cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
On the Symmetric $K$ -User Interference Channels With Limited Feedback

In this paper, we develop achievability schemes for symmetric $K$ -user interference channels with a rate-limited feedback from each receiver to the corresponding transmitter. We study this problem under two different channel models: the linear deterministic model, and the Gaussian model. For the deterministic model, the proposed scheme achieves a symmetric rate that is the minimum of the symmetric capacity with infinite feedback, and the sum of the symmetric capacity without feedback and the symmetric amount of feedback. For the Gaussian interference channel, we use lattice codes to propose a transmission strategy that incorporates the techniques of Han–Kobayashi message splitting, interference decoding, and decode and forward. This strategy achieves a symmetric rate, which is within a constant number of bits to the minimum of the symmetric capacity with infinite feedback, and the sum of the symmetric capacity without feedback and the amount of symmetric feedback. This constant is obtained as a function of the number of users, $K$ . We note that for the special case of Gaussian IC with $K = 2$ , our proposed achievability scheme results in a symmetric rate that is within at most 21.085 bits/s/Hz of the outer bound, which is the first constant gap bound despite the constant gap claim in [1] . The symmetric achievable rate is used to characterize the achievable generalized degrees of freedom, which exhibits a gradual increase from no feedback to perfect feedback in the presence of feedback links with limited capacity.
Two-fluid nonlinear theory of response of tokamak plasma to resonant magnetic perturbation

A comprehensive two-fluid nonlinear theory of magnetic reconnection driven at a single, tearing-stable, rational surface embedded in an H-mode tokamak plasma is presented. The surface is assumed to be resonant with one of the dominant helical harmonics of an applied resonant magnetic perturbation (RMP). The theory described in this paper is highly relevant to the problem of understanding the physics of RMP-induced edge localized mode suppression in tokamak plasmas.A comprehensive two-fluid nonlinear theory of magnetic reconnection driven at a single, tearing-stable, rational surface embedded in an H-mode tokamak plasma is presented. The surface is assumed to be resonant with one of the dominant helical harmonics of an applied resonant magnetic perturbation (RMP). The theory described in this paper is highly relevant to the problem of understanding the physics of RMP-induced edge localized mode suppression in tokamak plasmas.
On the slice spectral sequence

We introduce a variant of the slice spectral sequence which uses only regular slice cells, and state the precise relationship between the two spectral sequences. We analyze how the slice filtration of an equivariant spectrum that is concentrated over a normal subgroup is related to the slice filtration of its geometric fixed points, and use this to prove a conjecture of Hill on the slice filtration of an Eilenberg‐Mac Lane spectrum [3]. We also show how the (co)connectivity of a spectrum results in the (co)connectivity of its slice tower, demonstrating the “efficiency” of the slice spectral sequence.
The principle of maximal transcendentality and the four-loop collinear anomalous dimension

We use the principle of maximal transcendentality and the universal nature of subleading infrared poles to extract the analytic value of the four-loop collinear anomalous dimension in planar $$ \mathcal{N} $$ = 4 super-Yang-Mills theory from recent QCD results, obtaining $$ {\widehat{\mathcal{G}}}_0^{(4)}=-300{\zeta}_7-256{\zeta}_2{\zeta}_5-384{\zeta}_3{\zeta}_4 $$ . This value agrees with a previous numerical result to within 0.2%. It also provides the Regge trajectory, threshold soft anomalous dimension and rapidity anomalous dimension through four loops.
Hyperbolic graphs of surface groups

We give a sufficient condition for the fundamental group of a reglued graph of surfaces to be hyperbolic. A reglued graph of surfaces is constructed by cutting a fixed graph of surfaces along the edge surfaces, then regluing by pseudo-Anosov homeomorphisms of the edge surfaces. By carefully choosing the regluing homeomorphism, we construct an example of such a reglued graph of surfaces, whose fundamental group is not abstractly commensurable to any surface-by-free group, ie which is different from all the examples given by Mosher [10]. 20F67, 20F65; 57M07, 20F28
Accretion disc onto a static non-baryonic compact object

Abstract We study the emissivity properties of a geometrically thin, optically thick, steady accretion disc about a static boson star. Starting from a numerical computation of the metric potentials and the rotational velocities of the particles in the vicinity of the compact object, we obtain the power per unit area, the temperature of the disc, and the spectrum of the emitted radiation. In order to see if different central objects could be actually distinguished, all these results are compared with the case of a central Schwarzschild black hole of equal mass. We considered different situations both for the boson star, assumed with and without self-interactions, and the disc, whose internal commencement can be closer to the center than in the black hole case. We finally make some considerations about the Eddington luminosity, which becomes radially dependent for a transparent object. We found that, particularly at high energies, differences in the emitted spectrum are notorious. Reasons for that are discussed.
Stellar Tidal Disruption Events by Direct-collapse Black Holes

