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Symmetries and anomalies of Hamiltonian staggered fermions

We review the shift (translation) and time reversal symmetries of Hamiltonian staggered fermions and their connection to continuum symmetries concentrating in particular on the case of massless fermions and (3+1) dimensions. We construct operators using the staggered fields that implement these symmetries on finite lattices. We show that shifts composed of an odd multiple of the elementary shift anticommute with time reversal and are related to continuum axial transformations. We argue that the presence of these nontrivial commutation relations implies the existence of lattice ’t Hooft anomalies. From the shifts we also construct a set of conserved, quantized charges that generate continuous symmetries of the lattice theory. In general these do not commute with the vector charge signaling further ’t Hooft anomalies.

Anomalies↗

Astronomical Spectroscopy with Skipper CCDs: First Results from a Skipper CCD Focal Plane Prototype at SIFS

We present the first on-sky results from an ultra-low-readout-noise Skipper CCD focal plane prototype for the SOAR Integral Field Spectrograph (SIFS). The Skipper CCD focal plane consists of four 6k $\times$ 1k, 15 $\mu$m pixel, fully-depleted, $p$-channel devices that have been thinned to $\sim$250 $\mu$m, backside processed, and treated with an anti-reflective coating. These Skipper CCDs were configured for astronomical spectroscopy, i.e., a single-sample readout noise $< 4.3$\,e$^-$\,rms/pixel, the ability to achieve multi-sample readout noise $\ll 1\,$e$^-$\,rms/pix, full-well capacities $\sim$40,000--65,000 e$^-$, low dark current and charge transfer inefficiency ($\sim 2$ $\times$ $10^{-4}$ e$^-$/pixel/s and 3.44 $\times$ $10^{-7}$, respectively), and an absolute quantum efficiency of $\gtrsim 80\%$ between 450\,nm and 980\,nm ($\gtrsim 90\%$ between 600\,nm and 900\,nm). We optimize the readout sequence timing to achieve sub-electron noise ($\sim 0.5$\,e$^-$\,rms/pix) and photon-counting ($\sim 0.22$\,e$^-$\,rms/pix) readout noise over an area of 2k $\times$ 4k and 110 $\times$ 4k pixels, respectively in a readout time of $\lesssim 17$min. We observed two Lyman-$\alpha$ emitting quasars (HB89\,1159$+$123 and QSO\,J1621$–$0042) at redshift $z \sim 3.5$, two moderate redshift galaxy clusters (CL\,J1001$+$0220 and SPT-CL\,J2040$-$4451), an emission line galaxy at $z = 0.3239$, a candidate member star of the Bo\"{o}tes~II ultra-faint dwarf galaxy, and five CALSPEC spectrophotometric standard stars (HD074000, HD60753, HD106252, HD101452, HD200654). We present charge-quantized, photon-counting observation of the quasar HB89\,1159$+$123 and show the detector sensitivity increase for faint spectral features. We demonstrate signal-to-noise performance improvement for SIFS for observations in the low-background, readout-noise-dominated regime. We outline preliminary scientific studies that will leverage the SIFS-Skipper CCD data to derive new cosmological measurements in the context of dark matter and galaxy evolution.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Astronomical Spectroscopy with Skipper CCDs: First Results from a Skipper CCD Focal Plane Prototype at SIFS

