We investigate the triplon excitations of the pinwheel valence-bond-solid phase on the deformed kagome lattice compound Rb2Cu3SnF12. Using bond-operator mean-field theory, we compute the triplon band structure, dynamical structure factor, Berry curvatures and the associated thermal Hall response. We show that the presence of Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interactions and an external magnetic field are key for endowing triplon bands with nontrivial Chern numbers. We find good qualitative agreement of the low-energy dynamical structure factor with neutron-scattering experiments. An applied magnetic field can isolate the lowest triplon Chern band leading to a tunable thermal Hall conductivity for accessible temperature and field regimes. Our results establish the deformed kagome pinwheel valence-bond solid as a promising platform for topological triplon physics and for observing the associated thermal Hall effect.

We analyze a class of linear Ricci--trace deformations of Einstein's field equations in which the relative weight between the Ricci tensor and the scalar-curvature trace sector is modified while the metric remains the only gravitational field. The purpose of the analysis is structural rather than phenomenological: we classify the corresponding field-equation class, fix the parameter dictionaries commonly used in the Rastall-gravity literature, and identify which equivalence statements survive after Newtonian calibration. We show that two frequently used parametrizations, \[ (1-ε)R_{μν}-\frac12 g_{μν}R=κ_εT_{μν}, \qquad R_{μν}-\frac{1-λ}{2}g_{μν}R=κ_λT_{μν}, \] are algebraically isomorphic only if both the deformation parameter and the bare gravitational coupling are transformed simultaneously. This algebraic equivalence, however, is not automatically an operational equivalence. Once the same laboratory stress tensor and the same measured Newton constant are fixed, the parameter map is a passive reparametrization only at the Einstein point. We further identify the \(λ\)-representative with the standard Rastall equation, clarify the role of the conserved effective source, derive the corresponding FLRW perfect-fluid sector, and discuss degenerate cases including vacuum, trace-free matter, radiation, dust, and the singular traceless point. Finally, we distinguish the Ricci--trace class from Unimodular Gravity (UG): although both involve the trace sector, UG follows from a restricted variational principle and produces the cosmological constant as an integration constant, rather than from an algebraic Ricci--trace deformation. The result is a compact operational classification of Rastall-type Ricci--trace models.

We present the first Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) Band 3 (100 GHz) and Band 6 (243 GHz) continuum observations of the Arches cluster, one of the youngest and most massive stellar clusters in the Milky Way. We detect and characterise millimetre emission from 23 massive stars, including WN7-9h Wolf-Rayet stars, O-type supergiants and hypergiants. By combining our ALMA measurements with archival Very Large Array data spanning 5-22.5 GHz, we derive broadband radio-millimetre spectral indices and investigate the radial structure of stellar winds through frequency-dependent clumping diagnostics. The majority of Wolf-Rayet stars exhibit spectral indices clustered around $α\approx 0.7-0.8$, consistent with predominantly thermal free-free emission from dense, partially optically thick winds. In contrast, several O-type stars show flat or negative broadband spectral indices, indicative of non-thermal synchrotron emission likely associated with colliding-wind binaries. Using millimetre flux densities, we derive clumping-scaled mass-loss rates spanning $\log(\dot{M}/\mathrm{M}_{\odot}\,\text{yr}^{-1})\approx-4.1$ to $-4.9$ for the WN stars and $-4.9$ to $-5.4$ for the O super-/hypergiants, consistent with expectations for luminous massive stars in the Galactic Centre environment. We find significant evidence of structured wind clumping at millimetre wavelengths that generally decreases with increasing radius, supporting structured wind models with strong inner-wind inhomogeneities. These results demonstrate the power of combined radio-millimetre observations for constraining mass-loss and wind structure in massive stars, and provide new insight into stellar feedback in extreme cluster environments.

Recent materials advances have made it possible to fabricate twisted transition metal dichalcogenide homobilayers. These systems have been shown to host integer and fractional Chern insulating states. Because of spontaneous time reversal symmetry breaking, their ground state harbors intriguing spin-polarized currents with whirlpools on the moiré length scale that can be measured by scanning probe methods. We first provide a quantitative analysis of these persistent currents and then show that the maximum of the amplitude of the current density in the bulk of the sample is an accurate tracker of topological order. We conclude by calculating how the quantization of the Hall conductance is affected by finite-size effects.

