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Observational constraints on classical novae are heavily biased to phases near optical peak and later because of the simple fact that novae are not typically discovered until they become bright. The earliest phases of brightening, coming before discovery, are typically missed, but this is changing with the proliferation of wide-field optical monitoring systems including ZTF, ASAS-SN, and Evryscope. Here, we report on unprecedented observations of the fast nova V1674 Her beginning >10 mag below its optical peak and including high-cadence (2 min.) observations that chart a rise of ~8 mag in just 5 hours. Two clear breaks are identified as the light curve transitions first from rising slowly to rising rapidly, followed by a transition to an even faster, nearly linear rate of increasing flux with time. The depths of the observations allow us to place tight constraints on the size of the photosphere under the assumption of blackbody emission from a white dwarf emitting at its Eddington luminosity. We find that the white dwarf was unlikely to have overflowed its Roche lobe prior to the launch of a fast wind, which poses a challenge for explaining the Fermi $\gamma$-ray detections as the interaction of a fast wind with a slow-torus of gas stripped from the inflated white dwarf envelope by the companion. High-cadence observations of novae from Evryscope and the planned Argus Array can record the diversity of rising nova light curves and help resolve how the interplay between thermonuclear fusion, binary interaction, and shocks power their earliest light., Comment: 20 pages, 6 figures, 2 tables, accepted for publication in ApJ

A device filled with pure xenon first demonstrated the ability to operate simultaneously as a bubble chamber and scintillation detector in 2017. Initial results from data taken at thermodynamic thresholds down to ~4 keV showed sensitivity to ~20 keV nuclear recoils with no observable bubble nucleation by $\gamma$-ray interactions. This paper presents results from further operation of the same device at thermodynamic thresholds as low as 0.50 keV, hardware limited. The bubble chamber has now been shown to have sensitivity to ~1 keV nuclear recoils while remaining insensitive to bubble nucleation by $\gamma$-rays. A robust calibration of the chamber's nuclear recoil nucleation response, as a function of nuclear recoil energy and thermodynamic state, is presented. Stringent upper limits are established for the probability of bubble nucleation by $\gamma$-ray-induced Auger cascades, with a limit of $<1.1\times10^{-6}$ set at 0.50 keV, the lowest thermodynamic threshold explored., Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures

The human visual system is well-tuned to detect faces of all shapes and sizes. While this brings obvious survival advantages, such as a better chance of spotting unknown predators in the bush, it also leads to spurious face detections. ``Face pareidolia'' describes the perception of face-like structure among otherwise random stimuli: seeing faces in coffee stains or clouds in the sky. In this paper, we study face pareidolia from a computer vision perspective. We present an image dataset of ``Faces in Things'', consisting of five thousand web images with human-annotated pareidolic faces. Using this dataset, we examine the extent to which a state-of-the-art human face detector exhibits pareidolia, and find a significant behavioral gap between humans and machines. We find that the evolutionary need for humans to detect animal faces, as well as human faces, may explain some of this gap. Finally, we propose a simple statistical model of pareidolia in images. Through studies on human subjects and our pareidolic face detectors we confirm a key prediction of our model regarding what image conditions are most likely to induce pareidolia. Dataset and Website: https://aka.ms/faces-in-things

3D integration of GaSb-based gain chips on a silicon photonics platform using micro-transfer printing is demonstrated for the first time. The release process of GaSb coupons, and their transfer for the demonstration of hybrid GaSb/Silicon-photonics on-chip external cavity lasers is reported. A methodology to evaluate the key features of the gain chip coupons, namely the quality of the etched facets and the facet coating deposited using a wafer-level process, is introduced. The characterization provides insight into the fabrication factors limiting the performance of the gain coupons. The level of performance achieved for the transfer printing process offers a solid landmark for the development of photonics integration technology operating at the 2-3 $\mu$m wavelength range. This is instrumental for the deployment of mid-IR photonic integration technology in emerging applications related to gas and biomarker sensing.

