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.

We propose heavy axions as a natural superheavy dark matter candidate in string theory, with the relic density of dark matter originating in quantum fluctuations during cosmic inflation. String theory is well known for the possibility of having tens to hundreds of axionlike particles—the axiverse. Moduli stabilization generates high-scale masses for many of these, placing them naturally in the "superheavy" regime of particle physics. We consider moduli stabilization in the Kachru-Kallosh-Linde-Trivedi framework, featuring a single volume modulus and <inline-formula><mml:math><mml:msub><mml:mi>C</mml:mi><mml:mn>4</mml:mn></mml:msub></mml:math></inline-formula> axion, and a fiducial inflation model minimally coupled to the volume modulus. We demonstrate that both the volume modulus and the axion can be abundantly produced through gravitational particle production. The former is unstable and readily decays to Standard Model particles while the latter (the axion) can be stable and survives to constitute the present day dark matter.

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 snakelike 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.

We apply the framework of Vlasov perturbation theory (<inline-formula><mml:math><mml:mrow><mml:mi>VPT</mml:mi></mml:mrow></mml:math></inline-formula>) to the two-loop matter power spectrum within <inline-formula><mml:math><mml:mi>Λ</mml:mi></mml:math></inline-formula> cold dark matter cosmologies. The main difference to standard perturbation theory (SPT) arises from taking the velocity dispersion tensor into account, and the resulting screening of the backreaction of UV modes renders loop integrals cutoff independent. <inline-formula><mml:math><mml:mrow><mml:mi>VPT</mml:mi></mml:mrow></mml:math></inline-formula> is informed about nonperturbative small-scale dynamics via the average value of the dispersion generated by shell-crossing, which impacts the evolution of perturbations on weakly nonlinear scales. When using an average dispersion from halo models, the <inline-formula><mml:math><mml:mrow><mml:mi>VPT</mml:mi></mml:mrow></mml:math></inline-formula> power spectrum agrees with the one from the simulation, up to differences from missing three-loop contributions. Alternatively, treating the average dispersion as a free parameter we find a remarkably stable prediction of the matter power spectrum from collisionless dynamics at percent level for a wide range of the dispersion scale. We quantify the impact of truncating the Vlasov hierarchy for the cumulants of the phase-space distribution function, finding that the two-loop matter power spectrum is robust to neglecting third and higher cumulants. Finally, we introduce and validate a simplified fast scheme fast <inline-formula><mml:math><mml:mrow><mml:mi>VPT</mml:mi></mml:mrow></mml:math></inline-formula> that can be easily incorporated into existing codes and is as numerically efficient as SPT.

The Min protein system prevents abnormal cell division in bacteria by forming oscillatory patterns between cell poles. However, predicting the protein concentrations at which oscillations start and whether cells can maintain them under physiological perturbations remains challenging. Here we show that dynamic pattern formation is robust across a wide range of Min protein levels and variations in the growth physiology using genetically engineered Escherichia coli strains. We modulate the expression of minCD and minE under fast- and slow-growth conditions and build a MinD versus MinE phase diagram that reveals dynamic patterns, including travelling and standing waves. We found that the natural expression level of Min proteins is resource-optimal and robust to changes in protein concentration. In addition, we observed an invariant wavelength of dynamic Min patterns across the phase diagram. We explain the experimental findings quantitatively with biophysical theory based on reaction–diffusion models that consider the switching of MinE between its latent and active states, indicating its essential role as a robustness module for Min oscillation in vivo. Our results underline the potential of integrating quantitative cell physiology and biophysical modelling to understand the fundamental mechanisms controlling cell division machinery, and they offer insights applicable to other biological processes.

Electroweakly interacting stable spin-1 particle in the (1-10) TeV mass range can be a dark matter candidate with rich testability. In particular, one or even two gamma-ray line-like features are expected to be a smoking-gun signature for indirect detection in this scenario. The presence of large Sudakov logarithmic corrections, though, significantly complicates the theoretical prediction of the gamma-ray spectrum. We resum these corrections at the next-to-leading-log (NLL) accuracy using Soft-Collinear Effective field Theory (SCET). Rather interestingly, we find that the LL- and NLL-resummed endpoint spectra for this model are, up to an overall factor, identical to already existing calculations in the contexts of spin-0 and spin-1/2 (i.e. wino-like) scenarios. We discuss how this non-trivial "exact universality" irrespective of DM spin at these accuracies comes about despite the completely different SCET operator bases. Our resummations allow us to reduce the uncertainty, demonstrated in the energy spectrum with distinctive two peaks from annihilations into γγ, Zγ channel and a photon with Z ₂-even extra heavy neutral boson Z ^'. We discuss the prospect of improving accuracy further, which is crucial for the heavier DM mass region and realistic resolution in future gamma-ray observations.

Spectropolarimetry, the observation of polarization and intensity as a function of wavelength, is a powerful tool in stellar astrophysics. It is particularly useful for characterizing stars and circumstellar material, and for tracing the influence of magnetic fields on a host star and its environment. Maintaining modern, flexible, and accessible computational tools that enable spectropolarimetric studies is thus essential. The SpecpolFlow package is a new, completely Pythonic workflow for analyzing stellar spectropolarimetric observations. Its suite of tools provides a user-friendly interface for working with data from an assortment of instruments and telescopes. SpecpolFlow contains tools for spectral normalization and visualization, the extraction of Least-Squares Deconvolution (LSD) profiles, the generation and optimization of line masks for LSD analyses, and the calculation of longitudinal magnetic field measurements from the LSD profiles. It also provides Python classes for the manipulation of spectropolarimetric products. The SpecpolFlow website includes an array of tutorials that guide users through common analysis cases using the software. SpecpolFlow is distributed as a free, open-source package, with fully documented tools (via an API and command line interface) which are actively maintained by a team of contributors.

Context. Planetary nebulae (PNe) and their luminosity function (PNLF) in galaxies have been used as a cosmic distance indicator for decades, yet a fundamental understanding is still lacking to explain the universality of the PNLF among different galaxies. So far, models for the PNLF have generally assumed near-solar metallicities and employed simplified stellar populations. Aims. In this work, we investigate how metallicity and helium abundances affect the resulting PNe and PNLF as well as the importance of the initial-to-final mass relation (IFMR) and circumnebular extinction in order to resolve the tension between PNLF observations and previous models. Methods. We introduce PICS (PNe In Cosmological Simulations), a PN model framework that takes into account the stellar metal-licity and is applicable to realistic stellar populations obtained from both cosmological simulations and observations. The framework combines current stellar evolution models with post-AGB tracks and PN models to obtain the PNe from the parent stellar population. Results. We find that metallicity plays an important role for the resulting PNe, as old metal-rich populations can harbor much brighter PNe than old metal-poor populations. In addition, we show that the helium abundance is a vital ingredient at high metallicities, and we explored the impact on the PNLF of a possible saturation of the helium content at higher metallicities. We present PNLF grids for different stellar ages and metallicities, where the observed PNLF bright end can be reached even for old stellar populations of 10 Gyr at high metallicities. Finally, we find that the PNLFs of old stellar populations are extremely sensitive to the IFMR, potentially allowing for the production of bright PNe. Conclusions. With PICS, we have laid the groundwork for studying how models and assumptions relevant to PNe affect the PNe and PNLF. Two of the central ingredients for the PNe and PNLF are the metallicity and helium abundance. Future applications of PICS include self-consistent modeling of PNe in a cosmological framework to explain the origin of the universality of the PNLF bright-end cutoff and using it as a diagnostic tool for galaxy formation.

Precision spectroscopy of the electron spectrum of the tritium <inline-formula><mml:math><mml:mi>β</mml:mi></mml:math></inline-formula>-decay near the kinematic endpoint is a direct method to determine the effective electron antineutrino mass. The KArlsruhe TRItium Neutrino (KATRIN) experiment aims to determine this quantity with a sensitivity of better than <inline-formula><mml:math><mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mn>0.3</mml:mn></mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mspace></mml:mspace><mml:mtext>eV</mml:mtext></mml:mrow></mml:mrow></mml:math></inline-formula> (<inline-formula><mml:math><mml:mrow><mml:mn>90</mml:mn><mml:mo>%</mml:mo></mml:mrow></mml:math></inline-formula> C.L.). An inhomogeneous electric potential in the tritium source of KATRIN can lead to distortions of the <inline-formula><mml:math><mml:mi>β</mml:mi></mml:math></inline-formula>-spectrum, which directly impact the neutrino-mass observable. This effect can be quantified through precision spectroscopy of the conversion-electrons of co-circulated metastable <inline-formula><mml:math><mml:mrow><mml:mmultiscripts><mml:mrow></mml:mrow><mml:mrow></mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mn>83</mml:mn><mml:mtext>m</mml:mtext></mml:mrow></mml:mmultiscripts><mml:mtext>Kr</mml:mtext></mml:mrow></mml:math></inline-formula>. Therefore, dedicated, several-weeks long measurement campaigns have been performed within the KATRIN data taking schedule. In this work, we infer the tritium source potential observables from these measurements, and present their implications for the neutrino-mass determination.

Galaxy evolution is driven by spatially distributed processes with varying time-scales. Integral field spectroscopy provides spatially resolved information about these processes. Nevertheless, disentangling these processes, which are related to both the underlying stellar populations and the interstellar medium can be challenging. We present a case study on NGC 613, observed with MUSE (Multi-Unit Spectroscopic Explorer) for the TIMER (Time Inference with MUSE in Extragalactic Rings) project, a local barred galaxy, which shows several gas ionization mechanisms and is rich in both large and inner-scale stellar structures. We develop a set of steps to overcome fundamental problems in the modelling of emission lines with multiple components, together with the characterization of the stellar populations. That results in the disentanglement of the gas ionization mechanisms and kinematics, along with an optimal parametrization for star formation history recovery. Our analysis reveals evidence of gas inflows, which are associated with the bar dust lanes traced with Hubble Space Telescope. In addition, we show the gas kinematics in a central biconical outflow, which is aligned with a radio jet observed with Very Large Array. The emission line provides estimates of electron density, gas-phase metallicity, and the mass outflow rate, allowing us to distinguish intertwined ionization mechanisms and to identify a part of the multiphase gas cycle in NGC 613. It traces the gas kinematics from the bar lanes to inner scale gas reservoirs, where it can eventually trigger star formation or AGN activity, as observed in the outflow.

We perform a thorough investigation of the universality of the long-distance matrix elements (LDMEs) of nonrelativistic QCD factorization based on a next-to-leading order (NLO) fit of <inline-formula><mml:math><mml:mi>J</mml:mi><mml:mo>/</mml:mo><mml:mi>ψ</mml:mi></mml:math></inline-formula> color octet LDMEs to high transverse momentum <inline-formula><mml:math><mml:msub><mml:mi>p</mml:mi><mml:mi>T</mml:mi></mml:msub></mml:math></inline-formula> <inline-formula><mml:math><mml:mi>J</mml:mi><mml:mo>/</mml:mo><mml:mi>ψ</mml:mi></mml:math></inline-formula> and <inline-formula><mml:math><mml:msub><mml:mi>η</mml:mi><mml:mi>c</mml:mi></mml:msub></mml:math></inline-formula> production data at the LHC. We thereby apply a novel fit-and-predict procedure to systematically take into account scale variations, and predict various observables never studied in this context before. In particular, the LDMEs can well describe <inline-formula><mml:math><mml:mi>J</mml:mi><mml:mo>/</mml:mo><mml:mi>ψ</mml:mi></mml:math></inline-formula> hadroproduction up to the highest measured values of <inline-formula><mml:math><mml:msub><mml:mi>p</mml:mi><mml:mi>T</mml:mi></mml:msub></mml:math></inline-formula>, as well as <inline-formula><mml:math><mml:mrow><mml:mi>ϒ</mml:mi><mml:mo>(</mml:mo><mml:mi>n</mml:mi><mml:mi>S</mml:mi><mml:mo>)</mml:mo></mml:mrow></mml:math></inline-formula> production via potential nonrelativistic QCD based relations. Furthermore, <inline-formula><mml:math><mml:mi>J</mml:mi><mml:mo>/</mml:mo><mml:mi>ψ</mml:mi></mml:math></inline-formula> production in <inline-formula><mml:math><mml:mi>γ</mml:mi><mml:mi>γ</mml:mi></mml:math></inline-formula> and <inline-formula><mml:math><mml:mi>γ</mml:mi><mml:mi>p</mml:mi></mml:math></inline-formula> collisions is surprisingly reproduced down to <inline-formula><mml:math><mml:msub><mml:mi>p</mml:mi><mml:mi>T</mml:mi></mml:msub><mml:mo>=</mml:mo><mml:mn>1</mml:mn><mml:mtext> </mml:mtext><mml:mtext> </mml:mtext><mml:mi>GeV</mml:mi></mml:math></inline-formula>, as long as the region of large inelasticity <inline-formula><mml:math><mml:mi>z</mml:mi></mml:math></inline-formula> is excluded, which may be of significance in future quarkonium studies, in particular at the EIC and the high-luminosity LHC. In addition, our summary reveals an interesting pattern as to which observables still evade a consistent description.

Progress in technology has always been a driver of progress in science. Answering challenging questions requires bespoke technology and strategies in its use. The expanding toolbox of bottom-up synthetic biology allows us to study the organization principles underlying life. This include artificial membrane systems, phase-separating protein droplets, nucleic acids programmed to encode and use information, and many others. To study the details of the underlying physical chemistry, novel biophysical techniques are often needed. Fluorescence techniques allow studying the dynamics of biomolecules with high sensitivity and at high spatial and temporal resolution. [...]

Context. The multitude of different architectures found for evolved exoplanet systems are in all likelihood set during the initial planet-formation phase in the circumstellar disk. To understand this process, we have to study the earliest phases of planet formation. Aims. Complex sub-structures, believed to be driven by embedded planets, have been detected in a significant portion of the disks observed at high angular resolution. We aim to extend the sample of such disks to low stellar masses and to connect the disk morphology to the expected proto-planet properties. Methods. In this study, we used VLT/SPHERE to obtain resolved images on the scale of ∼10 au of the circumstellar disk in the 2MASSJ16120668-3010270 system in polarized scattered light. We searched for the thermal radiation of recently formed gas giants embedded in the disk. Additionally, we used VLT/XSHOOTER to obtain the stellar properties in the system. Results. We resolve the disk in the 2MASSJ16120668-3010270 system for the first time in scattered near-infrared light and reveal an exceptionally structured disk. We find an inner disk (reaching out to 40 au) with two spiral arms, separated by a gap from an outer ring extending to 115 au. By comparison with our own model and hydrodynamic models from the literature, we find that these structures are consistent with the presence of an embedded gas giant with a mass range between 0.1 M_Jup and 5 M_Jup depending on the employed model and their underlying assumptions. Our SPHERE observations find a tentative candidate point source within the disk gap, the brightness of which would be consistent with this mass range if it indeed traces thermal emission by an embedded planet. This interpretation is somewhat strengthened by the proximity of this signal to compact millimeter continuum emission in the disk gap, which may trace circumplanetary material. It is, however, unclear if this tentative companion candidate could be responsible for the observed disk gap size, given its close proximity to the inner disk. Generally, our VLT/SPHERE observations set an upper limit of ∼5 M_Jup in the disk gap (∼0.2"‑0.5"), consistently with our modeling results. The 2MASSJ16120668-3010270 system is one of only a few systems that shows this exceptional morphology of spiral arms located inside a scattered light gap and ring. We speculate that this may have to do with a higher disk viscosity compared with other systems such as PDS 70. If planets in the disk are confirmed, 2MASSJ16120668-3010270 will become a prime laboratory for the study of planet-disk interaction. ★Based on observations made with ESO telescopes at the La Silla Paranal Observatory under program IDs 111.255B.001, 1104.C-0415(D) and 109.23BC.001.