The second data release of the European Pulsar Timing Array (EPTA) collaboration provides evidence for the presence of a gravitational-wave (GW) background. In this work, we explore a potential cosmological interpretation of this signal in terms of inflationary scenarios. We parametrize the tensor power spectrum in terms of the tensor-to-scalar ratio $r$, the tensor spectral index $n_t$, the reheating temperature $T_{\text{rh}}$, and the cut-off frequency $f_{\text{end}}$. We incorporate all relevant observational constraints, including those from the Cosmic Microwave Background, Big Bang Nucleosynthesis, and LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA observations. We demonstrate that imposing these constraints consistently reduces the region of parameter space that provides a viable interpretation of the EPTA signal, to $-11.66 \lesssim \log_{10}r \lesssim -1.45$, $1.32 \lesssim n_t \lesssim 2.47$, $1.78\text{ MeV} \lesssim T_{\text{rh}} \lesssim 28.2\text{ GeV}$, and $75.86\text{ nHz} \lesssim f_{\text{end}} \lesssim 14.45\text{ Hz}$ at the 95% confidence level. This favours the scenario in which the GW spectrum in the EPTA frequency band originates from tensor modes that re-entered the Hubble radius during the radiation-dominated era, allowing for a higher $r$ and a flatter spectrum. However, $T_{\text{rh}}$ must take very low values, which are challenging to explain theoretically.

To explore the pathways toward establishing a global quantum network, we investigate several link architectures for transatlantic quantum entanglement distribution over a 6,500 km ground distance. We define free-space link configurations involving satellites and stratospheric high altitude platforms (HAPs), using today's technology and without relying on quantum memories and repeaters. Considering link budgets, space radiation, orbital characteristics, and system complexity we find that a hybrid architecture consisting of an entangled photon source located on a low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite supported by two passive optical relays located on HAPs provides the overall highest entanglement distribution rate. In addition, the satellite HAP architecture offers practical advantages in payload design and launch requirements, and the ability to lower the weather-related link interruptions assuming some maneuverability of HAPs. Overall, this hybrid configuration yields on the order of 5X10^6 secure key bits per year using 30 cm aperture ground receivers, nearly two orders of magnitude higher than achievable with a single MEO satellite and 1 m aperture ground receivers. Our results highlight the major benefits of hybrid satellite HAP architectures by reducing system complexity while enabling scalable and more accessible long-range quantum communication networks.

Evaporating black holes can leave distinct imprints on gravitational wave (GW) backgrounds. We show that black hole populations with finite width mass distributions exhibit a universal late time evolution governed by the evaporation dynamics rather than the details of the initial mass distribution, leading to a characteristic power law suppression of the induced GWs. We demonstrate this for a broad class of mass functions in primordial black hole (PBH) scenarios featuring an early Universe matter-dominated era, and identify the suppression of PBH-induced GWs found for critical collapse distributions as a manifestation of this general phenomenon. Our results establish a direct connection between the asymptotic GW spectrum and the underlying law of black hole evaporation.

We predict a fundamentally new superconducting state in superconductor/antiferromagnet heterostructures with Ising spin--orbit coupling: proximity-induced orbital antiferromagnetism. In this state, the order parameter acquires a periodic phase modulation locked to the magnetic lattice, generating atomic-scale loop currents with opposite orbital moments on neighboring unit cells. Its emergence requires at least three nonequivalent magnetic sublattices per unit cell and finite spin--orbit coupling. Using NbSe$_2$/MnPS$_3$ as a concrete example, we combine first-principles and Bogoliubov--de Gennes calculations to demonstrate that the proximity-induced exchange field leads to robust phase modulation. Unlike FFLO and helical states, the phase gradient is atomic-scale, the state is current-carrying, and it remains uniquely stable over the full parameter range. The state manifests as characteristic finite-energy dips in the local density of states, accessible by STM.

