The existence of quantum many-body scars, which prevents thermalization from certain initial states after a long time, has been established across different quantum many-body systems. These include gauge theories corresponding to spin-<inline-formula><mml:math display="inline"><mml:mrow><mml:mn>1</mml:mn><mml:mo>/</mml:mo><mml:mn>2</mml:mn></mml:mrow></mml:math></inline-formula> quantum link models. Establishing quantum scars in gauge theories with high spin is not accessible with existing numerical methods, which rely on exact diagonalization. We systematically identify scars for pure gauge theories with arbitrarily large integer spin <inline-formula><mml:math display="inline"><mml:mi>S</mml:mi></mml:math></inline-formula> in <inline-formula><mml:math display="inline"><mml:mrow><mml:mn>2</mml:mn><mml:mo>+</mml:mo><mml:mn>1</mml:mn><mml:mi mathvariant="normal">D</mml:mi></mml:mrow></mml:math></inline-formula>, where the electric field is restricted to <inline-formula><mml:math display="inline"><mml:mn>2</mml:mn><mml:mi>S</mml:mi><mml:mo>+</mml:mo><mml:mn>1</mml:mn></mml:math></inline-formula> states per link. Through an explicit analytic construction, we show that the presence of scars is widespread in <inline-formula><mml:math display="inline"><mml:mrow><mml:mn>2</mml:mn><mml:mo>+</mml:mo><mml:mn>1</mml:mn><mml:mi mathvariant="normal">D</mml:mi></mml:mrow></mml:math></inline-formula> gauge theories for arbitrary integer spin. We confirm these findings numerically for small truncated spin and <inline-formula><mml:math display="inline"><mml:mi>S</mml:mi><mml:mo>=</mml:mo><mml:mn>1</mml:mn></mml:math></inline-formula> quantum link models. Our analytic construction establishes the presence of scars far beyond volumes and spins that can be probed with existing numerical methods and can guide quantum simulation experiments toward interesting nonequilibrium phenomena, inaccessible otherwise.

The Euclid Wide Survey (EWS) is predicted to find approximately 170 000 galaxy-galaxy strong lenses from its lifetime observation of 14 000 deg^2 of the sky. Detecting this many lenses by visual inspection with professional astronomers and citizen scientists alone is infeasible. Machine learning algorithms, particularly convolutional neural networks (CNNs), have been used as an automated method of detecting strong lenses, and have proven fruitful in finding galaxy-galaxy strong lens candidates. We identify the major challenge to be the automatic detection of galaxy-galaxy strong lenses while simultaneously maintaining a low false positive rate. One aim of this research is to have a quantified starting point on the achieved purity and completeness with our current version of CNN-based detection pipelines for the VIS images of EWS. We select all sources with VIS IE < 23 mag from the Euclid Early Release Observation imaging of the Perseus field. We apply a range of CNN architectures to detect strong lenses in these cutouts. All our networks perform extremely well on simulated data sets and their respective validation sets. However, when applied to real Euclid imaging, the highest lens purity is just 11%. Among all our networks, the false positives are typically identifiable by human volunteers as, for example, spiral galaxies, multiple sources, and artefacts, implying that improvements are still possible, perhaps via a second, more interpretable lens selection filtering stage. There is currently no alternative to human classification of CNN-selected lens candidates. Given the expected 10^5 lensing systems in Euclid, this implies 10^6 objects for human classification, which while very large is not in principle intractable and not without precedent.

We perform a thorough investigation of the universality of the long distance matrix elements (LDMEs) of nonrelativistic QCD factorization based on a next-to-leading order (NLO) fit of $J/\psi$ color octet (CO) LDMEs to high transverse momentum $p_T$ $J/\psi$ and $\eta_c$ production data at the LHC. We thereby apply a novel fit-and-predict procedure to systematically take into account scale variations, and predict various observables never studied in this context before. In particular, the LDMEs can well describe $J/\psi$ hadroproduction up to the highest measured values of $p_T$, as well as $\Upsilon(nS)$ production via potential NRQCD based relations. Furthermore, $J/\psi$ production in $\gamma \gamma$ and $\gamma p$ collisions is surprisingly reproduced down to $p_T=1$ GeV, as long as the region of large inelasticity $z$ is excluded, which may be of significance in future quarkonium studies, in particular at the EIC and the high-luminosity LHC. In addition, our summary reveals an interesting pattern as to which observables still evade a consistent description.

We combine the theory of Cartan-Tanaka prolongations with the Molien-Weyl integral formula and Hilbert-Poincaré series to compute the Spencer cohomology groups of the $D=11$ Poincaré superalgebra $\mathfrak p$, relevant for superspace formulations of $11$-dimensional supergravity in terms of nonholonomic superstructures. This includes novel fermionic Spencer groups, providing with new cohomology classes of $\mathbb Z$-grading $1$ and form number $2$. Using the Hilbert-Poincaré series and the Euler characteristic, we also explore Spencer cohomology contributions in higher form numbers. We then propose a new general definition of filtered deformations of graded Lie superalgebras along first-order fermionic directions and investigate such deformations of $\mathfrak p$ that are maximally supersymmetric. In particular, we establish a no-go type theorem for maximally supersymmetric filtered subdeformations of $\mathfrak p$ along timelike (i.e., generic) first-order fermionic directions.

The dispersion measure (DM) of fast radio bursts (FRBs) is sensitive to the electron distribution in the Universe, making it a promising probe of cosmology and astrophysical processes such as baryonic feedback. However, cosmological analyses of FRBs require knowledge of the contribution to the observed DM coming from the FRB host. The size and distribution of this contribution is still uncertain, thus significantly limiting current cosmological FRB analyses. In this study, we extend the baryonification (BCM) approach to derive a physically-motivated, analytic model for predicting the host contribution to FRB DMs. By focusing on the statistical properties of FRB host DMs, we find that our simple model is able to reproduce the probability distribution function (PDF) of host halo DMs measured from the CAMELS suite of hydrodynamic simulations, as well as their mass- and redshift dependence. Furthermore, we demonstrate that our model allows for self-consistent predictions of the host DM PDF and the matter power spectrum suppression due to baryonic effects, as observed in these simulations, making it promising for modelling host-DM-related systematics in FRB analyses. In general, we find that the shape of the host DM PDF is determined by the interplay between the FRB and gas distributions in halos. Our findings indicate that more compact FRB profiles require shallower gas profiles (and vice versa) in order to match the observed DM distributions in hydrodynamic simulations. Furthermore, the analytic model presented here shows that the shape of the host DM PDF is highly sensitive to the parameters of the BCM. This suggests that this observable could be used as an interesting test bed for baryonic processes, complementing other probes due to its sensitivity to feedback on galactic scales. We further discuss the main limitations of our analysis, and point out potential avenues for future work.

Radioactive nuclei with lifetimes on the order of millions of years can reveal the formation history of the Sun and active nucleosynthesis occurring at the time and place of its birth^1,2. Among such nuclei whose decay signatures are found in the oldest meteorites, ²⁰⁵Pb is a powerful example, as it is produced exclusively by slow neutron captures (the s process), with most being synthesized in asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars^{3, 4–5}. However, making accurate abundance predictions for ²⁰⁵Pb has so far been impossible because the weak decay rates of ²⁰⁵Pb and ²⁰⁵Tl are very uncertain at stellar temperatures^6,7. To constrain these decay rates, we measured for the first time the bound-state β^‑ decay of fully ionized ²⁰⁵Tl⁸¹⁺, an exotic decay mode that only occurs in highly charged ions. The measured half-life is 4.7 times longer than the previous theoretical estimate⁸ and our 10% experimental uncertainty has eliminated the main nuclear-physics limitation. With new, experimentally backed decay rates, we used AGB stellar models to calculate ²⁰⁵Pb yields. Propagating those yields with basic galactic chemical evolution (GCE) and comparing with the ²⁰⁵Pb/²⁰⁴Pb ratio from meteorites^{9, 10–11}, we determined the isolation time of solar material inside its parent molecular cloud. We find positive isolation times that are consistent with the other s-process short-lived radioactive nuclei found in the early Solar System. Our results reaffirm the site of the Sun's birth as a long-lived, giant molecular cloud and support the use of the ²⁰⁵Pb–²⁰⁵Tl decay system as a chronometer in the early Solar System.

The discovery of XYZ exotic states in the hadronic sector with two heavy quarks represents a significant challenge in particle theory. Understanding and predicting their nature remains an open problem. In this work, we demonstrate how the Born-Oppenheimer (BO) effective field theory (BOEFT), derived from quantum chromodynamics (QCD) on the basis of scale separation and symmetries, can address XYZ exotics of any composition. We derive the Schrödinger coupled equations that describe hybrids, tetraquarks, pentaquarks, doubly heavy baryons, and quarkonia at leading order, incorporating nonadiabatic terms, and present the predicted multiplets. We define the static potentials in terms of the QCD static energies for all relevant cases. We provide the precise form of the nonperturbative low-energy gauge-invariant correlators required for the BOEFT: static energies, generalized Wilson loops, gluelumps, and adjoint mesons. These are to be calculated on the lattice, and we calculate here their short-distance behavior. Furthermore, we outline how spin-dependent corrections and mixing terms can be incorporated using matching computations. Lastly, we discuss how static energies with the same BO quantum numbers mix at large distances leading to the phenomenon of avoided level crossing. This effect is crucial to understand the emergence of exotics with molecular characteristics, such as the <inline-formula><mml:math display="inline"><mml:mrow><mml:msub><mml:mrow><mml:mi>χ</mml:mi></mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mi>c</mml:mi><mml:mn>1</mml:mn></mml:mrow></mml:msub><mml:mo stretchy="false">(</mml:mo><mml:mn>3872</mml:mn><mml:mo stretchy="false">)</mml:mo></mml:mrow></mml:math></inline-formula>. With BOEFT both the tetraquark and the molecular picture appear as part of the same description.

The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) has detected substructures in numerous protoplanetary disks at radii from a few to over 100 au. These substructures are commonly thought to be associated with planet formation, either by serving as sites fostering planetesimal formation or by arising as a consequence of planet–disk interactions. Our current understanding of substructures, though, is primarily based on observations of nearby star-forming regions with mild UV environments, whereas stars are typically born in much harsher UV environments, which may inhibit planet formation in the outer disk through external photoevaporation. We present high-resolution (∼8 au) ALMA 1.3 mm continuum images of eight disks in σ Orionis, a cluster irradiated by an O9.5 star. Gaps and rings are resolved in the images of five disks. The most striking of these is SO 1274, which features five gaps that appear to be arranged nearly in a resonant chain. In addition, we infer the presence of gap or shoulder-like structures in the other three disks through visibility modeling. These observations indicate that substructures robustly form and survive at semimajor axes of several tens of au or less in disks exposed to intermediate levels of external UV radiation as well as in compact disks. However, our observations also suggest that disks in σ Orionis are mostly small, and thus millimeter continuum gaps beyond a disk radius of 50 au are rare in this region, possibly due to either external photoevaporation or age effects.

Very compact (<inline-formula><tex-math id="TM0001" notation="LaTeX">$R_\mathrm{e}\lesssim 1$</tex-math></inline-formula> kpc) massive quiescent galaxies (red nuggets) are more abundant in the high-redshift Universe (<inline-formula><tex-math id="TM0002" notation="LaTeX">$z\sim 2$</tex-math></inline-formula>-3) than today. Their size evolution can be explained by collisionless dynamical processes in galaxy mergers which, however, fail to reproduce the diffuse low-density central cores in the local massive early-type galaxies (ETGs). We use sequences of major and minor merger N-body simulations starting with compact spherical and disc-like progenitor models to investigate the impact of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) on the evolution of the galaxies. With the KETJU code we accurately follow the collisional interaction of the SMBHs with the nearby stellar population and the collisionless evolution of the galaxies and their dark matter haloes. We show that only models including SMBHs can simultaneously explain the formation of low-density cores up to sizes of <inline-formula><tex-math id="TM0003" notation="LaTeX">$R_\mathrm{b} \sim 1.3$</tex-math></inline-formula> kpc with mass deficits in the observed range and the rapid half-mass size evolution. In addition, the orbital structure in the core region (tangentially biased orbits) is consistent with observation-based results for local cored ETGs. The displacement of stars by the SMBHs boost the half-mass size evolution by up to a factor of 2 and even fast rotating progenitors (compact quiescent discs) lose their rotational support after 6-8 mergers. We conclude that the presence of SMBHs is required for merger-driven evolution models of high-redshift red nuggets into local ETGs.

Estimates of the frequency of planetary systems in the Milky Way are observationally limited by the low-mass planet regime. Nevertheless, substantial evidence for systems with undetectably low planetary masses now exists in the form of main-sequence stars that host debris discs, as well as metal-polluted white dwarfs. Further, low-mass sections of star formation regions impose upper bounds on protoplanetary disc masses, limiting the capacity for terrestrial or larger planets to form. Here, we use planetary population synthesis calculations to investigate the conditions that allow planetary systems to form only minor planets and smaller detritus. We simulate the accretional, collisional, and migratory growth of <inline-formula><tex-math id="TM0001" notation="LaTeX">$10^{17}$</tex-math></inline-formula> kg embryonic seeds and then quantify which configurations with entirely sub-Earth-mass bodies (<inline-formula><tex-math id="TM0002" notation="LaTeX">$\lesssim\!\! 10^{24}$</tex-math></inline-formula> kg) survive. We find that substantial regions of the initial parameter space allow for sub-terrestrial configurations to form, with the success rate most closely tied to the initial dust mass. Total dust mass budgets of up to <inline-formula><tex-math id="TM0003" notation="LaTeX">$10^2 \ \mathrm{ M}_{\oplus }$</tex-math></inline-formula> within 10 au can be insufficiently high to form terrestrial or giant planets, resulting in systems with only minor planets. Consequently, the prevalence of planetary systems throughout the Milky Way might be higher than what is typically assumed, and minor planet-only systems may help inform the currently uncertain correspondence between planet-hosting white dwarfs and metal-polluted white dwarfs.

A possible extension of the Standard Model able to explain the recent measurement of the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon consists in adding a gauged <inline-formula><mml:math display="inline"><mml:mi>U</mml:mi><mml:mo stretchy="false">(</mml:mo><mml:mn>1</mml:mn><mml:msub><mml:mo stretchy="false">)</mml:mo><mml:mrow><mml:msub><mml:mi>L</mml:mi><mml:mi>μ</mml:mi></mml:msub><mml:mo>-</mml:mo><mml:msub><mml:mi>L</mml:mi><mml:mi>τ</mml:mi></mml:msub></mml:mrow></mml:msub></mml:math></inline-formula> symmetry. If the dark matter particle is charged under this symmetry, then the kinetic mixing between the new gauge boson and the photon induces dark matter-electron interactions. We derive direct detection constraints on light dark matter charged under a <inline-formula><mml:math display="inline"><mml:mi>U</mml:mi><mml:mo stretchy="false">(</mml:mo><mml:mn>1</mml:mn><mml:msub><mml:mo stretchy="false">)</mml:mo><mml:mrow><mml:msub><mml:mi>L</mml:mi><mml:mi>μ</mml:mi></mml:msub><mml:mo>-</mml:mo><mml:msub><mml:mi>L</mml:mi><mml:mi>τ</mml:mi></mml:msub></mml:mrow></mml:msub></mml:math></inline-formula> symmetry with electron recoil experiments and explore prospects with XLZD and OSCURA to close in the parameter space able to explain simultaneously the recent measurement on the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon and the observed relic density of dark matter. We further discuss the spin-dependent scattering contribution arising in this model, which was ignored previously in the literature.

We study the decay of a heavy CP-even neutral Higgs into an on-shell Standard Model-like Higgs boson and two photons, $H\to h\gamma\gamma$, in the two-Higgs doublet model. We argue that the decay channel $H\to h\gamma\gamma$, followed by the decay of the Standard Model Higgs $h\rightarrow b\bar b$, could be observed at the 5$\sigma$ level at the High-Luminosity LHC for masses of the heavy Higgs up to 900 GeV for the type-II, 500 GeV for the Lepton Specific and the Flipped 2HDMs, and at 3 sigmas for the type-I, for masses up to 600 GeV. We also discuss the possible role of the decay $H\to h\gamma\gamma$ in discriminating among 2HDMs.

