The $\Lambda$CDM model provides a good fit to a large span of cosmological data but harbors areas of phenomenology. With the improvement of the number and the accuracy of observations, discrepancies among key cosmological parameters of the model have emerged. The most statistically significant tension is the $4-6\sigma$ disagreement between predictions of the Hubble constant $H_0$ by early time probes with $\Lambda$CDM model, and a number of late time, model-independent determinations of $H_0$ from local measurements of distances and redshifts. The high precision and consistency of the data at both ends present strong challenges to the possible solution space and demand a hypothesis with enough rigor to explain multiple observations--whether these invoke new physics, unexpected large-scale structures or multiple, unrelated errors. We present a thorough review of the problem, including a discussion of recent Hubble constant estimates and a summary of the proposed theoretical solutions. Some of the models presented are formally successful, improving the fit to the data in light of their additional degrees of freedom, restoring agreement within $1-2\sigma$ between {\it Planck} 2018, using CMB power spectra data, BAO, Pantheon SN data, and R20, the latest SH0ES Team measurement of the Hubble constant ($H_0 = 73.2 \pm 1.3{\rm\,km\,s^{-1}\,Mpc^{-1}}$ at 68\% confidence level). Reduced tension might not simply come from a change in $H_0$ but also from an increase in its uncertainty due to degeneracy with additional physics, pointing to the need for additional probes. While no specific proposal makes a strong case for being highly likely or far better than all others, solutions involving early or dynamical dark energy, neutrino interactions, interacting cosmologies, primordial magnetic fields, and modified gravity provide the best options until a better alternative comes along.[Abridged]

We use cosmological hydrodynamic simulations (IllustrisTNG and SIMBA) to explore the redshift, luminosity, and black hole mass dependence of the quasar halo occupation distribution (HOD). In both simulations, we find that the quasar activity is quenched at a characteristic halo mass ($\sim 10^{13} M_{\odot}$) scale affecting the nature of its occupation distribution function. We note that the quenching is more pronounced at low redshifts for quasars selected through a luminosity threshold. We show that a very significant bias (a factor of $\sim 10-50$ in the central occupation and $\sim 10-70\%$ in the satellite occupation fraction) is introduced in the reconstruction of quasar host halo mass distributions from the observed two-point-correlation function, if the HOD modeling does not account for the quenching effect in the central occupation function. While there is strong suppression of the occupation fraction of central quasars, the satellite occupation still follows a power-law like behavior. Our results show that the global satellite fraction of quasars increases monotonically from high to low redshifts, with $20-40 \%$ of the quasars being satellite at intermediate redshifts, consistent with previous clustering based estimates. In addition, our study reveals that while the occupation function of quasars depends on redshift, luminosity, and feedback modes, there is hardly any evolution in the supermassive black hole (SMBH; mass-selected sample) occupation. The SMBH HOD over the entire parameter space is well-modeled by a power-law and a step function similar to what has been found for galaxies and low-luminosity active galactic nuclei.

We study the differences in physical properties of quasar-host galaxies using an optically selected sample of radio loud (RL) and radio quiet (RQ) quasars (in the redshift range 0.15 < z < 1.9) which we have further cross-matched with the VLA-FIRST survey catalog. The sources in our sample have broad Hbeta and MgII emission lines (1000 km/s < FWHM < 15000 km/s) with a subsample of high broad line quasars (FWHM > 15000 km/s). We construct the broadband spectral energy distribution (SED) of our broad line quasars using multi-wavelength archival data and targeted observations with the AstroSat telescope. We use the state-of-the-art SED modeling code CIGALE v2022.0 to model the SEDs and determine the best-fit physical parameters of the quasar host galaxies namely their star-formation rate (SFR), main-sequence stellar mass, luminosity absorbed by dust, e-folding time and stellar population age. We find that the emission from the host galaxy of our sources is between 20%-35% of the total luminosity, as they are mostly dominated by the central quasars. Using the best-fit estimates, we reconstruct the optical spectra of our quasars which show remarkable agreement in reproducing the observed SDSS spectra of the same sources. We plot the main-sequence relation for our quasars and note that they are significantly away from the main sequence of star-forming galaxies. Further, the main sequence relation shows a bimodality for our RL quasars indicating populations segregated by Eddington ratios. We conclude that RL quasars in our sample with lower Eddington ratios tend to have substantially lower star-formation rates for similar stellar mass. Our analyses, thus, provide a completely independent route in studying the host galaxies of quasars and addressing the radio dichotomy problem from the host galaxy perspective.

