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The quantum Josephson voltage standard is well established across the metrology community for many years. It relies on the synchronisation of the flux tunneling in the S/I/S Josepson junctions (JJ) with the microwave radiation (MW). The phenomenon is called the Shapiro steps. Together with the Quantum Hall resistance standard, the voltage standard forms the foundation of electrostatic metrology. The current is then defined as the ratio of the voltage and resistance. Realisation of the quantum current standard, would close the electrostatic metrological triangle of voltage-resistance-current. The current quantisation, the inverse Shapiro steps, was recently shown using the superconducting nanowires and small JJ. The effect is a synchronization of the MW with the Cooper pair tunnelling. This paves the way to combine the JJ voltage and current standards on the same chip and demonstrate feasibility of the multi-standard operation. We show the voltage and current quantization on the same chip up to frequency of 10 GHz, corresponding to the amplitudes 0.021 mV and 3.23 nA respectively. The accuracy of the voltage and current quantisation, however, is relatively low, 35 ppk and 100 ppk respectively. We discuss measures to optimise the JJs, circuit and environment to boost the amplitude and accuracy of the standards., Comment: 5 figures, 5 pages, published in APL

Metasurfaces offer a powerful platform for effective light manipulation, which is crucial for advanced optical technologies. While designs of polarization-independent structures have reduced the need for polarized illumination, they are often limited by either low Q factors or low resonance modulation. Here, we design and experimentally demonstrate a metasurface with polarization-independent quasi-bound state in the continuum (quasi-BIC), where the unit cell consists of four silicon squares arranged in a two-dimensional array and the resonance properties can be controlled by adjusting the edge length difference between different squares. Our metasurface experimentally achieves a Q factor of approximately 100 and a resonance modulation of around 50%. This work addresses a common limitation in previous designs, which either achieved high Q factors exceeding 200 with a resonance modulation of less than 10%, leading to challenging signal-to-noise ratio requirements, or achieved strong resonance modulation with Q factors of only around 10, limiting light confinement and fine-tuning capabilities. In contrast, our metasurface ensures that the polarization-independent signal is sharp and distinct within the system, reducing the demands on signal-to-noise ratio and improving robustness. Experiments show the consistent performance across different polarization angles. This work contributes to the development of versatile optical devices, enhancing the potential for the practical application of BIC-based designs in areas such as optical filtering and sensing.

The need of atmospheric information with a higher spatial and temporal resolution drives the development of small satellites and satellite constellations to complement satellite flagship missions. Since optical systems are a main contributor to the satellite size, these are the prime candidate for their miniaturization. We present here a novel optical system where the complete spectrometer part of the optical system is compressed in one flat optical element. The element consists of an array of photonic crystals which is directly placed on a detector. The photonic crystals act as optical filters with a tunable spectral transmission response. From the integrated optical signals per filter and the atmosphere model, greenhouse gas concentrations are obtained using computational inversion. We present in this article the instrument concept, the manufacturing and measurement of the photonic crystals, methods for the filter array optimization, and discuss the predicted retrieval performance for the detection of methane and carbon dioxide., Comment: ICSO 2024

In the strong-coupling regime, the interaction between light and matter reaches a hybridization state where the photonic and material components become inseparably linked. Using tailored states of light to break symmetries in such systems can underpin the development of novel non-equilibrium quantum materials. Chiral optical cavities offer a promising way for this, enabling either temporal or spatial symmetry-breaking, both of which are unachievable with conventional mirror cavities. For spatial symmetry-breaking a cavity needs to discriminate the handedness of circularly polarized light, a functionality that can only be achieved with metamaterials. Here, we suggest and demonstrate experimentally a chiral transition metal dichalcogenide (TMDC) metasurface with broken out-of-plane symmetry, allowing for a selective formation of self-hybridized exciton-polaritons with specific chirality. Our metasurface cavity maintains maximum chirality for oblique incidence up to 20{\deg}, significantly outperforming all previously known designs, thereby turning the angle of incidence from a constraint to a new degree of freedom for sub-nanometer precise control of resonance wavelengths. Moreover, we study the chiral strong-coupling regime in nonlinear experiments and show the polariton-driven nature of chiral third-harmonic generation. Our results demonstrate a clear pathway towards novel quantum material engineering with implications in a wide range of photonics research, such as superconductivity and valleytronics., Comment: 34 pages, 4 figures, and 12 supporting figures