The Higgs boson decay into bottom quarks is the dominant decay channel contributing to its total decay width, which can be used to measure the bottom quark Yukawa coupling and mass. This decay width has been computed up to $\mathcal{O}(\alpha_s^4)$ for the process induced by the bottom quark Yukawa coupling, assuming massless final states, and the corresponding corrections beyond $\mathcal{O}(\alpha_s^2)$ are found to be less than $0.2\%$. We present an analytical result for the decay into massive bottom quarks at $\mathcal{O}(\alpha_s^3)$ that includes the contribution from the top quark Yukawa coupling induced process. We have made use of the optical theorem, canonical differential equations and the regular basis in the calculation and expressed the result in terms of multiple polylogarithms and elliptic functions. We propose a systematic and unified procedure to derive the $\epsilon$-factorized differential equation for the three-loop kite integral family, which includes the three-loop banana integrals as a sub-sector. We find that the $\mathcal{O}(\alpha_s^3)$ corrections increase the decay width, relative to the result up to $\mathcal{O}(\alpha_s^2)$, by $1\%$ due to the large logarithms $\log^i (m_H^2/m_b^2)$ with $ 1\le i \le 4 $ in the small bottom quark mass limit. The coefficient of the double logarithms is proportional to $C_A-C_F$, which is the typical color structure in the resummation of soft quark contributions at subleading power.

In this work we propose a simple algebraic recursion for the complete one-loop integrands of $N$-graviton correlators. This formula automatically yields the correct symmetry factors of individual diagrams, taking into account both the graviton and the ghost loop, and seamlessly controlling the related combinatorics.

We calculate the renormalization group equation (RGE) of the lepton-number-violating Weinberg operator with the particle content of the Standard Model (SM), thus completing the set of two-loop RGEs of the SM effective field theory up to dimension 5. We identify new diagrams that could increase the rank of the Wilson coefficient of the Weinberg operator, and we calculate the complete two-loop RGE for the neutrino mass eigenvalues and leptonic mixing matrix. We also briefly discuss some phenomenological implications of the RGEs.

Astrophysical turbulent flows display an intrinsically multi-scale nature, making their numerical simulation and the subsequent analyses of simulated data a complex problem. In particular, two fundamental steps in the study of turbulent velocity fields are the Helmholtz-Hodge decomposition (compressive+solenoidal; HHD) and the Reynolds decomposition (bulk+turbulent; RD). These problems are relatively simple to perform numerically for uniformly-sampled data, such as the one emerging from Eulerian, fix-grid simulations; but their computation is remarkably more complex in the case of non-uniformly sampled data, such as the one stemming from particle-based or meshless simulations. In this paper, we describe, implement and test vortex-p, a publicly available tool evolved from the vortex code, to perform both these decompositions upon the velocity fields of particle-based simulations, either from smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH), moving-mesh or meshless codes. The algorithm relies on the creation of an ad-hoc adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) set of grids, on which the input velocity field is represented. HHD is then addressed by means of elliptic solvers, while for the RD we adapt an iterative, multi-scale filter. We perform a series of idealised tests to assess the accuracy, convergence and scaling of the code. Finally, we present some applications of the code to various SPH and meshless finite-mass (MFM) simulations of galaxy clusters performed with OpenGadget3, with different resolutions and physics, to showcase the capabilities of the code.

We transform the one-loop four-point type I open superstring gluon amplitude to correlation functions on the celestial sphere including both the (non-)orientable planar and non-planar sector. This requires a Mellin transform with respect to the energies of the scattered strings, as well as to integrate over the open-string worldsheet moduli space. After accomplishing the former we obtain celestial string integrands with remaining worldsheet integrals Ψ(β), where β is related to the conformal scaling dimensions of the conformal primary operators under consideration. Employing an alternative approach of performing an α′-expansion of the open superstring amplitude first and Mellin transforming afterwards, we obtain a fully integrated expression, capturing the pole structure in the β-plane. The same analysis is performed at tree-level yielding similar results. We conclude by solving Ψ(β) for specific values of β, consistently reproducing the results of the α′-expansion ansatz. In all approaches we find that the dependence on α′ reduces to that of a simple overall factor of (α′)β−3 at loop and (α′)β at tree level, consistent with previous literature.

Division is crucial for replicating biological compartments and, by extension, a fundamental aspect of life. Current studies highlight the importance of simple vesicular structures in prebiotic conditions, yet the mechanisms behind their self-division remain poorly understood. Recent research suggests that environmental factors can induce phase transitions in fatty acid-based protocells, leading to vesicle fission. However, using chemical energy to induce vesicle division, similar to the extant of life, has been less explored. This study investigates a mechanism of vesicle division by membrane budding driven by chemical energy without complex molecular machinery. We demonstrate that, in response to chemical fuel, simple fatty acid-based vesicles can bud off smaller daughter vesicles. The division mechanism is finely controlled by adjusting fuel concentration, offering valuable insights into primitive cellular dynamics. We showcase the robustness of self-division across different fatty acids, retaining encapsulated materials during division and suggesting protocell-like behavior. These results underscore the potential for chemical energy to drive autonomous replication in protocell models, highlighting a plausible pathway for the emergence of life. Furthermore, this study contributes to the development of synthetic cells, enhancing our understanding of the minimal requirements for cellular life and providing a foundation for future research in synthetic biology and the origins of life.

In this contribution, we aim to summarise the efforts of the Italian SKA scientific community in conducting surveys of star-forming regions within our Galaxy, in the development of astrochemical research on protostellar envelopes and disks, and in studying the planet formation process itself. The objective is dual: Firstly, to investigate the accumulation and development of dust throughout the formation of planets, and secondly, to chemically examine protoplanetary disks and protostellar envelopes by studying heavy molecules, such as chains and rings containing over seven carbon atoms, which exhibit significantly reduced strength at millimeter wavelengths.

How does molecular complexity emerge and evolve during the process leading to the formation of a planetary system? Astrochemistry is experiencing a golden age, marked by significant advancements in the observation and understanding of the chemical processes occurring in the inner regions of protostellar systems. However, many questions remain open, such as the origin of the chemical diversity observed in the early evolutionary stages, which may influence the chemical composition of the forming planets. Additionally, astrochemistry provides us with powerful tools to investigate the accretion/ejection processes occurring in the inner regions of young embedded objects, such as jets, winds, accretion streamers, and shocks. In this chapter, we review the observational efforts carried out in recent years to chemically characterize the inner regions of Solar-System analogs. We summarize our current understanding of molecular complexity in planet-forming disks and shed light on the existing limitations and unanswered questions. Finally, we highlight the important role of future radio facilities, like SKAO and ngVLA, in exploring the chemical complexity of the regions where planetary systems are emerging.

We consider the production of a pair of heavy quarks $Q\bar{Q}$ in association with a generic colour singlet system $V$ at lepton colliders, and present the first analytic calculation of the two-loop soft function differential in the total momentum of the real radiation. The calculation is performed by reducing the relevant Feynman integrals into a canonical basis of master integrals by means of integration-by-parts identities. The resulting integrals are then evaluated by solving a system of differential equations in the kinematic invariants, whose boundary conditions are determined analytically with some care due to the presence of Coulomb singularities. The fully differential soft function is expressed in terms of Goncharov polylogarithms. This result is an essential ingredient for a range of N$^3$LL resummations for key collider observables at lepton colliders, such as the $Q\bar{Q}V$ production cross section at threshold and observables sensitive to the total transverse momentum of the radiation in heavy-quark final states. Moreover, it constitutes the complete final-final dipole contribution to the fully differential soft function needed for the description of $Q\bar{Q}V$ production at hadron colliders, which plays an important role in the LHC physics programme.

We present a novel realization of leptogenesis from the decays of sterile (right-handed) neutrinos (RHNs) produced from runaway bubble collisions at a first order phase transition. Such configurations can produce heavy RHNs with mass many orders of magnitude above the scale of symmetry breaking as well as the temperature of the plasma, thereby enabling high scale leptogenesis without the need for high reheat temperatures while also naturally suppressing washout effects. This mechanism is also efficient for RHN masses ≳ 10¹⁴ GeV, the natural scale for type-I seesaw with

We investigate the possibility of disentangling different new physics contributions to the rare meson decays and through kinematic distributions in the missing energy . We employ dimension-6 operators within the Low-Energy Effective Field Theory (LEFT), identifying the invisible part of the final state as either active or sterile neutrinos. Special emphasis is given to lepton-number violating (LNV) operators with scalar and tensor currents. We show analytically that contributions from vector, scalar, and tensor quark currents can be uniquely determined from experimental data of kinematic distributions. In addition, we present new correlations of branching ratios for K and B-decays involving scalar and tensor currents. As there could a priori also be new invisible particles in the final states, we include dark-sector operators giving rise to two dark scalars, fermions, or vectors in the final state. In this context, we present new calculations of the inclusive decay rate for dark operators. We show that careful measurements of kinematic distributions make it theoretically possible to disentangle the contribution from LEFT operators from most of the dark-sector operators, even when multiple operators are contributing. We revisit sum rules for vector currents in LEFT and show that the latter are also satisfied in some new dark-physics scenarios that could mimic LEFT. Finally, we point out that an excess in rare meson decays consistent with a LNV hypothesis would point towards highly flavor non-democratic physics in the UV, and could put high-scale leptogenesis under tension.

We compute analytically the three-loop correlation function of the local operator $\text{tr} \, \phi^3$ inserted into three on-shell states, in maximally supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory. The result is expressed in terms of Chen iterated integrals. We also present our result using generalised polylogarithms, and evaluate them numerically, finding agreement with a previous numerical result in the literature. We observe that the result depends on fewer kinematic singularities compared to individual Feynman integrals. Furthermore, upon choosing a suitable definition of the finite part, we find that the latter satisfies powerful symbol adjacency relations similar to those previously observed for the $\text{tr} \, \phi^2$ case.

The precision measurement of the tritium $\beta$-decay spectrum performed by the KATRIN experiment provides a unique way to search for general neutrino interactions (GNI). All theoretical allowed GNI terms involving neutrinos are incorporated into a low-energy effective field theory, and can be identified by specific signatures in the measured tritium $\beta$-spectrum. In this paper an effective description of the impact of GNI on the $\beta$-spectrum is formulated and the first constraints on the effective GNI parameters are derived based on the 4 Mio. electrons collected in the second measurement campaign of KATRIN in 2019. In addition, constraints on selected types of interactions are investigated, thereby exploring the potential of KATRIN to search for more specific new physics cases, including a right-handed W boson, a charged Higgs or leptoquarks.

In high energy physics, the ability to reconstruct particles based on their detector signatures is essential for downstream data analyses. A particle reconstruction algorithm based on learning hypergraphs (HGPflow) has previously been explored in the context of single jets. In this paper, we expand the scope to full proton-proton and electron-positron collision events and study reconstruction quality using metrics at the particle, jet, and event levels. Rather than operating on the entire event in a single pass, we train HGPflow on smaller partitions to avoid potentially learning long-range correlations related to the physics process. We demonstrate that this approach is feasible and that on most metrics, HGPflow outperforms both traditional particle flow algorithms and a machine learning-based benchmark model.

Because Venus is completely shrouded by clouds, they play an important role in the planet's atmospheric dynamics. Studying the various morphological features observed on satellite imagery of the Venusian clouds is crucial to understanding not only the dynamic atmospheric processes, but also interactions between the planet's surface structures and atmosphere. While attempts at manually categorizing and classifying these features have been made many times throughout Venus' observational history, they have been limited in scope and prone to subjective bias. We therefore present and investigate an automated, objective, and scalable approach for their classification using unsupervised machine learning that can leverage full datasets of past, ongoing, and future missions. To achieve this, we introduce a novel framework to generate nadir observation patches of Venus' clouds at fixed consistent scales from satellite imagery data of the Venus Express and Akatsuki missions. Such patches are then divided into classes using an unsupervised machine learning approach that consists of encoding the patch images into feature vectors via a convolutional neural network trained on the patch datasets and subsequently clustering the obtained embeddings using hierarchical agglomerative clustering. We find that our approach demonstrates considerable accuracy when tested against a curated benchmark dataset of Earth cloud categories, is able to identify meaningful classes for global-scale (3000km) cloud features on Venus and can detect small-scale (25km) wave patterns. However, at medium scales (<mml:math altimg="si1.svg" display="inline" id="d1e1226"><mml:mo>∼</mml:mo></mml:math>500km) challenges are encountered, as available resolution and distinctive features start to diminish and blended features complicate the separation of well defined clusters.

The formation details of globular clusters (GCs) are still poorly understood due to their old ages and the lack of detailed observations of their formation. A large variety of models for the formation and evolution of GCs have been created to improve our understanding of their origins, based on GC properties observed at z=0. We present the first side-by-side comparison of six current GC formation models with respect to their predictions for the GC ages and formation redshifts in Milky Way (MW)-like galaxies. We find that all the models are capable of forming most of the surviving GCs at more than 10 Gyr ago, in general agreement with the observation that most GCs are old. However, the measured MW GC ages are still systematically older than those predicted in the galaxies of four of the models. Investigating the variation of modelled GC age distributions for general MW-mass galaxies, we find that some of the models predict that a significant fraction of MW-mass galaxies would entirely lack a GC population older than 10 Gyr, whereas others predict that all MW-mass galaxies have a significant fraction of old GCs. This will have to be further tested in upcoming surveys, as systems without old GCs in that mass range are currently not known. Finally, we show that the models predict different formation redshifts for the oldest surviving GCs, highlighting that models currently disagree about whether the recently observed young star clusters at high redshifts could be the progenitors of today's GCs.

Emergent cooperative functionality in active matter systems plays a crucial role in various applications of active swarms, ranging from pollutant foraging and collective threat detection to tissue embolization. In nature, animals like bats and whales use acoustic signals to communicate and enhance their evolutionary competitiveness. Here, we show that information exchange by acoustic waves between active agents creates a large variety of multifunctional structures. In our realization of collective swarms, each unit is equipped with an acoustic emitter and a detector. The swarmers respond to the resulting acoustic field by adjusting their emission frequency and migrating toward the strongest signal. We find self-organized structures with different morphology, including snake-like self-propelled entities, localized aggregates, and spinning rings. These collective swarms exhibit emergent functionalities, such as phenotype robustness, collective decision-making, and environmental sensing. For instance, the collectives show self-regeneration after strong distortion, allowing them to penetrate through narrow constrictions. Additionally, they exhibit a population-scale perception of reflecting objects and a collective response to acoustic control inputs. Our results provide insights into fundamental organization mechanisms in information-exchanging swarms. They may inspire design principles for technical implementations in the form of acoustically or electromagnetically communicating microrobotic swarms capable of performing complex tasks and concerting collective responses to external cues.

Context. Cosmic filaments are observationally hard to detect. However, hydrodynamical cosmological simulations are ideal laboratories where the evolution of the cosmic web can be studied, and they allow for easier insight into the nature of the filaments. Aims. We investigate how the intrinsic properties of filaments are evolving in areas extracted from a larger cosmological simulation. We aim to identify significant trends in the properties of the warm-hot intergalactic medium (WHIM) and suggest possible explanations. Methods. To study the filaments and their contents, we selected a subset of regions from the Dianoga simulation. We analysed these regions that were simulated with different baryon physics, namely with and without AGN feedback. We constructed the cosmic web using the subspace constrained mean shift (SCMS) algorithm and the sequential chain algorithm for resolving filaments (SCARF). We examined the basic physical properties of filaments (length, shape, mass, radius) and analysed different gas phases (hot, WHIM, and colder gas components) within those structures. The evolution of the global filament properties and the properties of the gas phases were studied in the redshift range 0 < z < 1.48. Results. Within our simulations, the detected filaments have, on average, lengths below 9 Mpc. The filaments' shape correlates with their length, as the longer they are, the more likely they are curved. We find that the scaling relation between mass M and length L of the filaments is well described by the power law M ∞ L^1.7. The radial density profile widens with redshift, meaning that the radius of the filaments becomes larger over time. The fraction of gas mass in the WHIM phase does not depend on the model and rises towards lower redshifts. However, the included baryon physics has a strong impact on the metallicity of gas in filaments, indicating that the AGN feedback impacts the metal content already at redshifts of z ~ 2.

