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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 361 records · Page 20

North‐East Peri‐Tethyan Water Column Deoxygenation and Euxinia at the Paleocene Eocene Thermal Maximum

Abstract The Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) is associated with climatic change and biological turnover. It shares features with the Oceanic Anoxic Events (OAEs) of the Mesozoic, such as transient global warming and biogeochemical perturbations. However, the PETM experienced a more muted expansion of marine anoxia compared to the Mesozoic OAEs (especially OAE2), with geographically limited evidence for photic zone euxinia (PZE). We explore the extent and drivers of marine deoxygenation during the PETM using biomarkers for water column euxinia and anoxia as well as an intermediate complexity Earth system model (cGEnIE). These reveal that the water column in the North‐East Peri‐Tethys became anoxic, with euxinic conditions reaching the photic zone (PZE) during the PETM. Our model shows that euxinia developed due to a global increase in the ocean nutrient inventory with concomitant oxygen consumption, similar to findings for OAE2. The particularly strong regional response in the NE Peri‐Tethys appears to arise from a combination of global CO 2 ‐weathering forcing, regionally restricted circulation and upwelling of sulphidic thermocline waters. Unlike OAE2, anoxia and PZE do not become widespread in our PETM simulations, consistent with new and existing geochemical and biological proxy data. This globally muted response could result from reduced biogeochemical feedbacks to climate forcing relative to the mid‐Cretaceous climate. Our observations suggest that similar mechanisms operated in response to disparate Cenozoic (PETM) and Mesozoic (OAEs) transient global warming events, while also highlighting that background conditions are crucial in modulating the sensitivity of Earth's system to them.

Behrooz, L.↗

Global Ocean Cooling of 2.3°C During the Last Glacial Maximum

Abstract Quantitative constraints on past mean ocean temperature (MOT) critically inform our historical understanding of Earth's energy balance. A recently developed MOT proxy based on paleoatmospheric Xe, Kr, and N 2 ratios in ice core air bubbles is a promising tool rooted in the temperature dependences of gas solubilities. However, these inert gases are systematically undersaturated in the modern ocean interior, and it remains unclear how air‐sea disequilibrium may have changed in the past. Here, we carry out 30 tracer‐enabled model simulations under varying circulation, sea ice cover, and wind stress regimes to evaluate air‐sea disequilibrium in the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) ocean. We find that undersaturation of all three gases was likely reduced, primarily due to strengthened high‐latitude winds, biasing reconstructed MOT by −0.38 ± 0.37°C (1σ). Accounting for air‐sea disequilibrium, paleoatmospheric inert gases indicate that LGM MOT was 2.27 ± 0.46°C (1σ) colder than the pre‐industrial era.

Seltzer, A. M.↗

An investigation of irreproducibility in maximum likelihood phylogenetic inference

Phylogenetic trees are essential for studying biology, but their reproducibility under identical parameter settings remains unexplored. Here, we find that 3515 (18.11%) IQ-TREE-inferred and 1813 (9.34%) RAxML-NG-inferred maximum likelihood (ML) gene trees are topologically irreproducible when executing two replicates (Run1 and Run2) for each of 19,414 gene alignments in 15 animal, plant, and fungal phylogenomic datasets. Notably, coalescent-based ASTRAL species phylogenies inferred from Run1 and Run2 sets of individual gene trees are topologically irreproducible for 9/15 phylogenomic datasets, whereas concatenation-based phylogenies inferred twice from the same supermatrix are reproducible. Our simulations further show that irreproducible phylogenies are more likely to be incorrect than reproducible phylogenies. These results suggest that a considerable fraction of single-gene ML trees may be irreproducible. Increasing reproducibility in ML inference will benefit from providing analyses’ log files, which contain typically reported parameters (e.g., program, substitution model, number of tree searches) but also typically unreported ones (e.g., random starting seed number, number of threads, processor type).

