant of a merging subcluster, which first passed
pericenter southeast of the center of the primary cluster and is now close to
its second pericenter passage, moving at ~1000 km/s. Sloshing excited by the
merger gave rise to the two cold fronts and the disposition of the cold fronts
reveals that we view the merger from close to the plane of the orbit of the
offset core.


  The current focus of the CERN program is the Large Hadron Collider (LHC),
however, CERN is engaged in long baseline neutrino physics with the CNGS
project and supports T2K as recognized CERN RE13, and for good reasons: a
number of observed phenomena in high-energy physics and cosmology lack their
resolution within the Standard Model of particle physics; these puzzles include
the origin of neutrino masses, CP-violation in the leptonic sector, and baryon
asymmetry of the Universe. They will only partially be addressed at LHC. A
positive measurement of $\sin^22\theta_{13}>0.01$ would certainly give a
tremendous boost to neutrino physics by opening the possibility to study CP
violation in the lepton sector and the determination of the neutrino mass
hierarchy with upgraded conventional super-beams. These experiments (so called
``Phase II'') require, in addition to an upgraded beam power, next generation
very massive neutrino detectors with excellent energy resolution and high
detection efficiency in a wide neutrino energy range, to cover 1st and 2nd
oscillation maxima, and excellent particle identification and
  $\pi^0$ background suppression. Two generations of large water Cherenkov
detectors at Kamioka (Kamiokande and Super-Kamiokande) have been extremely
successful. And there are good reasons to consider a third generation water
Cherenkov detector with an order of magnitude larger mass than Super-Kamiokande
for both non-accelerator (proton decay, supernovae, ...) and accelerator-based
physics. On the other hand, a very massive underground liquid Argon detector of
about 100 kton could represent a credible alternative for the precision
measurements of ``Phase II'' and aim at significantly new results in neutrino
astroparticle and non-accelerator-based particle physics (e.g. proton decay).


  A review and consolidation of some of our more recent publications, many with
our various collaborators. While we cannot resist mentioning Tribimaximal
mixing, our main theme is Flavour Symmetry, in particular Flavour-Symmetric
Observables, scalar (or pseudo-scalar) under $S3_l \times S3_{\nu}$. Our "best
guess" for the smallest neutrino mixing angle remains: $\sin
\theta_{13}=\sqrt{2 \Delta m^2_{sol}/(3 \Delta m^2_{atm})} \simeq 0.13$.


  We explore a distance-3 homological CSS quantum code, namely the small
stellated dodecahedron code, for dense storage of quantum information and we
compare its performance with the distance-3 surface code. The data and ancilla
qubits of the small stellated dodecahedron code can be located on the edges
resp. vertices of a small stellated dodecahedron, making this code suitable for
3D connectivity. This code encodes 8 logical qubits into 30 physical qubits
(plus 22 ancilla qubits for parity check measurements) as compared to 1 logical
qubit into 9 physical qubits (plus 8 ancilla qubits) for the surface code. We
develop fault-tolerant parity check circuits and a decoder for this code,
allowing us to numerically assess the circuit-based pseudo-threshold.


  Deep neural networks (DNNs) have shown great potential in non-reference image
quality assessment (NR-IQA). However, the annotation of NR-IQA is
labor-intensive and time-consuming, which severely limits their application
especially for authentic images. To relieve the dependence on quality
annotation, some works have applied unsupervised domain adaptation (UDA) to
NR-IQA. However, the above methods ignore that the alignment space used in
classification is sub-optimal, since the space is not elaborately designed for
perception. To solve this challenge, we propose an effective
perception-oriented unsupervised domain adaptation method StyleAM for NR-IQA,
which transfers sufficient knowledge from label-rich source domain data to
label-free target domain images via Style Alignment and Mixup. Specifically, we
find a more compact and reliable space i.e., feature style space for
perception-oriented UDA based on an interesting/amazing observation, that the
feature style (i.e., the mean and variance) of the deep layer in DNNs is
exactly associated with the quality score in NR-IQA. Therefore, we propose to
align the source and target domains in a more perceptual-oriented space i.e.,
the feature style space, to reduce the intervention from other
quality-irrelevant feature factors. Furthermore, to increase the consistency
between quality score and its feature style, we also propose a novel feature
augmentation strategy Style Mixup, which mixes the feature styles (i.e., the
mean and variance) before the last layer of DNNs together with mixing their
labels. Extensive experimental results on two typical cross-domain settings
(i.e., synthetic to authentic, and multiple distortions to one distortion) have
demonstrated the effectiveness of our proposed StyleAM on NR-IQA.


  We numerically investigate a bosonic representation for hole pairs on a
two-leg t-J ladder where hard core bosons on a chain represent the hole pairs
on the ladder. The interaction between hole pairs is obtained by fitting the
density profile obtained with the effective model to the one obtained with the
\tj model, taking into account the inner structure of the hole pair given by
the hole-hole correlation function. For these interactions we calculate the
Luttinger liquid parameter, which takes the universal value $K_{\rho}=1$ as
half filling is approached, for values of the rung exchange $J'$ between strong
coupling and the isotropic case. The long distance behavior of the hole-hole
correlation function is also investigated. Starting from large $J'$, the
correlation length first increases as expected, but diminishes significantly as
$J'$ is reduced and bound holes sit mainly on adjacent rungs. As the isotropic
case is approached, the correlation length increases again. This effect is
related to the different kind of bonds in the region between the two holes of a
hole pair when they move apart.


  We obtained deep Gemini GMOS-S $g,r$ photometry of the ultra-faint dwarf
galaxy candidate Cetus II with the aim of providing stronger constraints on its
size, luminosity and stellar population. Cetus II is an important object in the
size-luminosity plane as it occupies the transition zone between dwarf galaxies
and star clusters. All known objects smaller than Cetus II ($r_h \sim 20$ pc)
are reported to be star clusters, while most larger objects are likely dwarf
galaxies. We found a prominent excess of main-sequence stars in the
colour-magnitude diagram of Cetus II, best described by a single stellar
population with an age of 11.2 Gyr, metallicity of [Fe/H] = $-1.28$ dex, an
[$\alpha$/Fe] = 0.0 dex at a heliocentric distance of 26.3$\pm$1.2 kpc. As well
as being spatially located within the Sagittarius dwarf tidal stream, these
properties are well matched to the Sagittarius galaxy's Population B stars.
Interestingly, like our recent findings on the ultra-faint dwarf galaxy
candidate Tucana V, the stellar field in the direction of Cetus II shows no
evidence of a concentrated overdensity despite tracing the main sequence for
over six magnitudes. These results strongly support the picture that Cetus II
is not an ultra-faint stellar system in the Milky Way halo, but made up of
stars from the Sagittarius tidal stream.


  We present first results from a simulation of quenched overlap fermions with
improved gauge field action. Among the quantities we study are the spectral
properties of the overlap operator, the chiral condensate and topological
charge, quark and hadron masses, and selected nucleon matrix elements. To make
contact with continuum physics, we compute the renormalization constants of
quark bilinear operators in perturbation theory and beyond.


  We explore the feasibility of using the Moon as a detector of extremely high
energy (>10^19 eV) cosmic rays and neutrinos. The idea is to use the existing
radiotelescopes on Earth to look for short pulses of Cherenkov radiation in the
GHz range emitted by showers induced just below the surface of the Moon when
cosmic rays or neutrinos strike it. We estimate the energy threshold of the
technique and the effective aperture and volume of the Moon for this detection.
We apply our calculation to obtain the expected event rates from the observed
cosmic ray flux and several representative theoretical neutrino fluxes.


  Unlike at lower redshift, where there is a 40% detection rate, surveys for
21-cm absorption arising within the hosts of z > 1 radio galaxies and quasars
have been remarkably unsuccessful. Curran et al.(2008) suggest that this is due
to the high redshift selection biasing towards the most optically bright
objects (those most luminous in the ultra-violetin the rest-frame), where the
gas is ionised by the active galactic nucleus. They therefore argue that there
must be a population of fainter objects in which the hydrogen is not ionised
and which exhibit a similar detection rate as at lower redshifts. In order to
find this "missing" gas at high redshift, we have therefore undertaken a survey
of z > 2 radio sources, selected by optical faintness. Despite having optical
magnitudes which indicate that the targets have ultra-violet luminosities below
the threshold where all of the gas is ionised, there were no detections in any
of the eight sources for which useable data were obtained. Upon an analysis of
the spectral energy distributions, ionising photon rates can only be determined
for three of these, all of which suggest that the objects are above the highest
luminosity of a current 21-cm detection. The possibility that the other five
could be located at lower photon rates cannot be ruled out, although zero
detections out of five is not statistically significant. Another possible cause
of the non-detections is that our selection biases the sample towards sources
which are very steep in the radio band, with a mean spectral index of = -1.0,
cf. -0.3 for both the 21-cm detections and UV luminous non-detections. This
adds the further possibility that the sources have very extended emission,
which would have the effect of reducing the coverage by the putative absorbing
gas, thus decreasing the sensitivity of the observation.


