We develop a Monte Carlo simulation method for computing stationary solutions of the general-relativistic Vlasov equation describing a gas of noncolliding particles. As specific examples, we select planar or spherically symmetric accretion models on the Schwarzschild background spacetime. In all cases the gas extends to infinity, which poses an additional difficulty in the Monte Carlo approach. We discuss models with monoenergetic particles as well as solutions obeying the Maxwell-Jüttner distribution at infinity. For all models, exact expressions for the particle current density are known or can be computed analytically. We demonstrate perfect agreement between exact expressions for the particle current density and the results of our Monte Carlo simulations.

We use numerical simulations of scalar field dark matter evolving on a moving black hole background to confirm the regime of validity of (semi)analytic expressions derived from first principles for both dynamical friction and momentum accretion in the relativistic regime. We cover both small and large clouds (relative to the de Broglie wavelength of the scalars), and light and heavy particle masses (relative to the black hole size). In the case of a small dark matter cloud, the effect of accretion is a non-negligible contribution to the total force on the black hole, even for small scalar masses. We confirm that this momentum accretion transitions between two regimes (wave and particlelike) and we identify the mass of the scalar at which the transition between regimes occurs.

We present a measurement of gravitational lensing over $1500{\mathrm{deg}}^2$ of the Southern sky using SPT-3G temperature data at 95 GHz and 150 GHz taken in 2018. The lensing amplitude relative to a fiducial Planck 2018 Lambda cold dark matter ($\mathrm{\Lambda }\mathrm{CDM}$) cosmology is found to be $1.020\pm 0.060$, excluding instrumental and astrophysical systematic uncertainties. We conduct extensive systematic and null tests to check the robustness of the lensing measurements, and report a minimum-variance combined lensing power spectrum over angular multipoles of $50<L<2000$, which we use to constrain cosmological models. When analyzed alone and jointly with primary cosmic microwave background (CMB) spectra within the $\mathrm{\Lambda }\mathrm{CDM}$ model, our lensing amplitude measurements are consistent with measurements from SPT-SZ, SPTpol, ACT, and Planck. Incorporating loose priors on the baryon density and other parameters including uncertainties on a foreground bias template, we obtain a $1\sigma$ constraint on ${\sigma }_8{\mathrm{\Omega }}_{\mathrm{m}}^{0.25}=0.595\pm 0.026$ using the SPT-3G 2018 lensing data alone, where ${\sigma }_8$ is a common measure of the amplitude of structure today and ${\mathrm{\Omega }}_{\mathrm{m}}$ is the matter density parameter. Combining SPT-3G 2018 lensing measurements with baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) data, we derive parameter constraints of ${\sigma }_8=0.810\pm 0.033$, $S_8\equiv {\sigma }_8({\mathrm{\Omega }}_{\mathrm{m}}/0.3{)}^{0.5}=0.836\pm 0.039$, and Hubble constant $H_0={68.8}_{-1.6}^{+1.3}\mathrm{km}{\mathrm{s}}^{-1}{\mathrm{Mpc}}^{-1}$. Our preferred $S_8$ value is higher by 1.6 to $1.8\sigma$ compared to cosmic shear measurements from DES-Y3, HSC-Y3, and KiDS-1000 at lower redshift and smaller scales. We combine our lensing data with CMB anisotropy measurements from both SPT-3G and Planck to constrain extensions of $\mathrm{\Lambda }\mathrm{CDM}$. Using CMB anisotropy and lensing measurements from SPT-3G only, we provide independent constraints on the spatial curvature of ${\mathrm{\Omega }}_K=0.014_{-0.026}^{+0.023}$ (95% C.L.) and the dark energy density of ${\mathrm{\Omega }}_{\mathrm{\Lambda }}=0.722_{-0.026}^{+0.031}$ (68% C.L.). When combining SPT-3G lensing data with SPT-3G CMB anisotropy and BAO data, we find an upper limit on the sum of the neutrino masses of $\sum m_{\nu }<0.30\mathrm{eV}$ (95% C.L.). Due to the different combination of angular scales and sky area, this lensing analysis provides an independent check on lensing measurements by ACT and Planck.