Given a supermanifold equipped with an odd distribution of maximal dimension and constant symbol, we construct the formal moduli problem of deformations of the distribution. This moduli problem is described by a local super dg Lie algebra that provides both a resolution of the structure-preserving vector fields on superspace and a derived enhancement of superconformal symmetry. Applying our construction in standard physical examples returns the conformal supergravity multiplet in every known example, in any dimension and with any amount of supersymmetry$\unicode{x2014}$whether or not a superconformal algebra exists. We discuss new examples related to twisted supergravity, higher Virasoro algebras, and exceptional super Lie algebras. The compatibility of our techniques with twisting also leads to a computation of every twist of the stress tensor multiplet of a superconformal theory, including universal operator product expansions. Our approach uses a derived model for the space of functions constant along the distribution, which is applicable even when the distribution is non-involutive; we construct other natural multiplets, such as Kähler differentials, that appear naturally through this lens on superspace geometry.

In a classical scattering problem, the classical eikonal is defined as the generator of the canonical transformation that maps in-states to out-states. It can be regarded as the classical limit of the log of the quantum S-matrix. In a classical analog of the Born approximation in quantum mechanics, the classical eikonal admits an expansion in oriented tree graphs, where oriented edges denote retarded/advanced worldline propagators. The Magnus expansion, which takes the log of a time-ordered exponential integral, offers an efficient method to compute the coefficients of the tree graphs to all orders. We exploit a Hopf algebra structure behind the Magnus expansion to develop a fast algorithm which can compute the tree coefficients up to the 12th order (over half a million trees) in less than an hour. In a relativistic setting, our methods can be applied to the post-Minkowskian (PM) expansion for gravitational binaries. We demonstrate the methods by computing the 3PM eikonal and find agreement with previous results based on amplitude methods.

Increasing evidence shows that warped disks are common, challenging the methods used to model their velocity fields. Molecular line emission of these disks is characterized by a twisted pattern, similar to the signal from radial flows, complicating the study of warped disk kinematics. Previous attempts to model these features have encountered difficulties in distinguishing between the underlying kinematics of different disks. This study aims to advance gas kinematics modeling capabilities by extending the Extracting Disk Dynamics ($\texttt{eddy}$) package to include warped geometries and radial flows. We assess the performance of $\texttt{eddy}$ in recovering input parameters for scenarios involving warps, radial flows, and combinations of the two. Additionally, we provide a basis to break the visual degeneracy between warped disks and radial flow, establishing a criterion to distinguish them. We extended the $\texttt{eddy}$ package to handle warped geometries by including a parametric prescription of a warped disk and a ray-casting algorithm to account for the surface self-obscuration arising from the 3D to 2D projection. The effectiveness of the tool was tested using the radiative transfer code $\texttt{RADMC3D}$, generating synthetic models for disks with radial flows, warped disks, and warped disks with radial flows. We demonstrate the efficacy of our tool in accurately recovering the geometrical parameters of systems, particularly in data with sufficient angular resolution. Importantly, we observe minimal impact from thermal noise levels typical in Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) observations. Furthermore, our findings reveal that fitting an incorrect model type produces characteristic residual signatures, which serve as kinematic criteria for disk classification.

Quantum higher-spin theory applied to Compton amplitudes has proven to be surprisingly useful for elucidating Kerr black hole dynamics. Here we apply the framework to compute scattering amplitudes and observables for a binary system of two rotating black holes, at second post-Minkowskian order, and to all orders in the spin-multipole expansion for certain quantities. Starting from the established three-point and conjectured Compton quantum amplitudes, the infinite-spin limit gives classical amplitudes that serves as building block that we feed into the unitarity method to construct the 2-to-2 one-loop amplitude. We give scalar box, vector box, and scalar triangle coefficients to all orders in spin, where the latter are expressed in terms of Bessel-like functions. Using the Kosower-Maybee-O'Connell formalism, the classical 2PM impulse is computed, and in parallel we work out the scattering angle and eikonal phase. We give novel all-orders-in-spin formulae for certain contributions, and the remaining ones are given up to ${\cal O}(S^{11})$. Since Kerr 2PM dynamics beyond ${\cal O}(S^{\ge 5})$ is as of yet not completely settled, this work serves as a useful reference for future studies.

We present the morphological parameters and global properties of dust-obscured star formation in typical star-forming galaxies at z = 4–6. Among 26 galaxies composed of 20 galaxies observed by the Cycle-8 ALMA Large Program, CRISTAL, and 6 galaxies from archival data, we individually detect rest-frame 158 μm dust continuum emission from 19 galaxies, 9 of which are reported for the first time. The derived far-infrared luminosities are in the range log₁₀L_IR [L_⊙] = 10.9 ‑ 12.4, an order of magnitude lower than previously detected massive dusty star-forming galaxies (DSFGs). We find the average relationship between the fraction of dust-obscured star formation (f_obs) and the stellar mass to be consistent with previous results at z = 4–6 in a mass range of log₁₀M_* [M_⊙]∼9.5 ‑ 11.0 and to show potential evolution from z = 6 ‑ 9. The individual f_obs exhibits significant diversity, and we find a potential correlation with the spatial offset between the dust and UV continuum, suggesting that inhomogeneous dust reddening may cause the source-to-source scatter in f_obs. The effective radii of the dust emission are on average ∼1.5 kpc and are about two times more extended than those seen in rest-frame UV. The infrared surface densities of these galaxies (Σ_IR ∼ 2.0 × 10¹⁰ L_⊙ kpc^‑2) are one order of magnitude lower than those of DSFGs that host compact central starbursts. On the basis of the comparable contribution of dust-obscured and dust-unobscured star formation along with their similar spatial extent, we suggest that typical star-forming galaxies at z = 4 ‑ 6 form stars throughout the entirety of their disks.

Robust modeling of non-linear scales is critical for accurate cosmological inference in Stage IV surveys. For weak lensing analyses in particular, a key challenge arises from the incomplete understanding of how non-gravitational processes, such as supernovae and active galactic nuclei - collectively known as baryonic feedback - affect the matter distribution. Several existing methods for modeling baryonic feedback treat it independently from the underlying cosmology, an assumption which has been found to be inaccurate by hydrodynamical simulations. In this work, we examine the impact of this coupling between baryonic feedback and cosmology on parameter inference at LSST Y1 precision. We build mock 3$\times$2pt data vectors using the Magneticum suite of hydrodynamical simulations, which span a wide range of cosmologies while keeping subgrid parameters fixed. We perform simulated likelihood analyses for two baryon mitigation techniques: (i) the Principal Component Analysis (PCA) method which identifies eigenmodes for capturing the effect baryonic feedback on the data vector and (ii) HMCode2020 (Mead et al. 2021) which analytically models the modification in the matter distribution using a halo model approach. Our results show that the PCA method is robust to the coupling between cosmology and baryonic feedback, whereas, when using HMCode2020 there can be up to $0.5\sigma$ bias in $\Omega_\text{m}$-$S_8$. For HMCode2020, the bias also correlates with the input cosmology while for PCA we find no such correlation.

We consider gauged linear sigma models with gauge group U(1) that exhibit a geometric as well as a Landau–Ginzburg phase. We construct defects that implement the transport of D-branes from the Landau–Ginzburg phase to the geometric phase. Through their fusion with boundary conditions these defects in particular provide functors between the respective D-brane categories. The latter map (equivariant) matrix factorizations to coherent sheaves and can be formulated explicitly in terms of complexes of matrix factorizations.

Most star formation in the local Universe occurs in spiral galaxies, but their origin remains an unanswered question. Various theories have been proposed to explain the development of spiral arms, each predicting different spatial distributions of the interstellar medium. This study maps the star formation rate (SFR) and gas-phase metallicity of nine spiral galaxies with the TYPHOON survey to test two dominating theories: density wave theory and dynamic spiral theory. We discuss the environmental effects on our galaxies, considering reported environments and merging events. Taking advantage of the large field of view covering the entire optical disc, we quantify the fluctuation of SFR and metallicity relative to the azimuthal distance from the spiral arms. We find higher SFR and metallicity in the trailing edge of NGC 1365 (by 0.117 and 0.068 dex, respectively) and NGC 1566 (by 0.119 and 0.037 dex, respectively), which is in line with density wave theory. NGC 2442 shows a different result with higher metallicity (0.093 dex) in the leading edge, possibly attributed to an ongoing merging. The other six spiral galaxies show no statistically significant offset in SFR or metallicity, consistent with dynamic spiral theory. We also compare the behaviour of metallicity inside and outside the corotation radius (CR) of NGC 1365 and NGC 1566. We find comparable metallicity fluctuations near and beyond the CR of NGC 1365, indicating gravitational perturbation. NGC 1566 shows the greatest fluctuation near the CR, in line with the analytic spiral arms. Our work highlights that a combination of mechanisms explains the origin of spiral features in the local Universe.

Context. Photoevaporation is an important process for protoplanetary disc dispersal, but there has so far been a lack of consensus from simulations over the mass-loss rates and the most important part of the high-energy spectrum involved in driving the wind. Aims. We aim to isolate the origins of these discrepancies through carefully benchmarked hydrodynamic simulations of X-ray photoevaporation with time-dependent thermochemistry calculated on the fly. Methods. We conducted hydrodynamic simulations with PLUTO where the thermochemistry is calculated using PRIZMO. We explored the contribution of certain key microphysical processes and the impact of employing different spectra previously used in literature studies. Results. We find that additional cooling results from the excitation of O by neutral H, which leads to dramatically reduced mass-loss across the disc compared to previous X-ray photoevaporation models, with an integrated rate of ~10^‑9 M_⊙ yr^‑1. Such rates would allow for longer-lived discs than previously expected from population synthesis. An alternative spectrum with less soft X-ray produces mass-loss rates around a factor of two to three times lower. The chemistry is significantly out of equilibrium, with the survival of H₂ into the wind being aided by advection. This leads to H₂ becoming the dominant coolant at 10s au, thus stabilising a larger radial temperature gradient across the wind as well as providing a possible wind tracer.

The <inline-formula><mml:math display="inline"><mml:mi>S</mml:mi></mml:math></inline-formula>-matrix formulation of gravity suggests that the <inline-formula><mml:math display="inline"><mml:mi>θ</mml:mi></mml:math></inline-formula>-vacuum structure must not be sustained by the theory. We point out that, when applied to the vacuum of general relativity, this criterion hints to supersymmetry. The topological susceptibility of gravitational vacuum induced by Eguchi-Hanson instantons can be eliminated neither by spin-<inline-formula><mml:math display="inline"><mml:mn>1</mml:mn><mml:mo>/</mml:mo><mml:mn>2</mml:mn></mml:math></inline-formula> fermions nor by an axion coupled via them since such fermions do not provide instanton zero modes. Instead, the job is done by a spin-<inline-formula><mml:math display="inline"><mml:mn>3</mml:mn><mml:mo>/</mml:mo><mml:mn>2</mml:mn></mml:math></inline-formula> fermion, hence realizing a local supersymmetry. This scenario also necessitates the spontaneous breaking of supersymmetry and predicts the existence of axion of <inline-formula><mml:math display="inline"><mml:mi>R</mml:mi></mml:math></inline-formula> symmetry which gets mass exclusively from the gravitational instantons. The <inline-formula><mml:math display="inline"><mml:mi>R</mml:mi></mml:math></inline-formula> axion can be a viable dark matter candidate. Matching between the index and the anomaly imposes a constraint that spin-<inline-formula><mml:math display="inline"><mml:mn>1</mml:mn><mml:mo>/</mml:mo><mml:mn>2</mml:mn></mml:math></inline-formula> fermions should not contribute to the chiral gravitational anomaly.

Metals in the diffuse, ionized gas at the boundary between the Milky Way's interstellar medium (ISM) and circumgalactic medium (CGM), known as the disk-halo interface (DHI), are valuable tracers of the feedback processes that drive the Galactic fountain. However, metallicity measurements in this region are challenging due to obscuration by the Milky Way ISM and uncertain ionization corrections that affect the total hydrogen column density. In this work, we constrain the ionization corrections to neutral hydrogen column densities using precisely measured electron column densities from the dispersion measure of pulsars that lie in the same globular clusters as UV-bright targets with high-resolution absorption spectroscopy. We address the blending of absorption lines with the ISM by jointly fitting Voigt profiles to all absorption components. We present our metallicity estimates for the DHI of the Milky Way based on detailed photoionization modeling to the absorption from ionized metal lines and ionization-corrected total hydrogen columns. Generally, the gas clouds show a large scatter in metallicity, ranging between $0.04-3.2\ Z_{\odot}$, implying that the DHI consists of a mixture of gaseous structures having multiple origins. We estimate the inflow and outflow timescales of the DHI ionized clouds to be $6 - 35$ Myr. We report the detection of an infalling cloud with super-solar metallicity that suggests a Galactic fountain mechanism, whereas at least one low-metallicity outflowing cloud ($Z < 0.1\ Z_{\odot}$) poses a challenge for Galactic fountain and feedback models.

The general epidemic process (GEP), also known as susceptible-infected-recovered model, provides a minimal model of how an epidemic spreads within a population of susceptible individuals who acquire permanent immunization upon recovery. This model exhibits a second-order absorbing state phase transition, commonly studied assuming immobile healthy individuals. We investigate the impact of mobility on the scaling properties of disease spreading near the extinction threshold by introducing two generalizations of GEP, where the mobility of susceptible and recovered individuals is examined independently. In both cases, including mobility violates GEP's rapidity reversal symmetry and alters the number of absorbing states. The critical dynamics of the models are analyzed through a perturbative renormalization group (RG) approach and large-scale stochastic simulations using a Gillespie algorithm. The RG analysis predicts both models to belong to the same novel universality class describing the critical dynamics of epidemic spreading when the infected individuals interact with a diffusive species and gain immunization upon recovery. At the associated RG fixed point, the immobile species decouples from the dynamics of the infected species, dominated by the coupling with the diffusive species. Numerical simulations in two dimensions affirm our RG results by identifying the same set of critical exponents for both models. Violation of the rapidity reversal symmetry is confirmed by breaking the associated hyperscaling relation. Our study underscores the significance of mobility in shaping population spreading dynamics near the extinction threshold.

The stochastic gravitational wave background (SGWB) consists of an incoherent collection of waves from both astrophysical and cosmological sources. To distinguish the SGWB from noise, it is essential to verify its quadrupolar nature, exemplified by the cross-correlations among pairs of pulsars within a pulsar timing array, commonly referred to as the Hellings-Downs curve. We extend the concept of quadrupolar correlations to pairs of general gravitational wave detectors, classified by their antenna responses. This study involves space-based missions such as the laser interferometers LISA, Taiji, and TianQin, along with atom interferometers like AEDGE/MAGIS. We calculate modulations in their correlations due to orbital motions and relative orientations, which are characteristic markers for identifying the quadrupolar nature of the SGWB. Our findings identify optimal configurations for these missions, offer forecasts for the time needed to identify the quadrupolar nature of the SGWB, and are applicable to both space-space and space-terrestrial correlations.

Context. Photometric redshifts for galaxies hosting an accreting supermassive black hole in their center, known as active galactic nuclei (AGNs), are notoriously challenging. At present, they are most optimally computed via spectral energy distribution (SED) fittings, assuming that deep photometry for many wavelengths is available. However, for AGNs detected from all-sky surveys, the photometry is limited and provided by a range of instruments and studies. This makes the task of homogenizing the data challenging, presenting a dramatic drawback for the millions of AGNs that wide surveys such as SRG/eROSITA are poised to detect. Aims. This work aims to compute reliable photometric redshifts for X-ray-detected AGNs using only one dataset that covers a large area: the tenth data release of the Imaging Legacy Survey (LS10) for DESI. LS10 provides deep grizW1-W4 forced photometry within various apertures over the footprint of the eROSITA-DE survey, which avoids issues related to the cross-calibration of surveys. Methods. We present the results from CIRCLEZ, a machine-learning algorithm based on a fully connected neural network. CIRCLEZ is built on a training sample of 14 000 X-ray-detected AGNs and utilizes multi-aperture photometry, mapping the light distribution of the sources. Results. The accuracy (σ_NMAD) and the fraction of outliers (η) reached in a test sample of 2913 AGNs are equal to 0.067 and 11.6%, respectively. The results are comparable to (or even better than) what was previously obtained for the same field, but with much less effort in this instance. We further tested the stability of the results by computing the photometric redshifts for the sources detected in CSC2 and Chandra-COSMOS Legacy, reaching a comparable accuracy as in eFEDS when limiting the magnitude of the counterparts to the depth of LS10. Conclusions. The method can be applied to fainter samples of AGNs using deeper optical data from future surveys (for example, LSST, Euclid), granting LS10-like information on the light distribution beyond the morphological type. Along with this paper, we have released an updated version of the photometric redshifts (including errors and probability distribution functions) for eROSITA/eFEDS.