Recent Baryon Acoustic Oscillation (BAO) measurements released by DESI, when combined with Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) data from Planck and two different samples of Type Ia supernovae (Pantheon-Plus and DESY5) reveal a preference for Dynamical Dark Energy (DDE) characterized by a present-day quintessence-like equation of state that crossed into the phantom regime in the past. A core ansatz for this result is assuming a linear Chevallier-Polarski-Linder (CPL) parameterization $w(a) = w_0 + w_a (1-a)$ to describe the evolution of the DE equation of state (EoS). In this paper, we test if and to what extent this assumption impacts the results. To prevent broadening uncertainties in cosmological parameter inference and facilitate direct comparison with the baseline CPL case, we focus on 4 alternative well-known models that, just like CPL, consist of only two free parameters: the present-day DE EoS ($w_0$) and a parameter quantifying its dynamical evolution ($w_a$). We demonstrate that the preference for DDE remains robust regardless of the parameterization: $w_0$ consistently remains in the quintessence regime, while $w_a$ consistently indicates a preference for a dynamical evolution towards the phantom regime. This tendency is significantly strengthened by DESY5 SN measurements. By comparing the best-fit $\chi^2$ obtained within each DDE model, we notice that the linear CPL parameterization is not the best-fitting case. Among the models considered, the EoS proposed by Barboza and Alcaniz consistently leads to the most significant improvement.

We briefly review the early development of the mean-field dynamics for cooperatively interacting quantum many-body systems, mapped to pseudo-spin (Ising-like) systems. We start with (Anderson, 1958) pseudo-spin mapping of the BCS (1957) Hamiltonian of superconductivity, reducing it to a mean-field Hamiltonian of XY (or effectively Ising) model in a transverse field. Then we get the mean-field estimate for the equilibrium gap in the ground state energy at different temperatures (gap disappearing at the transition temperature), which fits Landau's (1949) phenomenological theory of superfluidity. We then present in detail a general dynamical extension (for non-equilibrium cases) of the mean-field theory of quantum Ising systems (in a transverse field), following de Gennes' (1963) decomposition of the mean field into orthogonal classical cooperative (longitudinal) component and the quantum (transverse) component, with each component following Suzuki--Kubo (1968) mean-field dynamics. Next we discuss its applications to quantum hysteresis in Ising magnets (in presence of an oscillating transverse field), to quantum heat engines (employing transverse Ising model as working fluid), and to the quantum annealing of the Sherrington--Kirkpatrick (1975) spin glass by tuning down (to zero) the transverse field, which provides a very fast computational algorithm leading to ground state energy values converging to the best known analytic estimate for the model. Finally, we summarize the main results obtained and conclude about the effectiveness of the de Gennes--Suzuki--Kubo mean-field equations for the study of various dynamical aspects of quantum condensed matter systems.

We consider interacting dark matter-dark energy models arising out of a general interaction term $Q=f(\rho_{m},\rho_{d},\dot{\rho}_{m},\dot{\rho}_{d}).$ Here $f$ is a functional relation connecting the energy densities $\rho_{m}$ and $\rho_{d}$ and their derivatives w.r.t. time $t.$ In our model we consider two interacting barotropic fluid with constant equation of state $\omega_{m}$ and $\omega_{d}.$ By considering a dynamical interaction between them we trace out the cosmological evolution dynamics of the universe. We analytically solve the model by considering a constant ratio between the two fluids and then track the corresponding analytical results using observational data from the baryon acoustic oscillation measurements, Type Ia supernovae measurements and the local Hubble constant measurements. From this general setting we introduce three different models and nine different interaction function. Our final aim is to set up a comparative analysis of the various class of models under the different interaction function using common theoretical and numerical analysis.