We present cosmological parameter constraints from a blind joint analysis of three two-point correlation functions measured from the Year 3 Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC-Y3) imaging data, covering about $416{\mathrm{deg}}^2$, and the SDSS DR11 spectroscopic galaxies spanning the redshift range [0.15, 0.70]. We subdivide the SDSS galaxies into three luminosity-cut, and therefore nearly volume-limited samples separated in redshift, each of which acts as a large-scale structure tracer characterized by the measurement of the projected correlation function, $w_{\mathrm{p}}(R)$. We also use the measurements of the galaxy-galaxy weak-lensing signal $\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Sigma }(R)$ for each of these SDSS samples which act as lenses for a secure sample of source galaxies selected from the HSC-Y3 shape catalog based on their photometric redshifts. We combine these measurements with the cosmic shear correlation functions, ${\xi }_{\pm }(\vartheta )$ measured for our HSC source sample. We model these observables with the minimal bias model of the galaxy clustering observables in the context of a flat $\mathrm{\Lambda }\mathrm{CDM}$ cosmology. We use conservative scale cuts, $R>12$ and $8h^{-1}\mathrm{Mpc}$ for $\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Sigma }$ and $w_{\mathrm{p}}$, respectively, where the minimal bias model is valid, in addition to conservative prior on the residual bias in the mean redshift of the HSC photometric source galaxies. We present various validation tests of our model as well as analysis methods. Our baseline analysis yields $S_8=0.775_{-0.038}^{+0.043}$ (68% C.I.) for the $\mathrm{\Lambda }\mathrm{CDM}$ model, after marginalizing over uncertainties in other parameters. Our value of $S_8$ is consistent with that from the Planck 2018 data, but the credible interval of our result is still relatively large. We show that various internal consistency tests based on different splits of the data are passed. Our results are statistically consistent with those of a companion paper, which extends this analysis to smaller scales with an emulator-based halo model, using $\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Sigma }(R)$ and $w_{\mathrm{p}}(R)$ down to $R>3$ and $2h^{-1}\mathrm{Mpc}$, respectively.

We utilize the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (SDSS-BOSS) galaxies and its overlap with approximately 416 sq degrees of deep grizy-band imaging from the Subaru Hyper Suprime-Cam Survey (HSC). We perform measurements of three two-point correlations which form the basis of the cosmological inference presented in our companion papers, Miyatake et al. and Sugiyama et al. We use three approximately volume limited subsamples of spectroscopic galaxies by their $i$-band magnitude from the SDSS-BOSS: LOWZ ($0.1<z<0.35$), CMASS1 ($0.43<z<0.55$) and CMASS2 ($0.55<z<0.7$), respectively. We present high signal-to-noise ratio measurements of the projected correlation functions of these galaxies, which is expected to be proportional to the projected matter correlation function on large scales with a proportionality constant dependent on the bias of galaxies. In order to help break the degeneracy between the amplitude of the matter correlation and the bias of these spectroscopic galaxies, we use the distortions of the shapes of fainter galaxies in HSC due to weak gravitational lensing, to measure the galaxy-galaxy lensing signal, which probes the projected galaxy-matter cross-correlation function of the SDSS-BOSS galaxies. We also measure the cosmic shear correlation functions from HSC galaxies which is related to the projected matter correlation function. We demonstrate the robustness of our measurements by subjecting each of them to a variety of systematic tests. Our use of a single sample of HSC source galaxies is crucial to calibrate any residual systematic biases in the inferred redshifts of our galaxies. We also describe the construction of a suite of mocks: (i) spectroscopic galaxy catalogs which obey the clustering and abundance of each of the three SDSS-BOSS subsamples, and (ii) galaxy shape catalogs which obey the footprint of the HSC survey and have been appropriately sheared by the large-scale structure expected in a $\mathrm{\Lambda }$ Cold Dark Matter model. We use these mock catalogs to compute the covariance of each of our observables.