When modifying existing policies in high-risk settings, it is often necessary to ensure with high certainty that the newly proposed policy improves upon a baseline, such as the status quo. In this work, we consider the problem of safe policy improvement, where one only adopts a new policy if it is deemed to be better than the specified baseline with at least pre-specified probability. We focus on threshold policies, a ubiquitous class of policies with applications in economics, healthcare, and digital advertising. Existing methods rely on potentially underpowered safety checks and limit the opportunities for finding safe improvements, so too often they must revert to the baseline to maintain safety. We overcome these issues by leveraging the most powerful safety test in the asymptotic regime and allowing for multiple candidates to be tested for improvement over the baseline. We show that in adversarial settings, our approach controls the rate of adopting a policy worse than the baseline to the pre-specified error level, even in moderate sample sizes. We present CSPI and CSPI-MT, two novel heuristics for selecting cutoff(s) to maximize the policy improvement from baseline. We demonstrate through both synthetic and external datasets that our approaches improve both the detection rates of safe policies and the realized improvement, particularly under stringent safety requirements and low signal-to-noise conditions.

We study the problem of finding the resistors in a resistor network from measurements of the power dissipated by the resistors under different loads. We give sufficient conditions for local uniqueness, i.e. conditions that guarantee that the linearization of this non-linear inverse problem admits a unique solution. Our method is inspired by a method to study local uniqueness of inverse problems with internal functionals in the continuum, where the inverse problem is reformulated as a redundant system of differential equations. We use our method to derive local uniqueness conditions for other discrete inverse problems with internal functionals including a discrete analogue of the inverse Schr\"odinger problem and problems where the resistors are replaced by impedances and dissipated power at the zero and a positive frequency are available. Moreover, we show that the dissipated power measurements can be obtained from measurements of thermal noise induced currents., Comment: 18 pages, 3 figures

The Scintillating Bubble Chamber (SBC) collaboration purchased 32 Hamamatsu VUV4 silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs) for use in SBC-LAr10, a bubble chamber containing 10~kg of liquid argon. A dark-count characterization technique, which avoids the use of a single-photon source, was used at two temperatures to measure the VUV4 SiPMs breakdown voltage ($V_{\text{BD}}$), the SiPM gain ($g_{\text{SiPM}}$), the rate of change of $g_{\text{SiPM}}$ with respect to voltage ($m$), the dark count rate (DCR), and the probability of a correlated avalanche (P$_{\text{CA}}$) as well as the temperature coefficients of these parameters. A Peltier-based chilled vacuum chamber was developed at Queen's University to cool down the Quads to $233.15\pm0.2$~K and $255.15\pm0.2$~K with average stability of $\pm20$~mK. An analysis framework was developed to estimate $V_{\text{BD}}$ to tens of mV precision and DCR close to Poissonian error. The temperature dependence of $V_{\text{BD}}$ was found to be $56\pm2$~mV~K$^{-1}$, and $m$ on average across all Quads was found to be $(459\pm3(\rm{stat.})\pm23(\rm{sys.}))\times 10^{3}~e^-$~PE$^{-1}$~V$^{-1}$. The average DCR temperature coefficient was estimated to be $0.099\pm0.008$~K$^{-1}$ corresponding to a reduction factor of 7 for every 20~K drop in temperature. The average temperature dependence of P$_{\text{CA}}$ was estimated to be $4000\pm1000$~ppm~K$^{-1}$. P$_{\text{CA}}$ estimated from the average across all SiPMs is a better estimator than the P$_{\text{CA}}$ calculated from individual SiPMs, for all of the other parameters, the opposite is true. All the estimated parameters were measured to the precision required for SBC-LAr10, and the Quads will be used in conditions to optimize the signal-to-noise ratio., Comment: 25 pages, 19 figures

The Simons Observatory (SO) is a cosmic microwave background (CMB) survey experiment that includes small-aperture telescopes (SATs) observing from an altitude of 5,200 m in the Atacama Desert in Chile. The SO SATs will cover six spectral bands between 27 and 280 GHz to search for primordial B-modes to a sensitivity of $\sigma(r)=0.002$, with quantified systematic errors well below this value. Each SAT is a self-contained cryogenic telescope with a 35$^\circ$ field of view, 42 cm diameter optical aperture, 40 K half-wave plate, 1 K refractive optics, and $<0.1$ K focal plane that holds $>12,000$ TES detectors. We describe the nominal design of the SATs and present details about the integration and testing for one operating at 93 and 145 GHz.