We apply population synthesis techniques to analyze TYPHOON long slit spectra of the starburst barred spiral galaxy M83. The analysis covers a central square of 5' side length. We determine the spatial distribution of dust through the analysis of reddening and extinction, together with star formation rates, ages, and metallicities of young and old stellar populations. For the first time, a spatial one-to-one comparison of metallicities derived from full spectral fitting techniques with those obtained from individual young stellar probes has been carried out. The comparison with blue supergiant stars, young massive star clusters, and super star clusters shows a high degree of concordance when wavelength coverage in the B band is available. The metallicity of the young population is supersolar and does not show a radial metallicity gradient along the investigated part of the disk, in agreement with our chemical evolution model. However, a notable decrease in metallicity is observed in a tightly confined region at the galaxy center, coinciding with circumnuclear orbits. We attribute this to matter infall either from the circumgalactic medium, a dwarf galaxy interloper, or, alternatively, to active-galactic-nucleus-interrupted chemical evolution. We confirm the presence of a dust cavity with a diameter of 260 pc close to the galaxy center. Dust absorption and molecular CO emission are spatially well correlated. We find an anticorrelation between R_V, the ratio of dust attenuation to reddening, and the emission strength of molecular species present in photodissociation regions. We confirm our results by using alternative fitting algorithms and stellar libraries.

At any given scale, 3$\times$2-point statistics extract only three numbers from the joint distribution of the cosmic matter density and galaxy density fluctuations: their variances and their covariance. It is well known that the full shape of the PDF of those fluctuations contains significantly more information than can be accessed through these three numbers. But the study of the PDF of cosmic density fluctuations in real observational data is still in its infancy. Here we present \verb|CosMomentum|, a public software toolkit for calculating theoretical predictions for the full shape of the joint distribution of a line-of-sight projected tracer density and the gravitational lensing convergence. We demonstrate that an analysis of this full shape of the PDF can indeed disentangle complicated tracer bias and stochasticity relations from signatures of cosmic structure growth. Our paper also provides back-drop for an upcoming follow-up study, which prepares PDF analyses for application to observational data by incorporating the impact of realistic weak lensing systematics.

LiteBIRD, the Lite (Light) satellite for the study of $B$-mode polarization and Inflation from cosmic background Radiation Detection, is a space mission focused on primordial cosmology and fundamental physics. In this paper, we present the LiteBIRD Simulation Framework (LBS), a Python package designed for the implementation of pipelines that model the outputs of the data acquisition process from the three instruments on the LiteBIRD spacecraft: LFT (Low-Frequency Telescope), MFT (Mid-Frequency Telescope), and HFT (High-Frequency Telescope). LBS provides several modules to simulate the scanning strategy of the telescopes, the measurement of realistic polarized radiation coming from the sky (including the Cosmic Microwave Background itself, the Solar and Kinematic dipole, and the diffuse foregrounds emitted by the Galaxy), the generation of instrumental noise and the effect of systematic errors, like pointing wobbling, non-idealities in the Half-Wave Plate, et cetera. Additionally, we present the implementation of a simple but complete pipeline that showcases the main features of LBS. We also discuss how we ensured that LBS lets people develop pipelines whose results are accurate and reproducible. A full end-to-end pipeline has been developed using LBS to characterize the scientific performance of the LiteBIRD experiment. This pipeline and the results of the first simulation run are presented in Puglisi et al. (2025).

Axion-like particles (ALPs) are well-motivated examples of light, weakly coupled particles in theories beyond the Standard Model. In this work, we study long-lived ALPs coupled exclusively to leptons in the mass range between $2 m_e$ and $m_τ- m_e$. For anarchic flavor structure the leptophilic ALP production in tau decays or from ALP-tau bremsstrahlung is enhanced thanks to derivative couplings of the ALP and can surpass production from electron and muon channels, especially for ALPs heavier than $m_μ$. Using past data from high-energy fixed-target experiments such as CHARM and BEBC we place new constraints on the ALP decay constant $f_a$, reaching scales as high as $\mathcal{O}(10^8)$~GeV in lepton-flavor-violating channels and $f_a \sim \mathcal{O}(10^2)$~GeV in lepton-flavor-conserving ones. We also present projections for the event-rate sensitivity of current and future detectors to ALPs produced at the Fermilab Main Injector, the CERN SPS, and in the forward direction of the LHC. We show that SHiP will be sensitive to $f_a$ values that are over an order of magnitude above the existing constraints.

Dark objects streaming into the solar system can be probed using gravitational wave (GW) experiments through the perturbations that they would induce on the detector test masses. In this work, we study the detectability of the resulting gravitational signal for a number of current and future GW observatories. Dark matter in the form of clumps or primordial black holes with masses in the range $10^7$-$10^{11}\,\rm{g}$ can be detected with the proposed DECIGO experiment.

The dust-to-gas ratio in the protoplanetary disk, which is likely imprinted into the host star metallicity, is a property that plays a crucial role during planet formation. We aim at constraining planet formation and evolution processes by statistically analysing planetary systems generated by the Generation III Bern model, comparing with the correlations derived from observational samples. Using synthetic planets biased to observational completeness, we find that (1) the occurrence rates of large giant planets and Neptune-size planets are positively correlated with [Fe/H], while small sub-Earths exhibit an anti-correlation. In between, for sub-Neptune and super-Earth, the occurrence rate first increases and then decreases with increasing [Fe/H] with an inflection point at 0.1 dex. (2) Planets with orbital periods shorter than ten days are more likely to be found around stars with higher metallicity, and this tendency weakens with increasing planet radius. (3) Both giant planets and small planets exhibit a positive correlation between the eccentricity and [Fe/H], which could be explained by the self-excitation and perturbation of outer giant planets. (4) The radius valley deepens and becomes more prominent with increasing [Fe/H], accompanied by a lower super-Earth-to-sub-Neptune ratio. Furthermore, the average radius of the planets above the valley increases with [Fe/H]. Our nominal model successfully reproduces many observed correlations with stellar metallicity, supporting the description of physical processes and parameters included in the Bern model. However, the dependences of orbital eccentricity and period on [Fe/H] predicted by the synthetic population is however significantly weaker than observed. This discrepancy suggests that long-term dynamical interactions between planets, along with the impact of binaries/companions, can drive the system towards a dynamically hotter state.

We investigate dynamical symmetry breaking in a class of chiral gauge theories containing the Georgi-Glashow model. These theories feature a gauge sector and two fermion species that transform in the two-index antisymmetric and antifundamental representations with different multiplicities. Using the effective action formalism and the functional renormalization group, we derive the flow of four-fermion interactions that encode their resonant structure and information about bound-state formation. Generalizing the theories to multiple generations, we make contact with the loss of asymptotic freedom and dissect the boundary of a conjectured conformal window. Our results show that, while most of the theory space displays a dominant color-breaking condensate, there exists a strongly coupled regime where the lowest-laying mechanisms fail and more intricate dynamics are expected to arise. This analysis provides a first step toward the infrared behavior of chiral gauge theories with functional methods.

It is shown that the generation of magnetic islands by pressure-gradient-driven turbulence is common across a wide range of conditions. The interaction among the turbulence, the magnetic island, and other large scale structures, namely, the zonal flow and the zonal current, largely determines the dynamics of the overall system. The turbulence takes a background role, providing energy to the large-scale structures, without influencing their evolution directly. It is found that the growth of the zonal current is linearly related to that of the magnetic island, while the zonal flow has a strongly sheared region where the island has its maximum radial extension. The zonal current is found to slow down the formation of large-scale magnetic islands, while the zonal flow is needed to have the system move its energy to larger and larger scales. The driving instability in the system is the fluid kinetic ballooning mode (KBM) instability at high <inline-formula> <mml:math><mml:mi>β</mml:mi></mml:math></inline-formula>, while the tearing mode is kept stable. The formation of magnetic-island-like structures at the spatial scale of the fluid KBM instability is observed quite early in the non-linear phase for most cases studied, and a slow coalescence process evolves the magnetic structures toward larger and larger scales. Cases, which did neither show this coalescence process nor show the formation of the small scale island-like structures, were seen to have narrower mode structures for comparable instability growth rates, which was achieved by varying the magnetic shear. The islands often end up exceeding the radial box size late in the non-linear phase, showing unbounded growth. The impact on the pressure profile of turbulence driven magnetic islands is not trivial, showing flattening of the pressure profile only far from the resonance, where the zonal flow is weaker, and the appearance of said flattening is slow, after the island has reached a sufficiently large size, when compared with collisional time scales.

The intracluster medium (ICM), composed of hot plasma, dominates the baryonic content of galaxy clusters and is primarily observable in X-rays. Its thermodynamic properties, pressure, temperature, entropy, and electron density, offer crucial insight into the physical processes shaping clusters, from accretion and mergers to radiative cooling and feedback. We investigate the thermodynamic properties of galaxy clusters in the Simulating the LOcal Web (SLOW) constrained simulations, which reproduce the observed large-scale structure of the local Universe. We assess how well these simulations reproduce observed ICM profiles and explore the connection between cluster formation history and core classification. Three-dimensional thermodynamic profiles are extracted and compared to deprojected X-ray and Sunyaev - Zel'dovich (SZ) data for local clusters classified as solid cool-core (SCC), weakly cool-core (WCC), and non-cool-core (NCC) systems. We also examine the mass assembly history of the simulated counterparts to link their formation to present-day ICM properties. The simulations reproduce global thermodynamic profiles for clusters such as Perseus, Coma, A85, A119, A1644, A2029, A3158, and A3266. Moreover, they show that CC clusters typically assemble their mass earlier, while NCC systems grow through more extended, late-time merger-driven histories. WCC clusters show intermediate behavior, suggesting an evolutionary transition. Our results demonstrate that constrained simulations provide a powerful tool for linking cluster formation history to present-day ICM properties and point to possible refinements in subgrid physics as well as in resolution that could improve the agreement in cluster core regions.

We investigate the possibility that the high-energy neutrino flux observed from the Seyfert galaxy NGC 1068 originates from dark matter annihilations within the density spike surrounding the supermassive black hole at its center. The comparatively lower gamma-ray flux is attributed to a dark sector that couples predominantly to Standard Model neutrinos. To explain the absence of a corresponding neutrino signal from the center of the Milky Way, we propose two scenarios: (i) the disruption of the dark matter spike at the Milky Way center due to stellar heating, or (ii) the annihilation into a dark scalar that decays exclusively into neutrinos, with a decay length longer than the size of the Milky Way but shorter than the distance from Earth to NGC 1068.

Context. Anomalous Cepheids (ACs) are pulsating variable stars, and are less studied compared to the well-known Classical Cepheids (CCs) and RR Lyrae stars. The ACs are metal poor ([Fe/H] < 1.5) and follow distinct period-luminosity (PL) and period-Wesenheit (PW) relations that can be used for distance measurements, and they can pulsate in the fundamental (F) and first overtone (1O) modes. Aims. Our goal is to evaluate the precision and accuracy of distances obtained via PL and PW relations of ACs and thus to assess if they could be used to establish a cosmic distance scale independent from CCs. To this aim, we derived new, precise PL and PW relations for the F mode, the 1O mode, and, for the first time, the combined F+1O mode ACs in the Magellanic Clouds. We investigated the wavelength dependence of these relations and applied them to calculate the distances of various stellar systems in the Local Group hosting ACs, as well as to confirm the classification of these variable stars. Methods. We analyzed near-infrared (NIR) time series photometry in the Y, J, and K_s bands for about 200 ACs in the Magellanic Clouds acquired during 2009–2018 in the context of the VISTA survey of the Magellanic Clouds system (VMC), a European Southern Observatory public survey. The VMC NIR photometry was complemented with optical data from Gaia DR3 and the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment IV survey, which also provided the identification, periods, and pulsation mode for the investigated ACs. Custom templates generated from our best light curves were used to derive precise intensity-averaged mean magnitudes for 118 and 75 ACs in the Large (LMC) and Small Magellanic Clouds (SMC), respectively. Results. Optical and NIR mean magnitudes were used to derive multiband PL and PW relations, which were calibrated with the geometric distance modulus to the LMC based on eclipsing binaries. We investigated the dependence of PL relations on wavelength, finding that slopes increase and dispersion decreases when going from optical to NIR bands. We calculated the LMC distance modulus through calibrated AC PW relations in the Milky Way using Gaia parallaxes, the LMC-SMC relative distance modulus, and we confirmed the AC nature of a few new pulsators in Galactic globular clusters. We derived a distance modulus for the Draco dwarf spheroidal galaxy of 19.425 ± 0.048 mag, which is in agreement with recent literature determinations, but a discrepancy of 0.1 mag with RR Lyrae-based distance hints at possible metallicity effects on the AC PL and PW relations. Future spectroscopic surveys and Gaia DR4 will refine the AC distance scale and assess metallicity effects on PLRs and PWRs.

Collective neutrino flavor conversions in core-collapse supernovae (SNe) begin with instabilities, initially triggered when the dominant $ν_e$ outflow concurs with a small flux of antineutrinos with the opposite lepton number, with $\overlineν_e$ dominating over $\overlineν_μ$. When these "flipped" neutrinos emerge in the energy-integrated angular distribution (angular crossing), they initiate a fast instability. However, before such conditions arise, spectral crossings typically appear within $20~\mathrm{ms}$ of collapse, i.e., local spectral excesses of $\overlineν_e$ over $\overlineν_μ$ along some direction. Therefore, post-processing SN simulations cannot consistently capture later fast instabilities because the early slow ones have already altered the conditions.

Context. Ultra-diffuse galaxies (UDGs) are an intriguing population of galaxies. Despite their dwarf-like stellar masses and low surface brightness, they have large half-light radii and exhibit a diverse range of globular cluster (GC) populations. Some UDGs host many GCs while others have none, raising questions about the conditions under which star clusters form in dwarf galaxies. GAMA 526784, an isolated UDG with both an old stellar body and an extended star-forming front, including many young star clusters, provides an exceptional case to explore the link between UDG evolution and star cluster formation. Aims. This study investigates the stellar populations, star clusters, ionised gas properties, and kinematics of GAMA 526784, focusing on the galaxy's potential to form massive GCs and its connection to broader UDG formation scenarios. Methods. Imaging from HST and Subaru/HSC, alongside MUSE spectroscopy, were used to analyse the galaxy's morphology, chemical composition, and kinematics. A combination of SED fitting and full spectral fitting was applied. Results. GAMA 526784's central stellar body exhibits a low-metallicity ([M/H] ∼‑1.0 dex) and an old age (t_M ∼9.9 Gyr), indicative of a quiescent core. The outskirts are much younger (t_M ∼0.9 Gyr), but slightly more metal-poor ([M/H] ∼‑1.2 dex). The stellar kinematics show low velocity dispersions (∼10 km s^‑1) and a coherent rotational field, while the ionised gas exhibits higher dispersions (reaching ∼50 km s^‑1), a misaligned rotation axis (∼20^∘) and localised star formation, what could be suggestive of a recent interaction. The young star clusters span ages of 8‑11 Myr and masses of log(M_⋆/M_⊙) ∼5.0, while the old GC candidates have ∼9 Gyr and stellar masses of log(M_⋆/M_⊙) ∼5.5. Conclusions. GAMA 526784's properties point to interactions that triggered localised star formation, leading to the formation of young star clusters. Future observations of its molecular and neutral gas content will help assess its environment, the trigger of this star-forming episode, and explore its potential to sustain star formation.

