As the Vera Rubin Observatory begins its ten-year survey in 2025, it will probe key observables such as strong lensing (SL) by galaxies and clusters. In preparation for this new era, we assemble an extensive compilation of SL candidate systems from the literature, comprising over 30,000 unique objects that can be used as a watch list of known systems. By cross-matching this sample with photometric and spectroscopic catalogs, we construct two value-added tables containing key parameters for SL analysis, including lens and source redshifts and lens velocity dispersions $\sigma_v$. As a preparation for Rubin, we generate image cutouts for these systems in existing wide-field surveys with subarcsecond seeing, namely CFHTLens, CS82, RCSLens, KiDS, HSC, DES, and DESI Legacy. This sample, dubbed the "Last Stand Before Rubin" (LaStBeRu), has a myriad of applications, from using archival data to selections for follow-up projects and training of machine learning algorithms. As an application, we perform a test of General Relativity using these data, combining the effects of motion of massless particles (through SL modeling) and non-relativistic bodies through $\sigma_v$, which allow one to set constraints on the Post-Newtonian parameter $\gamma_\mathrm{PPN}$. Using the LaStBeRu database, we present an independent test of $\gamma_\mathrm{PPN}$ (distinct from previous analyses) and, for the first time, we present such a test exclusively with systems identifiable in ground-based images. By combining these data with the previously published samples, we obtain the most stringent constraint on $\gamma_\mathrm{PPN}$. Our results are consistent with GR at the $\sim$~1-$\sigma$ level and with the previous results from the literature.

Starting from the Pearson Correlation Matrix of stock returns and from the desire to obtain a reduced number of parameters relevant for the dynamics of a financial market, we propose to take the idea of a sectorial matrix, which would have a large number of parameters, to the reduced picture of a real symmetric $2 \times 2$ matrix, extreme case, that still conserves the desirable feature that the average correlation can be one of the parameters. This is achieved by averaging the correlation matrix over blocks created by choosing two subsets of stocks for rows and columns and averaging over each of the resulting blocks. Averaging over these blocks, we retain the average of the correlation matrix. We shall use a random selection for two equal block sizes as well as two specific, hopefully relevant, ones that do not produce equal block sizes. The results show that one of the non-random choices has somewhat different properties, whose meaning will have to be analyzed from an economy point of view.

This Report summarizes the proceedings of the 2019 Les Houches workshop on Physics at TeV Colliders. Session 1 dealt with (I) new developments for high precision Standard Model calculations, (II) the sensitivity of parton distribution functions to the experimental inputs, (III) new developments in jet substructure techniques and a detailed examination of gluon fragmentation at the LHC, (IV) issues in the theoretical description of the production of Standard Model Higgs bosons and how to relate experimental measurements, and (V) Monte Carlo event generator studies relating to PDF evolution and comparisons of important processes at the LHC.

Building on previous developments of a harmonic decomposition framework for computing the three-point correlation function (3PCF) of projected scalar fields over the sky, this work investigates how much cosmological information is contained in these higher-order statistics. We perform a forecast to determine the number of harmonic multipoles required to capture the full information content of the 3PCF in the context of galaxy weak lensing, finding that only the first few multipoles are sufficient to capture the additional cosmological information provided by the 3PCF. This study addresses a critical practical question: to what extent can the high-dimensional 3PCF signal be compressed without significant loss of cosmological information? Since the different multipoles contain highly redundant information, we apply a principal component analysis (PCA) which further reduces its dimensionality and preserving information. We also account for non-linear parameter degeneracies using the DALI method, an extension of Fisher forecasting that includes higher-order likelihood information. Under optimistic settings, we find that the 3PCF considerably improves the constraining power of the 2PCF for $\Omega_m$, reaching a 20% improvement. Other parameters also benefit, mainly due to their degeneracy with the matter abundance. For example, with our chosen scale cuts for galaxy sources at $z = 0.5$, we find that $\sigma_8$ is more tightly constrained, whereas $S_8$ and $w_0$ are not. Finally, we construct analytical Gaussian covariance matrices that can serve as a first step toward developing semi-analytical, semi-empirical alternatives to sample covariances.

We present an analytical solution for the evolution of parton distributions incorporating mixed-order QCD $\otimes$ QED corrections, addressing both polarized and unpolarized cases. Using the Altarelli-Parisi kernels extended to mixed order, we solve the DGLAP equations exactly in Mellin $N$-space and derive the associated Wilson coefficients for the polarized structure function $g_1$. Our analytical approach not only improves computational efficiency but also enhances the precision of theoretical predictions relevant for current and future phenomenological applications.