In order to assess the relevance of higher order terms in the Standard Model Effective Field Theory (SMEFT) expansion we consider four new physics models and their impact on the Drell Yan cross section. Of these four, one scalar model has no effect on Drell Yan, a model of fermions while appearing to generate a momentum expansion actually belongs to the vacuum expectation value expansion and so has a nominal effect on the process. The remaining two, a leptoquark and a Z' model exhibit a momentum expansion. After matching these models to dimension-ten we study how the inclusion of dimension-eight and dimension-ten operators in hypothetical effective field theory fits to the full ultraviolet models impacts fits. We do this both in the top-down approach, and in a very limited approximation to the bottom up approach of the SMEFT to infer the impact of a fully general fit to the SMEFT. We find that for the more weakly coupled models a strictly dimension-six fit is sufficient. In contrast when stronger interactions or lighter masses are considered the inclusion of dimension-eight operators becomes necessary. However, their Wilson coefficients perform the role of nuisance parameters with best fit values which can differ statistically from the theory prediction. In the most strongly coupled theories considered (which are already ruled out by data) the inclusion of dimension-ten operators allows for the measurement of dimension-eight operator coefficients consistent with theory predictions and the dimension-ten operator coefficients then behave as nuisance parameters. We also study the impact of the inclusion of partial next order results, such as dimension-six squared contributions, and find that in some cases they improve the convergence of the series while in others they hinder it., Comment: 30 pages excl. appendices, 6 figures, 4 tables (excl. appendices)

We study a generalized Dedekind sum $S_{\chi_1,\chi_2}(a,c)$ attached to newform Eisenstein series $E_{\chi_1,\chi_2}(z,s)$. Our work shows the Dedekind sum is rarely substantially larger than $\log^3 c$. The method of proof first relates the size of the Dedekind sum to continued fractions. A result of Hensley from 1991 then controls the average size of the maximal partial quotient in the continued fraction expansion of $a/c$. We complement this result by computing approximate values of the Dedekind sum in some special cases, which in particular produces examples of large values of the Dedekind sum., Comment: 9 pages

We present the basis of dimension-eight operators associated with universal theories. We first derive a complete list of independent dimension-eight operators formed with the Standard Model bosonic fields characteristic of such universal new physics scenarios. Without imposing C or P symmetries the basis contains 175 operators -- that is, the assumption of Universality reduces the number of independent SMEFT coefficients at dimension eight from 44807 to 175. 89 of the 175 universal operators are included in the general dimension-eight operator basis in the literature. The 86 additional operators involve higher derivatives of the Standard Model bosonic fields and can be rotated in favor of operators involving fermions using the Standard Model equations of motion for the bosonic fields. By doing so we obtain the allowed fermionic operators generated in this class of models which we map into the corresponding 86 independent combinations of operators in the dimension-eight basis of Ref. arXiv:2005.00059, Comment: 38 pages, 9 Tables; added a new section with few examples of UV completions, typos corrected, references added