This study explores the possibility of a time-varying dark energy (DE) equation of state (EoS) deviating from -1. We employ a comprehensive dataset of usual astronomical probes (Type Ia supernovae, baryon acoustic oscillations, Big Bang nucleosynthesis, Hubble data, and Planck 2018 CMB) alongside future mock gravitational wave (GW) distance measurements from the Einstein Telescope. We utilize the Pad'e approximation, a versatile framework encompassing well-known DE models like constant EoS, Chevallier-Polarski-Linder parametrization and other time-evolving DE parametrizations. Within Pad'e parametrization, we examine three specific forms (Pad'e-I, SPad'e-I, Pad'e-II) applied to both spatially flat and non-flat universes. Pad'e-II exhibits particularly interesting features in terms of the evidence of dynamical DE at many standard deviations. Our results can be summarized as follows. Flat Universe: When analyzing the combined dataset of standard probes (including CMB) with Pad'e-II in a flat universe, we find a strong preference (6.4{\sigma}) for a dynamical (time-varying) DE EoS. This preference remains significant (4.7{\sigma}) even when incorporating future GW data. Non-Flat Universe: In a non-flat universe, the combined standard datasets (without or with CMB) also indicate dynamical DE EoS at a high confidence level (6.2{\sigma} and 6.4{\sigma}, respectively). The addition of GW data slightly reduces the evidence (3.8{\sigma} and 5.1{\sigma}, respectively), but the preference persists. These results collectively suggest a robust case for dynamical DE in the dark sector. While a non-flat universe is not strongly favored, Pad'e-II hints at a possible closed universe when CMB data is included (with or without GW data).

We consider the unified bulk viscous scenarios and constrain them using the Cosmic Microwave Background observations from Planck 2018 and the Pantheon sample from Type Ia Supernovae. Then we generate the luminosity distance measurements from ${\cal O}(10^3)$ mock Gravitational Wave Standard Sirens (GWSS) events for the proposed Einstein Telescope. We then combine these mock luminosity distance measurements from the GWSS with the current cosmological probes in order to forecast how the mock GWSS data could be effective in constraining these bulk viscous scenarios. Our results show that a non-zero time dependent bulk viscosity in the universe sector is strongly preferred by the current cosmological probes and will possibly be confirmed at many standard deviations by the future GWSS measurements. We further mention that the addition of GWSS data can significantly reduce the uncertainties of the key cosmological parameters obtained from the usual cosmological probes employed in this work.

An unprecedented array of new observational capabilities are starting to yield key constraints on models of the epoch of first light in the Universe. In this Letter we discuss the implications of the UV radiation background at cosmic dawn inferred by recent JWST observations for radio experiments aimed at detecting the redshifted 21-cm hyperfine transition of diffuse neutral hydrogen. Under the basic assumption that the 21-cm signal is activated by the Ly$\alpha$ photon field produced by metal-poor stellar systems, we show that a detection at the low frequencies of the EDGES and SARAS3 experiments may be expected from a simple extrapolation of the declining UV luminosity density inferred at $z\lesssim 14$ from JWST early galaxy data. Accounting for an early radiation excess above the CMB suggests a shallower or flat evolution to simultaneously reproduce low and high-$z$ current UV luminosity density constraints, which cannot be entirely ruled out, given the large uncertainties from cosmic variance and the faint-end slope of the galaxy luminosity function at cosmic dawn. Our findings raise the intriguing possibility that a high star formation efficiency at early times may trigger the onset of intense Ly$\alpha$ emission at redshift $z\lesssim 20$ and produce a cosmic 21-cm absorption signal 200 Myr after the Big Bang.