We present an agent based model of a single asset financial market that is capable of replicating several non-trivial statistical properties observed in real financial markets, generically referred to as stylized facts. While previous models reported in the literature are also capable of replicating some of these statistical properties, in general, they tend to oversimplify either the trading mechanisms or the behavior of the agents. In our model, we strived to capture the most important characteristics of both aspects to create agents that employ strategies inspired on those used in real markets, and, at the same time, a more realistic trade mechanism based on a double auction order book. We study the role of the distinct types of trader on the return statistics: specifically, correlation properties (or lack thereof), volatilty clustering, heavy tails, and the degree to which the distribution can be described by a log-normal. Further, by introducing the practice of profit taking, our model is also capable of replicating the stylized fact related to an asymmetry in the distribution of losses and gains.

We present the second order contributions to the coefficient functions for the parity violating polarized structure functions $g_L$ and $g_4$, thus completing the $\mathcal{O}(\alpha_S^2)$ knowledge on DIS structure functions. We obtain the missing $\mathcal{O}(\alpha_S^2)$ pieces from the known parity conserving unpolarized coefficient functions. We also present a phenomenological analysis for the phase space region the future Electron-Ion Collider is set to explore.

Strong Lensing is a powerful probe of the matter distribution in galaxies and clusters and a relevant tool for cosmography. Analyses of strong gravitational lenses with Deep Learning have become a popular approach due to these astronomical objects' rarity and image complexity. Next-generation surveys will provide more opportunities to derive science from these objects and an increasing data volume to be analyzed. However, finding strong lenses is challenging, as their number densities are orders of magnitude below those of galaxies. Therefore, specific Strong Lensing search algorithms are required to discover the highest number of systems possible with high purity and low false alarm rate. The need for better algorithms has prompted the development of an open community data science competition named Strong Gravitational Lensing Challenge (SGLC). This work presents the Deep Learning strategies and methodology used to design the highest-scoring algorithm in the II SGLC. We discuss the approach used for this dataset, the choice for a suitable architecture, particularly the use of a network with two branches to work with images in different resolutions, and its optimization. We also discuss the detectability limit, the lessons learned, and prospects for defining a tailor-made architecture in a survey in contrast to a general one. Finally, we release the models and discuss the best choice to easily adapt the model to a dataset representing a survey with a different instrument. This work helps to take a step towards efficient, adaptable and accurate analyses of strong lenses with deep learning frameworks.

The Coherent Neutrino-Nucleus Interaction Experiment (CONNIE) aims to detect the coherent scattering (CE$\nu$NS) of reactor antineutrinos off silicon nuclei using thick fully-depleted high-resistivity silicon CCDs. Two Skipper-CCD sensors with sub-electron readout noise capability were installed at the experiment next to the Angra-2 reactor in 2021, making CONNIE the first experiment to employ Skipper-CCDs for reactor neutrino detection. We report on the performance of the Skipper-CCDs, the new data processing and data quality selection techniques and the event selection for CE$\nu$NS interactions, which enable CONNIE to reach a record low detection threshold of 15 eV. The data were collected over 300 days in 2021-2022 and correspond to exposures of 14.9 g-days with the reactor-on and 3.5 g-days with the reactor-off. The difference between the reactor-on and off event rates shows no excess and yields upper limits at 95% confidence level for the neutrino interaction rates comparable with previous CONNIE limits from standard CCDs and higher exposures. Searches for new neutrino interactions beyond the Standard Model were performed, yielding an improvement on the previous CONNIE limit on a simplified model with light vector mediators. A first dark matter (DM) search by diurnal modulation was performed by CONNIE and the results represent the best limits on the DM-electron scattering cross-section, obtained by a surface-level experiment. These promising results, obtained using a very small-mass sensor, illustrate the potential of Skipper-CCDs to probe rare neutrino interactions and motivate the plans to increase the detector mass in the near future.

Ultra-short-period (USP) exoplanets have orbital periods shorter than one day. Precise masses and radii of USPs could provide constraints on their unknown formation and evolution processes. We report the detection and characterization of the USP planet GJ 367b using high precision photometry and radial velocity observations. GJ 367b orbits a bright (V-band magnitude = 10.2), nearby, red (M-type) dwarf star every 7.7 hours. GJ 367b has a radius of $0.718 \pm 0.054$ Earth-radii, a mass of $0.546 \pm 0.078$ Earth-masses, making it a sub-Earth. The corresponding bulk density is $8.106 \pm 2.165$ g cm$^-3$, close to that of iron. An interior structure model predicts the planet has an iron core radius fraction of $86 \pm 5\%$, similar to Mercury's interior.