We report results from an analysis aimed at detecting the trispectrum of the kinematic Sunyaev-Zel{'}dovich (kSZ) effect by combining data from the South Pole Telescope (SPT) and {\it Herschel}-SPIRE experiments over a 100 ${\rm deg}^{2}$ field. The SPT observations combine data from the previous and current surveys, namely SPTpol and SPT-3G, to achieve depths of 4.5, 3, and 16 $\mu {\rm K-arcmin}$ in bands centered at 95, 150, and 220 GHz. For SPIRE, we include data from the 600 and 857 GHz bands. We reconstruct the velocity-induced large-scale correlation of the small-scale kSZ signal with a quadratic estimator that uses two cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature maps, constructed by optimally combining data from all the frequency bands. We reject the null hypothesis of a zero trispectrum at $10.3\sigma$ level. However, the measured trispectrum contains contributions from both the kSZ and other undesired components, such as CMB lensing and astrophysical foregrounds, with kSZ being sub-dominant. We use the \textsc{Agora} simulations to estimate the expected signal from CMB lensing and astrophysical foregrounds. After accounting for the contributions from CMB lensing and foreground signals, we do not detect an excess kSZ-only trispectrum and use this non-detection to set constraints on reionization. By applying a prior based on observations of the Gunn-Peterson trough, we obtain an upper limit on the duration of reionization of $\Delta z_{\rm re, 50} < 4.5$ (95\% C.L). We find these constraints are fairly robust to foregrounds assumptions. This trispectrum measurement is independent of, but consistent with, {\it Planck}'s optical depth measurement. This result is the first constraint on the epoch of reionization using the non-Gaussian nature of the kSZ signal., Comment: 15 pages, 5 figures (3 in main text and 2 in Appendix); Accepted for publication in PRL; Some texts have been moved to Appendix; Minor change in Fig. 2 to include nomalization; Data products and plotting scripts can be downloaded from https://github.com/sriniraghunathan/kSZ_4pt_SPT_SPIRE

ArgusSpec is a prototype autonomous spectroscopic follow-up instrument designed to characterize flares detected by the Argus Pathfinder telescope array by taking short exposure (30 s) broadband spectra (370 - 750 nm) at low resolutions (R~150 at 500 nm). The instrument is built from consumer off-the-shelf astronomical equipment, assembled inside a shipping container, and deployed alongside the Argus Pathfinder at a dark sky observing site in Western North Carolina. The \$35k prototype ArgusSpec was designed, built, and deployed in under a year, largely from existing parts, and has been operating on-sky since March 2023. With current hardware and software, the system is capable of receiving an observation, slewing, performing autonomous slit acquisition, and beginning data acquisition within an average of 32 s. With Argus Pathfinder's 1-second-cadence survey reporting alerts of rising sources within 2 s of onset, ArgusSpec can reach new targets well within a minute of the start of the event. As built, ArgusSpec can observe targets down to a 20$\sigma$ limiting magnitude of $m_V$~13 at 30 s cadence with an optical resolution of R~150 (at 500 nm). With automated rapid acquisition demonstrated, later hardware upgrades will significantly improve the limiting magnitude, and potentially enable deep spectroscopy by the coaddition of data from an array of ArgusSpec systems. ArgusSpec's primary science driver is the characterization of the blackbody evolution of flares from nearby M-dwarfs. Large flares emitted by these stars could have significant impacts on the potential habitability of any orbiting exoplanets, but our current understanding of these events is in large part built on observations from a handful of active stars. ArgusSpec will characterize large numbers of flares, building a spectroscopic library of the most extreme events from a wide variety of stellar masses and ages., Comment: 19 pages, 12 figures, 2 tables, Accepted to PASP

Current bounds on neutrino Majorana mass are affected by significant uncertainties in the nuclear calculations for neutrinoless double-beta decay. A key issue for a data-driven improvement of the nuclear theory is the actual value of the axial coupling constant $g_A$, which can be investigated through forbidden $\beta$-decays. We present the first measurement of 4$^{th}$-forbidden $\beta$-decay of $^{115}$In with a cryogenic calorimeter based on Indium Iodide. Exploiting the enhanced spectral shape method for the first time to this isotope, our study accurately determines simultaneously spectral shape, $g_A$, and half-life. The Interacting Shell Model, which best fits our data, indicates a half-life for this decay at $T_{1/2}=(5.26\pm0.06) \times 10^{14}$,yr.

