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Mar 13

Conditions for radiative zones in the molecular hydrogen envelope of Jupiter and Saturn: The role of alkali metals

Interior models of gas giants in the Solar System traditionally assume a fully convective molecular hydrogen envelope. However, recent observations from the Juno mission suggest a possible depletion of alkali metals in Jupiter's molecular hydrogen envelope, indicating that a stable radiative layer could exist at the kilobar level. Recent studies propose that deep stable layers help reconcile various Jupiter observations, including its atmospheric water and CO abundances and the depth of its zonal winds. However, opacity tables used to infer stable layers are often outdated and incomplete, leaving the precise molecular hydrogen envelope composition required for a deep radiative zone uncertain. In this paper, we determine atmospheric compositions that can lead to the formation of a radiative zone at the kilobar level in Jupiter and Saturn today. We computed radiative opacity tables covering pressures up to 10^5 bar, including the most abundant molecules present in the gas giants of the Solar System, as well as contributions from free electrons, metal hydrides, oxides, and atomic species, using the most up-to-date line lists published in the literature. These tables were used to calculate Rosseland-mean opacities for the molecular hydrogen envelopes of Jupiter and Saturn, which were then compared to the critical mean opacity required to maintain convection. We find that the presence of a radiative zone is controlled by the existence of K, Na, and NaH in the atmosphere of Jupiter and Saturn. For Jupiter, the elemental abundance of K and Na must be less than sim 10^{-3} times solar to form a radiative zone. In contrast, for Saturn, the required abundance for K and Na is below sim 10^{-4} times solar.

MetaFormer: High-fidelity Metalens Imaging via Aberration Correcting Transformers

Metalens is an emerging optical system with an irreplaceable merit in that it can be manufactured in ultra-thin and compact sizes, which shows great promise of various applications such as medical imaging and augmented/virtual reality (AR/VR). Despite its advantage in miniaturization, its practicality is constrained by severe aberrations and distortions, which significantly degrade the image quality. Several previous arts have attempted to address different types of aberrations, yet most of them are mainly designed for the traditional bulky lens and not convincing enough to remedy harsh aberrations of the metalens. While there have existed aberration correction methods specifically for metalens, they still fall short of restoration quality. In this work, we propose MetaFormer, an aberration correction framework for metalens-captured images, harnessing Vision Transformers (ViT) that has shown remarkable restoration performance in diverse image restoration tasks. Specifically, we devise a Multiple Adaptive Filters Guidance (MAFG), where multiple Wiener filters enrich the degraded input images with various noise-detail balances, enhancing output restoration quality. In addition, we introduce a Spatial and Transposed self-Attention Fusion (STAF) module, which aggregates features from spatial self-attention and transposed self-attention modules to further ameliorate aberration correction. We conduct extensive experiments, including correcting aberrated images and videos, and clean 3D reconstruction from the degraded images. The proposed method outperforms the previous arts by a significant margin. We further fabricate a metalens and verify the practicality of MetaFormer by restoring the images captured with the manufactured metalens in the wild. Code and pre-trained models are available at https://benhenryl.github.io/MetaFormer

Metasql: A Generate-then-Rank Framework for Natural Language to SQL Translation

The Natural Language Interface to Databases (NLIDB) empowers non-technical users with database access through intuitive natural language (NL) interactions. Advanced approaches, utilizing neural sequence-to-sequence models or large-scale language models, typically employ auto-regressive decoding to generate unique SQL queries sequentially. While these translation models have greatly improved the overall translation accuracy, surpassing 70% on NLIDB benchmarks, the use of auto-regressive decoding to generate single SQL queries may result in sub-optimal outputs, potentially leading to erroneous translations. In this paper, we propose Metasql, a unified generate-then-rank framework that can be flexibly incorporated with existing NLIDBs to consistently improve their translation accuracy. Metasql introduces query metadata to control the generation of better SQL query candidates and uses learning-to-rank algorithms to retrieve globally optimized queries. Specifically, Metasql first breaks down the meaning of the given NL query into a set of possible query metadata, representing the basic concepts of the semantics. These metadata are then used as language constraints to steer the underlying translation model toward generating a set of candidate SQL queries. Finally, Metasql ranks the candidates to identify the best matching one for the given NL query. Extensive experiments are performed to study Metasql on two public NLIDB benchmarks. The results show that the performance of the translation models can be effectively improved using Metasql.

