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Bai, Yang

Publications and source records attributed to Bai, Yang.

At least 19 records
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2025

Quantum information meets high-energy physics: input to the update of the European strategy for particle physics

Some of the most astonishing and prominent properties of Quantum Mechanics, such as entanglement and Bell nonlocality, have only been studied extensively in dedicated low-energy laboratory setups. The feasibility of these studies in the high-energy regime explored by particle colliders was only recently shown and has gathered the attention of the scientific community. For the range of particles and fundamental interactions involved, particle colliders provide a novel environment where quantum information theory can be probed, with energies exceeding by about 12 orders of magnitude those employed in dedicated laboratory setups. Furthermore, collider detectors have inherent advantages in performing certain quantum information measurements and allow for the reconstruction of the state of the system under consideration via quantum state tomography. Here, we elaborate on the potential, challenges, and goals of this innovative and rapidly evolving line of research and discuss its expected impact on both quantum information theory and high-energy physics.

Physics↗
DOE OSTI2024

Electrobaryonic axion: hair of neutron stars

Axion-like particles are predicted in many physics scenarios beyond the Standard Model (SM). Their interactions with SM particles may arise from the triangle anomaly of the associated global symmetry, along with other SM global and gauge symmetries, including anomalies with the global baryon number and electromagnetic gauge symmetries. We initiate the phenomenological study of the corresponding “electrobaryonic axion”—a particle that couples with both the baryon chemical potential and the electromagnetic field. Neutron stars, particularly magnetars, possessing high baryon density and strong magnetic fields, can naturally develop a thin axion hair around their surface. In this study, we calculate this phenomenon, considering the effects of neutron star rotation and general relativity. For axion particles lighter than the neutron star rotation frequency, the anomalous interaction can also induce the emission of axion particles from the neutron star. In the light axion regime, this emission can significantly contribute to the neutron star cooling rate.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2023

Snowmass2021 cosmic frontier white paper: Ultraheavy particle dark matter

We outline the unique opportunities and challenges in the search for "ultraheavy" dark matter candidates with masses between roughly 10 TeV and the Planck scale $m_{\rm pl} ≈ 10^{16}$ TeV. This mass range presents a wide and relatively unexplored dark matter parameter space, with a rich space of possible models and cosmic histories. We emphasize that both current detectors and new, targeted search techniques, via both direct and indirect detection, are poised to contribute to searches for ultraheavy particle dark matter in the coming decade. We highlight the need for new developments in this space, including new analyses of current and imminent direct and indirect experiments targeting ultraheavy dark matter and development of new, ultra-sensitive detector technologies like next-generation liquid noble detectors, neutrino experiments, and specialized quantum sensing techniques.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2023

Roadmap on energy harvesting materials

Ambient energy harvesting has great potential to contribute to sustainable development and address growing environmental challenges. Converting waste energy from energy-intensive processes and systems (e.g. combustion engines and furnaces) is crucial to reducing their environmental impact and achieving net-zero emissions. Compact energy harvesters will also be key to powering the exponentially growing smart devices ecosystem that is part of the Internet of Things, thus enabling futuristic applications that can improve our quality of life (e.g. smart homes, smart cities, smart manufacturing, and smart healthcare). To achieve these goals, innovative materials are needed to efficiently convert ambient energy into electricity through various physical mechanisms, such as the photovoltaic effect, thermoelectricity, piezoelectricity, triboelectricity, and radiofrequency wireless power transfer. By bringing together the perspectives of experts in various types of energy harvesting materials, this Roadmap provides extensive insights into recent advances and present challenges in the field. Additionally, the Roadmap analyses the key performance metrics of these technologies in relation to their ultimate energy conversion limits. Building on these insights, the Roadmap outlines promising directions for future research to fully harness the potential of energy harvesting materials for green energy anytime, anywhere.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2023

Variant Nelson-Barr mechanism with minimal flavor violation

Within the general framework of using spontaneous CP violation to solve the strong CP problem, we construct a variant Nelson-Barr model in which the Standard Model (SM) quark contribution to the strong CP phase is cancelled by new heavy QCD-charged fermions. This cancellation is ensured by choosing conjugate representations for the new colored states under the same global flavor symmetry of SM quarks. Choosing the global flavor symmetry to be that of minimal flavor violation, we suppress higher-order corrections to the strong CP phase to well below current experimental constraints. More than two dozen massless Goldstone bosons emerge from spontaneous flavor symmetry breaking, which yield strong astrophysical constraints on the symmetry breaking scale. In the early universe, the Goldstone bosons can be thermally produced from their interactions with the heavy colored fermions and contribute to ΔN eff at a measurable level. As a function of reheating temperature, the predicted ΔN eff shows an interesting plateau behavior we dub the “flavor stairway”, which encodes information about the SM quark flavor structure.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2023