We present cosmological constraints from the abundance of galaxy clusters selected via the thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) effect in South Pole Telescope (SPT) data with a simultaneous mass calibration using weak gravitational lensing data from the Dark Energy Survey (DES) and the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). The cluster sample is constructed from the combined SPT-SZ, SPTpol ECS, and SPTpol 500d surveys, and comprises 1,005 confirmed clusters in the redshift range $0.25-1.78$ over a total sky area of 5,200 deg$^2$. We use DES Year 3 weak-lensing data for 688 clusters with redshifts $z<0.95$ and HST weak-lensing data for 39 clusters with $0.6

The 3D folding of a mammalian gene can be studied by a polymer model, where the chromatin fibre is represented by a semiflexible polymer which interacts with multivalent proteins, representing complexes of DNA-binding transcription factors and RNA polymerases. This physical model leads to the natural emergence of clusters of proteins and binding sites, accompanied by the folding of chromatin into a set of topologies, each associated with a different network of loops. Here we combine numerics and analytics to first classify these networks and then find their relative importance or statistical weight, when the properties of the underlying polymer are those relevant to chromatin. Unlike polymer networks previously studied, our chromatin networks have finite average distances between successive binding sites, and this leads to giant differences between the weights of topologies with the same number of edges and nodes but different wiring. These weights strongly favour rosette-like structures with a local cloud of loops with respect to more complicated non-local topologies. Our results suggest that genes should overwhelmingly fold into a small fraction of all possible 3D topologies, which can be robustly characterised by the framework we propose here., Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures

Polymer physics models suggest that chromatin spontaneously folds into loop networks with transcription units (TUs), such as enhancers and promoters, as anchors. Here we use combinatoric arguments to enumerate the emergent chromatin loop networks, both in the case where TUs are labelled and where they are unlabelled. We then combine these mathematical results with those of computer simulations aimed at finding the inter-TU energy required to form a target loop network. We show that different topologies are vastly different in terms of both their combinatorial weight and energy of formation. We explain the latter result qualitatively by computing the topological weight of a given network -- i.e., its partition function in statistical mechanics language -- in the approximation where excluded volume interactions are neglected. Our results show that networks featuring local loops are statistically more likely with respect to networks including more non-local contacts. We suggest our classification of loop networks, together with our estimate of the combinatorial and topological weight of each network, will be relevant to catalogue 3D structures of chromatin fibres around eukaryotic genes, and to estimate their relative frequency in both simulations and experiments., Comment: 19 pages, 11 figures

This paper studies the level set Crouzeix conjecture, which is a weak version of Crouzeix's conjecture that applies to finite compressions of the shift. Amongst other results, this paper establishes the level set Crouzeix conjecture for several classes of $3\times3$, $4\times4$, and $5\times5$ matrices associated to compressions of the shift via a geometric analysis of their numerical ranges. This paper also establishes Crouzeix's conjecture for several classes of nilpotent matrices whose studies are motivated by related compressions of shifts., Comment: 28 pages

Metadata, often termed "data about data," is crucial for organizing, understanding, and managing vast omics datasets. It aids in efficient data discovery, integration, and interpretation, enabling users to access, comprehend, and utilize data effectively. Its significance spans the domains of scientific research, facilitating data reproducibility, reusability, and secondary analysis. However, numerous perceptual and technical barriers hinder the sharing of metadata among researchers. These barriers compromise the reliability of research results and hinder integrative meta-analyses of omics studies . This study highlights the key barriers to metadata sharing, including the lack of uniform standards, privacy and legal concerns, limitations in study design, limited incentives, inadequate infrastructure, and the dearth of well-trained personnel for metadata management and reuse. Proposed solutions include emphasizing the promotion of standardization, educational efforts, the role of journals and funding agencies, incentives and rewards, and the improvement of infrastructure. More accurate, reliable, and impactful research outcomes are achievable if the scientific community addresses these barriers, facilitating more accurate, reliable, and impactful research outcomes.

