Little string amplitudes (and the unreasonable effectiveness of 6D SYM)
A bstractWe study tree level scattering amplitudes of four massless states in the double scaled little string theory, and compare them to perturbative loop amplitudes in six-dimensional super-Yang-Mills theory. The little string amplitudes are computed from correlators in the cigar coset CFT and in N$$ \mathcal{N} $$ = 2 minimal models. The results are expressed in terms of integrals of conformal blocks and evaluated numerically in the α′ expansion. We find striking agreements with up to 2-loop scattering amplitudes of massless gluons in 6D SU(k) SYM at a ℤk invariant point on the Coulomb branch. We comment on the issue of UV divergence at higher loop orders in the gauge theory and discuss the implication of our results.

title: Deformations with maximal supersymmetries part 2: off-shell formulation
abstract: A bstractContinuing our exploration of maximally supersymmetric gauge theories (MSYM) deformed by higher dimensional operators, in this paper we consider an off-shell approach based on pure spinor superspace and focus on constructing supersymmetric deformations beyond the first order. In particular, we give a construction of the Batalin-Vilkovisky action of an all-order non-Abelian Born-Infeld deformation of MSYM in the non-minimal pure spinor formalism. We also discuss subtleties in the integration over the pure spinor superspace and the relevance of Berkovits-Nekrasov regularization.

title: Caustics, critical curves and cross-sections for gravitational lensing by disc galaxies
abstract: We study strong gravitational lensing by spiral galaxies, modeling them as infinitely thin uniform disks embedded in singular isothermal spheres. We derive general properties of the critical curves and caustics analytically. The multiple-image cross section is a sensitive function of the inclination angle of the disk relative to the observer. We compute the inclination averaged cross section for several sets of lensing parameters. For realistic disk mass and size parameters, we find that the cross section for multiple imaging is increased by only a modest factor and no dramatic increase in the optical depth for strong lensing of QSOs would be expected. However, the cross section for high magnifications is significantly increased due to the inclusion of a disk, especially for nearly edge-on configurations; due to the strong observational selection effects favoring high magnifications, there might be significant consequences for lensing statistics.

title: A neural network approach for identification of tau decays

title: Infrared–red cores in nearby elliptical galaxies
abstract: We present the Spitzer Space Telescope Infrared Array Camera observations for a sample of local elliptical galaxies to study later stages of active galactic nucleus (AGN) activity. A sample of 36 elliptical galaxies is selected from the Palomar spectroscopic survey. We detect nuclear non-stellar infrared emission in nine of them. There is unambiguous evidence of circumnuclear dust in these nine galaxies in their optical images. We also find a remarkable correlation between the infrared excess emission and the nuclear radio/X-ray emission, suggesting that infrared excess emission is tightly related to nuclear activity. The possible origin of infrared excess emission from hot dust heated by the central AGN is supported by the spectral indices of the infrared excess emission.

title: Linear growth of entanglement entropy in holographic thermalization captured by horizon interiors and mutual information
abstract: A bstractWe study the holographic entanglement entropy in a homogeneous falling shell background, which is dual to the strongly coupled field theory following a global quench. For d=2 conformal field theories, it is known that the entropy has a linear growth regime if the scale of the entangling region is large. In addition, the growth rate approaches a constant when the scale increases. We demonstrate analytically that this behavior is directly related to the part of minimal area surface probing the interior of apparent horizons in the bulk, as well as the mutual information between two disjoint rectangular subsystems in the boundary. Furthermore, we show numerically that all the results are universal for the d=3 conformal field theory, the non-relativistic scale-invariant theory and the dual theory of Gauss-Bonnet gravity.

title: Competition between s-wave order and d-wave order in holographic superconductors
abstract: A bstractWe study competition between s-wave order and d-wave order through two holographic superconductor models. We find that once the coexisting phase appears, it is always thermodynamically favored, and that the coexistence phase is narrow and one condensate tends to kill the other. The phase diagram is constructed for each model in terms of temperature and the ratio of charges of two orders. We further compare the behaviors of some thermodynamic quantities, and discuss the different aspects and identical ones between two models.