  The process of writing code and use of features in an integrated development
environment (IDE) is a fruitful source of data in computing education research.
Existing studies use records of students' actions in the IDE, consecutive code
snapshots, compilation events, and others, to gain deep insight into the
process of student programming. In this paper, we present a set of tools for
collecting and processing data of student activity during problem-solving. The
first tool is a plugin for IntelliJ-based IDEs (PyCharm, IntelliJ IDEA, CLion).
By capturing snapshots of code and IDE interaction data, it allows to analyze
the process of writing code in different languages -- Python, Java, Kotlin, and
C++. The second tool is designed for the post-processing of data collected by
the plugin and is capable of basic analysis and visualization. To validate and
showcase the toolkit, we present a dataset collected by our tools. It consists
of records of activity and IDE interaction events during solution of
programming tasks by 148 participants of different ages and levels of
programming experience. We propose several directions for further exploration
of the dataset.


This article is taken out.


  The impact of Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs) for providing situational
awareness to transmission system operators has been widely documented.
Micro-PMUs ($\mu$PMUs) are an emerging sensing technology that can provide
similar benefits to Distribution System Operators (DSOs), enabling a level of
visibility into the distribution grid that was previously unattainable. In
order to support the deployment of these high resolution sensors, the
automation of data analysis and prioritizing communication to the DSO becomes
crucial. In this paper, we explore the use of $\mu$PMUs to detect anomalies on
the distribution grid. Our methodology is motivated by growing concern about
failures and attacks to distribution automation equipment. The effectiveness of
our approach is demonstrated through both real and simulated data.


  To run an algorithm on a quantum computer, one must choose an assignment from
logical qubits in a circuit to physical qubits on quantum hardware. This task
of initial qubit placement, or qubit allocation, is especially important on
present-day quantum computers which have a limited number of qubits,
connectivity constraints, and varying gate fidelities. In this work we
formulate and implement the qubit placement problem as a quadratic,
unconstrained binary optimization (QUBO) problem and solve it using simulated
annealing to obtain a spectrum of initial placements. Compared to contemporary
allocation methods available in t|ket$\rangle $ and Qiskit, the QUBO method
yields allocations with improved circuit depth for $>$50% of a large set of
benchmark circuits, with many also requiring fewer CX gates.


  Superradiant phase transition represents an important quantum phenomenon that
shows the collective excitations based on the coupling between atoms and cavity
modes. The spin-orbit coupling is another quantum effect which induced from the
interaction of the atom internal degrees of freedom and momentum of
center-of-mass. In this work, we consider the cavity assisted dynamical
spin-orbit coupling which comes from the combination of these two effects. It
can induce a series of interesting quantum phenomena, such as the flat spectrum
and the singularity of the excitation energy spectrum around the critical point
of quantum phase transition. We further discuss the influence of atom decay and
nonlinear coupling to the phase diagram. The atom decay suppresses the
singularity of the phase diagram and the nonlinear coupling can break the
symmetric properties of the phase transition. Our work provide the theoretical
methods to research the rich quantum phenomena in this dynamic many-body
systems.


  We show that for n billiard particles on the line there exist three open sets
in the product of phase space and the space of their masses, such that these
particles exhibit exactly n-1, n over 2 respectively n+1 over 3 collisions.
These open sets intersect any neighborhood of the diagonal in mass space.


  Taking the covering dimension dim as notion for the dimension of a
topological space, we first specify thenumber zdim_{T_0}(n) of zero-dimensional
T_0-spaces on {1,...,n}$ and the number zdim(n) of zero-dimensional arbitrary
topological spaces on {1,\ldots,n} by means oftwo mappings po and P that
yieldthe number po(n) of partial orders on {1,...,n} and the set P(n) of
partitions of {1,...,n}, respectively. Algorithms for both mappings exist.
Assuming one for po to be at hand, we use our specification of zdim_{T_0}(n)
and modify one for P in such a way that it computes zdim_{T_0}(n) instead of
P(n). The specification of zdim(n) then allows to compute this number from
zdim_{T_0}(1) to zdim_{T_0}(n) and the Stirling numbers of the second kind
S(n,1) to S(n,n). The resulting algorithms have been implemented in C and we
also present results of practical experiments with them. To considerably reduce
the running times for computing zdim_{T_0}(n), we also describe a backtracking
approach and its parallel implementation in C using the OpenMP library.


  In the paper we consider models of generalized counting processes
time-changed by a general inverse subordinator, we characterize their
distributions and present governing equations for them. The equations are given
in terms of the generalized fractional derivatives, namely, convolutions-type
derivatives with respect to Bern\v{s}tein functions. Some particular examples
are presented.


  We present a formal, algebraic treatment of Fedosov's argument that the
coordinate algebra of a symplectic manifold has a deformation quantization. His
remarkable formulas are established in the context of affine symplectic
algebras.


  We introduce a flexible method to simultaneously infer both the drift and
volatility functions of a discretely observed scalar diffusion. We introduce
spline bases to represent these functions and develop a Markov chain Monte
Carlo algorithm to infer, a posteriori, the coefficients of these functions in
the spline basis. A key innovation is that we use spline bases to model
transformed versions of the drift and volatility functions rather than the
functions themselves. The output of the algorithm is a posterior sample of
plausible drift and volatility functions that are not constrained to any
particular parametric family. The flexibility of this approach provides
practitioners a powerful investigative tool, allowing them to posit a variety
of parametric models to better capture the underlying dynamics of their
processes of interest. We illustrate the versatility of our method by applying
it to challenging datasets from finance, paleoclimatology, and astrophysics. In
view of the parametric diffusion models widely employed in the literature for
those examples, some of our results are surprising since they call into
question some aspects of these models.


  We develop an asymptotical control theory for one of the simplest distributed
oscillating systems, namely, for a closed string under a bounded load applied
to a single distinguished point. We find exact classes of string states that
admit complete damping and an asymptotically exact value of the required time.
By using approximate reachable sets instead of exact ones, we design a
dry-friction like feedback control, which turns out to be asymptotically
optimal. We prove the existence of motion under the control using a rather
explicit solution of a nonlinear wave equation. Remarkably, the solution is
determined via purely algebraic operations. The main result is a proof of
asymptotic optimality of the control thus constructed.


  We present a novel method aimed at enhancing the sample efficiency of
ensemble Q learning. Our proposed approach integrates multi-head self-attention
into the ensembled Q networks while bootstrapping the state-action pairs
ingested by the ensemble. This not only results in performance improvements
over the original REDQ (Chen et al. 2021) and its variant DroQ (Hi-raoka et al.
2022), thereby enhancing Q predictions, but also effectively reduces both the
average normalized bias and standard deviation of normalized bias within
Q-function ensembles. Importantly, our method also performs well even in
scenarios with a low update-to-data (UTD) ratio. Notably, the implementation of
our proposed method is straightforward, requiring minimal modifications to the
base model.


  We analyze ecological systems that are influenced by random environmental
fluctuations. We first provide general conditions which ensure that the species
coexist and the system converges to a unique invariant probability measure
(stationary distribution). Since it is usually impossible to characterize this
invariant probability measure analytically, we develop a powerful method for
numerically approximating invariant probability measures. This allows us to
shed light upon how the various parameters of the ecosystem impact the
stationary distribution.
  We analyze different types of environmental fluctuations. At first we study
ecosystems modeled by stochastic differential equations. In the second setting
we look at piecewise deterministic Markov processes. These are processes where
one follows a system of differential equations for a random time, after which
the environmental state changes, and one follows a different set of
differential equations -- this procedure then gets repeated indefinitely.
Finally, we look at stochastic differential equations with switching, which
take into account both the white noise fluctuations and the random
environmental switches.
  As applications of our theoretical and numerical analysis, we look at
competitive Lotka--Volterra, Beddington-DeAngelis predator-prey, and
rock-paper-scissors dynamics. We highlight new biological insights by analyzing
the stationary distributions of the ecosystems and by seeing how various types
of environmental fluctuations influence the long term fate of populations.