NASA's all-sky survey mission, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), is specifically engineered to detect exoplanets that transit bright stars. Thus far, TESS has successfully identified approximately 400 transiting exoplanets, in addition to roughly 6000 candidate exoplanets pending confirmation. In this study, we present the results of our ongoing project, the Validation of Transiting Exoplanets using Statistical Tools (VaTEST). Our dedicated effort is focused on the confirmation and characterization of new exoplanets through the application of statistical validation tools. Through a combination of ground-based telescope data, high-resolution imaging, and the utilization of the statistical validation tool known as \texttt{TRICERATOPS}, we have successfully discovered eight potential super-Earths. These planets bear the designations: TOI-238b (1.61$^{+0.09} _{-0.10}$ R$_\oplus$), TOI-771b (1.42$^{+0.11} _{-0.09}$ R$_\oplus$), TOI-871b (1.66$^{+0.11} _{-0.11}$ R$_\oplus$), TOI-1467b (1.83$^{+0.16} _{-0.15}$ R$_\oplus$), TOI-1739b (1.69$^{+0.10} _{-0.08}$ R$_\oplus$), TOI-2068b (1.82$^{+0.16} _{-0.15}$ R$_\oplus$), TOI-4559b (1.42$^{+0.13} _{-0.11}$ R$_\oplus$), and TOI-5799b (1.62$^{+0.19} _{-0.13}$ R$_\oplus$). Among all these planets, six of them fall within the region known as 'keystone planets,' which makes them particularly interesting for study. Based on the location of TOI-771b and TOI-4559b below the radius valley we characterized them as likely super-Earths, though radial velocity mass measurements for these planets will provide more details about their characterization. It is noteworthy that planets within the size range investigated herein are absent from our own solar system, making their study crucial for gaining insights into the evolutionary stages between Earth and Neptune.

We present numerically exact non-equilibrium dynamics of a one-dimensional Bose gas in quasi-periodic lattice that plays an intermediate role between the long-ranged order and truly disordered systems exhibiting unusual correlated phases. Precision control over lattice depth, interaction strength and filling factor enables the exploration of various correlated phases in a finite periodic lattice. We investigate the system dynamics when the secondary incommensurate lattice is abruptly switched on. To solve the many-body Schroedinger equation, we employ the multiconfigurational time-dependent Hartree method for bosons (MCTDHB). The many-body dynamics are analyzed through distinct measures of the Glauber correlation functions and dynamical fragmentation. Our study reveals four distinct scenarios of localization process in the non-equilibrium dynamics. Weakly interacting non-fragmented superfluid of incommensurate filling in the primary lattice exhibits collapse-revival dynamics of localization. In contrast, a fragmented superfluid with commensurate filling exhibits dynamical Mott localization. A strongly correlated, fully fragmented Mott state shows a subtle competition with localization introduced by the secondary lattice that merely melts the Mott correlations. Interestingly, in the fermionized Mott regime, where the density in each well is fragmented, the intra-dimer correlations exhibit unexpected robustness. These findings provide new insights into many-body correlation dynamics and novel localization mechanisms in quasi-periodic lattices, paving the way for engineering exotic quantum behaviors in ultracold atomic systems.

We investigate the scenario of interacting dark energy through a detailed confrontation with various observational datasets. We quantify the interaction in a general way, through the deviation from the standard scaling of the dark matter energy density. We use observational Hubble Data from Cosmic Chronometers (CC), data from Baryon Acoustic Oscillations (BAO) from the recently released DESI DR2, data from Supernova Type Ia (SNIa), both with and without calibration by SH0ES, and finally the CMB data from Planck 2018. For the basic and simplest interacting model, we find that the data favor a non-zero interaction up to $2\sigma$. Notably, when we employ SH0ES-calibrated SNIa data the preference of non-zero interaction becomes more significant. However, comparison with $\Lambda$CDM scenario through AIC, BIC and Bayesian analysis, reveals a mixed picture.