We study a model of random walk on a fluctuating rough surface using the field-theoretic renormalization group (RG). The surface is modelled by the well-known Kardar--Parisi--Zhang (KPZ) stochastic equation while the random walk is described by the standard diffusion equation for a particle in a uniform gravitational field. In the RG approach, possible types of infrared (IR) asymptotic (long-time, large-distance) behaviour are determined by IR attractive fixed points. Within the one-loop RG calculation (the leading order in $\varepsilon=2-d$, $d$ being the spatial dimension), we found six possible fixed points or curves of points. Two of them can be IR attractive: the Gaussian point (free theory) and the nontrivial point where the KPZ surface is rough but its interaction with the random walk is irrelevant. For those perturbative fixed points, the spreading law for a particles' cloud coincides with that for ordinary random walk, $R(t)\sim t^{1/2}$. We also explored consequences of the presumed existence in the KPZ model of a non-perturbative strong-coupling fixed point. We found that it gives rise to an IR attractive fixed point in the full-scale model with the nontrivial spreading law $R(t)\sim t^{1/z}$, where the exponent $z<2$ can be inferred from the non-perturbative analysis of the KPZ model. Thus, the spreading becomes faster on a rough fluctuating surface in comparison to a smooth one. What is more, the Galilean-type symmetry inherent for the pure KPZ model extends dynamically to the IR asymptotic behaviour of the Green's functions of the full model., Comment: 21 pages

This work addresses the critical challenge of optimal filter selection for a novel trace gas measurement device. This device uses photonic crystal filters to retrieve trace gas concentrations prone to photon and read noise. The filter selection directly influences accuracy and precision of the gas retrieval and therefore is a crucial performance driver. We formulate the problem as a stochastic combinatorial optimization problem and develop a simulator mimicking gas retrieval with noise. The objective function for selecting filters reducing retrieval error is minimized by the employed metaheuristics, that represent various families of optimizers. We aim to improve the found top-performing algorithms using our novel distance-driven extensions, that employ metrics on the space of filter selections. This leads to a novel adaptation of the UMDA algorithm, we call UMDA-U-PLS-Dist, equipped with one of the proposed distance metrics as the most efficient and robust solver among the considered ones. Analysis of filter sets produced by this method reveals that filters with relatively smooth transmission profiles but containing high contrast improve the device performance. Moreover, the top-performing obtained solution shows significant improvement compared to the baseline.

The emergence of Segment Anything (SAM) sparked research interest in the field of interactive segmentation, especially in the context of image editing tasks and speeding up data annotation. Unlike common semantic segmentation, interactive segmentation methods allow users to directly influence their output through prompts (e.g. clicks). However, click patterns in real-world interactive segmentation scenarios remain largely unexplored. Most methods rely on the assumption that users would click in the center of the largest erroneous area. Nevertheless, recent studies show that this is not always the case. Thus, methods may have poor performance in real-world deployment despite high metrics in a baseline benchmark. To accurately simulate real-user clicks, we conducted a large crowdsourcing study of click patterns in an interactive segmentation scenario and collected 475K real-user clicks. Drawing on ideas from saliency tasks, we develop a clickability model that enables sampling clicks, which closely resemble actual user inputs. Using our model and dataset, we propose RClicks benchmark for a comprehensive comparison of existing interactive segmentation methods on realistic clicks. Specifically, we evaluate not only the average quality of methods, but also the robustness w.r.t. click patterns. According to our benchmark, in real-world usage interactive segmentation models may perform worse than it has been reported in the baseline benchmark, and most of the methods are not robust. We believe that RClicks is a significant step towards creating interactive segmentation methods that provide the best user experience in real-world cases., Comment: Accepted by NeurIPS 2024

Synchronization of Bloch oscillations in small Josephson junctions (JJs) under microwave radiation, which leads to current quantization, has been proposed as an effect that is dual to the appearance of Shapiro steps. This current quantization was recently demonstrated in superconducting nanowires in a compact high-impedance environment. Direct observation of current quantization in JJs would cofirm the synchronization of Bloch oscillations with microwaves and help with the realisation of the metrological current standard. Here, we place JJs in a high-impedance environment and demonstrate dual Shapiro steps for frequencies up to 24 GHz (I=7.7 nA). Current quantization exists, however, only in a narrow range of JJ parameters. We carry out a systematic study to explain this by invoking the model of a JJ in the presence of thermal noise. The findings are important for fundamental physics and application in quantum metrology., Comment: 13 pages, 5 figures