  Solutions to the classic problems of dealing with heterogeneous data and
making entire collections interoperable while ensuring that any annotation,
which includes the recognition-and-reward system of scientific publishing, need
to fit into a seamless beginning to end to attract large numbers of end users.
The latest trend in Web applications encourages highly interactive Web sites
with rich user interfaces featuring content integrated from various sources
around the Web. The obvious potential of RDF, SPARQL, and OWL to provide
flexible data modeling, easier data integration, and networked data access may
be the answer to the classic problems. Using Semantic Web technologies we have
created a Web application, the ConceptWiki, as an end-to-end solution for
creating browserbased readwrite triples using RDF, which focus on data
integration and ease of use for the end user. Here we will demonstrate the
integration of a biological data source, the ENZYME database, into the
ConceptWiki and it's representation in RDF.


  We investigate the stability of self-similar solutions for a gravitationally
collapsing isothermal sphere in Newtonian gravity by means of a normal mode
analysis. It is found that the Hunter series of solutions are highly unstable,
while neither the Larson-Penston solution nor the homogeneous collapse one have
an analytic unstable mode. Since the homogeneous collapse solution is known to
suffer the kink instability, the present result and recent numerical
simulations strongly support a proposition that the Larson-Penston solution
will be realized in astrophysical situations. It is also found that the Hunter
(A) solution has a single unstable mode, which implies that it is a critical
solution associated with some critical phenomena which are analogous to those
in general relativity. The critical exponent $\gamma$ is calculated as
$\gamma\simeq 0.10567$. In contrast to the general relativistic case, the order
parameter will be the collapsed mass. In order to obtain a complete picture of
the Newtonian critical phenomena, full numerical simulations will be needed.


  Uncertainty Quantification (UQ) is essential for creating trustworthy machine
learning models. Recent years have seen a steep rise in UQ methods that can
flag suspicious examples, however, it is often unclear what exactly these
methods identify. In this work, we propose a framework for categorizing
uncertain examples flagged by UQ methods in classification tasks. We introduce
the confusion density matrix -- a kernel-based approximation of the
misclassification density -- and use this to categorize suspicious examples
identified by a given uncertainty method into three classes:
out-of-distribution (OOD) examples, boundary (Bnd) examples, and examples in
regions of high in-distribution misclassification (IDM). Through extensive
experiments, we show that our framework provides a new and distinct perspective
for assessing differences between uncertainty quantification methods, thereby
forming a valuable assessment benchmark.


  In an analogy to the case of axion, which converts the $\Theta$-angle into a
dynamical degree of freedom, we are trying to imagine a situation where the
quark mixing angles turn out to be dynamical degrees of freedom
(pseudo-Goldstone bosons), and their vacuum expectation values are obtained
from the minimization of the vacuum energy. We present an explicit
supersymmetric model with horizontal symmetry, where such a mechanism can be
realized. It implies one relation between the quark masses and the CKM mixing
angles: $s_{13}s_{23}/s_{12}=(m_s/m_b)^2$, which is fulfilled within present
experimental accuracy. We believe, however, that the idea might be more general
than this concrete model, and it can be implemented in more profound
frameworks.


  Recently, digital payment systems have significantly changed people's
lifestyles. New challenges have surfaced in monitoring and guaranteeing the
integrity of payment processing systems. One important task is to predict the
future transaction statistics of each merchant. These predictions can thus be
used to steer other tasks, ranging from fraud detection to recommendation. This
problem is challenging as we need to predict not only multivariate time series
but also multi-steps into the future. In this work, we propose a multi-stream
RNN model for multi-step merchant transaction predictions tailored to these
requirements. The proposed multi-stream RNN summarizes transaction data in
different granularity and makes predictions for multiple steps in the future.
Our extensive experimental results have demonstrated that the proposed model is
capable of outperforming existing state-of-the-art methods.


  Numerical simulations of various domain growth systems are reported, in order
to compute the parameter describing the violation of fluctuation dissipation
theorem (FDT) in aging phenomena. We compute two-times correlation and response
functions and find that, as expected from the exact solution of a certain
mean-field model (equivalent to the O(N) model in three dimensions, in the
limit of N going to infinity), this parameter is equal to one (no violation of
FDT) in the quasi-equilibrium regime (short separation of times), and zero in
the aging regime.


  We report a 51V nuclear magnetic resonance investigation of the frustrated
spin-1/2 chain compound LiCuVO4, performed in pulsed magnetic fields and
focused on high-field phases up to 55 T. For the crystal orientations H // c
and H // b we find a narrow field region just below the magnetic saturation
where the local magnetization remains uniform and homogeneous, while its value
is field dependent. This behavior is the first microscopic signature of the
spin-nematic state, breaking spin-rotation symmetry without generating any
transverse dipolar order, and is consistent with theoretical predictions for
the LiCuVO4 compound.


  Experimental data of the frequency-dependent ac susceptibility for the
dipolar spin ice Dy2Ti2O7 has been analyzed by Monte Carlo simulations on the
basis of the single-spin-flip Metropolis algorithm. We have directly evaluated
the ac susceptibility by applying an ac magnetic field. We found that the
simulated behaviors reproduces the experimental behavior of the ac
susceptibility in the temperature range from 0.6 to 1.0 K, where dilute
magnetic monopoles diffusively move. The conversion factor from simulation time
to real time, i.e., the rate of hopping of monopoles to nearest-neighbor sites,
strongly depends on temperature.


  From previous ground-based observations, the hot Jupiter exoplanet XO-6b was
reported to exhibit apparently periodic transit timing variations (TTVs), with
a semi-amplitude of 14 minutes and a period of about 450 days. These variations
were interpreted as being due to a resonant perturbation between XO-6b and a
hitherto unknown low-mass planet orbiting the same star. To understand this
enigmatic planetary system better, we analysed three sectors of data, spanning
over seven months, from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), which
produces high-quality light curves that are well suited to characterizing
exoplanets and searching for TTVs. Here we present an updated orbital period of
3.7649893 $\pm$ 0.0000037 days and a transit epoch of 2456652.7157 $\pm$ 0.0022
BJD$_{TDB}$. The planetary parameters we report, while consistent with their
discovery values, have greatly improved precision. Notably, we find no evidence
for TTVs: we can rule out TTVs $\gtrsim$ 2.5 minutes at the 3$\sigma$ level.
Therefore, the TESS data have sufficient precision and time baseline to reveal
readily the previously reported TTVs of approximately 10 minutes. Our findings
highlight TESS's capabilities for robust follow-up, and confirm that TTVs are
rarely seen in hot Jupiters, unlike is the case with small planets.


  Here we have shown that asymptotically anti-de Sitter (AdS) black holes in
the Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet (GB) theory are unstable under linear perturbations
of spacetime in some region of parameters. This (eikonal) instability develops
at high multipole numbers. We found the exact parametric regions of the eikonal
instability and extended this consideration to asymptotically flat and de
Sitter cases. The approach to the threshold of instability is driven by purely
imaginary quasinormal modes, which are similar to those found recently in [5]
for the higher curvature corrected black hole with the planar horizon. The
found instability may indicate limits of holographic applicability of the
GB-AdS backgrounds. Recently, through the analysis of critical behavior in AdS
space-time in the presence of Gauss-Bonnet term, it was shown [19] that that,
if the total energy content of the AdS space-time is small, then no black holes
can be formed with mass less than some critical value. A similar mass gap was
also found when considering collapse of mass shells in asymptotically flat
Gauss-Bonnet theories [20]. The found instability of all sufficiently small
Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet-AdS, -dS and asymptotically flat black holes may explain
the existing mass gaps in their formation.


  The integer $\beta (\rho, v, k)$ is defined to be the maximum number of
blocks in any $(v, k)$-packing in which the maximum partial parallel class (or
PPC) has size $\rho$. This problem was introduced and studied by Stinson for
the case $k=3$. Here, we mainly consider the case $k = 4$ and we obtain some
upper bounds and lower bounds on $\beta (\rho, v, 4)$. We also provide some
explicit constructions of $(v,4)$-packings having a maximum PPC of a given size
$\rho$. For small values of $\rho$, the number of blocks of the constructed
packings are very close to the upper bounds on $\beta (\rho, v, 4)$. Some of
our methods are extended to the cases $k > 4$.


  The paper studies wsat$(G,H)$ which is the minimum number of edges in a
weakly $H$-saturated subgraph of $G$. We prove that wsat$(K_n,H)$ is `stable' -
remains the same after independent removal of every edge of $K_n$ with constant
probability - for all pattern graphs $H$ such that there exists a `local' set
of edges percolating in $K_n$. This is true, for example, for cliques and
complete bipartite graphs. We also find a threshold probability for the weak
$K_{1,t}$-saturation stability.