We measure weak lensing cosmic shear power spectra from the 3-year galaxy shear catalog of the Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC) Subaru Strategic Program imaging survey. The shear catalog covers $416{\mathrm{deg}}^2$ of the northern sky, with a mean $i$-band seeing of 0.59 arcsec and an effective galaxy number density of $15{\mathrm{arcmin}}^{-2}$ within our adopted redshift range. With an $i$-band magnitude limit of 24.5 mag, and four tomographic redshift bins spanning $0.3\le z_{\mathrm{ph}}\le 1.5$ based on photometric redshifts, we obtain a high-significance measurement of the cosmic shear power spectra, with a signal-to-noise ratio of approximately 26.4 in the multipole range $300<\ell <1800$. The accuracy of our power spectrum measurement is tested against realistic mock shear catalogs, and we use these catalogs to get a reliable measurement of the covariance of the power spectrum measurements. We use a robust blinding procedure to avoid confirmation bias, and model various uncertainties and sources of bias in our analysis, including point spread function systematics, redshift distribution uncertainties, the intrinsic alignment of galaxies and the modeling of the matter power spectrum. For a flat $\mathrm{\Lambda }\mathrm{CDM}$ model, we find $S_8\equiv {\sigma }_8({\mathrm{\Omega }}_m/0.3{)}^{0.5}=0.776_{-0.033}^{+0.032}$, which is in excellent agreement with the constraints from the other HSC Year 3 cosmology analyses, as well as those from a number of other cosmic shear experiments. This result implies a $\sim 2\sigma$-level tension with the Planck 2018 cosmology. We study the effect that various systematic errors and modeling choices could have on this value, and find that they can shift the best-fit value of $S_8$ by no more than $\sim 0.5\sigma$, indicating that our result is robust to such systematics.

We perform a blinded cosmology analysis with cosmic shear two-point correlation functions measured from more than 25 million galaxies in the Hyper Suprime-Cam three-year shear catalog in four tomographic redshift bins ranging from 0.3 to 1.5. After conservative masking and galaxy selection, the survey covers $416{\mathrm{deg}}^2$ of the northern sky with an effective galaxy number density of $15{\mathrm{arcmin}}^{-2}$ over the four redshift bins. The 2PCFs adopted for cosmology analysis are measured in the angular range; $7.1<\theta /\mathrm{arcmin}<56.6$ for ${\xi }_{+}$ and $31.2<\theta /\mathrm{arcmin}<248$ for ${\xi }_{-}$, with a total signal-to-noise ratio of 26.6. We apply a conservative, wide, flat prior on the photometric redshift errors on the last two tomographic bins, and the relative magnitudes of the cosmic shear amplitude across four redshift bins allow us to calibrate the photometric redshift errors. With this flat prior on redshift errors, we find ${\mathrm{\Omega }}_{\mathrm{m}}=0.256_{-0.044}^{+0.056}$ and $S_8\equiv {\sigma }_8\sqrt{{\mathrm{\Omega }}_{\mathrm{m}}/0.3}=0.769_{-0.034}^{+0.031}$ (both 68% C.I.) for a flat $\mathrm{\Lambda }$ cold dark matter cosmology. We find, after unblinding, that our constraint on $S_8$ is consistent with the Fourier space cosmic shear and the $3\times 2$ pt analyses on the same HSC dataset. We carefully study the potential systematics from astrophysical and systematic model uncertainties in our fiducial analysis using synthetic data, and report no biases (including projection bias in the posterior space) greater than $0.5\sigma$ in the estimation of $S_8$. Our analysis hints that the mean redshifts of the two highest tomographic bins are higher than initially estimated. In addition, a number of consistency tests are conducted to assess the robustness of our analysis. Comparing our result with Planck-2018 cosmic microwave background observations, we find a $\sim 2\sigma$ tension for the $\mathrm{\Lambda }\mathrm{CDM}$ model.

