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Recently, log-periodic quantum oscillations have been detected in the topological materials zirconium pentatelluride (ZrTe₅) and hafnium pentatelluride (HfTe₅), displaying an intriguing discrete scale invariance (DSI) characteristic. In condensed materials, the DSI is considered to be related to the quasi-bound states formed by massless Dirac fermions with strong Coulomb attraction, offering a feasible platform to study the longpursued atomic-collapse phenomenon. Here, we demonstrate that a variety of atomic vacancies in the topological material HfTe₅ can host the geometric quasi-bound states with a DSI feature, resembling an artificial supercritical atom collapse. The density of states of these quasi-bound states is enhanced, and the quasi-bound states are spatially distributed in the “orbitals” surrounding the vacancy sites, which are detected and visualized by low-temperature scanning tunneling microscope/spectroscopy. By applying the perpendicular magnetic fields, the quasi-bound states at lower energies become wider and eventually invisible; meanwhile, the energies of quasi-bound states move gradually toward the Fermi energy (EF). These features are consistent with the theoretical prediction of a magnetic field—induced transition from supercritical to subcritical states. The direct observation of geometric quasi-bound states sheds light on the deep understanding of the DSI in quantum materials.

Recently it has been demonstrated that the connectivity transition from microscopic connectivity to macroscopic connectedness, known as percolation, is generically announced by a cascade of microtransitions of the percolation order parameter (Chen et al 2014 Phys. Rev. Lett. 112 155701). Here we report the discovery of macrotransition cascades which follow percolation. The order parameter grows in discrete macroscopic steps with positions that can be randomly distributed even in the thermodynamic limit. These transition positions are, however, correlated and follow scaling laws which arise from discrete scale invariance (DSI) and non self-averaging, both traditionally unrelated to percolation. We reveal the DSI in ensemble measurements of these non self-averaging systems by rescaling of the individual realizations before averaging.

We investigate properties of optimal designs under the second-order least squares estimator (SLSE) for linear and nonlinear regression models. First we derive equivalence theorems for optimal designs under the SLSE. We then obtain the number of support points in A-, c- and D-optimal designs analytically for several models. Using a generalized scale invariance concept we also study the scale invariance property of D-optimal designs. In addition, numerical algorithms are discussed for finding optimal designs. The results are quite general and can be applied for various linear and nonlinear models. Several applications are presented, including results for fractional polynomial, spline regression and trigonometric regression models.

Recent years have seen remarkable development in open quantum systems effectively described by non-Hermitian Hamiltonians. A unique feature of non-Hermitian topological systems is the skin effect, anomalous localization of an extensive number of eigenstates driven by nonreciprocal dissipation. Despite its significance for non-Hermitian topological phases, the relevance of the skin effect to quantum entanglement and critical phenomena has remained unclear. Here, we find that the skin effect induces a nonequilibrium quantum phase transition in the entanglement dynamics. We show that the skin effect gives rise to a macroscopic flow of particles and suppresses the entanglement propagation and thermalization, leading to the area law of the entanglement entropy in the nonequilibrium steady state. Moreover, we reveal an entanglement phase transition induced by the competition between the unitary dynamics and the skin effect even without disorder or interactions. This entanglement phase transition accompanies nonequilibrium quantum criticality characterized by a nonunitary conformal field theory whose effective central charge is extremely sensitive to the boundary conditions. We also demonstrate that it originates from an exceptional point of the non-Hermitian Hamiltonian and the concomitant scale invariance of the skin modes localized according to the power law. Furthermore, we show that the skin effect leads to the purification and the reduction of von Neumann entropy even in Markovian open quantum systems described by the Lindblad master equation. Our work opens a way to control the entanglement growth and establishes a fundamental understanding of phase transitions and critical phenomena in open quantum systems far from thermal equilibrium.

This work revisits a class of biomimetically inspired waveforms introduced by R.A. Altes in the 1970s for use in sonar detection. Similar to the chirps used for echolocation by bats and dolphins, these waveforms are log-periodic oscillations, windowed by a smooth decaying envelope. Log-periodicity is associated with the deep symmetry of discrete scale invariance in physical systems. Furthermore, there is a close connection between such chirping techniques, and other useful applications such as wavelet decomposition for multi-resolution analysis. Motivated to uncover additional properties, we propose an alternative, simpler parameterisation of the original Altes waveforms. From this, it becomes apparent that we have a flexible family of hyperbolic chirps suitable for the detection of accelerating time-series oscillations. The proposed formalism reveals the original chirps to be a set of admissible wavelets with desirable properties of regularity, infinite vanishing moments and time-frequency localisation. As they are self-similar, these “Altes chirplets” allow efficient implementation of the scale-invariant hyperbolic chirplet transform (HCT), whose basis functions form hyperbolic curves in the time-frequency plane. Compared with the rectangular time-frequency tilings of both the conventional wavelet transform and the short-time Fourier transform, the HCT can better facilitate the detection of chirping signals, which are often the signature of critical failure in complex systems. A synthetic example is presented to illustrate this useful application of the HCT.