  We present a measurement of the integrated luminosity of $e^+e^-$ collision
data collected with the BESIII detector at the BEPCII collider at a
center-of-mass energy of $E_{\rm cm} = 3.773$~GeV. The integrated luminosities
of the data sets taken from December 2021 to June 2022, from November 2022 to
June 2023, and from October 2023 to February 2024 are determined to be $4.995
\pm 0.019$~fb$^{-1}$, $8.157 \pm 0.031$~fb$^{-1}$, and $4.191 \pm
0.016$~fb$^{-1}$, respectively, by analyzing large angle Bhabha scattering
events. The uncertainties are dominated by systematic effects and the
statistical uncertainties are negligible. Our results provide essential input
for future analyses and precision measurements.


  We use high-speed x-ray imaging to reveal how a small (~10cm) desert dwelling
lizard, the sandfish (Scincus scincus), swims within a granular medium [1]. On
the surface, the lizard uses a standard diagonal gait, but once below the
surface, the organism no longer uses limbs for propulsion. Instead it
propagates a large amplitude single period sinusoidal traveling wave down its
body and tail to propel itself at speeds up to ~1.5 body-length/sec. Motivated
by these experiments we study a numerical model of the sandfish as it swims
within a validated soft sphere Molecular Dynamics granular media simulation. We
use this model as a tool to understand dynamics like flow fields and forces
generated as the animal swims within the granular media.
  [1] Maladen, R.D. and Ding, Y. and Li, C. and Goldman, D.I., Undulatory
Swimming in Sand: Subsurface Locomotion of the Sandfish Lizard, Science, 325,
314, 2009


  The semiconductor diode, which acts as an electrical rectifier and allows
unidirectional electronic transports, is the key to information processing in
integrated circuits. Analogously, an optical rectifier (or diode) working at
specific target wavelengths has recently becomes a dreaming device in optical
communication and signal processing. In this paper, we propose a scheme to
realize an optical diode for photonic transport at the level of few photons.
The system consists of two spatially overlapping single-mode semiconductor
microcavities coupled via ${\chi ^{(2)}}$ nonlinearities. The photon blockade
is predicted to take place in this system. These photon blockade effects can be
achieved by tuning the frequency of the input laser field (driving field).
Based on those blockades, we derive analytically the single- and two-photon
current in terms of zero and finite-time delayed two-order correlation
function. The results suggest that the system can serve as an single- and
two-photon quantum optical diodes which allow transmission of photons in one
direction much more efficiently than in the other.


  We explore the tidal excitation of stellar modes in binary systems using
Kepler observations of the remarkable eccentric binary KOI-54 (HD 187091; KIC
8112039), which displays strong ellipsoidal variation as well as a variety of
linear and nonlinear pulsations. We report the amplitude and phase of over 120
harmonic and anharmonic pulsations in the system. We use pulsation phases to
determine that the two largest-amplitude pulsations, the 90th and 91st
harmonics, most likely correspond to axisymmetric m=0 modes in both stars, and
thus cannot be responsible for resonance locks as had been recently proposed.
We find evidence that the amplitude of at least one of these two pulsations is
decreasing with a characteristic timescale of ~100 yr. We also use the
pulsations' phases to confirm the onset of the traveling wave regime for
harmonic pulsations with frequencies <~50 Omega_orbit, in agreement with
theoretical expectations. We present evidence that many pulsations that are not
harmonics of the orbital frequency correspond to modes undergoing simultaneous
nonlinear coupling to multiple linearly driven parent modes. Since coupling
among multiple modes can lower the threshold for nonlinear interactions,
nonlinear phenomena may be easier to observe in highly eccentric systems, where
broader arrays of driving frequencies are available. This may help to explain
why the observed amplitudes of the linear pulsations are much smaller than the
theoretical threshold for decay via three-mode coupling.


  Autonomous driving is complex, requiring sophisticated 3D scene
understanding, localization, mapping, and control. Rather than explicitly
modelling and fusing each of these components, we instead consider an
end-to-end approach via reinforcement learning (RL). However, collecting
exploration driving data in the real world is impractical and dangerous. While
training in simulation and deploying visual sim-to-real techniques has worked
well for robot manipulation, deploying beyond controlled workspace viewpoints
remains a challenge. In this paper, we address this challenge by presenting
Sim2Seg, a re-imagining of RCAN that crosses the visual reality gap for
off-road autonomous driving, without using any real-world data. This is done by
learning to translate randomized simulation images into simulated segmentation
and depth maps, subsequently enabling real-world images to also be translated.
This allows us to train an end-to-end RL policy in simulation, and directly
deploy in the real-world. Our approach, which can be trained in 48 hours on 1
GPU, can perform equally as well as a classical perception and control stack
that took thousands of engineering hours over several months to build. We hope
this work motivates future end-to-end autonomous driving research.


  We show that a low-mass neutron star undergoes delayed explosion after mass
removal from its surface. We couple the Newtonian hydrodynamics to a nuclear
reaction network of $\sim 4500$ isotopes to study the nucleosynthesis and
neutrino emission during the explosion. An electron anti-neutrino burst with a
peak luminosity of $\sim 3\times10^{50}$ erg s$^{-1}$ is emitted while the
ejecta is heated to $\sim 10^{9}$ K. A robust r-process nucleosynthesis is
realized in the ejecta. Lanthanides and heavy elements near the second and
third r-process peaks are synthesized as end products of nucleosynthesis,
suggesting that low-mass neutron star explosions could be an important source
of solar chemical elements.


  Claims by the DAMA (DArk MAtter) collaboration to have detected an annually
varying signal consistent with models of dark matter appear to be at variance
with results from other dark-matter searches. To further understand the DAMA
results, we have carried out an independent analysis of DAMA data reconstructed
from published figures. In addition to reexamining the Lomb-Scargle and
chi-square analyses previously carried out by the DAMA collaboration, we carry
out two new likelihood analyses and a new chi-square analysis, focusing
attention on the treatment of experimental errors and binning. We confirm the
existence of an annual oscillation, with a maximum in early June, but at a
lower significance level than previously reported.


  This work brings together ideas of mixing graph colourings, discrete
homotopy, and precolouring extension. A particular focus is circular
colourings. We prove that all the $(k,q)$-colourings of a graph $G$ can be
obtained by successively recolouring a single vertex provided $k/q\geq 2col(G)$
along the lines of Cereceda, van den Heuvel and Johnson's result for
$k$-colourings. We give various bounds for such mixing results and discuss
their sharpness, including cases where the bounds for circular and classical
colourings coincide. As a corollary, we obtain an Albertson-type extension
theorem for $(k,q)$-precolourings of circular cliques. Such a result was first
conjectured by Albertson and West. General results on homomorphism mixing are
presented, including a characterization of graphs $G$ for which the
endomorphism monoid can be generated through the mixing process. As in similar
work of Brightwell and Winkler, the concept of dismantlability plays a key
role.


  We review various aspects of jet physics in the context of hadron colliders.
We start by discussing the definitions and properties of jets and recent
development in this area. We then consider the question of factorization for
processes with jets, in particular for cases in which jets are produced in
special configurations, like for example in the region of forward rapidities.
We review numerous perturbative methods for calculating predictions for jet
processes, including the fixed-order calculations as well as various matching
and merging techniques. We also discuss the questions related to
non-perturbative effects and the role they play in precision jet studies. We
describe the status of calculations for processes with jet vetoes and we also
elaborate on production of jets in forward direction. Throughout the article,
we present selected comparisons between state-of-the-art theoretical
predictions and the data from the LHC.


  The Lyapunov exponents of GL(2)-cocycles over Markov shifts depend
continuously on the underlying data, that is, on the matrix coefficients and
the Markov measure transition probabilities.


  In this paper we consider the problem of locating a nonzero entry in a
high-dimensional vector from possibly adaptive linear measurements. We consider
a recursive bisection method which we dub the compressive binary search and
show that it improves on what any nonadaptive method can achieve. We also
establish a non-asymptotic lower bound that applies to all methods, regardless
of their computational complexity. Combined, these results show that the
compressive binary search is within a double logarithmic factor of the optimal
performance.


  Mesoscopic correlations are observed in the polarization of microwave
radiation transmitted through a random waveguide. These measurements, supported
by diagrammatic theory, permit the unambiguous identification of short, long,
and infinite range components in the intensity correlation function, as well as
an additional frequency-independent component.