Dedekind's problem counts monotone Boolean functions, equivalently downsets of a Boolean lattice. We recast this enumeration as a finite layer-ratio reconstruction problem for the Whitney numbers of the ranked ideal lattice. An exact adjacent-layer double count expresses each layer ratio through local averages of the number of addable elements and the number of removable elements. Reversible fixed-layer Markov chains estimate these averages and hence estimate the Dedekind number M(n). Backtests at M(8) and M(9) calibrate seed-level variability under the fixed protocol and measure the observed Monte Carlo budget scaling. The resulting estimate probes the Whitney-number sequence of the ideal lattice. Although these rows have previously been described empirically as unimodal, the high-precision n=9 estimate has a shallow two-shoulder feature around the central rank, contrary to that empirical description; n=11 and n=13 center-window estimates show a larger-contrast analogous pattern. The protocol estimate for M(10) is \[ \widehat M(10)=(8.9360\pm0.0010)\times 10^{78}, \] where the displayed uncertainty is the budget-based forecast scale from the cross-n scaling law under the production budget.

Tropospheric ozone (O3) is a key greenhouse gas and atmospheric oxidant, yet its sources in the remote troposphere remain strongly debated. Observation-based tracer analyses suggest that O3 attributed to biomass burning is much greater than that from fossil fuel sources (by a factor of ~2-10), contradicting state-of-the-art global models. Here we show that this discrepancy primarily arises from the strong sensitivity of tracer methods to differences in tracer lifetimes, especially after extended transport to the remote regions. To resolve this discrepancy, we develop a deep learning (DL) framework that synthesizes global observations and chemical transport model simulations. The DL approach accurately infers source contributions and reveals that fossil fuel emissions contribute over three times more O3 to the remote troposphere than biomass burning. Our findings underscore that phasing out fossil fuels remains the most powerful lever for mitigating remote tropospheric ozone.

The Monte Carlo method, applied to lattice quantum field theory, gives access to Euclidean correlation functions with well-understood error bars. Recovering the observables one cares about, such as the spectral density, requires solving an ill-posed inverse problem, usually tackled with heuristics that lose rigorous control of the error. Instead of trying to find the ``best'' spectral density $ρ(ω)$, we ask how small or large linear functionals $\int_{\mathbb{R}^+} G(ω) ρ(ω) \mathrm{d} ω$ of it can be, given the Monte Carlo data and the reflection positivity of the lattice action. This is a convex but infinite-dimensional problem. We show how its dual can be rigorously relaxed into a hierarchy of finite semidefinite programs, solvable with standard solvers and enjoying strong convergence guarantees. The resulting bounds are rigorous even when the relaxation is not tight, and converge quickly to the regime where the error is entirely dominated by Monte Carlo statistics. The method also flags implausible Monte Carlo data, for instance underestimated error bars, through an infeasibility certificate. We demonstrate it on lattice $ϕ^4$ theory in two dimensions.

The Mpemba effect refers to faster relaxation of states that are initially farther from equilibrium, yet its characterization is often tied to a chosen distance or resource measure. We introduce resource-Markovianity, an extended concept of quantum Markovianity to quantum resource theories, and formulate the resource Mpemba effect operationally as the breaking of resource-Markovianity by a relaxation operation. This yields a measure-independent operational characterization of resource Mpemba effects in general resource theories, together with quantitative characterizations based on resource-non-Markovianity measures. We illustrate the framework with the Mpemba effect for distinguishability of states, due to its relation to quantum Markovianity, and with the thermomajorization Mpemba effect from an operational perspective. These results reveal a deep interplay between quantum resources, non-Markovianity, and the Mpemba effect.

We study static neutron stars in an algebraic sector of Poincaré gauge gravity with parity-even and parity-odd quadratic torsion invariants. Since torsion is non-propagating, the contorsion equation is algebraic and can be solved in terms of the spin current. For a Weyssenhoff fluid satisfying the Frenkel condition, the metric field equations reduce to ordinary Riemannian Einstein equations sourced by an effective fluid containing spin-squared corrections. We derive the effective energy density, radial pressure, and tangential pressure, allowing both isotropic and anisotropic spin correlations. In contrast with Einstein--Cartan theory, the coefficient of the effective spin-spin interaction is not fixed, but depends on the dimensionless quadratic-torsion couplings. In the Einstein--Cartan limit, using the metric definition of the stress-energy tensor, the unpolarized spin contribution gives $w_{\mathrm{spin}}=-1/3$. We then derive the corresponding modified Tolman--Oppenheimer--Volkoff equations and solve them numerically using the DD2 equation of state. For the positive effective spin-spin coupling branch considered here, the torsion correction makes the stellar configurations more compact, lowers the maximum mass, and reduces the binding energy relative to the general-relativistic sequence. For the smooth weak-polarization profiles considered, spin-correlation anisotropy has only a negligible effect on the mass--radius relation.

