In modern collider experiments, the quest to explore fundamental interactions between elementary particles has reached unparalleled levels of precision. Signatures from particle physics detectors are low-level objects (such as energy depositions or tracks) encoding the physics of collisions (the final state particles of hard scattering interactions). The complete simulation of them in a detector is a computational and storage-intensive task. To address this computational bottleneck in particle physics, alternative approaches have been developed, introducing additional assumptions and trade off accuracy for speed. The field has seen a surge in interest in surrogate modeling the detector simulation, fueled by the advancements in deep generative models. These models aim to generate responses that are statistically identical to the observed data. In this paper, we conduct a comprehensive and exhaustive taxonomic review of the existing literature on the simulation of detector signatures from both methodological and application-wise perspectives. Initially, we formulate the problem of detector signature simulation and discuss its different variations that can be unified. Next, we classify the state-of-the-art methods into five distinct categories based on their underlying model architectures, summarizing their respective generation strategies. Finally, we shed light on the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead in detector signature simulation, setting the stage for future research and development.

We present the Astrophysical Multimessenger Modeling (AM ³ ) software. AM ³ is a documented open-source software (source code at gitlab.desy.de/am3/am3; user guide and documentation at am3.readthedocs.io/en/latest/) that efficiently solves the coupled integro-differential equations describing the temporal evolution of the spectral densities of particles interacting in astrophysical environments, including photons, electrons, positrons, protons, neutrons, pions, muons, and neutrinos. The software has been extensively used to simulate the multiwavelength and neutrino emission from active galactic nuclei (including blazars), gamma-ray bursts, and tidal disruption events. The simulations include all relevant nonthermal processes, namely synchrotron emission, inverse Compton scattering, photon–photon annihilation, proton–proton and proton–photon pion production, and photo-pair production. The software self-consistently calculates the full cascade of primary and secondary particles, including nonlinear feedback processes and predictions in the time domain. It also allows the user to track separately the particle densities produced by means of each distinct interaction process, including the different hadronic channels. With its efficient hybrid solver combining analytical and numerical techniques, AM ³ combines efficiency and accuracy at a user-adjustable level. We describe the technical details of the numerical framework and present three examples of applications to different astrophysical environments.

We extend the evolution-mapping approach, introduced in the first paper of this series to describe non-linear matter density fluctuations, to statistics of the cosmic velocity field. This framework classifies cosmological parameters into shape parameters, which determine the shape of the linear matter power spectrum, <inline-formula><tex-math id="TM0001" notation="LaTeX">$P_{\rm L}(k, z)$</tex-math></inline-formula>, and evolution parameters, which control its amplitude at any redshift. Evolution-mapping leverages the fact that density fluctuations in cosmologies with identical shape parameters but different evolution parameters exhibit similar non-linear evolutions when expressed as a function of clustering amplitude. We analyse a suite of N-body simulations sharing identical shape parameters but spanning a wide range of evolution parameters. Using a method for estimating the volume-weighted velocity field based on the Voronoi tessellation of simulation particles, we study the non-linear evolution of the velocity divergence power spectrum, <inline-formula><tex-math id="TM0002" notation="LaTeX">$P_{\theta \theta }(k)$</tex-math></inline-formula>, and its cross-power spectrum with the density field, <inline-formula><tex-math id="TM0003" notation="LaTeX">$P_{\delta \theta }(k)$</tex-math></inline-formula>. We demonstrate that the evolution-mapping relation applies accurately to <inline-formula><tex-math id="TM0004" notation="LaTeX">$P_{\theta \theta }(k)$</tex-math></inline-formula> and <inline-formula><tex-math id="TM0005" notation="LaTeX">$P_{\delta \theta }(k)$</tex-math></inline-formula>. While this breaks down in the strongly non-linear regime, deviations can be modelled in terms of differences in the suppression factor, <inline-formula><tex-math id="TM0006" notation="LaTeX">$g(a) = D(a)/a$</tex-math></inline-formula>, similar to those for the density field. Such modelling describes the differences in <inline-formula><tex-math id="TM0007" notation="LaTeX">$P_{\theta \theta }(k)$</tex-math></inline-formula> between models with the same linear clustering amplitude to better than 1 per cent accuracy at all scales and redshifts considered. Evolution-mapping simplifies the description of the cosmological dependence of non-linear density and velocity statistics, streamlining the sampling of large cosmological parameter spaces for cosmological analysis.