Molecular deuteration is a powerful diagnostic tool for probing the physical conditions and chemical processes in astrophysical environments. In this work, we focus on formaldehyde deuteration in the protobinary system NGC 1333 IRAS 4A, located in the Perseus molecular cloud. Using high-resolution (<inline-formula><tex-math id="TM0002" notation="LaTeX">$\sim$</tex-math></inline-formula>100 au) ALMA (The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array) observations, we investigate the [D<inline-formula><tex-math id="TM0003" notation="LaTeX">$_2$</tex-math></inline-formula>CO]/[HDCO] ratio along the cavity walls of the outflows emanating from IRAS 4A1. Our analysis reveals a consistent decrease in the deuteration ratio (from <inline-formula><tex-math id="TM0004" notation="LaTeX">$\sim$</tex-math></inline-formula>60-20 per cent to <inline-formula><tex-math id="TM0005" notation="LaTeX">$\sim$</tex-math></inline-formula>10 per cent) with increasing distance from the protostar (from <inline-formula><tex-math id="TM0006" notation="LaTeX">$\sim$</tex-math></inline-formula>2000 to <inline-formula><tex-math id="TM0007" notation="LaTeX">$\sim$</tex-math></inline-formula>4000 au). Given the large measured [D<inline-formula><tex-math id="TM0008" notation="LaTeX">$_2$</tex-math></inline-formula>CO]/[HDCO], both HDCO and D<inline-formula><tex-math id="TM0009" notation="LaTeX">$_2$</tex-math></inline-formula>CO are likely injected by the shocks along the cavity walls into the gas-phase from the dust mantles, formed in the previous prestellar phase. We propose that the observed [D<inline-formula><tex-math id="TM0010" notation="LaTeX">$_2$</tex-math></inline-formula>CO]/[HDCO] decrease is due to the density profile of the prestellar core from which NGC 1333 IRAS 4A was born. When considering the chemical processes at the base of formaldehyde deuteration, the IRAS 4A's prestellar precursor had a predominantly flat density profile within 3000 au and a decrease of density beyond this radius.

Dark matter (DM) self-interactions alter the matter distribution on galactic scales and alleviate tensions with observations. A feature of the self-interaction cross section is its angular dependence, influencing offsets between galaxies and DM halos in merging galaxy clusters. While algorithms for modelling mostly forward-dominated or mostly large-angle scatterings exist, incorporating realistic angular dependencies, such as light mediator models, within $N$-body simulations remains challenging. We develop, validate and apply a novel and efficient method, combining existing approaches to describe small- and large-angle scattering regimes within a hybrid scheme. Below a critical angle the effective description via a drag force combined with transverse momentum diffusion is used, while above the angle-dependence is sampled explicitly. First, we verify the scheme using a test set-up with known analytical solutions, and check that our results are insensitive to the choice of the critical angle within an expected range. Next, we demonstrate that our scheme speeds up the computations by multiple orders of magnitude for realistic light mediator models. Finally, we apply the method to galaxy cluster mergers and discuss the sensitivity of the offset between galaxies and DM to the angle-dependence of the cross section. Our scheme ensures accurate offsets for mediator mass $m_\phi$ and DM mass $m_\chi$ within the range $0.1v/c\lesssim m_\phi/m_\chi\lesssim v/c$, while for larger (smaller) mass ratios the offsets obtained for isotropic (forward-dominated) self-scattering are approached. Here $v$ is the typical velocity scale. Equivalently, the upper condition can be expressed as $1.1\lesssim \sigma_{\rm tot}/\sigma_{\mathrm{\widetilde{T}}}\lesssim 10$ for the ratio of total and momentum transfer cross sections, with the ratio being $1$ ($\infty$) in the isotropic (forward-dominated) limits.

Context. Despite being one of the most fundamental properties of galaxies that dictate the form of the potential, the 3D shapes are intrinsically difficult to determine from observations. The improving quality of triaxial modeling methods in recent years has made it possible to measure these shapes more accurately. Aims. This study provides a comprehensive understanding of the stellar and dark matter (DM) shapes of galaxies and the connection between them. As these shapes are the result of the formation history of a galaxy, we investigate which galaxy properties they are correlated with, which will be especially useful for interpreting the results from dynamical modeling. Methods. Using the hydrodynamical cosmological simulation Magneticum Pathfinder Box4 (uhr), we computed the stellar and DM intrinsic shapes of 690 simulated galaxies with stellar masses above 2 × 10¹⁰ M_⊙ at three different radii with an iterative unweighted method. We also determined their morphologies, their projected morphological and kinematic parameters, and their fractions of in situ formed stars. Results. The DM follows the stellar component in shape and orientation at three half-mass radii, indicating that DM is heavily influenced by the baryonic potential in the inner parts of the halo. The outer DM halo is independent of the inner properties such as the DM shape or galaxy morphology, however, and is more closely related to the large-scale anisotropy of the gas inflow. Overall, DM halo shapes are prolate, consistent with previous literature. The stellar shapes of galaxies are correlated with their morphology, with early-type galaxies featuring more spherical and prolate shapes than late-type galaxies out to 3 R_1/2. Galaxies with more rotational support are flatter, and the stellar shapes are connected to the mass distribution, though not to the mass itself. In particular, more extended early-type galaxies have larger triaxialities at a given mass. Finally, the shapes can be used to better constrain the in situ fraction of stars when combined with the stellar mass. Conclusions. The relations between shape, mass distribution, and in situ formed star fraction of galaxies show that the shapes depend on the details of the accretion history through which the galaxies are formed. The similarities between DM and stellar shapes in the inner regions of galaxy halos signal the importance of baryonic matter for the behavior of DM in galaxies and will be of use for improving the underlying assumptions of dynamical models for galaxies in the future. However, at large radii the shapes of the DM are completely decoupled from the central galaxy, and their shapes and spin are coupled more to the large scale inflow than to the galaxy in the center.

The holographic principle suggests that regions of space contain fewer physical degrees of freedom than would be implied by conventional quantum field theory. Meanwhile, in Hilbert spaces of large dimension 2ⁿ, it is possible to define [ image ] Pauli algebras that are nearly anti-commuting (but not quite) and which can be thought of as 'overlapping degrees of freedom'. We propose to model the phenomenology of holographic theories by allowing field-theory modes to be overlapping, and derive potential observational consequences. In particular, we build a Fermionic quantum field whose effective degrees of freedom approximately obey area scaling and satisfy a cosmic Bekenstein bound, and compare predictions of that model to cosmic neutrino observations. Our implementation of holography implies a finite lifetime of plane waves, which depends on the overall UV cutoff of the theory. To allow for neutrino flux from blazar TXS 0506+056 to be observable, our model needs to have a cutoff [ image ]. This is broadly consistent with current bounds on the energy spectrum of cosmic neutrinos from IceCube, but high energy neutrinos are a potential challenge for our model of holography. We motivate our construction via quantum mereology, i.e. using the idea that EFT degrees of freedom should emerge from an abstract theory of quantum gravity by finding quasi-classical Hilbert space decompositions. We also discuss how to extend the framework to Bosons. Finally, using results from random matrix theory we derive an analytical understanding of the energy spectrum of our theory. The numerical tools used in this work are publicly available within the GPUniverse package, github.com/OliverFHD/GPUniverse.

Using stacked emission-line flux measurements of cool circumgalactic gas (CGM) in lower-mass galaxies (10^9.0 ≤ M _*/M _⊙ ≤ 10^10.2), we measure the dependence of the emission characteristics on orientation relative to the disk plane as a function of radius and compare to what we found previously for massive (M _* > 10^10.4 M _⊙) early-type galaxies. Although the line ratios (the lower [N II]/Hα and [O III]/Hβ) suggest an overall softer ionizing source than in the more massive galaxies, consistent with previous findings, we find the same ionization hardening signature (a higher [N II]/Hα ratio in the inner polar region) along the polar direction at small radii that we found for the more massive galaxies. The line ratio in the inner polar bin is distinct from that measured for the inner planar bin with 99.99%, confidence and with >99.9% confidence we conclude that it lies outside the star formation regime. The effective hardening of the ionization of the CGM along the polar axis, at small radii, could indicate either relic effects of active galactic nucleus activity or shock ionization. In either case, this signature appears to be ubiquitous across the stellar mass range we are able to explore with our spectral stacking technique and currently available archival data.

Context. Merging compact objects such as binary black holes provide a promising probe for the physics of dark matter (DM). The gravitational waves emitted during inspiral potentially allow one to detect DM spikes around black holes. This is because the dynamical friction force experienced by the inspiralling black hole alters the orbital period and thus the gravitational wave signal. Aims. The dynamical friction arising from DM can potentially differ from the collisionless case when DM is subject to self-interactions. This paper aims to understand how self-interactions impact dynamical friction. Methods. To study the dynamical friction force, we use idealised N-body simulations, where we include self-interacting dark matter. Results. We find that the dynamical friction force for inspiralling black holes would be typically enhanced by DM self-interactions compared to a collisionless medium (ignoring differences in the DM density). At lower velocities below the sound speed, we find that the dynamical friction force can be reduced by the presence of self-interactions. Conclusions. DM self-interactions have a significant effect on the dynamical friction for black hole mergers. Assuming the Chandrasekhar formula may underpredict the deceleration due to dynamical friction.

One necessary step for probing the nature of self-interacting dark matter (SIDM) particles with astrophysical observations is to pin down any possible velocity dependence in the SIDM cross-section. Major challenges for achieving this goal include eliminating, or mitigating, the impact of the baryonic components and tidal effects within the dark matter halos of interest - the effects of these processes can be highly degenerate with those of dark matter self-interactions at small scales. In this work, we select 9 isolated galaxies and brightest cluster galaxies (BCGs) with baryonic components small enough such that the baryonic gravitational potentials do not significantly influence the halo gravothermal evolution processes. We then constrain the parameters of Rutherford and Møller scattering cross-section models with the measured rotation curves and stellar kinematics through the gravothermal fluid formalism and isothermal method. Cross-sections constrained by the two methods are consistent at <inline-formula><tex-math id="TM0001" notation="LaTeX">$1\sigma$</tex-math></inline-formula> confidence level, but the isothermal method prefers cross-sections greater than the gravothermal approach constraints by a factor of <inline-formula><tex-math id="TM0002" notation="LaTeX">$\sim 3$</tex-math></inline-formula>.

Context. Classical Cepheids (DCEPs) are crucial for calibrating the extragalactic distance ladder, ultimately enabling the determination of the Hubble constant through the period-luminosity (PL) and period-Wesenheit (PW) relations that they exhibit. Hence, it is vital to understand how the PL and PW relations depend on metallicity. This is the purpose of the C-MetaLL survey, within which this work is situated. The DCEPs are also very important tracers of the young populations placed along the Galactic disc. Aims. We aim to enlarge the sample of DCEPs with accurate abundances from high-resolution spectroscopy. In particular, our goal is to extend the range of measured metallicities towards the metal-poor regime to better cover the parameter space. To this end, we observed objects in a wide range of Galactocentric radii, allowing us to study in detail the abundance gradients present in the Galactic disc. Methods. We present the results of the analysis of 331 spectra obtained for 180 individual DCEPs with a variety of high-resolution spectrographs. For each target, we derived accurate atmospheric parameters, radial velocities, and abundances for up to 29 different species. The iron abundances range between 0.5 and ‑1 dex with a rather homogeneous distribution in metallicity. Results. The sample presented in this paper was complemented with that already published in the context of the C-MetaLL survey, resulting in a total of 292 pulsators whose spectra have been analysed in a homogeneous way. These data were used to study the abundance gradients of the Galactic disc in a range of Galactocentric radii (R_GC) spanning the range of 5–20 kpc. Conclusions. For most of the elements, we have found a clear negative gradient, with a slope of ‑0.064 ± 0.003 dex kpc^‑1 for [Fe/H] case. Through a qualitative fit with the Galactic spiral arms, we show how our farthest targets (R_GC > 10 kpc) trace both the Outer and Outer Scutum-Centaurus arms. The homogeneity of the sample will be of pivotal importance for the study of the metallicity dependence of the DCEP PL relations.

The main goal of the CRESST-III experiment is the direct detection of dark matter particles via their scattering off target nuclei in cryogenic detectors. In this work we present the results of a silicon-on-sapphire (SOS) detector with a mass of 0.6 g and an energy threshold of <inline-formula><mml:math display="inline"><mml:mrow><mml:mo stretchy="false">(</mml:mo><mml:mn>6.7</mml:mn><mml:mo>±</mml:mo><mml:mn>0.2</mml:mn><mml:mo stretchy="false">)</mml:mo><mml:mtext> </mml:mtext><mml:mtext> </mml:mtext><mml:mi>eV</mml:mi></mml:mrow></mml:math></inline-formula> with a baseline energy resolution of <inline-formula><mml:math display="inline"><mml:mrow><mml:mo stretchy="false">(</mml:mo><mml:mn>1.0</mml:mn><mml:mo>±</mml:mo><mml:mn>0.2</mml:mn><mml:mo stretchy="false">)</mml:mo><mml:mtext> </mml:mtext><mml:mtext> </mml:mtext><mml:mi>eV</mml:mi></mml:mrow></mml:math></inline-formula>. This allowed for a calibration via the detection of single luminescence photons in the eV-range, which could be observed in CRESST for the first time. We present new exclusion limits on the spin-independent and spin-dependent dark matter-nucleon cross section that extend to dark matter particle masses of less than <inline-formula><mml:math display="inline"><mml:mrow><mml:mn>100</mml:mn><mml:mtext> </mml:mtext><mml:mtext> </mml:mtext><mml:mi>MeV</mml:mi><mml:mo>/</mml:mo><mml:msup><mml:mrow><mml:mi mathvariant="normal">c</mml:mi></mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mn>2</mml:mn></mml:mrow></mml:msup></mml:mrow></mml:math></inline-formula>.

We present an analysis of the cold gas phase in a low-metallicity starburst generated in a high-resolution hydrodynamical simulation of a gas-rich dwarf galaxy merger as part of the GRIFFIN project. The simulations resolve (4 M<inline-formula><tex-math id="TM0001" notation="LaTeX">$_\odot$</tex-math></inline-formula> gas phase mass resolution, <inline-formula><tex-math id="TM0002" notation="LaTeX">$\sim$</tex-math></inline-formula>0.1 pc spatial resolution) the multiphase interstellar medium with a non-equilibrium chemical heating/cooling network at temperatures below 10<inline-formula><tex-math id="TM0003" notation="LaTeX">$^4$</tex-math></inline-formula> K. Massive stars are sampled individually and interact with the interstellar medium (ISM) through the formation of H II regions and supernova explosions. In the extended starburst phase, the ISM is dominated by cold (<inline-formula><tex-math id="TM0004" notation="LaTeX">$T_\mathrm{gas} < 300$</tex-math></inline-formula> K) filamentary clouds with self-similar internal structures. The clouds have masses of <inline-formula><tex-math id="TM0005" notation="LaTeX">$10^{2.6}$</tex-math></inline-formula>-<inline-formula><tex-math id="TM0006" notation="LaTeX">$10^{5.6}$</tex-math></inline-formula> M<inline-formula><tex-math id="TM0007" notation="LaTeX">$_\odot$</tex-math></inline-formula> with a power-law mass function, <inline-formula><tex-math id="TM0008" notation="LaTeX">$\mathrm{ d}N/\mathrm{ d}M \propto M^\alpha$</tex-math></inline-formula> with <inline-formula><tex-math id="TM0009" notation="LaTeX">$\alpha = -1.78 (\,\pm \,0.08)$</tex-math></inline-formula>. They also follow the Larson relations, in good agreement with observations. We trace the lifecycle of the cold clouds and find that they follow an exponential lifetime distribution and an e-folding time of <inline-formula><tex-math id="TM0010" notation="LaTeX">$\sim$</tex-math></inline-formula>3.5 Myr. Clouds with peak masses below <inline-formula><tex-math id="TM0011" notation="LaTeX">$10^4$</tex-math></inline-formula> M<inline-formula><tex-math id="TM0012" notation="LaTeX">$_\odot$</tex-math></inline-formula> follow a power-law relation with their average lifetime <inline-formula><tex-math id="TM0013" notation="LaTeX">$\tau _\mathrm{life} \propto M^{0.3}_\mathrm{max}$</tex-math></inline-formula> which flattens out for higher cloud masses at <inline-formula><tex-math id="TM0014" notation="LaTeX">$< 10$</tex-math></inline-formula> Myr. A similar relation exists between cloud size at peak mass and lifetime. This simulation of the evolution of a realistic galactic cold cloud population supports the rapid formation and disruption of star-forming clouds by stellar radiation and supernovae on a time-scale less than 10 Myr.