Near-extremal charged black holes: greybody factors and evolution

As a charged black hole reaches its extremal state via Hawking radiation, quantum effects become important for its thermodynamic properties when its temperature is below a mass gap scale. Using AdS 2 /CFT 1 correspondence and solutions for the corresponding Schwarzian action, we calculate the black hole greybody factors including the quantum effects. In the low temperature limit, the greybody factors scale as T 2s+3/2 with s the radiated field spin. Hence, the Hawking radiation of a near-extremal charged black hole (NEBH) is dominated by emitting scalar particles including the Higgs boson. Time evolution of an NEBH is also calculated and shows a stochastic feature. For an NEBH lighter than around 10 8 times the Planck mass, its temperature at the current universe is below the mass gap scale and is universally tens of GeV, which is important if one searches for primordial (hidden) charged black holes.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2022

Review of the U.S. Policies, Codes, and Standards of Zero-Carbon Buildings

The global issue of climate change has accelerated the international commitment to net-zero carbon emission development. Decarbonizing the building sector has been put on several governments’ sustainable development agendas. To provide a reference for decarbonizing the building sector, this paper summarizes the U.S. experience in zero-carbon buildings (ZCBs) from the aspects of policies, codes, and standards at the federal and local levels and those of professional societies. Based on the definition and boundaries of ZCBs, this paper introduces policies on building energy efficiency, electrification, on-site renewable energy deployment, and “buy clean”, illustrating highlights in building phases, energy systems, materials production, and fiscal incentives. The synergic efforts and coordination between federal and local levels and with professional societies are also introduced. Successful experiences in policy and standard implementation are summarized, including the systemic work of multilevel governance, clearly defined goals and stringent policies, constant upgrades of codes and standards, transparency in reporting and information sharing, and increased financial and investment opportunities. This paper provides concrete recommendations for developing zero-carbon building policies.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2022

Tethered Small-Molecule Acceptors Simultaneously Enhance the Efficiency and Stability of Polymer Solar Cells

For polymer solar cells (PSCs), the mixture of polymer donors and small-molecule acceptors (SMAs) is fine-tuned to realize a favorable kinetically trapped morphology and thus a commercially viable device efficiency. However, the thermodynamic relaxation of the mixed domains within the blend raises concerns related to the long-term operational stability of the devices, especially in the record-holding Y-series SMAs. Here, a new class of dimeric Y6-based SMAs tethered with differential flexible spacers is reported to regulate their aggregation and relaxation behavior. In their polymer blends with PM6, it is found that they favor an improved structural order relative to that of Y6 counterpart. Most importantly, the tethered SMAs show large glass transition temperatures to suppress the thermodynamic relaxation in mixed domains. For the high-performing dimeric blend, an unprecedented open circuit voltage of 0.87 V is realized with a conversion efficiency of 17.85%, while those of regular Y6-base devices only reach 0.84 V and 16.93%, respectively. Most importantly, the dimer-based device possesses substantially reduced burn-in efficiency loss, retaining more than 80% of the initial efficiency after operating at the maximum power point under continuous illumination for 700 h. In conclusion, the tethering approach provides a new direction to develop PSCs with high efficiency and excellent operating stability.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2022

IceCube at the frontier of macroscopic dark matter direct detection

For a class of macroscopic dark matter models, inelastic scattering of dark matter off a nucleus can generate electromagnetic signatures with GeV-scale energy. The IceCube detector, with its kilometer-scale size, is ideal for directly detecting such inelastic scattering. Based on the slow particle trigger for the DeepCore detector, we perform a detailed signal and background simulation to estimate the discovery potential. For order 1 GeV deposited energy in each interaction, we find that IceCube can probe the dark matter masses up to one gram.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2022

Origin of nontopological soliton dark matter: solitosynthesis or phase transition

This work demonstrates that nontopological solitons with large global charges and masses, even above the Planck scale, can form in the early universe and dominate the dark matter abundance. In solitosynthesis, solitons prefer to grow as large as possible under equilibrium dynamics when an initial global charge asymmetry is present. Their abundance is set by when soliton formation via particle fusion freezes out, and their charges are set by the time it takes to accumulate free particles. This work improves the estimation of both quantities, and in particular shows that much larger-charged solitons form than previously thought. The results are estimated analytically and validated numerically by solving the coupled Boltzmann equations. Without solitosynthesis, phase transitions can still form solitons from particles left inside false-vacuum pockets and determine their present-day abundance and properties. Even with zero charge asymmetry, solitons formed in this way can have very large charges on account of statistical fluctuations in the numbers of (anti)particles inside each pocket.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2022