Millicharged particles, proposed by various extensions of the standard model, can be created in pairs by high-energy photons within nuclear reactors and can interact electromagnetically with electrons in matter. Recently, the existence of a plasmon peak in the interaction cross-section with silicon in the eV range was highlighted as a promising approach to enhance low-energy sensitivities. The CONNIE and Atucha-II reactor neutrino experiments utilize Skipper-CCD sensors, which enable the detection of interactions in the eV range. We present world-leading limits on the charge of millicharged particles within a mass range spanning six orders of magnitude, derived through a comprehensive analysis and the combination of data from both experiments.

We consider the extension of the CMW soft-gluon effective coupling in the context of soft-gluon resummation for QCD hard-scattering observables beyond the next-to-leading logarithmic accuracy. We present two proposals of a soft-gluon effective coupling that extend the CMW coupling to all perturbative orders in the \ms\ coupling $\as$. Although both effective couplings are well-defined in the physical four-dimensional space time, we examine their behaviour in $d=4 -2\ep$ space time dimensions. We uncover an all-order perturbative relation with the cusp anomalous dimension: the (four dimensional) cusp anomalous dimension is equal to the $d$-dimensional soft-gluon effective coupling at the conformal point $\ep=\beta(\as)$, where the $d$-dimensional QCD $\beta$-function, $\beta(\as) - \ep$, vanishes. We present the explicit expressions of the two soft-gluon couplings up to ${\cal O}(\as^2)$ in $d$ dimensions. In the four-dimensional case we compute the two soft couplings up to ${\cal O}(\as^3)$. For one of the two couplings, we confirm the ${\cal O}(\as^3)$ result previously presented by other authors. For the other coupling, we obtain the explicit relation with the cusp anomalous dimension up to ${\cal O}(\as^4)$. We comment on Casimir scaling at ${\cal O}(\as^4)$.

We compute the QCD$\times$QED (${\cal{O}}(\alpha_s \alpha)$) mixed and QED$^2$ (${\cal{O}}(\alpha^2)$) corrections to the production of an on-shell $Z$ boson in hadronic collisions. We obtain them by profiting from the calculation of the pure QCD terms after taking the corresponding abelian limits. Therefore, we extend the available knowledge up to complete next-to-next-to leading order precision in QCD$\oplus$QED. We present explicit results for the perturbative coefficients and perform the phenomenological analysis at different collider energies with particular emphasis on the mixed corrections. We study the contribution from the different channels and discuss the scale dependence stabilisation effect. We consider a factorisation approximation for the mixed order terms and show that it fails to reproduce the exact result. We find that the contributions are small, typically at the few per mille level, but that under some kinematical conditions they can compete with the pure QCD NNLO ones.

We report the discovery of a super-Earth candidate orbiting the nearby mid M dwarf Gl\,725A using the radial velocity (RV) method. The planetary signal has been independently identified using high-precision RVs from the SOPHIE and SPIRou spectrographs, in the optical and near-infrared domains, respectively. We modelled the stellar activity signal jointly with the planet using two Gaussian Processes, one for each instrument to account for the chromaticity of the stellar activity and instrumental systematics, along with a Keplerian model. The signal is significantly detected with a RV semi-amplitude of $1.67\pm0.20$ m/s. The planet Gl 725A b is found to be in an orbit compatible with circular with a period of $11.2201\pm0.0051$ days. We analysed 27 sectors of TESS photometry on which no transit event was found. We determined a minimum mass of $M_{p}\sin{i}=2.78\pm0.35\,M_{\oplus}$ which places the planet in the super-Earth regime. Using Mass-Radius relationships we predict a planetary radius to be between 1.2 and $2.0\,R_{\oplus}$. The proximity of Gl 725A, of only 3.5 pc, makes this new exoplanet one of the closest to Earth and joins the group of S-type low-mass planets in short orbits (P<15 d) around close M dwarfs.

We consider the scaling behaviour of the fluctuation susceptibility associated with the average activation in the Greenberg-Hastings neural network model and its relation to microscopic spontaneous activation. We found that, as the spontaneous activation probability tends to zero, a clear finite size scaling behaviour in the susceptibility emerges, characterized by critical exponents which follow already known scaling laws. This shows that the spontaneous activation probability plays the role of an external field conjugated to the order parameter of the dynamical activation transition. The roles of different kinds of activation mechanisms around the different dynamical phase transitions exhibited by the model are characterized numerically and using a mean field approximation.

On 2019 August 14 at 21:10:39 UTC, the LIGO/Virgo Collaboration (LVC) detected a possible neutron star-black hole merger (NSBH), the first ever identified. An extensive search for an optical counterpart of this event, designated GW190814, was undertaken using the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) on the 4m Victor M. Blanco Telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory. Target of Opportunity interrupts were issued on 8 separate nights to observe 11 candidates using the 4.1m Southern Astrophysical Research (SOAR) telescope's Goodman High Throughput Spectrograph in order to assess whether any of these transients was likely to be an optical counterpart of the possible NSBH merger. Here, we describe the process of observing with SOAR, the analysis of our spectra, our spectroscopic typing methodology, and our resultant conclusion that none of the candidates corresponded to the gravitational wave merger event but were all instead other transients. Finally, we describe the lessons learned from this effort. Application of these lessons will be critical for a successful community spectroscopic follow-up program for LVC observing run 4 (O4) and beyond.