We present a catalog of 689 galaxy cluster candidates detected at significance $\xi>4$ via their thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) effect signature in 95 and 150 GHz data from the 500-square-degree SPTpol survey. We use optical and infrared data from the Dark Energy Camera and the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) and \spitzer \ satellites, to confirm 544 of these candidates as clusters with $\sim94\%$ purity. The sample has an approximately redshift-independent mass threshold at redshift $z>0.25$ and spans $1.5 \times 10^{14} < M_{500c} < 9.1 \times 10^{14}$ $M_\odot/h_{70}$ \ and $0.031$. We use external radio data from the Sydney University Molonglo Sky Survey (SUMSS) to estimate contamination to the SZ signal from synchrotron sources. The contamination reduces the recovered $\xi$ by a median value of 0.032, or $\sim0.8\%$ of the $\xi=4$ threshold value, and $\sim7\%$ of candidates have a predicted contamination greater than $\Delta \xi = 1$. With the exception of a small number of systems $(<1\%)$, an analysis of clusters detected in single-frequency 95 and 150 GHz data shows no significant contamination of the SZ signal by emission from dusty or synchrotron sources. This cluster sample will be a key component in upcoming astrophysical and cosmological analyses of clusters. The SPTpol millimeter-wave maps and associated data products used to produce this sample are available at https://pole.uchicago.edu/public/data/sptpol_500d_clusters/index.html, and the NASA LAMBDA website. An interactive sky server with the SPTpol maps and Dark Energy Survey data release 2 images is also available at NCSA https://skyviewer.ncsa.illinois.edu., Comment: Matches version accepted by OJA. 19 pages + references, 14 figures, cluster candidate table provided in Appendix. Data products available at https://pole.uchicago.edu/public/data/sptpol_500d_clusters/index.html and an interactive sky server at https://skyviewer.ncsa.illinois.edu

Low-temperature cryogenics open the door for a range of interesting technologies based on features like superconductivity and superfluidity, low-temperature phase transitions or the low heat capacity of non-metals in the milli-Kelvin range. Devices based on these technologies are often sensitive to small energy depositions as can be caused by environmental radiation. The Cryogenic Underground TEst facility (CUTE) at SNOLAB is a platform for testing and operating cryogenic devices in an environment with low levels of background. The large experimental chamber ($\mathcal{O}$(10) L) reaches a base temperature of $\sim$12 mK; it can hold a payload of up to $\sim$20 kg and provides a radiogenic background event rate as low as a few events/kg/keV/day in the energy range below about 100 keV, as well as a negligible muon rate ($\mathcal{O}$(1)/month). CUTE was designed and built in the context of the Super Cryogenic Dark Matter Search experiment (SuperCDMS) which uses cryogenic detectors to search for interactions of dark matter particles with ordinary matter. The facility has been used to test SuperCDMS detectors since its commissioning in 2019. In 2021, it was handed over to SNOLAB to become a SNOLAB user facility after the completion of the testing of detectors for SuperCDMS. The facility will be available for projects that benefit from these special conditions, based on proposals assessed for their scientific and technological merits. This article describes the main design features and operating parameters of CUTE., Comment: 24 pages, 10 figures; published in Frontiers in Physics Changes since V1: minor adjustments to be consistent with journal version (minor changes in language for improved clarity; expanded section 11; minor changes to figures 1, 2, 3, 7 and 10)

We present the requirements, design and evaluation of the cryogenic continuously rotating half-wave plate (CHWP) for the Simons Observatory (SO). SO is a cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization experiment at Parque Astron\'{o}mico Atacama in northern Chile that covers a wide range of angular scales using both small (0.42 m) and large (6 m) aperture telescopes. In particular, the small aperture telescopes (SATs) focus on large angular scales for primordial B-mode polarization. To this end, the SATs employ a CHWP to modulate the polarization of the incident light at 8~Hz, suppressing atmospheric $1/f$ noise and mitigating systematic uncertainties that would otherwise arise due to the differential response of detectors sensitive to orthogonal polarizations. The CHWP consists of a 505 mm diameter achromatic sapphire HWP and a cryogenic rotation mechanism, both of which are cooled down to $\sim$50 K to reduce detector thermal loading. Under normal operation the HWP is suspended by a superconducting magnetic bearing and rotates with a constant 2 Hz frequency, controlled by an electromagnetic synchronous motor. The rotation angle is detected through an angular encoder with a noise level of 0.07$\mu\mathrm{rad}\sqrt{\mathrm{s}}$. During a cooldown, the rotor is held in place by a grip-and-release mechanism that serves as both an alignment device and a thermal path. In this paper we provide an overview of the SO SAT CHWP: its requirements, hardware design, and laboratory performance., Comment: 19 pages, 21 figures, submitted to RSI