Metal artefact reduction sequences for a piezoelectric bone conduction implant using a realistic head phantom in MRI

Industry standards require medical device manufacturers to perform implant-induced artefact testing in phantoms at a pre-clinical stage to define the extent of artefacts that can be expected during MRI. Once a device is commercially available, studies on volunteers, cadavers or patients are performed to investigate implant-induced artefacts and artefact reduction methods more in-depth. This study describes the design and evaluation of a realistic head phantom for pre-clinical implant-induced artefact testing in a relevant environment. A case study is performed where a state-of-the-art piezoelectric bone conduction implant is used in the 1.5 T and 3 T MRI environments. Images were acquired using clinical and novel metal artefact reducing (MARS) sequences at both field strengths. Artefact width and length were measured in a healthy volunteer and compared with artefact sizes obtained in the phantom. Artefact sizes are reported that are similar in shape between the phantom and a volunteer, yet with dimensions differing up to 20% between both. When the implant magnet is removed, the artefact size can be reduced below a diameter of 5 cm, whilst the presence of an implant magnet and splint creates higher artefacts up to 20 cm in diameter. Pulse sequences have been altered to reduce the scan time up to 7 minutes, while preserving the image quality. These results show that the anthropomorphic phantom can be used at a preclinical stage to provide clinically relevant images, illustrating the impact of the artefact on important brain structures.

MetaShift: A Dataset of Datasets for Evaluating Contextual Distribution Shifts and Training Conflicts

Understanding the performance of machine learning models across diverse data distributions is critically important for reliable applications. Motivated by this, there is a growing focus on curating benchmark datasets that capture distribution shifts. While valuable, the existing benchmarks are limited in that many of them only contain a small number of shifts and they lack systematic annotation about what is different across different shifts. We present MetaShift--a collection of 12,868 sets of natural images across 410 classes--to address this challenge. We leverage the natural heterogeneity of Visual Genome and its annotations to construct MetaShift. The key construction idea is to cluster images using its metadata, which provides context for each image (e.g. "cats with cars" or "cats in bathroom") that represent distinct data distributions. MetaShift has two important benefits: first, it contains orders of magnitude more natural data shifts than previously available. Second, it provides explicit explanations of what is unique about each of its data sets and a distance score that measures the amount of distribution shift between any two of its data sets. We demonstrate the utility of MetaShift in benchmarking several recent proposals for training models to be robust to data shifts. We find that the simple empirical risk minimization performs the best when shifts are moderate and no method had a systematic advantage for large shifts. We also show how MetaShift can help to visualize conflicts between data subsets during model training.

HoloBeam: Learning Optimal Beamforming in Far-Field Holographic Metasurface Transceivers

Holographic Metasurface Transceivers (HMTs) are emerging as cost-effective substitutes to large antenna arrays for beamforming in Millimeter and TeraHertz wave communication. However, to achieve desired channel gains through beamforming in HMT, phase-shifts of a large number of elements need to be appropriately set, which is challenging. Also, these optimal phase-shifts depend on the location of the receivers, which could be unknown. In this work, we develop a learning algorithm using a {\it fixed-budget multi-armed bandit framework} to beamform and maximize received signal strength at the receiver for far-field regions. Our algorithm, named \Algo exploits the parametric form of channel gains of the beams, which can be expressed in terms of two {\it phase-shifting parameters}. Even after parameterization, the problem is still challenging as phase-shifting parameters take continuous values. To overcome this, {\it\HB} works with the discrete values of phase-shifting parameters and exploits their unimodal relations with channel gains to learn the optimal values faster. We upper bound the probability of {\it\HB} incorrectly identifying the (discrete) optimal phase-shift parameters in terms of the number of pilots used in learning. We show that this probability decays exponentially with the number of pilot signals. We demonstrate that {\it\HB} outperforms state-of-the-art algorithms through extensive simulations.

The JWST EXCELS survey: direct estimates of C, N, and O abundances in two relatively metal-rich galaxies at $\mathbf{z\simeq5}$