We describe a general method for constructing a minimal basis of transcendental functions tailored to a scattering amplitude. Starting with formal solutions for all master integral topologies, we grade the appearing functions by properties such as their symbol alphabet or letter adjacency. We rotate the basis such that functions with spurious features appear in the least possible number of basis elements. Since their coefficients must vanish for physical quantities, this approach avoids complex cancellations. As a first application, we evaluate all integral topologies relevant to the three-loop $Hggg$ and $Hgq\bar{q}$ amplitudes in the leading-colour approximation and heavy-top limit. We describe the derivation of canonical differential equation systems and present a method for fixing boundary conditions without the need for a full functional representation. Using multiple numerical reductions, we test the maximal transcendentality conjecture for $Hggg$ and identify a new letter which appears in functions of weight 4 and 5. In addition, we provide the first direct analytic computation of a three-point form factor of the operator $\mathrm{Tr}(\phi^2)$ in planar $\mathcal{N}=4$ sYM and find agreement with numerical and bootstrapped results.

The statistical analysis of cosmic large-scale structure is most often based on simple two-point summary statistics, like the power spectrum or the two-point correlation function of a sample of galaxies or other types of tracers. In contrast, topological measures of clustering are also sensitive to higher-order correlations and thus offer the prospect to access additional information that may harbor important constraining power. We here revisit one such geometric measure of the cosmic web in the form of the so-called percolation analysis, using the recent MillenniumTNG simulation suite of the ΛCDM paradigm. We analyze continuum percolation statistics both for high-resolution dark matter particle distributions and for galaxy mock catalogs from a semianalytic galaxy formation model within a periodic simulation volume of 3000 Mpc on a side. For comparison, we also investigate the percolation statistics of random particle sets and neutrino distributions with two different summed particle masses. We find that the percolation statistics of the dark matter distribution evolves strongly with redshift and thus clustering strength, yielding a progressively lower percolation threshold toward later times. However, there is a sizable residual dependence on numerical resolution, which we interpret as a residual influence of different levels of shot noise. This is corroborated by our analysis of galaxy mock catalogs, whose results depend on sampling density more strongly than on galaxy selection criteria. While this limits the discriminative power of percolation statistics, our results suggest that it still remains useful as a complementary cosmological test when controlled for sampling density.

We study stellar core growth in simulations of merging massive ($M_\star>10^{11}\,\mathrm{M}_\odot$) elliptical galaxies by a supermassive black hole (SMBH) displaced by gravitational wave induced recoil velocity. With controlled, dense sampling of the SMBH recoil velocity, we find the core radius originally formed by SMBH binary scouring can grow by a factor of 2-3 when the recoil velocity exceeds $\sim50$ per cent of the central escape velocity, and the mass deficit grows by up to a factor of $\sim4$. Using Bayesian inference we predict the distribution of stellar core sizes formed through this process to peak at $\sim1\,\mathrm{kpc}$. An orbital decomposition of stellar particles within the core reveals that radial orbits dominate over tube orbits when the recoil velocity exceeds the velocity dispersion of the core, whereas tube orbits dominate for the lowest recoil kicks. A change in orbital structure is reflected in the anisotropy parameter, with a central tangential bias present only for recoil velocities less than the local stellar velocity dispersion. Emulating current integral field unit observations of the stellar line-of-sight velocity distribution, we uncover a distinct signature in the Gauss-Hermite symmetric deviation coefficient $h_4$ that uniquely constrains the core size due to binary scouring. This signature is insensitive to the later evolution of the stellar mass distribution due to SMBH recoil. Our results provide a novel method to estimate the SMBH recoil magnitude from observations of local elliptical galaxies, and implies these galaxies primarily experienced recoil velocities less than the stellar velocity dispersion of the core.

So far, even the highest resolution galaxy formation simulations with gravitational softening have failed to reproduce realistic life cycles of star clusters. We present the first star-by-star galaxy models of star cluster formation to account for hydrodynamics, star formation, stellar evolution and collisional gravitational interactions between stars and compact remnants using the updated SPHGAL+KETJU code, part of the GRIFFIN-project. Gravitational dynamics in the vicinity of $>3$ M$_\odot$ stars and their remnants are solved with a regularised integrator (KETJU) without gravitational softening. Comparisons of idealised star cluster evolution with SPHGAL+KETJU and direct N-body show broad agreement and the failure of simulations that use gravitational softening. In the hydrodynamical dwarf galaxy simulations run with SPHGAL+KETJU, clusters up to $\sim900$ M$_\odot$ are formed compact (effective radii $0.1-1$ pc) and their sizes increase by up to a factor of ten in agreement with previous N-body simulations and the observed sizes of exposed star clusters. The sizes increase rapidly once the clusters become exposed due to photoionising radiation. On average $63\%$ of the gravitationally bound clusters disrupt during the first $100$ Myr of evolution in the galactic tidal field. The addition of collisional dynamics reduces the fraction of supernovae in bound clusters by a factor of $\sim 2.6$, however the global star formation and outflow histories change by less than $30\%$. We demonstrate that the accurate treatment of gravitational encounters with massive stars enables more realistic star cluster life cycles from the earliest stages of cluster formation until disruption in simulated low-mass galaxies.

Context. Analysis of several spectroscopic surveys indicates the presence of a bimodality between the disc stars in the abundance ratio space of [α/Fe] versus [Fe/H]. The two stellar groups are commonly referred to as the high-α and low-α sequences. Some models capable of reproducing such a bimodality invoke the presence of a hiatus in the star formation history in our Galaxy, whereas other models explain the two sequences by means of stellar migration. Aims. Our aim is to show that the existence of the gap in the star formation rate between high-α and low-α is evident in the stars of APOGEE DR17, if one plots [Fe/α] versus [α/H], confirming previous suggestions. We then try to interpret the data by means of detailed chemical models. Methods. We compare the APOGEE DR17 red giant stars with the predictions of a detailed chemical evolution model based on the two-infall paradigm, taking into account also the possible accretion of dwarf satellites. Results. The APOGEE DR17 abundance ratios [Fe/α] versus [α/H] exhibit a sharp increase in [Fe/α] at a nearly constant [α/H] (where α elements considered are Mg, Si, O) during the transition between the two disc phases. This observation strongly supports the hypothesis that a hiatus in star formation occurred during this evolutionary phase. Notably, the most pronounced growth in the [Fe/α] versus [α/H] relation is observed for oxygen, as this element is exclusively synthesised in core-collapse supernovae. The revised version of the two-infall chemical evolution model proposed in this study reproduces the APOGEE DR17 abundance ratios better than before. Particularly noteworthy is the model's ability to predict the hiatus in the star formation between the two infalls of gas, which form the thick and thin disc, respectively, and thus generate abundance ratios compatible with APOGEE DR17 data. Conclusions. We show that the signature of a hiatus in the star formation is imprinted in the APOGEE DR17 abundance ratios. A chemical model predicting a pause in the star formation of a duration of roughly 3.5 Gyr, and in which the high-α disc starts forming from pre-enriched gas by a previous encounter with a dwarf galaxy, could well explain the observations

We present cosmological constraints from the abundance of galaxy clusters selected via the thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) effect in South Pole Telescope (SPT) data with a simultaneous mass calibration using weak gravitational lensing data from the Dark Energy Survey (DES) and the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). The cluster sample is constructed from the combined SPT-SZ, SPTpol ECS, and SPTpol 500d surveys, and comprises 1,005 confirmed clusters in the redshift range 0.25–1.78 over a total sky area of <inline-formula><mml:math display="inline"><mml:mrow><mml:mn>5200</mml:mn><mml:mtext> </mml:mtext><mml:mtext> </mml:mtext><mml:mrow><mml:msup><mml:mrow><mml:mi>deg</mml:mi></mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mn>2</mml:mn></mml:mrow></mml:msup></mml:mrow></mml:mrow></mml:math></inline-formula>. We use DES Year 3 weak-lensing data for 688 clusters with redshifts <inline-formula><mml:math display="inline"><mml:mi>z</mml:mi><mml:mo><</mml:mo><mml:mn>0.95</mml:mn></mml:math></inline-formula> and HST weak-lensing data for 39 clusters with <inline-formula><mml:math display="inline"><mml:mn>0.6</mml:mn><mml:mo><</mml:mo><mml:mi>z</mml:mi><mml:mo><</mml:mo><mml:mn>1.7</mml:mn></mml:math></inline-formula>. The weak-lensing measurements enable robust mass measurements of sample clusters and allow us to empirically constrain the SZ observable-mass relation without having to make strong assumptions about, e.g., the hydrodynamical state of the clusters. For a flat <inline-formula><mml:math display="inline"><mml:mi mathvariant="normal">Λ</mml:mi><mml:mi>CDM</mml:mi></mml:math></inline-formula> cosmology, and marginalizing over the sum of massive neutrinos, we measure <inline-formula><mml:math display="inline"><mml:msub><mml:mi mathvariant="normal">Ω</mml:mi><mml:mi mathvariant="normal">m</mml:mi></mml:msub><mml:mo>=</mml:mo><mml:mn>0.286</mml:mn><mml:mo>±</mml:mo><mml:mn>0.032</mml:mn></mml:math></inline-formula>, <inline-formula><mml:math display="inline"><mml:msub><mml:mi>σ</mml:mi><mml:mn>8</mml:mn></mml:msub><mml:mo>=</mml:mo><mml:mn>0.817</mml:mn><mml:mo>±</mml:mo><mml:mn>0.026</mml:mn></mml:math></inline-formula>, and the parameter combination <inline-formula><mml:math display="inline"><mml:mrow><mml:msub><mml:mrow><mml:mi>σ</mml:mi></mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mn>8</mml:mn></mml:mrow></mml:msub><mml:mo stretchy="false">(</mml:mo><mml:msub><mml:mrow><mml:mi mathvariant="normal">Ω</mml:mi></mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mi mathvariant="normal">m</mml:mi></mml:mrow></mml:msub><mml:mo>/</mml:mo><mml:mn>0.3</mml:mn><mml:msup><mml:mrow><mml:mo stretchy="false">)</mml:mo></mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mn>0.25</mml:mn></mml:mrow></mml:msup><mml:mo>=</mml:mo><mml:mn>0.805</mml:mn><mml:mo>±</mml:mo><mml:mn>0.016</mml:mn></mml:mrow></mml:math></inline-formula>. Our measurement of <inline-formula><mml:math display="inline"><mml:msub><mml:mi>S</mml:mi><mml:mn>8</mml:mn></mml:msub><mml:mo>≡</mml:mo><mml:msub><mml:mi>σ</mml:mi><mml:mn>8</mml:mn></mml:msub><mml:msqrt><mml:mrow><mml:msub><mml:mi mathvariant="normal">Ω</mml:mi><mml:mi mathvariant="normal">m</mml:mi></mml:msub><mml:mo>/</mml:mo><mml:mn>0.3</mml:mn></mml:mrow></mml:msqrt><mml:mo>=</mml:mo><mml:mn>0.795</mml:mn><mml:mo>±</mml:mo><mml:mn>0.029</mml:mn></mml:math></inline-formula> and the constraint from Planck CMB anisotropies (2018 TT, TE, <inline-formula><mml:math display="inline"><mml:mrow><mml:mi>EE</mml:mi><mml:mo>+</mml:mo><mml:mi>lowE</mml:mi></mml:mrow></mml:math></inline-formula>) differ by <inline-formula><mml:math display="inline"><mml:mn>1.1</mml:mn><mml:mi>σ</mml:mi></mml:math></inline-formula>. In combination with that Planck dataset, we place a 95% upper limit on the sum of neutrino masses <inline-formula><mml:math display="inline"><mml:mo>∑</mml:mo><mml:msub><mml:mi>m</mml:mi><mml:mi>ν</mml:mi></mml:msub><mml:mo><</mml:mo><mml:mn>0.18</mml:mn><mml:mtext> </mml:mtext><mml:mtext> </mml:mtext><mml:mi>eV</mml:mi></mml:math></inline-formula>. When additionally allowing the dark energy equation of state parameter <inline-formula><mml:math display="inline"><mml:mi>w</mml:mi></mml:math></inline-formula> to vary, we obtain <inline-formula><mml:math display="inline"><mml:mi>w</mml:mi><mml:mo>=</mml:mo><mml:mo>-</mml:mo><mml:mn>1.45</mml:mn><mml:mo>±</mml:mo><mml:mn>0.31</mml:mn></mml:math></inline-formula> from our cluster-based analysis. In combination with Planck data, we measure <inline-formula><mml:math display="inline"><mml:mi>w</mml:mi><mml:mo>=</mml:mo><mml:mo>-</mml:mo><mml:mn>1.3</mml:mn><mml:msubsup><mml:mn>4</mml:mn><mml:mrow><mml:mo>-</mml:mo><mml:mn>0.15</mml:mn></mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mo>+</mml:mo><mml:mn>0.22</mml:mn></mml:mrow></mml:msubsup></mml:math></inline-formula>, or a <inline-formula><mml:math display="inline"><mml:mn>2.2</mml:mn><mml:mi>σ</mml:mi></mml:math></inline-formula> difference with a cosmological constant. We use the cluster abundance to measure <inline-formula><mml:math display="inline"><mml:msub><mml:mi>σ</mml:mi><mml:mn>8</mml:mn></mml:msub></mml:math></inline-formula> in five redshift bins between 0.25 and 1.8, and we find the results to be consistent with structure growth as predicted by the <inline-formula><mml:math display="inline"><mml:mi mathvariant="normal">Λ</mml:mi><mml:mi>CDM</mml:mi></mml:math></inline-formula> model fit to Planck primary CMB data.

Aims. In this Letter we investigate the origin of the Oosterhoff dichotomy in light of recent discoveries related to several ancient merging events of external galaxies with the Milky Way (MW). In particular, we aim to clarify if the subdivision in terms of the Oosterhoff type between Galactic globular clusters (GGCs) and field RR Lyrae (RRLs) can be traced back to one or more ancient galaxies that merged with the MW in its past. Methods. We first explored the association of GGCs with the past merging events according to different literature studies. Subsequently, we compiled the positions, proper motions, and radial velocities of 10 138 field RRL variables from Gaia Data Release 3. To infer the distances, we adopted the M_G–[Fe/H] relation, with [Fe/H] values estimated via empirical relationships involving individual periods and Fourier parameters. We then calculated the orbits and the integrals of motion using the Python library Galpy for the whole sample. By comparing the location of the field RRLs in the energy–angular momentum diagram with that of the GGCs, we determined their likely origin. Finally, using GaiaG-band light curves, we determined the Oosterhoff types of our RRL stars based on their location in the Bailey diagram. Results. The analysis of the Bailey diagrams for Galactic RRL stars and GGCs associated with an 'in situ' versus 'accreted' halo origin shows remarkable differences. The in situ sample shows a wide range of metallicities with a continuous distribution and no sign of the Oosterhoff dichotomy. Conversely, the accreted RRLs clearly show the Oosterhoff dichotomy and a significantly smaller dispersion in metallicity. Conclusions. Our results suggest that the Oosterhoff dichotomy was imported into the MW by the merging events that shaped the Galaxy.