Despite the 3D nature of core-collapse supernovae (CCSNe), simulations in spherical symmetry (1D) play an important role to study large model sets for the progenitor-remnant connection, explosion properties, remnant masses, and CCSN nucleosynthesis. To trigger explosions in 1D, various numerical recipes have been applied, mostly with gross simplifications of the complex microphysics governing stellar core collapse, the formation of the compact remnant, and the mechanism of the explosion. Here, we investigate the two most popular treatments, piston-driven and thermal-bomb explosions, in comparison to 1D explosions powered by a parametric neutrino engine in the P-HOTB code. For this comparison, we calculate CCSNe for eight stars and evolution times up to <inline-formula><tex-math>$10^4$</tex-math></inline-formula> s, targeting the same progenitor-specific explosion energies as obtained by the neutrino-engine results. Otherwise, we employ widely used ('classic') modelling assumptions, and alternatively to the standard contraction–expansion trajectory for pistons, we also test suitably selected Lagrangian mass shells adopted from the neutrino-driven explosions as 'special trajectories'. Although the <inline-formula><tex-math>$^{56}$</tex-math></inline-formula>Ni production agrees within roughly a factor of two between the different explosion triggers, neither piston nor thermal bombs can reproduce the correlation of <inline-formula><tex-math>$^{56}$</tex-math></inline-formula>Ni yields and explosion energies found in neutrino-driven explosions. This shortcoming as well as the problem of massive fallback witnessed in classical piston models, which diminishes or extinguishes the ejected nickel, can be largely cured by the special trajectories. These and the choice of the explosion energies, however, make the modelling dependent on pre-existing neutrino-driven explosion results.

We assess the computational feasibility of end-to-end Bayesian analysis of the JAXA-led LiteBIRD experiment by analysing simulated time ordered data (TOD) for a subset of detectors through the Cosmoglobe and Commander3 framework. The data volume for the simulated TOD is 1.55 TB, or 470 GB after Huffman compression. From this we estimate a total data volume of 238 TB for the full three year mission, or 70 TB after Huffman compression. We further estimate the running time for one Gibbs sample, from TOD to cosmological parameters, to be approximately 3000 CPU hours. The current simulations are based on an ideal instrument model, only including correlated 1/f noise. Future work will consider realistic systematics with full end-to-end error propagation. We conclude that these requirements are well within capabilities of future high-performance computing systems.

A hallmark of the computational campaign in nuclear and particle physics is the lattice-gauge-theory program. It continues to enable theoretical predictions for a range of phenomena in nature from the underlying Standard Model. The emergence of a new computational paradigm based on quantum computing, therefore, can introduce further advances in this program. In particular, it is believed that quantum computing will make possible first-principles studies of matter at extreme densities, and in and out of equilibrium, hence improving our theoretical description of early universe, astrophysical environments, and high-energy particle collisions. Developing and advancing a quantum-computing based lattice-gauge-theory program, therefore, is a vibrant and fast-moving area of research in theoretical nuclear and particle physics. These lecture notes introduce the topic of quantum computing lattice gauge theories in a pedagogical manner, with an emphasis on theoretical and algorithmic aspects of the program, and on the most common approaches and practices, to keep the presentation focused and useful. Hamiltonian formulation of lattice gauge theories is introduced within the Kogut-Susskind framework, the notion of Hilbert space and physical states is discussed, and some elementary numerical methods for performing Hamiltonian simulations are discussed. Quantum-simulation preliminaries and digital quantum-computing basics are presented, which set the stage for concrete examples of gauge-theory quantum-circuit design and resource analysis. A step-by-step analysis is provided for a simpler Abelian gauge theory, and an overview of our current understanding of the quantum-computing cost of quantum chromodynamics is presented in the end. Examples and exercises augment the material, and reinforce the concepts and methods introduced throughout.

The XRISM Resolve X-ray spectrometer allows to gain detailed insight into gas motions of the intra cluster medium (ICM) of galaxy clusters. Current simulation studies focus mainly on statistical comparisons, making the comparison to the currently still small number of clusters difficult due to unknown selection effects. This study aims to bridge this gap, using simulated counterparts of Coma, Virgo, and Perseus from the SLOW constrained simulations. These clusters show excellent agreement in their properties and dynamical state with observations, thus providing an ideal testbed to understand the processes shaping the properties of the ICM. We find that the simulations match the order of the amount of turbulence for the three considered clusters, Coma being the most active, followed by Perseus, while Virgo is very relaxed. Typical turbulent velocities are a few $\approx100$ km s$^{-1}$, very close to observed values. The resulting turbulent pressure support is $\approx1\%$ for Virgo and $\approx 3-4\%$ for Perseus and Coma within the central $1-2\%$ of $R_{200}$. Compared to previous simulations and observations, measured velocities and turbulent pressure support are consistently lower, in line with XRISM findings, thus indicating the importance of selection effects.

We investigate the interaction between a shock-driven hot wind and a cold multicloud layer, for conditions commonly found in interstellar and circumgalactic gas. We present a method for identifying distinct clouds using a friends-of-friends algorithm. This approach unveils novel detailed information about individual clouds and their collective behaviour. By tracing the evolution of individual clouds, our method provides comprehensive descriptions of cloud morphology, including measures of the elongation and fractal dimension. Combining the kinematics and morphology of clouds, we refine previous models for drag and entrainment processes. Our by-cloud analysis allows to discern the dominant entrainment processes at different times. We find that after the initial shock passage, momentum transfer due to condensation becomes increasingly important, compared to ram pressure, which dominates at early times. We also find that internal motions within clouds act as an effective dynamic pressure that exceeds the thermal pressure by an order of magnitude. Our analysis shows how the highly efficient cooling of the warm mixed gas at temperatures <inline-formula><tex-math>$\sim 10^{5}$</tex-math></inline-formula> K is effectively balanced by the kinetic energy injected by the hot wind into the warm and cold phases via shocks and shear motions. Compression-driven condensation and turbulence dissipation maintain a multiphase outflow and can help explain the presence of dense gas in galaxy-scale winds. Finally, we show that applying our friends-of-friends analysis to H I-emitting gas and correcting for beam size and telescope sensitivity can explain two populations of H I clouds within the Milky-Way nuclear wind as structures pertaining to the same outflow.

In dense neutrino environments, the mean field of flavor coherence can develop instabilities. A necessary condition is that the flavor lepton number changes sign as a function of energy and/or angle. Whether such a crossing is also sufficient has been a longstanding question. We construct an explicit counterexample: a spectral crossing without accompanying flavor instability, with an even number of crossings being key. This failure is physically understood as Cherenkov-like emission of flavor waves. If flipped-lepton-number neutrinos never dominate among those kinematically allowed to decay, the waves cannot grow.

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 ∼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 (ISM) with increasing Galactocentric radius. A direct effect of the outflow is that baryons do not remain in the ISM for long, which causes the ratio of star formation to accretion, <inline-formula> <mml:math><mml:msub><mml:mrow><mml:mover><mml:mrow><mml:mo>Σ</mml:mo></mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mo>̇</mml:mo></mml:mrow></mml:mover></mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mo>⋆</mml:mo></mml:mrow></mml:msub><mml:mo>/</mml:mo><mml:msub><mml:mrow><mml:mover><mml:mrow><mml:mo>Σ</mml:mo></mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mo>̇</mml:mo></mml:mrow></mml:mover></mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mspace></mml:mspace><mml:mtext>in</mml:mtext><mml:mspace></mml:mspace></mml:mrow></mml:msub></mml:math> </inline-formula>, 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 ∼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 <inline-formula> <mml:math><mml:msub><mml:mrow><mml:mover><mml:mrow><mml:mo>Σ</mml:mo></mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mo>̇</mml:mo></mml:mrow></mml:mover></mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mo>⋆</mml:mo></mml:mrow></mml:msub><mml:mo>/</mml:mo><mml:msub><mml:mrow><mml:mover><mml:mrow><mml:mo>Σ</mml:mo></mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mo>̇</mml:mo></mml:mrow></mml:mover></mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mspace></mml:mspace><mml:mtext>in</mml:mtext><mml:mspace></mml:mspace></mml:mrow></mml:msub></mml:math> </inline-formula> with increasing Galactocentric radius.

The Standard Model Effective Field Theory (SMEFT) based on the unbroken gauge group $\text{SU(3)}_C\otimes\text{SU(2)}_L\otimes\text{U(1)}_Y$ and containing only particles of the Standard Model (SM) has developed in the last decade to a mature field. It is the framework to be used in the energy gap from scales sufficiently higher than the electroweak scale up to the lowest energy scale at which new particles show up. We summarize the present status of this theory with a particular emphasize on its role in the indirect search for new physics (NP). While flavour physics of both quarks and leptons is the main topic of our review, we also discuss electric dipole moments, anomalous magnetic moments $(g-2)_{μ,e}$, $Z$-pole observables, Higgs observables and high-$p_T$ scattering processes within the SMEFT. We group the observables into ten classes and list for each class the most relevant operators and the corresponding renormalization group equations (RGEs). We exhibit the correlations between different classes implied both by the operator mixing and the $\text{SU(2)}_L$ gauge symmetry. Our main goal is to provide an insight into the complicated operator structure of this framework which hopefully will facilitate the identification of valid ultraviolet completions behind possible anomalies observed in future data. Numerous colourful charts, and 85 tables, while representing rather complicated RG evolution from the NP scale down to the electroweak scale, beautify the involved SMEFT landscape. Over 950 references to the literature underline the importance and the popularity of this field. We discuss both top-down and bottom-up approaches as well as their interplay. This allows us eventually to present an atlas of different landscapes beyond the SM that includes heavy gauge bosons and scalars, vector-like quarks and leptons and leptoquarks.

Cosmic microwave background (CMB) photons are deflected by large-scale structure through gravitational lensing. This secondary effect introduces higher-order correlations in CMB anisotropies, which are used to reconstruct lensing deflections. This allows mapping of the integrated matter distribution along the line of sight, probing the growth of structure, and recovering an undistorted view of the last-scattering surface. Gravitational lensing has been measured by previous CMB experiments, with $\textit{Planck}$'s $42\,σ$ detection being the current best full-sky lensing map. We present an enhanced $\textit{LiteBIRD}$ lensing map by extending the CMB multipole range and including the minimum-variance estimation, leading to a $49$ to $58\,σ$ detection over $80\,\%$ of the sky, depending on the final complexity of polarized Galactic emission. The combination of $\textit{Planck}$ and $\textit{LiteBIRD}$ will be the best full-sky lensing map in the 2030s, providing a $72$ to $78\,σ$ detection over $80\,\%$ of the sky, almost doubling $\textit{Planck}$'s sensitivity. Finally, we explore different applications of the lensing map, including cosmological parameter estimation using a lensing-only likelihood and internal delensing, showing that the combination of both experiments leads to improved constraints. The combination of $\textit{Planck}$ + $\textit{LiteBIRD}$ will improve the $S_8$ constraint by a factor of 2 compared to $\textit{Planck}$, and $\textit{Planck}$ + $\textit{LiteBIRD}$ internal delensing will improve $\textit{LiteBIRD}$'s tensor-to-scalar ratio constraint by $6\,\%$. We have tested the robustness of our results against foreground models of different complexity, showing that a significant improvement remains even for the most complex foregrounds.

Galaxies whose images overlap in the focal plane of a telescope, commonly referred to as blends, are often located at different redshifts. Blending introduces a challenge to weak lensing cosmology probes, as such blends are subject to shear signals from multiple redshifts. This effect can be described by joining shear bias and redshift characterisation in the effective redshift distribution, $n_γ(z)$, which includes the response of apparent shapes of detected objects to shear of galaxies at redshift $z$. In this work, we propose a novel method to correct $n_γ(z)$ for redshift-mixed blending by emulating the shear response to neighbouring galaxies. Specifically, we design a ``half-sky-shearing'' simulation with HSC-Wide-like specifications, in which we extract the response of a detected object's measured ellipticity to shear of neighbouring galaxies among numerous galaxy pairs. We demonstrate the feasibility of accurately emulating these pairwise responses and validate the robustness of our approach under varying observing conditions and galaxy population uncertainties. We find that the effective redshift of sources at the high-redshift tail of the distribution is about 0.05 lower than expected when not modelling the effect. Given appropriately processed image simulations, our correction method can be readily incorporated into future cosmological analyses to mitigate this source of systematic error.

Baryonic feedback fundamentally alters the total matter distribution on small to intermediate cosmological scales, posing a significant challenge for contemporary cosmological analyses. Direct tracers of the baryon distribution are therefore key for unearthing cosmological information buried under astrophysical effects. Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) have emerged as a novel and direct probe of baryons, tracing the integrated ionised electron density along the line-of-sight, quantified by the dispersion measure (DM). The scatter of the DM as a function of redshift provides insight into the lumpiness of the electron distribution and, consequently, baryonic feedback processes. Using a model calibrated to the \texttt{BAHAMAS} hydrodynamical simulation suite, we forward-model the statistical properties of the DM with redshift. Applying this model to approximately 100 localised FRBs, we constrain the governing feedback parameter, $\log T_\mathrm{AGN}$. Our findings represent the first measurement of baryonic feedback using FRBs, demonstrating a strong rejection of no-feedback scenarios at greater than $99.7\,\%$ confidence ($3σ$), depending on the FRB sample. We find that FRBs prefer fairly strong feedback, similar to other measurements of the baryon distribution, via the thermal and kinetic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect. The results are robust against sightline correlations and modelling assumptions. We emphasise the importance of accurate calibration of the host galaxy and Milky Way contributions to the DM. Furthermore, we discuss implications for future FRB surveys and necessary improvements to current models to ensure accurate fitting of upcoming data, particularly that from low-redshift FRBs.

Context. The stellar halos of low-mass galaxies (M_* ≤ 10¹⁰ M_⊙) are becoming objects of interest among the extragalactic community due to a recent set of observations with the capacity to detect such structures. Additionally, new and very-high-resolution cosmological simulations have been performed, enabling the study of this faint component in low-mass galaxies. The presence of stellar halos in low-mass systems could help shed light on our understanding of the assembly of low-mass observed galaxies and their evolution. It could also allow us to test whether the hierarchical model for the formation of structures is applicable at small scales. Aims. In this work, we aim to characterise the stellar halos of simulated low-mass galaxies and analyse their evolution and accretion history. Methods. We used a sample of 17 simulated low-mass galaxies from the Auriga Project with a stellar mass range from 3.28 × 10⁸ M_⊙ to 2.08 × 10¹⁰ M_⊙. These are cosmological magneto-hydrodynamical zoom-in simulations that have a very high resolution 5 × 10⁴ M_⊙ in dark matter (DM) mass and ∼6 × 10³ M_⊙ in baryonic mass. We defined the stellar halo as the stellar material located outside of an ellipsoid with semi-major axes equal to four times the half-light radius of each galaxy. We analysed the stellar halos of these galaxies and studied their formation channels. Results. We find that the inner regions of the stellar halo (between four and six times the half-light radius) are dominated by in situ material. For the less massive simulated dwarfs (M_* ≤ 4.54 × 10⁸ M_⊙), this dominance extends to all radii. We find that this in situ stellar halo is mostly formed in the inner regions of the galaxies and was subsequently ejected into the outskirts during interactions and merger events with satellite galaxies. In ∼50% of the galaxies, the stripped gas from satellite galaxies (likely mixed with the gas from the host dwarf) contributed to the formation of this in situ halo. The stellar halos of the galaxies more massive than M_* ≥ 1 × 10⁹ M_⊙ are dominated by the accreted component beyond six half-light radii. We find that the more massive dwarf galaxies (M_* ≥ 6.30 × 10⁹ M_⊙) accrete stellar material until later times (τ₉₀ ≈ 4.44 Gyr ago, with τ₉₀ as the formation time) than the less massive ones (τ₉₀ ≈ 8.17 Gyr ago). This has an impact on the formation time of the accreted stellar halos. These galaxies have between one and seven significant progenitors that contribute to the accreted component of these galaxies; however, there is no clear correlation between the amount of accreted mass of the galaxies and their number of significant progenitors.