We analyze the early growth stage of direct-collapse black holes (DCBHs) with $\sim 10^{5} \ \rm M_\odot$, which are formed by collapse of supermassive stars in atomic-cooling halos at $z \gtrsim 10$. A nuclear accretion disk around a newborn DCBH is gravitationally unstable and fragments into clumps with a few $10 \ \rm M_\odot$ at $\sim 0.01-0.1 \ \rm pc$ from the center. Such clumps evolve into massive population III stars with a few $10-100 \ \rm M_\odot$ via successive gas accretion and a nuclear star cluster is formed. Radiative and mechanical feedback from an inner slim disk and the star cluster will significantly reduce the gas accretion rate onto the DCBH within $\sim 10^6 \ \rm yr$. Some of the nuclear stars can be scattered onto the loss cone orbits also within $\lesssim 10^6 \ \rm yr$ and tidally disrupted by the central DCBH. The jet luminosity powered by such tidal disruption events can be $L_{\rm j} \gtrsim 10^{50} \ \rm erg \ s^{-1}$. The prompt emission will be observed in X-ray bands with a peak duration of $\delta t_{\rm obs} \sim 10^{5-6} \ (1+z) \ \rm s$ followed by a tail $\propto t_{\rm obs}^{-5/3}$, which can be detectable by Swift BAT and eROSITA even from $z \sim 20$. Follow-up observations of the radio afterglows with, e.g., eVLA and the host halos with JWST could probe the earliest AGN feedback from DCBHs.
Momentum Operators in Two Intervals: Spectra and Phase Transition

We study the momentum operator defined on the disjoint union of two intervals. Even in one dimension, the question of two non-empty open and non-overlapping intervals has not been worked out in a way that extends the cases of a single interval and gives a list of the selfadjoint extensions. Starting with zero boundary conditions at the four endpoints, we characterize the selfadjoint extensions and undertake a systematic and complete study of the spectral theory of the selfadjoint extensions. In an application of our extension theory to harmonic analysis, we offer a new family of spectral pairs. Compared to earlier studies, it yields a more direct link between spectrum and geometry.
Chaos and complementarity in de Sitter space

We consider small perturbations to a static three-dimensional de Sitter geometry. For early enough perturbations that satisfy the null energy condition, the result is a shockwave geometry that leads to a time advance in the trajectory of geodesics crossing it. This brings the opposite poles of de Sitter space into causal contact with each other, much like a traversable wormhole in Anti-de Sitter space. In this background, we compute out-of-time-order correlators (OTOCs) to asses the chaotic nature of the de Sitter horizon and find that it is maximally chaotic: one of the OTOCs we study decays exponentially with a Lyapunov exponent that saturates the chaos bound. We discuss the consequences of our results for de Sitter complementarity and inflation.
Scalings of intermittent structures in magnetohydrodynamic turbulence

Turbulence is ubiquitous in plasmas, leading to rich dynamics characterized by irregularity, irreversibility, energy fluctuations across many scales, and energy transfer across many scales. Another fundamental and generic feature of turbulence, although sometimes overlooked, is the inhomogeneous dissipation of energy in space and in time. This is a consequence of intermittency, the scale-dependent inhomogeneity of dynamics caused by fluctuations in the turbulent cascade. Intermittency causes turbulent plasmas to self-organize into coherent dissipative structures, which may govern heating, diffusion, particle acceleration, and radiation emissions. In this paper, we present recent progress on understanding intermittency in incompressible magnetohydrodynamicturbulence with a strong guide field. We focus on the statistical analysis of intermittent dissipative structures, which occupy a small fraction of the volume but arguably account for the majority of energy dissipation. We show that, in our numerical simulations, intermittent structures in the current density,vorticity, and Elsasser vorticities all have nearly identical statistical properties. We propose phenomenological explanations for the scalings based on general considerations of Elsasser vorticity structures. Finally, we examine the broader implications of intermittency for astrophysical systems.
Global Strong Solutions of the Vlasov-Poisson-Boltzmann System in Bounded Domains

When dilute charged particles are confined in a bounded domain, boundary effects are crucial in the global dynamics. We construct a unique global-in-time solution to the Vlasov–Poisson–Boltzmann system in convex domains with the diffuse boundary condition. The construction is based on an L2-L∞ framework with a novel nonlinear-normed energy estimate of a distribution function in some weighted W1,p-spaces and C2,δ-estimates of the self-consistent electric potential. Moreover we prove an exponential convergence of the distribution function toward the global Maxwellian.
Immersed surfaces in the modular orbifold

A hyperbolic conjugacy class in the modular group PSL(2, Z) corresponds to a closed geodesic in the modular orbifold. Some of these geodesics virtually bound immersed surfaces, and some do not; the distinction is related to the polyhedral structure in the unit ball of the stable commutator length norm. We prove the following stability theorem: for every hyperbolic element of the modular group, the product of this element with a sufficiently large power of a parabolic element is represented by a geodesic that virtually bounds an immersed surface.
On volumes of hyperbolic orbifolds

We use H C Wang’s bound on the radius of a ball embedded in the fundamental domain of a lattice of a semisimple Lie group to construct an explicit lower bound for the volume of a hyperbolic n–orbifold.
Borel circle squaring