Metallicities of both gas and stars decline toward large radii in spiral galaxies, a trend known as the radial metallicity gradient. We quantify the evolution of the metallicity gradient in the Milky Way as traced by APOGEE red giants with age estimates from machine learning algorithms. Stars up to ages of $\sim$9 Gyr follow a similar relation between metallicity and Galactocentric radius. This constancy challenges current models of Galactic chemical evolution, which typically predict lower metallicities for older stellar populations. Our results favor an equilibrium scenario, in which the gas-phase gradient reaches a nearly constant normalization early in the disk lifetime. Using a fiducial choice of parameters, we demonstrate that one possible origin of this behavior is an outflow that more readily ejects gas from the interstellar medium with increasing Galactocentric radius. A direct effect of the outflow is that baryons do not remain in the interstellar medium for long, which causes the ratio of star formation to accretion, $\dot{\Sigma}_\star / \dot{\Sigma}_\text{in}$, to quickly become constant. This ratio is closely related to the local equilibrium metallicity, since its numerator and denominator set the rates of metal production by stars and hydrogen gained through accretion, respectively. Building in a merger event results in a perturbation that evolves back toward the equilibrium state on $\sim$Gyr timescales. Under the equilibrium scenario, the radial metallicity gradient is not a consequence of the inside-out growth of the disk but instead reflects a trend of declining $\dot{\Sigma}_\star / \dot{\Sigma}_\text{in}$ with increasing Galactocentric radius.

Low-metallicity environments are subject to inefficient cooling. They also have low dust-to-gas ratios and therefore less efficient photoelectric (PE) heating than in solar-neighbourhood conditions, where PE heating is one of the most important heating processes in the warm neutral interstellar medium (ISM). We perform magneto-hydrodynamic simulations of stratified ISM patches with a gas metallicity of 0.02 Z$_\odot$ as part of the SILCC project. The simulations include non-equilibrium chemistry, heating, and cooling of the low-temperature ISM as well as anisotropic cosmic ray (CR) transport, and stellar tracks. We include stellar feedback in the form of far-UV and ionising (FUV and EUV) radiation, massive star winds, supernovae, and CR injection. From the local CR energy density, we compute a CR heating rate that is variable in space and time. In this way, we can compare the relative impact of PE and CR heating on the metal-poor ISM and find that CR heating can dominate over PE heating. Models with a uniform CR ionisation rate suppress or severely delay star formation, since they provide a larger amount of energy to the ISM due to CR heating. Models with a variable CR ionisation rate form stars predominantly in pristine regions with low PE heating and CR ionisation rates where the metal-poor gas is able to cool efficiently. Because of the low metallicity, the amount of formed stars in all runs is not enough to trigger outflows of gas from the mid-plane.

We present a Bayesian population modeling method to analyze the abundance of galaxy clusters identified by the South Pole Telescope (SPT) with a simultaneous mass calibration using weak gravitational lensing data from the Dark Energy Survey (DES) and the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). We discuss and validate the modeling choices with a particular focus on a robust, weak-lensing-based mass calibration using DES data. For the DES Year 3 data, we report a systematic uncertainty in weak-lensing mass calibration that increases from 1% at <inline-formula><mml:math display="inline"><mml:mi>z</mml:mi><mml:mo>=</mml:mo><mml:mn>0.25</mml:mn></mml:math></inline-formula> to 10% at <inline-formula><mml:math display="inline"><mml:mi>z</mml:mi><mml:mo>=</mml:mo><mml:mn>0.95</mml:mn></mml:math></inline-formula>, to which we add 2% in quadrature to account for uncertainties in the impact of baryonic effects. We implement an analysis pipeline that joins the cluster abundance likelihood with a multiobservable likelihood for the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect, optical richness, and weak-lensing measurements for each individual cluster. We validate that our analysis pipeline can recover unbiased cosmological constraints by analyzing mocks that closely resemble the cluster sample extracted from the SPT-SZ, SPTpol ECS, and SPTpol 500d surveys and the DES Year 3 and HST-39 weak-lensing datasets. This work represents a crucial prerequisite for the subsequent cosmological analysis of the real dataset.

Modeling the intrinsic alignment (IA) of galaxies poses a challenge to weak lensing analyses. The Dark Energy Survey is expected to be less impacted by IA when limited to blue, star-forming galaxies. The cosmological parameter constraints from this blue cosmic shear sample are stable to IA model choice, unlike passive galaxies in the full DES Y3 sample, the goodness-of-fit is improved and the $\Omega_{m}$ and $S_8$ better agree with the cosmic microwave background. Mitigating IA with sample selection, instead of flexible model choices, can reduce uncertainty in $S_8$ by a factor of 1.5.

Very compact (R_e ≲ 1 kpc) massive quiescent galaxies (red nuggets) are more abundant in the high-redshift Universe (z ~ 2-3) than today. Their size evolution can be explained by collisionless dynamical processes in galaxy mergers which, however, fail to reproduce the diffuse low-density central cores in the local massive early-type galaxies (ETGs). We use sequences of major and minor merger N-body simulations starting with compact spherical and disk-like progenitor models to investigate the impact of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) on the evolution of the galaxies. With the KETJU code we accurately follow the collisional interaction of the SMBHs with the nearby stellar population and the collisionless evolution of the galaxies and their dark matter halos. We show that only models including SMBHs can simultaneously explain the formation of low-density cores up to sizes of R_b ~ 1.3 kpc with mass deficits in the observed range and the rapid half-mass size evolution. In addition, the orbital structure in the core region (tangentially biased orbits) is consistent with observation-based results for local cored ETGs. The displacement of stars by the SMBHs boost the half-mass size evolution by up to a factor of two and even fast rotating progenitors (compact quiescent disks) lose their rotational support after 6-8 mergers. We conclude that the presence of SMBHs is required for merger driven evolution models of high redshift red nuggets into local ETGs.

Analysis of pre-explosion imaging has confirmed red supergiants (RSGs) as the progenitors to Type II-P supernovae (SNe). However, extracting the RSG's luminosity requires assumptions regarding the star's temperature or spectral type and the corresponding bolometric correction, circumstellar extinction, and possible variability. The robustness of these assumptions is difficult to test, since we cannot go back in time and obtain additional pre-explosion imaging. Here, we perform a simple test using the RSGs in M31, which have been well observed from optical to mid-IR. We ask the following: By treating each star as if we only had single-band photometry and making assumptions typically used in SN progenitor studies, what bolometric luminosity would we infer for each star? How close is this to the bolometric luminosity for that same star inferred from the full optical-to-IR spectral energy distribution (SED)? We find common assumptions adopted in progenitor studies systematically underestimate the bolometric luminosity by a factor of 2, typically leading to inferred progenitor masses that are systematically too low. Additionally, we find a much larger spread in luminosity derived from single-filter photometry compared to SED-derived luminosities, indicating uncertainties in progenitor luminosities are also underestimated. When these corrections and larger uncertainties are included in the analysis, even the most luminous known RSGs are not ruled out at the 3$\sigma$ level, indicating there is currently no statistically significant evidence that the most luminous RSGs are missing from the observed sample of II-P progenitors. The proposed correction also alleviates the problem of having progenitors with masses below the expected lower-mass bound for core-collapse.

Collisionless low-Mach-number shocks are abundant in astrophysical and space plasma environments, exhibiting complex wave activity and wave–particle interactions. In this paper, we present 2D Particle-in-Cell (PIC) simulations of quasi-perpendicular nonrelativistic (v _sh ≈ (5500–22000) km s^‑1) low-Mach-number shocks, with a specific focus on studying electrostatic waves in the shock ramp and precursor regions. In these shocks, an ion-scale oblique whistler wave creates a configuration with two hot counterstreaming electron beams, which drive unstable electron acoustic waves (EAWs) that can turn into electrostatic solitary waves (ESWs) at the late stage of their evolution. By conducting simulations with periodic boundaries, we show that the EAW properties agree with linear dispersion analysis. The characteristics of ESWs in shock simulations, including their wavelength and amplitude, depend on the shock velocity. When extrapolated to shocks with realistic velocities (v _sh ≈ 300 km s^‑1), the ESW wavelength is reduced to one-tenth of the electron skin depth and the ESW amplitude is anticipated to surpass that of the quasi-static electric field by more than a factor of 100. These theoretical predictions may explain a discrepancy, between PIC and satellite measurements, in the relative amplitude of high- and low-frequency electric field fluctuations.

We use the dispersion measure (DM) of localised Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) to constrain cosmological and host galaxy parameters using simulation-based inference (SBI) for the first time. By simulating the large-scale structure of the electron density with the Generator for Large-Scale Structure (GLASS), we generate log-normal realisations of the free electron density field, accurately capturing the correlations between different FRBs. For the host galaxy contribution, we rigorously test various models, including log-normal, truncated Gaussian and Gamma distributions, while modelling the Milky Way component using pulsar data. Through these simulations, we employ the truncated sequential neural posterior estimation method to obtain the posterior. Using current observational data, we successfully recover the amplitude of the DM-redshift relation, consistent with Planck, while also fitting both the mean host contribution and its shape. Notably, we find no clear preference for a specific model of the host galaxy contribution. Although SBI may not yet be strictly necessary for FRB inference, this work lays the groundwork for the future, as the increasing volume of FRB data will demand precise modelling of both the host and large-scale structure components. Our modular simulation pipeline offers flexibility, allowing for easy integration of improved models as they become available, ensuring scalability and adaptability for upcoming analyses using FRBs. The pipeline is made publicly available under github.com/koustav-konar/FastNeuralBurst.

Numerous protoplanetary disks exhibit shadows in scattered light observations. These shadows are typically cast by misaligned inner disks and are associated with observable structures in the outer disk such as bright arcs and spirals. Investigating the dynamics of the shadowed outer disk is therefore essential in understanding the formation and evolution of these structures. We carry out twodimensional radiation hydrodynamics simulations that include radiative diffusion and dust-gas dynamics to study the formation of substructure in shadowed disks. We find that spiral arms are launched at the edge of each shadow, permeating the entire disk. The local dissipation of these spirals results in an angular momentum flux, opening multiple gaps and leading to a series of concentric, regularly-spaced rings We find that ring formation is favored in weakly turbulent disks where dust growth is taking place. These conditions are met for typical class-II disks, in which bright rings should form well within a fraction of their lifetime (0.1-0.2 Myr). For hotter disks gap opening is more efficient, such that the gap edges quickly collapse into vortices that can appear as bright arcs in continuum emission before decaying into rings or merging into massive, long-lived structures. Synthetic observations show that these structures should be observable in scattered light and millimeter continuum emission, providing a new way to probe the presence of substructure in protoplanetary disks. Our results suggest that the formation of rings and gaps is a common process in shadowed disks, and can explain the rich radial substructure observed in several protoplanetary disks.

The renormalization group equations for large-scale structure (RG-LSS) describe how the bias and stochastic (noise) parameters — both of matter and biased tracers such as galaxies — evolve as a function of the cutoff Λ of the effective field theory. In previous work, we derived the RG-LSS equations for the bias parameters using the Wilson-Polchinski framework. Here, we extend these results to include stochastic contributions, corresponding to terms in the effective action that are higher order in the current J. We derive the general local interaction terms that describe stochasticity at all orders in perturbations, and a closed set of nonlinear RG equations for their coefficients. These imply that a single nonlinear bias term generates all stochastic moments through RG evolution. Further, the evolution is controlled by a different, lower scale than the nonlinear scale. This has implications for the optimal choice of the renormalization scale when comparing the theory with data to obtain cosmological constraints.

Cold dark matter axions produced in the post-inflationary Peccei-Quinn symmetry breaking scenario serve as clear targets for their experimental detection, since it is in principle possible to give a sharp prediction for their mass once we understand precisely how they are produced from the decay of global cosmic strings in the early Universe. In this paper, we perform a dedicated analysis of the spectrum of axions radiated from strings based on large scale numerical simulations of the cosmological evolution of the Peccei-Quinn field on a static lattice. Making full use of the massively parallel code and computing resources, we executed the simulations with up to 11264³ lattice sites, which allows us to improve our understanding of the dependence on the parameter controlling the string tension and thus give a more accurate extrapolation of the numerical results. We found that there are several systematic effects that have been overlooked in previous works, such as the dependence on the initial conditions, contaminations due to oscillations in the spectrum, and discretisation effects, some of which could explain the discrepancy in the literature. We confirmed the trend that the spectral index of the axion emission spectrum increases with the string tension, but did not find a clear evidence of whether it continues to increase or saturates to a constant at larger values of the string tension due to the severe discretisation effects. Taking this uncertainty into account and performing the extrapolation with a simple power law assumption on the spectrum, we find that the dark matter mass is predicted in the range of m _a ≈ 95–450 μeV.

In prior studies, a very minimal Yukawa sector within the SO(10) Grand Unified Theory framework has been identified, comprising of Higgs fields belonging to a real 10_H, a real 120_H, and a <inline-formula id="IEq1"><mml:math display="inline"><mml:msub><mml:mover accent="true"><mml:mn>126</mml:mn><mml:mo stretchy="true">¯</mml:mo></mml:mover><mml:mi>H</mml:mi></mml:msub></mml:math></inline-formula> dimensional representations. In this work, within this minimal framework, we have obtained fits to fermion masses and mixings while successfully reproducing the cosmological baryon asymmetry via leptogenesis. The right-handed neutrino (N_i) mass spectrum obtained from the fit is strongly hierarchical, suggesting that B ‑ L asymmetry is dominantly produced from N₂ dynamics while N₁ is responsible for erasing the excess asymmetry. With this rather constrained Yukawa sector, fits are obtained both for normal and inverted ordered neutrino mass spectra, consistent with leptonic CP-violating phase δ_CP indicated by global fits of neutrino oscillation data, while also satisfying the current limits from neutrinoless double beta decay experiments. In particular, the leptonic CP-violating phase has a preference to be in the range δ_CP ≃ (230 – 300)°. We also show the consistency of the framework with gauge coupling unification and proton lifetime limits.

Dust grains play a significant role in several astrophysical processes, including gas/dust dynamics, chemical reactions, and radiative transfer. Replenishment of small-grain populations is mainly governed by fragmentation during pair-wise collisions between grains. The wide spectrum of fragmentation outcomes, from complete disruption to erosion and/or mass transfer, can be modelled by the general non-linear fragmentation equation. Efficiently solving this equation is crucial for an accurate treatment of the dust fragmentation in numerical modelling. However, similar to dust coagulation, numerical errors in current fragmentation algorithms employed in astrophysics are dominated by the numerical overdiffusion problem - particularly in three-dimensional hydrodynamic simulations where the discrete resolution of the mass-density distribution tends to be highly limited. With this in mind, we have derived the first conservative form of the general non-linear fragmentation with a mass flux highlighting the mass transfer phenomenon. Then, to address cases of limited mass density resolution, we applied a high-order discontinuous Galerkin scheme to efficiently solve the conservative fragmentation equation with a reduced number of dust bins. An accuracy of <inline-formula><tex-math id="TM0001" notation="LaTeX">$0.1{\!-\!}1~{{\ \rm per\ cent}}$</tex-math></inline-formula> is reached with 20 dust bins spanning a mass range of 9 orders of magnitude.

Star-galaxy separation is a crucial step in creating target catalogues for extragalactic spectroscopic surveys. A classifier biased towards inclusivity risks including high numbers of stars, wasting fibre hours, while a more conservative classifier might overlook galaxies, compromising completeness and hence survey objectives. To avoid bias introduced by a training set in supervised methods, we employ an unsupervised machine learning approach. Using photometry from the Wide Area VISTA Extragalactic Survey (WAVES)-Wide catalogue comprising 9-band u - K_s data, we create a feature space with colours, fluxes, and apparent size information extracted by PROFOUND. We apply the non-linear dimensionality reduction method UMAP (Uniform Manifold Approximation and Projection) combined with the classifier HDBSCAN to classify stars and galaxies. Our method is verified against a baseline colour and morphological method using a truth catalogue from Gaia, SDSS, GAMA, and DESI. We correctly identify 99.75% of galaxies within the AB magnitude limit of Z = 21.2, with an F1 score of 0.9971 ± 0.0018 across the entire ground truth sample, compared to 0.9879 ± 0.0088 from the baseline method. Our method's higher purity (0.9967 ± 0.0021) compared to the baseline (0.9795 ± 0.0172) increases efficiency, identifying 11% fewer galaxy or ambiguous sources, saving approximately 70,000 fibre hours on the 4MOST instrument. We achieve reliable classification statistics for challenging sources including quasars, compact galaxies, and low surface brightness galaxies, retrieving 92.7%, 84.6%, and 99.5% of them respectively. Angular clustering analysis validates our classifications, showing consistency with expected galaxy clustering, regardless of the baseline classification.