Very-metal-poor stars ([Fe/H] < ‑2) are important laboratories for testing stellar models and reconstructing the formation history of our galaxy. Asteroseismology is a powerful tool to probe stellar interiors and measure ages, but few asteroseismic detections are known in very-metal-poor stars and none have allowed detailed modeling of oscillation frequencies. We report the discovery of a low-luminosity Kepler red giant (KIC 8144907) with high signal-to-noise ratio oscillations, [Fe/H] = ‑2.66 ± 0.08 and [α/Fe] = 0.38 ± 0.06, making it by far the most metal-poor star to date for which detailed asteroseismic modeling is possible. By combining the oscillation spectrum from Kepler with high-resolution spectroscopy, we measure an asteroseismic mass and age of 0.79 ± 0.02(ran) ± 0.01(sys) M _⊙ and 12.0 ± 0.6(ran) ± 0.4(sys) Gyr, with remarkable agreement across different codes and input physics, demonstrating that stellar models and asteroseismology are reliable for very-metal-poor stars when individual frequencies are used. The results also provide a direct age anchor for the early formation of the Milky Way, implying that substantial star formation did not commence until redshift z ≈ 3 (if the star formed in situ) or that the Milky Way has undergone merger events for at least ≈12 Gyr (if the star was accreted by a dwarf satellite merger such as Gaia-Enceladus).

Recent observations of volume-limited samples of magnetic white dwarfs (WD) have revealed a higher incidence of magnetism in older WDs. Specifically, these studies indicate that magnetism is more prevalent in WDs with fully or partially crystallized cores compared to those with entirely liquid cores. This has led to the recognition of a crystallization-driven dynamo as an important mechanism for explaining magnetism in isolated WDs. However, recent simulations challenged the capability of this mechanism to match both the incidence of magnetism and the field strengths detected in WDs. In this letter, we explore an alternative hypothesis for the surface emergence of magnetic fields in isolated WDs. WDs with masses $\gtrsim 0.55 M_\odot$ are the descendants of main-sequence stars with convective cores capable of generating strong dynamo magnetic fields. This idea is supported by asteroseismic evidence of strong magnetic fields buried within the interiors of red giant branch stars. Assuming that these fields are disrupted by subsequent convective zones, we have estimated magnetic breakout times for WDs. Due to the significant uncertainties in breakout times stemming from the treatment of convective boundaries and mass loss rates, we cannot provide a precise prediction for the emergence time of the main-sequence dynamo field. However, we can predict that this emergence should occur during the WD phase for WDs with masses $\gtrsim 0.65 M_\odot$. We also find that the magnetic breakout is expected to occur earlier in more massive WDs, consistently with observations from volume-limited samples and the well-established fact that magnetic WDs tend to be more massive than non-magnetic ones. Moreover, within the uncertainties of stellar evolutionary models, we find that the emergence of main-sequence dynamo magnetic fields can account for a significant portion of the magnetic WDs.

The high-precision measurements of exoplanet transit light curves that are now available contain information about the planet properties, their orbital parameters, and stellar limb darkening (LD). Recent 3D magnetohydrodynamical (MHD) simulations of stellar atmospheres have shown that LD depends on the photospheric magnetic field, and hence its precise determination can be used to estimate the field strength. Among existing LD laws, the uses of the simplest ones may lead to biased inferences, whereas the uses of complex laws typically lead to a large degeneracy among the LD parameters. We have developed a novel approach in which we use a complex LD model but with second derivative regularization during the fitting process. Regularization controls the complexity of the model appropriately and reduces the degeneracy among LD parameters, thus resulting in precise inferences. The tests on simulated data suggest that our inferences are not only precise but also accurate. This technique is used to re-analyse 43 transit light curves measured by the NASA Kepler and Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite missions. Comparisons of our LD inferences with the corresponding literature values show good agreement, while the precisions of our measurements are better by up to a factor of 2. We find that 1D non-magnetic model atmospheres fail to reproduce the observations while 3D MHD simulations are qualitatively consistent. The LD measurements, together with MHD simulations, confirm that Kepler-17, WASP-18, and KELT-24 have relatively high magnetic fields (<inline-formula><tex-math id="TM0001" notation="LaTeX">$\gt 200$</tex-math></inline-formula> G). This study paves the way for estimating the stellar surface magnetic field using the LD measurements.