The low temperature physics of structurally amorphous materials is governed by two-level system defects (TLS), the exact origin and nature of which remain elusive despite decades of study. Recent advances towards realising stable high-coherence platforms for quantum computing has increased the importance of studying TLS in solid-state quantum circuits, as they are a persistent source of decoherence and instability. Here we perform scanning gate microscopy on a live superconducting quantum circuit at millikelvin temperatures to locate individual TLS. Our method directly reveals the microscopic nature of TLS and is also capable of deducing the three dimensional orientation of individual TLS electric dipole moments. Such insights, when combined with structural information of the underlying materials, can help unravel the detailed microscopic nature and chemical origin of TLS, directing strategies for their eventual mitigation.

Resonant dielectric planar structures can interact selectively with light of particular helicity thus providing an attractive platform for chiral flat optics. The absence of mirror-symmetry planes defines geometric chirality, and it remains the main condition for achieving strong circular dichroism. For planar optical structures such as photonic-crystal membranes and metasurfaces, breaking of out-of-plane mirror symmetry is especially challenging, as it requires to fabricate meta-atoms with a tilt, variable height, or vertically shifted positions. Although transparent substrates formally break out-of-plane mirror symmetries, their optical effect is typically subtle being rarely considered for enhancing optical chirality. Here we reveal that low-refractive-index substrates can induce up to maximum optical chirality in otherwise achiral metastructures so that the transparency to waves of one helicity is combined with resonant blocking of waves of the opposite helicity. This effect originates from engineering twisted photonic eigenstates of different parities. Our perturbation analysis developed in terms of the resonant-state expansion reveals how the eigenstate coupling induced by a substrate gives rise to a pair of chiral resonances of opposite handedness. Our general theory is confirmed by the specific examples of light transmission in the normal and oblique directions by a rotation-symmetric photonic-crystal membrane placed on different transparent substrates., Comment: 18 pages, 6 figures

The method proposed in [I.R. Khairulin et al., JETP Letters 117(9), 652 (2023)] for converting the linearly polarized radiation of high-order harmonics of an optical field into the circularly polarized in an optically modulated active medium of a plasma-based X-ray laser has been de-veloped. This method is extended to the case of finite width of spectral lines (finite pulse dura-tion) of high harmonic radiation and nonlinear interaction of radiation with matter. The trans-formation of the polarization of the harmonic field is achieved by introducing a phase shift of {\pi}/2 between its polarization components, parallel and orthogonal to the polarization of the modulating field, through resonant dispersion on the spectral wings of the induced gain lines of the active medium and is accompanied by an increase in the power of high harmonics. It is shown that for harmonics with a finite bandwidth, the polarization of the output radiation is non-uniform in time. The reasons for such non-uniformity are analyzed and the conditions for its minimization are found. The influence of nonlinearity and amplified spontaneous radiation of the active medium on the high-harmonic polarization is investigated. The possibilities for the experimental implementation of this effect in a neon-like active medium of a plasma X-ray laser based on Ti12+ ions with an unperturbed wavelength of the inverted transition at 32.6 nm are analyzed., Comment: 23 pages, 8 figures, 38 references

We study the electronic structure of Ta2NiSe5 in its low-temperature semiconducting phase, using resonant inelastic x-ray scattering (RIXS) at the Ta L3 edge. We also investigate the electronic properties of Ta2NiSe5 within the density-functional theory using the generalized gradient approximation in the framework of the fully relativistic spin-polarized Dirac linear muffin-tin orbital band-structure method. While ARPES, dc transport, and optical measurements indicate that Ta2NiSe5 is a small band-gap semiconductor, DFT gives a metallic nonmagnetic solution in Ta2NiSe5 . To obtain the semiconducting ground state in Ta2 NiSe5 we use a self-interaction correction (SIC) procedure by introducing an orbital-dependent potential Vl into the Hamiltonian. We investigate theoretically the x-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) and RIXS spectra at the Ni and Ta L3 edges and analyze the spectra in terms of interband transitions. We investigate the RIXS spectra as a function of momentum transfer vector Q and incident photon energy. Because Ta2 NiSe5 possesses only fully occupied (Ni 3d and Se 4p) and completely empty (Ta 5d) shells with the formal valencies Ta5+ (5d0), Ni0 (3d10 ), and Se2- (4p6 ), both the Ni and Ta L3 RIXS spectra belong to a charge transfer type with ligand-to-metal excitations., Comment: 11 pages, 15 figures