Phases of confining SU(5) chiral gauge theory with three generations

We explore the possible low energy phases of the confining non-supersymmetric SU(5) chiral gauge theory with three generations of fermions in the (10+ $\bar{5}$) representations. This theory has the same fermion and gauge matter content as the simplest Georgi-Glashow grand unified theory of the Standard Model and has an SU(3) × SU(3) × U(1) global symmetry. Using ’t Hooft anomaly matching, most attractive channel, and soft SUSY breaking approaches, we outline a number of possible consistent low energy vacua including one with a remnant SO(3) × U(1) symmetry that is analogous to the one-generation model. For the soft SUSY breaking approach, we find that as one extrapolates to large SUSY breaking to recover the original theory, a phase transition is possible. We show that such a phase transition is guaranteed if SUSY breaking is communicated via anomaly mediation.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2022

Effect of crystallite geometries on electrochemical performance of porous intercalation electrodes by multiscale operando investigation

Lithium-ion batteries are yet to realize their full promise because of challenges in the design and construction of electrode architectures that allow for their entire interior volumes to be reversibly accessible for ion storage. Electrodes constructed from the same material and with the same specifications, which differ only in terms of dimensions and geometries of the constituent particles, can show surprising differences in polarization, stress accumulation and capacity fade. Here, using operando synchrotron X-ray diffraction and energy dispersive X-ray diffraction (EDXRD), we probe the mechanistic origins of the remarkable particle geometry-dependent modification of lithiation-induced phase transformations in V2O5 as a model phase-transforming cathode. A pronounced modulation of phase coexistence regimes is observed as a function of particle geometry. Specifically, a metastable phase is stabilized for nanometre-sized spherical V2O5 particles, to circumvent the formation of large misfit strains. Spatially resolved EDXRD measurements demonstrate that particle geometries strongly modify the tortuosity of the porous cathode architecture. Greater ion-transport limitations in electrode architectures comprising micrometre-sized platelets result in considerable lithiation heterogeneities across the thickness of the electrode. These insights establish particle geometry-dependent modification of metastable phase regimes and electrode tortuosity as key design principles for realizing the promise of intercalation cathodes. Designing electrode architectures for Li-ion batteries that can be reversibly accessible for ion storage can be challenging. Using operando techniques the mechanistic origin of lithiation-induced phase transformations in a V2O5 model cathode is now clarified.

Luo, Yuting↗
DOE OSTI2022

Q-monopole-ball: a topological and nontopological soliton

Magnetic monopoles and Q-balls are examples of topological and nontopological solitons, respectively. A new soliton state with both topological and nontopological charges is shown to also exist, given a monopole sector with a portal coupling to an additional scalar field S with a global U(1) symmetry. This new state, the Q-monopole-ball, is more stable than an isolated Q-ball made of only S particles, and it could be stable against fissioning into monopoles and free Sparticles. Stable Q-monopole-balls can contain large magnetic charges, providing a novel nongravitational mechanism for binding like-charged monopoles together. They could be produced from a phase transition in the early universe and account for all dark matter.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2022

Diluted axion star collisions with neutron stars

Diluted axion star, a self-gravitating object with the quantum pressure balancing gravity, has been predicted in many models with a QCD axion or axion-like particle. It can be formed in the early universe and composes a sizable fraction of dark matter. One could detect the transient radio signals when it passes by a magnetar with the axion particle converted into photon in the magnetic field. Using both numerical and semi-analytic approaches, we simulate the axion star's dynamic evolution and estimate the fraction of axion particles that can have a resonance conversion during such a collision event. We have found that both self-gravity and quantum pressure are not important after the diluted axion star enters the Roche radius. A free-fall approximate can capture individual particle trajectories very well. Finally, with some optimistic cosmological and astrophysical assumptions, the QCD axion parameter space can be probed from detecting such a collision event by radio telescopes.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2021

Muon g -2 from millicharged hidden confining sector

We provide a novel explanation to the muon g - 2 excess with new physics contributions at the two-loop level. In this scenario, light millicharged particles are introduced to modify the photon vacuum polarization that contributes to muon g - 2 at one additional loop. The muon g - 2 excess can be explained with the millicharged particle mass m χ around 10 MeV and the product of the multiplicity factor and millicharge squared of N χ ε 2 ~ 10 -3 . The minimal model faces severe constraints from direct searches at fixed-target experiments and astrophysical observables. However, if the millicharged particles are also charged under a hidden confining gauge group SU(N χ ) with a confinement scale of MeV, hidden-sector hadrons are unstable and can decay into neutrinos, which makes this scenario consistent with existing constraints. This explanation can be well tested at low-energy lepton colliders such as BESIII and Belle II as well as other proposed fixed-target experiments.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