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DOE OSTI2024

Positivity from Cosmological Correlators

Abstract Effective field theories in flat space and in anti-de Sitter space are constrained by causality and unitarity, often in the form of positivity bounds. Similar bounds have been harder to demonstrate in cosmological backgrounds, where the roles of unitarity and causality are more obscure. Fortunately, the expansion of the universe ensures that late-time cosmological correlators are effectively classical and the role of unitarity is played by classical statistical inequalities. For multi-field inflation, the resulting positivity constraints have long been known in terms of the Suyama-Yamaguchi inequality. In this paper, we demonstrate that similar statistical bounds imply nontrivial constraints for massive fields in the early universe. We show that any real anomalous dimensions for principal series fields in de Sitter space must be positive. We also derive a limit on the amplitude of particular oscillatory signals from inflation, including those arising in cosmological collider physics. Finally, we demonstrate that these constraints manifest themselves directly in the two-point statistics of matter and galaxies that will be measured in upcoming surveys.

Physics↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Where Lies the Quantumness Behind Detecting Electromagnetic Waves for Frequencies from Infrared and Up?

The synthesis of Newtonian concept of corpuscles during emission with Huygens’ concept of secondary-wavelets during propagation implies that all EM radiations from quantized atoms and molecules are released as discrete amount of energies. However, they propagate out as time-finite Maxwellian light pulses. Huygens also underscored that his secondary wavelets keep propagating as independent pulses in the absence of any interacting medium, or until intercepted by an interface with a medium or a detector. Then we use the Superposition Principle and the coherence theory to derive Einstein’s photoelectric equation by summing innumerable random time-finite pulses. This process driven approach should yield the characteristic statistical variations of photoelectron current pulses, as generated by photodetectors for different kinds of light sources. Lamb & Scully originally proposed this semiclassical approach without assuming that light actually consists of time finite pulses. The quantumness remains confined within the excitation and de-excitations processes in the material particles.

Electromagnetic Waves↗

DOE OSTI2017

Statistical model of exotic rotational correlations in emergent space-time

A statistical model is formulated to compute exotic rotational correlations that arise as inertial frames and causal structure emerge on large scales from entangled Planck scale quantum systems. Noncommutative quantum dynamics are represented by random transverse displacements that respect causal symmetry. Entanglement is represented by covariance of these displacements in Planck scale intervals defined by future null cones of events on an observer's world line. Light that propagates in a nonradial direction inherits a projected component of the exotic rotational correlation that accumulates as a random walk in phase. A calculation of the projection and accumulation leads to exact predictions for statistical properties of exotic Planck scale correlations in an interferometer of any configuration. The cross-covariance for two nearly co-located interferometers is shown to depart only slightly from the autocovariance. Specific examples are computed for configurations that approximate realistic experiments, and show that the model can be rigorously tested.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

DOE OSTI2024

Statistical data analysis of x-ray spectroscopy data enabled by neural network accelerated Bayesian inference

Bayesian inference applied to x-ray spectroscopy data analysis enables uncertainty quantification necessary to rigorously test theoretical models. However, when comparing to data, detailed atomic physics and radiation transfer calculations of x-ray emission from non-uniform plasma conditions are typically too slow to be performed in line with statistical sampling methods, such as Markov Chain Monte Carlo sampling. Furthermore, differences in transition energies and x-ray opacities often make direct comparisons between simulated and measured spectra unreliable. Here, we present a spectral decomposition method that allows for corrections to line positions and bound–bound opacities to best fit experimental data, with the goal of providing quantitative feedback to improve the underlying theoretical models and guide future experiments. In this work, we use a neural network (NN) surrogate model to replace spectral calculations of isobaric hot-spots created in Kr-doped implosions at the National Ignition Facility. The NN was trained on calculations of x-ray spectra using an isobaric hot-spot model post-processed with Cretin, a multi-species atomic kinetics and radiation code. The speedup provided by the NN model to generate x-ray emission spectra enables statistical analysis of parameterized models with sufficient detail to accurately represent the physical system and extract the plasma parameters of interest.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗

DOE OSTI2019

Fractional excitations in foliated fracton phases

Fractional excitations in fracton models exhibit novel features not present in conventional topological phases: their mobility is constrained, there are an infinitude of types, and they bear an exotic sense of ‘braiding’. Hence, they require a new framework for proper characterization. Based on our definition of foliated fracton phases in which equivalence between models includes the possibility of adding layers of gapped 2D states, we propose to characterize fractional excitations in these phases up to the addition of quasiparticles with 2D mobility. That is, two quasiparticles differing by a set of quasiparticles that move along 2D planes are considered to be equivalent; likewise, ‘braiding’ statistics are measured in a way that is insensitive to the attachment of 2D quasiparticles. The fractional excitation types and statistics defined in this way provide a universal characterization of the underlying foliated fracton order which can subsequently be used to establish phase relations. We demonstrate as an example the equivalence between the X-cube model and the semionic X-cube model both in terms of fractional excitations and through an exact mapping.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