We present the first on-sky results from an ultra-low-readout-noise Skipper CCD focal plane prototype for the SOAR Integral Field Spectrograph (SIFS). The Skipper CCD focal plane consists of four 6k x 1k, 15 $\mu$m pixel, fully-depleted, p-channel devices that have been thinned to ~250 $\mu$m, backside processed, and treated with an anti-reflective coating. These Skipper CCDs were configured for astronomical spectroscopy, i.e., single-sample readout noise < 4.3 e- rms/pixel, the ability to achieve multi-sample readout noise $\ll$ 1 e- rms/pixel, full-well capacities ~40,000-65,000 e-, low dark current and charge transfer inefficiency (~2 x 10$^{-4}$ e-/pixel/s and 3.44 x 10$^{-7}$, respectively), and an absolute quantum efficiency of $\gtrsim$ 80% between 450 nm and 980 nm ($\gtrsim$ 90% between 600 nm and 900 nm). We optimized the readout sequence timing to achieve sub-electron noise (~0.5 e- rms/pixel) in a region of 2k x 4k pixels and photon-counting noise (~0.22 e- rms/pixel) in a region of 220 x 4k pixels, each with a readout time of $\lesssim$ 17 min. We observed two quasars (HB89 1159+123 and QSO J1621-0042) at redshift z ~ 3.5, two high-redshift galaxy clusters (CL J1001+0220 and SPT-CL J2040-4451), an emission line galaxy at z = 0.3239, a candidate member star of the Bo\"{o}tes II ultra-faint dwarf galaxy, and five CALSPEC spectrophotometric standard stars (HD074000, HD60753, HD106252, HD101452, HD200654). We present charge-quantized, photon-counting observations of the quasar HB89 1159+123 and show the detector sensitivity increase for faint spectral features. We demonstrate signal-to-noise performance improvements for SIFS observations in the low-background, readout-noise-dominated regime. We outline scientific studies that will leverage the SIFS-Skipper CCD data and new detector architectures that utilize the Skipper floating gate amplifier with faster readout times.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

Rapid Inference of Logic Gate Neural Networks for Anomaly Detection in High Energy Physics

The increasing data rates and complexity of detectors at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) necessitate fast and efficient machine learning models, particularly for rapid selection of what data to store, known as triggering. Building on recent work in differentiable logic gates, we present a public implementation of a Convolutional Differentiable Logic Gate Neural Network (CLGN). We apply this to detecting anomalies at the Level-1 Trigger at CMS using public data from the CICADA project. We demonstrate that the CLGN achieves physics performance on par with or superior to conventional quantized neural networks. We also synthesize an LGN for a Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) and show highly promising FPGA characteristics, notably zero Digital Signal Processor (DSP) resource usage. This work highlights the potential of logic gate networks for high-speed, on-detector inference in High Energy Physics and beyond.

FOS: Physical sciences↗

Quantized Constant-Q Gabor Atoms for Sparse Binary Representations of Cyber-Physical Signatures

Increased data acquisition by uncalibrated, heterogeneous digital sensor systems such as smartphones present new challenges. Binary metrics are proposed for the quantification of cyber-physical signal characteristics and features, and a standardized constant-Q variation of the Gabor atom is developed for use with wavelet transforms. Two different continuous wavelet transform (CWT) reconstruction formulas are presented and tested under different signal to noise ratio (SNR) conditions. A sparse superposition of Nth order Gabor atoms worked well against a synthetic blast transient using the wavelet entropy and an entropy-like parametrization of the SNR as the CWT coefficient-weighting functions. The proposed methods should be well suited for sparse feature extraction and dictionary-based machine learning across multiple sensor modalities.

46 - INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AN↗

Detecting Fractional Chern Insulators in Optical Lattices Through Quantized Displacement

The realization of interacting topological states of matter such as fractional Chern insulators (FCIs) in cold atom systems has recently come within experimental reach due to the engineering of optical lattices with synthetic gauge fields providing the required topological band structures. However, detecting their occurrence might prove difficult since transport measurements akin to those in solid state systems are challenging to perform in cold atom setups and alternatives have to be found. Here, we show that for a ν = 1/2 FCI state realized in the lowest band of a Harper-Hofstadter model of interacting bosons confined by a harmonic trapping potential, the fractionally quantized Hall conductivity σ xy can be accurately determined by the displacement of the atomic cloud under the action of a constant force which provides a suitable experimentally measurable signal for detecting the topological nature of the state. Using matrix-product state algorithms, we show that, in both cylinder and square geometries, the movement of the particle cloud in time under the application of a constant force field on top of the confining potential is proportional to σ xy for an extended range of field strengths.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

Large oscillatory thermal hall effect in kagome metals

The thermal Hall effect recently provided intriguing probes to the ground state of exotic quantum matters. These observations of transverse thermal Hall signals lead to the debate on the fermionic versus bosonic origins of these phenomena. The recent report of quantum oscillations (QOs) in Kitaev spin liquid points to a possible resolution. The Landau level quantization would most likely capture only the fermionic thermal transport effect. However, the QOs in the thermal Hall effect are generally hard to detect. In this work, we report the observation of a large oscillatory thermal Hall effect of correlated Kagome metals. We detect a 180-degree phase change of the oscillation and demonstrate the phase flip as an essential feature for QOs in the thermal transport properties. More importantly, the QOs in the thermal Hall channel are more profound than those in the electrical Hall channel, which strongly violates the Wiedemann–Franz (WF) law for QOs. This result presents the oscillatory thermal Hall effect as a powerful probe to the correlated quantum materials.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

