February 2026 – Page 3 – Kavli Institute Pre-Print Publications

Relativistic Tidal Dissipation and the Gravitational-wave Signal of a White Dwarf Orbiting an Intermediate-Mass Black Hole

Posted by klaurent February 26, 2026April 1, 2026Peking

Kavli Affiliate: Xian Chen| Summary: Finding intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) and measuring their masses and spins are key to understanding massive black hole formation. White dwarf (WD)-IMBH binaries provide a unique probe because they emit both electromagnetic radiation and gravitational waves (GWs), thereby conveying richer information. However, such multi-messenger sources often enter the regime of […]

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High Spectral Resolution X-ray Observations of the Evolved Supermassive Stellar Binary System $η$ Carinae – Iron K$α$ Band Profile Revealed with XRISM

Posted by klaurent February 25, 2026March 9, 2026MIT

Kavli Affiliate: Erin Kara | Summary:The supermassive binary system, $η$ Carinae, is experiencing enormous wind-driven mass loss at a rate unparalleled in the rest of the Galaxy. Their wind-wind collision (WWC) continuously produces shock heated, X-ray emitting plasmas. The XRISM X-ray observatory observed the system in 2023 and 2024 when the X-ray emission began to […]

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Little Red Dots as Obscured Little Blue Dots: A Super-Eddington Unification Model

Posted by klaurent February 25, 2026March 9, 2026Cambridge

Kavli Affiliate: Roberto Maiolino | Summary:We test whether "Little Red Dots" (LRDs) are dust-reddened, high-inclination counterparts of compact, blue broad-line AGNs ("Little Blue Dots", LBDs) powered by super-Eddington accretion. We model the central engine as a geometrically thick, radiation-pressure supported accretion flow whose funnel yields strongly anisotropic, intrinsically blue ionizing continua, coupled to an equatorially […]

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It’s a matter of time: Empirical Constraints on Supernova Yields and Delay Times from Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxies

Posted by klaurent February 25, 2026March 9, 2026Chicago

Kavli Affiliate: Alexander Ji | Summary:The chemical abundances of a stellar population encode information about nucleosynthesis and its astrophysical sites, but this information is confounded by the specific star formation history of the host galaxy. As a result, placing empirical constraints on supernova yields and timing using abundances has been very challenging. We introduce a […]

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A steadily declining dispersion measure for the repeating fast radio burst FRB 20220529A: Evidence for an FRB engine embedded in an expanding supernova remnant

Posted by klaurent February 25, 2026MIT

Kavli Affiliate: Kiyoshi Masui | Summary:We present the discovery and subsequent 3.2 year monitoring campaign of the repeating fast radio burst FRB 20220529A with CHIME/FRB. We observe a gradual dispersion measure (DM) decline of $-0.881pm0.001~mathrmpc~mathrmcm^-3~mathrmyear^-1$ ($-1.235pm0.001~mathrmpc~mathrmcm^-3~mathrmyear^-1$ in the rest frame), implying a $geq3.5pm0.2$% decrease of the total electron column in the source environment, and we […]

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A steadily declining dispersion measure for the repeating fast radio burst FRB 20220529A: Evidence for an FRB engine embedded in an expanding supernova remnant

Posted by klaurent February 25, 2026March 9, 2026MIT

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AT2024lhc and AT2024kmq in the landscape of featureless tidal disruption events

Posted by klaurent February 25, 2026March 9, 2026MIT

Kavli Affiliate: Dheeraj Pasham | Summary:We study AT2024kmq and AT2024lhc, two tidal disruption events (TDEs) with blue featureless spectra associated with high-mass black holes ($M_rm BHsim 10^8,M_odot$). Both events show optical precursors consistent with shock dissipation from stream self-intersection. Their X-ray emission is luminous ($L_rm Xsim 10^44,rm erg,s^-1$), highly variable (with minimum observed variability timescales […]

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A generalized synthetic control algorithm for sparse functional data

Posted by dbos February 25, 2026March 9, 2026UCSD / Salk

Kavli Affiliate: Wesley Thompson | Authors: Lucy Shao, Kilian M. Pohl and Wesley K. Thompson | Summary: The Synthetic Control Method (SCM) and its interactive factor model generalizations (GSC) are powerful for estimating causal effects from panel data but are not easily applied when follow-up is irregular or sparse, common features of biomedical cohorts. We […]

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Designing heterostructures to control oxygen stoichiometry in helimagnetic perovskite strontium ferrite

Posted by klaurent February 25, 2026March 9, 2026Cornell

Kavli Affiliate: David Muller | Summary:A large challenge in determining the physics of helimagnetic SrFeO3 is in stabilizing the stoichiometric chemical phase over long enough time scales to conduct extensive measurements. Degradation in SrFeO3 manifests mainly as a crossover from metallic to insulating behavior. Using a combination of electronic transport and density functional theory, we […]

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The DECam MAGIC Survey: Uncovering the Tidal Tails of the Crater II Dwarf Galaxy

Posted by klaurent February 24, 2026Chicago

Kavli Affiliate: Alexander Ji | Summary:Crater II (CraII), a large and low-density dwarf spheroidal galaxy, has unusual observed properties that are difficult to reproduce in cold dark matter simulations. Ongoing tidal disruption may help explain the discrepancies, as evidenced by the recent discovery of tidal tails. Here we present metallicity-sensitive narrowband photometry of the Ca […]

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