The influence of a random environment on the dynamics of a fluctuating rough surface is investigated using a field theoretic renormalization group. The environment motion is modelled by the stochastic Navier--Stokes equation, which includes both a fluid in thermal equilibrium and a turbulent fluid. The surface is described by the generalized Pavlik's stochastic equation. As a result of fulfilling the renormalizability requirement, the model necessarily involves an infinite number of coupling constants. The one-loop counterterm is derived in an explicit closed form. The corresponding renormalization group equations demonstrate the existence of three two-dimensional surfaces of fixed points in the infinite-dimensional parameter space. If the surfaces contain IR attractive regions, the problem allows for the large-scale, long-time scaling behaviour. For the first surface (advection is irrelevant) the critical dimensions of the height field $\Delta_{h}$, the response field $\Delta_{h'}$ and the frequency $\Delta_{\omega}$ are non-universal through the dependence on the effective couplings. For the other two surfaces (advection is relevant) the dimensions are universal and they are found exactly.

Accurate nuclei segmentation in histopathological images is crucial for cancer diagnosis. Automating this process offers valuable support to clinical experts, as manual annotation is time-consuming and prone to human errors. However, automating nuclei segmentation presents challenges due to uncertain cell boundaries, intricate staining, and diverse structures. In this paper, we present a segmentation approach that combines the U-Net architecture with a DenseNet-121 backbone, harnessing the strengths of both to capture comprehensive contextual and spatial information. Our model introduces the Wavelet-guided channel attention module to enhance cell boundary delineation, along with a learnable weighted global attention module for channel-specific attention. The decoder module, composed of an upsample block and convolution block, further refines segmentation in handling staining patterns. The experimental results conducted on two publicly accessible histopathology datasets, namely Monuseg and TNBC, underscore the superiority of our proposed model, demonstrating its potential to advance histopathological image analysis and cancer diagnosis. The code is made available at: https://github.com/AyushRoy2001/AWGUNET.

The experimental data from quasielastic electron and (anti)neutrino scattering on $^{12}$C are reanalyzed in terms of a new scaling variable $\psi^*$ suggested by the interacting relativistic Fermi gas with scalar and vector interactions, which is known to generate a relativistic effective mass for the interacting nucleons. We construct a new scaling function $f^\text{QE}(\psi^*)$ for the inclusive lepton scattering from nuclei within the coherent density fluctuation model (CDFM). The latter is a natural extension of the relativistic Fermi gas model to finite nuclei. In this work, on the basis of the scaling function obtained within CDFM with a relativistic effective mass $m_N^* =0.8 m_N$, we calculate and compare the theoretical predictions with a large set of experimental data for inclusive ($e,e'$) and (anti)neutrino cross sections. The model also includes the contribution of weak two-body currents in the two-particle two-hole sector, evaluated within a fully relativistic Fermi gas. Good agreement with experimental data is found over the whole range of electron and (anti)neutrino energies., Comment: 15 pages, 11 figures. Accepted for publication in Physical Review C

We present an efficient method to perform overdamped Brownian dynamics simulations in external force fields and for particle interactions that include a hardcore part. The method applies to particle motion in one dimension, where it is possible to update particle positions by repositioning particle clusters as a whole. These clusters consist of several particles in contact. They form because particle collisions are treated as completely inelastic rather than elastic ones. Updating of cluster positions in time steps is carried out by cluster fragmentation and merging procedures. The presented method is particularly powerful at high collision rates in densely crowded systems, where collective movements of particle assemblies is governing the dynamics. As an application, we simulate the single-file diffusion of sticky hard spheres in a periodic potential., Comment: 15 pages, 7 figures