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

Quantum circuit cutting with maximum-likelihood tomography

Abstract We introduce maximum-likelihood fragment tomography (MLFT) as an improved circuit cutting technique for running clustered quantum circuits on quantum devices with a limited number of qubits. In addition to minimizing the classical computing overhead of circuit cutting methods, MLFT finds the most likely probability distribution for the output of a quantum circuit, given the measurement data obtained from the circuit’s fragments. We demonstrate the benefits of MLFT for accurately estimating the output of a fragmented quantum circuit with numerical experiments on random unitary circuits. Finally, we show that circuit cutting can estimate the output of a clustered circuit with higher fidelity than full circuit execution, thereby motivating the use of circuit cutting as a standard tool for running clustered circuits on quantum hardware.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Hurricane-Induced Rainfall is a Stronger Predictor of Tropical Forest Damage in Puerto Rico Than Maximum Wind Speeds

Projected increases in cyclonic storm intensity under a warming climate will have profound effects on forests, potentially changing these ecosystems from carbon sinks to sources. Forecasting storm impacts on these ecosystems requires consideration of risk factors associated with storm meteorology, landscape structure, and forest attributes. Here we evaluate risk factors associated with damage severity caused by Hurricanes María and Irma across Puerto Rican forests. Using field and remote sensing data, total forest aboveground biomass (AGB) lost to the storms was estimated at 10.44 (±2.33) Tg, ca. 23% of island-wide pre-hurricane forest AGB. Storm-related rainfall was a stronger predictor of forest damage than maximum wind speeds. Soil water storage capacity was also an important risk factor, corroborating the influence of rainfall on forest damage. Expected increases of 20% in hurricane-associated rainfall in the North Atlantic highlight the need to consider how such shifts, together with high speed winds, will affect terrestrial ecosystems.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Microcanonical rates from ring-polymer molecular dynamics: Direct-shooting, stationary-phase, and maximum-entropy approaches

We address the calculation of microcanonical reaction rates for processes involving significant nuclear quantum effects using ring-polymer molecular dynamics (RPMD), both with and without electronically non-adiabatic transitions. After illustrating the shortcomings of the naive free-particle direct-shooting method, in which the temperature of the internal ring-polymer modes is set to the translational energy scale, we investigate alternative strategies based on the expression for the microcanonical rate in terms of the inverse Laplace transform of the thermal reaction rate. It is shown that simple application of the stationary-phase approximation (SPA) dramatically improves the performance of the microcanonical rates using RPMD, particularly in the low-energy region where tunneling dominates. Using the SPA as a Bayesian prior, numerically exact RPMD microcanonical rates are then obtained using maximum entropy inversion of the thermal reaction rates for both electronically adiabatic and non-adiabatic model systems. Finally, the direct-shooting method is revisited using the SPA-determined temperature for the internal ring-polymer modes, leading to a simple, direct-simulation method with improved accuracy in the tunneling regime. This work suggests a general strategy for the extraction of microcanonical dynamical quantities from RPMD (or other approximate thermal) simulations.

Tao, Xuecheng↗

Chaos and regularity of radionuclides with maximum likelihood estimation method

Abstract In this study, we considered the fluctuation properties of some energy levels of even and odd mass radionuclides, which are used in complex phenomena. Different sequences are prepared by using all the available experimental data and analyzed by using the maximum likelihood estimation technique to get the chaoticity parameter of Abul-magd distribution. The dependence of chaoticity degrees of different radionuclides to their mass regions, their decay modes, and also their physical half-lives are studied. Our results show more chaotic behavior of odd-mass radionuclides in comparison with even–even mass and also the most Poisson-like behavior for even–even mass in the A > 150 mass region. The results offer the most regular behavior for long-lived, even mass radionuclides in comparison to other categories of half-lives. Also, we got an obvious difference between the chaoticity degrees for nuclei which undergo β + decay in comparison with radionuclides which show electron capture mode.