We develop a general framework for investigating the influence of topological defects on the local characteristics of a quantum scalar field in a warped geometry background. The Ricci tensor and curvature scalar are decomposed into contributions from the warp factor, the radial geometry and the angular defect structure. For an arbitrary curvature coupling parameter, the field equation is separated into independent radial, angular and warp-coordinate parts. A complete set of normalized mode functions is obtained for general values of the angular deficit parameters. The general formalism is applied to several specific cases, such as conformally flat warped spacetimes, generalized cosmic strings, global monopoles and anti-de Sitter (AdS)-type warped geometries. The Hadamard two-point function is then evaluated for a global monopole in AdS spacetime using the obtained mode functions.

Using the finite-temperature heat kernel method, we compute the gauge-invariant effective Lagrangian up to dimension-six for massive hot scalar QED. We propose two complementary methods: integrating out heavy modes at finite temperature, and deriving the finite-temperature heat kernel coefficients from the zero-temperature ones. We show that in the static limit, both lead to the same three-dimensional effective operators. We also compute the gauge-invariant Coleman-Weinberg effective potential for a constant background at finite temperature. We further examine how the Polyakov loop modifies the matching coefficients and assess its impact together with the higher-dimensional operators on the thermodynamics of cosmological first-order phase transitions, which in turn can affect an associated gravitational-wave spectrum.

Hard safety filters are increasingly placed downstream of learned controllers to guarantee constraint satisfaction at run time. Yet a filtered controller that never violates a constraint may still have learned nothing about safety: the filter can silently repair an incompetent upstream policy, so that post-filter success measures the filter, not the policy. We argue that safe policy learning should ask who earns the safety - the policy or its protective layers - and we make this question measurable. We introduce Intervention-Aware Variational Quantum Differentiable Predictive Control (IA-VQC-DPC), which (i) trains a compact variational quantum circuit (VQC) policy under a primal-dual intervention budget that penalizes reliance on a differentiable Control-Barrier-Function (CBF) projection, and (ii) is evaluated with a safety-attribution protocol that decomposes the executed-trajectory correction into a CBF term and a deployment runtime-guard term, and stress-tests the policy with guard-off evaluation. On closed-loop, high-fidelity BOPTEST building-control emulators (5 seeds, 60 episodes per method), intervention-aware training significantly lowers the quantum policy's raw pre-filter violation and total safety-layer reliance (both p < 10^-4) with no significant energy regression; at an equal approximately 400-parameter budget the quantum policy is significantly safer and more comfortable than a matched classical policy. Guard-off evaluation confirms the improvement is policy-level and exposes a valuable negative result: a learned differentiable energy head is only safe when paired with a distribution-aware runtime guard. The attribution protocol is general beyond quantum policies and buildings.

We present a detailed study of the spatial distribution and chemical composition of interstellar ices toward six Class 0 protostars (HOPS-56, HOPS-60, HOPS-73, HOPS-91, HOPS-96, and HOPS-108) in the Orion A molecular cloud. Using high-resolution spectroscopic data from the JWST NIRspec and MIRI MRS instruments (4.3 - 8.1 $μ$m), we have constructed the first pixel by pixel absorption maps with a resolution of $\sim$100~AU for key ice species, including $^{13}$CO$_2$, OCN$^-$, CO, H$_2$O, NH$_4^+$, and H$_2$CO. CH$_4$ and OCS were analyzed toward the continuum peaks. The column densities were derived by fitting the observed spectra with laboratory ice analogs. We employed radiative transfer modeling, which confirmed the reliability of our column density estimates within the protostellar envelopes. Our analysis reveals significant variations in ice abundances and distributions, reflecting the physical structure and energetic processes within the envelopes. Specifically, we observe the influence of protostellar heating and outflows on the ice mantles, most notably in HOPS-60. The total ice composition is consistent with astrochemical models and covers $\sim$90% of observed ice inventory suggesting that ice is primarily formed during the prestellar stage and subsequently inherited by the protostellar envelope. Based on the abundance relative to water, the sources can be categorized into two distinct groups, possibly indicating evolutionary differences or variations in envelope density and temperature profiles.