We present a spectroscopic analysis of two star-forming galaxies at z~5 observed with JWST/NIRSpec as part of the Early eXtragalactic Continuum and Emission Line Science (EXCELS) survey. The detection of the C III]lambdalambda1906,09, [O II]lambdalambda3726,29, [O III]lambdalambda4363,5007, and [N II]lambda6584 nebular emission lines enables investigation of the C/O, N/O, and C/N abundance ratios using the temperature-sensitive method. The two galaxies have stellar masses of log(M_{star}/M_{odot} ) = 8.13pm0.09 and log(M_{star}/M_{odot} )=8.52pm0.13 and corresponding metallicities of Z~0.2Z_{odot} and Z~0.3Z_{odot}. These metallicities are somewhat higher than is typical for other z>5 galaxies with similar stellar mass and are in fact comparable to high-redshift analogue galaxies at z~0. Both galaxies display evidence for N/O enhancement with respect to the z~0 sample, with log(N/O)=-1.07pm0.17 and log(N/O)=-0.86pm0.15 respectively. In contrast, we find low C abundances, with log(C/O)=-0.82pm0.22 and log(C/O)=-1.02pm0.22, consistent with the predicted yields of core-collapse supernovae. Following the trend observed in other high-redshift sources, we find that the C/N ratios are lower at fixed O/H compared to the majority of local galaxies. In contrast to the top-heavy IMF invoked in some studies to explain low C/N ratios in metal-poor galaxies, we find, via comparison to chemical evolution models, that a standard or bottom-heavy IMF better explains the observed abundance ratios in more enriched systems due to an increase in N-enrichment from intermediate mass (4-7M_{odot}) stars. Our results demonstrate that robust measurements of CNO abundances with JWST can reveal unique enrichment pathways in galaxies as a function of both metallicity and redshift.

MSA-3D: Metallicity Gradients in Galaxies at $z\sim1$ with JWST/NIRSpec Slit-stepping Spectroscopy

The radial gradient of gas-phase metallicity is a powerful probe of the chemical and structural evolution of star-forming galaxies, closely tied to disk formation and gas kinematics in the early universe. We present spatially resolved chemical and dynamical properties for a sample of 25 galaxies at 0.5 lesssim z lesssim 1.7 from the \msasd survey. These innovative observations provide 3D spectroscopy of galaxies at a spatial resolution approaching JWST's diffraction limit and a high spectral resolution of Rsimeq2700. The metallicity gradients measured in our galaxy sample range from -0.03 to 0.02 dex~kpc^{-1}. Most galaxies exhibit negative or flat radial gradients, indicating lower metallicity in the outskirts or uniform metallicity throughout the entire galaxy. We confirm a tight relationship between stellar mass and metallicity gradient at zsim1 with small intrinsic scatter of 0.02 dex~kpc^{-1}. Our results indicate that metallicity gradients become increasingly negative as stellar mass increases, likely because the more massive galaxies tend to be more ``disky". This relationship is consistent with the predictions from cosmological hydrodynamic zoom-in simulations with strong stellar feedback. This work presents the effort to harness the multiplexing capability of JWST NIRSpec/MSA in slit-stepping mode to map the chemical and kinematic profiles of high-redshift galaxies in large samples and at high spatial and spectral resolution.

First Order Quantum Phase Transition in the Hybrid Metal-Mott Insulator Transition Metal Dichalcogenide 4Hb-TaS2

Coupling together distinct correlated and topologically non-trivial electronic phases of matter can potentially induce novel electronic orders and phase transitions among them. Transition metal dichalcogenide compounds serve as a bedrock for exploration of such hybrid systems. They host a variety of exotic electronic phases and their Van der Waals nature enables to admix them, either by exfoliation and stacking or by stoichiometric growth, and thereby induce novel correlated complexes. Here we investigate the compound 4Hb-TaS_2 that interleaves the Mott-insulating state of 1T-TaS_2 and the putative spin liquid it hosts together with the metallic state of 2H-TaS_2 and the low temperature superconducting phase it harbors. We reveal a thermodynamic phase diagram that hosts a first order quantum phase transition between a correlated Kondo cluster state and a flat band state in which the Kondo cluster becomes depleted. We demonstrate that this intrinsic transition can be induced by an electric field and temperature as well as by manipulation of the interlayer coupling with the probe tip, hence allowing to reversibly toggle between the Kondo cluster and the flat band states. The phase transition is manifested by a discontinuous change of the complete electronic spectrum accompanied by hysteresis and low frequency noise. We find that the shape of the transition line in the phase diagram is determined by the local compressibility and the entropy of the two electronic states. Our findings set such heterogeneous structures as an exciting platform for systematic investigation and manipulation of Mott-metal transitions and strongly correlated phases and quantum phase transitions therein.

I am a Strange Dataset: Metalinguistic Tests for Language Models

Statements involving metalinguistic self-reference ("This paper has six sections.") are prevalent in many domains. Can large language models (LLMs) handle such language? In this paper, we present "I am a Strange Dataset", a new dataset for addressing this question. There are two subtasks: generation and verification. In generation, models continue statements like "The penultimate word in this sentence is" (where a correct continuation is "is"). In verification, models judge the truth of statements like "The penultimate word in this sentence is sentence." (false). We also provide minimally different metalinguistic non-self-reference examples to complement the main dataset by probing for whether models can handle metalinguistic language at all. The dataset is hand-crafted by experts and validated by non-expert annotators. We test a variety of open-source LLMs (7B to 70B parameters) as well as closed-source LLMs through APIs. All models perform close to chance across both subtasks and even on the non-self-referential metalinguistic control data, though we find some steady improvement with model scale. GPT 4 is the only model to consistently do significantly better than chance, and it is still only in the 60% range, while our untrained human annotators score well in the 89-93% range. The dataset and evaluation toolkit are available at https://github.com/TristanThrush/i-am-a-strange-dataset.