Aims. Our goal is twofold. First, to detect new clusters we apply the newest methods for the detection of clustering with the best available wide-field sky surveys in the mid-infrared because they are the least affected by extinction. Second, we address the question of cluster detection's completeness, for now limiting it to the most massive star clusters. Methods. This search is based on the mid-infrared Galactic Legacy Infrared Mid Plane Survey Extraordinaire (GLIMPSE), to minimize the effect of dust extinction. The search Ordering Points To Identify the Clustering Structure (OPTICS) clustering algorithm is applied to identify clusters, after excluding the bluest, presumably foreground sources, to improve the cluster-to-field contrast. The success rate for cluster identification is estimated with a semi-empirical simulation that adds clusters, based on the real objects, to the point source catalog, to be recovered later with the same search algorithm that was used in the search for new cluster candidates. As a first step, this is limited to the most massive star clusters with a total mass of 104 $M_\odot$. Results. Our automated search, combined with inspection of the color-magnitude diagrams and images yielded 659 cluster candidates; 106 of these appear to have been previously identified, suggesting that a large hidden population of star clusters still exists in the inner Milky Way. However, the search for the simulated supermassive clusters achieves a recovery rate of 70 to 95%, depending on the distance and extinction toward them. Conclusions. The new candidates, if confirmed, indicate that the Milky Way still harbors a sizeable population of still unknown clusters. However, they must be objects of modest richness, because our simulation indicates that there is no substantial hidden population of supermassive clusters in the central region of our Galaxy.

Future cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiments are primarily targeting a detection of the primordial $B$-mode polarisation. The faintness of this signal requires exquisite control of systematic effects which may bias the measurements. In this work, we derive requirements on the relative calibration accuracy of the overall polarisation gain ($\Delta g_\nu$) for LiteBIRD experiment, through the application of the blind Needlet Internal Linear Combination (NILC) foreground-cleaning method. We find that minimum variance techniques, as NILC, are less affected by gain calibration uncertainties than a parametric approach, which requires a proper modelling of these instrumental effects. The tightest constraints are obtained for frequency channels where the CMB signal is relatively brighter (166 GHz channel, $\Delta {g}_\nu \approx 0.16 \%$), while, with a parametric approach, the strictest requirements were on foreground-dominated channels. We then propagate gain calibration uncertainties, corresponding to the derived requirements, into all frequency channels simultaneously. We find that the overall impact on the estimated $r$ is lower than the required budget for LiteBIRD by almost a factor $5$. The adopted procedure to derive requirements assumes a simple Galactic model. We therefore assess the robustness of obtained results against more realistic scenarios by injecting the gain calibration uncertainties, according to the requirements, into LiteBIRD simulated maps and assuming intermediate- and high-complexity sky models. In this case, we employ the so-called Multi-Clustering NILC (MC-NILC) foreground-cleaning pipeline and obtain that the impact of gain calibration uncertainties on $r$ is lower than the LiteBIRD gain systematics budget for the intermediate-complexity sky model. For the high-complexity case, instead, it would be necessary to tighten the requirements by a factor $1.8$.

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.

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 discuss the relation between the Koonin-Pratt femtoscopic correlation function (CF) and invariant mass distributions from production experiments. We show that the equivalence is total for a zero source-size and that a Gaussian finite-size source provides a form-factor for the virtual production of the particles. Motivated by this remarkable relationship, we study an alternative method to the Koonin-Pratt formula, which connects the evaluation of the CF directly with the production mechanisms. The differences arise mostly from the $T$-matrix quadratic terms and increase with the source size. We study the case of the $D^0 D^{\ast +}$ and $D^+ D^{\ast 0}$ correlation functions of interest to unravel the dynamics of the exotic $T_ {cc}(3875)^+$, and find that these differences become quite sizable already for 1 fm sources. We nevertheless conclude that the lack of coherence in high-multiplicity-event reactions and in the creation of the fire-ball source that emits the hadrons certainly make much more realistic the formalism based on the Koonin-Pratt equation. We finally derive an improved Lednicky-Lyuboshits (LL) approach, which implements a Lorentz ultraviolet regulator that corrects the pathological behaviour of the LL CF in the punctual source-size limit.

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.

