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At least 37 records · Page 2

Asymptotic Relaxation of Moment Equations for a Multi-species, Homogeneous BGK Model

Multi-species BGK models describe the dynamics of rarefied gases with constituent particles of different elements or compounds with potentially nontrivial velocity distributions. Here, in this paper, moment equations for the bulk velocities, energies, and temperatures of a spatially homogeneous multi-species BGK model are examined. A key challenge in analyzing these equations is the fact that the collision frequencies are allowed to depend on the species temperatures, which allows for more realistic simulations of dilute gas flow. Therefore, a positive lower bound is established for the species temperatures. With this lower bound, a global existence and uniqueness of solutions to the coupled velocity-energy ODE system is established. The lower bound also enables a proof of exponential decay to a unique steady-state solution. Numerical results are presented to demonstrate how the bulk velocities and temperatures relax for large times.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Minimum stabilizing energy release for mixing processes

Diffusive operations, which mix the populations of different elements of phase space, can irreversibly transform a given initial state into any of a spectrum of different states from which no further energy can be extracted through diffusive operations. We call these ground states. Here, the lower bound of accessible ground-state energies represents the maximal possible release of energy. This lower bound, sometimes called the diffusively accessible free energy, is of interest in theories of instabilities and wave-particle interactions. On the other hand, the upper bound of accessible ground-state energies has escaped identification as a problem of interest. Yet, as demonstrated here, in the case of a continuous system, it is precisely this upper bound that corresponds to the paradigmatic “quasilinear plateau” ground state of the bump-on-tail distribution. Although for general discrete systems the complexity of calculating the upper bound grows rapidly with the number of states, using techniques adapted from treatments of the lower bound, the upper bound can in fact be computed directly for the three-state discrete system.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

On the Minimum Radius of Very Massive Neutron Stars

Prospects of establishing the radii of massive neutron stars in PSR J1614 – 2230 and PSR J0740 + 6620 from Neutron Star Interior Composition ExploreR and Chandra observatories hold the potential to constrain the equation of state (EoS) of matter to densities well beyond those encountered in canonical stars of mass $\sim 1.4\,{M}_{\odot }$. In this work, we investigate the relation between the radii of very massive neutron stars up to the maximum mass, ${M}_{\max }$, supported by dense matter EoSs. Results from models with hadronic matter are contrasted with those that include a first-order hadron-to-quark phase transition. We find that a lower bound on ${M}_{\max }$ with an upper bound on the radius of massive pulsars serves to rule out quark matter that is too soft, and an upper bound on ${M}_{\max }$ with a lower bound on the radius of massive pulsars strongly disfavors a transition into quark matter that is too stiff appearing at low densities. In conclusion, the complementary role played by radius inferences from future gravitational-wave events of inspiraling binary neutron stars is also briefly discussed.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

An Analysis of the Johnson-Lindenstrauss Lemma with the Bivariate Gamma Distribution

Probabilistic proofs of the Johnson-Lindenstrauss lemma imply that random projection can reduce the dimension of a data set and approximately preserve pairwise distances. If a distance being approximately preserved is called a success, and the complement of this event is called a failure, then such a random projection likely results in no failures. Assuming a Gaussian random projection, the lemma is proved by showing that the no-failure probability is positive using a combination of Bonferroni's inequality and Markov's inequality. This paper modifies this proof in two ways to obtain a greater lower bound on the no-failure probability. First, Bonferroni's inequality is applied to pairs of failures instead of individual failures. Second, since a pair of projection errors has a bivariate gamma distribution, this probability of a pair of successes is bounded using an inequality from [Jensen, 1969]. If n is the number of points to be embedded and μ is the probability of success, then this leads to an increase in the lower bound on the no-failure probability of $\frac{1}{2}$ ($\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{n}{2}$) (1- μ ) 2 is ($\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{n}{2}$) is even and $\frac{1}{2}$ (($\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{n}{2}$)-1) (1- μ ) 2 if ($\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{n}{2}$) is odd. For example, if n =10 5 points are to be embedded in k =10 4 dimensions with a tolerance of ϵ=0.1, then the improvement in the lower bound is on the order of 10 -14 . We also show that further improvement is possible if the inequality in [Jensen, 1969] extends to three successes, though we do not have a proof of this result.