The bulk metallicity of giant planets around M stars

The bulk-metallicity determination of giant exoplanets is essential to constrain their formation and evolution pathways and to compare them to the solar system. Previous studies inferred an inverse relation between the mass and bulk metallicity. However, the data almost exclusively contained planets that orbit FGK stars. The recent discoveries of giant exoplanets around M-dwarf stars present an opportunity to probe whether they follow a mass-metallicity trend different from that of their FGK counterparts. Using evolution models we characterised the interiors of giant exoplanets with reliable mass-radius measurements that orbit FGK and M-dwarf stars. We then inferred the mass-metallicity trends for both populations. We found that the bulk metallicity of giant planets around M stars is overall lower compared to those around FGK stars. This yielded mass-metallicity relations for the two populations with similar slopes but significantly different offsets. The lack of metal-rich giant planets around M dwarfs could explain the difference in the inferred offset and be a result of different formation conditions. However, there were only 20 successful bulk-metallicity retrievals for the giant planets around M dwarfs, which resulted in rather large uncertainties. Therefore, it is of great importance to continue detecting these planets with both transit and radial velocities. Additionally, the characterisation of the atmospheres of giant planets around M-stars can further help to constrain their interiors and to investigate the atmosp

Strong pairing and symmetric pseudogap metal in double Kondo lattice model: from nickelate superconductor to tetralayer optical lattice

In this work, we propose and study a double Kondo lattice model which hosts robust superconductivity. The system consists of two identical Kondo lattice model, each with Kondo coupling J_K within each layer, while the localized spin moments are coupled together via an inter-layer on-site antiferromagnetic spin coupling J_perp. We consider the strong J_perp limit, wherein the local moments tend to form rung singlets and are thus gapped. However, the Kondo coupling J_K transmits the inter-layer entanglement between the local moments to the itinerant electrons. Consequently, the itinerant electrons experience a strong inter-layer antiferromangetic spin coupling and form strong inter-layer pairing, which is confirmed through numerical simulation in one dimensional system. Experimentally, the J_K rightarrow -infty limits of the model describes the recently found bilayer nickelate La_3Ni_2O_7, while the J_K>0 side can be realized in tetralayer optical lattice of cold atoms. Two extreme limits, J_K rightarrow -infty and J_K rightarrow +infty limit are shown to be simplified to a bilayer type II t-J model and a bilayer one-orbital t-J model, respectively. Thus, our double Kondo lattice model offers a unified framework for nickelate superconductor and tetralayer optical lattice quantum simulator upon changing the sign of J_K. We highlight both the qualitative similarity and the quantitative difference in the two sides of J_K. Finally, we discuss the possibility of a symmetric Kondo breakdown transition in the model with a symmetric pseudogap metal corresponding to the usual heavy Fermi liquid.

Star Formation Rates, Metallicities, and Stellar Masses on kpc-scales in TNG50

Integral field units (IFU) have extended our knowledge of galactic properties to kpc (or, sometimes, even smaller) patches of galaxies. These scales are where the physics driving galaxy evolution (feedback, chemical enrichment, etc.) take place. Quantifying the spatially-resolved properties of galaxies, both observationally and theoretically, is therefore critical to our understanding of galaxy evolution. To this end, we investigate spatially-resolved scaling relations within central galaxies (M_star>10^{9.0}) at z=0 in IllustrisTNG. We examine both the resolved star-forming main sequence (rSFMS) and the resolved mass-metallicity relation (rMZR) using 1~{rm kpc}times1~{rm kpc} maps of galaxies. We find that the rSFMS in IllustrisTNG is well-described by a power-law, but has some dependence on the host galaxy's mass. Conversely, the rMZR for IllustrisTNG can be described by a single power-law at low stellar mass surface density that flattens at high surface densities and is independent of host galaxy mass. We find quantitative agreement in both the rSFMS and rMZR with recent IFU observational campaigns. Furthermore, we argue that the rSFMS is an indirect result of the Schmidt-Kennicutt (SK) law and local gas fraction relation, which are both independent of host galaxy properties. Finally, we expand upon a localized leaky-box model to study the evolution of idealized spaxels and find that it provides a good description of these resolved relations. The degree of agreement, however, between idealized spaxels and simulated spaxels depends on the `net' outflow rate for the spaxel, and the observed scaling relations indicate a preference for a low net outflow rate.