We give a completely constructive solution to Tarski's circle squaring problem. More generally, we prove a Borel version of an equidecomposition theorem due to Laczkovich. If $k \geq 1$ and $A, B \subseteq \mathbb{R}^k$ are bounded Borel sets with the same positive Lebesgue measure whose boundaries have upper Minkowski dimension less than $k$, then $A$ and $B$ are equidecomposable by translations using Borel pieces. This answers a question of Wagon. Our proof uses ideas from the study of flows in graphs, and a recent result of Gao, Jackson, Krohne, and Seward on special types of witnesses to the hyperfiniteness of free Borel actions of $\mathbb{Z}^d$.
QCD axion dark matter from a late time phase transition

We investigate the possibility that the Peccei-Quinn phase transition occurs at a temperature far below the symmetry breaking scale. Low phase transition temperatures are typical in supersymmetric theories, where symmetry breaking fields have small masses. We find that QCD axions are abundantly produced just after the phase transition. The observed dark matter abundance is reproduced even if the decay constant is much lower than 1011 GeV. The produced axions tend to be warm. For some range of the decay constant, the effect of the predicted warmness on structure formation can be confirmed by future observations of 21 cm lines. A portion of parameter space requires a mixing between the Peccei-Quinn symmetry breaking field and the Standard Model Higgs, and predicts an observable rate of rare Kaon decays.
On optical forces in spherical whispering gallery mode resonators

In this paper we discuss the force exerted by the field of an optical cavity on a polarizable dipole. We show that the modification of the cavity modes due to interaction with the dipole significantly alters the properties of the force. In particular, all components of the force are found to be non-conservative, and cannot, therefore, be derived from a potential energy. We also suggest a simple generalization of the standard formulas for the optical force on the dipole, which reproduces the results of calculations based on the Maxwell stress tensor.
Optimal Join Algorithms Meet Top-k

Top-k queries have been studied intensively in the database community and they are an important means to reduce query cost when only the "best" or "most interesting" results are needed instead of the full output. While some optimality results exist, e.g., the famous Threshold Algorithm, they hold only in a fairly limited model of computation that does not account for the cost incurred by large intermediate results and hence is not aligned with typical database-optimizer cost models. On the other hand, the idea of avoiding large intermediate results is arguably the main goal of recent work on optimal join algorithms, which uses the standard RAM model of computation to determine algorithm complexity. This research has created a lot of excitement due to its promise of reducing the time complexity of join queries with cycles, but it has mostly focused on full-output computation. We argue that the two areas can and should be studied from a unified point of view in order to achieve optimality in the common model of computation for a very general class of top-k-style join queries. This tutorial has two main objectives. First, we will explore and contrast the main assumptions, concepts, and algorithmic achievements of the two research areas. Second, we will cover recent, as well as some older, approaches that emerged at the intersection to support efficient ranked enumeration of join-query results. These are related to classic work on k-shortest path algorithms and more general optimization problems, some of which dates back to the 1950s. We demonstrate that this line of research warrants renewed attention in the challenging context of ranked enumeration for general join queries.
Spin Polarization Oscillations without Spin Precession: Spin-Orbit Entangled Resonances in Quasi-One-Dimensional Spin Transport

Resonant behavior involving spin-orbit entangled states occurs for spin transport along a narrow channel defined in a two-dimensional electron gas, including an apparent rapid relaxation of the spin polarization for special values of the channel width and applied magnetic field (so-called ballistic spin resonance). A fully quantum-mechanical theory for transport using multiple subbands of the one-dimensional system provides the dependence of the spin density on the applied magnetic field and channel width and position along the channel. We show how the spatially nonoscillating part of the spin density vanishes when the Zeeman energy matches the subband energy splittings. The resonance phenomenon persists in the presence of disorder.
X-SRAM: Enabling In-Memory Boolean Computations in CMOS Static Random Access Memories

Silicon-based static random access memories (SRAM) and digital Boolean logic have been the workhorse of the state-of-the-art computing platforms. Despite tremendous strides in scaling the ubiquitous metal-oxide-semiconductor transistor, the underlying von-Neumann computing architecture has remained unchanged. The limited throughput and energy-efficiency of the state-of-the-art computing systems, to a large extent, result from the well-known von-Neumann bottleneck . The energy and throughput inefficiency of the von-Neumann machines have been accentuated in recent times due to the present emphasis on data-intensive applications such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, and cryptography. A possible approach towards mitigating the overhead associated with the von-Neumann bottleneck is to enable in-memory Boolean computations. In this paper, we present an augmented version of the conventional SRAM bit-cells, called the X-SRAM , with the ability to perform in-memory, vector Boolean computations, in addition to the usual memory storage operations. We propose at least six different schemes for enabling in-memory vector computations, including NAND, NOR, IMP (implication), XOR logic gates, with respect to different bit-cell topologies − the 8T cell and the 8+T Differential cell. In addition, we also present a novel ‘read-compute-store’ scheme, wherein the computed Boolean function can be directly stored in the memory without the need of latching the data and carrying out a subsequent write operation. The feasibility of the proposed schemes has been verified using the predictive transistor models and detailed Monte-Carlo variation analysis. As an illustration, we also present the efficacy of the proposed in-memory computations by implementing advanced encryption standard algorithm on a non-standard von-Neumann machine wherein the conventional SRAM is replaced by X-SRAM. Our simulations indicated that up to 75% of memory accesses can be saved using the proposed techniques.
Coarse-graining two-dimensional turbulence via dynamical optimization

