arXiv preprints from January 1, 2026 through September 7, 2026 — 20:07:35 EST
We propose a novel origin for the disparity between quark and lepton flavor mixing based on the refractive nature of neutrino masses. We postulate that the fundamental mixing in both the quark and lepton sectors is CKM-like, together with tiny vacuum neutrino masses, while the observed PMNS mixing matrix emerges dynamically from...
Strongly lensed star clusters have recently been detected up to redshift $z\approx 10$ in galaxy cluster fields using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). When pairs of mirror images of such star clusters appear across the lensing critical curve, it is usually assumed that both images will display identical spectral energy...
Nonreciprocal supercurrents in Josephson junctions have recently emerged as a sensitive tool for investigating broken symmetries in superconducting quantum materials. Here, we report an even-odd Josephson diode effect (JDE) in Corbino-geometry junctions fabricated on the pristine surface of a bulk-insulating three-dimensional...
We show that the Kasteleyn transition, the abrupt proliferation of infinite strings of defects in classical dimer and related models, can also be relevant for frustrated 2d quantum magnets. This is explicitly demonstrated in a phase of the spin-1/2 Heisenberg diamond-decorated honeycomb lattice where a family of exact eigenstates...
We investigate the ground-state and finite-temperature properties of the $J_1$-$J_2$ Heisenberg antiferromagnet on the square lattice in the presence of an external magnetic field. We focus on the highly frustrated regime around $J_2 \approx J_1/2$. The $h$-$T$ phase diagram is investigated with particular emphasis on the...
Conduction as a mechanism for explaining the disrupted cooling-flow in galaxy clusters has been mostly discounted, as the process is inefficient at transporting heat all the way from the cluster into the core. However, thermal conduction can be strongly enhanced when materials of significantly different temperature are brought into...
Casimir torque is conventionally associated with explicit breaking of rotational symmetry, arising from material dielectric anisotropy, geometric asymmetry, or externally applied fields that themselves break rotational invariance. Here we demonstrate a fundamentally different mechanism: an axially symmetric magnetic field can generate...
We study the dynamics of circuits composed of stochastic and bistochastic controlled gates. This type of dynamics arises from quantum circuits with random controlled gates, as well as in stochastic circuits and deterministic classical cellular automata. We prove that stochastic and bistochastic controlled gates lead to two-point...
We demonstrate the capabilities of probabilistic diffusion models to reduce dramatically the computational cost of expensive hydrodynamical simulations to study the relationship between observable baryonic cosmological probes and dark matter at field level and well into the non-linear regime. We introduce a novel technique, Cosmo-FOLD...
We provide a detailed characterization of 2M07515777+1807352, a post-common envelope eclipsing binary system with a 10.3 d, nearly, but not quite, circular orbit (e = 0.02). This system consists of a massive white dwarf (WD) ($1.08$ M$_{\odot}$) and a 4400 K main-sequence companion (0.66 M$_{\odot}$). This WD is among the most massive...
Assuming all three known neutrinos are Dirac fermions, $U(1)_{B-L}$ can be an exact symmetry. We show that, if the condition of charge quantization is relaxed, the anomaly-free $B-L$ charges of two out of three right-handed neutrinos can be enhanced by arbitrarily large factors, while all other fermions retain their canonical charges....
Fast X-ray transients (FXTs) are flashes of X-rays that last for a few hundreds of seconds to a few hours. An enigmatic population of these transients that did not have a clear origin has been known for several decades, mostly found serendipitously in soft X-ray imaging observations. Recent progress in this field by Einstein Probe has...
Small asteroids and large meteoroids frequently impact the Earth, though their physical and material properties remain poorly understood. When observed as fireballs in Earth's atmosphere, these properties can be inferred from their ablation and fragmentation behavior. The 2022 release of previously classified United States Government...
Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) protocols enable two distant parties to communicate with information-theoretically proven secrecy. However, these protocols are generally vulnerable to potential mismatches between the physical modeling and the implementation of their quantum operations, thereby opening opportunities for side channel...
Orbital magnetism is a purely quantum phenomenon that reflects intrinsic electronic properties of solids, yet its microscopic description in interacting multiband systems remains incomplete. We develop a general quantum many-body framework for orbital magnetic responses based on the Luttinger-Ward functional. Starting from the Dyson...
We present a reanalysis of the water maser system in NGC 4258 to reassess its geometric distance, commonly reported as approximately 7.6 Mpc with percent-level accuracy, a key anchor in extragalactic distance ladder calibrations and recent determinations of the Hubble constant. We introduce a method that relies exclusively on tracking...
The rapid emergence of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) in the early Universe poses a challenge to current models of black hole growth. One promising formation pathway is the direct collapse black hole (DCBH) scenario, in which gas in pristine, low-metallicity halos forms supermassive (or quasi-) stars leading to massive black holes...
The discovery by JWST of a substantial population of compact "Little Red Dots" (LRDs) presents a major puzzle: their observed spectra defy standard astrophysical interpretations. Here, we show that LRD spectra are naturally reproduced by emission from an accreting Direct Collapse Black Hole (DCBH). Using radiation-hydrodynamic...
eROSITA substantiated earlier indications that Loop-I is the northern part of an extended bipolar Galactic-bubble structure, but the southern bubble was not established in nonthermal emission and the shock strength was not robustly measured in either bubble. After using eROSITA data to map the bubble edges, we analyzed edge-adjacent...
Transition--metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) uniquely combine topological electronic states realized without external magnetic fields with a strong optical response arising from long--lived excitons. Motivated by this confluence, we investigate an interacting fermion--boson system formed by coupling an exciton to a quasihole of a...
The origin of hot Jupiters is the oldest problem in exoplanet astrophysics. Hot Jupiters formed in situ or via disk migration should be in place just a few Myr after the formation of their host stars. On the other hand, hot Jupiters formed via eccentricity excitation and tidal damping as a result of planet--planet scattering or...
Inspired by string theory and cosmological constant problem, it is plausible that the Universe's vacuum structure is characterized by a landscape of metastable vacua. The existence of dark matter and dark energy further suggests that the dark sector may inhabit its own "dark landscape". If the dark vacuum is metastable, bubbles of...
Josephson junctions made of conventional superconductors display Fraunhofer-like oscillations of the critical current as a function of the threaded magnetic flux. When the superconductors are deposited on the surface of a three-dimensional topological insulator, this pattern is slightly modified due to the presence of chiral Majorana...
One of the largest source of uncertainties in the predictions of stellar models comes from the internal transport mechanisms. In close massive binaries, previous theoretical studies suggest that tides systematically boost chemical mixing. However, observations do not reveal any clear period-nitrogen enrichment trend, challenging these...
Using the modified Villain lattice Hamiltonian formulation of the 1+1d compact boson theory, we construct exactly solvable abelian chiral lattice gauge theories in two spacetime dimensions. As a concrete example, we derive an explicit quadratic lattice Hamiltonian for the "34-50" chiral gauge theory. We further show that $N$ copies of...