Understanding the dynamical properties of quantum systems is an essential task in quantum computing, quantum control, and many-body physics. Tools such as representation theory and Lie theory provide crucial information on reachability and computational power. However, this information can be difficult to access exactly or compute efficiently for arbitrary generating sets. Here we focus on the setting of Pauli strings, which satisfy numerous exceptional properties that simplify the problem. We find deep connections between Pauli Lie algebras and certain subgroups of the Clifford group generated by transvections, through the symplectic properties of the Pauli strings. This allows us to give an invariant-based perspective on these objects and their reachability, in the language of Pauli orbits, symmetries, and invariant subspaces. The invariant-based approach provides efficient algorithms for identifying Lie algebras and orbits, as well as a simple framework for analyzing structured Pauli generating sets. We also show in an elementary way that Clifford subgroups generated by transvections provide 3-designs for the corresponding Pauli Lie groups. We illustrate the framework through structured examples from variational quantum algorithms, restricted quantum computation, many-body systems, and random circuits.

A fraction of the electromagnetic power used to generate and heat the plasma in helicon sources and electrodeless plasma thrusters can leak into the outer expansion region, interacting with the plasma in the magnetic nozzle and affecting the performance of the device. This work analyzes the properties of the plasma in a convergent-divergent magnetic nozzle when right-hand polarized waves of varying amplitude propagate into it. This is accomplished with a 1D3V fully-implicit, Vlasov-Darwin particle-in-cell model of the collisionless ion and electron plasma in a magnetic tube. The code exactly conserves charge locally and energy globally. It features a nonuniform grid and an enhanced substepping routine for the particle trajectories. The requirement that the expansion be current-free is satisfied thanks to linear closed-loop controllers on the injection and downstream boundary conditions. Wave heating increases the electron perpendicular temperature, especially in the vicinity of an electron cyclotron resonance surface, always present inside the magnetic nozzle of a helicon device. The energized electrons become anisotropic, and drive a more pronounced potential drop and a higher ion acceleration than in the absence of waves, at the expense of the wave power. The computed moments of the ion and electron distributions reveal the dominant balance of the electron thermal terms, electrostatic terms, and ion inertial terms in the momentum and energy equations. Wave heating helps populate otherwise-inaccessible regions of the electrons phase space and modifies the doubly-trapped electron population found in the purely electrostatic case...

We propose and study all-multiplicity building blocks for tree-level string amplitudes in AdS. These are worldsheet integrals obtained by dressing the corresponding flat-space disc and sphere integrals with multivariable multiple polylogarithms and their single-valued analogues, respectively. We derive monodromy relations for the open-string building blocks and a KLT factorisation for their closed-string counterparts. This extends the non-commutative AdS uplift of lower-point flat-space structures to general $n$-point kinematics.

We present a dispersive amplitude analysis of the low-energy $π^0π^0$ system in the radiative decay $J/ψ\toγπ^0π^0$, using the mass-independent BESIII $0^{++}$ and $2^{++}$ intensities, the total spectrum, and the measured $0^{++}-2^{++}$ $E1$ phase difference. The isoscalar $S$-wave is described by a coupled-channel $ππ/K\bar K$ Muskhelishvili-Omnès representation, which implements the strong final-state interactions associated with the $f_0(500)$ and $f_0(980)$. The $D$-wave is treated with a single-channel $ππ$ Muskhelishvili-Omnès representation, where we identify all kinematic constraints of helicity amplitudes before transforming them to the experimental $E1$, $M2$, and $E3$ multipoles. Smooth short-distance production of a pseudoscalar-meson pair is encoded in subtraction polynomials, while left-hand-cut effects are estimated and found to be numerically subleading. We identify the negative solution of the BESIII $0^{++}-2^{++}$ $E1$ phase ambiguity, after using the modulo-$π$ freedom of production amplitudes, as the phase solution compatible with unitarity constraints, showing that the measured phase information can be accommodated with the Omnès phase motion without requiring large additional phases. By normalizing the BESIII intensities with the extracted branching fraction, we fix the absolute scale of the fitted amplitudes, making them suitable as input for future dispersive studies of two-pion contributions to gravitational form factors.