96 KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AND PRESERVATION↗

Scalable Experimental Bounds for Entangled Quantum State Fidelities

Estimating the state preparation fidelity of highly entangled states on noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) devices is important for benchmarking and application considerations. Unfortunately, exact fidelity measurements quickly become prohibitively expensive, as they scale exponentially as O(3 N for N-qubit states, using full state tomography with measurements in all Pauli bases combinations. However, Somma et al.established that the complexity could be drastically reduced when looking at fidelity lower bounds for states that exhibit symmetries, such as Dicke states and GHZ states. These bounds must still be tight enough for larger states to provide reasonable estimations on NISQ devices. For the first time and more than 15 years after the theoretical introduction, we report meaningful lower bounds for the state preparation fidelity of all Dicke states up to N=10 and all GHZ states up to N=20 on Quantinuum H1 ion-trap systems using efficient implementations of recently proposed scalable circuits for these states. Our achieved lower bounds match or exceed previously reported exact fidelities on superconducting systems for much smaller states. Furthermore, we provide evidence that for large Dicke states |$D^{N}_{N/2}\rangle$, we may resort to a GHZ-based approximate state preparation to achieve better fidelity. This work provides a path forward to benchmarking entanglement as NISQ devices improve in size and quality.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Efficient distributed continual learning for steering experiments in real-time

Deep learning has emerged as a powerful method for extracting valuable information from large volumes of data. However, when new training data arrives continuously (i.e., is not fully available from the beginning), incremental training suffers from catastrophic forgetting (i.e., new patterns are reinforced at the expense of previously acquired knowledge). Training from scratch each time new training data becomes available would result in extremely long training times and massive data accumulation. Rehearsal-based continual learning has shown promise for addressing the catastrophic forgetting challenge, but research to date has not addressed performance and scalability. To fill this gap, we propose an approach based on a distributed rehearsal buffer that efficiently complements data-parallel training on multiple GPUs to achieve high accuracy, short runtime, and scalability. It leverages a set of buffers (local to each GPU) and uses several asynchronous techniques for updating these local buffers in an embarrassingly parallel fashion, all while handling the communication overheads necessary to augment input minibatches using unbiased, global sampling. We further propose a generalization of rehearsal buffers to support both classification and generative learning tasks, as well as more advanced rehearsal strategies (notably Dark Experience Replay, leveraging knowledge distillation). We illustrate this approach with a real-life HPC streaming application from the domain of ptychographic image reconstruction. Furthermore, we run extensive experiments on up to 128 GPUs of the ThetaGPU supercomputer to compare our approach with baselines representative of training-from-scratch (the upper bound in terms of accuracy) and incremental training (the lower bound). Results show that rehearsal-based continual learning achieves a top-5 validation accuracy close to the upper bound, while simultaneously exhibiting a runtime close to the lower bound.

Asynchronous data management↗

Lepto-axiogenesis and the scale of supersymmetry

If the Peccei-Quinn field containing the QCD axion undergoes rotations in the early universe, the dimension-five operator responsible for neutrino masses can generate a lepton asymmetry that ultimately gives rise to the observed baryon asymmetry of the Universe. This lepto-axiogenesis scenario requires a flat potential for the radial direction of the Peccei-Quinn field, naturally realized in supersymmetric models. We carefully compute the efficiency of this mechanism for the Dine-Fischler-Srednicki-Zhitnitsky (DFSZ) and Kim-Shifman-Vainshtein-Zakharov (KSVZ) axion models and place lower bounds on the masses of scalar superpartners required to reproduce the observed baryon asymmetry. For the KSVZ model, we find an efficiency for generation of the asymmetry six times larger than the previously extant computation after including scattering channels involving superpartners. In this case, the superpartner scale should be above 30 TeV for a domain wall number of one; the lower bound weakens for larger domain wall numbers. We find that the superpartner mass scale may also be as low as ~ 30 TeV for the DFSZ model. In all cases, the lower bound on the superpartner masses is inversely proportional to the sum of the squares of the neutrino masses and so can strengthen as the upper bound on the neutrino mass improves. We identify the parameter space where the axion rotation can simultaneously produce axion dark matter via kinetic misalignment; in this case it is possible to put an upper bound of order PeV on the masses of scalar superpartners.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Trajectory-independent speed limits for controlled open quantum systems