Brownian particles suspended in disordered crowded environments often exhibit non-Gaussian normal diffusion (NGND), whereby their displacements grow with mean square proportional to the observation time and non-Gaussian statistics. Their distributions appear to decay almost exponentially according to "universal" laws largely insensitive to the observation time. This effect is generically attributed to slow environmental fluctuations, which perturb the local configuration of the suspension medium. To investigate the microscopic mechanisms responsible for the NGND phenomenon, we study Brownian diffusion in low dimensional systems, like the free diffusion of ellipsoidal and active particles, the diffusion of colloidal particles in fluctuating corrugated channels and Brownian motion in arrays of planar convective rolls. NGND appears to be a transient effect related to the time modulation of the instantaneous particle's diffusivity, which can occur even under equilibrium conditions. Consequently, we propose to generalize the definition of NGND to include transient displacement distributions which vary continuously with the observation time. To this purpose, we provide a heuristic one-parameter function, which fits all time-dependent transient displacement distributions corresponding to the same diffusion constant. Moreover, we reveal the existence of low dimensional systems where the NGND distributions are not leptokurtic (fat exponential tails), as often reported in the literature, but platykurtic (thin sub-Gaussian tails), i.e., with negative excess kurtosis. The actual nature of the NGND transients is related to the specific microscopic dynamics of the diffusing particle.

Recent measurements of the Cosmic Microwave Anisotropies power spectra measured by the Planck satellite show a preference for a closed universe at more than $99 \%$ Confidence Level. Such a scenario is however in disagreement with several low redshift observables, including luminosity distances of Type Ia Supernovae. Here we show that Interacting Dark Energy (IDE) models can ease the discrepancies between Planck and Supernovae Ia data in a closed Universe. Therefore IDE cosmologies remain as very appealing scenarios, as they can provide the solution to a number of observational tensions in different fiducial cosmologies. The results presented here strongly favour broader analyses of cosmological data, and suggest that relaxing the usual flatness and vacuum energy assumptions can lead to a much better agreement among theory and observations.

The current cosmological probes have provided a fantastic confirmation of the standard $\Lambda$ Cold Dark Matter cosmological model, that has been constrained with unprecedented accuracy. However, with the increase of the experimental sensitivity a few statistically significant tensions between different independent cosmological datasets emerged. While these tensions can be in portion the result of systematic errors, the persistence after several years of accurate analysis strongly hints at cracks in the standard cosmological scenario and the need for new physics. In this Letter of Interest we will focus on the $4.4\sigma$ tension between the Planck estimate of the Hubble constant $H_0$ and the SH0ES collaboration measurements. After showing the $H_0$ evaluations made from different teams using different methods and geometric calibrations, we will list a few interesting new physics models that could solve this tension and discuss how the next decade experiments will be crucial.

We briefly review the early development of the mean-field dynamics for cooperatively interacting quantum many-body systems, mapped to pseudo-spin (Ising-like) systems. We start with (Anderson, 1958) pseudo-spin mapping of the BCS (1957) Hamiltonian of superconductivity, reducing it to a mean-field Hamiltonian of XY (or effectively Ising) model in a transverse field. Then we get the mean-field estimate for the equilibrium gap in the ground state energy at different temperatures (gap disappearing at the transition temperature), which fits Landau's (1949) phenomenological theory of superfluidity. We then present in detail a general dynamical extension of the mean-field theory of quantum Ising systems (in a transverse field), following de Gennes' (1963) decomposition of the mean field into orthogonal classical cooperative (longitudinal) component and the quantum (transverse) component, with each of the components following Suzuki-Kubo (1968) mean-field dynamics. Next we discuss its applications to quantum hysteresis in Ising magnets (in presence of oscillating transverse field), to quantum heat engines (employing transverse Ising model as working fluid), and to the quantum annealing of the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick (1975) spin glass by tuning down (to zero) the transverse field which provided us a very fast computational algorithm leading to ground state energy values converging to the best known analytic estimate for the model. Finally, we summarize the main results obtained and conclude about the effectiveness of the de Gennes-Suzuki-Kubo mean-field equations for the study of various dynamical aspects of quantum condensed matter systems.