In this work, we study a model problem involving a point particle inspiraling into a non-rotating black hole in higher-derivative theories of gravity. In such theories, both the background spacetime and the generation and propagation of gravitational waves differ from those in General Relativity. We develop a modified Teukolsky formalism to describe gravitational waves sourced by the point particle and, as an illustrative example, compute the resulting fluxes to the black hole horizon and null infinity for a cubic gravity theory. The formalism is constructed in a way that can be naturally extended to rotating black holes. These results represent essential steps to build extreme mass-ratio-inspiral waveforms in modified gravity theories, which may also be rescaled to approximate waveforms from comparable-mass binary black hole systems, analogous to existing approaches in General Relativity.

Observing the physical world is a foundational pursuit in science. In the quantum realm, however, observation necessitates a fundamental quantum-to-classical conversion: destructive measurements irreversibly project quantum states into classical data, inevitably incurring a loss of information. What physical principles govern this information loss, and how can we construct optimal measurements to maximize the readout? Here, we address these questions by establishing an intrinsic relationship between readout capability--quantified by the ratio of accessible classical Fisher information to the total quantum Fisher information (QFI), and measurement complexity--defined as the quantum circuit depth required prior to projection. Remarkably, we uncover a sudden emergence of observability: a sharp hidden-to-visible transition driven entirely by measurement complexity. We rigorously prove that below critical depth thresholds--$Θ((\log n)^{1/δ})$ for $δ$-dimensional architectures and $Θ(\log\log n)$ for all-to-all connectivity--readout capability decays exponentially with system size $n$, rendering the quantum information fundamentally inaccessible. Surprisingly, immediately above this threshold, the system enters a visible regime: we demonstrate that randomized measurements universally recover a constant fraction of the QFI using approximate unitary 3-designs, for which we explicitly develop optimal-depth circuit constructions tailored to finite-dimensional architectures. By unveiling the fundamental scaling laws and transitions that govern quantum observation, our results delineate definitive resource boundaries for quantum learning, state certification, and quantum metrology.

The Einstein-de Haas (EdH) effect describes the emergence of collective rotation driven by spin alignment under an external magnetic field. We investigate this effect in a dynamically expanding quark-gluon plasma (QGP) using a quasiparticle model (QPM). We compute the EdH-induced angular velocity $ω_{\mathrm{EdH}}$ as a function of temperature, proper time, and fireball radius. Our results show that $ω_{\mathrm{EdH}}$ grows with proper time and is consequently suppressed at higher temperatures. Near the QGP crossover temperature, $ω_{\mathrm{EdH}}$ attains a substantial, non-negligible magnitude. We identify a nontrivial crossing between the strong and weak magnetic field regimes that reflects the competition between spin alignment and the energy required to sustain orbital motion. This nontrivial crossing temperature separates a spin-dominated regime from an inertia-dominated regime of magnetic field-induced rotation. These findings establish the EdH effect as a manifestation of angular momentum conservation in magnetized QCD matter.

Rydberg atoms possess strong electric dipole transitions and tunable energy levels, making them promising candidates for microwave to optical conversion on integrated superconducting atom chips. Achieving strong coupling of the atoms to e.g. the microwave field of an on-chip resonator requires placing the atoms within tens of micrometers from the chip surface. However, inhomogeneous stray electric fields originating from the surface can induce position-dependent Stark forces, resulting in atomic motion and leading to time-dependent shifts of the Rydberg energy levels. We experimentally investigate these effects using time-of-flight and spectroscopic techniques, observing substantial level shifts and signal loss attributable to field-induced atomic motion. A theoretical model incorporating an exponentially decaying surface field with a superimposed bias accurately reproduces the observed dynamics. To mitigate the level shift, we introduce a Stark echo sequence that dynamically reverses the force. This approach suppresses the atomic motion and maintains the atomic resonance. The method relies solely on global field control and is compatible with atom-resonator coupling architectures, providing a robust strategy for preserving coherence of Rydberg atoms in inhomogeneous electric fields near surfaces.

Lattice simulations provide the thermodynamics of quantum chromodynamics (QCD) as a function of the temperature, at zero-to-moderate values of the baryonic chemical potential. However, the contribution of single hadronic species cannot be directly isolated from lattice calculations. In this work, we find linear combinations of up to fourth order susceptibilities which isolate the contribution of hadrons to the QCD pressure according to their baryon number $B$, electric charge $Q$ and strangeness $S$ content. These combinations are valid, provided that the thermodynamics of a strongly-interacting gas in the low-temperature regime can be modeled as a gas of non-interacting hadrons and their resonances. Finally, we test the validity of these linear combinations in the Hadron Resonance Gas (HRG) model and compare them to available lattice QCD results, using continuum-estimated susceptibilities.