A model reduction technique based on an optimization principle is employed to coarse-grain inviscid, incompressible fluid dynamics in two dimensions. In this reduction the spectrally-truncated vorticity equation defines the microdynamics, while the macroscopic state space consists of quasi-equilibrium trial probability densities on the microscopic phase space, which are parameterized by the means and variances of the low modes of the vorticity. A macroscopic path therefore represents a coarse-grained approximation to the evolution of a nonequilibrium ensemble of microscopic solutions. Closure in terms of the vector of resolved variables, namely, the means and variances of the low modes, is achieved by minimizing over all feasible paths the time integral of their mean-squared residual with respect to the Liouville equation. The equations governing the optimal path are deduced from Hamilton–Jacobi theory. The coarse-grained dynamics derived by this optimization technique contains a scale-dependent eddy viscosity, modified nonlinear interactions between the low mode means, and a nonlinear coupling between the mean and variance of each low mode. The predictive skill of this optimal closure is validated quantitatively by comparing it against direct numerical simulations. These tests show that good agreement is achieved without adjusting any closure parameters.
Adaptive Honeypot Engagement Through Reinforcement Learning of Semi-Markov Decision Processes

A honeynet is a promising active cyber defense mechanism. It reveals the fundamental Indicators of Compromise (IoCs) by luring attackers to conduct adversarial behaviors in a controlled and monitored environment. The active interaction at the honeynet brings a high reward but also introduces high implementation costs and risks of adversarial honeynet exploitation. In this work, we apply infinite-horizon Semi-Markov Decision Process (SMDP) to characterize a stochastic transition and sojourn time of attackers in the honeynet and quantify the reward-risk trade-off. In particular, we design adaptive long-term engagement policies shown to be risk-averse, cost-effective, and time-efficient. Numerical results have demonstrated that our adaptive engagement policies can quickly attract attackers to the target honeypot and engage them for a sufficiently long period to obtain worthy threat information. Meanwhile, the penetration probability is kept at a low level. The results show that the expected utility is robust against attackers of a large range of persistence and intelligence. Finally, we apply reinforcement learning to the SMDP to solve the curse of modeling. Under a prudent choice of the learning rate and exploration policy, we achieve a quick and robust convergence of the optimal policy and value.
Dependence of homogeneous crystal nucleation in water droplets on their radii and its implication for modeling the formation of ice particles in cirrus clouds.

We propose an approximation for the total ice nucleation rate J = J(T,R) in supercooled water droplets as a function of both droplet radius R and temperature T, taking into account both volume-based and surface-stimulated nucleation modes. Its crucial idea is that even in the surface-stimulated mode crystal nuclei initially emerge (as sub-critical clusters) homogeneously in the sub-surface layer, not “pseudo-heterogeneously” at the surface. This mode is negligible in large droplets, but becomes increasingly important with decreasing droplet size and is dominant in small droplets. The crossover droplet radius for the transition of homogeneous ice nucleation from the volume-based mode to the surface-stimulated mode nonmonotonically depends on T from 233 K to 239.5 K, ranging there from ≈2 μm to ≈100 μm. Using experimental data on ice nucleation rates in small droplets, we determine that the ice–air interfacial tension of basal facets of ice crystals monotonically increases from ≈89 dyn cm−1 at T = 234.8 K to ≈91 dyn cm−1 at T = 236.2 K.
Conditions for Steady Gravitational Radiation from Accreting Neutron Stars

The gravitational wave- and accretion-driven evolution of the angular velocity, core temperature, and (small) amplitude of an r-mode of neutron stars in low-mass X-ray binaries and similar systems is investigated. The conditions required for evolution to a stable equilibrium state (with gravitational wave flux proportional to average X-ray flux) are determined. In keeping with conclusions derived from observations of neutron star cooling, the core neutrons are taken to be normal while the core protons and hyperons and the crust neutrons are taken to be singlet superfluids. The dominant sources of damping are then hyperon bulk viscosity (if much of the core is at least 2-3 times nuclear density) and (e-e and n-n) shear (and possibly magnetic) viscosity within the core-crust boundary layer. It is found that a stable equilibrium state can be reached if the superfluid transition temperature of the hyperons is sufficiently small (2 × 109 K), allowing the gravitational radiation from Sco X-1 and several other neutron stars in low-mass X-ray binaries to be potentially detectable by the second-generation LIGO (and VIRGO) arrays.
Explicit Dehn filling and Heegaard splittings

We prove an explicit, quantitative criterion that ensures the Heegaard surfaces in Dehn fillings behave "as expected." Given a cusped hyperbolic manifold X, and a Dehn filling whose meridian and longitude curves are longer than 2pi(2g-1), we show that every genus g Heegaard splitting of the filled manifold is isotopic to a splitting of the original manifold X. The analogous statement holds for fillings of multiple boundary tori. This gives an effective version of a theorem of Moriah-Rubinstein and Rieck-Sedgwick.
A detection metric designed for O’Connell effect eclipsing binaries