We present the searches conducted with the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) in response to S250206dm, a bona fide event with a false alarm rate of one in 25 years, detected by the International Gravitational Wave Network (IGWN). Although the event is significant, the nature of the compact objects involved remains unclear, with at least one likely neutron star. ZTF covered 68% of the localization region, though we did not identify any likely optical counterpart. We describe the ZTF strategy, potential candidates, and the observations that helped rule out candidates, including sources circulated by other collaborations. Similar to Ahumada et al. 2024, we perform a frequentist analysis, using simsurvey, as well as Bayesian analysis, using nimbus, to quantify the efficiency of our searches. We find that, given the nominal distance to this event of 373$\pm$104 Mpc, our efficiencies are above 10% for KNe brighter than $-17.5$ absolute magnitude. Assuming the optical counterpart known as kilonova (KN) lies within the ZTF footprint, our limits constrain the brightest end of the KN parameter space. Through dedicated radiative transfer simulations of KNe from binary neutron star (BNS) and black hole-neutron star (BHNS) mergers, we exclude parts of the BNS KN parameter space. Up to 35% of the models with high wind ejecta mass ($M_{\rm wind} \approx 0.13$ M$_{\odot}$) are ruled out when viewed face-on ($\cosθ_{\rm obs} = 1.0$). Finally, we present a joint analysis using the combined coverage from ZTF and the Gravitational Wave Multimessenger Dark Energy Camera Survey (GW-MMADS). The joint observations cover 73% of the localization region, and the combined efficiency has a stronger impact on rising and slowly fading models, allowing us to rule out 55% of the high-mass KN models viewed face-on.

Scattering amplitudes are expected to admit a factorised structure in special kinematic limits, such as the Regge, soft and collinear limits. However, less is known about the precise mechanisms through which factorisation of $n$-particle scattering amplitudes is realised at high perturbative orders, where more complex structures arise. Starting with the soft anomalous dimension, in this work we investigate the multi-particle collinear limits of massless amplitudes at three- and four-loop orders. Using colour conservation and rescaling symmetry, we show how strict collinear factorisation of multiple massless final-state coloured particles is realised, and provide results for the corresponding splitting amplitude soft anomalous dimensions. In particular, we demonstrate through four loops that the conditions on the structure of the soft anomalous dimension that are required by strict collinear factorisation in all two-particle collinear limits, are sufficient to guarantee such factorisation also in any multiple collinear limit. Then, assuming that strict collinear factorisation of massless partons holds also for amplitudes containing massive coloured particles, we derive new constraints on the soft anomalous dimension from multi-collinear limits.

Mean-field dynamo theory, describing the evolution of large-scale magnetic fields, has been the mainstay of theoretical interpretation of magnetism in astrophysical objects such as the Sun for several decades. More recently, three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic simulations have reached a level of fidelity where they capture dynamo action self-consistently on local and global scales without resorting to parametrization of unresolved scales. Recent global simulations also capture many of the observed characteristics of solar and stellar large-scale magnetic fields and cycles. Successful explanation of the results of such simulations with corresponding mean-field models is a crucial validation step for mean-field dynamo theory. Here the connections between mean-field theory and current dynamo simulations are reviewed. These connections range from the numerical computation of turbulent transport coefficients to mean-field models of simulations, and their relevance to the solar dynamo. Finally, the most notable successes and current challenges in mean-field theoretical interpretations of simulations are summarized.

We present the first gamma-ray burst (GRB) host galaxy with a measured absorption line and electron temperature (T_e) based metallicity, using the temperature sensitive [O III]λ4363 auroral line detected in the JWST/NIRSpec spectrum of the host of GRB 050505 at redshift z = 4.28. We find that the metallicity of the cold interstellar gas, derived from the absorption lines in the GRB afterglow, of 12 + log(O/H)~7.7 is in reasonable agreement with the temperature-based emission line metallicity in the warm gas of the GRB host galaxy, which has values of 12 + log(O/H) = 7.80±0.19 and 7.96±0.21 for two common indicators. When using strong emission line diagnostics appropriate for high-z galaxies and sensitive to ionisation parameter, we find good agreement between the strong emission line metallicity and the other two methods. Our results imply that, for the host of GRB050505, mixing between the warm and the cold ISM along the line of sight to the GRB is efficient, and that GRB afterglow absorption lines can be a reliable tracer of the metallicity of the galaxy. If confirmed with a large sample, this suggest that metallicities determined via GRB afterglow spectroscopy can be used to trace cosmic chemical evolution to the earliest cosmic epochs and in galaxies far too faint for emission line spectroscopy, even for JWST.

We derive constraints on the neutrino mass using a variety of recent cosmological datasets, including DESI BAO, the full-shape analysis of the DESI matter power spectrum and the one-dimensional power spectrum of the Lyman-$α$ forest (P1D) from eBOSS quasars as well as the cosmic microwave background (CMB). The constraints are obtained in the frequentist formalism by constructing profile likelihoods and applying the Feldman-Cousins prescription to compute confidence intervals. This method avoids potential prior and volume effects that may arise in a comparable Bayesian analysis. Parabolic fits to the profiles allow one to distinguish changes in the upper limits from variations in the constraining power $σ$ of the different data combinations. We find that all profiles in the $Λ$CDM model are cut off by the $\sum m_ν\geq 0$ bound, meaning that the corresponding parabolas reach their minimum in the unphysical sector. The most stringent 95% C.L. upper limit is obtained by the combination of DESI DR2 BAO, Planck PR4 and CMB lensing at 53 meV, below the minimum of 59 meV set by the normal ordering. Extending $Λ$CDM to non-zero curvature and $w_0w_\mathrm{a}$CDM relaxes the constraints past 59 meV again, but only $w_0w_\mathrm{a}$CDM exhibits profiles with a minimum at a positive value. Using a combination of DESI DR1 full-shape, BBN and eBOSS Lyman-$α$ P1D, we successfully constrain the neutrino mass independently of the CMB. This combination yields $\sum m_ν\leq 285$ meV (95% C.L.). The addition of DESI full-shape or Lyman-$α$ P1D to CMB and DESI BAO results in small but noticeable improvement of the constraining power of the data. Lyman-$α$ free-streaming measurements especially improve the constraint. Since they are based on eBOSS data, this sets a promising precedent for upcoming DESI data.

Context. The nearest giant spiral, the Andromeda galaxy (M31), exhibits a kinematically hot stellar disc, a global star formation episode ∼2–4 Gyr ago, and conspicuous substructures in its stellar halo that are suggestive of a recent accretion event. Aims. Recent chemodynamical measurements in the M31 disc and inner halo can be used as additional constraints for N-body hydrodynamical simulations that successfully reproduce the disc age-velocity dispersion relation and star formation history as well as the morphology of the inner halo substructures. Methods. We combined an available N-body hydrodynamical simulation of a major merger (mass ratio 1:4) with a well-motivated chemical model to predict abundance distributions and gradients in the merger remnant at z = 0. We computed the projected phase space and the [M/H] distributions for the substructures in the M31 inner halo, namely, the Giant Stellar Stream (GSS) and the North-East (NE) and Western (W) shelves. We compared the chemodynamical properties of the simulated M31 remnant with recent measurements for the M31 stars in the inner halo substructures. Results. This major merger model predicts (i) multiple distinct components within each of the substructures; (ii) a high mean metallicity and large spread in the GSS and NE and W shelves, which explain various photometric and spectroscopic metallicity measurements; (iii) simulated phase space diagrams that qualitatively reproduce various features identified in the projected phase space of the substructures in published data from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI); (iv) a large distance spread in the GSS, as suggested by previous tip of the red giant branch measurements; and (v) phase space ridges caused by several wraps of the secondary as well as up-scattered main M31 disc stars that also have plausible counterparts in the observed phase spaces. Conclusions. These results provide further strong and independent arguments for a major satellite merger in M31 ∼3 Gyr ago and a coherent explanation for many of the observational results that make M31 appear so different from the Milky Way.

We present a view of the stellar halo in the inner-central regions of the Milky Way (R <~ 10 kpc) mapped by RR Lyrae stars. The combined BRAVA-RR/APOGEE RR Lyrae catalog is used to obtain a sample of 281 RR Lyrae stars located in the bulge region of the Galaxy, but with orbits indicating they belong to the inner-central halo. The RR Lyrae stars in the halo are more metal-poor than the bulge RR Lyrae stars and have pulsation properties more consistent with an accreted population. We use the Milky Way-like zoom-in cosmological simulation Auriga to compare the properties of the RR Lyrae stars to those expected from the "Gaia-Enceladus-Sausage" (GES) merger. The integrals of motions and eccentricities of the RR Lyrae stars are consistent with a small fraction of 6-9 +- 2 % of the inner-central halo RR Lyrae population having originated from GES. This fraction, lower than what is seen in the solar neighborhood, is consistent with trends seen in the Auriga simulation, where a GES-like merger would have a decreasing fraction of GES stars at small Galactocentric radii compared to other accreted populations. Very few of the Auriga inner Galaxy GES-18 particles have properties consistent with belonging to a bulge population with (z_max < 1.1 kpc), indicating that no (or very few) RR Lyrae stars with bulge orbits should have originated from GES.

We employ on-shell methods to construct scattering amplitudes and derive effective theories involving massive spin-3/2 fermions interacting with spin 0, 1 and 2 bosons. The four-point massive amplitudes are constructed using an all-line-transverse momentum shift, assuming that in the massless limit, three-point interactions are smooth and the Ward identity is satisfied. For a Majorana spin-3/2 fermion with mass $m_{3/2}$, we show that interactions with only spin 0 and massive spin-1 bosons do not lead to an effective theory valid up to a cutoff $Λ\gg m_{3/2}$ that is independent of particle masses. Instead, adding an interaction with a spin-2 graviton gives rise to four-point amplitudes with a Planck scale unitarity cutoff that reproduces well-known results from $N=1$ supergravity, such as $F$-term breaking with a complex scalar and $D$-term breaking with an additional massive photon. These bottom-up results are then extended to two Majorana spin-3/2 fermions where an interacting effective theory valid up to $Λ\gg m_{3/2}$ again requires the introduction of the spin-2 graviton. Unitarity up to the Planck scale is then achieved when the two Majorana spin-3/2 fermions have unequal masses, and necessarily couple to two massive spin-1 states corresponding to the spontaneous breaking of $N=2$ supergravity to $N=0$. Our results, obtained from the bottom-up and without any Lagrangian, imply that broken supergravity is the unique, effective theory involving interactions of massive spin-3/2 fermions valid up to a cutoff $Λ\gg m_{3/2}$ that does not depend on particle masses.

Active galactic nuclei (AGN) emit radiation via accretion across the entire energy spectrum. While the standard disk and corona model can somewhat describe this emission, it fails to predict specific features such as the soft X-ray excess, the short-term optical/UV variability, and the observed UV/X-ray correlation in AGN. In this context, the fraction of AGN emission in different bands (i.e., bolometric corrections) can be useful to better understand the accretion physics of AGN. Past studies have shown that the X-ray bolometric corrections are strongly dependent on the physical properties of AGN, such as their luminosities and Eddington ratios. However, since these two parameters depend on each other, it has been unclear which is the main driver of the X-ray bolometric corrections. We present here results from a large study of hard X-ray-selected (14-195 keV) nearby ($z<0.1$) AGN. Based on our systematic analysis of the simultaneous optical-to-X-ray spectral energy distributions of 236 unobscured AGN, we found that the primary parameter controlling the X-ray bolometric corrections is the Eddington ratio. Our results show that while the X-ray bolometric correction increases with the bolometric luminosity for sources with intermediate Eddington ratios ($0.01-1$), this dependence vanishes for sources with lower Eddington ratios ($<0.01$). This could be used as evidence for a change in the accretion physics of AGN at low Eddington ratios.

We investigate the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) MIRI MRS gas molecular content of an externally irradiated Herbig disk, the F-type XUE 10 source, in the context of the eXtreme UV Environments (XUE) program. XUE 10 belongs to the massive star cluster NGC 6357 (1.69 kpc), where it is exposed to an external far-ultraviolet (FUV) radiation $\approx$ 10$^3$ times stronger than in the Solar neighborhood. We modeled the molecular features in the mid-infrared spectrum with Local Thermodynamic Equilibrium (LTE) 0D slab models. We derived basic parameters of the stellar host from a VLT FORS2 optical spectrum using PHOENIX stellar templates. We detect bright CO2 gas with the first simultaneous detection (> 5$σ$) of four isotopologues (12CO2, 13CO2, 16O12C18O, 16O12C17O) in a protoplanetary disk. We also detect faint CO emission (2$σ$) and the HI Pf$α$ line (8$σ$). We also place strict upper limits on the water content, finding a total column density $\lesssim$ 10$^{18}$ cm$^{-2}$. The CO2 species trace low gas temperatures (300-370 K) with a range of column densities of 7.4 $\times$ 10$^{17}$ cm$^{-2}$ (16O12C17O)-1.3 $\times$ 10$^{20}$ cm$^{-2}$ (12CO2) in an equivalent emitting radius of 1.15 au. The emission of 13CO2 is likely affected by line optical depth effects. 16O12C18O and 16O12C17O abundances may be isotopically anomalous compared to the 16O/18O and 16O/17O ratios measured in the interstellar medium and the Solar System. We propose that the mid-infrared spectrum of XUE 10 is explained by H2O removal either via advection or strong photo-dissociation by stellar UV irradiation, and enhanced local CO2 gas-phase production. Outer disk truncation supports the observed CO2-H2O dichotomy. A CO2 vapor enrichment in 18O and 17O can be explained by means of external UV irradiation and early on (10$^{4-5}$ yr) delivery of isotopically anomalous water ice to the inner disk.

The X-SHYNE library is a homogeneous sample of 43 medium-resolution (R=8000) infrared (0.3-2.5um) spectra of young (<500Myr), low-mass (<20Mjup), and cold (Teff=600-2000K) isolated brown dwarfs and wide-separation companions observed with the VLT/X-Shooter instrument. To characterize our targets, we performed a global comparative analysis. We first applied a semi-empirical approach. By refining their age and bolometric luminosity, we derived key atmospheric and physical properties, such as Teff, mass, surface gravity (g), and radius, using the evolutionary model COND03. These results were then compared with the results from a synthetic analysis based on three self-consistent atmospheric models. To compare our spectra with these grids we used the Bayesian inference code ForMoSA. We found similar Lbol estimates between both approaches, but an underestimated Teff from the cloudy models, likely due to a lack of absorbers that could dominate the J and H bands of early L. We also observed a discrepancy in the log(g) estimates, which are dispersed between 3.5 and 5.5 dex for mid-L objects. We interpreted this as a bias caused by a range of rotational velocities leading to cloud migration toward equatorial latitudes, combined with a variety of viewing angles that result in different observed atmospheric properties (cloud column densities, atmospheric pressures, etc.). Finally, while providing robust estimates of [M/H] and C/O for individual objects remains challenging, the X-SHYNE library globally suggests solar values, which are consistent with a formation via stellar formation mechanisms. This study highlights the strength of homogeneous datasets in performing comparative analyses, reducing the impact of systematics, and ensuring robust conclusions while avoiding over-interpretation.