High-cadence high-resolution spectroscopic observations of infant Type II supernovae (SNe) represent an exquisite probe of the atmospheres and winds of exploding red-supergiant (RSG) stars. Using radiation hydrodynamics and radiative transfer, we study the gas and radiation properties during and after the phase of shock breakout, considering RSG progenitors enshrouded within a circumstellar material (CSM) that varies in extent, density, and velocity profile. In all cases, the original, unadulterated CSM structure is probed only at the onset of shock breakout, visible in high-resolution spectra as narrow, often blueshifted emission, possibly with an absorption trough. As the SN luminosity rises during breakout, radiative acceleration of the unshocked CSM starts, leading to a broadening of the ``narrow'' lines by ~100 and up to ~1000km/s, depending on CSM properties. This acceleration is maximum close to the shock, where the radiative flux is greater, and thus typically masked by optical-depth effects. Generally, narrow-line broadening is greater for more compact, tenuous CSM because of the proximity to the shock where the flux is born, and smaller in denser and more extended CSM. Narrow-line emission should show a broadening that slowly increases first (the line forms further out in the original wind), then sharply rises (the line forms in a region that is radiatively accelerated), before decreasing until late times (the line forms further away in regions more weakly accelerated). Radiative acceleration should inhibit X-ray emission during the early, IIn phase. Although high spectral resolution is critical at the earliest times to probe the original slow wind, radiative acceleration and associated line broadening may be captured with medium resolution allowing a simultaneous view of narrow, Doppler-broadened as well as extended, electron-scattering broadened line emission.

Abridged: The fortunate proximity of the SN2023ixf allowed astronomers to follow its evolution from almost the moment of the collapse of the progenitor's core. SN2023ixf can be explained as an explosion of a massive star with an energy of 0.7e51 erg, however with a greatly reduced envelope mass, probably because of binary interaction. In our radiative-transfer simulations, the SN ejecta of 6 Msun interact with circumstellar material (CSM) of ~0.6 Msun extending to 1.e15 cm, which results in a light curve (LC) peak matching that of SN2023ixf. The origin of this required CSM might be gravity waves originating from convective shell burning, which could enhance wind-like mass-loss during the late stages of stellar evolution. The steeply rising, low-luminosity flux during the first hours after observationally confirmed non-detection, however, cannot be explained by the collision of the energetic SN shock with the CSM. Instead, we considered it as a precursor that we could fit by the emission from ~0.5 Msun of matter that was ejected with an energy of 1.e49 erg a fraction of a day before the main shock of the SN explosion reached the surface of the progenitor. The source of this energy injection into the outermost shell of the stellar envelope could also be dynamical processes related to the convective activity in the progenitor's interior or envelope. Alternatively, the early rise of the LC could point to the initial breakout of a highly non-spherical SN shock or of fast-moving, asymmetrically ejected matter that was swept out well ahead of the SN shock, potentially in a low-energy, nearly relativistic jet. We also discuss that pre-SN outbursts and LC precursors can be used to study or to constrain energy deposition in the outermost stellar layers by the decay of exotic particles, such as axions, which could be produced simultaneously with neutrinos in the newly formed, hot neutron star.

Context. Recent evidence from spectroscopic surveys points towards the presence of a metal-poor, young stellar population in the low- α, chemically thin disk. In this context, the investigation of the spatial distribution and time evolution of precise, unbiased abundances is fundamental to disentangle the scenarios of formation and evolution of the Galaxy. Aims. We study the evolution of abundance gradients in the Milky Way by taking advantage of a large sample of open star clusters, which are among the best tracers for this purpose. In particular, we used data from the last release of the Gaia-ESO survey. Methods. We performed a careful selection of open cluster member stars, excluding those members that may be affected by biases in spectral analysis. We compared the cleaned open cluster sample with detailed chemical evolution models for the Milky Way, using well-tested stellar yields and prescription for radial migration. We tested different scenarios of Galaxy evolution to explain the data, namely, the two-infall and the three-infall frameworks, which suggest the chemical thin disk is formed by one or two subsequent gas accretion episodes, respectively. Results. With the performed selection in cluster member stars, we still find a metallicity decrease between intermediate-age (1 < Age/Gyr < 3) and young (Age < 1 Gyr) open clusters. This decrease cannot be explained in the context of the two-infall scenario, even by accounting for the effect of migration and yield prescriptions. The three-infall framework, with its late gas accretion in the last 3 Gyr, is able to explain the low metallic content in young clusters. However, we have invoked a milder metal dilution for this gas infall episode relative to previous findings. Conclusions. To explain the observed low metallic content in young clusters, we propose that a late gas accretion episode triggering a metal dilution would have taken place, extending the framework of the three-infall model for the first time to the entire Galactic disk.

In single-field inflation, violation of the slow-roll approximation can lead to growth of curvature perturbation outside the horizon. This violation is characterized by a period with a large negative value of the second slow-roll parameter. At an early time, inflation must satisfy the slow-roll approximation, so the large-scale curvature perturbation can explain the cosmic microwave background fluctuations. At intermediate time, it is viable to have a theory that violates the slow-roll approximation, which implies amplification of the curvature perturbation on small scales. Specifically, we consider ultraslow-roll inflation as the intermediate period. At late time, inflation should go back to the slow roll period so that it can end. This means that there are two transitions of the second slow-roll parameter. In this paper, we compare two different possibilities for the second transition: sharp and smooth transitions. Focusing on effects generated by the relevant cubic self-interaction of the curvature perturbation, we find that the bispectrum and one-loop correction to the power spectrum due to the change of the second slow-roll parameter vanish if and only if the Mukhanov-Sasaki equation for perturbation satisfies a specific condition called Wands duality. We also find in the case of sharp transition that, even though this duality is satisfied in the ultraslow-roll and slow-roll phases, it is severely violated at the transition so that the resultant one-loop correction is extremely large inversely proportional to the duration of the transition.

Protoplanetary discs, as the birthplaces and nurseries of planets, are crucial to understanding planet formation. Disc winds and planet-disc interactions are fundamental mechanisms shaping the structure and evolution of protoplanetary discs and the planets within them. Massive planets can influence their discs by creating substructures such as gaps and spiral density waves, significantly impacting the dynamics of gas and dust within the disc. Winds can strip material from the disc, eventually dispersing it and setting an upper limit on both its lifetime and the timeframe available for planet formation. Despite their importance, the detailed mechanisms driving these winds – particularly the roles of thermal and magnetic processes at various locations and evolutionary stages – remain poorly constrained. This thesis investigates the intricate interplay between a thermal disc wind launched by X-ray photoevaporation and the substructures produced by giant planets. While previous detailed studies examined these processes separately, this work integrates them into one comprehensive model to investigate their interactions. Additional focus is put on producing synthetic observations of atomic forbidden emission lines in several disc wind models that can be compared to observational data and help constrain the launching conditions of disc winds. [...]

We identify a new production channel for QCD axions in supernova environments that contributes to axion emissivity for all models solving the strong CP problem. This channel arises at tree-level from a shift-symmetry-breaking operator constructed at next-to-leading order in Chiral Perturbation Theory. In scenarios where model-dependent derivative couplings to nucleons are absent, this sets the strongest model-independent constraint on the axion mass, improving on existing bounds by two orders of magnitude.

Baryonification algorithms model the impact of galaxy formation and feedback on the matter field in gravity-only simulations by adopting physically motivated parametric prescriptions. In this paper, we extend these models to describe gas temperature and pressure, allowing for a self-consistent modelling of the thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect, weak gravitational lensing, and their cross-correlation, down to small scales. We validate our approach by showing that it can simultaneously reproduce the electron pressure, gas, stellar, and dark matter power spectra as measured in all BAHAMAS hydrodynamical simulations. Specifically, with only two additional free parameters, we can fit the electron pressure auto- and cross-power spectra at 10% while reproducing the suppression in the matter power spectrum induced by baryons at the per cent level, for different active galactic nuclei (AGN) feedback strengths in BAHAMAS. Furthermore, we reproduce BAHAMAS convergence and thermal Sunyaev Zel'dovich angular power spectra within 1% and 10% accuracy, respectively, down to ℓ = 5000. When used jointly with cosmological rescaling algorithms, the baryonification presented here allows for a fast and accurate exploration of cosmological and astrophysical scenarios. Therefore, it can be employed to create mock catalogues, lightcones, and large training sets for emulators aimed at interpreting forthcoming multi-wavelength observations of the large-scale structure of the Universe.

Tentative observations of cosmic-ray antihelium by the AMS-02 collaboration have re-energized the quest to use antinuclei to search for physics beyond the standard model. However, our transition to a data-driven era requires more accurate models of the expected astrophysical antinuclei fluxes. We use a state-of-the-art cosmic-ray propagation model, fit to high-precision antiproton and cosmic-ray nuclei (B, Be, Li) data, to constrain the antinuclei flux from both astrophysical and dark matter annihilation models. We show that astrophysical sources are capable of producing

We investigate ultra-high frequency gravitational waves (GWs) from gravitons generated during inflationary reheating. Specifically, we study inflaton scattering with its decay product, where the couplings involved in this 2 → 2 scattering are the same as those in the 1 → 3 graviton Bremsstrahlung process. We compute the graviton production rate via such 2 → 2 scattering. Additionally, we compare the resulting GW spectrum with that from Bremsstrahlung as well as that from pure 2 → 2 inflaton scatterings. For completeness, the GW spectrum from graviton pair production through one-loop induced 1 → 2 inflaton decay is also analyzed. With a systematic comparison among the four sources of GWs, we find that 2 → 2 inflaton scattering with its decay product can dominate over Bremsstrahlung if the reheating temperature is larger than the inflaton mass. Pure inflaton 2 → 2 scattering is typically subdominant compared to Bremsstrahlung except in the high-frequency tail. The contribution from one-loop induced 1 → 2 inflaton decay is shown to be suppressed compared to Bremsstrahlung and pure inflaton 2 → 2 scattering.

We present a flow-based generative approach to emulate grids of stellar evolutionary models. By interpreting the input parameters and output properties of these models as multidimensional probability distributions, we train conditional normalizing flows to learn and predict the complex relationships between grid inputs and outputs in the form of conditional joint distributions. Leveraging the expressive power and versatility of these flows, we showcase their ability to emulate a variety of evolutionary tracks and isochrones across a continuous range of input parameters. In addition, we describe a simple Bayesian approach for estimating stellar parameters using these flows and demonstrate its application to asteroseismic data sets of red giants observed by the Kepler mission. By applying this approach to red giants in open clusters NGC 6791 and NGC 6819, we illustrate how large age uncertainties can arise when fitting only to global asteroseismic and spectroscopic parameters without prior information on initial helium abundances and mixing length parameter values. We also conduct inference using the flow at a large scale by determining revised estimates of masses and radii for 15,388 field red giants. These estimates show improved agreement with results from existing grid-based modeling, reveal distinct population-level features in the red clump, and suggest that the masses of Kepler red giants previously determined using the corrected asteroseismic scaling relations have been overestimated by 5%–10%.

To fulfil its science requirements, the Ariel space mission[1] has been specifically designed to have a stable payload and satellite platform optimised to provide a broad, instantaneous wavelength coverage to detect many molecular species, probe the thermal structure, identify/characterize clouds and monitor the stellar activity. The chosen wavelength range, from 0.5 to 7.8 µm, covers all the expected major atmospheric gases from, e.g. H2O, CO2, CH4, NH3, HCN, H2S, through to the more exotic metallic compounds, such as TiO, VO, and condensed species.In the frame of the "Spectral Data and databases" working group, 50+ members of the Ariel science team and colleagues were invited to contribute to a White Paper entitled: "Data availability and requirements relevant for the Ariel space mission and other exoplanet atmosphere applications"[2]. The goal of this 70-pages work submitted for a publication to RASTI is to provide a snapshot of the data availability and data needs primarily for the Ariel space mission, but also for related atmospheric studies of exoplanets and brown dwarfs in general. It covers the following data-related topics: molecular and atomic line lists, line profiles, computed cross-sections and opacities, collision-induced absorption and other continuum data, optical properties of aerosols and surfaces, atmospheric chemistry, UV photodissociation and photoabsorption cross-sections, and standards in the description and format of such data. These data aspects are discussed by addressing the following questions for each topic, based on the experience of the "data-provider" and "data-user" communities: (1) what are the types and sources of currently available data, (2) what work is currently in progress, and (3) what are the current and anticipated data needs. Our aim is to provide practical information on existing sources of data whether in databases, theoretical, or literature sources.In addition, a project on the GitHub platform - github.com/Ariel-data -has been created to foster collaboration between the communities. As an open access tool, GitHub provides huge advantages of forming direct dialogues and become a go-to place for both data users and data providers, even for those who are currently not directly involved in the Ariel consortium or in the field of exoplanetary science in general.References[1] G. Tinetti et al., ESA Definition Study Report},(2020) - sci.esa.int/documents/34022/36216/Ariel_Definition_Study_Report_2020.pdf[2] K.L. Chubb, S. Robert, C. Sousa-Silva, S.N. Yurchenko, et al., RAS Techniques and Instruments, submitted (2024) - arXiv:2404.02188.

In the quantum simulation of lattice gauge theories, gauge symmetry can be either fixed or encoded as a redundancy of the Hilbert space. While gauge-fixing reduces the number of qubits, keeping the gauge redundancy can provide code space to mitigate and correct quantum errors by checking and restoring Gauss's law. In this work, we consider the correctable errors for generic finite gauge groups and design the quantum circuits to detect and correct them. We calculate the error thresholds below which the gauge-redundant digitization with Gauss's law error correction has better fidelity than the gauge-fixed digitization involving only gauge-invariant states. Our results provide guidance for fault-tolerant quantum simulations of lattice gauge theories.

We explore the potential for improving constraints on gravity by leveraging correlations in the dispersion measure derived from Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) in combination with cosmic shear. Specifically, we focus on Horndeski gravity, inferring the kinetic braiding and Planck mass run rate from a stage-4 cosmic shear mock survey alongside a survey comprising $10^4$ FRBs. For the inference pipeline, we utilise hi_class to predict the linear matter power spectrum in modified gravity scenarios, while non-linear corrections are modelled with HMcode, including feedback mechanisms. Our findings indicate that FRBs can disentangle degeneracies between baryonic feedback and cosmological parameters, as well as the mass of massive neutrinos. Since these parameters are also degenerate with modified gravity parameters, the inclusion of FRBs can enhance constraints on Horndeski parameters by up to $40$ percent, despite being a less significant measurement. Additionally, we apply our model to current FRB data and use the uncertainty in the $\mathrm{DM}-z$ relation to impose limits on gravity. However, due to the limited sample size of current data, constraints are predominantly influenced by theoretical priors. Despite this, our study demonstrates that FRBs will significantly augment the limited set of cosmological probes available, playing a critical role in providing alternative tests of feedback, cosmology, and gravity. All codes used in this work are made publically available.

It is well-known that all Feynman integrals within a given family can be expressed as a finite linear combination of master integrals. The master integrals naturally group into sectors. Starting from two loops, there can exist sectors made up of more than one master integral. In this paper we show that such sectors may have additional symmetries. First of all, self-duality, which was first observed in Feynman integrals related to Calabi-Yau geometries, often carries over to non-Calabi-Yau Feynman integrals. Secondly, we show that in addition there can exist Galois symmetries relating integrals. In the simplest case of two master integrals within a sector, whose definition involves a square root r, we may choose a basis (I₁, I₂) such that I₂ is obtained from I₁ by the substitution r → ‑r. This pattern also persists in sectors, which a priori are not related to any square root with dependence on the kinematic variables. We show in several examples that in such cases a suitable redefinition of the integrals introduces constant square roots like <inline-formula id="IEq1"><mml:math display="inline"><mml:msqrt><mml:mn>3</mml:mn></mml:msqrt></mml:math></inline-formula>. The new master integrals are then again related by a Galois symmetry, for example the substitution <inline-formula id="IEq2"><mml:math display="inline"><mml:msqrt><mml:mn>3</mml:mn></mml:msqrt></mml:math></inline-formula> → <inline-formula id="IEq3"><mml:math display="inline"><mml:mo>‑</mml:mo><mml:msqrt><mml:mn>3</mml:mn></mml:msqrt></mml:math></inline-formula>. To handle the case where the argument of a square root would be a perfect square we introduce a limit Galois symmetry. Both self-duality and Galois symmetries constrain the differential equation.