We present cosmology results from a blinded joint analysis of cosmic shear, ${\xi }_{\pm }(\vartheta )$, galaxy-galaxy weak lensing, $\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Sigma }(R)$, and projected galaxy clustering, $w_{\mathrm{p}}(R)$, measured from the Hyper Suprime-Cam three-year (HSC-Y3) shape catalog and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) DR11 spectroscopic galaxy catalog—a $3\times 2\mathrm{pt}$ cosmology analysis. We define luminosity-cut, and therefore nearly volume-limited, samples of SDSS galaxies to serve as the tracers of $w_{\mathrm{p}}$ and as the lens samples for $\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Sigma }$ in three spectroscopic redshift bins spanning the range $0.15<z<0.7$. For the ${\xi }_{\pm }$ and $\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Sigma }$ measurements, we use a single sample of about seven million source galaxies over $416{\mathrm{deg}}^2$, selected from HSC-Y3 based on having photometric redshifts (photo-$z$) greater than 0.75. The deep, high-quality HSC-Y3 data enable significant detections of the $\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Sigma }$ signals, with integrated signal-to-noise ratio $S/N\sim 24$ in the range $3\le R/[h^{-1}\mathrm{Mpc}]\le 30$ over the three lens samples. ${\xi }_{\pm }$ has $S/N\sim 19$ in the range $8^{\prime }\le \vartheta \le 50^{\prime }$ and ${30}^{\prime }\le \vartheta \le 150^{\prime }$ for ${\xi }_{+}$ and ${\xi }_{-}$, respectively. For cosmological parameter inference, we use the dark emulator package, combined with a halo occupation distribution prescription for the relation between galaxies and halos, to model $w_{\mathrm{p}}$ and $\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Sigma }$ down to quasinonlinear scales, and we estimate cosmological parameters after marginalizing over nuisance parameters. In our baseline analysis we employ an uninformative flat prior of the residual photo-$z$ error, given by $\mathrm{\Pi }(\mathrm{\Delta }{z}_{\mathrm{ph}})=\mathcal{U}(-1,1)$, to model a residual bias in the mean redshift of HSC source galaxies. Comparing the relative lensing amplitudes for $\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Sigma }$ in the three redshift bins and for ${\xi }_{\pm }$ with the single HSC source galaxy sample allows us to calibrate the photo-$z$ parameter $\mathrm{\Delta }{z}_{\mathrm{ph}}$ to the precision of $\sigma (\mathrm{\Delta }{z}_{\mathrm{ph}})\simeq 0.09$. With these methods, we obtain a robust constraint on the cosmological parameters for the flat $\mathrm{\Lambda }\mathrm{CDM}$ model: $S_8={\sigma }_8({\mathrm{\Omega }}_{\mathrm{m}}/0.3{)}^{0.5}={0.763}_{-0.036}^{+0.040}$, or the best-constrained parameter given by $S_8^{\prime }={\sigma }_8({\mathrm{\Omega }}_{\mathrm{m}}/0.3{)}^{0.22}=0.721\pm 0.028$, determined with about 4% fractional precision. Based on multidimensional tension metrics, HSC-Y3 data exhibits about $2.5\sigma$ tension with the cosmological constraint inferred by Planck for the $\mathrm{\Lambda }\mathrm{CDM}$ model, and hints at a nonzero residual photo-$z$ bias implying that the true mean redshift of the HSC galaxies at $z\gtrsim 0.75$ is higher than that implied by the original photo-$z$ estimates.

Previous studies based on Bayesian methods have shown that the constraints on cosmological parameters from the Baryonic Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) full-shape data using the effective field theory of large-scale structures (EFTofLSS) depend on the choice of prior on the EFT nuisance parameters. In this work, we explore this prior dependence by adopting a frequentist approach based on the profile likelihood method, which is inherently independent of priors, considering data from BOSS, eBOSS and Planck. We find that the priors on the EFT parameters in the Bayesian inference are informative and that prior volume effects are important. This is reflected in shifts of the posterior mean compared to the maximum likelihood estimate by up to $1.0\sigma$ ($1.6\sigma$) and in a widening of intervals informed from frequentist compared to Bayesian intervals by factors of up to 1.9 (1.6) for BOSS (eBOSS) in the baseline configuration, while the constraints from Planck are unchanged. Our frequentist confidence intervals give no indication of a tension between BOSS/eBOSS and Planck. However, we find that the profile likelihood prefers extreme values of the EFT parameters, highlighting the importance of combining Bayesian and frequentist approaches for a fully nuanced cosmological inference. We show that the improved statistical power of future data will reconcile the constraints from frequentist and Bayesian inference using the EFTofLSS.