We present a detailed kinematic study of a sample of 32 massive (9.5≤ log(M_*/{M_{⊙}})≤10.9) main-sequence star-forming galaxies (MS SFGs) at 4<z<6 from the ALMA-CRISTAL program. The data consist of deep (up to 15hr observing time per target), high-resolution (∼1kpc) ALMA observations of the [CII]158μm line emission. This data set enables the first systematic kpc-scale characterisation of the kinematics nature of typical massive SFGs at these epochs. We find that ∼50% of the sample are disk-like, with a number of galaxies located in systems of multiple components. Kinematic modelling reveals these main sequence disks exhibit high-velocity dispersions (σ_0), with a median disk velocity dispersion of ∼70{kms^{-1}} and V_{rot}/σ_0∼2, and consistent with dominant gravity driving. The elevated disk dispersions are in line with the predicted evolution based on Toomre theory and the extrapolated trends from z∼0-2.5 MS star-forming disks. The inferred dark matter (DM) mass fraction within the effective radius f_{DM}(<R_{e}) for the disk systems decreases with the central baryonic mass surface density, and is consistent with the trend reported by kinematic studies at z≲3; roughly half the disks have f_{DM}(<R_{e})≲30%. The CRISTAL sample of massive MS SFGs provides a reference of the kinematics of a representative population and extends the view onto typical galaxies beyond previous kpc-scale studies at z≲3.

We systematically extend the framework of galaxy bias renormalization to two-loop order. For the minimal complete basis of 29 deterministic bias operators up to fifth order in the density field and at leading order in gradient expansion we explicitly work out one- and two-loop renormalization. The latter is provided in terms of double-hard limits of bias kernels, which we find to depend on only one function of the ratio of the loop momenta. After including stochasticity in terms of composite operator renormalization, we apply the framework to the two-loop power spectrum of biased tracers and provide a simple result suitable for numerical evaluation. In addition, we work out one- and two-loop renormalization group equations (RGE) for deterministic bias coefficients related to bias operators constructed from a smoothed density field, generalizing previous works. We identify a linear combination of bias operators with enhanced UV sensitivity, related to a positive eigenvalue of the RGE. Finally, we present an analogy with the RGE as used in quantum field theory, suggesting that a resummation of large logarithms as employed in the latter may also yield useful applications in the study of large-scale galaxy bias.

Supergiant B[e] (sgB[e]) stars are exceptionally rare objects, with only a handful of confirmed examples in the Milky Way. The evolutionary pathways leading to the sgB[e] phase remain largely debated, highlighting the need for additional observations. The sgB[e] star Wd1-9, located in the massive cluster Westerlund 1 (Wd1), is enshrouded in a dusty cocoon--likely the result of past eruptive activity--leaving its true nature enigmatic. We present the most detailed X-ray study of Wd1-9 to date, using X-rays that pierce through its cocoon with the aim to uncover its nature and evolutionary state. We utilize 36 Chandra observations of Wd1 from the 'Extended Westerlund 1 and 2 Open Clusters Survey' (EWOCS), plus eight archival datasets, totalling 1.1 Ms. This dataset allows investigation of long-term variability and periodicity in Wd1-9, while X-ray colours and spectra are analysed over time to uncover patterns that shed light on its nature. Wd1-9 exhibits significant long-term X-ray variability, within which we identify a strong 14-day periodic signal. We interpret this as the orbital period, marking the first period determination for the system. The X-ray spectrum of Wd1-9 is thermal and hard (kT approximately 3.0 keV), resembling the spectra of bright Wolf-Rayet (WR) binaries in Wd1, while a strong Fe emission line at 6.7 keV indicates hot plasma from a colliding-wind X-ray binary. Wd1-9, with evidence of past mass loss, circumbinary material, a hard X-ray spectrum, and a newly detected 14-day period, displays all the hallmarks of a binary--likely a WR+OB--that recently underwent early Case B mass transfer. Its sgB[e] classification is likely phenomenological reflecting emission from the dense circumbinary material. This places Wd1-9 in a rarely observed phase, possibly revealing a newly formed WN star, bridging the gap between immediate precursors and later evolutionary stages in Wd1.

We investigate the influence of supernova (SN) feedback on the satellites of elliptical host galaxies using hydrodynamic simulations. Utilizing a modified version of the GADGET-3 code, we perform cosmological zoom-in simulations of 11 elliptical galaxies with stellar masses in the range $10^{11} M_{\odot} < M_{*} < 2 \times 10^{11} M_{\odot}$. We conduct two sets of simulations with identical initial conditions: the Fiducial model, which includes a three-phase SN mechanical wind, and the weak SN feedback model, where nearly all SN energy is released as thermal energy with a reduced SN wind velocity. Our comparison shows minimal differences in the elliptical host galaxies, but significant variations in the physical properties of satellite galaxies. The weak SN feedback model produces a larger number of satellite galaxies compared to the Fiducial model, and significantly more than observed. For satellite galaxies with stellar masses above $10^{8}$ $M_{\odot}$, the weak SN feedback model generates approximately five times more satellites than observed in the xSAGA survey. Most of these overproduced satellites have small stellar masses, below $10^{10}$ $M_{\odot}$. Additionally, satellites in the weak SN feedback model are about 3.5 times more compact than those observed in the SAGA survey and the Fiducial model, with metallicities nearly 1 dex higher than observed values. In conclusion, the satellite galaxies in the Fiducial model, which includes mechanical SN feedback, exhibit properties more closely aligned with observations. This underscores the necessity of incorporating both mechanical AGN and SN feedback to reproduce the observed properties of elliptical galaxy and their satellites in simulations.

We present and discuss optical emission line properties obtained from the analysis of Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) spectra for an X-ray selected sample of 3684 galaxies (0.002 < z < 0.55), drawn from the eRASS1 catalog. We modeled SDSS-V DR19 spectra using the NBursts full spectrum fitting technique with E-MILES simple stellar populations (SSP) models and emission line templates to decompose broad and narrow emission line components for correlation with X-ray properties. We place the galaxies on the Baldwin-Phillips-Terlevich (BPT) diagram to diagnose their dominant excitation mechanism. We show that the consistent use of the narrow component fluxes shifts most galaxies systematically and significantly upward to the active galactic nuclei (AGN) region on the BPT diagram. On this basis, we confirm the dependence between a galaxys position on the BPT diagram and its (0.2-2.3 keV) X-ray/H$α$ flux ratio. We also verified the correlation between X-ray luminosity and emission line luminosities of the narrow [O\iii]$λ5007$ and broad H$α$ component; as well as the relations between the Supermassive Black Hole (SMBH) mass, the X-ray luminosity, and the velocity dispersion of the stellar component ($σ_{*}$) on the base on the unique sample of optical spectroscopic follow-up of X-ray sources detected by eROSITA. These results highlight the importance of emission line decomposition in AGN classification and refine the connection between X-ray emission and optical emission line properties in galaxies.

The relation between the masses of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) and their host galaxies encodes information on their mode of growth, especially at the earliest epochs. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has opened such investigations by detecting the host galaxies of AGN and more luminous quasars within the first billion years of the universe (z > 6). Here, we evaluate the relation between the mass of SMBHs and the total stellar mass of their host galaxies using a sample of nine quasars at 6.18 < z < 6.4 from the Subaru High-z Exploration of Low-luminosity Quasars (SHELLQs) survey with NIRCam and NIRSpec observations. We find that the observed location of these quasars in the SMBH-galaxy mass plane (log MBH ~ 8-9; log M* ~9.5-11) is consistent with a non-evolving intrinsic mass relation with dispersion (0.80_{-0.28}^{+0.23} dex) higher than the local value (~0.3-0.4 dex). Our analysis is based on a forward model of systematics and includes a consideration of the impact of selection effects and measurement uncertainties, an assumption on the slope of the mass relation, and finds a reasonable AGN fraction (2.3%) of galaxies at z ~ 6 with an actively growing UV-unobscured black hole. In particular, models with a substantially higher normalisation in MBH would require an unrealistically low intrinsic dispersion (~0.22 dex) and a lower AGN fraction (~0.6%). Consequently, our results predict a large population of AGNs at lower black hole masses, as are now just starting to be discovered in focused efforts with JWST.

We have carried out a systematic search for galaxy-scale lenses exploiting multiband imaging data from the third public data release of the Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC) survey with the focus on false-positive removal, after applying deep learning classifiers to all ~110 million sources with an i-Kron radius above 0."8 .<!--inline-formula id="FI1"><alternatives><tex-math id="tex_eq1">&lt;![CDATA[$\[0^{\prime\prime}_\cdot8\]$]]&gt;</tex-math><mml:math display="inline" id="mml_eq1"><mml:msubsup><mml:mn>0</mml:mn><mml:mo>ṡ</mml:mo><mml:mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"><mml:mi class="MJX-variant" mathvariant="normal">'</mml:mi><mml:mi class="MJX-variant" mathvariant="normal">'</mml:mi></mml:mrow></mml:msubsup><mml:mn>8</mml:mn></mml:math><inline-graphic xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" id="img_eq1" mime-subtype="png" mimetype="image" xlink:href="aa54425-25-eq1.png"/></alternatives> To improve the performance, we tested the combination of multiple networks from our previous lens search projects and found the best performance by averaging the scores from five of our networks. Although this ensemble network leads already to a false-positive rate of ~0.01% at a true-positive rate (TPR) of 75% on known real lenses, we have elaborated techniques to further clean the network candidate list before visual inspection. In detail, we tested the rejection using SExtractor and the modeling network from HOLISMOKES IX, which resulted together in a candidate rejection of 29% without lowering the TPR. After the initial visual inspection stage to remove obvious non-lenses, 3408 lens candidates of the ~110 million parent sample remained. We carried out a comprehensive multistage visual inspection involving eight individuals and identified finally 95 grade A (average grade G ≥ 2.5) and 503 grade B (2.5> G ≥ 1.5) lens candidates, including 92 discoveries showing clear lensing features that are reported for the first time. This inspection also incorporated a novel environmental characterization using histograms of photometric redshifts. We publicly release the average grades, mass model predictions, and environment characterization of all visually inspected candidates, while including references for previously discovered systems, which makes this catalog one of the largest compilation of known lenses. The results demonstrate that (1) the combination of multiple networks enhances the selection performance and (2) both automated masking tools as well as modeling networks, which can be easily applied to hundreds of thousands of network candidates expected in the near future of wide-field imaging surveys, help reduce the number of false positives, which has been the main limitation in lens searches to date.

A crucial ingredient affecting fast neutrino flavor conversion in core-collapse supernovae (SNe) is the shape of the angular distribution of the electron-neutrino lepton number (ELN). The presence of an ELN crossing signals favorable conditions for flavor conversion. However, the dependence of ELN crossings on the SN properties is only partially understood. We investigate a suite of 12 spherically symmetric neutrino-hydrodynamics simulations of the core collapse of a SN with a mass of $18.6 M_\odot$; each model employs different microphysics (i.e., three different nuclear equations of state, with and without muon creation) and includes or not a mixing-length treatment for proto-neutron star convection. We solve the Boltzmann equations to compute the neutrino angular distributions relying on static fluid properties extracted from each of the SN simulations in our suite for six selected post-bounce times. We explore the dependence of the ELN distributions on the SN microphysics and proto-neutron star convection. We find that the latter shifts the proto-neutron star radius outwards, favoring the appearance of ELN crossings at larger radii. On the other hand, muon creation causes proto-neutron star contraction, facilitating the occurrence of ELN crossings at smaller radii. These effects mildly depend on the nuclear equation of state. Our findings highlight the subtle impact of the SN microphysics, proto-neutron star convection, and neutrino transport on the ELN angular distributions.

These lectures discuss multi-particle production in QCD and in gravity at ultrarelativistic energies, their double copy relations, and strong parallels in emergent shockwave dynamics. Dispersive techniques are applied to derive the BFKL equation for multi-gluon production in Regge asymptotics. Identical methods apply in gravity and are captured by a gravitational Lipatov equation. The building blocks in both cases are Lipatov vertices and reggeized propagators satisfying double copy relations; in gravity, Weinberg's soft theorem is recovered as a limit of the Lipatov framework. BFKL evolution in QCD generates wee parton states of maximal occupancy characterized by an emergent semi-hard saturation scale. A Color Glass Condensate EFT, and renormalization group equations in this framework, describe wee parton correlations, and their rapidity evolution. A shockwave picture of deeply inelastic scattering and hadron-hadron collisions follows, with multi-particle production described by Cutkosky's rules in strong time-dependent fields. Gluon radiation in this framework has a double copy in gravitational shockwave collisions, with a similar correspondence applicable to gluon and graviton shockwave propagators. Possible extensions of this double copy are outlined for computing multi-particle production in gravitational shockwave collisions, self-force and tidal contributions, and classical and quantum noise in the focusing of geodesics.

We discuss the cold dark matter plus massive neutrinos simulations of the MillenniumTNG project, which aim to improve understanding of how well ongoing and future large-scale galaxy surveys will measure neutrino masses. Our largest simulations, <inline-formula><tex-math>$3000\, {\rm Mpc}$</tex-math></inline-formula> on a side, use <inline-formula><tex-math>$10240^3$</tex-math></inline-formula> particles of mass <inline-formula><tex-math>$m_{\mathrm{ p}} = 6.66\times 10^{8}\, h^{-1}{\rm M}_\odot$</tex-math></inline-formula> to represent cold dark matter, and <inline-formula><tex-math>$2560^3$</tex-math></inline-formula> to represent a population of neutrinos with summed mass <inline-formula><tex-math>$M_\nu = 100$</tex-math></inline-formula> meV. Smaller volume runs with <inline-formula><tex-math>${\sim} 630\, {\rm Mpc}$</tex-math></inline-formula> also include cases with <inline-formula><tex-math>$M_\nu = 0\, \textrm {and}\, 300\, {\rm meV}$</tex-math></inline-formula>. All simulations are carried out twice using the paired-and-fixed technique for cosmic variance reduction. We evolve the neutrino component using the particle-based <inline-formula><tex-math>$\delta f$</tex-math></inline-formula> importance sampling method, which greatly reduces shot noise in the neutrino density field. In addition, we modify the GADGET-4 code to account both for the influence of relativistic and mildly relativistic components on the expansion rate and for non-Newtonian effects on the largest represented simulation scales. This allows us to quantify accurately the impact of neutrinos on basic statistical measures of non-linear structure formation, such as the matter power spectrum and the halo mass function. We use semi-analytic models of galaxy formation to predict the galaxy population and its clustering properties as a function of summed neutrino mass, finding significant (<inline-formula><tex-math>${\sim} 10~{{\ \rm per\ cent}}$</tex-math></inline-formula>) impacts on the cosmic star formation rate history, the galaxy mass function, and the clustering strength. This offers the prospect of identifying combinations of summary statistics that are optimally sensitive to the neutrino mass.

We introduce an extension of the evolution mapping framework to cosmological models that include massive neutrinos. The original evolution mapping framework exploits a degeneracy in the linear matter power spectrum when expressed in Mpc units, which compresses its dependence on cosmological parameters into those that affect its shape and a single extra parameter <inline-formula><mml:math><mml:msub><mml:mi>σ</mml:mi><mml:mn>12</mml:mn></mml:msub></mml:math></inline-formula>, defined as the rms linear variance in spheres of radius 12 Mpc. We show that by promoting the scalar amplitude of fluctuations, <inline-formula><mml:math><mml:msub><mml:mi>A</mml:mi><mml:mi>s</mml:mi></mml:msub></mml:math></inline-formula>, to a shape parameter, we can additionally describe the suppression due to massive neutrinos at any redshift to sub-0.01% accuracy across a wide range of masses and for different numbers of mass eigenstates. This methodology has been integrated into the public COMET package, enhancing its ability to emulate predictions of state-of-the-art perturbative models for galaxy clustering, such as the effective field theory (EFT) model. Additionally, the updated software now accommodates a broader cosmological parameter space for the emulator, enables the simultaneous generation of multiple predictions to reduce computation time, and incorporates analytic marginalization over nuisance parameters to expedite posterior estimation. Finally, we explore the impact of different infrared resummation techniques on galaxy power spectrum multipoles, demonstrating that any discrepancies can be mitigated by EFT counterterms without impacting the cosmological parameters.