In this article, we investigate the dynamics of a phantom scalar field with an arbitrary potential, focusing on accelerating scaling solutions of cosmological relevance. We consider both uncoupled and coupled cosmological scenarios. In the latter case, the coupling between phantom dark energy and dark matter is motivated by the warm inflationary paradigm, with the dissipation coefficient assumed to be either constant or variable. The evolution equations of our coupled and uncoupled cosmological models are written in the form of autonomous systems, whose stability is studied using methods of qualitative analysis of dynamical systems. For this analysis, the only requirement imposed on the phantom scalar-field potential is that a specific dynamical variable, defined in terms of the potential and its derivative, must be invertible. We show that the uncoupled phantom cosmological model cannot accommodate any accelerated scaling solution, while such solutions do exist in the coupled scenario, for both constant and variable dissipation coefficients. Although there is a limitation to these scaling solutions $-$ specifically, the current stage of accelerated expansion is not preceded by a long enough matter-dominated era $-$ our results show that the existence of a direct coupling between phantom dark energy and dark matter yields great potential for addressing the cosmic coincidence problem.

We investigate cosmological bounds on sterile neutrino masses in the light of the Hubble and $S_8$ tensions. We argue that non-zero masses for sterile neutrinos are inferred at 2$\sigma$ level in some extended models such as varying dark energy equation of state, when a direct measurement of the Hubble constant $H_0$ and weak lensing measurement of dark energy survey (DES) are taken into account. Furthermore, the Hubble and $S_8$ tensions are also reduced in such a framework. We also consider the case where a non-flat Universe is allowed and show that a slightly open Universe may be favored in models with sterile neutrinos in the context of the cosmological tensions.

We present an extensive Monte Carlo investigation of the metastable lifetime through the reversal of the magnetization of spin-$s$ Ising and Blume-Capel models, where $s=\{1/2, 1, 3/2, 2, 5/2, 3, 7/2\}$. The mean metastable lifetime (or reversal time) is studied as a function of the applied magnetic field and for both models is found to obey the Becker-Doring theory, as was initially developed for the case of $s=1/2$ Ising ferromagnet within the classical nucleation theory. Moreover, the decay of metastable volume fraction nicely follows the Avrami's law for all values of $s$ and for both models considered.

We report new detections of the two transient ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) in NGC 5128 from an ongoing series of Chandra observations. Both sources have previously been observed Lx (2-3)E39 erg/s, at the lower end of the ULX luminosity range. The new observations allow us to study these sources in the luminosity regime frequented by the Galactic black hole X-ray binaries (BH XBs). We present the recent lightcurves of both ULXs. 1RXH J132519.8-430312 (ULX1) was observed at Lx ~ 1E38 erg/s, while CXOU J132518.2-430304 (ULX2) declined to Lx ~ 2E37 erg/s and then lingered at this luminosity for hundreds of days. We show that a reasonable upper limit for both duty cycles is 0.2, with a lower limit of 0.12 for ULX2. This duty cycle is larger than anticipated for transient ULXs in old stellar populations. By fitting simple spectral models in an observation with ~50 counts we recover properties consistent with Galactic BH XBs, but inconclusive as to the spectral state. We utilise quantile analyses to demonstrate that the spectra are generally soft, and that in one observation the spectrum of ULX2 is inconsistent with a canonical hard state at >95% confidence. This is contrary to what would be expected of an accreting IMBH primary, which we would expect to be in the hard state at these luminosities. We discuss the paucity of transient ULXs discovered in early-type galaxies and excogitate explanations. We suggest that the number of transient ULXs scales with the giant and sub-giant populations, rather than the total number of XBs.