We present the construction of a novel time-domain signature extraction methodology and the development of a supporting supervised pattern detection algorithm. We focus on the targeted identification of eclipsing binaries that demonstrate a feature known as the O’Connell effect. Our proposed methodology maps stellar variable observations to a new representation known as distribution fields (DFs). Given this novel representation, we develop a metric learning technique directly on the DF space that is capable of specifically identifying our stars of interest. The metric is tuned on a set of labeled eclipsing binary data from the Kepler survey, targeting particular systems exhibiting the O’Connell effect. The result is a conservative selection of 124 potential targets of interest out of the Villanova Eclipsing Binary Catalog. Our framework demonstrates favorable performance on Kepler eclipsing binary data, taking a crucial step in preparing the way for large-scale data volumes from next-generation telescopes such as LSST and SKA.
Nonparaxial phasor-field propagation

Growing interest in non-line-of-sight (NLoS) imaging, colloquially referred to as "seeing around corners", has led to the development of phasor-field (P-field) imaging, wherein the field envelope of amplitude-modulated spatially-incoherent light is manipulated like an optical wave to directly probe a space that is otherwise shielded from view by diffuse scattering. Recently, we have established a paraxial theory for P-field imaging in a transmissive geometry that is a proxy for three-bounce NLoS imaging [J. Dove and J. H. Shapiro, Opt. Express27(13) 18016 (2019)]. Our theory, which relies on the Fresnel diffraction integral, introduces the two-frequency spatial Wigner distribution (TFSWD) to efficiently account for specularities and occlusions that may be present in the hidden space and cannot be characterized with P-field formalism alone. However, because the paraxial assumption is likely violated in many, if not most, NLoS scenarios, in the present paper we overcome that limitation by deriving a nonparaxial propagation formula for the P field using the Rayleigh-Sommerfeld diffraction integral. We also propose a Rayleigh-Sommerfeld propagation formula for the TFSWD and provide a derivation that is valid under specific partial-coherence conditions. Finally, we report a pair of differential equations that characterize free-space TFSWD propagation without restriction.
Mass-Capacity Inequalities for Conformally Flat Manifolds with Boundary

In this paper we prove a mass-capacity inequality and a volumetric Penrose inequality for conformally flat manifolds, in arbitrary dimensions. As a by-product of the proofs, capacity and Aleksandro...
ENERGY DEPENDENCE OF SHORT AND LONG-RANGE MULTIPLICITY CORRELATIONS IN Au+Au COLLISIONS FROM STAR

A general overview of the measurement of long-range multiplicity correlations measured by the STAR experiment in Au+Au collisions at RHIC is presented. The presence of long-range correlations can provide insight into the early stages, and the type of matter produced in, these collisions. These measurements have been made in Au+Au collisions at and 62.4 GeV. These results indicate a relatively large long-range correlation is produced in Au+Au collisions compared to a pp baseline at . A weaker long-range correlation is seen as a function of incident energy. Further, comparison of the onset of the long-range correlation to the calculated percolation density parameter at is presented.
Active compensation of aperture discontinuities for WFIRST-AFTA: analytical and numerical comparison of propagation methods and preliminary results with a WFIRST-AFTA-like pupil

The new frontier in the quest for the highest contrast levels in the focal plane of a coronagraph is now the correction of the large diffraction artifacts introduced at the science camera by apertures of increasing complexity. Indeed, the future generation of space- and ground-based coronagraphic instruments will be mounted on on-axis and/or segmented telescopes; the design of coronagraphic instruments for such observatories is currently a domain undergoing rapid progress. One approach consists of using two sequential deformable mirrors (DMs) to correct for aberrations introduced by secondary mirror structures and segmentation of the primary mirror. The coronagraph for the WFIRST-AFTA mission will be the first of such instruments in space with a two-DM wavefront control system. Regardless of the control algorithm for these multiple DMs, they will have to rely on quick and accurate simulation of the propagation effects introduced by the out-of-pupil surface. In the first part of this paper, we present the analytical description of the different approximations to simulate these propagation effects. In Appendix A, we prove analytically that in the special case of surfaces inducing a converging beam, the Fresnel method yields high fidelity for simulations of these effects. We provide numerical simulations showing this effect. In the second part, we use these tools in the framework of the active compensation of aperture discontinuities (ACAD) technique applied to pupil geometries similar to WFIRST-AFTA. We present these simulations in the context of the optical layout of the high-contrast imager for complex aperture telescopes, which will test ACAD on a optical bench. The results of this analysis show that using the ACAD method, an apodized pupil Lyot coronagraph, and the performance of our current DMs, we are able to obtain, in numerical simulations, a dark hole with a WFIRST-AFTA-like. Our numerical simulation shows that we can obtain contrast better than 2×10−9 in monochromatic light and better than 3×10−8 with 10% bandwidth between 5 and 14 λ/D.
KIC 8462852 Faded throughout the Kepler Mission