DOE OSTI2021

Risk-Adaptive Experimental Design for High-Consequence Systems: LDRD Final Report

Constructing accurate statistical models of critical system responses typically requires an enormous amount of data from physical experiments or numerical simulations. Unfortunately, data generation is often expensive and time consuming. To streamline the data generation process, optimal experimental design determines the 'best' allocation of experiments with respect to a criterion that measures the ability to estimate some important aspect of an assumed statistical model. While optimal design has a vast literature, few researchers have developed design paradigms targeting tail statistics, such as quantiles. In this project, we tailored and extended traditional design paradigms to target distribution tails. Our approach included (i) the development of new optimality criteria to shape the distribution of prediction variances, (ii) the development of novel risk-adapted surrogate models that provably overestimate certain statistics including the probability of exceeding a threshold, and (iii) the asymptotic analysis of regression approaches that target tail statistics such as superquantile regression. To accompany our theoretical contributions, we released implementations of our methods for surrogate modeling and design of experiments in two complementary open source software packages, the ROL/OED Toolkit and PyApprox.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

NASA NTRS2014

Gamma-Ray Emission in Dissipative Pulsar Magnetospheres: from Theory to Fermi Observations

We compute the patterns of gamma-ray emission due to curvature radiation in dissipative pulsar magnetospheres. Our ultimate goal is to construct macrophysical models that are able to reproduce the observed gamma-ray light curve phenomenology recently published in the Second Fermi Pulsar Catalog. We apply specific forms of Ohm's law on the open field lines using a broad range for the macroscopic conductivity values that result in solutions ranging, from near-vacuum to near-force-free. Using these solutions, we generate model gamma-ray light curves by calculating realistic trajectories and Lorentz factors of radiating particles under the influence of both the accelerating electric fields and curvature radiation reaction. We further constrain our models using the observed dependence of the phase lags between the radio and gamma-ray emission on the gamma-ray peak separation. We perform a statistical comparison of our model radio-lag versus peak-separation diagram and the one obtained for the Fermi standard pulsars. We find that for models of uniform conductivity over the entire open magnetic field line region, agreement with observations favors higher values of this parameter. We find, however, significant improvement in fitting the data with models that employ a hybrid form of conductivity, specifically, infinite conductivity interior to the light cylinder and high but finite conductivity on the outside. In these models the gamma-ray emission is produced in regions near the equatorial current sheet but modulated by the local physical properties. These models have radio lags near the observed values and statistically best reproduce the observed light curve phenomenology. Additionally, they also produce GeV photon cut-off energies.

stars↗

NASA NTRS1999

Fast Quantum Algorithm for Predicting Descriptive Statistics of Stochastic Processes

Stochastic processes are used as a modeling tool in several sub-fields of physics, biology, and finance. Analytic understanding of the long term behavior of such processes is only tractable for very simple types of stochastic processes such as Markovian processes. However, in real world applications more complex stochastic processes often arise. In physics, the complicating factor might be nonlinearities; in biology it might be memory effects; and in finance is might be the non-random intentional behavior of participants in a market. In the absence of analytic insight, one is forced to understand these more complex stochastic processes via numerical simulation techniques. In this paper we present a quantum algorithm for performing such simulations. In particular, we show how a quantum algorithm can predict arbitrary descriptive statistics (moments) of N-step stochastic processes in just O(square root of N) time. That is, the quantum complexity is the square root of the classical complexity for performing such simulations. This is a significant speedup in comparison to the current state of the art.

Williams Colin P.↗

DOE OSTI2020

Closing the Gap Between Modeling and Experiments in the Self-assembly of Biomolecules at Interfaces and in Solution

Molecular self-assembly is a powerful tool in materials design, wherein non-covalent interactions like electrostatic, hydrophobic, hydrogen bonding, and van der Waals can be exploited to produce supramolecular nanostructures that are functional and highly tunable. Biomolecules are attractive building blocks, as they are biocompatible, biodegradable and adopt a wide array of higher order structures. Moreover, naturally occurring protein systems display a manifold of structures and interactions that can be replicated in synthetic biomolecules. In this perspective, we highlight advances in multiscale simulation techniques across broad spatiotemporal scales that can aid in characterizing self-assembly of hybrid and hierarchical bionanomaterial systems, with an emphasis on physics-based simulation approaches currently employed to study biomolecules at mineral interfaces. The power of these approaches is highlighted across a few recent areas where molecular simulations have advanced our understanding of self-assembly spanning peptides to protein self-assembly. Looking forward, we discuss how in the near future emerging methods in statistical and machine learning will advance this research field in all areas from expanding the capabilities of physics-based simulation methods to enabling new analyses of high throughput experiments. These advances will pave the way for understanding the molecular recognition patterns in systems that are dictated by self-assembly - biomineralizing peptides, hierarchical peptoids, and large protein assemblies, and will aid in the development of a new synthesis science for achieving precise molecular control in materials design