  Increasing interest in the acquisition of biotic and abiotic resources from
within the deep sea (e.g. fisheries, oil-gas extraction, and mining) urgently
imposes the development of novel monitoring technologies, beyond the
traditional vessel-assisted, time-consuming, high-cost sampling surveys. The
implementation of permanent networks of seabed and water-column cabled (fixed)
and docked mobile platforms is presently enforced, to cooperatively measure
biological features and environmental (physico-chemical) parameters. Video and
acoustic (i.e. optoacoustic) imaging are becoming central approaches for
studying benthic fauna (e.g. quantifying species presence, behaviour, and
trophic interactions) in a remote, continuous, and prolonged fashion. Imaging
is also being complemented by in situ environmental-DNA sequencing
technologies, allowing the traceability of a wide range of organisms (including
prokaryotes) beyond the reach of optoacoustic tools. Here, we describe the
different fixed and mobile platforms of those benthic and pelagic monitoring
networks, proposing at the same time an innovative roadmap for the automated
computing of hierarchical ecological information of deep-sea ecosystems (i.e.
from single species abundance and life traits, to community composition, and
overall biodiversity)


  Training of modern large neural networks (NN) requires a combination of
parallelization strategies encompassing data, model, or optimizer sharding.
When strategies increase in complexity, it becomes necessary for partitioning
tools to be 1) expressive, allowing the composition of simpler strategies, and
2) predictable to estimate performance analytically. We present PartIR, our
design for a NN partitioning system. PartIR is focused on an incremental
approach to rewriting and is hardware-and-runtime agnostic. We present a simple
but powerful API for composing sharding strategies and a simulator to validate
them. The process is driven by high-level programmer-issued partitioning
tactics, which can be both manual and automatic. Importantly, the tactics are
specified separately from the model code, making them easy to change. We
evaluate PartIR on several different models to demonstrate its predictability,
expressibility, and ability to reach peak performance..


  Assuming the Riemann hypothesis, we prove estimates for the variance of the
real and imaginary part of the logarithm of the Riemann zeta-function in short
intervals. We give three different formulations of these results. Assuming a
conjecture of Chan for how often gaps between zeros can be close to a fixed
nonzero value, we prove a conjecture of Berry (1988) for the number variance of
zeta zeros in the non-universal regime. In this range, GUE statistics do not
describe the distribution of the zeros. We also calculate lower-order terms in
the second moment of the logarithm of the modulus of the Riemann zeta-function
on the critical line. Assuming Montgomery's pair correlation conjecture, this
establishes a special case of a conjecture of Keating and Snaith (2000).


  This paper proposes a machine learning method based on the Extra Trees (ET)
algorithm for forecasting Significant Wave Heights in oceanic waters. To derive
multiple features from the CDIP buoys, which make point measurements, we first
nowcast various parameters and then forecast them at 30-min intervals. The
proposed algorithm has Scatter Index (SI), Bias, Correlation Coefficient, Root
Mean Squared Error (RMSE) of 0.130, -0.002, 0.97, and 0.14, respectively, for
one day ahead prediction and 0.110, -0.001, 0.98, and 0.122, respectively, for
14-day ahead prediction on the testing dataset. While other state-of-the-art
methods can only forecast up to 120 hours ahead, we extend it further to 14
days. Our proposed setup includes spectral features, hv-block cross-validation,
and stringent QC criteria. The proposed algorithm performs significantly better
than the state-of-the-art methods commonly used for significant wave height
forecasting for one-day ahead prediction. Moreover, the improved performance of
the proposed machine learning method compared to the numerical methods shows
that this performance can be extended to even longer periods allowing for early
prediction of significant wave heights in oceanic waters.


  We consider a relation between two kinds of unknotting numbers defined by
using a band surgery on unoriented knots; the band-unknotting number and
H(2)-unknotting number, which we may characterize in terms of the first Betti
number of surfaces in S^3 spanning the knot and the trivial knot. We also give
several examples for these numbers.


  Aims. We performed a detailed membership selection and studied the accretion
properties of low-mass stars in the two apparently very similar young (1-10
Myr) clusters sigma Ori and lambda Ori.
  Methods. We observed 98 and 49 low-mass (0.2-1.0 M_sun) stars in sigma Ori
and lambda Ori respectively, using the multi-object optical spectrograph FLAMES
at the VLT, with the high-resolution (R=17,000) HR15N grating (6470-6790 AA).
We used radial velocities, Li and Halpha to establish cluster membership and
Halpha and other optical emission lines to analyze the accretion properties of
members.
  Results. We identified 65 and 45 members of the sigma Ori and lambda Ori
clusters, respectively and discovered 16 new candidate binary systems. We also
measured rotational broadening for 20 stars and estimated the mass accretion
rates in 25 stars of the sigma Ori cluster, finding values between 10^-11 and
10^-7.7 M_sun yr^-1 and in 4 stars of the lambda Ori cluster, finding values
between 10^-11 and 10^-10.1 M_sun yr-1. Comparing our results with the infrared
photometry obtained by the Spitzer satellite, we find that the fraction of
stars with disks and the fraction of active disks is larger in the sigma Ori
cluster (52+-9% and 78+-16%) than in lambda Ori (28+-8% and 40+-20%)
  Conclusions. The different disk and accretion properties of the two clusters
could be due either to the effect of the high-mass stars and the supernova
explosion in the lambda Ori cluster or to different ages of the cluster
populations. Further observations are required to draw a definitive conclusion.


  The linear noise approximation (LNA) offers a simple means by which one can
study intrinsic noise in monostable biochemical networks. Using simple physical
arguments, we have recently introduced the slow-scale LNA (ssLNA) which is a
reduced version of the LNA under conditions of timescale separation. In this
paper, we present the first rigorous derivation of the ssLNA using the
projection operator technique and show that the ssLNA follows uniquely from the
standard LNA under the same conditions of timescale separation as those
required for the deterministic quasi-steady state approximation. We also show
that the large molecule number limit of several common stochastic model
reduction techniques under timescale separation conditions constitutes a
special case of the ssLNA.


  We use first-principles methods to study doped strong ferroelectrics (taking
BaTiO$_3$ as a prototype). Here we find a strong coupling between itinerant
electrons and soft polar phonons in doped BaTiO$_3$, contrary to
Anderson/Blount's weakly coupled electron mechanism for "ferroelectric-like
metals". As a consequence, across a polar-to-centrosymmetric phase transition
in doped BaTiO$_3$, the total electron-phonon coupling is increased to about
0.6 around the critical concentration, which is sufficient to induce
phonon-mediated superconductivity of about 2 K. Lowering the crystal symmetry
of doped BaTiO$_3$ by imposing epitaxial strain can further increase the
superconducting temperature via a sizable coupling between itinerant electrons
and acoustic phonons. Our work demonstrates a viable approach to modulating
electron-phonon coupling and inducing phonon-mediated superconductivity in
doped strong ferroelectrics and potentially in polar metals. Our results also
show that the weakly coupled electron mechanism for "ferroelectric-like metals"
is not necessarily present in doped strong ferroelectrics.


  We prove an asymptotic crystallization result in two dimensions for a class
of nonlocal particle systems. To be precise, we consider the best approximation
with respect to the 2-Wasserstein metric of a given absolutely continuous
probability measure $f \mathrm{d}x$ by a discrete probability measure $\sum_i
m_i \delta_{z_i}$, subject to a constraint on the particle sizes $m_i$. The
locations $z_i$ of the particles, their sizes $m_i$, and the number of
particles are all unknowns of the problem. We study a one-parameter family of
constraints. This is an example of an optimal location problem (or an optimal
sampling or quantization problem) and it has applications in economics, signal
compression, and numerical integration. We establish the asymptotic minimum
value of the (rescaled) approximation error as the number of particles goes to
infinity. In particular, we show that for the constrained best approximation of
the Lebesgue measure by a discrete measure, the discrete measure whose support
is a triangular lattice is asymptotically optimal. In addition, we prove an
analogous result for a problem where the constraint is replaced by a
penalization. These results can also be viewed as the asymptotic optimality of
the hexagonal tiling for an optimal partitioning problem. They generalise the
crystallization result of Bourne, Peletier and Theil (Communications in
Mathematical Physics, 2014) from a single particle system to a class of
particle systems, and prove a case of a conjecture by Bouchitt\'{e}, Jimenez
and Mahadevan (Journal de Math\'ematiques Pures et Appliqu\'ees, 2011).
Finally, we prove a crystallization result which states that optimal
configurations with energy close to that of a triangular lattice are
geometrically close to a triangular lattice.