An efficient quantum circuit for block encoding a pairing Hamiltonian

We present an efficient quantum circuit for block encoding a pairing Hamiltonian often studied in nuclear physics. Our block encoding scheme does not require mapping the creation and annihilation operators to the Pauli operators and representing the Hamiltonian as a linear combination of unitaries. Instead, we show how to encode the Hamiltonian directly using controlled swap operations. We analyze the gate complexity of the block encoding circuit and show that it scales polynomially with respect to the number of qubits required to represent a quantum state associated with the pairing Hamiltonian. We also show how the block encoding circuit can be combined with the quantum singular value transformation to construct an efficient quantum circuit for approximating the density of states of a pairing Hamiltonian. The techniques presented can be extended to encode more general second-quantized Hamiltonians.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Intermediate-temperature topological Uhlmann phase on IBM quantum computers

A spin-1 system can exhibit an intermediate-temperature topological regime with a quantized Uhlmann phase sandwiched by topologically trivial low- and high-temperature regimes. We present a quantum circuit consisting of system and ancilla qubits plus a probe qubit which prepares an initial state corresponding to the purified state of a spin-1 system at finite temperature, evolves the system according to the Uhlmann process, and measures the Uhlmann phase via expectation values of the probe qubit. Although classical simulations suggest the quantized Uhlmann phase is observable on International Business Machines (IBM’s) noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) computers, an implementation of the circuit without any optimization exceeds the gate count for the error budget and results in unresolved signals. Through a series of optimization with Qiskit and BQSKit, the gate count can be substantially reduced, making the jumps of the Uhlmann phase more visible. A recent hardware upgrade of IBM quantum computers further improves the signals and leads to a clearer demonstration of interesting finite-temperature topological phenomena on NISQ hardware.

Mastandrea, Christopher [Univ. of California, Merc↗

Quantized Information in Spectral Cyberspace

The constant-Q Gabor atom is developed for spectral power, information, and uncertainty quantification from time–frequency representations. Stable multiresolution spectral entropy algorithms are constructed with continuous wavelet and Stockwell transforms. The recommended processing and scaling method will depend on the signature of interest, the desired information, and the acceptable levels of uncertainty of signal and noise features. Selected Lamb wave signatures and information spectra from the 2022 Tonga eruption are presented as representative case studies. Resilient transformations from physical to information metrics are provided for sensor-agnostic signal processing, pattern recognition, and machine learning applications.

74 ATOMIC AND MOLECULAR PHYSICS↗

Competition between excitonic insulators and quantum Hall states in correlated electron–hole bilayers

Excitonic insulators represent a unique quantum phase of matter that enables the study of exotic quantum bosonic states. Strongly coupled electron–hole bilayers, which host stable dipolar exciton fluids with an exciton density that can be adjusted electrostatically, offer an ideal platform to investigate correlated excitonic insulators. On the basis of electron–hole bilayers made of MoSe2/hexagonal boron nitride/WSe2 heterostructures, here we study the behaviour of excitonic insulators in a perpendicular magnetic field. We report the observation of excitonic quantum oscillations in both Coulomb drag signals and electrical resistance at low to medium magnetic fields. Under a strong magnetic field, we identify multiple quantum phase transitions between the excitonic insulator phase and the bilayer quantum Hall insulator phase. These findings underscore the interplay between the electron–hole interactions and Landau-level quantization, and enable further exploration of quantum phenomena in composite bosonic insulators.

Qi, Ruishi↗

Single Carrier Modulation Resource Allocation for Massive MIMO with Virtual Antennas

Today’s Massive MIMO cellular operation is dominated by orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) modulation. One of the advantages of OFDM is the flexibility to carve up the available spectrum into resource blocks (RBs) that can operate adjacent to one another. Massive MIMO adds spatial multiplexing layers on top of the RBs, enabling the simultaneous operation of dozens of UEs. Cyclic prefixed single carrier modulation (CP-SCM) is an alternative to OFDM that also benefits from massive MIMO and is useful as an OFDM alternative in specific scenarios. However, until recently, no resource allocation method has been proposed for CP-SCM. In this paper, we present a CP-SCM resource allocation scheme using virtual antennas in a massive MIMO time domain duplexed scenario. By creating several virtual antennas for each physical antenna, the benefits of massive MIMO are achieved with a smaller physical antenna count. Resources are quantized into data streams, and each user can be assigned a variable number of simultaneous streams. This paper presents a detailed development and analysis of multi-stream processing (MSP) for both uplink detection and downlink precoding. We also introduce heterogeneous MSP, where CP-SCM and OFDM signals can be processed in the same MSP framework.