Existing quantum speed limits for controlled open quantum systems depend on the specified trajectory. For example, lower bounds on quantum annealing times in the presence of dissipation depend explicitly on the chosen annealing schedule. Recently, schedule-independent speed limits have been derived for annealing in the closed quantum system setting [L. P. García-Pintos et al ., SciPost Phys. 18 , 159 (2025)]. In this work, we generalize these results to open quantum systems, deriving schedule-independent lower bounds for quantum annealing times in systems described by a Lindblad master equation. We analyze the interplay between coherent control and dissipation in single- and two-qubit examples, demonstrating that the derived lower bounds capture key scaling behavior with respect to the strength of the dissipator. Finally, we apply the bound to thermal state preparation and show that the bound matches the expected asymptotic behavior for an Ising model in the high-temperature limit.

open quantum systems & decoherence↗

The Markov gap for geometric reflected entropy

The reflected entropy S R (A : B) of a density matrix ρ AB is a bipartite correlation measure lower-bounded by the quantum mutual information I(A : B). In holographic states satisfying the quantum extremal surface formula, where the reflected entropy is related to the area of the entanglement wedge cross-section, there is often an order-N 2 gap between S R and I. We provide an information-theoretic interpretation of this gap by observing that S R - I is related to the fidelity of a particular Markov recovery problem that is impossible in any state whose entanglement wedge cross-section has a nonempty boundary; for this reason, we call the quantity S R - I the Markov gap. We then prove that for time-symmetric states in pure AdS 3 gravity, the Markov gap is universally lower bounded by log(2)ℓ AdS /2G N times the number of endpoints of the cross-section. We provide evidence that this lower bound continues to hold in the presence of bulk matter, and comment on how it might generalize above three bulk dimensions. Finally, we explore the Markov recovery problem controlling S R - I using fixed area states. This analysis involves deriving a formula for the quantum fidelity — in fact, for all the sandwiched Rényi relative entropies — between fixed area states with one versus two fixed areas, which may be of independent interest. We discuss, throughout the paper, connections to the general theory of multipartite entanglement in holography.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

Bound-preserving finite element approximations of the Keller–Segel equations

We report this paper aims to develop numerical approximations of the Keller–Segel equations that mimic at the discrete level the lower bounds and the energy law of the continuous problem. We solve these equations for two unknowns: the organism (or cell) density, which is a positive variable, and the chemoattractant density, which is a non-negative variable. We propose two algorithms, which combine a stabilized finite element method and a semi-implicit time integration. The stabilization consists of a nonlinear artificial diffusion that employs a graph-Laplacian operator and a shock detector that localizes local extrema. As a result, both algorithms turn out to be nonlinear and can generate cell and chemoattractant numerical densities fulfilling lower bounds. However, the first algorithm requires a suitable constraint between the space and time discrete parameters, whereas the second one does not. We design the latter to attain a discrete energy law on acute meshes. We report some numerical experiments to validate the theoretical results on blowup and nonblowup phenomena. In the blowup setting, we identify a locking phenomenon that relates the L ∞ (Ω)-norm to the L 1 (Ω)-norm limiting the growth of the singularity when supported on a macroelement.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Investigating controls on sea ice algal production using E3SMv1.1-BGC

We present the analysis of global sympagic primary production (PP) from 300 years of pre-industrial and historical simulations of the E3SMv1.1-BGC model. The model includes a novel, eight-element sea ice biogeochemical component, MPAS-Seaice zbgc, which is resolved in three spatial dimensions and uses a vertical transport scheme based on internal brine dynamics. Modeled ice algal chlorophyll-a concentrations and column-integrated values are broadly consistent with observations, though chl-a profile fractions indicate that upper ice communities of the Southern Ocean are underestimated. Simulations of polar integrated sea ice PP support the lower bound in published estimates for both polar regions with mean Arctic values of 7.5 and 15.5 TgC/a in the Southern Ocean. However, comparisons of the polar climate state with observations, using a maximal bound for ice algal growth rates, suggest that the Arctic lower bound is a significant underestimation driven by biases in ocean surface nitrate, and that correction of these biases supports as much as 60.7 TgC/a of net Arctic PP. Simulated Southern Ocean sympagic PP is predominantly light-limited, and regional patterns, particularly in the coastal high production band, are found to be negatively correlated with snow thickness.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Multi-parametric analysis for mixed integer linear programming: An application to transmission upgrade and congestion management

