arXiv preprints from January 1, 2026 through September 21, 2026 — 23:26:19 EST
Twenty-five years of RHIC operation have produced a uniquely diverse dataset, which enables a broad physics program. This contribution highlights recent STAR results in four areas: exotic-state searches and ultra-peripheral collisions; the onset of quark--gluon plasma (QGP) signatures in small systems; radial flow and its...
The metal content of galaxies provides direct insight into the underlying physical processes that drive galaxy evolution. An example of this is the three-parameter relationship between stellar mass, gas-phase metallicity, and star formation rate, commonly referred to as the Fundamental Metallicity Relation (FMR). Previous studies have...
The degree of spin-orbit alignment in merging binary black holes is a powerful probe of their formation history. However, assessing spin-orbit misalignment in individual events remains challenging, as most parameters commonly used to characterize precession tend to be poorly constrained. In this work, we introduce the angle between...
Conventional oxide epitaxy approaches face challenges when the oxidation conditions of constituent elements differ significantly. Here we demonstrate that V--O thin films can serve as solid-phase precursors for epitaxial AlV$_2$O$_4$, comprising a pyrochlore V$^{2.5+}$ network coexisting with AlO$_4$ tetrahedra within the spinel...
The effects of pressure on the chemical sooting structure of equi-diffusive soot formation (SF) in a counterflow diffusion flame (CDF) are explored in a combined experimental and numerical study over pressures ranging from 1 bar to 6 bar. Experiments preserve the diffusive flame structure and carbon flux at increasing pressures and...
We investigate the emergence of roton instability in self-bound quantum droplets interacting via a finite-range soft-core potential modeled by a Heaviside step interaction. The ground-state properties are obtained by solving the extended Gross-Pitaevskii equation including Lee-Huang-Yang corrections with a nonlocal interaction term....
We present a panchromatic transmission spectrum of GJ1132b spanning $0.71$--$5.16~μ$m, combining published transit observations from Magellan/LDSS3C, HST/WFC3 G141, and JWST/NIRSpec (G395H and G395M). Using petitRADTRANS and PyMultiNest, we perform Bayesian atmospheric retrievals, comparing a flat-line, Gaussian-feature models, and...
I show that the progenitor of supernova (SN) 1987A faded substantially and became red for hundreds of years to observers in and near the plane of the equatorial ring, because the equatorial ring, which was formed by a binary interaction between the SN 1987A progenitor and a main-sequence companion that ejected material about 20,000...
Dynamical friction (DF) and gravitational-wave radiation reaction are conventionally treated as distinct dissipative mechanisms acting on a compact object inspiraling through a matter environment. We show that DF is not an additional force but a term at order $q^2ε$ in a covariant multiparameter expansion of the MiSaTaQuWa force...
X-ray speckle-based dark-field imaging offers high sensitivity to sub-pixel structural features, yet its quantitative reliability in clinical and preclinical settings remains constrained by low photon flux and finite focal spot sizes. However, how hardware-induced noise and source blurring propagate through retrieval algorithms to...
In a recent breakthrough, Yamakawa and Zhandry (J. ACM 2024) constructed a proof of quantumness in the quantum random oracle model (QROM) in which the quantum prover samples a codeword preimage of a publicly computable function H. They conjectured that given any H, a successful prover must sample their preimage from a high-entropy...
We characterize all maximally charged black hole spacetimes in $3+1$ dimensions. More precisely, given any initial data set $(M,g,k)$ saturating the mass-charge inequality that satisfies the charged dominant energy condition, we show that $(M,g,k)$ must arise from an isometric embedding into a Majumdar-Papapetrou spacetime.
We study long-range correlated Wigner-type matrices built from row-independent stationary Gaussian sequences. For exponentially decaying (AR(1)) correlations, the bulk spectral density deforms from the semicircle law via an explicit combinatorial "hub" mechanism, yet we verify the flatness and decay hypotheses of the...
Scalar-induced gravitational waves (SIGWs) probe primordial curvature perturbations beyond cosmic microwave background scales, while primordial black holes (PBHs) probe the rare tail of the same statistics. We ask whether SIGW morphology can reveal scale-dependent primordial non-Gaussianity. We adopt the internal-leg separable kernel,...
We investigate the melting dynamics of an ice disk subjected to an external oscillatory flow using two-dimensional direct numerical simulations, in the absence of buoyancy, varying the flow amplitude and its oscillation frequency. We identify two distinct regimes governed by the interplay between advection and diffusion within the...
Few planetary systems form in isolation. Rather, interactions in their birth environments may sculpt their architectures or drive them into unstable configurations. Here we study the role of environmental perturbations in triggering dynamical instabilities leading to hot Jupiter formation in dense clusters, focusing on whether the...
Chemical interactions between the hydrogen-dominated envelopes and silicate-rich interiors of sub-Neptunes likely play a key role in shaping their atmospheric structure, mass-radius relations, and upper atmosphere composition. While atmospheric abundances and structure deeply influence each other, many existing models have either...
In particle physics, discovery claims conventionally require an observed significance exceeding $5σ$. However, the interpretation of a $5σ$ result depends critically on the testing procedure, namely whether the hypothesis is tested at a single pre-specified point in parameter space or by scanning over a range of possible signal...
The design of disordered point patterns with desirable properties is an exciting and ongoing research endeavor, with applications ranging from materials to computer science. A successful approach in recent years has been the optimization of point patterns through a loss function that enforces properties in their Fourier-space...
The topology of the electronic structure for an avoided crossing and a conical intersection (CI) is different and is characterized by the presence of the geometric phase in the electronic wavefunction in the latter. Using the linear Jahn-Teller model, we show that an avoided crossing can be created from the conical intersection while...
The emergence of Galactic PeV astronomy makes photon--photon ($γγ$) absorption an increasingly important component of gamma-ray data analysis. In this work, the Galactic Photon Survival Probability (GPSP) atlas is presented as the first Galactic framework describing gamma-ray survival probabilities over the full parameter space...
The dynamics of particles in the early universe are described by Boltzmann equations, which involve high-dimensional phase-space integrals. Classical approaches use quadrature integration and evolve the system on a fixed momentum grid, which scales poorly to complicated systems and parameter scans, severely limiting the complexity of...
Cooperation is ubiquitous in both natural and human societies, yet its evolutionary basis remains a major challenge. A long-standing puzzle is whether having more information leads to better decision-making and thus a higher level of cooperation. To address this question, we adopt a recently developed reinforcement learning framework...
Vibrational spectroscopy reports on molecular structure with chemical-bond specificity, but in biological systems the vibrational signals of a target chromophore are typically buried under contributions from the surrounding matrix. Resonance Raman (RR) spectroscopy addresses this problem by matching the excitation wavelength to an...
Ion channels and pumps drive ion-selective currents through cell membranes at localized sites, yet a cell's electrical state is routinely summarized by a single transmembrane voltage. Combining theory and numerical simulations, we resolve the spatiotemporal dynamics of charge reorganization driven by a localized current on a spherical...