We study a flaring activity of the HSP Mrk421 that was characterized from radio to very-high-energy (VHE; E $>0.1$TeV) gamma rays with MAGIC, Fermi-LAT, Swift, XMM-Newton and several optical and radio telescopes. These observations included, for the first time for a gamma-ray flare of a blazar, simultaneous X-ray polarization measurements with IXPE. We find substantial variability in both X-rays and VHE gamma rays throughout the campaign, with the highest VHE flux above 0.2 TeV occurring during the IXPE observing window, and exceeding twice the flux of the Crab Nebula. However, the VHE and X-ray spectra are on average softer, and the correlation between these two bands weaker that those reported in previous flares of Mrk421. IXPE reveals an X-ray polarization degree significantly higher than that at radio and optical frequencies. The X-ray polarization angle varies by $\sim$100$^\circ$ on timescales of days, and the polarization degree changes by more than a factor 4. The highest X-ray polarization degree reaches 26%, around which a X-ray counter-clockwise hysteresis loop is measured with XMM-Newton. It suggests that the X-ray emission comes from particles close to the high-energy cutoff, hence possibly probing an extreme case of the Turbulent Extreme Multi-Zone model. We model the broadband emission with a simplified stratified jet model throughout the flare. The polarization measurements imply an electron distribution in the X-ray emitting region with a very high minimum Lorentz factor, which is expected in electron-ion plasma, as well as a variation of the emitting region size up to a factor of three during the flaring activity. We find no correlation between the fluxes and the evolution of the model parameters, which indicates a stochastic nature of the underlying physical mechanism. Such behaviour would be expected in a highly turbulent electron-ion plasma crossing a shock front.

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.

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.

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.

ALMA has detected substructures in numerous protoplanetary disks at radii from a few to over a hundred au. These substructures are commonly thought to be associated with planet formation, either by serving as sites fostering planetesimal formation or 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 ($\sim8$ au) ALMA 1.3 mm continuum images of eight disks in $\sigma$ 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 semi-major 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 $\sigma$ 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.

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 $\overline{126}_H$ 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 $N_2$ dynamics while $N_1$ 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 $\delta_\mathrm{CP}$ indicated by global fits of neutrino oscillation data, while also satisfying the current limits from neutrinoless double beta decay experiments. In particular, the the leptonic CP-violating phase has a preference to be in the range $\delta_\mathrm{CP}\simeq (230-300)^\circ$. We also show the consistency of the framework with gauge coupling unification and proton lifetime limits.

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.

For cellular functions like division and polarization, protein pattern formation driven by NTPase cycles is a central spatial control strategy. Operating far from equilibrium, no general theory links microscopic reaction networks and parameters to the pattern type and dynamics. We discover a generic mechanism giving rise to an effective interfacial tension organizing the macroscopic structure of non-equilibrium steady-state patterns. Namely, maintaining protein-density interfaces by cyclic protein attachment and detachment produces curvature-dependent protein redistribution which straightens the interface. We develop a non-equilibrium Neumann angle law and Plateau vertex conditions for interface junctions and mesh patterns, thus introducing the concepts of ``Turing mixtures'' and ``Turing foams''. In contrast to liquid foams and mixtures, these non-equilibrium patterns can select an intrinsic wavelength by interrupting an equilibrium-like coarsening process. Data from in vitro experiments with the E. coli Min protein system verifies the vertex conditions and supports the wavelength dynamics. Our study uncovers interface laws with correspondence to thermodynamic relations that arise from distinct physical processes in active systems. It allows the design of specific pattern morphologies with potential applications as spatial control strategies in synthetic cells.

In dense neutrino environments, such as provided by core-collapse supernovae or neutron-star mergers, neutrino angular distributions may be unstable to collective flavor conversions, whose outcome remains to be fully understood. These conversions are much faster than hydrodynamical scales, suggesting that self-consistent configurations may never be strongly unstable. With this motivation in mind, we study weakly unstable modes, i.e., those with small growth rates. We show that our newly developed dispersion relation (Paper~I of this series) allows for an expansion in powers of the small growth rate. For weakly unstable distributions, we show that the unstable modes must either move with subluminal phase velocity, or very close to the speed of light. The instability is fed from neutrinos moving resonantly with the waves, allowing us to derive explicit expressions for the growth rate. For axisymmetric distributions, often assumed in the literature, numerical examples show the accuracy of these expressions. We also note that for the often-studied one-dimensional systems one should not forget the axial-symmetry-breaking modes, and we provide explicit expressions for the range of wavenumbers that exhibit instabilities.

We propose masked particle modeling (MPM) as a self-supervised method for learning generic, transferable, and reusable representations on unordered sets of inputs for use in high energy physics (HEP) scientific data. This work provides a novel scheme to perform masked modeling based pre-training to learn permutation invariant functions on sets. More generally, this work provides a step towards building large foundation models for HEP that can be generically pre-trained with self-supervised learning and later fine-tuned for a variety of down-stream tasks. In MPM, particles in a set are masked and the training objective is to recover their identity, as defined by a discretized token representation of a pre-trained vector quantized variational autoencoder. We study the efficacy of the method in samples of high energy jets at collider physics experiments, including studies on the impact of discretization, permutation invariance, and ordering. We also study the fine-tuning capability of the model, showing that it can be adapted to tasks such as supervised and weakly supervised jet classification, and that the model can transfer efficiently with small fine-tuning data sets to new classes and new data domains.