We propose that the cascade decay ${\mathrm{\Lambda }}_b\to D(\to K^{+}{\pi }^{-})N(\to p{\pi }^{-})$ may serve as the discovery channel for baryonic $CP$ violation. This decay chain is contributed by, dominantly, the amplitudes with the intermediate $D$ state as $D^0$ or ${\overline{D}}^0$. The large weak phase between the two kinds of amplitudes suggests the possibility of significant $CP$ violation. While the presence of undetermined strong phases may complicate the dependence of $CP$ asymmetry, our phenomenological analysis demonstrates that $CP$ violation remains prominent across a broad range of strong phases. The mechanism also applies to similar decay modes such as ${\mathrm{\Lambda }}_b\to D(\to K^{+}{K}^{-})\mathrm{\Lambda }$. Considering the anticipated luminosity of LHCb, we conclude that these decay channels offer a promising opportunity to uncover $CP$ violation in the baryon sector.

Starting with the two-derivative limit of $D=2$ string theory, we explore the space of $T$-duality invariant ${\alpha }^{\prime }$ corrections, a space that contains a point representing the fully ${\alpha }^{\prime }$-corrected classical string theory. Using a parametrization introduced by Gasperini and Veneziano we obtain black hole solutions in this theory space. We prove that the dual of a solution with a regular horizon must have a curvature singularity. We find regions in the theory space where the black hole is deformed while preserving the horizon and the singularity, and regions where no black hole appears to exist. Furthermore, we find subregions in this theory space, probably not containing string theory, in which the black hole geometry exhibits a horizon leading to an interior that, having no singularity in the metric, curvature or dilaton, is a regular cosmology.

What does it mean for a boundary condition to be symmetric with respect to a noninvertible global symmetry? We discuss two possible definitions in $1+1\mathrm{D}$ QFTs and lattice models. On the one hand, we call a boundary weakly symmetric if the symmetry defects can terminate topologically on it, leading to conserved operators for the Hamiltonian on an interval (in the open string channel). On the other hand, we call a boundary strongly symmetric if the corresponding boundary state is an eigenstate of the symmetry operators (in the closed string channel). These two notions of symmetric boundaries are equivalent for invertible symmetries, but bifurcate for noninvertible symmetries. We discuss the relation to anomalies, where we observe that it is sometimes possible to gauge a noninvertible symmetry in a generalized sense even though it is incompatible with a trivially gapped phase. The analysis of symmetric boundaries further leads to constraints on bulk and boundary renormalization group flows. In $2+1\mathrm{D}$, we study the action of noninvertible condensation defects on the boundaries of $U(1)$ gauge theory and several TQFTs. Starting from the Dirichlet boundary of free Maxwell theory, the noninvertible symmetries generate infinitely many boundary conditions that are neither Dirichlet nor Neumann.

Earth can act as a transducer to convert ultralight bosonic dark matter (axions and hidden photons) into an oscillating magnetic field with a characteristic pattern across its surface. Here we describe the first results of a dedicated experiment, the Search for Noninteracting Particles Experimental Hunt, that aims to detect such dark-matter-induced magnetic-field patterns by performing correlated measurements with a network of magnetometers in relatively quiet magnetic environments (in the wilderness far from human-generated magnetic noise). Our experiment constrains parameter space describing hidden-photon and axion dark matter with Compton frequencies in the 0.5–5.0 Hz range. Limits on the kinetic-mixing parameter for hidden-photon dark matter represent the best experimental bounds to date in this frequency range.

Geometric transitions between Calabi-Yau manifolds have proven to be a powerful tool in exploring the intricate and interconnected vacuum structure of string compactifications. However, their role in $\mathcal{N}=1$, four-dimensional string compactifications remains relatively unexplored. In this work we present a novel proposal for transitioning the background geometry (including NS5-branes and holomorphic, slope-stable vector bundles) of four-dimensional, $\mathcal{N}=1$ heterotic string compactifications through a conifold transition connecting Calabi-Yau threefolds. Our proposal is geometric in nature but informed by the heterotic effective theory. Central to this study is a description of how the cotangent bundles of the deformation and resolution manifolds in the conifold can be connected by an apparent small instanton transition with a 5-brane wrapping the small resolution curves. We show that by a “pair creation” process 5-branes can be generated simultaneously in the gauge and gravitational sectors and used to describe a coupled minimal change in the manifold and gauge sector. This observation leads us to propose dualities for 5-branes and gauge bundles in heterotic conifolds which we then confirm at the level of spectrum in large classes of examples. While the 5-brane duality is novel, we observe that the bundle correspondence has appeared before in the target space duality exhibited by (0, 2) gauged linear sigma models. Thus our work provides a geometric explanation of (0, 2) target space duality.