  Fast proton conduction mechanism is of key importance for achieving high
performance in fuel cell membranes, batteries, supercapacitors, and
electrochromic materials. Enhanced proton diffusion is often observed in
hydrated materials where it is thought to occur via the famous Grotthuss
mechanism through pathways formed by structural water. Using first-principles
density-functional theory calculations, we demonstrate that proton diffusion in
tungsten oxide dihydrate (WO$_{3}$.2H$_{2}$O), a known good proton conductor,
takes place within the layers of corner-sharing WO$_{6}$ octahedra without
direct involvement of structural water. The calculated proton migration barrier
in WO$_{3}$.2H$_{2}$O (0.42 eV) is in good agreement with the experimental
value inferred from the temperature dependence of conductivity (0.36 eV). The
preferred proton diffusion path in WO$_{3}$.2H$_{2}$O is essentially the same
as in $\gamma$-WO$_{3}$, and we find an activation energy of 0.35 eV for the
latter, which agrees well with the experimental values. In contrast to the
small intercalation voltages calculated for WO$_{3}$ and WO$_{3}$.2H$_{2}$O, we
find that proton absorption in the monohydrate WO$_{3}$.H$_{2}$O is
energetically highly favorable, corresponding to voltages in excess of 1 eV in
the dilute limit. However, strong proton-proton repulsion limits the
equilibrium H content at zero voltage. We find a fast one-dimensional diffusion
channel in WO$_{3}$.H$_{2}$O with an activation energy of only 0.07 eV at
dilute proton concentrations, but much higher barriers are expected at
near-equilibrium concentrations due to strong repulsive interactions with other
protons. Our results illustrate that low proton diffusion barriers and low
insertion voltages both contribute to fast proton transport in bulk
WO$_{3}$.2H$_{2}$O and $\gamma$-WO$_{3}$.


  It is very common to use quotations (quotes) to make our writings more
elegant or convincing. To help people find appropriate quotes efficiently, the
task of quote recommendation is presented, aiming to recommend quotes that fit
the current context of writing. There have been various quote recommendation
approaches, but they are evaluated on different unpublished datasets. To
facilitate the research on this task, we build a large and fully open quote
recommendation dataset called QuoteR, which comprises three parts including
English, standard Chinese and classical Chinese. Any part of it is larger than
previous unpublished counterparts. We conduct an extensive evaluation of
existing quote recommendation methods on QuoteR. Furthermore, we propose a new
quote recommendation model that significantly outperforms previous methods on
all three parts of QuoteR. All the code and data of this paper are available at
https://github.com/thunlp/QuoteR.


  The reflection matrix R=S^{\dagger}S, with S being the scattering matrix,
differs from the unit one, when absorption is finite. Using the random matrix
approach, we calculate analytically the distribution function of its
eigenvalues in the limit of a large number of propagating modes in the leads
attached to a chaotic cavity. The obtained result is independent on the
presence of time-reversal symmetry in the system, being valid at finite
absorption and arbitrary openness of the system. The particular cases of
perfectly and weakly open cavities are considered in detail. An application of
our results to the problem of thermal emission from random media is briefly
discussed.


  This paper explores the adoption of blockchain technology in the gaming
industry. While supporters affirm that distributed ledger technology has
potential to revolutionize gaming economies and provide players with control
over their virtual assets, there are practical challenges such as energy
consumption and user adoption to be addressed, and detractors question whether
blockchain integration is even necessary. This report characterises popular
blockchain-based gaming projects like Enjin and Axie Infinity, then compares
metrics such as transaction cost and player feedback to evaluate the longevity
of blockchain-integrated gaming as a whole.


  Analytical approximations for $< \phi^2 >$ of a quantized scalar field in
ultrastatic asymptotically flat spacetimes are obtained. The field is assumed
to be both massive and massless, with an arbitrary coupling $\xi$ to the scalar
curvature, and in a zero or nonzero temperature vacuum state. The expression
for $< \phi^2 >$ is divided into low- and high-frequency parts. The expansion
for the high-frequency contribution to this quantity is obtained. This
expansion is analogous to the DeWitt-Schwinger one. As an example, the
low-frequency contribution to $< \phi^2 >$ is calculated on the background of
the small perturbed flat spacetime in a quantum state corresponding to the
Minkowski vacuum at the asymptotic. The limits of the applicability of these
approximations are discussed.


  In this paper we study the commutator of Cauchy type integrals $\EuScript C$
on a bounded strongly pseudoconvex domain $D$ in $\mathbb C^n$ with boundary
$bD$ satisfying the minimum regularity condition $C^{2}$ as in the recent
result of Lanzani--Stein. We point out that in this setting the Cauchy type
integrals $\EuScript C$ is the sum of the essential part $\EuScript C^\sharp$
which is a Calder\'on--Zygmund operator and a remainder $\EuScript R$ which is
no longer a Calder\'on--Zygmund operator. We show that the commutator $[b,
\EuScript C]$ is bounded on $L^p(bD)$ ($1<p<\infty$) if {\color{black}and only
if}\ $b$ is in the BMO space on $bD$. Moreover, the commutator $[b, \EuScript
C]$ is compact on $L^p(bD)$ ($1<p<\infty$) if {\color{black}and only if}\ $b$
is in the VMO space on $bD$. Our method can also be applied to the commutator
of Cauchy--Leray integral in a bounded, strongly $\mathbb C$-linearly convex
domain $D$ in $\mathbb C^n$ with the boundary $bD$ satisfying the minimum
regularity $C^{1,1}$. Such a Cauchy--Leray integral is a Calder\'on--Zygmund
operator as proved in the recent result of Lanzani--Stein. We also point out
that our method provides another proof of the boundedness and compactness of
commutator of Cauchy--Szeg\H o operator on a bounded strongly pseudoconvex
domain $D$ in $\mathbb C^n$ with smooth boundary (first established by
Krantz--Li).


  The coherence of the relic gravitons is investigated within a quantum
mechanical perspective. After introducing the notion and the properties of the
generalized Glauber correlators valid in the tensor case, the degrees of first-
and second-order coherence are evaluated both inside and beyond the effective
horizon. The inclusive approach (encompassing the polarizations of the
gravitons) is contrasted with the exclusive approximation where the total
intensity is calculated either from a single polarization or even from a single
mode of the field. While the relic gravitons reentering the effective horizon
after the end of a quasi-de Sitter stage of expansion are first-order coherent,
the Hanbury Brown-Twiss correlations always exhibit a super-Poissonian
statistics with different quantitative features that depend on the properties
of their initial states and on the average over the tensor polarizations.


  We prove an operator-theoretic reconstruction of the Beilinson-Bloch
regulator for compact Riemann surfaces, using loop operators and the
Connes-Karoubi character for Fredholm modules. The proof includes a new
computation of the Connes-Karoubi character for Steinberg symbols of the
circle, which relies on the Helton-Howe determinant theory, but not on the
Carey-Pincus theory of joint torsion.


  We show that there is a unique hypersurface of minimal degree passing through
the non-faces of a polytope which is defined by a simple hyperplane
arrangement. This generalizes the construction of the adjoint curve of a
polygon by Wachspress in 1975. The defining polynomial of our adjoint
hypersurface is the adjoint polynomial introduced by Warren in 1996. This is a
key ingredient for the definition of Wachspress coordinates, which are
barycentric coordinates on an arbitrary convex polytope. The adjoint polynomial
also appears both in algebraic statistics, when studying the moments of uniform
probability distributions on polytopes, and in intersection theory, when
computing Segre classes of monomial schemes. We describe the Wachspress map,
the rational map defined by the Wachspress coordinates, and the Wachspress
variety, the image of this map. The inverse of the Wachspress map is the
projection from the linear span of the image of the adjoint hypersurface. To
relate adjoints of polytopes to classical adjoints of divisors in algebraic
geometry, we study irreducible hypersurfaces that have the same degree and
multiplicity along the non-faces of a polytope as its defining hyperplane
arrangement. We list all finitely many combinatorial types of polytopes in
dimensions two and three for which such irreducible hypersurfaces exist. In the
case of polygons, the general such curves< are elliptic. In the
three-dimensional case, the general such surfaces are either K3 or elliptic.


  The characteristics of Alfv\'en waves propagating in a direction oblique to
the ambient magnetic field in a stellar wind environment are discussed. A
kinetic formulation for a magnetized dusty plasma is adopted considering
Maxwellian distributions of electrons and ions, and immobile dust particles
electrically charged by absorption of plasma particles and by photoionization.
The dispersion relation is numerically solved and the results are compared with
situations previously studied where dust particles were not charged by
photoionization, which is an important process in a stellar wind of a
relatively hot star. We show that the presence of dust causes the shear
Alfv\'en waves to present a region of wavenumber values with zero frequency and
that the minimum wavelength for which the mode becomes dispersive again is
roughly proportional to the radiation intensity to which the dust grains are
exposed. The damping rates of both shear and compressional Alfv\'en waves are
observed to decrease with increasing radiation flux, for the parameters
considered. For the particular case where both modes present a region with null
real frequency when the radiation flux is absent or weak, it is shown that when
the radiation flux is sufficiently strong, the photoionization mechanism may
cause this region to get smaller or even to vanish, for compressional Alfv\'en
waves. In that case, the compressional Alfv\'en waves present non zero
frequency for all wavenumber values, while the shear Alfv\'en waves still
present null frequency in a certain interval of wavenumber values, which gets
smaller with the presence of radiation.