The non-observation of baryon number violation suggests that the scale of baryon-number violating interactions at zero temperature is comparable to the GUT scale. However, the pertinent measurements involve hadrons made of the first-generation quarks, such as protons and neutrons. One may therefore entertain the idea that new flavour physics breaks baryon number at a much lower scale, but only in the coupling to a third generation quark, leading to observable baryon-number violating b-hadron decay rates. In this paper we show that indirect constraints on the new physics scale Λ_BNV from the existing bounds on the proton lifetime do not allow for this possibility. For this purpose we consider the three dominant proton decay channels p → <inline-formula id="IEq1"><mml:math display="inline"><mml:msup><mml:mi>ℓ</mml:mi><mml:mo>+</mml:mo></mml:msup><mml:msub><mml:mi>ν</mml:mi><mml:mi>ℓ</mml:mi></mml:msub><mml:mover accent="true"><mml:mi>ν</mml:mi><mml:mo stretchy="true">¯</mml:mo></mml:mover></mml:math></inline-formula>, p → <inline-formula id="IEq2"><mml:math display="inline"><mml:msup><mml:mi>π</mml:mi><mml:mo>+</mml:mo></mml:msup><mml:mover accent="true"><mml:mi>ν</mml:mi><mml:mo stretchy="true">¯</mml:mo></mml:mover></mml:math></inline-formula> and p → π⁰ℓ⁺ mediated by a virtual bottom quark.

Weak gravitational lensing is a powerful tool for precision tests of cosmology. As the expected deflection angles are small, predictions based on non-linear N-body simulations are commonly computed with the Born approximation. Here, we examine this assumption using DORIAN, a newly developed full-sky ray-tracing scheme applied to high-resolution mass-shell outputs of the two largest simulations in the MillenniumTNG suite, each with a 3000 Mpc box containing almost 1.1 trillion cold dark matter particles in addition to 16.7 billion particles representing massive neutrinos. We examine simple two-point statistics like the angular power spectrum of the convergence field, as well as statistics sensitive to higher order correlations such as peak and minimum statistics, void statistics, and Minkowski functionals of the convergence maps. Overall, we find only small differences between the Born approximation and a full ray-tracing treatment. While these are negligibly small at power-spectrum level, some higher order statistics show more sizeable effects; ray-tracing is necessary to achieve per cent level precision. At the resolution reached here, full-sky maps with 0.8 billion pixels and an angular resolution of 0.43 arcmin, we find that interpolation accuracy can introduce appreciable errors in ray-tracing results. We therefore implemented an interpolation method based on non-uniform fast Fourier transforms (NUFFT) along with more traditional methods. Bilinear interpolation introduces significant smoothing, while nearest grid point sampling agrees well with NUFFT, at least for our fiducial source redshift, <inline-formula><tex-math id="TM0001" notation="LaTeX">$z_s=1.0$</tex-math></inline-formula>, and for the 1 arcmin smoothing we use for higher order statistics.

We study particular integrated correlation functions of two superconformal primary operators of the stress tensor multiplet in the presence of a half-BPS line defect labelled by electromagnetic charges $(p,q)$ in $\mathcal{N}=4$ supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory (SYM) with gauge group $SU(N)$. An important consequence of ${\rm SL}(2,\mathbb{Z})$ electromagnetic duality in $\mathcal{N}=4$ SYM is that correlators of line defect operators with different charges $(p,q)$ must be related in a non-trivial manner when the complex coupling $\tau=\theta/(2\pi)+4\pi i /g_{_{\rm YM}}^2$ is transformed appropriately. In this work we introduce a novel class of real-analytic functions whose automorphic properties with respect to ${\rm SL}(2,\mathbb{Z})$ match the expected transformations of line defect operators in $\mathcal{N}=4$ SYM under electromagnetic duality. At large $N$ and fixed $\tau$, the correlation functions we consider are related to scattering amplitudes of two gravitons from extended $(p,q)$-strings in the holographic dual type IIB superstring theory. We show that the large-$N$ expansion coefficients of the integrated two-point line defect correlators are given by finite linear combinations with rational coefficients of elements belonging to this class of automorphic functions. On the other hand, for any fixed value of $N$ we conjecture that the line defect integrated correlators can be expressed as formal infinite series over such automorphic functions. The resummation of this series produces a simple lattice sum representation for the integrated line defect correlator that manifests its automorphic properties. We explicitly demonstrate this construction for the cases with gauge group $SU(2)$ and $SU(3)$. Our results give direct access to non-perturbative integrated correlators in the presence of an 't Hooft-line defect, observables otherwise very difficult to compute by other means.

Context. A correlation has been reported between the arrival directions of high-energy IceCube events and γ-ray blazars classified as intermediate- and high-synchrotron-peaked BL Lacs. Subsequent studies have investigated the optical properties of these sources, compiled and analyzed public multiwavelength data, and constrained their individual neutrino emission based on public IceCube point-source data. Aims. We provide a theoretical interpretation of public multiwavelength and neutrino point source data for the 32 BL Lac objects in the sample previously associated with an IceCube alert event. We combined the individual source results to draw conclusions regarding the multimesssenger properties of the sample and the required power in relativistic protons. Methods. We performed particle interaction modeling using open-source numerical simulation software. We constrained the model parameters using a novel and unique approach that simultaneously describes the host galaxy contribution, the observed synchrotron peak properties, the average multiwavelength fluxes, and, where possible, the IceCube point source constraints. Results. We show that a single-zone leptohadronic model can describe the multiwavelength broadband fluxes from all 32 IceCube candidates. In some cases, the model suggests that hadronic emission may contribute a considerable fraction of the γ-ray flux. The required power in relativistic protons ranges from a few percent to a factor of ten of the Eddington luminosity, which is energetically less demanding compared to other leptohadronic blazar models in recent literature. The model can describe the 68% confidence level IceCube flux for a large fraction of the masquerading BL Lacs in the sample, including TXS 0506+056; whereas, for true BL Lacs, the model predicts a low neutrino flux in the IceCube sensitivity range. Physically, this distinction is due to the presence of photons from broad line emission in masquerading BL Lacs, which increase the efficiency of hadronic interactions. The predicted neutrino flux peaks between a few petaelectronvolt and 100 PeV and scales positively with the flux in the gigaelectronvolt, megaelectronvolt, X-ray, and optical bands. Based on these results, we provide a list of the brightest neutrino emitters, which can be used for future searches targeting the 10–100 PeV regime.

In this work, we significantly enhance masked particle modeling (MPM), a self-supervised learning scheme for constructing highly expressive representations of unordered sets relevant to developing foundation models for high-energy physics. In MPM, a model is trained to recover the missing elements of a set, a learning objective that requires no labels and can be applied directly to experimental data. We achieve significant performance improvements over previous work on MPM by addressing inefficiencies in the implementation and incorporating a more powerful decoder. We compare several pre-training tasks and introduce new reconstruction methods that utilize conditional generative models without data tokenization or discretization. We show that these new methods outperform the tokenized learning objective from the original MPM on a new test bed for foundation models for jets, which includes using a wide variety of downstream tasks relevant to jet physics, such as classification, secondary vertex finding, and track identification.

The essence of the memory burden effect is that a load of information carried by a system stabilizes it. This universal effect is especially prominent in systems with a high capacity of information storage, such as black holes and other objects with maximal microstate degeneracy, the entities universally referred to as "saturons." The phenomenon has several implications. The memory burden effect suppresses a further decay of a black hole, the latest, after it has emitted about half of its initial mass. As a consequence, the light primordial black holes that previously were assumed to be fully evaporated are expected to be present as viable dark matter candidates. In the present paper, we deepen the understanding of the memory burden effect. We first identify various memory burden regimes in generic Hamiltonian systems and then establish a precise correspondence in solitons and in black holes. We make transparent, at a microscopic level, the fundamental differences between the stabilization by a quantum memory burden versus the stabilization by a long-range classical hair due to a spin or an electric charge. We identify certain new features of potential observational interest, such as the model-independent spread of the stabilized masses of initially degenerate primordial black holes.

We propose a simple fit function, <inline-formula><mml:math display="inline"><mml:msub><mml:mi>L</mml:mi><mml:msub><mml:mi>ν</mml:mi><mml:mi>i</mml:mi></mml:msub></mml:msub><mml:mo stretchy="false">(</mml:mo><mml:mi>t</mml:mi><mml:mo stretchy="false">)</mml:mo><mml:mo>=</mml:mo><mml:mi>C</mml:mi><mml:msup><mml:mi>t</mml:mi><mml:mrow><mml:mo>-</mml:mo><mml:mi>α</mml:mi></mml:mrow></mml:msup><mml:msup><mml:mi>e</mml:mi><mml:mrow><mml:mo>-</mml:mo><mml:mo stretchy="false">(</mml:mo><mml:mi>t</mml:mi><mml:mo>/</mml:mo><mml:mi>τ</mml:mi><mml:msup><mml:mo stretchy="false">)</mml:mo><mml:mi>n</mml:mi></mml:msup></mml:mrow></mml:msup></mml:math></inline-formula>, to parametrize the luminosities of neutrinos and antineutrinos of all flavors during the protoneutron star (PNS) cooling phase at postbounce times <inline-formula><mml:math display="inline"><mml:mi>t</mml:mi><mml:mo>≳</mml:mo><mml:mn>1</mml:mn><mml:mtext> </mml:mtext><mml:mtext> </mml:mtext><mml:mi mathvariant="normal">s</mml:mi></mml:math></inline-formula>. This fit is based on results from a set of neutrino-hydrodynamics simulations of core-collapse supernovae in spherical symmetry. The simulations were performed with an energy-dependent transport for six neutrino species and took into account the effects of convection and muons in the dense and hot PNS interior. We provide values of the fit parameters <inline-formula><mml:math display="inline"><mml:mi>C</mml:mi></mml:math></inline-formula>, <inline-formula><mml:math display="inline"><mml:mi>α</mml:mi></mml:math></inline-formula>, <inline-formula><mml:math display="inline"><mml:mi>τ</mml:mi></mml:math></inline-formula>, and <inline-formula><mml:math display="inline"><mml:mi>n</mml:mi></mml:math></inline-formula> for different neutron star masses and equations of state as well as correlations between these fit parameters. Our functional description is useful for analytic supernova modeling, for characterizing the neutrino light curves in large underground neutrino detectors, and as a tool to extract information from measured signals on the mass and equation of state of the PNS and on secondary signal components on top of the PNS's neutrino emission.

Neutron stars provide a unique opportunity to study strongly interacting matter under extreme density conditions. The intricacies of matter inside neutron stars and their equation of state are not directly visible, but determine bulk properties, such as mass and radius, which affect the star's thermal X-ray emissions. However, the telescope spectra of these emissions are also affected by the stellar distance, hydrogen column, and effective surface temperature, which are not always well-constrained. Uncertainties on these nuisance parameters must be accounted for when making a robust estimation of the equation of state. In this study, we develop a novel methodology that, for the first time, can infer the full posterior distribution of both the equation of state and nuisance parameters directly from telescope observations. This method relies on the use of neural likelihood estimation, in which normalizing flows use samples of simulated telescope data to learn the likelihood of the neutron star spectra as a function of these parameters, coupled with Hamiltonian Monte Carlo methods to efficiently sample from the corresponding posterior distribution. Our approach surpasses the accuracy of previous methods, improves the interpretability of the results by providing access to the full posterior distribution, and naturally scales to a growing number of neutron star observations expected in the coming years.

Gravitational lensing by galaxy clusters involves hundreds of galaxies over a large redshift range and increases the likelihood of rare phenomena (supernovae, microlensing, dark substructures, etc.). Characterizing the mass and light distributions of foreground and background objects often requires a combination of high-resolution data and advanced modeling techniques. We present the detailed analysis of El Anzuelo, a prominent quintuply imaged dusty star-forming galaxy (ɀ_s = 2.29), mainly lensed by three members of the massive galaxy cluster ACT-CL J0102–4915, also known as El Gordo (ɀ_d = 0.87). We leverage JWST/NIRCam images, which contain lensing features that were unseen in previous HST images, using a Bayesian, multi-wavelength, differentiable and GPU-accelerated modeling framework that combines HERCULENS (lens modeling) and NIFTY (field model and inference) software packages. For one of the deflectors, we complement lensing constraints with stellar kinematics measured from VLT/MUSE data. In our lens model, we explicitly include the mass distribution of the cluster, locally corrected by a constant shear field. We find that the two main deflectors (L1 and L2) have logarithmic mass density slopes steeper than isothermal, with γ_L1 = 2.23 ± 0.05 and γ_L2 = 2.21 ± 0.04. We argue that such steep density profiles can arise due to tidally truncated mass distributions, which we probe thanks to the cluster lensing boost and the strong asymmetry of the lensing configuration. Moreover, our three-dimensional source model captures most of the surface brightness of the lensed galaxy, revealing a clump with a maximum diameter of 400 parsecs at the source redshift, visible at wavelengths λ_rest ≳ 0.6 µm. Finally, we caution on using point-like features within extended arcs to constrain galaxy-scale lens models before securing them with extended arc modeling.

The joint probability distribution of matter overdensity and galaxy counts in cells is a powerful probe of cosmology, and the extent to which variance in galaxy counts at fixed matter density deviates from Poisson shot noise is not fully understood. The lack of informed bounds on this stochasticity is currently the limiting factor in constraining cosmology with the galaxy–matter probability distribution function (PDF). We investigate stochasticity in the conditional distribution of galaxy counts along lines of sight with fixed matter density, and we present a halo occupation distribution (HOD)-based approach for obtaining plausible ranges for stochasticity parameters. To probe the high-dimensional space of possible galaxy–matter connections, we derive a set of HODs that conserve the galaxies' linear bias and number density to produce REDMAGIC-like galaxy catalogs within the ABACUSSUMMIT suite of N-body simulations. We study the impact of individual HOD parameters and cosmology on stochasticity and perform a Monte Carlo search in HOD parameter space subject to the constraints on bias and density. In mock catalogs generated by the selected HODs, shot noise in galaxy counts spans both sub-Poisson and super-Poisson values, ranging from 80% to 133% of Poisson variance for cells with mean matter density. Nearly all of the derived HODs show a positive relationship between local matter density and stochasticity. For galaxy catalogs with higher stochasticity, modeling galaxy bias to second order is required for an accurate description of the conditional PDF of galaxy counts at fixed matter density. The presence of galaxy assembly bias also substantially extends the range of stochasticity in the super-Poisson direction. This HOD-based approach leverages degrees of freedom in the galaxy–halo connection to obtain informed bounds on nuisance model parameters and can be adapted to study other parametrizations of shot noise in galaxy counts, in particular to motivate prior ranges on stochasticity for cosmological analyses.

A newfound interest has been seen in narrowband galaxy surveys as a promising method for achieving the necessary accuracy on the photometric redshift estimate of individual galaxies for next-generation stage IV cosmological surveys. One key advantage is the ability to provide higher spectral resolution information on galaxies, which ought to allow for a more accurate and precise estimation of the stellar population properties for galaxies. However, the impact of adding narrowband photometry on the stellar population properties estimate is largely unexplored. The scope of this work is two-fold: 1) we leverage the predictive power of broadband and narrowband data to infer galaxy physical properties, such as stellar masses, ages, star formation rates, and metallicities; and 2) we evaluate the improvement of performance in estimating galaxy properties when we use narrowband instead of broadband data. In this work, we measured the stellar population properties of a sample of galaxies in the COSMOS field for which both narrowband and broadband data are available. In particular, we employed narrowband data from the Physics of the Accelerating Universe Survey (PAUS) and broadband data from the Canada France Hawaii Telescope legacy survey (CFHTLS). We used two different spectral energy distribution (SED) fitting codes to measure galaxy properties, namely, CIGALE and PROSPECTOR. We find that the increased spectral resolution of narrowband photom try does not yield a substantial improvement in terms of constraining the galaxy properties using the SED fitting. Nonetheless, we find that we are able to obtain a more diverse distribution of metallicities and dust optical depths with CIGALE when employing the narrowband data. The effect is not as prominent as expected, which we relate to the low narrowband signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) of a majority of the sampled galaxies, the respective drawbacks of both codes, and the restriction of coverage to the optical regime. The measured properties are compared to those reported in the COSMOS2020 catalogue, showing a good agreement. We have released the catalogue of measured properties in tandem with this work.