The study of topological materials possessing nontrivial band structures enables exploitation of relativistic physics and development of a spectrum of intriguing physical phenomena. However, previous studies of Weyl physics have been limited exclusively to semimetals. Here, via systematic magnetotransport measurements, two representative topological transport signatures of Weyl physics, the negative longitudinal magnetoresistance and the planar Hall effect, are observed in the elemental semiconductor tellurium. More strikingly, logarithmically periodic oscillations in both the magnetoresistance and Hall data are revealed beyond the quantum limit and found to share similar characteristics with those observed in ZrTe₅ and HfTe₅. The log-periodic oscillations originate from the formation of two-body quasi-bound states formed between Weyl fermions and opposite charge centers, the energies of which constitute a geometric series that matches the general feature of discrete scale invariance (DSI). Our discovery reveals the topological nature of tellurium and further confirms the universality of DSI in topological materials. Moreover, introduction of Weyl physics into semiconductors to develop “Weyl semiconductors” provides an ideal platform for manipulating fundamental Weyl fermionic behaviors and for designing future topological devices.

A bstract Both celestial and momentum space amplitudes in four dimensions are beset by divergences resulting from spacetime translation and sometimes scale invariance. In this paper we consider a (linearized) marginal deformation of the celestial CFT for Yang-Mills theory which preserves 2D conformal invariance but breaks both spacetime translation and scale invariance and involves a chirally coupled massive scalar. The resulting MHV celestial amplitudes are completely finite (apart from the usual soft and collinear divergences and isolated poles in the sum of the weights) and take the canonical CFT form. Moreover, we show they can be simply rewritten in terms of AdS 3 -Witten contact diagrams which evaluate to the well-known D -functions, thereby forging a direct connection between flat and AdS holography.

This study addresses the limitations of Transformer models in image feature extraction, particularly their lack of inductive bias for visual structures. Compared to Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), the Transformers are more sensitive to different hyperparameters of optimizers, which leads to a lack of stability and slow convergence. To tackle these challenges, we propose the Convolution-based Efficient Transformer Image Feature Extraction Network (CEFormer) as an enhancement of the Transformer architecture. Our model incorporates E-Attention, depthwise separable convolution, and dilated convolution to introduce crucial inductive biases, such as translation invariance, locality, and scale invariance, into the Transformer framework. Additionally, we implement a lightweight convolution module to process the input images, resulting in faster convergence and improved stability. This results in an efficient convolution combined Transformer image feature extraction network. Experimental results on the ImageNet1k Top-1 dataset demonstrate that the proposed network achieves better accuracy while maintaining high computational speed. It achieves up to 85.0% accuracy across various model sizes on image classification, outperforming various baseline models. When integrated into the Mask Region-Convolutional Neural Network (R-CNN) framework as a backbone network, CEFormer outperforms other models and achieves the highest mean Average Precision (mAP) scores. This research presents a significant advancement in Transformer-based image feature extraction, balancing performance and computational efficiency.

A bstract We derive a set of no-go theorems and yes-go examples for the parity-odd primordial trispectrum of curvature perturbations. We work at tree-level in the decoupling limit of the Effective Field Theory of Inflation and assume scale invariance and a Bunch-Davies vacuum. We show that the parity-odd scalar trispectrum vanishes in the presence of any number of scalar fields with arbitrary mass and any parity-odd scalar correlator vanishes in the presence of any number of spinning fields with massless de Sitter mode functions, in agreement with the findings of Liu, Tong, Wang and Xianyu [1]. The same is true for correlators with an odd number of conformally-coupled external fields. We derive these results using both the (boostless) cosmological bootstrap, in particular the Cosmological Optical Theorem, and explicit perturbative calculations. We then discuss a series of yes-go examples by relaxing the above assumptions one at the time. In particular, we provide explicit results for the parity-odd trispectrum for (i) violations of scale invariance in single-clock inflation, (ii) the modified dispersion relation of the ghost condensate (non-Bunch-Davies vacuum), and (iii) interactions with massive spinning fields. Our results establish the parity-odd trispectrum as an exceptionally sensitive probe of new physics beyond vanilla inflation.

The string tensions can be dynamical, as we have studied in recent publications, for example in the case when we formulate string theories in the modified measure formalism. Then string and brane tensions appear, but as an additional dynamical degree of freedom. It can be seen, however, that these string or brane tensions may not be universal, but rather each string and each brane generates its own tension, which can have a different value for each string or brane. The case where there are strings that can have different spontaneously generated tensions has been considered in previous publication. To have a real dynamical string tension, we consider new background fields that can couple to the strings, the tension scalar which is capable of changing locally along the world sheet the value of the tension of the extended object. When all string tensions are equal, there is now an unbroken target space scale invariance. By considering possible effective actions of gravity and strings as matter in D dimensions, we determine D by requiring that the effective action be, as the fundamental theory, target space scale invariant, which singles out D=4.