We study two classes of single-field inflationary models - a generalization of the alpha-attractor and the alpha-Starobinsky model - and examine their compatibility with current observational data from Planck, ACT DR6, and BAO measurements from DESI DR2. Our analysis focuses on the reheating phase that follows inflation, characterized by the equation-of-state parameter omega_re, the reheating temperature T_re, and the number of e-folds N_re. We use a semi-analytical approach based on an equation linking inflationary dynamics to reheating, allowing us to compute the inflaton value at horizon crossing phi_k and other related cosmological quantities. We consider different decay channels for the inflaton: gravitational, Yukawa, and scalar. We are particularly interested in studying these models in the r-n_s and T_re-n_s planes, especially in regions close to the P-ACT-LB2 combination, which is the area most distant from the Planck data. To do this, we explore a wide range of values for the model parameters and show the graphs where the closest approximation to the P-ACT-LB2 region occurs. Other authors have already carried out related work; where there is overlap, our results are consistent with those obtained by other means.

Constraints on dark matter halo masses from weak gravitational lensing can be improved significantly by using additional information about the morphology of their density distribution, leading to tighter cosmological constraints derived from the halo mass function. This work is the first of two in which we investigate the accuracy of halo morphology and mass measurements in 2D and 3D. To this end, we determine several halo physical properties in the MICE-Grand Challenge dark matter only simulation. We present a public catalogue of these properties that includes density profiles and shape parameters measured in 2D and 3D, the halo centre at the peak of the 3D density distribution as well as the gravitational and kinetic energies and angular momentum vectors. The density profiles are computed using spherical and ellipsoidal radial bins, taking into account the halo shapes. We also provide halo concentrations and masses derived from fits to 2D and 3D density profiles using NFW and Einasto models for halos with more than $1000$ particles ($\gtrsim 3 \times 10^{13} h^{-1} M_{\odot}$). We find that the Einasto model provides better fits compared to NFW, regardless of the halo relaxation state and shape. The mass and concentration parameters of the 3D density profiles derived from fits to the 2D profiles are in general biased. Similar biases are obtained when constraining mass and concentrations using a weak-lensing stacking analysis. We show that these biases depend on the radial range and density profile model adopted in the fitting procedure, but not on the halo shape.

We determine approximate next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) corrections to unpolarized and polarized semi-inclusive DIS. They are derived using the threshold resummation formalism, which we fully develop to next-to-next-to-leading logarithmic (NNLL) accuracy, including the two-loop hard factor. The approximate NNLO terms are obtained by expansion of the resummed expression. They include all terms in Mellin space that are logarithmically enhanced at threshold, or that are constant. In terms of the customary SIDIS variables $x$ and $z$ they include all double distributions (that is, "plus" distributions and $\delta$-functions) in the partonic variables. We also investigate corrections that are suppressed at threshold and we determine the dominant terms among these. Our numerical estimates suggest much significance of the approximate NNLO terms, along with a reduction in scale dependence.

Gravitational entropy is an elusive concept. Various theoretical proposals have been presented, initially based on Penrose's Weyl Curvature Hypothesis, and variations of it. A more recent proposal by Clifton, Ellis, and Tavakol (CET) considered a novel approach by defining such entropy from a Gibbs equation constructed from an effective stress-energy tensor that emerges from the 'square root' algebraic decomposition of the Bel-Robinson tensor, the simplest divergence-less tensor related to the Weyl tensor. Since, so far all gravitational entropy proposals have been applied to highly restrictive and symmetric spacetimes, we probe in this paper the CET proposal for a class of much less idealized spactimes (the Szekeres class I models) capable of describing the joint evolution of arrays of arbitrary number of structures: overdensities and voids, all placed on selected spatial locations in an asymptotic $\Lambda$CDM backgound. By using suitable covariant variables and their fluctuations, we find the necessary and sufficient conditions for a positive CET entropy production to be a negative sign of the product of the density and Hubble expansion fluctuations. To examine the viability of this theoretical result we examine numerically the CET entropy production for two elongated over dense regions surrounding a central spheroidal void, all evolving jointly from initial linear perturbations at the last scattering era into present day Mpc-size CDM structures. We show that CET entropy production is positive for all times after last scattering at the precise spatial locations where structure growth occurs and where the exact density growing mode is dominant. The present paper provides the least idealized (and most physically robust) probe of a gravitational entropy proposal in the context of structure formation.