Upgrading the capacity of existing transmission lines is essential for meeting the growing energy demands, facilitating the integration of renewable energy, and ensuring the security of the transmission system. This study focuses on the selection of lines whose capacities and by how much should be expanded from the perspective of the Independent System Operators (ISOs) to minimize the total system cost. We employ advanced multi-parametric programming and an enhanced branch-and-bound algorithm to address complex mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) problems, considering multi-period time constraints and physical limitations of generators and transmission lines. To characterize the various decisions in transmission expansion, we model the increased capacity of existing lines as parameters within a specified range. This study first relaxes the binary variables to continuous variables and applies the Lagrange method and Karush-Kuhn-Tucker (KKT) conditions to obtain optimal solutions and identify critical regions associated with active and inactive constraints. Moreover, we extend the traditional branch-and-bound (B&B) method by determining the problem’s upper and lower bounds at each node of the B&B decision tree, helping to manage computational challenges in large-scale MILP problems. Here, we compare the difference between the upper and lower bounds to obtain an approximate optimal solution within the decision-makers’ tolerable error range. In addition, the first derivative of the objective function on the parameters of each line is used to inform the selection of lines for easing congestion and maximizing social welfare. Finally, the capacity upgrades are selected by weighing the reductions in system costs against the expense of upgrading line capacities. The findings are supported by numerical simulations and provide transmission-line planners with decision-making guidance.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

Signaling and scrambling with strongly long-range interactions

Strongly long-range interacting quantum systems—those with interactions decaying as a power law 1/$r^α$ in the distance $\textit{r}$ on a $\textit{D}$-dimensional lattice for $\textit{α ≤ D}$—have received significant interest in recent years. They are present in leading experimental platforms for quantum computation and simulation, as well as in theoretical models of quantum-information scrambling and fast entanglement creation. Since no notion of locality is expected in such systems, a general understanding of their dynamics is lacking. In a step towards rectifying this problem, we prove two Lieb-Robinson-type bounds that constrain the time for signaling and scrambling in strongly long-range interacting systems, for which no tight bounds were previously known. In this work, our first bound applies to systems mappable to free-particle Hamiltonians with long-range hopping, and is saturable for $\textit{α ≤ D/2}$. Our second bound pertains to generic long-range interacting spin Hamiltonians and gives a tight lower bound for the signaling time to extensive subsets of the system for all $\textit{α < D}$. This many-site signaling time lower bounds the scrambling time in strongly long-range interacting systems.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

Impacts of Siting Considerations on Offshore Wind Technical Potential in the United States

We estimated the technical potential for the offshore wind (OSW) resource in the United States under two siting regimes to characterize the uncertainty pertaining to the local drivers of siting within a national context. We established Open Access and Limited Access regimes to represent upper and lower bounds on OSW deployment, respectively. These included spatial constraints such as technology depth limits, military use areas, protected areas, existing infrastructure, shipping lanes and more. The same spatial considerations are also considered in the Limited Access regime, but with additional buffers to existing infrastructure as well as a reduced capacity density assumption. Capacity density is the concentration of wind energy development for a given area specified in terms of megawatts (MW) per square kilometer (km 2 ). In the Open-Access regime we used a 5 MW/km 2 assumption, while in the Limited Access scenario we assumed 3 MW/km 2 . This difference reflects our intention for the Open-Access scenario to serve as an upper bound for OSW technical potential, with the Limited-Access scenario as a lower bound. We also applied three technology advancement scenarios to each of the siting regimes. The three technology scenarios (Conservative, Moderate, and Advanced) represent plausible improvements in turbine technology including increased rated power and higher hub heights.