KIC 8462852 is a superficially ordinary main sequence F star for which Kepler detected an unusual series of brief dimming events. We obtain accurate relative photometry of KIC 8462852 from the Kepler full-frame images, finding that the brightness of KIC 8462852 monotonically decreased over the four years it was observed by Kepler. Over the first ~1000 days KIC 8462852 faded approximately linearly at a rate of 0.341 ± 0.041% yr^(−1), for a total decline of 0.9%. KIC 8462852 then dimmed much more rapidly in the next ~200 days, with its flux dropping by more than 2%. For the final ~200 days of Kepler photometry the magnitude remained approximately constant, although the data are also consistent with the decline rate measured for the first 2.7 years. Of a sample of 193 nearby comparison stars and 355 stars with similar stellar parameters, none exhibit the rapid decline by >2% or the cumulative fading by 3% of KIC 8462852. Moreover, of these comparison stars, only one changes brightness as quickly as the 0.341% yr^(−1) measured for KIC 8462852 during the first three years of the Kepler mission. We examine whether the rapid decline could be caused by a cloud of transiting circumstellar material, finding that while such a cloud could evade detection in submillimeter observations, the transit ingress and duration cannot be explained by a simple cloud model. Moreover, this model cannot account for the observed longer-term dimming. No known or proposed stellar phenomena can fully explain all aspects of the observed light curve.
The Fibonacci Hamiltonian

We consider the Fibonacci Hamiltonian, the central model in the study of electronic properties of one-dimensional quasicrystals, and establish relations between its spectrum and spectral characteristics (namely, the optimal Holder exponent of the integrated density of states, the dimension of the density of states measure, the dimension of the spectrum, and the upper transport exponent) and the dynamical properties of the Fibonacci trace map (such as dimensional characteristics of the non-wandering hyperbolic set and its measure of maximal entropy as well as other equilibrium measures, topological entropy, multipliers of periodic orbits). We also exhibit a connection between the spectral quantities and the thermodynamic pressure function. As a result, a detailed description of the spectral properties for all values of the coupling constant is obtained (in contrast to all previous quantitative results, which could be established only in the regime of small or large coupling). In particular, we show that the spectrum of this operator is a dynamically defined Cantor set and that the density of states measure is exact-dimensional; this implies that all standard fractal dimensions coincide in each case. We show that all the gaps of the spectrum allowed by the gap labeling theorem are open for all values of the coupling constant. Also, we establish strict inequalities between the four spectral characteristics in question, and provide the exact large coupling asymptotics of the dimension of the density of states measure (for the other three quantities, the large coupling asymptotics were known before).
Meeting the Cool Neighbors. III. Spectroscopy of Northern NLTT Stars

We present initial results of an all-sky search for late-type dwarfs within 20 pc of the Sun using the New Luyten Two-Tenths (NLTT) catalog cross-referenced with the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS) database. The results were obtained with low-resolution optical spectroscopic follow-up of candidate nearby stars as a preliminary test of our methodology. MJ, derived using spectral indices, and 2MASS J are used to estimate distances. Out of the 70 objects observed, 28 are identified as previously unrecognized objects within 25 pc of the Sun, and up to 19 of these are within 20 pc. One, LP 647-13, is an M9-type dwarf at 10.5 pc, making it one of the four closest M9 dwarfs currently known. We also discuss the chromospheric activity of the observed dwarfs.
Sedimentation Efficiency of Condensation Clouds in Substellar Atmospheres

Condensation clouds in substellar atmospheres have been widely inferred from spectra and photometric variability. Up until now, their horizontally averaged vertical distribution and mean particle size have been largely characterized using models, one of which is the eddy diffusion-sedimentation model from Ackerman and Marley that relies on a sedimentation efficiency parameter, f(sub sed), to determine the vertical extent of clouds in the atmosphere. However, the physical processes controlling the vertical structure of clouds in substellar atmospheres are not well understood. In this work, we derive trends in f(sub sed) across a large range of eddy diffusivities (K (sub zz) ), gravities, material properties, and cloud formation pathways by fitting cloud distributions calculated by a more detailed cloud microphysics model. We find that f(sub sed) is dependent on K (sub zz), but not gravity, when K (sub zz) is held constant. f(sub sed) is most sensitive to the nucleation rate of cloud particles, as determined by material properties like surface energy and molecular weight. High surface energy materials form fewer, larger cloud particles, leading to large f(sub sed) (>1), and vice versa for materials with low surface energy. For cloud formation via heterogeneous nucleation, f(sub sed) is sensitive to the condensation nuclei flux and radius, connecting cloud formation in substellar atmospheres to the objects' formation environments and other atmospheric aerosols. These insights could lead to improved cloud models that help us better understand substellar atmospheres. For example, we demonstrate that f(sub sed) could increase with increasing cloud base depth in an atmosphere, shedding light on the nature of the brown dwarf L/T transition.
Tropicalization of Classical Moduli Spaces