Terminal velocity reached by bubble walls in first-order phase transitions is an important parameter determining both primordial gravitational wave spectrum and the production of baryon asymmetry in models of electroweak baryogenesis. We developed a numerical code to study the real-time evolution of expanding bubbles and investigate how their walls reach stationary states. Our results agree with profiles obtained within the so-called bag model with very good accuracy; however, not all such solutions are stable and realized in dynamical systems. Depending on the exact shape of the potential there is always a range of wall velocities where no steady-state solutions exist. This behavior in deflagrations was explained by hydrodynamical obstruction where solutions that would heat the plasma outside the wall above the critical temperature and cause local symmetry restoration are forbidden. For even more affected hybrid solutions causes are less straightforward. However, we provide a simple numerical fit allowing one to verify if a solution with a given velocity is allowed simply by computing the ratio of the nucleation temperature to the critical one for the potential in question.

In this paper, we report the first measurement of CNO solar neutrinos by Borexino that uses the correlated integrated directionality (CID) method, exploiting the subdominant Cherenkov light in the liquid scintillator detector. The directional information of the solar origin of the neutrinos is preserved by the early Cherenkov photons from the neutrino scattered electrons and is used to discriminate between signal and background. The directional information is independent from the spectral information on which the previous CNO solar neutrino measurements by Borexino were based, except for the selection of the energy region of interest. While the CNO spectral analysis could only be applied on the Phase-III dataset, the directional analysis can use the complete Borexino data taking period from 2007 to 2021. The absence of CNO neutrinos has been rejected with $>5\sigma$ posterior probability using the Bayesian statistics. The directional CNO measurement is obtained without an external constraint on the ${}^{210}\mathrm{Bi}$ contamination of the liquid scintillator, which was applied in the spectral analysis approach. The final and the most precise CNO measurement of Borexino is then obtained by combining the new CID-based CNO result with an improved spectral fit of the Phase-III dataset. Including the statistical and the systematic errors, the extracted CNO interaction rate is $R(\mathrm{CNO})={6.7}_{-0.8}^{+1.2}\mathrm{cpd}/100\mathrm{tonnes}$. Taking into account the neutrino flavor conversion, the resulting CNO neutrino flux at Earth is ${\mathrm{\Phi }}_{\mathrm{CNO}}={6.7}_{-0.8}^{+1.2}\times {10}^8{\mathrm{cm}}^{-2}{\mathrm{s}}^{-1}$, which is found to be in agreement with the high metallicity standard solar models. This outcome, combined with the ${}^7\mathrm{Be}$ and ${}^8\mathrm{B}$ fluxes measurements previously obtained by Borexino, can be used to disfavor the low metallicity SSM B16-AGSS09met model at $3.2\sigma$ CL, assuming the SSM B16-GS98 high metallicity model to be true. Also, the sum of C and N abundances in the solar core with respect to the H abundance is evaluated with improved precision, resulting in ${\mathrm{N}}_{\mathrm{CN}}={5.81}_{-0.94}^{+1.22}\times {10}^{-4}$, which is compatible with the high metallicity scenario and exhibits a $2\sigma$ tension with the low metallicity case. The results described in this work reinforce the role of directional Cherenkov light in large-scale liquid scintillator detectors and open up new avenues for the next-generation liquid scintillator or hybrid neutrino experiments. A particular relevance is expected for the latter detectors, which aim to combine the advantages from both Cherenkov-based and scintillation-based detection techniques.