  Lorenz maps are maps of the unit interval with one critical point of order
rho>1, and a discontinuity at that point. They appear as return maps of leafs
of sections of the geometric Lorenz flow.
  We construct real a priori bounds for renormalizable Lorenz maps with certain
monotone combinatorics, and use these bounds to show existence of periodic
points of renormalization, as well as existence of Cantor attractors for
dynamics of infinitely renormalizable Lorenz maps.


  We provide a rigorous perturbative quantization of the B-twisted topological
sigma model via a first order quantum field theory on derived mapping space in
the formal neighborhood of constant maps. We prove that the first Chern class
of the target manifold is the obstruction to the quantization via
Batalin-Vilkovisky formalism. When the first Chern class vanishes, i.e. on
Calabi-Yau manifolds, the factorization algebra of observables gives rise to
the expected topological correlation functions in the B-model. We explain a
twisting procedure to generalize to the Landau-Ginzburg case, and show that the
resulting topological correlations coincide with Vafa's residue formula.


  Transport of excitons through transfer networks is a unique example where the
interplay between quantum coherence and environment-induced dephasing leads to
non-trivial effects. One exciting example is the "environment-assisted quantum
transport", (ENAQT), where, counter intuitively, the environment interrupts
quantum transport in a way that enhances the transfer efficiency. Here we show
that the interplay between dephasing and quantum coherence can lead to an
additional function in exciton transport - photo-protection, that is the
reduction of current upon increased excitation. We start by demonstrating that
even under weak coupling conditions, weak excitations can lead to
multiple-exciton generation, thus going beyond the common single-exciton
approximation. We then consider the transport of two excitons, and show that a
interplay between dephasing and exciton-exciton interactions leads to a
reduction in current, i.e. to photo-protection. The effect may be related to
actual photo-protection observed in photosynthetic systems.


  Since the seminal contribution of Geymonat, M\"uller, and Triantafyllidis, it
is known that strong ellipticity is not necessarily conserved through periodic
homogenization in linear elasticity. This phenomenon is related to microscopic
buckling of composite materials. Consider a mixture of two isotropic phases
which leads to loss of strong ellipticity when arranged in a laminate manner,
as considered by Guti\'errez and by Briane and Francfort. In this contribution
we prove that the laminate structure is essentially the only microstructure
which leads to such a loss of strong ellipticity. We perform a more general
analysis in the stationary, ergodic setting.


  In this paper, we propose HeadNeRF, a novel NeRF-based parametric head model
that integrates the neural radiance field to the parametric representation of
the human head. It can render high fidelity head images in real-time on modern
GPUs, and supports directly controlling the generated images' rendering pose
and various semantic attributes. Different from existing related parametric
models, we use the neural radiance fields as a novel 3D proxy instead of the
traditional 3D textured mesh, which makes that HeadNeRF is able to generate
high fidelity images. However, the computationally expensive rendering process
of the original NeRF hinders the construction of the parametric NeRF model. To
address this issue, we adopt the strategy of integrating 2D neural rendering to
the rendering process of NeRF and design novel loss terms. As a result, the
rendering speed of HeadNeRF can be significantly accelerated, and the rendering
time of one frame is reduced from 5s to 25ms. The well designed loss terms also
improve the rendering accuracy, and the fine-level details of the human head,
such as the gaps between teeth, wrinkles, and beards, can be represented and
synthesized by HeadNeRF. Extensive experimental results and several
applications demonstrate its effectiveness. The trained parametric model is
available at https://github.com/CrisHY1995/headnerf.


  Observation of a point source of astrophysical neutrinos would be a "smoking
gun" signature of a cosmic-ray accelerator. While IceCube has recently
discovered a diffuse flux of astrophysical neutrinos, no localized point source
has been observed. Previous IceCube searches for point sources in the southern
sky were restricted by either an energy threshold above a few hundred TeV or
poor neutrino angular resolution. Here we present a search for southern sky
point sources with greatly improved sensitivities to neutrinos with energies
below 100 TeV. By selecting charged-current $\nu_{\mu}$ interacting inside the
detector, we reduce the atmospheric background while retaining efficiency for
astrophysical neutrino-induced events reconstructed with sub-degree angular
resolution. The new event sample covers three years of detector data and leads
to a factor of ten improvement in sensitivity to point sources emitting below
100 TeV in the southern sky. No statistically significant evidence of point
sources was found, and upper limits are set on neutrino emission from
individual sources. A posteriori analysis of the highest-energy ~100 TeV
starting event in the sample found that this event alone represents a
$2.8\sigma$ deviation from the hypothesis that the data consists only of
atmospheric background.


  In this work, we propose sequence-level certainty as a common theme over
hallucination in Knowledge Grounded Dialogue Generation (KGDG). We explore the
correlation between the level of hallucination in model responses and two types
of sequence-level certainty: probabilistic certainty and semantic certainty.
Empirical results reveal that higher levels of both types of certainty in model
responses are correlated with lower levels of hallucination. We further propose
Certainty-based Response Ranking (CRR), a decoding-time hallucination
mitigation method that samples several response candidates, ranks them based on
sequence-level certainty, and outputs the response with the highest certainty
level. Aligning with our definitions of sequence-level certainty, we design 2
types of CRR approaches: Probabilistic CRR (P-CRR) and Semantic CRR (S-CRR).
P-CRR ranks individually sampled model responses using the arithmetic mean
log-probability of the entire sequence. S-CRR approaches certainty estimation
from meaning-space, and ranks model response candidates based on their semantic
certainty level as measured by an entailment-based Agreement Score (AS).
Through extensive experiments across 3 KGDG datasets, 3 decoding methods, and 4
KGDG models, we validate the effectiveness of CRR for reducing hallucination in
KGDG task.


  We investigate a neutral gauge boson X originated from a hidden U(1)
extension of the standard model as the particle dark matter candidate. The
vector dark matter interacts with the standard model fermions through heavy
fermion mediators. The interactions give rise to t-channel annihilation cross
section in the XX to ff process, which dominates the thermal relic abundance
during thermal freeze-out and produces measurable gamma-ray flux in the
galactic halo. For a light vector dark matter, if it predominantly couples to
the third generation fermions, this model could explain the excess of gamma
rays from the galactic center. We show that the vector dark matter with a mass
of 20 ~ 40 GeV and that annihilate into the bb and tautau final states provides
an excellent description of the observed gamma-ray excess. The parameter space
aimed at explaining the gamma-ray excess, could also provide the correct
thermal relic density and is compatible with the constraints from electroweak
precision data, Higgs invisible decay, and collider searches. We also show the
dark matter couplings to the nucleon from the fermion portal interactions are
loop-suppressed, and only contribute to the spin-dependent cross section. So
the vector dark matter could easily escape the stringent constraints from the
direct detection experiments.


  We present a novel framework to streamline the calculation of jet and beam
functions to next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) in perturbation theory. By
exploiting the infrared behaviour of the collinear splitting functions, we
factorise the singularities with suitable phase-space parametrisations and
perform the observable-dependent integrations numerically. We have implemented
our approach in the publicly available code {\tt pySecDec} and present first
results for sample jet and beam functions.


  Despite the increasing popularity of metaheuristics, many crucially important
questions remain unanswered. There are two important issues: theoretical
framework and the gap between theory and applications. At the moment, the
practice of metaheuristics is like heuristic itself, to some extent, by trial
and error. Mathematical analysis lags far behind, apart from a few, limited,
studies on convergence analysis and stability, there is no theoretical
framework for analyzing metaheuristic algorithms. I believe mathematical and
statistical methods using Markov chains and dynamical systems can be very
useful in the future work. There is no doubt that any theoretical progress will
provide potentially huge insightful into meteheuristic algorithms.


  We study the high-contrast biharmonic plate equation with HCT and Morley
discretizations. We construct a preconditioner that is robust with respect to
contrast size and mesh size simultaneously based on the preconditioner proposed
by Aksoylu et al. (2008, Comput. Vis. Sci. 11, pp. 319--331). By extending the
devised singular perturbation analysis from linear finite element
discretization to the above discretizations, we prove and numerically
demonstrate the robustness of the preconditioner. Therefore, we accomplish a
desirable preconditioning design goal by using the same family of
preconditioners to solve elliptic family of PDEs with varying discretizations.
We also present a strategy on how to generalize the proposed preconditioner to
cover high-contrast elliptic PDEs of order $2k, k>2$. Moreover, we prove a
fundamental qualitative property of solution of the high-contrast biharmonic
plate equation. Namely, the solution over the highly-bending island becomes a
linear polynomial asymptotically. The effectiveness of our preconditioner is
largely due to the integration of this qualitative understanding of the
underlying PDE into its construction.