The image of the complement of a hyperplane arrangement under a monomial map can be tropicalized combinatorially using matroid theory. We apply this to classical moduli spaces that are associated with complex reflection arrangements. Starting from modular curves, we visit the Segre cubic, the Igusa quartic, and moduli of marked del Pezzo surfaces of degrees 2 and 3. Our primary example is the Burkhardt quartic, whose tropicalization is a 3-dimensional fan in 39-dimensional space. This effectuates a synthesis of concrete and abstract approaches to tropical moduli of genus 2 curves.
Experimental Demonstration of xor Operation in Graphene Magnetologic Gates at Room Temperature

Graphene is the wonder material hoped to enable the energy-efficient spin-based information processing that could replace today's electronics. Actually making working devices from this stuff, however, is not trivial. This study presents a milestone in harnessing spins in graphene for computation: The authors have produced one of the building blocks needed to make spintronic integrated circuits.
A higher chromatic analogue of the image of J

We prove a higher chromatic analogue of Snaith’s theorem which identifies the K–theory spectrum as the localisation of the suspension spectrum of ℂℙ∞ away from the Bott class; in this result, higher Eilenberg–MacLane spaces play the role of ℂℙ∞ = K(ℤ,2). Using this, we obtain a partial computation of the part of the Picard-graded homotopy of the K(n)–local sphere indexed by powers of a spectrum which for large primes is a shift of the Gross–Hopkins dual of the sphere. Our main technical tool is a K(n)–local notion generalising complex orientation to higher Eilenberg–MacLane spaces. As for complex-oriented theories, such an orientation produces a one-dimensional formal group law as an invariant of the cohomology theory. As an application, we prove a theorem that gives evidence for the chromatic redshift conjecture.
Geometric phases of water waves

Recently, Banner et al. (Phys. Rev. Lett., 112 (2014) 114502) highlighted a new fundamental property of open ocean wave groups, the so-called crest slowdown. For linear narrow-band waves, this is related to the geometric and dynamical phase velocities Ud and Ug associated with the parallel transport through the principal fiber bundle of the wave dynamics with U(1) symmetry. The theoretical predictions are shown to be in fair agreement with ocean field observations, from which the average crest speed with and .
Doppler amplification of motion of a trapped three-level ion

The system of a trapped ion translationally excited by a blue-detuned near-resonant laser, sometimes described as an instance of a phonon laser, has recently received attention as interesting in its own right and for its application to non-destructive readout of internal states of non-fluorescing ions. Previous theoretical work has been limited to cases of two-level ions. Here, we perform simulations to study the dynamics of a phonon laser involving the Λ-type ion, in which coherent population trapping (CPT) effects lead to different behavior than in the previously studied cases. We explore optimization of the laser parameters to maximize amplification gain for initially seeded motion and consider the related signal-to-noise ratios for internal state readout. We find that good Doppler amplification and state readout performance can be obtained even when operating quite near the CPT dip.
Star Formation in Spiral Arms

The origin and types of spiral arms are reviewed with an emphasis on the connections between these arms and star formation. Flocculent spiral arms are most likely the result of transient instabilities in the gas that promote dense cloud formation, star formation, and generate turbulence. Long irregular spiral arms are usually initiated by gravitational instabilities in the stars, with the gas contributing to and following these instabilities, and star formation in the gas. Global spiral arms triggered by global perturbations, such as a galaxy interaction, can be wavemodes with wave reflection in the inner regions. They might grow and dominate the disk for several rotations before degenerating into higher-order modes by non-linear effects. Interstellar gas flows through these global arms, and through the more transient stellar spiral arms as well, where it can reach a high density and low shear, thereby promoting self-gravitational instabilities. The result is the formation of giant spiral arm cloud complexes, in which dense molecular clouds form and turn into stars. The molecular envelops and debris from these clouds appear to survive and drift through the interarm regions for a long time, possibly 100 Myr or more, with lingering spontaneous star formation and triggered star formation in the pieces that are still at high-pressure edges near older HII regions.
Goldstone’s Theorem on a Light-Like Plane

I review various aspects of chiral symmetry and its spontaneous breaking on null planes, including the interesting manner in which Goldstone’s theorem is realized and the constraints that chiral symmetry imposes on the null-plane Hamiltonians. Specializing to QCD with N massless flavors, I show that there is an interesting limit in which the chiral constraints on the null-plane Hamiltonians can be solved to give the spin-flavor algebra SU(2N), recovering a result originally found by Weinberg using different methods.
The Smart Kinetic Self-Avoiding Walk and Schramm Loewner Evolution