Teeth segmentation and recognition are critical in various dental applications and dental diagnosis. Automatic and accurate segmentation approaches have been made possible by integrating deep learning models. Although teeth segmentation has been studied in the past, only some techniques were able to effectively classify and segment teeth simultaneously. This article offers a pipeline of two deep learning models, U-Net and YOLOv8, which results in BB-UNet, a new architecture for the classification and segmentation of teeth on panoramic X-rays that is efficient and reliable. We have improved the quality and reliability of teeth segmentation by utilising the YOLOv8 and U-Net capabilities. The proposed networks have been evaluated using the mean average precision (mAP) and dice coefficient for YOLOv8 and BB-UNet, respectively. We have achieved a 3\% increase in mAP score for teeth classification compared to existing methods, and a 10-15\% increase in dice coefficient for teeth segmentation compared to U-Net across different categories of teeth. A new Dental dataset was created based on UFBA-UESC dataset with Bounding-Box and Polygon annotations of 425 dental panoramic X-rays. The findings of this research pave the way for a wider adoption of object detection models in the field of dental diagnosis., Comment: submtted to Expert Systems with Applications Journal

We present the first results from a proof-of-concept search for dark sectors via invisible decays of pseudoscalar $\eta$ and $\eta'$ mesons in the NA64h experiment at the CERN SPS. Our novel technique uses the charge-exchange reaction of 50 GeV $\pi^-$ on nuclei of an active target as the source of neutral mesons. The $\eta, \eta' \to invisible$ events would exhibit themselves via a striking signature - the complete disappearance of the incoming beam energy in the detector. No evidence for such events has been found with $2.9\times10^{9}$ pions on target accumulated during one day of data taking. This allows us to set a stringent limit on the branching ratio ${\rm Br}(\eta' \to invisible) < 2.1 \times 10^{-4}$ improving the current bound by a factor of $\simeq3$. We also set a limit on ${\rm Br}(\eta \to invisible) < 1.1 \times 10^{-4}$ comparable with the existing one. These results demonstrate the great potential of our approach and provide clear guidance on how to enhance and extend the sensitivity for dark sector physics from future searches for invisible neutral meson decays., Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures

In this article, a geometric approach to incorporating investor views in portfolio construction is presented. In particular, the proposed approach utilizes the notion of generalized Wasserstein barycenter (GWB) to combine the statistical information about asset returns with investor views to obtain an updated estimate of the asset drifts and covariance, which are then fed into a mean-variance optimizer as inputs. Quantitative comparisons of the proposed geometric approach with the conventional Black-Litterman model (and a closely related variant) are presented. The proposed geometric approach provides investors with more flexibility in specifying their confidence in their views than conventional Black-Litterman model-based approaches. The geometric approach also rewards the investors more for making correct decisions than conventional BL based approaches. We provide empirical and theoretical justifications for our claim., Comment: Abstract Page + TOC + 35 pages, 4 Figures, 4 Tables

Microscopic particles flowing through narrow channels may accumulate near bifurcation points provoking flow reduction, clogging and ultimately chip breakage. Here we show that the full flow behavior of colloidal particles through a microfluidic Y-junction (i.e. a three way intersection) can be controlled by tuning the pair interactions and the degree of confinement. By combining experiments with numerical simulations, we investigate the dynamic states emerging when magnetizable colloids flow through a symmetric Y-junction such that a single particle can pass through both gates with the same probability. We show that clogging can be avoided by repulsive interactions and branching into the two channels can be steered as well by interactions: attractive particles are flowing through the same gate, while repulsive colloids alternate between the two gates. Even details of the particle assembly such as buckling at the exit gate are tunable by interactions and the channel geometry., Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures

In this paper, we introduce four comprehensive datasets for the Chuvash language, aiming to support and enhance linguistic research and technological development for this underrepresented language. These datasets include a monolingual dataset, a parallel dataset with Russian, a parallel dataset with English, and an audio dataset. Each dataset is meticulously curated to serve various applications such as machine translation, linguistic analysis, and speech recognition, providing valuable resources for scholars and developers working with the Chuvash language. Together, these datasets represent a significant step towards preserving and promoting the Chuvash language in the digital age.