Physics↗

The DESI DR1 peculiar velocity survey: growth rate measurements from the maximum likelihood fields method

We present the constraint on the growth rate of structure from the combination of DESI DR1 BGS sample, Fundamental Plane, and Tully-Fisher peculiar velocity catalogues using the maximum likelihood fields method. The combined catalogue contains 415,523 galaxy redshifts and 76,616 peculiar velocity measurements. To handle the large amount of data in the DESI DR1 peculiar velocity catalogue, we significantly improve the computational efficiency by rewriting the algorithm with JAX. After removing outliers and Tully-Fisher galaxies that are affected by systematics, we find fσ 8 = 0.483 -0.043 +0.080 (stat) ± 0.018(sys), consistent within 1σ with the power spectrum and correlation function analysis using the same dataset. Combining all three measurements with appropriate correlations, the consensus measurement is fσ 8 (z eff = 0.07) = 0.450±0.055, consistent with Planck +ΛCDM cosmology (fσ 8 = 0.449±0.008). Combining with the high redshift growth rate of structure measurements from DESI ShapeFit, the constraint on the growth index is γ = 0.58±0.11, consistent with GR.

cosmic flows↗

Maximum a posteriori Ly α estimator (MAPLE): band power and covariance estimation of the 3D Ly α forest power spectrum

We present a novel maximum a posteriori estimator to jointly estimate band powers and the covariance of the three-dimensional power spectrum (P3D) of Ly $\alpha$ forest flux fluctuations, called MAPLE. Our Wiener-filter based algorithm reconstructs a window-deconvolved P3D in the presence of complex survey geometries typical for Ly $\alpha$ surveys that are sparsely sampled transverse to and densely sampled along the line of sight. We demonstrate our method on idealized Gaussian random fields with two selection functions: (i) a sparse sampling of 30 background sources per square degree designed to emulate the current Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument; (ii) a dense sampling of 900 background sources per square degree emulating the upcoming Prime Focus Spectrograph Galaxy Evolution Survey. Our proof-of-principle shows promise, especially since the algorithm can be extended to marginalize jointly over nuisance parameters and contaminants, i.e. offsets introduced by continuum fitting. Our code is implemented in JAX and is publicly available on GitHub.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Quantum Hamiltonian algorithms for maximum independent sets

ABSTRACT We compare two quantum Hamiltonian algorithms that address the maximum independent set problem: one based on the emergent non-Abelian gauge matrix in adiabatic evolution of an energetically isolated manifold of states; the other based on designed application of single-qubit operations. We demonstrate that they are mathematically equivalent in the sense that one is the other’s interaction picture. Despite their mathematical equivalence, our numerical simulations show significant differences between them in performance, which is explained analytically. Intriguingly, this equivalence unveils that the PXP model, recently prominent in quantum dynamics research, can be viewed as quantum diffusion over the median graph of all independent sets governed by the non-Abelian gauge matrix.

Science & Technology - Other Topics↗

Utilizing the maximum likelihood estimator for flow analysis

We explore the possibility of evaluating flow harmonics by employing the maximum likelihood estimator (MLE). For a given finite multiplicity, the MLE simultaneously furnishes estimations for all the parameters of the underlying distribution function while efficiently suppressing the variance of measures. Also, the method provides a means to assess a specific class of mixed harmonics, which is not straightforwardly feasible by the approaches primarily based on particle correlations. The results are analyzed using the Wald, likelihood ratio, and score tests of hypotheses. Besides, the resultant flow harmonics obtained using MLE are compared with those derived using particle correlations and event plane methods. Here, the dependencies of extracted flow harmonics on the multiplicity of individual events and the total number of events are analyzed. It is shown that the proposed approach works efficiently to deal with the deficiency in detector acceptability. Moreover, we elaborate on a fictitious scenario where the event plane is not a well-defined quantity in the distribution function. For the latter case, the MLE is shown to largely perform better than the two-particle correlation estimator. In this regard, one concludes that the MLE furnishes a meaningful alternative to the existing approaches for flow analysis.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗

Limit on the anisotropy of the one-way maximum attainable speed of the electron

We report here the first experimental result for the anisotropy of the one-way maximum attainable speed of the electron, $\vec{\Delta c_{1,e}}$, obtained via the study of a sidereal time dependence of a difference between the electron and positron beam momenta in the CESR storage ring at Cornell University. At 95 percent confidence, an upper limit for the component of $\Delta \vec {c}_{1,e}/c$ perpendicular to Earth's rotational axis is found to be $5.5 \times 10^{-15}$.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Testing hadronic-model predictions of depth of maximum of air-shower profiles and ground-particle signals using hybrid data of the Pierre Auger Observatory

We test the predictions of hadronic interaction models regarding the depth of maximum of air-shower profiles, X max , and ground-particle signals in water-Cherenkov detectors at 1000 m from the shower core, S ( 1000 ) , using the data from the fluorescence and surface detectors of the Pierre Auger Observatory. The test consists of fitting the measured two-dimensional ( S ( 1000 ) , X max ) distributions using templates for simulated air showers produced with hadronic interaction models pos-, et--04, 2.3d and leaving the scales of predicted X max and the signals from hadronic component at ground as free-fit parameters. The method relies on the assumption that the mass composition remains the same at all zenith angles, while the longitudinal shower development and attenuation of ground signal depend on the mass composition in a correlated way. The analysis was applied to 2239 events detected by both the fluorescence and surface detectors of the Pierre Auger Observatory with energies between 10 18.5 eV to 10 19.0 eV and zenith angles below 60°. We found, that within the assumptions of the method, the best description of the data is achieved if the predictions of the hadronic interaction models are shifted to deeper X max values and larger hadronic signals at all zenith angles. Given the magnitude of the shifts and the data sample size, the statistical significance of the improvement of data description using the modifications considered in the paper is larger than 5 σ even for any linear combination of experimental systematic uncertainties. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Measurement of the depth of maximum of air-shower profiles with energies between 10 18.5 and 10 20 eV using the surface detector of the Pierre Auger Observatory and deep learning

We report an investigation of the mass composition of cosmic rays with energies from 3 to 100 EeV ( 1 EeV = 10 18 eV ) using the distributions of the depth of shower maximum X max . The analysis relies on ∼ 50 , 000 events recorded by the surface detector of the Pierre Auger Observatory and a deep-learning-based reconstruction algorithm. Above energies of 5 EeV, the dataset offers a 10-fold increase in statistics with respect to fluorescence measurements at the Observatory. After cross-calibration using the fluorescence detector, this enables the first measurement of the evolution of the mean and the standard deviation of the X max distributions up to 100 EeV. Our findings are threefold: (i) The evolution of the mean logarithmic mass toward a heavier composition with increasing energy can be confirmed and is extended to 100 EeV. (ii) The evolution of the fluctuations of X max toward a heavier and purer composition with increasing energy can be confirmed with high statistics. We report a rather heavy composition and small fluctuations in X max at the highest energies. (iii) We find indications for a characteristic structure beyond a constant change in the mean logarithmic mass, featuring three breaks that are observed in proximity to the ankle, instep, and suppression features in the energy spectrum. Published by the American Physical Society 2025

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

Quantum maximum entropy closure for small flavor coherence

Quantum angular moment transport schemes are an important avenue toward describing neutrino flavor mixing phenomena in dense astrophysical environments such as supernovae and merging neutron stars. Successful implementation will require new closure relations that go beyond those used in classical transport. In this paper, we derive the first analytic expression for a quantum M1 closure, valid in the limit of small flavor coherence, based on the maximum entropy principle. We verify that the resulting closure relation has the appropriate limits and characteristic speeds in the diffusive and free-streaming regimes. We then use this new closure in a moment linear stability analysis to search for fast flavor instabilities in a binary neutron star merger simulation and find better results as compared with previously designed, ad hoc , semiclassical closures.