The smart kinetic self-avoiding walk (SKSAW) is a random walk which never intersects itself and grows forever when run in the full-plane. At each time step the walk chooses the next step uniformly from among the allowable nearest neighbors of the current endpoint of the walk. In the full-plane a nearest neighbor is allowable if it has not been visited before and there is a path from the nearest neighbor to infinity through sites that have not been visited before. It is well known that on the hexagonal lattice the SKSAW in a bounded domain between two boundary points is equivalent to an interface in critical percolation, and hence its scaling limit is the chordal Schramm–Loewner evolution with $$\kappa =6$$ (SLE $$_6$$ ). Like SLE there are variants of the SKSAW depending on the domain and the initial and terminal points. On the hexagonal lattice these variants have been shown to converge to the corresponding version of SLE $$_6$$ . It is believed that the scaling limit of all these variants on any regular lattice is the corresponding version of SLE $$_6$$ . We test this conjecture for the square lattice by simulating the SKSAW in the full-plane and find excellent agreement with the predictions of full-plane SLE $$_6$$ .
Variation of instructor-student interactions in an introductory interactive physics course

The physics instruction at UC Davis for life science majors takes place in a long-standing reformed large-enrollment physics course in which the discussion or laboratory instructors (primarily graduate student teaching assistants) implement the interactive-engagement (IE) elements of the course. Because so many different instructors participate in disseminating the IE course elements, we find it essential to the instructors' professional development to observe and document the student-instructor interactions within the classroom. Out of this effort, we have developed a computerized real-time instructor observation tool (RIOT) to take data of student-instructor interactions. We use the RIOT to observe 29 different instructors for 5 hours each over the course of one quarter, for a total of about 150 hours of class time, finding that the range of instructor behaviors is more extreme than previously assumed. In this paper, we introduce RIOT and describe how the variation present across 29 different instructors can provide students in the same course with significantly different course experiences.
Star Formation and Gas Dynamics in Galactic Disks: Physical Processes and Numerical Models

Star formation depends on the available gaseous “fuel” as well as galactic environment, with higher specific star formation rates where gas is predominantly molecular and where stellar (and dark matter) densities are higher. The partition of gas into different thermal components must itself depend on the star formation rate, since a steady state distribution requires a balance between heating (largely from stellar UV for the atomic component) and cooling. In this presentation, I discuss a simple thermal and dynamical equilibrium model for the star formation rate in disk galaxies, where the basic inputs are the total surface density of gas and the volume density of stars and dark matter, averaged over ~kpc scales. Galactic environment is important because the vertical gravity of the stars and dark matter compress gas toward the midplane, helping to establish the pressure, and hence the cooling rate. In equilibrium, the star formation rate must evolve until the gas heating rate is high enough to balance this cooling rate and maintain the pressure imposed by the local gravitational field. In addition to discussing the formulation of this equilibrium model, I review the current status of numerical simulations of multiphase disks, focusing on measurements of quantities that characterize the mean properties of the diffuse ISM. Based on simulations, turbulence levels in the diffuse ISM appear relatively insensitive to local disk conditions and energetic driving rates, consistent with observations. It remains to be determined, both from observations and simulations, how mass exchange processes control the ratio of cold-to-warm gas in the atomic ISM.
Noncommutative Generalizations of Theorems of Cohen and Kaplansky

This paper investigates situations where a property of a ring can be tested on a set of “prime right ideals.” Generalizing theorems of Cohen and Kaplansky, we show that every right ideal of a ring is finitely generated (resp. principal) iff every “prime right ideal” is finitely generated (resp. principal), where the phrase “prime right ideal” can be interpreted in one of many different ways. We also use our methods to show that other properties can be tested on special sets of right ideals, such as the right artinian property and various homological properties. Applying these methods, we prove the following noncommutative generalization of a result of Kaplansky: a (left and right) noetherian ring is a principal right ideal ring iff all of its maximal right ideals are principal. A counterexample shows that the left noetherian hypothesis cannot be dropped. Finally, we compare our results to earlier generalizations of Cohen’s and Kaplansky’s theorems in the literature.
Dehn surgery, homology and hyperbolic volume

If a closed, orientable hyperbolic 3‐manifold M has volume at most 1.22 then H1.MIZp/ has dimension at most 2 for every prime p⁄ 2;7, and H1.MIZ2/ and H1.MIZ7/ have dimension at most 3. The proof combines several deep results about hyperbolic 3‐manifolds. The strategy is to compare the volume of a tube about a shortest closed geodesic C M with the volumes of tubes about short closed geodesics in a sequence of hyperbolic manifolds obtained from M by Dehn surgeries on C . 57M50; 57M27
Tracking the post-BBN evolution of deuterium

The primordial abundance of deuterium produced during Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN) depends sensitively on the universal ratio of baryons to photons, an important cosmological parameter probed independently by the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation. Observations of deuterium in high-redshift, low-metallicity QSO Absorption Line Systems (QSOALS) provide a key baryometer, determining the baryon abundance at the time of BBN to a precision of {approx}5%. Alternatively, if the CMB-determined baryon to photon ratio is used in the BBN calculation of the primordial abundances, the BBN-predicted deuterium abundance may be compared with the primordial value inferred from the QSOALS, testing the standard cosmological model. In the post-BBN universe, as gas is cycled through stars, deuterium is only destroyed so that its abundance measured anytime, anywhere in the Universe, bounds the primordial abundance from below. Constraints on models of post-BBN Galactic chemical evolution follow from a comparison of the relic deuterium abundance with the FUSE-inferred deuterium abundances in the chemically enriched, stellar processed material of the local ISM.