Sampath, Janani↗

DOE OSTI2018

Two-Dimensional Triplet Magnetoexcitons and a Magnetofermionic Condensate in the GaAs/AlGaAs Heterostructures

A fundamentally new collective state, namely, the magnetofermionic condensate, is discovered during photoexcitation of a sufficiently dense gas of long-lived triplet cyclotron magnetoexcitons in a twodimensional Hall insulator with a high electron mobility, a filling factor of ν = 2, and temperatures of T < 1 K. The condensed phase coherently interacts with an external electromagnetic field, exhibits superradiant properties in the recombination of correlated condensate electrons with heavy holes in the valence band, and spreads nondissipatively in the layer of a two-dimensional electron gas to macroscopical large distances, transferring an integer spin. The observed effects are explained in terms of a coherent condensate in a nonequilibrium system of two-dimensional fermions with a fully quantized energy spectrum, in which a degenerate ensemble of long-lived triplet magnetoexcitons obeying the Bose statistics is present.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗

DOE OSTI2025

Status and Prospects of SBND

The Short-Baseline Near Detector (SBND) is one of the neutrino detectors positioned along the the Booster Neutrino Beam (BNB) at Fermilab. It is the near detector in the Short-Baseline Neutrino (SBN) Program, as well as having a wide-ranging independent physics program. The detector began taking neutrino data in the summer of 2024 and has already collected over 1 million neutrino events. Thanks to its unique combination of measurement resolution and statistics, SBND will soon carry out a rich program of neutrino interaction measurements and novel searches for physics beyond the Standard Model (BSM). As the SBN near detector, it will enable the full potential of the SBN sterile neutrino program by performing a precise characterisation of the unoscillated event rate and constraining BNB flux and neutrino-argon cross-section systematic uncertainties. In this talk, the physics reach, current status, and future prospects of SBND are discussed.

Paton, Josephine [Fermilab]↗

DOE OSTI2022

Inadequacy of current approaches for characterizing membrane transport properties at high salinities

Cost optimal design of osmotic membrane processes requires an accurate estimate of membrane transport parameters across their full operational range. However, standard approaches for estimating these parameters rely on empirical methods, the accuracy of which remains unquantified as a function of temperature, salinity, and measurement error. Herein, we present a systematic accuracy analysis of previously developed methods for estimation of membrane transport properties in reverse osmosis, high-pressure reverse osmosis, forward osmosis, pressure retarded reverse osmosis, and osmotically assisted reverse osmosis. We use a Monte Carlo approach to sample the full range of feasible membrane water permeabilities, salt permeabilities, structural parameters, and operating conditions for these processes. These material and process parameters are then incorporated into a physical transport model for each process. Our analysis shows that the statistical uncertainty of current empirical methods for estimating membrane parameters increases by 5 times from low-salinity to high-salinity conditions. Here, the result of this work demonstrates that empirical methods are inadequate for precisely estimating membrane transport properties at high salinity and highlight a critical need for the development of statistically validated higher accuracy methods.

42 ENGINEERING↗

DOE OSTI2017

Black hole evaporation in conformal gravity

We study the formation and the evaporation of a spherically symmetric black hole in conformal gravity. From the collapse of a spherically symmetric thin shell of radiation, we find a singularity-free non-rotating black hole. This black hole has the same Hawking temperature as a Schwarzschild black hole with the same mass, and it completely evaporates either in a finite or in an infinite time, depending on the ensemble. We consider the analysis both in the canonical and in the micro-canonical statistical ensembles. Last, we discuss the corresponding Penrose diagram of this physical process.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2020

Efficient neutrino oscillation parameter inference using Gaussian processes

The unified approach of Feldman and Cousins allows for exact statistical inference of small signals that commonly arise in high energy physics. It has gained widespread use, for instance, in measurements of neutrino oscillation parameters in long-baseline experiments. However, the approach relies on the Neyman construction of the classical confidence interval and is computationally intensive as it is typically done in a grid-based fashion over the entire parameter space. In this article, we propose an efficient algorithm for the Feldman-Cousins approach using Gaussian processes to construct confidence intervals iteratively. Further, we show that in the neutrino oscillation context, one can obtain confidence intervals fives times faster in one dimension and ten times faster in two dimensions, while maintaining an accuracy above 99.5%.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