The utilization of ferrimagnets in spintronic applications purportedly offers the potential for high-speed and energy-efficient switching of magnetic states, coupled with their notable stability. This collection of characteristics is commonly observed in ferrimagnetic materials that are in close proximity to states of magnetic or angular momentum compensation. This is owing to the presence of two antiparallel ordered magnetic sublattices that exhibit differing responses to variations in temperature or composition. In the vicinity of the magnetic compensation state, an external field has the capacity to disrupt the collinearity between the sublattices, resulting in the codirectionality of the magnetic projections. The existence of the canted phase has been extensively described theoretically, but its experimental investigation remains limited. Here, a violation of antiferromagnetic ordering is detected through a change in the direction of the effective field induced by the spin-orbital torque, without altering the dominant characteristics of the ferrimagnetic structure. This effect is observed both during external heating of the sample and as a consequence of Joule heating with an increase in the transmitted current. In the examined structure of W/Co70Tb30/Ru, the canted phase region is observed at approximately room temperature and at external fields on the order of 0.1 T. Through macrospin modeling and analytical explanations, a correlation between anisotropy, interlattice exchange interaction, and the presence of the canted phase region is established.

We have investigated the electronic structure of the transition metal oxide Ca3Ru2O7 within density functional theory using the generalized gradient approximation while considering strong Coulomb correlations in the framework of the fully relativistic spin-polarized Dirac linear muffin-tin orbital band-structure method. Ca3Ru2O7 can be classified as a Mott insulator since it was expected to be metallic from band structure calculations. We have investigated the resonant inelastic x-ray scattering spectra at the Ru and Ca K, L3, and M3 edges as well as at the O K edge. The experimentally measured resonance inelastic x-ray spectrum of Ca3Ru2O7 at the Ru L3 edge possesses a sharp feature below 2 electron-volts corresponding to transitions within the Ru t_2g levels. The excitation located from 2 to 4 electron-volts is due to t2g -> e_g transitions. The third wide structure situated at 4.5-11 electron-volts appears due to transitions between the Ru 4dO states derived from the tails of oxygen 2p states and t_2g and e_g states. The measured resonance inelastic x-ray spectra at the Ru L3 and M3 edges are very similar. However, the corresponding measured resonance inelastic x-ray spectra at the Ca site quite differ from each other due to the significant difference in the widths of core-levels., Comment: 11 pages, 14 figures. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2310.08228

The Spin Physics Detector collaboration proposes to install a universal detector in the second interaction point of the NICA collider under construction (JINR, Dubna) to study the spin structure of the proton and deuteron and other spin-related phenomena using a unique possibility to operate with polarized proton and deuteron beams at a collision energy up to 27 GeV and a luminosity up to $10^{32}$ cm$^{-2}$ s$^{-1}$. As the main goal, the experiment aims to provide access to the gluon TMD PDFs in the proton and deuteron, as well as the gluon transversity distribution and tensor PDFs in the deuteron, via the measurement of specific single and double spin asymmetries using different complementary probes such as charmonia, open charm, and prompt photon production processes. Other polarized and unpolarized physics is possible, especially at the first stage of NICA operation with reduced luminosity and collision energy of the proton and ion beams. This document is dedicated exclusively to technical issues of the SPD setup construction.

The inclusion of an additional $U(1)$ gauge $L_\mu-L_\tau$ symmetry would release the tension between the measured and the predicted value of the anomalous muon magnetic moment: this paradigm assumes the existence of a new, light $Z^\prime$ vector boson, with dominant coupling to $\mu$ and $\tau$ leptons and interacting with electrons via a loop mechanism. The $L_\mu-L_\tau$ model can also explain the Dark Matter relic abundance, by assuming that the $Z'$ boson acts as a "portal" to a new Dark Sector of particles in Nature, not charged under known interactions. In this work we present the results of the $Z'$ search performed by the NA64-$e$ experiment at CERN SPS, that collected $\sim 9\times10^{11}$ 100 GeV electrons impinging on an active thick target. Despite the suppressed $Z'$ production yield with an electron beam, NA64-$e$ provides the first accelerator-based results excluding the $g-2$ preferred band of the $Z'$ parameter space in the 1 keV $ < m_{Z'} \lesssim 2$ MeV range, in complementarity with the limits recently obtained by the NA64-$\mu$ experiment with a muon beam., Comment: 15 pages, 5 figures. New version with extended exclusion limits down to 1 keV in Z' mass