Ray tracing plays a vital role in black hole imaging, modeling the emission mechanisms of pulsars, and deriving signatures from physics beyond the Standard Model. In this work we focus on one specific application of ray tracing, namely, predicting radio signals generated from the resonant conversion of axion dark matter in the strongly magnetized plasma surrounding neutron stars. The production and propagation of low-energy photons in these environments are sensitive to both the anisotropic response of the background plasma and curved spacetime; here, we employ a fully covariant framework capable of treating both effects. We implement this both via forward and backward ray tracing. In forward ray tracing, photons are sampled at the point of emission and propagated to infinity, whilst in the backward-tracing approach, photons are traced backwards from an image plane to the point of production. We explore various approximations adopted in prior work, quantifying the importance of gravity, plasma anisotropy, the neutron star mass and radius, and imposing the proper kinematic matching of the resonance. Finally, using a more realistic model for the charge distribution of magnetar magnetospheres, we revisit the sensitivity of current and future radio and sub-mm telescopes to spectral lines emanating from the Galactic Center magnetar, showing such observations may extend sensitivity to axion masses $m_a\sim \mathcal{O}(\mathrm{few})\times {10}^{-3}\mathrm{eV}$, potentially even probing parameter space of the QCD axion.

We propose extensions of the anti-$k_t$ and Cambridge/Aachen hierarchical jet clustering algorithms that are designed to retain the exact jet kinematics of these algorithms, while providing an infrared-and-collinear-safe definition of jet flavor at any fixed order in perturbation theory. Central to our approach is a new technique called interleaved flavor neutralization (IFN), whereby the treatment of flavor is integrated with, but distinct from, the kinematic clustering. IFN allows flavor information to be meaningfully accessed at each stage of the clustering sequence, which enables a consistent assignment of flavor both to individual jets and to their substructure. We validate the IFN approach using a dedicated framework for fixed-order tests of infrared and collinear safety, which also reveals unanticipated issues in earlier approaches to flavored jet clustering. We briefly explore the phenomenological impact of IFN with anti-$k_t$ jets for benchmark tasks at the Large Hadron Collider.

We measure the three-dimensional cross-power spectrum of galaxy density and intrinsic alignment (IA) fields for the first time from the spectroscopic and imaging data of SDSS-III BOSS galaxies, for each of the four samples in the redshift range $0.2<z<0.75$. In the measurement we use the power-spectrum estimator, developed in our previous work, to take into account the line-of-sight dependent projection of galaxy shapes onto the sky coordinate and the $E/B$-mode decomposition of the spin-2 shape field. Our method achieves a significant detection of the $E$-mode power spectrum with the total signal-to-noise ratio comparable with that of the quadrupole moment of the galaxy density power spectrum, while the measured $B$-mode power spectra are consistent with a null signal to within the statistical errors for all the galaxy samples. We also show that, compared to the previous results based on the two-dimensional projected correlation function, our method improves the precision of the linear shape bias parameter estimation by up to a factor of two thanks to the three-dimensional information. By performing a joint analysis of the galaxy density and IA power spectra in the linear regime, we constrain the isotropic and anisotropic local primordial non-Gaussianities (PNGs) parameters, $f_{\mathrm{NL}}^{s=0}$ and $f_{\mathrm{NL}}^{s=2}$, simultaneously, where the two types of PNGs induce characteristic scale-dependent biases at very large scales in the density and IA power spectra, respectively. We do not find any significant detection for both PNGs; the constraints $f_{\mathrm{NL}}^{s=0}=57_{-29}^{+30}$ and $f_{\mathrm{NL}}^{s=2}=-67_{-269}^{+285}$ (68% credible interval), respectively. Our method paves the way for using the IA power spectrum as a cosmological probe for current and future galaxy surveys.

Using simple, intuitive arguments, we discuss the expected accuracy with which astrophysical parameters can be extracted from an observed gravitational wave signal. The observation of a chirplike signal in the data allows for measurement of the component masses and aligned spins, while measurement in three or more detectors enables good localization. The ability to measure additional features in the observed signal—the existence or absence of power in (i) the second gravitational wave polarization, (ii) higher gravitational wave multipoles or (iii) spin-induced orbital precession—provide new information which can be used to significantly improve the accuracy of parameter measurement. We introduce the simple-pe algorithm which uses these methods to generate rapid parameter estimation results for binary mergers. We present results from a set of simulations, to illustrate the method, and compare results from simple-pe with measurements from full parameter estimation routines. The simple-pe routine is able to provide initial parameter estimates in a matter of CPU minutes, which could be used in real-time alerts and also as input to significantly accelerate detailed parameter estimation routines.