We present a plausible and coherent view of the evolution of the protosolar disk that is consistent with the cosmochemical constraints and compatible with observations of other protoplanetary disks and sophisticated numerical simulations. The evidence that high-temperature condensates, CAIs and AOAs, formed near the protosun before being transported to the outer disk can be explained by either an early phase of vigorous radial spreading of the disk, or fast transport of these condensates from the vicinity of the protosun towards large disk radii via the protostellar outflow. The assumption that the material accreted towards the end of the infall phase was isotopically distinct allows us to explain the observed dichotomy in nucleosynthetic isotopic anomalies of meteorites and leads to intriguing predictions on the isotopic composition of refractory elements in comets. When the infall of material waned, the disk started to evolve as an accretion disk. Initially, dust drifted inwards, shrinking the radius of the dust component to ~ 45 au, probably about 1/2 of the width of the gas component. Then structures must have emerged, producing a series of pressure maxima in the disk which trapped the dust on My timescales. This allowed planetesimals to form at radically distinct times without changing significantly of isotopic properties. There was no late accretion of material onto the disk via streamers. The disk disappeared in ~5 Myr, as indicated by paleomagnetic data in meteorites. In conclusion, the evolution of the protosolar disk seems to have been quite typical in terms of size, lifetime, and dust behavior, suggesting that the peculiarities of the Solar system with respect to extrasolar planetary system probably originate from the chaotic nature of planet formation and not at the level of the parental disk.

We present magnetohydrodynamic simulations of star formation in the multiphase interstellar medium to quantify the impact of non-ionising far-ultraviolet (FUV) radiation. This study is carried out within the framework of the \textsc{Silcc Project}. It incorporates the radiative transfer of ionising radiation and self-consistent modelling of variable FUV radiation from star clusters. Near young star clusters, the interstellar radiation field (ISRF) can reach values of $G_0 \approx 10^4$ (in Habing units), far exceeding the canonical solar neighbourhood value of $G_0 = 1.7$. However, our findings suggest that FUV radiation has minimal impact on the integrated star formation rate compared to other feedback mechanisms such as ionising radiation, stellar winds, and supernovae. Only a slight decrease in star formation burstiness, related to increased photoelectric heating efficiency by the variable FUV radiation field, is detectable. Dust near star-forming regions can be heated up to 60 K via the photoelectric (PE) effect, showing a broad temperature distribution. PE heating rates for variable FUV radiation models show higher peak intensities but lower average heating rates than static ISRF models. Simulations of solar neighbourhood conditions without stellar winds or ionising radiation but with self-consistent ISRF and supernovae show high star formation rates $\sim10^{-1}\,\mathrm{M_\odot\,yr^{-1}\,kpc^{-2}}$, contradicting expectations. Our chemical analysis reveals increased cold neutral medium volume-filling factors (VFF) outside the vicinity of stellar clusters with a variable ISRF. Simultaneously, the thermally unstable gas is reduced, and a sharper separation of warm and cold gas phases is observed. The variable FUV field also promotes a diffuse molecular gas phase with VFF of $\sim5-10$~per cent.

Time-delay cosmography is a powerful technique to constrain cosmological parameters, particularly the Hubble constant (H₀). The TDCOSMO Collaboration is performing an ongoing analysis of lensed quasars to constrain cosmology using this method. In this work, we obtain constraints from the lensed quasar WGD 2038‑4008 using new time-delay measurements and previous mass models by TDCOSMO. This is the first TDCOSMO lens to incorporate multiple lens modeling codes and the full time-delay covariance matrix into the cosmological inference. The models are fixed before the time delay is measured, and the analysis is performed blinded with respect to the cosmological parameters to prevent unconscious experimenter bias. We obtain D_{Δ t} = 1.68_‑0.38^+0.40 Gpc using two families of mass models, a power-law describing the total mass distribution, and a composite model of baryons and dark matter, although the composite model is disfavored due to kinematics constraints. In a flat ΛCDM cosmology, we constrain the Hubble constant to be H₀ = 65_‑14⁺²³ km s^‑1 Mpc^‑1. The dominant source of uncertainty comes from the time delays, due to the low variability of the quasar. Future long-term monitoring, especially in the era of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory's Legacy Survey of Space and Time, could catch stronger quasar variability and further reduce the uncertainties. This system will be incorporated into an upcoming hierarchical analysis of the entire TDCOSMO sample, and improved time delays and spatially-resolved stellar kinematics could strengthen the constraints from this system in the future.