5G and beyond communications↗

Observation of anomalous thermal Hall effect in a Kagome superconductor

Broken time-reversal symmetry (TRS) in superconductors can induce not only spontaneous magnetization by the finite angular momentum of Cooper pairs but also the anomalous thermal Hall effects (ATHEs), whose detection has been extremely challenging. Here, we report the successful observation of an ATHE developing below the superconducting transition temperature at zero magnetic field in the kagome-lattice superconductor CsV 3 Sb 5 . This finding is verified by the absence of a signal in a conventional type-II superconductor using the same setup and by ruling out the trapped-vortex effects through micro-Hall array measurements. Both the temperature dependence and the magnitude of the observed anomalous thermal Hall conductivity are quite different from those expected for the quantized thermal edge current of an intrinsic ATHE but consistent with extrinsic impurity-induced ATHEs in chiral superconductivity. Our study of ATHE offers an alternative approach to probe TRS breaking in the superconducting states.

Yoshida, Hiroki [Univ. of Tokyo, Chiba (Japan)] (O↗

Slow Quasiparticle Dynamics and Anyonic Statistics in a Fractional Quantum Hall Fabry-Pérot Interferometer

Anyons are two-dimensional particles with fractional exchange statistics that emerge as elementary excitations of fractional quantum Hall phases. Experimentally, their exchange statistics can be measured in the edge-state Fabry-Pérot interferometer, wherein the presence of 𝑁 𝑞⁢𝑝 localized anyons contributes a phase 𝑁 𝑞⁢𝑝⁢ 𝜃 𝑎 to the interference pattern where 𝜃 𝑎 is twice the exchange phase. Here we report the observation of large, hysteretic phase jumps in a monolayer graphene Fabry-Pérot interferometer at 𝜈 = 1/3. When the filling factor is increased from 𝜈 < 1/3 toward the center of the plateau, we observe phase slips with magnitude Δ⁢𝜃 ≈ 2⁢𝜋/3, consistent with the addition of individual quasiparticles to the interferometer bulk. These phase slips occur as instantaneous jumps in the interference signal, with intervals between the jumps indicating quasiparticle equilibration times exceeding 20 min. We use this long timescale to investigate the effect of changes in interferometer area 𝐴 𝐼 and 𝑁 𝑞⁢𝑝 independently at fixed magnetic field, revealing a striking memory effect in the phase slip magnitude. In particular, as the 𝜈 =1/3 plateau is approached from higher filling, we observed phase slips with Δ⁢𝜃 significantly larger than 2⁢𝜋/3 over the same range of gate voltage where quantized jumps are seen for increasing 𝜈. We discuss this asymmetry in terms of bulk-edge coupling of quasiparticles localized near the edge or in the bulk, and argue that this effect can be qualitatively reconciled with theoretical expectations for strongly interacting quasiparticles in the presence of weak disorder and strongly nonequilibrium charge dynamics. Besides providing a replication of interferometric measurements sensitive to 𝜃 𝑎 , our results highlight the key role played by charge dynamics on signatures of the anyon phase, and demonstrate that fractional quasiparticles can be indefinitely localized in nonequilibrium configurations.