DOE OSTI2024

Measurement of branching fractions for Λ c + → n K S 0 π + and Λ c + → n K S 0 K +

Based on 4.5 fb − 1 of e + e − collision data accumulated at center-of-mass energies between 4599.53 and 4698.82 MeV with the BESIII detector, we measure the absolute branching fraction of the Cabibbo-favored decay Λ c + → n K S 0 π + with the precision improved by a factor of 2.8 and report the first evidence for the singly-Cabibbo-suppressed decay Λ c + → n K S 0 K + . The branching fractions for Λ c + → n K S 0 π + and Λ c + → n K S 0 K + are determined to be ( 1.86 ± 0.08 ± 0.04 ) × 10 − 2 and ( 3. 9 − 1.4 + 1.7 ± 0.3 ) × 1 0 − 4 , respectively, where the first uncertainties are statistical and the second ones are systematic. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Astronomy & Astrophysics↗

DOE OSTI2024

Observation of χ c J → p p ¯ K S 0 K − π + + c . c .

By analyzing ( 27.12 ± 0.14 ) × 10 8 ψ ( 3686 ) events collected with the BESIII detector operating at the BEPCII collider, the decays χ c J → p p ¯ K S 0 K − π + + c . c . ( J = 0 , 1 , 2 ) are observed for the first time with statistical significances greater than 10 σ . The branching fractions of these decays are determined to be B ( χ c 0 → p p ¯ K S 0 K − π + + c . c . ) = ( 2.61 ± 0.27 ± 0.32 ) × 10 − 5 , B ( χ c 1 → p p ¯ K S 0 K − π + + c . c . ) = ( 4.16 ± 0.24 ± 0.46 ) × 10 − 5 , and B ( χ c 2 → p p ¯ K S 0 K − π + + c . c . ) = ( 5.63 ± 0.28 ± 0.46 ) × 10 − 5 , respectively. The processes χ c 1 , 2 → p ¯ Λ ( 1520 ) K S 0 π + + c . c . are also observed, with statistical significances of 5.7 σ and 7.0 σ , respectively. Evidence for χ c 0 → p ¯ Λ ( 1520 ) K S 0 π + + c . c . is found with statistical significances of 3.3 σ . The corresponding branching fractions are determined to be B ( χ c 0 → p ¯ Λ ( 1520 ) K S 0 π + + c . c . ) = ( 1.6 1 − 0.64 + 0.68 ± 0.23 ) × 10 − 5 , B ( χ c 1 → p ¯ Λ ( 1520 ) K S 0 π + + c . c . ) = ( 4.06 − 0.76 + 0.80 ± 0.52 ) × 10 − 5 , and B ( χ c 2 → p ¯ Λ ( 1520 ) K S 0 π + + c . c . ) = ( 4.0 9 − 0.84 + 0.87 ± 0.42 ) × 10 − 5 . Here, the first uncertainties are statistical and the second ones are systematic. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Ablikim, M.↗

DOE OSTI2024

Observation of χ c 0 → Σ + Σ ¯ − η and evidence for χ c 1 , 2 → Σ + Σ ¯ − η

Using ( 27.12 ± 0.14 ) × 10 8 ψ ( 3686 ) events collected with the BESIII detector, the decay χ c 0 → Σ + Σ ¯ − η is observed for the first time with a signal significance of 7.0 σ , and evidence for χ c 1 → Σ + Σ ¯ − η and χ c 2 → Σ + Σ ¯ − η is found with signal significances of 4.3 σ and 4.6 σ , respectively. The branching fractions are determined to be B ( χ c 0 → Σ + Σ ¯ − η ) = ( 1.26 ± 0.20 ± 0.13 ) × 10 − 4 , B ( χ c 1 → Σ + Σ ¯ − η ) = ( 5.10 ± 1.21 ± 0.67 ) × 10 − 5 , and B ( χ c 2 → Σ + Σ ¯ − η ) = ( 5.46 ± 1.18 ± 0.50 ) × 10 − 5 , where the first uncertainties are statistical, and the second ones are systematic. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Ablikim, M.↗

DOE OSTI2020

Big Data Health Physics

This project, in completion of the Illinois Institute of Technology’s Professional Masters of Health Physics program, represents a two part independent study wherein (1) a Statistical Analysis is performed on a new data process implemented at a Los Alamos National Laboratory facility and (2) a Project Management Plan is designed for the successful implementation of this new radiation protection management process.

62 RADIOLOGY AND NUCLEAR MEDICINE↗