Responses to perturbations are key to understanding physical systems. The ability to contrast such responses by comparing how a system reacts under slightly different conditions provides a mechanism for learning. Here, we introduce Perturbative Contrastive Physical Learning (PCPL), a general framework in which learning emerges from measurable contrasts between physical states produced by controlled changes to inputs, boundary conditions, parameters, or interpreter functions. PCPL unifies and extends prior approaches: Equilibrium Propagation is rooted in contrasts between free and nudged equilibria in energy-based systems, while Frequency Propagation corresponds to contrasts extracted from sinusoidally driven, frequency-demodulated responses. We show that contrast-driven updates can reflect either local sensitivities or global inverse-problem structure, yet do not require centralized gradient computation. Instead, effective learning geometry emerges implicitly from the system's own physical response, allowing learning behavior to arise without an external processor or explicit backpropagation. We demonstrate PCPL in two platforms: (i) spring networks that update bond stiffness using measured displacements and forces, and (ii) continuous-variable photonic circuits trained via x quadrature measurements and finite-difference estimates of the Jacobian. Both platforms successfully learn classification tasks. We further show that a continuous-variable photonic circuit can be trained to implement analog multiplication, illustrating a step toward more autonomous physical learning systems.

Microwave-induced resistance oscillations (MIROs) \cite{zudov:2001a} occur when a 2D electron gas is subjected to radiation of frequency $ω= 2 πf$ and varying magnetic field $B$. MIROs are periodic in $1/B$, with the period determined by the radiation frequency $ω$, and their amplitude scales with the radiation power. Stepping from single-photon transitions between Landau levels, MIROs are found on the lower-field side of the cyclotron resonance, $ω_c \lesssim ω$, where $ω_c$ is the cyclotron frequency. Here, we report on experimental observation of another class of magneto resistance oscillations, which are also induced by radiation, but in the radio frequency (UHF band) range. These oscillations are distinct from MIROs in the following aspects: (i) they occur at $ω_c \gg ω$, (ii) their amplitude is independent of radiation power, (iii) their period is controlled by the radiation electric field, rather than by $ω$, and (iv) they can be either $1/B$ or $1/B^2$-periodic, depending on $B$. We further show that these oscillations can be explained by a displacement model in the limit of short-range disorder.

We construct the double-current deformations of two-dimensional quantum field theories whose partition functions have background gauge-field anomalies. Extending the path integral construction of [1], we couple the seed theory to dynamical gauge fields and compact Stueckelberg fields and insert parallel transport in the anomaly line bundle. The deformed partition function then has the same anomaly as the undeformed one. For flat background gauge fields the Stueckelberg non-zero modes localize the dynamical gauge fields to flat connections, reducing the deformation to a finite-dimensional holonomy integral. We derive the integral kernel on the torus and its higher-genus generalization. For the compact boson, or equivalently the Abelian $U(1)$ WZW model, the kernel gives a Gaussian transform of the torus partition function: at zero background the spectrum is obtained by $k\to K_λ$, while contact terms and spectral-flow data remain controlled by the original anomaly. We also formulate the anomaly-compatible non-Abelian and homogeneous Yang-Baxter generalization.

Many works have attempted to estimate the correlation and integral timescales associated with turbulent fluctuations in the solar wind, which are interpreted as length scales based on Taylor's~Hypothesis. However, accurate estimates of these timescales from spacecraft observations heavily rely on the accurate estimation of autocorrelation functions (ACF), which have been recently shown to depend strongly on the interval length used to estimate them. In this Letter, we show that this dependence on interval length may be artificial because common ACF estimators do not correctly capture the long-lag behavior of the true ACF of the underlying turbulence. We introduce a new ergodicity-based methodology to unambiguously estimate the integral timescale, and a new ACF estimator with better ergodic convergence than current ones. Due to its ergodic properties, the new ACF estimator properly captures the long-lag behavior, and is independent of the interval length. We use this approach to estimate the integral and correlation scales of magnetic fluctuations in the solar wind near $1~{\rm au}$.