We use the narrow [Ne v] $λ$3427 emission line detected in the recently published JWST spectra of two galaxies, at z = 6.9 and 5.6, to study the key properties of the active galactic nuclei (AGN) and the supermassive black holes in their centers. Using a new empirical scaling linking the [Ne v] line emission with AGN accretion-driven (continuum) emission, derived from a highly complete low-redshift AGN sample, we show that the [Ne v] emission in the two z > 5 galaxies implies total (bolometric) AGN luminosities of order L_bol~(4-8)x10^45 erg/s. Assuming that the radiation emitted from these systems is Eddington limited, the (minimal) black hole masses are of order M_BH>10^7 M_sun. Combined with the published stellar masses of the galaxies, estimated from dedicated fitting of their spectral energy distributions, the implied BH-to-stellar mass ratios are of order M_BH/M_host~0.1-1. This is considerably higher than what is found in the local Universe, but is consistent with the general trend seen in some other z > 5 AGN. Given the intrinsic weakness of the [Ne v] line and the nature of the [Ne v]-to-L_bol scaling, any (rare) detection of the [Ne v] $λ$3427 line at z > 5 would translate to similarly high AGN luminosities and SMBH masses, thus providing a unique observational path for studying luminous AGN well into the epoch of reionization, including obscured sources.

In the build-up of galactic discs gas infall is an important ingredient and it produces radial gas inflows as a physical consequence of angular momentum conservation, since the infalling gas on to the disc at a specific radius has lower angular momentum than the circular motions of the gas at the point of impact. NGC300 is a well studied isolated, bulge-less, and low-mass disc galaxy ideally suited for an investigation of galaxy evolution with radial gas inflows. To investigate the effects of radial gas inflows on the physical properties of NGC300, a chemical evolution model for NGC300 is constructed by assuming its disc builds up progressively by infalling of metall-free gas and outflowing of metal-enriched gas. Radial gas inflows are also considered in the model. Our model including the radial gas inflows and an inside-out disc formation scenario can simultaneously reproduce the present-day observed radial profiles of HI gas mass surface density, SFR surface density, sSFR, gas-phase and stellar metallicity. We find that, although the value of radial gas inflow velocity is as low as -0.1 km/s, the radial gas inflows steepen the present-day radial profiles of HI gas mass surface density, SFR surface density, and metallicity, but flatten the radial sSFR profile. Incorporating radial gas inflows significantly improves the agreement between our model predicted present-day sSFR profile and the observations of NGC300. It predicts a significant flattening of the metallicity gradient with cosmic time. We also find that the model predicted star formation has been more active recently, indicating that the radial gas inflows may be help to sustain star formation in local spirals, at least in NGC300.

The δN formalism has been the major computational tool to study the superhorizon evolution of the scalar type perturbation sourced by scalar fields. Recently, this formalism was generalized to compute an arbitrary scalar, vector, and tensor type perturbations, including the gravitational waves (GWs), sourced by an arbitrary bosonic fields. In this paper, we explain how to use the generalized δN formalism (the gδN formalism), considering a model with U(1) gauge fields as a concrete example. Several new findings on this model and prospects on future gravitational wave experiments are also discussed, including the condition for the two linear polarizations of GWs to have different amplitudes. This paper provides a detailed explanation of our previous paper published in Physical Review Letters. We also discuss the Weinberg's adiabatic mode for an anisotropic background, showing a qualitative difference from the one for the FLRW background.

A flagship application of quantum computers is the simulation of other quantum systems, including quantum field theories. In this article, we show how quantum computers can be employed to naturally calculate Feynman diagrams and their interferences in Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD). We simulate the colour parts of the interactions directly on the quantum computer, while the kinematic parts are for now pre-computed classically. For processes where some of the external particles are identical, we find the first hints of a potential quantum advantage. We validate our techniques using simulated quantum computers. Furthermore, for toy examples we also demonstrate our algorithms on a 56-qubit trapped-ion quantum computer. The work constitutes a further key step towards a full quantum simulation of generic perturbative QCD processes.

We investigate whether the effective theory for isolated, massive, and weakly interacting spin-$3/2$ particles is compatible with causality and unitarity-i.e., the positivity of scattering amplitudes. We find no solution to positivity constraints, except when gravitons are also present and couple in a (nearly) supersymmetric way. Gravity is thus bootstrapped from $S$-matrix consistency conditions for the longitudinal and transverse polarizations of massive spin-$3/2$ states. For two such particles forming a $U(1)$-charged state, a (gravi)photon gauging the symmetry is also required, with couplings characteristic of supergravity and consistent with both the no global symmetry and weak gravity conjectures. We further explore the EFT-hedron associated with the longitudinal polarizations, the Goldstinos, through novel $t$-$u$ symmetric dispersion relations. We identify the extremal UV models that lie at the corners of the allowed parameter space, recovering familiar models of supersymmetry breaking and uncovering new ones.

We present new observations that densely sample the microwave (4-360 GHz) continuum spectra from eight young systems in the Taurus region. Multi-component, empirical model prescriptions were used to disentangle the contributions from their dust disks and other emission mechanisms. We found partially optically thick, free-free emission in all these systems, with positive spectral indices (median $α_{\rm c} \approx 1$ at 10 GHz) and contributing 5-50% of the 43 GHz fluxes. There is no evidence for synchrotron or spinning dust grain emission contributions for these targets. The inferred dust disk spectra all show substantial curvature: their spectral indices decrease with frequency, from $α_{\rm d} \approx 2.8$-4.0 around 43 GHz to 1.7-2.1 around 340 GHz. This curvature suggests that a substantial fraction of the (sub)millimeter ($\gtrsim$ 200 GHz) dust emission may be optically thick, and therefore the traditional metrics for estimating dust masses are flawed. Assuming the emission at lower frequencies (43 GHz) is optically thin, the local spectral indices and fluxes were used to constrain the disk-averaged dust properties and estimate corresponding dust masses. These masses are roughly an order of magnitude higher ($\approx 1000 \, M_\oplus$) than those found from the traditional approach based on (sub)millimeter fluxes. These findings emphasize the value of broad spectral coverage - particularly extending to lower frequencies ($\sim$cm-band) - for accurately interpreting dust disk emission; such observations may help reshape our perspective on the available mass budgets for planet formation.

We present the ALMA-CRISTAL survey, an ALMA Cycle 8 Large Program designed to investigate the physical properties of star-forming galaxies at 4 ≲ z ≲ 6 through spatially resolved, multiwavelength observations. This survey targets 19 star-forming main-sequence galaxies selected from the ALPINE survey, using ALMA Band 7 observations to study [C II] 158 μm line emission and dust continuum, complemented by JWST/NIRCam and HST imaging to map stellar and UV emission. The CRISTAL sample expanded to 39 after including newly detected galaxies in the CRISTAL fields, archival data, and pilot study targets. The resulting dataset provides a detailed view of gas, dust, and stellar structures on kiloparsec scales at the end of the era of reionization. The survey reveals diverse morphologies and kinematics, including rotating disks, merging systems, [C II] emission tails from potential interactions, and clumpy star formation. Notably, the [C II] emission in many cases extends beyond the stellar light seen in HST and JWST imaging. Scientific highlights include CRISTAL-10, exhibiting an extreme [C II] deficit similar to Arp 220, and CRISTAL-13, where feedback from young star-forming clumps likely causes an offset between the stellar clumps and the peaks of [C II] emission. CRISTAL galaxies exhibit global [C II]/FIR ratios that decrease with increasing FIR luminosity, similar to trends seen in local galaxies but shifted to higher luminosities, likely due to their higher molecular gas content. CRISTAL galaxies also span a previously unexplored range of global FIR surface brightness at high-redshift, showing that high-redshift galaxies can have elevated [C II]/FIR ratios. These elevated ratios are likely influenced by factors such as lower-metallicity gas, the presence of significant extraplanar gas, and contributions from shock-excited gas.

The gas-phase metallicity affects heating and cooling processes in the star-forming galactic interstellar medium (ISM) as well as ionising luminosities, wind strengths, and lifetimes of massive stars. To investigate its impact, we conduct magnetohydrodynamic simulations of the ISM using the FLASH code as part of the SILCC project. The simulations assume a gas surface density of 10 M$_\odot$ pc$^{-2}$ and span metallicities from 1/50 Z$_\odot$ to 1 Z$_\odot$. We include non-equilibrium thermo-chemistry, a space- and time-variable far-UV background and cosmic ray ionisation rate, metal-dependent stellar tracks, the formation of HII regions, stellar winds, type II supernovae, and cosmic ray injection and transport. With the metallicity decreasing over the investigated range, the star formation rate decreases by more than a factor of ten, the mass fraction of cold gas decreases from 60% to 2.3%, while the volume filling fraction of the warm gas increases from 20% to 80%. Furthermore, the fraction of H$_\mathrm{2}$ in the densest regions drops by a factor of four, and the dense ISM fragments into approximately five times fewer structures at the lowest metallicity. Outflow mass loading factors remain largely unchanged, with values close to unity, except for a significant decline at the lowest metallicity. Including the major processes that regulate ISM properties, this study highlights the strong impact of gas phase metallicity on the star-forming ISM.

The M-theoretic emergence proposal claims that in an isotropic decompactification limit to M-theory the full effective action is generated via quantum effects by integrating out only the light towers of states of the theory. In the BPS particle sector, these include transversally wrapped M2- and M5-branes possibly carrying Kaluza-Klein momentum. This implies that a longitudinally wrapped M5-brane, i.e. a wrapped D4-brane, is not to be included in emergence computations. In this work we collect explicit evidence supporting this point by examining an F4 gauge coupling in six dimensions, making use of the duality between heterotic string theory on T4 and strongly coupled type IIA on K3. In this instance, the M-theoretic emergence proposal can be viewed as a tool for making predictions for the microscopic behavior of string theoretic amplitudes.

We investigate the high-ionization, narrow [Ne v] $λ$3427 emission line in a sample of over 340 ultrahard X-ray (14-195 keV) selected Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) drawn from the BASS project. The analysis includes measurements in individual and stacked spectra, and considers several key AGN properties such as X-ray luminosity, supermassive black hole (SMBH) mass, Eddington ratios, and line-of-sight column density. The [Ne v] $λ$3427 line is robustly detected in ~43% (146/341) of the AGN in our sample, with no significant trends between the detection rate and key AGN/SMBH properties. In particular, the detection rate remains high even at the highest levels of obscuration (>70% for log[N_H/cm^-2] > 23). On the other hand, even some of our highest signal-to-noise spectra (S/N > 50) lack a robust [Ne v] detection. The typical (median) scaling ratios between [Ne v] line emission and (ultra-)hard X-ray emission in our sample are log L[Ne v]/L(14-150 keV) = -3.75 and log L[Ne v]/L(2-10 keV) = -3.36. The scatter on these scaling ratios, of ~0.5 dex, is comparable to, and indeed smaller than, what is found for other commonly used tracers of AGN radiative outputs (e.g., [O III] $λ$5007). Otherwise, we find no significant relations between the (relative) strength of [Ne v] and the basic AGN/SMBH properties under study, in contrast with simple expectations from models of SMBH accretion flows. Our results reaffirm the usability of [Ne v] as an AGN tracer even in highly obscured systems, including dual AGN and high redshift sources.

In the past, researchers have mostly relied on single-resolution images from individual telescopes to detect gravitational lenses. We present a search for galaxy-scale lenses that, for the first time, combines high-resolution single-band images (in our case from the Hubble Space Telescope, HST) with lower-resolution multiband images (in our case from the Legacy survey, LS) using machine learning. This methodology simulates the operational strategies employed by future missions, such as combining the images of Euclid and the Rubin Observatory's Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). To compensate for the scarcity of lensed galaxy images for network training, we generated mock lenses by superimposing arc features onto HST images, saved the lens parameters, and replicated the lens system in the LS images. We tested four architectures based on ResNet-18: (1) using single-band HST images, (2) using three bands of LS images, (3) stacking these images after interpolating the LS images to HST pixel scale for simultaneous processing, and (4) merging a ResNet branch of HST with a ResNet branch of LS before the fully connected layer. We compared these architecture performances by creating receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves for each model and comparing their output scores. At a false-positive rate of 10^‑4, the true-positive rate is ∼0.41, ∼0.45, ∼0.51 and ∼0.55, for HST, LS, stacked images and merged branches, respectively. Our results demonstrate that models integrating images from both the HST and LS significantly enhance the detection of galaxy-scale lenses compared to models relying on data from a single instrument. These results show the potential benefits of using both Euclid and LSST images, as wide-field imaging surveys are expected to discover approximately 100 000 lenses.

We used strong gravitational lensing to study the mass distribution of the galaxy cluster MACS J0035.4‑2015, by modeling its total mass distribution. The combination of high-resolution imaging from the Hubble Space Telescope with ground-based spectroscopy from the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer mounted at the Very Large Telescope allowed us to model the observed multiple image positions with ≈0.″3 precision. We find that MACS J0035.4‑2015 can be best described by a combination of an elliptical dark matter halo modeled as an isothermal mass profile, with the brightest cluster galaxy and cluster members each modeled with a spherical truncated isothermal parameterization. With these assumptions, the total mass is estimated to be ≈ 6 × 10¹³ M_⊙ within 100 kpc. The data and mass model presented here form the basis for future cosmological and astrophysical studies of this cluster.

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.

RNA and proteins are the foundation of life and a natural starting point to explore its origins. However, the prebiotic relationship between the two is asymmetric. While RNA evolved to assemble proteins from amino acids, a significant mirror-symmetric effect of amino acids to trigger the synthesis of RNA was missing. We describe ambient alkaline conditions where amino acids, without additional chemical activators, promote RNA copolymerisation more than 100-fold, starting from prebiotically plausible ribonucleoside-2',3'-cyclic phosphates. The observed effect is explained by acid-base catalysis, with optimal efficiency at pH values near the amine pK_aH. The fold-change in oligomerisation yield is nucleobase-selective, resulting in increased compositional diversity necessary for subsequent molecular evolution and favouring the formation of natural 3'‑5' linkages. The elevated pH offers recycling of oligonucleotide sequences back to 2',3'-cyclic phosphates, providing conditions for high-fidelity replication by templated ligation. The findings reveal a clear functional role of amino acids in the evolution of RNA earlier than previously assumed.

Our understanding of the γ-ray sky has improved dramatically in the past decade, however, the unresolved γ-ray background (UGRB) still has a potential wealth of information about the faintest γ-ray sources pervading the Universe. Statistical cross-correlations with tracers of cosmic structure can indirectly identify the populations that most characterize the γ-ray background. In this study, we analyze the angular correlation between the γ-ray background and the matter distribution in the Universe as traced by gravitational lensing, leveraging more than a decade of observations from the Fermi-Large Area Telescope (LAT) and 3 years of data from the Dark Energy Survey (DES). We detect a correlation at signal-to-noise ratio of 8.9. Most of the statistical significance comes from large scales, demonstrating, for the first time, that a substantial portion of the UGRB aligns with the mass clustering of the Universe as traced by weak lensing. Blazars provide a plausible explanation for this signal, especially if those contributing to the correlation reside in halos of large mass (∼ 10¹⁴ M _⊙) and account for approximately 30–40% of the UGRB above 10 GeV. Additionally, we observe a preference for a curved γ-ray energy spectrum, with a log-parabolic shape being favored over a power-law. We also discuss the possibility of modifications to the blazar model and the inclusion of additional γ-ray sources, such as star-forming galaxies, misalinged active galactic nuclei, or particle dark matter.