astrophysical & cosmological simulations↗

Demonstrating Agreement between Radio and Fluorescence Measurements of the Depth of Maximum of Extensive Air Showers at the Pierre Auger Observatory

We show, for the first time, radio measurements of the depth of shower maximum ( X max ) of air showers induced by cosmic rays that are compared to measurements of the established fluorescence method at the same location. Using measurements at the Pierre Auger Observatory we show full compatibility between our radio and the previously published fluorescence dataset, and between a subset of air showers observed simultaneously with both radio and fluorescence techniques, a measurement setup unique to the Pierre Auger Observatory. Furthermore, we show radio X max resolution as a function of energy and demonstrate the ability to make competitive high-resolution X max measurements with even a sparse radio array. With this, we show that the radio technique is capable of cosmic-ray mass composition studies, both at Auger and at other experiments. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

Understanding protein-complex assembly through grand canonical maximum entropy modeling

Inside a cell, heterotypic proteins assemble in inhomogeneous, crowded systems where the abundance of these proteins vary with cell types. While some protein complexes form putative structures that can be visualized with imaging, there are far more protein complexes that are yet to be solved because of their dynamic associations with one another. Nevertheless, it is possible to infer these protein complexes through a physical model. However, it is often not clear to physicists what kind of data from biology is necessary for such a modeling endeavor. Here, we aim to model these clusters of coarse-grained protein assemblies from multiple subunits through the constraints of interactions among the subunits and the chemical potential of each subunit. We obtained the constraints on the interactions among subunits from the known protein structures. We inferred the chemical potential that dictates the particle number distribution of each protein subunit from the knowledge of protein abundance from experimental data. Guided by the maximum entropy principle, we formulated an inverse statistical mechanical method to infer the distribution of particle numbers from the data of protein abundance as chemical potentials for a grand canonical multicomponent mixture. Using grand canonical Monte Carlo simulations, we captured a distribution of high-order clusters in a protein complex of succinate dehydrogenase with four known subunits. The complexity of hierarchical clusters varies with the relative protein abundance of each subunit in distinctive cell types such as lung, heart, and brain. When the crowding content increases, we observed that crowding stabilizes emergent clusters that do not exist in dilute conditions. We, therefore, proposed a testable hypothesis that the hierarchical complexity of protein clusters on a molecular scale is a plausible biomarker of predicting the phenotypes of a cell.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

Maximum Entropy Principle in Deep Thermalization and in Hilbert-Space Ergodicity

We report universal statistical properties displayed by ensembles of pure states that naturally emerge in quantum many-body systems. Specifically, two classes of state ensembles are considered: those formed by (i) the temporal trajectory of a quantum state under unitary evolution or (ii) the quantum states of small subsystems obtained by partial, local projective measurements performed on their complements. These cases, respectively, exemplify the phenomena of “Hilbert-space ergodicity” and “deep thermalization.” In both cases, the resultant ensembles are defined by a simple principle: The distributions of pure states have maximum entropy, subject to constraints such as energy conservation, and effective constraints imposed by thermalization. We present and numerically verify quantifiable signatures of this principle by deriving explicit formulas for all statistical moments of the ensembles, proving the necessary and sufficient conditions for such universality under widely accepted assumptions, and describing their measurable consequences in experiments. We further discuss information-theoretic implications of the universality: Our ensembles have maximal information content while being maximally difficult to interrogate, establishing that generic quantum state ensembles that occur in nature hide (scramble) information as strongly as possible. Our results generalize the notions of Hilbert-space ergodicity to time-independent Hamiltonian dynamics and deep thermalization from infinite to finite effective temperature. Our work presents new perspectives to characterize and understand universal behaviors of quantum dynamics using statistical and information-theoretic tools.

Eigenstate thermalization↗