Chemo-mechanical waves on active deformable surfaces are a key component for many vital cellular functions. In particular, these waves play a major role in force generation and long-range signal transmission in cells that dynamically change shape, as encountered during cell division or morphogenesis. Reconstituting and controlling such chemically controlled cell deformations is a crucial but unsolved challenge for the development of synthetic cells. Here, we develop an optogenetic method to elucidate the mechanism responsible for coordinating surface contraction waves that occur in oocytes of the starfish Patiria miniata during meiotic cell division. Using spatiotemporally-patterned light stimuli as a control input, we create chemo-mechanical cortical excitations that are decoupled from meiotic cues and drive diverse shape deformations ranging from local pinching to surface contraction waves and cell lysis. We develop a quantitative model that entails the hierarchy of chemical and mechanical dynamics, which allows to relate the variety of mechanical responses to optogenetic stimuli. Our framework systematically predicts and explains transitions of programmed shape dynamics. Finally, we qualitatively map the observed shape dynamics to elucidate how the versatility of intracellular protein dynamics can give rise to a broad range of mechanical phenomenologies. More broadly, our results pave the way toward real-time control over dynamical deformations in living organisms and can advance the design of synthetic cells and life-like cellular functions.

Early-type stars have convective cores due to a steep temperature gradient produced by the CNO cycle. These cores can host dynamos, and the generated magnetic fields can be relevant to explain the magnetism observed in Ap/Bp stars. Our main objective is to characterise the convective core dynamos and differential rotation, and to do the first quantitative analysis of the relation between magnetic activity cycle and rotation period. We use numerical 3D star-in-a-box simulations of a $2.2~M_\odot$ A-type star with a convective core of roughly $20\%$ of the stellar radius surrounded by a radiative envelope. Rotation rates from 8 to 20 days are explored. We use two models of the entire star, and an additional zoom set, where $50\%$ of the radius is retained. The simulations produce hemispheric core dynamos with cycles and typical magnetic field strengths around 60 kG. However, only a very small fraction of the magnetic energy is able to reach the surface. The cores have solar-like differential rotation, and a substantial part of the radiative envelope has quasi-rigid rotation. In the most rapidly rotating cases the magnetic energy in the core is roughly 40\% of the kinetic energy. Finally, we find that the magnetic cycle period $P_\mathrm{cyc}$ increases with decreasing the rotation period $P_\mathrm{rot}$ which is also observed in many simulations of solar-type stars. Our simulations indicate that a strong hemispherical core dynamo arises routinely, but that it is not enough the explain the surface magnetism of Ap/Bp stars. Nevertheless, as the core dynamo produces dynamically relevant magnetic fields it should not be neglected when other mechanisms are explored.

A possible way of constructing polylogarithms on Riemann surfaces of higher genera facilitates integration kernels, which can be derived from generating functions incorporating the geometry of the surface. Functional relations between polylogarithms rely on identities for those integration kernels. In this article, we derive identities for Enriquez' meromorphic generating function and investigate the implications for the associated integration kernels. The resulting identities are shown to be exhaustive and therefore reproduce all identities for Enriquez' kernels conjectured in arXiv:2407.11476 recently.

The self-organization of proteins into enriched compartments and the formation of complex patterns are crucial processes for life on the cellular level. Liquid-liquid phase separation is one mechanism for forming such enriched compartments. When phase-separating proteins are membrane-bound and locally disturb it, the mechanical response of the membrane mediates interactions between these proteins. How these membrane-mediated interactions influence the steady state of the protein density distribution is thus an important question to investigate in order to understand the rich diversity of protein and membrane-shape patterns present at the cellular level. This work starts with a widely used model for membrane-bound phase-separating proteins. We numerically solve our system to map out its phase space and perform a careful, systematic expansion of the model equations to characterize the phase transitions through linear stability analysis and free energy arguments. We observe that the membrane-mediated interactions, due to their long-range nature, are capable of qualitatively altering the equilibrium state of the proteins. This leads to arrested coarsening and length-scale selection instead of simple demixing and complete coarsening. In this study, we unambiguously show that long-range membrane-mediated interactions lead to pattern formation in a system that otherwise would not do so. This work provides a basis for further systematic study of membrane-bound pattern-forming systems.