Quasi-periodic eruptions (QPEs) are rapid, recurring X-ray bursts from supermassive black holes, believed to result from interactions between accretion disks and surrounding matter. The galaxy SDSS1335+0728, previously stable for two decades, exhibited an increase in optical brightness in December 2019, followed by persistent active galactic nucleus (AGN)-like variability for 5 yr, suggesting the activation of a ~10⁶-M_⊙ black hole. Since February 2024, X-ray emission has been detected, revealing extreme ~4.5-d QPEs with high fluxes and amplitudes, long timescales, large integrated energies and a ~25-d superperiod. Low-significance UV variations are reported, probably related to the long timescales and large radii from which the emission originates. This discovery broadens the possible formation channels for QPEs, suggesting that they are linked not solely to tidal disruption events but more generally to newly formed accretion flows, which we are witnessing in real time in a turn-on AGN candidate.

The R3B experiment at FAIR studies nuclear reactions using high-energy radioactive beams. One key detector in R3B is the CALIFA calorimeter consisting of 2544 CsI(Tl) scintillator crystals designed to detect light charged particles and gamma rays with an energy resolution in the per cent range after Doppler correction. Precise cluster reconstruction from sparse hit patterns is a crucial requirement. Standard algorithms typically use fixed cluster sizes or geometric thresholds. To enhance performance, advanced machine learning techniques such as agglomerative clustering were implemented to use the full multi-dimensional parameter space including geometry, energy and time of individual interactions. An Edge Detection Neural Network exhibited significant differences. This study, based on Geant4 simulations, demonstrates improvements in cluster reconstruction efficiency of more than 30%, showcasing the potential of machine learning in nuclear physics experiments.

We show how a method to construct canonical differential equations for multi-loop Feynman integrals recently introduced by some of the authors can be extended to cases where the associated geometry is of Calabi-Yau type and even beyond. This can be achieved by supplementing the method with information from the mixed Hodge structure of the underlying geometry. We apply these ideas to specific classes of integrals whose associated geometry is a one-parameter family of Calabi-Yau varieties, and we argue that the method can always be successfully applied to those cases. Moreover, we perform an in-depth study of the properties of the resulting canonical differential equations. In particular, we show that the resulting canonical basis is equivalent to the one obtained by an alternative method recently introduced in the literature. We apply our method to non-trivial and cutting-edge examples of Feynman integrals necessary for gravitational wave scattering, further showcasing its power and flexibility.

High-energy physics requires the generation of large numbers of simulated data samples from complex but analytically tractable distributions called matrix elements. Surrogate models, such as normalizing flows, are gaining popularity for this task due to their computational efficiency. We adopt an approach based on flow annealed importance sampling bootstrap (FAB) that evaluates the differentiable target density during training and helps avoid the costly generation of training data in advance. We show that FAB reaches higher sampling efficiency with fewer target evaluations in high dimensions in comparison to other methods.

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 104 FRBs. For the inference pipeline, we utilise the Boltzmann code hi_class to predict the linear matter power spectrum in modified gravity scenarios, while non-linear corrections are obtained from the halo-model employed in 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 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.

We calculate two-loop renormalization group equations (RGEs) in the Standard Model Effective Field Theory (SMEFT) with right-handed neutrinos, i.e., the so-called νSMEFT, up to dimension five. Besides the two-loop RGEs of dimension-five (dim-5) operators, we also present those of the renormalizable couplings, including contributions from dim-5 operators. We check consistency relations among the first and second poles of ɛ ≡ (4 - d)/2 with d being the space-time dimension for all renormalization constants and find that those for lepton doublet and right-handed neutrino wave-function renormalization constants, as well as for renormalization constants of charged-lepton and neutrino Yukawa coupling matrices, do not hold. This leads to divergent RG functions for these fields and Yuwawa coupling matrices. We figure out that such infinite RG functions arise from the non-invariance of fields and Yukawa coupling matrices under field redefinitions, considering that flavor transformations are a kind of linear field redefinitions. Those infinite RG functions will disappear once one restores contributions from the derivative of renormalization constants with respect to the Wilson coefficients of redundant operators or, alternatively, considers the RGEs of flavor invariants, which are physical quantities and remain invariant under field redefinitions.

Heavy-ion storage rings have relatively large momentum acceptance which allows for multiple ion species to circulate at the same time. This needs to be considered in radioactive decay measurements of highly charged ions, where atomic charge exchange reactions can significantly alter the intensities of parent and daughter ions. In this study, we investigate this effect using the decay curves of ion numbers in the recent <inline-formula><mml:math><mml:mmultiscripts><mml:mrow></mml:mrow><mml:mrow></mml:mrow><mml:mn>205</mml:mn></mml:mmultiscripts></mml:math></inline-formula>Tl<inline-formula><mml:math><mml:mmultiscripts><mml:mrow></mml:mrow><mml:mrow></mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mn>81</mml:mn><mml:mo>+</mml:mo></mml:mrow></mml:mmultiscripts></mml:math></inline-formula> bound-state beta decay experiment conducted using the Experimental Storage Ring at GSI Darmstadt. To understand the intricate dynamics of ion numbers, we present a set of differential equations that account for various atomic and nuclear reaction processes—bound-state beta decay, atomic electron recombination and capture, and electron ionization. By incorporating appropriate boundary conditions, we develop a set of differential equations that accurately simulate the decay curves of various simultaneously stored ions in the storage ring: <inline-formula><mml:math><mml:mmultiscripts><mml:mrow></mml:mrow><mml:mrow></mml:mrow><mml:mn>205</mml:mn></mml:mmultiscripts></mml:math></inline-formula>Tl<inline-formula><mml:math><mml:mmultiscripts><mml:mrow></mml:mrow><mml:mrow></mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mn>81</mml:mn><mml:mo>+</mml:mo></mml:mrow></mml:mmultiscripts></mml:math></inline-formula>, <inline-formula><mml:math><mml:mmultiscripts><mml:mrow></mml:mrow><mml:mrow></mml:mrow><mml:mn>205</mml:mn></mml:mmultiscripts></mml:math></inline-formula>Pb<inline-formula><mml:math><mml:mmultiscripts><mml:mrow></mml:mrow><mml:mrow></mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mn>81</mml:mn><mml:mo>+</mml:mo></mml:mrow></mml:mmultiscripts></mml:math></inline-formula>, <inline-formula><mml:math><mml:mmultiscripts><mml:mrow></mml:mrow><mml:mrow></mml:mrow><mml:mn>205</mml:mn></mml:mmultiscripts></mml:math></inline-formula>Pb<inline-formula><mml:math><mml:mmultiscripts><mml:mrow></mml:mrow><mml:mrow></mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mn>82</mml:mn><mml:mo>+</mml:mo></mml:mrow></mml:mmultiscripts></mml:math></inline-formula>, <inline-formula><mml:math><mml:mmultiscripts><mml:mrow></mml:mrow><mml:mrow></mml:mrow><mml:mn>200</mml:mn></mml:mmultiscripts></mml:math></inline-formula>Hg<inline-formula><mml:math><mml:mmultiscripts><mml:mrow></mml:mrow><mml:mrow></mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mn>79</mml:mn><mml:mo>+</mml:mo></mml:mrow></mml:mmultiscripts></mml:math></inline-formula>, and <inline-formula><mml:math><mml:mmultiscripts><mml:mrow></mml:mrow><mml:mrow></mml:mrow><mml:mn>200</mml:mn></mml:mmultiscripts></mml:math></inline-formula>Hg<inline-formula><mml:math><mml:mmultiscripts><mml:mrow></mml:mrow><mml:mrow></mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mn>80</mml:mn><mml:mo>+</mml:mo></mml:mrow></mml:mmultiscripts></mml:math></inline-formula>. Through a quantitative comparison between simulations and experimental data, we provide insights into the detailed reaction mechanisms governing stored heavy ions within the storage ring. Our approach effectively models charge-changing processes, reduces the complexity of the experimental setup, and provides a simpler method for measuring the decay half-lives of highly charged ions in storage rings.

We study the femtoscopic correlation functions of meson-baryon pairs in the strangeness <inline-formula><mml:math><mml:mi>S</mml:mi><mml:mo>=</mml:mo><mml:mo>-</mml:mo><mml:mn>1</mml:mn></mml:math></inline-formula> sector, employing unitarized s-wave scattering amplitudes derived from the chiral Lagrangian up to next-to-leading order. For the first time, we deliver predictions on the <inline-formula><mml:math><mml:msup><mml:mi>π</mml:mi><mml:mo>-</mml:mo></mml:msup><mml:mi>Λ</mml:mi></mml:math></inline-formula> and <inline-formula><mml:math><mml:msup><mml:mi>K</mml:mi><mml:mo>+</mml:mo></mml:msup><mml:msup><mml:mi>Ξ</mml:mi><mml:mo>-</mml:mo></mml:msup></mml:math></inline-formula> correlation functions which are feasible to be measured at the Large Hadron Collider. We also demonstrate that the employed model is perfectly capable of reproducing the <inline-formula><mml:math><mml:msup><mml:mi>K</mml:mi><mml:mo>-</mml:mo></mml:msup><mml:mi>p</mml:mi></mml:math></inline-formula> correlation function data measured by the same collaboration, without the need to modify the coupling strength to the <inline-formula><mml:math><mml:msup><mml:mover><mml:mi>K</mml:mi><mml:mo>¯</mml:mo></mml:mover><mml:mn>0</mml:mn></mml:msup><mml:mi>n</mml:mi></mml:math></inline-formula> channel, as has been recently suggested. In all cases, the effects of the source size on the correlation are tested. In addition, we present detailed analysis of the different coupled-channel contributions, together with the quantification of the relative relevance of the different terms in the interaction. These calculations require the knowledge of the so-called production weights, for which we present two novel methods to compute them.

Context. Heavy chemical elements such as iron in the intra-cluster medium (ICM) of galaxy clusters are a signpost of the interaction between the gas and stellar components. Observations of the ICM metallicity in present-day massive systems, however, pose a challenge to the underlying assumption that the cluster galaxies have produced the amount of iron that enriches the ICM. Aims. We evaluate the iron share between ICM and stars within simulated galaxy clusters with the twofold aim of investigating the origin of possible differences with respect to observational findings and of shedding light on the observed excess of iron on the ICM with respect to expectations based on the observed stellar population. Methods. We evaluated the iron mass in gas and stars in a sample of 448 simulated systems with masses M_tot,500>10¹⁴ M_⊙ at z = 0.07. These were extracted from the high-resolution (352 h^‑1 cMpc)³ volume of the MAGNETICUM cosmological hydrodynamical simulations. We compared our results with observational data of low-redshift galaxy clusters. Results. The iron share in simulated clusters features a shallow dependence on the total mass, and its value is close to unity on average. In the most massive simulated systems, the iron share is thus smaller than observational values by almost an order of magnitude. The dominant contribution to this difference is related to the stellar component, whereas the chemical properties of the ICM agree well overall with the observations. We find larger stellar mass fractions in simulated massive clusters, which in turn yield higher stellar iron masses, than in observational data. Conclusions. Consistently with the modelling, we confirm that the stellar content within simulated present-day massive systems causes the metal enrichment in the ICM. It will be crucial to alleviate the stellar mass discrepancy between simulations and observations to definitely assess the iron budget in galaxy clusters.

We present one of the largest uniform optical spectroscopic surveys of X-ray selected sources to date that were observed as a pilot study for the Black Hole Mapper (BHM) survey. The BHM program of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS)-V is designed to provide optical spectra for hundreds of thousands of X-ray selected sources from the SRG/eROSITA all-sky survey. This significantly improves our ability to classify and characterise the physical properties of large statistical populations of X-ray emitting objects. Our sample consists of 13 079 sources in the eROSITA eFEDS performance verification field, 12 011 of which provide reliable redshifts from 0 ≲ z ≤ 5.8. The vast majority of these objects were detected as point-like sources (X-ray flux limit F_{0.5 ‑ 2 keV} ≳ 6.5 × 10^‑15 erg/s/cm²) and were observed for about 20 years with fibre-fed SDSS spectrographs. After including all available redshift information for the eFEDS sources from the dedicated SDSS-V plate programme and archival data, we visually inspected the SDSS optical spectra to verify the reliability of these redshift measurements and the performance of the SDSS pipeline. The visual inspection allowed us to recover reliable redshifts (for 99% of the spectra with a signal-to-noise ratio of > 2) and to assign classes to the sources, and we confirm that the vast majority of our sample consists of active galactic nuclei (AGNs). Only ∼3% of the eFEDS/SDSS sources are Galactic objects. We analysed the completeness and purity of the spectroscopic redshift catalogue, in which the spectroscopic completeness increases from 48% (full sample) to 81% for a cleaner, brighter (r_AB < 21.38) sample that we defined by considering a high X-ray detection likelihood, a reliable counterpart association, and an optimal sky coverage. We also show the diversity of the optical spectra of the X-ray selected AGNs and provide spectral stacks with a high signal-to-noise ratio in various sub-samples with different redshift and optical broad-band colours. Our AGN sample contains optical spectra of (broad-line) quasars, narrow-line galaxies, and optically passive galaxies. It is considerably diverse in its colours and in its levels of nuclear obscuration.

The ultra-hot Jupiter (UHJ) TOI-2109b marks the lower edge of the equilibrium temperature gap between 3500 and 4500 K, an unexplored thermal regime that separates KELT-9b, the hottest planet yet discovered, from all other currently known gas giants. To study the thermochemical structure of TOI-2109b's atmosphere, we obtained high-resolution emission spectra of both the planetary day- and nightsides with CAHA/CARMENES and VLT/CRIRES⁺. By applying the cross-correlation technique to the high-resolution spectra, we identified the emission signatures of Fe I (S/N = 4.3) and CO (S/N = 6.3), as well as a thermal inversion layer in the dayside atmo-sphere; no significant H₂O signal was detected from the dayside. None of the analyzed species were detectable from the nightside atmosphere. We applied a Bayesian retrieval framework that combines high-resolution spectroscopy with photometric measurements to constrain the dayside atmospheric parameters and derive upper limits for the nightside hemisphere. The dayside thermal inversion extends from approximately 3200 to 4600 K, with an atmospheric metallicity consistent with that of the host star (0.36 dex). Only weak constraints could be placed on the C/O ratio, with a lower limit of 0.15. The retrieved spectral line broadening is consistent with tidally locked rotation, indicating the absence of strong dynamical processes in the atmosphere. An upper temperature limit of approximately 2400 K and a maximum atmospheric temperature gradient of about 700 K/log bar could be derived for the planetary nightside. Comparison of the retrieved dayside temperature-pressure profile with theoretical models, the absence of strong atmospheric dynamics, and significant differences in the thermal constraints between the day- and nightside hemispheres suggest a limited heat transport efficiency across the planetary atmosphere. Overall, our results place TOI-2109b in a transitional regime between the UHJs below the thermal gap, which show both CO and H₂O emission lines, and KELT-9b, where molecular features are largely absent.