Formation of supermassive stars and dense star clusters in metal-poor clouds exposed to strong FUV radiation

The direct collapse scenario, which predicts the formation of supermassive stars (SMSs) as precursors to supermassive black holes (SMBHs), has been explored primarily under the assumption of metal-free conditions. However, environments exposed to strong far-ultraviolet (FUV) radiation, which is another requirement for the direct collapse, are often chemically enriched to varying degrees. In this study, we perform radiation hydrodynamic simulations of star-cluster formation in clouds with finite metallicities, Z=10^{-6} to 10^{-2} Z_{odot}, incorporating detailed thermal and chemical processes and radiative feedback from forming stars. Extending the simulations to approximately two million years, we demonstrate that SMSs with masses exceeding 10^4~M_odot can form even in metal-enriched clouds with Z lesssim 10^{-3} Z_{odot}. The accretion process in these cases, driven by "super-competitive accretion," preferentially channels gas into central massive stars in spite of small (sub-pc) scale fragmentation. At Z simeq 10^{-2} Z_{odot}, however, enhanced cooling leads to intense fragmentation on larger scales, resulting in the formation of dense star clusters dominated by very massive stars with 10^3 M_{odot} rather than SMSs. These clusters resemble young massive or globular clusters observed in the distant and local universe, exhibiting compact morphologies and high stellar surface densities. Our findings suggest that SMS formation is viable below a metallicity threshold of approximately 10^{-3} Z_{odot}, significantly increasing the number density of massive seed black holes to levels sufficient to account for the ubiquitous SMBHs observed in the local universe. Moreover, above this metallicity, this scenario naturally explains the transition from SMS formation to dense stellar cluster formation.

Red, hot, and very metal poor: extreme properties of a massive accreting black hole in the first 500 Myr

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has recently discovered a new population of objects at high redshift referred to as `Little Red Dots' (LRDs). Their nature currently remains elusive, despite their surprisingly high inferred number densities. This emerging population of red point-like sources is reshaping our view of the early Universe and may shed light on the formation of high-redshift supermassive black holes. Here we present a spectroscopically confirmed LRD CANUCS-LRD-z8.6 at z_{rm spec}=8.6319pm 0.0005 hosting an Active Galactic Nucleus (AGN), using JWST data. This source shows the typical spectral shape of an LRD (blue UV and red optical continuum, unresolved in JWST imaging), along with broad Hbeta line emission, detection of high-ionization emission lines (CIV, NIV]) and very high electron temperature indicative of the presence of AGN. This is also combined with a very low metallicity (Z<0.1 Z_odot). The presence of all these diverse features in one source makes CANUCS-LRD-z8.6 unique. We show that the inferred black hole mass of CANUCS-LRD-z8.6 (M_{rm BH}=1.0^{+0.6}_{-0.4}times 10^{8}rm ~M_odot) strongly challenges current standard theoretical models and simulations of black hole formation, and forces us to adopt `ad hoc' prescriptions. Indeed if massive seeds, or light seeds with super-Eddington accretion, are considered, the observed BH mass of CANUCS-LRD-z8.6 at z=8.6 can be reproduced. Moreover, the black hole is over-massive compared to its host, relative to the local M_{rm BH}-M_* relations, pointing towards an earlier and faster evolution of the black hole compared to its host galaxy.

Spin pumping by a moving domain wall at the interface of an antiferromagnetic insulator and a two-dimensional metal

A domain wall (DW) which moves parallel to a magnetically compensated interface between an antiferromagnetic insulator (AFMI) and a two-dimensional (2D) metal can pump spin polarization into the metal. It is assumed that localized spins of a collinear AFMI interact with itinerant electrons through their exchange interaction on the interface. We employed the formalism of Keldysh Green's functions for electrons which experience potential and spin-orbit scattering on random impurities. This formalism allows a unified analysis of spin pumping, spin diffusion and spin relaxation effects on a 2D electron gas. It is shown that the pumping of a nonstaggered magnetization into the metal film takes place in the second order with respect to the interface exchange interaction. At sufficiently weak spin relaxation this pumping effect can be much stronger than the first-order effect of the Pauli magnetism which is produced by the small nonstaggered exchange field of the DW. It is shown that the pumped polarization is sensitive to the geometry of the electron's Fermi surface and increases when the wave vector of the staggered magnetization approaches the nesting vector of the Fermi surface. In a disordered diffusive electron gas the induced spin polarization follows the motion of the domain wall. It is distributed asymmetrically around the DW over a distance which can be much larger than the DW width.