Water-based Liquid Scintillator (WbLS) is a novel detector medium for particle physics experiments. Applications range from the use as hybrid Cherenkov/scintillation target in low-energy and accelerator neutrino experiments to large-volume neutron vetoes for dark matter detectors. Here we present a WbLS based on well-known components (the surfactant Triton-X, the fluor PPO and vitamin C for long-term stability), with which a new recipe was developed and the result subjected to a thorough characterization of its properties. In addition, based on neutron scattering data we are able to demonstrate that the pulse shape discrimination capabilities of this particular LS are comparable to all-organic LAB based scintillators.

The origin of atmospheric heating in the cool, magnetic white dwarf GD 356 remains unsolved nearly 40 years after its discovery. This once idiosyncratic star with T_eff ≈ 7500 K, yet Balmer lines in Zeeman-split emission is now part of a growing class of white dwarfs exhibiting similar features, and which are tightly clustered in the HR diagram suggesting an intrinsic power source. This paper proposes that convective motions associated with an internal dynamo can power electric currents along magnetic field lines that heat the atmosphere via Ohmic dissipation. Such currents would require a dynamo driven by core ²²Ne distillation, and would further corroborate magnetic field generation in white dwarfs by this process. The model predicts that the heating will be highest near the magnetic poles, and virtually absent toward the equator, in agreement with observations. This picture is also consistent with the absence of X-ray or extreme ultraviolet emission, because the resistivity would decrease by several orders of magnitude at the typical coronal temperatures. The proposed model suggests that i) DAHe stars are mergers with enhanced ²²Ne that enables distillation and may result in significant cooling delays; and ii) any mergers that distill neon will generate magnetism and chromospheres. The predicted chromospheric emission is consistent with the two known massive DQe white dwarfs.

One of the most promising approaches for the next generation of neutrino experiments is the realization of large hybrid Cherenkov/scintillation detectors made possible by recent innovations in photodetection technology and liquid scintillator chemistry. The development of a potentially suitable future detector liquid with particularly slow light emission is discussed in the present publication. This cocktail is compared with respect to its fundamental characteristics (scintillation efficiency, transparency, and time profile of light emission) with liquid scintillators currently used in large-scale neutrino detectors. In addition, the optimization of the admixture of wavelength shifters for a scintillator with particularly high light emission is presented. Furthermore, the pulse-shape discrimination capabilities of the novel medium was studied using a pulsed particle accelerator driven neutron source. Beyond that, purification methods based on column chromatography and fractional vacuum distillation for the co-solvent DIN (Diisopropylnaphthalene) are discussed.

Context. Dark matter (DM) halos can be subject to gravothermal collapse if the DM is not collisionless, but engaged in strong self-interactions instead. When the scattering is able to efficiently transfer heat from the centre to the outskirts, the central region of the halo collapses and reaches densities much higher than those for collisionless DM. This phenomenon is potentially observable in studies of strong lensing. Current theoretical efforts are motivated by observations of surprisingly dense substructures. However, a comparison with observations requires accurate predictions. One method to obtain such predictions is to use N-body simulations. Collapsed halos are extreme systems that pose severe challenges when applying state-of-the-art codes to model self-interacting dark matter (SIDM). Aims. In this work, we investigate the root of such problems, with a focus on energy non-conservation. Moreover, we discuss possible strategies to avoid them. Methods. We ran N-body simulations, both with and without SIDM, of an isolated DM-only halo and we adjusted the numerical parameters to check the accuracy of the simulation. Results. We find that not only the numerical scheme for SIDM can lead to energy non-conservation, but also the modelling of gravitational interaction and the time integration are problematic. The main issues we find are: (a) particles changing their time step in a non-time-reversible manner; (b) the asymmetry in the tree-based gravitational force evaluation; and (c) SIDM velocity kicks breaking the time symmetry. Conclusions. Tuning the parameters of the simulation to achieve a high level of accuracy allows us to conserve energy not only at early stages of the evolution, but also later on. However, the cost of the simulations becomes prohibitively large as a result. Some of the problems that make the simulations of the gravothermal collapse phase inaccurate can be overcome by choosing appropriate numerical schemes. However, other issues still pose a challenge. Our findings motivate further works on addressing the challenges in simulating strong DM self-interactions.