Friction is central to the motion of active (self-propelled) objects such as bacteria, animals, and robots. While in a viscous fluid friction is described by Stokes's law, objects in contact with other solid bodies are often governed by more complex empirical friction laws. Here, we study active particles subject to Coulomb friction using a combination of active granular experiments and simulations, supported by theoretical predictions. The interplay of friction and activity forces induces a rich behavior resulting in three distinct dynamical regimes. While for low activity, Brownian motion is recovered, for large activity we observe a dynamical Stop & Go regime that continuously switches from diffusion and accelerated motion. For greater activity, we observe a super-mobile dynamical regime characterized by a fully accelerated motion which is described by an anomalous scaling of the diffusion coefficient with the activity. These findings cannot be observed with Stokes viscous forces typical of active swimmers but are central in dry active objects., Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures plus supplemental material with 8 pages, 3 figures and 2 movies

Transport processes in crowded periodic structures are often mediated by cooperative movements of particles forming clusters. Recent theoretical and experimental studies of driven Brownian motion of hard spheres showed that cluster-mediated transport in one-dimensional periodic potentials can proceed in form of solitary waves. We here give a comprehensive description of these solitons. Fundamental for our analysis is a static presoliton state, which is formed by a periodic arrangement of basic stable clusters. Their size follows from a geometric principle of minimum free space. Adding one particle to the presoliton state gives rise to solitons. We derive the minimal number of particles needed for soliton formation, number of solitons at larger particle numbers, soliton velocities and soliton-mediated particle currents. Incomplete relaxations of the basic clusters are responsible for an effective repulsive soliton-soliton interaction seen in measurements. A dynamical phase transition is predicted to occur in current-density relations at low temperatures. Our results provide a theoretical basis for describing experiments on cluster-mediated particle transport in periodic potentials., Comment: 21 pages, 12 figures

Symbolic regression (SR) poses a significant challenge for randomized search heuristics due to its reliance on the synthesis of expressions for input-output mappings. Although traditional genetic programming (GP) algorithms have achieved success in various domains, they exhibit limited performance when tree-based representations are used for SR. To address these limitations, we introduce a novel SR approach called Fourier Tree Growing (FTG) that draws insights from functional analysis. This new perspective enables us to perform optimization directly in a different space, thus avoiding intricate symbolic expressions. Our proposed algorithm exhibits significant performance improvements over traditional GP methods on a range of classical one-dimensional benchmarking problems. To identify and explain limiting factors of GP and FTG, we perform experiments on a large-scale polynomials benchmark with high-order polynomials up to degree 100. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this work represents the pioneering application of functional analysis in addressing SR problems. The superior performance of the proposed algorithm and insights into the limitations of GP open the way for further advancing GP for SR and related areas of explainable machine learning., Comment: 14 pages, 3 figures. Submitted to Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO-2024)

Interactive segmentation methods rely on user inputs to iteratively update the selection mask. A click specifying the object of interest is arguably the most simple and intuitive interaction type, and thereby the most common choice for interactive segmentation. However, user clicking patterns in the interactive segmentation context remain unexplored. Accordingly, interactive segmentation evaluation strategies rely more on intuition and common sense rather than empirical studies (e.g., assuming that users tend to click in the center of the area with the largest error). In this work, we conduct a real user study to investigate real user clicking patterns. This study reveals that the intuitive assumption made in the common evaluation strategy may not hold. As a result, interactive segmentation models may show high scores in the standard benchmarks, but it does not imply that they would perform well in a real world scenario. To assess the applicability of interactive segmentation methods, we propose a novel evaluation strategy providing a more comprehensive analysis of a model's performance. To this end, we propose a methodology for finding extreme user inputs by a direct optimization in a white-box adversarial attack on the interactive segmentation model. Based on the performance with such adversarial user inputs, we assess the robustness of interactive segmentation models w.r.t click positions. Besides, we introduce a novel benchmark for measuring the robustness of interactive segmentation, and report the results of an extensive evaluation of dozens of models., Comment: Accepted by AAAI2024

Grating couplers are widely used to couple waveguide modes with the far field. Their usefulness is determined not only by energy efficiency but also by additional supported functionality. In this paper, we demonstrate a plasmonic grating on a silicon nitride slab waveguide that couples both TE and TM waveguide modes with circularly polarized light in the far field. Specifically, we experimentally confirmed that circularly polarized light excites TE and TM modes propagating in opposite directions, and the direction is controlled by the handedness. The routing efficiency for normally incident light reaches up to 95%. The same structure operates in the outcoupling regime as well, demonstrating up to 97% degree of circular polarization, where the handedness is determined by the polarization and propagation direction of outcoupled modes. Our results pave the way for the realization of polarization-division multiplexers and demultiplexers, integrated circular polarization emitters, as well as detectors of the polarization state of the incident optical field.