We present GalSBI, a phenomenological model of the galaxy population for cosmological applications using simulation-based inference. The model is based on analytical parametrizations of galaxy luminosity functions, morphologies and spectral energy distributions. Model constraints are derived through iterative Approximate Bayesian Computation, by comparing Hyper Suprime-Cam deep field images with simulations which include a forward model of instrumental, observational and source extraction effects. We developed an emulator trained on image simulations using a normalizing flow. We use it to accelerate the inference by predicting detection probabilities, including blending effects and photometric properties of each object, while accounting for background and PSF variations. This enables robustness tests for all elements of the forward model and the inference. The model demonstrates excellent performance when comparing photometric properties from simulations with observed imaging data for key parameters such as magnitudes, colors and sizes. The redshift distribution of simulated galaxies agrees well with high-precision photometric redshifts in the COSMOS field within 1.5σ for all magnitude cuts. Additionally, we demonstrate how GalSBI's redshifts can be utilized for splitting galaxy catalogs into tomographic bins, highlighting its potential for current and upcoming surveys. GalSBI is fully open-source, with the accompanying Python package, galsbi (https://cosmo-docs.phys.ethz.ch/galsbi/), offering an easy interface to quickly generate realistic, survey-independent galaxy catalogs.

We present magnetohydrodynamic simulations of star formation in the multiphase interstellar medium (ISM) to quantify the impact of non-ionizing far-ultraviolet (FUV) radiation within the SILCC PROJECT simulation framework. Our study incorporates the radiative transfer of ionizing radiation and self-consistent modelling of variable FUV radiation from star clusters, advancing beyond previous studies using static or simplified FUV fields. This enables a more accurate capture of the dynamic interaction between radiation and the evolving ISM alongside other stellar feedback channels. The interstellar radiation field (ISRF) near young star clusters can reach <inline-formula><tex-math>$G_0 \approx 10^4$</tex-math></inline-formula> (in Habing units), far exceeding the solar neighbourhood value of <inline-formula><tex-math>$G_0 = 1.7$</tex-math></inline-formula>. Despite these high intensities, FUV radiation minimally impacts the integrated star formation rate compared to ionizing radiation, stellar winds, and supernovae. A slight reduction in star formation burstiness is linked to increased photoelectric (PE) heating efficiency by the variable FUV field. Dust near star-forming regions can be heated up to 60 K via the PE effect, with a broad temperature distribution. PE heating rates in variable FUV models exhibit higher peaks but lower averages than static ISRF models. Simulations under solar neighbourhood conditions without stellar winds or ionizing radiation but with supernovae yield unexpectedly high star formation rates of <inline-formula><tex-math>$\sim 0.1~\mathrm{M_\odot ~yr^{-1}~kpc^{-2}}$</tex-math></inline-formula>. Our analysis reveals increased cold neutral medium volume-filling factors (VFF) outside stellar clusters, reduced thermally unstable gas, and sharper warm–cold gas separation. The variable FUV field also promotes a cold diffuse gas phase with a molecular component, exhibiting a VFF of <inline-formula><tex-math>$\sim 5{-}10$</tex-math></inline-formula> per cent.

Slow flavor evolution (defined as driven by neutrino masses and not necessarily "slow") is receiving fresh attention in the context of compact astrophysical environments. In Part I of this series, we have studied the slow-mode dispersion relation following our recently developed analogy to plasma waves. The concept of resonance between flavor waves in the linear regime and propagating neutrinos is the defining feature of this approach. It is best motivated for weak instabilities, which probably is the most relevant regime in self-consistent astrophysical environments because these will try to eliminate the cause of instability. We here go beyond the dispersion relation alone (which by definition applies to infinite media) and consider the group velocities of unstable modes that determines whether the instability relaxes within the region where it first appears (absolute), or away from it (convective). We show that all weak instabilities are convective so that their further evolution is not local. Therefore, studying their consequences numerically in small boxes from given initial conditions may not always be appropriate.

We investigate the phases of a strongly coupled QCD-like theory at finite baryon chemical potential using s-confining supersymmetric QCD deformed by anomaly-mediated supersymmetry breaking. Focusing on the case of three colors and four flavors, we identify novel phases including spontaneous breaking of baryon number and/or parity. Both first-order and second-order phase transitions are observed as the baryon chemical potential is varied. These findings may offer insights into possible phases of real QCD at intermediate baryon densities.

Primordial black holes (PBHs) with masses below $10^9\,\rm{g}$ are typically assumed to have negligible cosmological impact due to their rapid evaporation via Hawking radiation. However, the 'memory burden' effect, which is a quantum suppression of PBH evaporation, can dramatically alter their decay dynamics. In this work, we revisit early-Universe constraints on ultralight PBHs in this mass range, demonstrating that memory burden significantly alters previous constraints. We compute new cosmological bounds from BBN that strongly limit the presence of ultralight PBHs in the early Universe. We report that the PBHs in the mass range $10^0$-$10^2\,\rm{g}$ for $k=2$ are unconstrained by observations.

The properties of satellite halos provide a promising probe for dark matter (DM) physics. Observations motivate current efforts to explain surprisingly compact DM halos. If DM is not collisionless but has strong self-interactions, halos can undergo gravothermal collapse, leading to higher densities in the central region of the halo. However, it is challenging to model this collapse phase from first principles. To improve on this, we seek to better understand numerical challenges and convergence properties of self-interacting dark matter (SIDM) N-body simulations in the collapse phase. Especially we aim for a better understanding of the evolution of satellite halos. To do so, we run SIDM N-body simulations of a low mass halo in isolation and within an external gravitational potential. The simulation setup is motivated by the perturber of the stellar stream GD-1. We find that the halo evolution is very sensitive to energy conservation errors, and a too large SIDM kernel size can artificially speed up the collapse. Moreover, we demonstrate that the King model can describe the density profile at small radii for the late stages that we have simulated. Furthermore, for our highest-resolved simulation (N = 5x10^7) we make the data public. It can serve as a benchmark. Overall, we find that the current numerical methods do not suffer from convergence problems in the late collapse phase and provide guidance on how to choose numerical parameters, e.g. that the energy conservation error is better kept well below 1%. This allows to run simulations of halos becoming concentrated enough to explain observations of GD-1 like stellar streams or strong gravitational lensing systems.

The precision measurement of the tritium <inline-formula><mml:math><mml:mrow><mml:mtext>β</mml:mtext></mml:mrow></mml:math></inline-formula>-decay spectrum performed by the KATRIN experiment provides a unique way to search for general neutrino interactions (GNIs). All theoretically allowed GNI terms at dimension 6 involving neutrinos are incorporated into a low-energy effective field theory, and can be identified by specific signatures in the measured tritium <inline-formula><mml:math><mml:mrow><mml:mtext>β</mml:mtext></mml:mrow></mml:math></inline-formula> spectrum. In this Letter an effective description of the impact of GNIs on the <inline-formula><mml:math><mml:mrow><mml:mtext>β</mml:mtext></mml:mrow></mml:math></inline-formula> spectrum is formulated and the first constraints on the effective GNI parameters are derived based on the <inline-formula><mml:math><mml:mn>4</mml:mn><mml:mo>×</mml:mo><mml:msup><mml:mn>10</mml:mn><mml:mn>6</mml:mn></mml:msup></mml:math></inline-formula> 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 boson, or leptoquarks.

We describe the recent experiments which claimed an observation of a tetra-neutron signal. Production reactions like transfer, knockout, fragmentation or photodisintegration have been used at very different experiments and facilities to form systems just made of neutrons. As a possible explanation of the partly contradicting results we suggest that some observed the bound ground state and some an unbound but still correlated state of the four neutrons at different exitation energy. We also refer to some of the theoretical works.

The current generation of cryogenic solid state detectors used in direct dark matter and CE\textnu NS searches typically reach energy thresholds of $\mathcal{O}$(10)$\,$eV for nuclear recoils. For a reliable calibration in this energy regime a method has been proposed, providing mono-energetic nuclear recoils at low energies $\sim\,$100$\,$eV$\,$-$\,$1$\,$keV. In this work we report on the observation of a peak at (1113.6$^{+6.5}_{-6.5}$)$\,$eV in the data of an Al$_{2}$O$_{3}$ crystal in CRESST-III, which was irradiated with neutrons from an AmBe calibration source. We attribute this mono-energetic peak to the radiative capture of thermal neutrons on $^{27}$Al and the subsequent de-excitation via single $γ$-emission. We compare the measured results with the outcome of Geant4 simulations and investigate the possibility to make use of this effect for the energy calibration of Al$_{2}$O$_{3}$ detectors at low energies. We further investigate the possibility of a shift in the expected energy scale of this effect caused by the creation of defects in the target crystal.

We present cosmological constraints from 8 strongly lensed quasars (hereafter, the TDCOSMO-2025 sample). Building on previous work, our analysis incorporated new deflector stellar velocity dispersions measured from spectra obtained with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the Keck Telescopes, and the Very Large Telescope (VLT), utilizing improved methods. We used integrated JWST stellar kinematics for 5 lenses, VLT-MUSE for 2, and resolved kinematics from Keck and JWST for RX J1131-1231. We also considered two samples of non-time-delay lenses: 11 from the Sloan Lens ACS (SLACS) sample with Keck-KCWI resolved kinematics; and 4 from the Strong Lenses in the Legacy Survey (SL2S) sample. We improved our analysis of line-of-sight effects, the surface brightness profile of the lens galaxies, and orbital anisotropy, and corrected for projection effects in the dynamics. Our uncertainties are maximally conservative by accounting for the mass-sheet degeneracy in the deflectors' mass density profiles. The analysis was blinded to prevent experimenter bias. Our primary result is based on the TDCOSMO-2025 sample, in combination with $Ω_{\rm m}$ constraints from the Pantheon+ Type Ia supernovae (SN) dataset. In the flat $Λ$ Cold Dark Matter (CDM), we find $H_0=71.6^{+3.9}_{-3.3}$ km s$^{-1}$ Mpc$^{-1}$. The SLACS and SL2S samples are in excellent agreement with the TDCOSMO-2025 sample, improving the precision on $H_0$ in flat $Λ$CDM to 4.6%. Using the Dark Energy Survey SN Year-5 dataset (DES-SN5YR) or DESI-DR2 baryonic acoustic oscillations (BAO) likelihoods instead of Pantheon+ yields very similar results. We also present constraints in the open $Λ$CDM, $w$CDM, $w_0w_a$CDM, and $w_ϕ$CDM cosmologies. The TDCOSMO $H_0$ inference is robust and consistent across all presented cosmological models, and our cosmological constraints in them agree with those from the BAO and SN.

The dilaton, a pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone boson (pNGB) of broken scale invariance, is an appealing ultralight dark matter (DM) candidate. Its mass is protected by conformal invariance and it can be searched for in tabletop experiments. However, contrary to standard pNGBs of internal symmetries, the dilaton generically has a large non-derivative self-coupling, leading to radiative contributions to its mass of the order of its decay constant. Hence typical ultralight dilatons should also have sub-eV decay constants, which would incur significant deviations from standard DM behavior at structure formation times, in severe tension with observations. Therefore, a fine-tuning is required to generate a hierarchy between the mass and the decay constant. In this work, we consider whether supersymmetry (SUSY) can be used to protect this hierarchy from quantum corrections. To ensure an ultralight dilaton mass robust against realistic SUSY-breaking contributions, we must consider a novel dilaton stabilization mechanism. The observed DM abundance can be produced by the misalignment mechanism for dilaton masses ranging from $10^{-11}$ to $1$ eV. Unfortunately, irreducible SUSY-breaking corrections due to gravity restrict the couplings between the dilaton and the Standard Model to be extremely small, beyond the reach of any current or proposed experiments. Our work demonstrates that constructing a consistent model of ultralight dilaton DM is quite involved.

We calculate the $θ$ dependence in a cousin of QCD, where the vacuum structure can be analyzed exactly. The theory is $\mathcal{N}=2$ $SU(2)$ gauge theory with $N_F=0,1,2,3$ flavors of fundamentals, explicitly broken to $\mathcal{N}=1$ via an adjoint superpotential, and coupled to anomaly mediated supersymmetry breaking (AMSB). The hierarchy $m_{AMSB}\ll μ_{\mathcal{N}=1}\ll Λ$ ensures the validity of our IR analysis. As expected from ordinary QCD, the vacuum energy is a function of $θ$ which undergoes 1st order phase transitions between different vacua where the various dyons condense. For $N_F=0$ we find the expected phase transition at $θ=π$, while for $N_F=1,2,3$ we find phase transitions at fractional values of $π$.

Surprisingly compact substructures in galaxies and galaxy clusters, but also field halos, have been observed by gravitational lensing. They could be difficult to explain with collisionless dark matter (DM). To explain those objects, recent studies focused on the gravothermal collapse that halos consisting of self-interacting dark matter (SIDM) can undergo. However, simple models of elastic scattering could face problems explaining those compact objects during very later stages of the collapse and the post-collapse phase, where a black hole may have formed from DM. We aim to explain compact halos while avoiding the gravothermal catastrophe to which typical SIDM models are subject. Therefore, we investigate the evolution of a DM halo for an SIDM model consisting of two species with unequal masses, which features only interactions between the different species but not within themselves. Employing $N$-body simulations, we study the effect of unequal-mass SIDM models on the evolution of an isolated DM halo. In particular, the late stages of its evolution with high central densities are simulated. We find that our two-species SIDM models can produce density cores with their size depending on the mass ratio of the two species. Moreover, mass segregation caused by the unequal particle masses leads to a finite final density state or at least a slowly growing density, which depends on the mass ratio and the mass fraction of the two DM species. SIDM models consisting of two DM species can simultaneously explain DM halos with density cores, as well as systems that are denser in their centre than expected from collisionless DM, while avoiding the gravothermal catastrophe. They are a compelling alternative to single-species models, offering a rich phenomenology.

We argue that the Standard Model is accompanied by a new pseudoscalar degree of freedom, <inline-formula><mml:math><mml:msub><mml:mi>η</mml:mi><mml:mi>w</mml:mi></mml:msub></mml:math></inline-formula> meson, which cancels the topological susceptibility of the electroweak vacuum and gets its mass from this effect. The prediction is based on the analyticity properties of the Chern-Simons correlator combined with the basic features of gravity. Depending on the quality level of the <inline-formula><mml:math><mml:mrow><mml:mi>U</mml:mi><mml:mo>(</mml:mo><mml:mn>1</mml:mn><mml:msub><mml:mrow><mml:mo>)</mml:mo></mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mi>B</mml:mi><mml:mo>+</mml:mo><mml:mi>L</mml:mi></mml:mrow></mml:msub></mml:mrow></mml:math></inline-formula> symmetry, the <inline-formula><mml:math><mml:msub><mml:mi>η</mml:mi><mml:mi>w</mml:mi></mml:msub></mml:math></inline-formula> emerges as a <inline-formula><mml:math><mml:mi>B</mml:mi><mml:mo>+</mml:mo><mml:mi>L</mml:mi></mml:math></inline-formula> pseudo-Goldstone boson or as a Stückelberg 2-form of the electroweak gauge redundancy. An intriguing scenario of the first category is the emergence of <inline-formula><mml:math><mml:msub><mml:mi>η</mml:mi><mml:mi>w</mml:mi></mml:msub></mml:math></inline-formula> in the form of the phase of a <inline-formula><mml:math><mml:mi>U</mml:mi><mml:mo>(</mml:mo><mml:mn>1</mml:mn><mml:msub><mml:mo>)</mml:mo><mml:mrow><mml:mi>B</mml:mi><mml:mo>+</mml:mo><mml:mi>L</mml:mi></mml:mrow></mml:msub></mml:math></inline-formula>-violating fermion condensate triggered by the instantons, somewhat similar to the <inline-formula><mml:math><mml:msup><mml:mi>η</mml:mi><mml:mo>'</mml:mo></mml:msup></mml:math></inline-formula> meson in QCD. Regardless of its origin, the presence of the <inline-formula><mml:math><mml:msub><mml:mi>η</mml:mi><mml:mi>w</mml:mi></mml:msub></mml:math></inline-formula> meson in the theory appears to be a matter of consistency.