Cryogenic scintillating calorimeters are ultra- sensitive particle detectors for rare event searches, particularly for the search for dark matter and the measurement of neutrino properties. These detectors are made from scintillating target crystals generating two signals for each particle interaction. The phonon (heat) signal precisely measures the deposited energy independent of the type of interacting particle. The scintillation light signal yields particle discrimination on an event-by-event basis. This paper presents a likelihood framework modeling backgrounds and a potential dark matter signal in the two-dimensional plane spanned by phonon and scintillation light energies. We apply the framework to data from CaWO<inline-formula id="IEq1"><mml:math><mml:mmultiscripts><mml:mrow></mml:mrow><mml:mn>4</mml:mn><mml:mrow></mml:mrow></mml:mmultiscripts></mml:math></inline-formula>-based detectors operated in the CRESST dark matter search. For the first time, a single likelihood framework is used in CRESST to model the data and extract results on dark matter in one step by using a profile likelihood ratio test. Our framework simultaneously fits (neutron) calibration data and physics (background) data and allows combining data from multiple detectors. Although tailored to CaWO<inline-formula id="IEq2"><mml:math><mml:mmultiscripts><mml:mrow></mml:mrow><mml:mn>4</mml:mn><mml:mrow></mml:mrow></mml:mmultiscripts></mml:math></inline-formula>-targets and the CRESST experiment, the framework can easily be expanded to other materials and experiments using scintillating cryogenic calorimeters for dark matter search and neutrino physics.

Many advances in astronomy and astrophysics originate from accurate images of the sky emission across multiple wavelengths. This often requires reconstructing spatially and spectrally correlated signals detected from multiple instruments. To facilitate the high-fidelity imaging of these signals, we introduce the universal Bayesian imaging kit (UBIK). Specifically, we present J-UBIK, a flexible and modular implementation leveraging the JAX-accelerated NIFTy.re software as its backend. J-UBIK streamlines the implementation of the key Bayesian inference components, providing for all the necessary steps of Bayesian imaging pipelines. First, it provides adaptable prior models for different sky realizations. Second, it includes likelihood models tailored to specific instruments. So far, the package includes three instruments: Chandra and eROSITA for X-ray observations, and the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) for the near- and mid-infrared. The aim is to expand this set in the future. Third, these models can be integrated with various inference and optimization schemes, such as maximum a posteriori estimation and variational inference. Explicit demos show how to integrate the individual modules into a full analysis pipeline. Overall, J-UBIK enables efficient generation of high-fidelity images via Bayesian pipelines that can be tailored to specific research objectives.

We present new VLT/MUSE observations of the Hubble Frontier Field (HFF) galaxy cluster MACS J1149.5+2223, lensing the well-known supernova "Refsdal" into multiple images, which has enabled the first cosmological applications with a strongly lensed supernova. Thanks to these data, targeting a northern region of the cluster and thus complementing our previous MUSE program on the cluster core, we have released a new catalog containing 162 secure spectroscopic redshifts. We confirmed 22 cluster members, which had previously been only photometrically selected, and detected ten additional ones, resulting in a total of 308 secure members, of which 63% are spectroscopically confirmed. We further identified 17 new spectroscopic multiple images belonging to six different background sources. By exploiting these new and our previously published MUSE data, in combination with the deep HFF images, we developed an improved total mass model of MACS J1149.5+2223. This model includes 308 total mass components for the member galaxies and requires four additional mass profiles, one of which is associated with a cluster galaxy overdensity identified in the north, representing the dark matter mass distribution on larger scales. The values of the resulting 34 free parameters are optimized based on the observed positions of 106 multiple images from 34 different families, that cover an extended redshift range between 1.240 and 5.983. Our final model has a multiple image position root mean square value of 0.39″, which is in good agreement with other cluster lens models based on a similar number of multiple images. With this refined mass model, we have paved the way toward an improved strong-lensing analyses that will exploit the deep and high resolution observations with HST and JWST on a pixel level in the region of the supernova Refsdal host. This will increase the number of observables by around two orders of magnitude, thus offering the opportunity to carry out more precise and accurate cosmographic measurements in the future. ⋆ This work is based in large part on data collected at ESO VLT (prog.IDs 294.A-5032 and 105.20P5.001) and NASA HST.

The hypergeometric amplitude is a one-parameter deformation of the Veneziano amplitude for four-point tachyon scattering in bosonic string theory that is consistent with $S$-matrix bootstrap constraints. In this article we construct a similar hypergeometric generalization of the Veneziano amplitude for type-I superstring theory. We then rule out a large region of the $(r,m^2,D)$ parameter space as non-unitary, and establish another large subset of the $(r, m^2, D)$ parameter space where all partial wave coefficients are positive. We also analyze positivity in various limits and special cases. As a corollary to our analysis, we are able to directly demonstrate positivity of a wider set of Veneziano amplitude partial wave coefficients than what has been presented elsewhere.