Networks or graphs are widely used across the sciences to represent relationships of many kinds. igraph (https://igraph.org) is a general-purpose software library for graph construction, analysis, and visualisation, combining fast and robust performance with a low entry barrier. igraph pairs a fast core written in C with beginner-friendly interfaces in Python, R, and Mathematica. Over the last two decades, igraph has expanded substantially. It now scales to billions of edges, supports Mathematica and interactive plotting, integrates with Jupyter notebooks and other network libraries, includes new graph layouts and community detection algorithms, and has streamlined the documentation with examples and Spanish translations. Modern testing features such as continuous integration, address sanitizers, stricter typing, and memory-managed vectors have also increased robustness. Hundreds of bug reports have been fixed and a community forum has been opened to connect users and developers. Specific effort has been made to broaden use and community participation by women, non-binary people, and other demographic groups typically underrepresented in open source software., Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures

The core object of this paper is a pair $(L, e)$, where $L$ is a Nijenhuis operator and $e$ is a vector field satisfying a specific Lie derivative condition, i.e., $Lie_{e}L=\operatorname{Id}$. Our research unfolds in two parts. In the first part, we establish a Splitting Theorem for Nijenhuis operators with a unity, offering an effective reduction of their study to cases where $L$ has either one real or two complex conjugate eigenvalues at a given point. We further provide the normal forms for $\mathrm{gl}$-regular Nijenhuis operators with a unity around algebraically generic points, along with semi-normal forms for dimensions two and three. In the second part, we establish the relationship between Nijenhuis operators with a unity and $F$-manifolds. Specifically, we prove that the class of regular $F$-manifolds coincides with the class of Nijenhuis manifolds with a cyclic unity. By extending our results from dimension three, we reveal semi-normal forms for corresponding $F$-manifolds around singularities., Comment: 21 pages, no figures

We have investigated the electronic structure of Sr2IrO4 within the density-functional theory using the generalized gradient approximation while taking into account strong Coulomb correlations in the framework of the fully relativistic spin-polarized Dirac linear MT orbital band structure method. We have investigated the x-ray absorption spectra, x-ray magnetic circular dichroism, and resonant inelastic x-ray scattering spectra at the Ir L3 and O K edges. The calculated results are in good agreement with the experimental data. The RIXS spectrum of Sr2IrO4 at the Ir L3 edge in addition to the elastic scattering peak at 0 eV possesses a sharp feature below 1.5 eV corresponding to transitions within the Ir t2g levels. The excitation located from 2 eV to 5 eV is due to t2g-eg transitions. The third wide structure situated at 5-12 eV appears due to transitions between the Ir 5d_O states derived from the tails of oxygen 2p states and eg and t2g states. The RIXS spectrum of Sr2IrO4 at the O K edge consists of three major inelastic excitations at 0.7 eV, 3.5 eV, and around 6.2 eV. We have found that the first low energy feature is due to interband transitions between occupied and empty O t2g transitions, which appear due to the strong hybridization between oxygen 2p and Ir t2g states in the close vicinity of the Fermi level. The next two peaks at around 3.5 and 6.2 eV reflect the interband transitions from the occupied O 2p states and the empty oxygen states which arise from the hybridization with Ir t2g and eg states, respectively. We have found that the theory reproduces well the shape and energy position of the low energy feature, but the second and the third peaks are shifted towards smaller energy in comparison with the experimental measurements.

Explicit expressions for multimatrix models with complex and unitary matrices allows to couple these models with well-known unitary, orthogonsl and sympletic ensembles. We consider examples of such mixed ensembles which are solvable in the sense that the partition functions of such ensembles can be considered as tau functions of the classical integrable equations., Comment: 10 pages

The generating series for the instanton contribution to Green functions of the $2D$ sigma model was found in the works of Schwarz, Fateev and Frolov. We show that this series can be written as a formal tau function of the two-sided two-component KP hierarchy. We call it formal singular tau function because this tau function is a sum where each term is the infrared and ultraviolet divergent one exactly as the series found by the mentioned authors. However one can regularize this singluar tau function and to obtain regular observables. This is because observables contains ratious of mentioned divergent expressions. Thus, we enladge the families of tau functions to work with., Comment: 8 pages