anyons↗

Attention Network Forecasts Time-to-Failure in Laboratory Shear Experiments

Rocks under stress deform by creep mechanisms that include formation and slip on small-scale internal cracks. Intragranular cracks and slip along grain contacts release energy as elastic waves termed acoustic emissions (AE). AEs are thought to contain predictive information that can be used for fault failure forecasting. Here, we present a method using unsupervised classification and an attention network to forecast labquakes using AE waveform features. Our data were generated in a laboratory setting using a biaxial shearing device with granular fault gouge intended to mimic the conditions of tectonic faults. Here, we analyzed the temporal evolution of AEs generated throughout several hundred laboratory earthquake cycles. We used a Conscience Self-Organizing Map (CSOM) to perform topologically ordered vector quantization based on waveform properties. The resulting map was used to interactively cluster AEs. We examined the clusters over time to identify those with predictive ability. Finally, we used a variety of LSTM and attention-based networks to test the predictive power of the AE clusters. By tracking cumulative waveform features over the seismic cycle, the network is able to forecast the time-to-failure (TTF) of lab earthquakes. Our results show that analyzing the data to isolate predictive signals and using a more sophisticated network architecture are key to robustly forecasting labquakes. In the future, this method could be applied on tectonic faults to monitor earthquakes and augment early warning systems.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗

Proposal for a dedicated search for millicharged and fractionally charged particles at LANL

In this paper, we propose an experiment, LANSCE-mQ, aiming to detect fractionally charged and millicharged particles (mCPs) using an 800 MeV proton beam fixed target at the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center (LANSCE) facility at Los Alamos National Laboratory. This search can shed new light on numerous fundamental questions, including charge quantization, the predictions of string theories and grand unification theories, the gauge symmetry of the Standard Model, dark sector models, and the tests of cosmic reheating. We propose to install two-layer scintillation detectors made of plastic (such as EJ-200) or CeBr 3 to search for mCPs. Dedicated geant4 detector simulations and in situ measurements have been conducted to obtain a preliminary determination of the background rate. The dominant backgrounds are beam-induced neutrons and coincident dark current signals from the photomultiplier tubes, while beam-induced high-energy photons ( γ ’s) and cosmic muons are subdominant. We determined that LANSCE-mQ, the dedicated mCP experiment, has the leading mCP sensitivity for mass between ∼ 1 and 300 MeV.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Neuro-Spark: A Submicrosecond Spiking Neural Networks Architecture for In-Sensor Filtering

Neuro-Spark, which is a new neuromorphic architecture with a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) implementation for ultrafast spiking neural network (SNN) inference at the edge, facilitates smart-pixel in-sensor filtering for high-energy physics experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Utilizing the evolutionary optimization for neuromorphic systems (EONS) training method, we generate compact SNN models with 91% signal efficiency, akin to convolutional neural networks but with half the parameters. However, deploying near the detector poses a challenge because the SNN must handle a sustained input data rate exceeding 1013 GB/s. To overcome this, we propose a novel hardware architecture that uses high-level synthesis to construct a tuned architecture for the EONS-trained SNN. In addition to the analysis and validation with an AMD Xilinx Artix-A7 FPGA, our solution consumes only ç24% of FPGA LUT and flipflops. We also introduce an innovative quantization method that reduces FPGA resource utilization by ç15% without compromising accuracy. Our FPGA implementation achieves computing latency of ç10 ns for smart-pixel application inference on an edge FPGA.

Miniskar, Narasinga Rao↗

Evidence of Chiral Fermion Edge Modes through Geometric Engineering of Thermal Hall Effect in 𝛼−RuCl 3

The experimental observation of half-integer-quantized thermal Hall conductivity in the Kitaev candidate material α-RuCl 3 has served as a signature of non-Abelian anyons through an associated chiral Majorana edge mode. However, both the reproducibility of the quantized thermal Hall conductivity and the fundamental nature of the associated heat carriers, whether bosonic or fermionic, are subjects of ongoing and vigorous debate. In a recent theoretical work, it was proposed that varying the sample geometry through creating constrictions can distinguish between different origins of the thermal Hall effect in magnetic insulators. Here, in this study, we provide experimental evidence of chiral fermion edge modes by comparing the thermal Hall effect of a geometrically constricted α-RuCl 3 sample with that of an unconstricted sample. In contrast to the unconstricted crystals where the thermal Hall signal fades below 5 K, the constricted crystals display a significant thermal Hall signal that remains measurable even at 2 K. This sharp difference agrees well with the theoretical prediction and provides compelling evidence for the contribution of chiral fermion edge modes to the thermal Hall effect in α-RuCl 3 . More broadly, this work confirms that the geometry dependence of the thermal Hall effect can help identify chiral spin liquids in candidate materials like α-RuCl 3 and paves the way for the experimental realization of thermal anyon interferometry.

Zhang, Heda [Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL),↗