17 WIND ENERGY↗

Quantum advantages for Pauli channel estimation

We show that entangled measurements provide an exponential advantage in sample complexity for Pauli channel estimation, which is both a fundamental problem and a practically important subroutine for benchmarking near-term quantum devices. The specific task we consider is to simultaneously learn all the eigenvalues of an n-qubit Pauli channel to ±ε precision. We give an estimation protocol with an n-qubit ancilla that succeeds with high probability using only O(n/ε 2 ) copies of the Pauli channel, while proving that any ancilla-free protocol (possibly with adaptive control and channel concatenation) would need at least Ω(2 n/3 ) rounds of measurement. We further study the advantages provided by a small number of ancillas. For the case that a k-qubit ancilla (k≤n) is available, we obtain a sample complexity lower bound of Ω(2 (n-k)/3 ) for any nonconcatenating protocol, and a stronger lower bound of Ω(n 2n-k ) for any nonadaptive, nonconcatenating protocol, which is shown to be tight. We also show how to apply the ancilla-assisted estimation protocol to a practical quantum benchmarking task in a noise-resilient and sample-efficient manner, given reasonable noise assumptions. Our results provide a practically interesting example for quantum advantages in learning and also bring insights for quantum benchmarking.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

Probing Postmeasurement Entanglement without Postselection

We study the problem of observing quantum collective phenomena emerging from large numbers of measurements. These phenomena are difficult to observe in conventional experiments because, in order to distinguish the effects of measurement from dephasing, it is necessary to postselect on sets of measurement outcomes with Born probabilities that are exponentially small in the number of measurements performed. An unconventional approach, which avoids this exponential “postselection problem”, is to construct cross-correlations between experimental data and the results of simulations on classical computers. However, these cross-correlations generally have no definite relation to physical quantities. We first show how to incorporate classical shadows into this framework, thereby allowing for the construction of quantum information-theoretic cross-correlations. We then identify cross-correlations that both upper and lower bound the measurement-averaged von Neumann entanglement entropy, as well as cross-correlations that lower bound the measurement-averaged purity and entanglement negativity. These bounds show that experiments can be performed to constrain postmeasurement entanglement without the need for postselection. To illustrate our technique, we consider how it could be used to observe the measurement-induced entanglement transition in Haar-random quantum circuits. We use exact numerical calculations as proxies for quantum simulations and, to highlight the fundamental limitations of classical memory, we construct cross-correlations with tensor-network calculations at finite bond dimension. Our results reveal a signature of measurement-induced criticality that can be observed using a quantum simulator in polynomial time and with polynomial classical memory. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

Microstate distinguishability, quantum complexity, and the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis

In this work, we use quantum complexity theory to quantify the difficulty of distinguishing eigenstates obeying the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH). After identifying simple operators with an algebra of low-energy observables and tracing out the complementary high-energy Hilbert space, the ETH leads to an exponential suppression of trace distance between the coarse grained eigenstates. Conversely, we show that an exponential hardness of distinguishing between states implies ETH-like matrix elements. Finally, the BBBV lower bound on the query complexity of Grover search then translates directly into a complexity-theoretic statement lower bounding the hardness of distinguishing these reduced states

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

Lightning Interferometry Uncertainty, Beam Steering Interferometry, and Evidence of Lightning Being Ignited by a Cosmic Ray Shower

Abstract We present an uncertainty analysis on correlation‐based time delay estimate, the basis for broadband lightning interferometry. A normal interferometry would yield much higher uncertainties than the theoretically predicted lower bound due to finite correlation window lengths. However, if the signals are aligned in time, the uncertainties approach the lower bound and can be used to indicate the interferometric uncertainties. Based on this, we introduce a beam steering interferometry technique. It first estimates a direction centroid for the lightning sources with a normal interferometry and computes the time delays among the signals. It then shifts the raw data with the time delays to align the signals roughly in time and reprocess the aligned signals. It finally pushes the reprocessed results to their correct positions, based on the time delays estimated in the first step. We apply this technique on a fast positive breakdown (FPB) process that started a normal intracloud lightning. The FPB process is shown to have a much more complex structure and development than a normal interferometry would provide. More importantly, from both interferometric and polarization analyses, the FPB appears to be ignited by a cosmic ray shower (CRS). We estimate the radio frequency strength and frequency content related to a presumed CRS in a thunderstorm electric field and find that they are in agreement with the observations. We examine the electric field effect of the CRS front and find that it could raise the field above the threshold for positive breakdown and is capable of igniting the FPB (and the lightning).

Shao, Xuan‐Min↗