  The data article describes the Road Damage Dataset, RDD2022, which comprises
47,420 road images from six countries, Japan, India, the Czech Republic,
Norway, the United States, and China. The images have been annotated with more
than 55,000 instances of road damage. Four types of road damage, namely
longitudinal cracks, transverse cracks, alligator cracks, and potholes, are
captured in the dataset. The annotated dataset is envisioned for developing
deep learning-based methods to detect and classify road damage automatically.
The dataset has been released as a part of the Crowd sensing-based Road Damage
Detection Challenge (CRDDC2022). The challenge CRDDC2022 invites researchers
from across the globe to propose solutions for automatic road damage detection
in multiple countries. The municipalities and road agencies may utilize the
RDD2022 dataset, and the models trained using RDD2022 for low-cost automatic
monitoring of road conditions. Further, computer vision and machine learning
researchers may use the dataset to benchmark the performance of different
algorithms for other image-based applications of the same type (classification,
object detection, etc.).


  Conformal symmetry is broken in physical QCD; nevertheless, one can use
conformal symmetry as a template, systematically correcting for its nonzero
$\beta$ function as well as higher-twist effects. For example, commensurate
scale relations which relate QCD observables to each other, such as the
generalized Crewther relation, have no renormalization scale or scheme
ambiguity and retain a convergent perturbative structure which reflects the
underlying conformal symmetry of the classical theory. The ``conformal
correspondence principle" also dictates the form of the expansion basis for
hadronic distribution amplitudes. The AdS/CFT correspondence connecting
superstring theory to superconformal gauge theory has important implications
for hadron phenomenology in the conformal limit, including an all-orders
demonstration of counting rules for hard exclusive processes as well as
determining essential aspects of hadronic light-front wavefunctions.
Theoretical and phenomenological evidence is now accumulating that QCD
couplings based on physical observables such as tau decay become constant at
small virtuality; i.e., effective charges develop an infrared fixed point in
contradiction to the usual assumption of singular growth in the infrared. The
near-constant behavior of effective couplings also suggests that QCD can be
approximated as a conformal theory even at relatively small momentum transfer.
The importance of using an analytic effective charge such as the pinch scheme
for unifying the electroweak and strong couplings and forces is also
emphasized.


  We present an overview of the methodology used to build a new stereo vision
solution that is suitable for System on Chip. This new solution was developed
to bring computer vision capability to embedded devices that live in a power
constrained environment. The solution is constructured as a hybrid between
classical Stereo Vision techniques and deep learning approaches. The
stereoscopic module is composed of two separate modules: one that accelerates
the neural network we trained and one that accelerates the front-end part. The
system is completely passive and does not require any structured light to
obtain very compelling accuracy. With respect to the previous Stereo Vision
solutions offered by the industries we offer a major improvement is robustness
to noise. This is mainly possible due to the deep learning part of the chosen
architecture. We submitted our result to Middlebury dataset challenge. It
currently ranks as the best System on Chip solution. The system has been
developed for low latency applications which require better than real time
performance on high definition videos.


  Using a fixed Eulerian mesh, the phase-field method has been successfully
utilized for a broad range of moving boundary problems involving multiphase
fluids and single-phase fluid-structure interaction. Nevertheless, multiphase
fluids interacting with multiple solids are rarely explored, especially for
large-scale finite element simulations with contact dynamics. In this work, we
introduce a novel parallelized three-dimensional fully Eulerian variational
framework for simulating multiphase fluids interacting with multiple deformable
solids subjected to contact dynamics. In the framework, each solid or fluid
phase is identified by a standalone phase indicator. Moreover the phase
indicators are initialized by the grid cell method, which restricts the
calculation to several grid cells. A diffuse interface description is employed
for a smooth interpolation of the physical properties across the phases,
yielding unified mass and momentum conservation equations for the coupled
dynamical interactions. For each solid object, temporal integration is carried
out to track the strain evolution in an Eulerian frame of reference. The
coupled differential equations are solved in a partitioned iterative manner. We
first verify the framework against reference numerical data in a
two-dimensional case of a rotational disk in a lid-driven cavity flow. The case
is generalized to a rotational sphere in a lid-driven cavity flow to showcase
large deformation and rotational motion of solids and examine the convergence
in three dimensions. We then simulate the falling of an immersed solid sphere
on an elastic block under gravitational force to demonstrate the translational
motion and the solid-to-solid contact in a fluid environment. Finally, we
demonstrate the framework for a ship-ice interaction problem involving
multiphase fluids with an air-water interface and contact between a floating
ship and ice floes.


  To perform achieve fault-tolerant quantum computation, one can use flagged
syndrome extraction with fewer ancilla qubits. However, it suffers from long
circuit depth if one stabilizer is measured at a time. Previously, Reichardt
showed that it is possible to measure multiple stabilizers with at most one
shared flag qubit for certain small quantum codes. In this paper, we propose a
procedure for general Calderbank-Shor-Steane codes of distance three so that
multiple $Z$-stabilizers ($X$-stabilizers) can be fault-tolerantly measured in
parallel with one shared flag qubit. We simulate the memory and computation
pseudo-thresholds for various code schemes. In particular, our parallel scheme
based on Shor's nine-qubit code performs better than known seven- and
nine-qubit schemes in the literature.


  We have observed the B I line at 2089.6 AA in the metal poor star HD 140283
with HST/STIS. The observation was an attempt to confirm the B abundances
derived from the 2497 AA B I line in earlier works in general, and for for this
star in particular (Edvardsson et al. 1994 A&A 290, 176; Kiselman & Carlsson
1996, A&A 311, 680). The resulting spectrum gained from 8 orbits of
observations is hardly consistent with the boron abundance derived in the
earlier works. A pure 10^B line could produce the feature observed but no
reasonable process can produce such a ratio between 10^B and 11^B. More likely
the analysed feature is affected by a statistical fluctuation. A conservative
upper limit estimate of the NLTE corrected boron abundance gives a value
marginally consistent with that derived from the 2497 AA line. We are proposing
further observations to derive a more definite abundance from the line.


  We show for the first time in over 50 years how to correctly apply the
Kinoshita-Lee-Nauenberg theorem diagrammatically in a next-to-leading order
scattering process. We improve on previous works by including all initial and
final state soft radiative processes, including absorption and an infinite sum
of partially disconnected amplitudes. Crucially, we exploit the Monotone
Convergence Theorem to prove that our delicate rearrangement of this formally
divergent series is correct. This rearrangement yields a factorization of the
infinite contribution from the initial state soft photons that then cancels in
the physically observable cross section. We derive the first complete
next-to-leading order, high-energy Rutherford elastic scattering cross section
in the $\overline{\mathrm{MS}}$ renormalization scheme as an explicit example
of our procedure.


  BitTorrent is a popular communication protocol for peer-to-peer file sharing.
It uses a data-centric approach, wherein the data is decentralized and peers
request each other for pieces of the file(s). Aspects of this process is
similar to the Named Data Networking (NDN) architecture, but is realized
completely at the application level on top of TCP/IP networking. nTorrent is a
peer-to-peer file sharing application that is based on NDN. The goal of this
project is to port the application onto ndnSIM to allow for simulation and
testing.


  The monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides are an emergent semiconductor
platform exhibiting rich excitonic physics with coupled spin-valley degree of
freedom and optical addressability. Here, we report a new series of low energy
excitonic emission lines in the photoluminescence spectrum of ultraclean
monolayer WSe2. These excitonic satellites are composed of three major peaks
with energy separations matching known phonons, and appear only with electron
doping. They possess homogenous spatial and spectral distribution, strong power
saturation, and anomalously long population (> 6 ${\mu}$s) and polarization
lifetimes (> 100 ns). Resonant excitation of the free inter- and intra-valley
bright trions leads to opposite optical orientation of the satellites, while
excitation of the free dark trion resonance suppresses the satellites
photoluminescence. Defect-controlled crystal synthesis and scanning tunneling
microscopy measurements provide corroboration that these features are dark
excitons bound to dilute donors, along with associated phonon replicas. Our
work opens opportunities to engineer homogenous single emitters and explore
collective quantum optical phenomena using intrinsic donor-bound excitons in
ultraclean 2D semiconductors.