July 2, 2026 – Kavli Institute Pre-Print Publications

Metallic Ultrasound Waveguides as a Distributed Tactile Sensing Platform for Contact Localization, Force Estimation, and Material Class Discrimination

Posted by klaurent July 2, 2026Caltech

Kavli Affiliate: Morteza Gharib| Summary:Tactile sensing is central to how robotic systems interact with the real world, yet current solutions face a tradeoff between sensing area and system complexity. This work investigates metallic ultrasound waveguides as distributed tactile sensors fully interrogated from a single proximal transducer. Using cylindrical indenters, we characterized the acoustic response to […]

Continue..

Coupling loss and transmission in a multimode fiber-fed Virtually Imaged Phased Array (VIPA)

Posted by klaurent July 2, 2026Harvard

Kavli Affiliate: David Charbonneau | Summary:The Virtually Imaged Phased Array (VIPA) is a spectral disperser that has seen increasing adoption across various applications, including optical telecommunications, high-resolution spectroscopy, and LiDAR. Although VIPAs are typically fed by single-mode optical fiber in these applications, there is growing interest in using a multimode optical fiber feed to enable […]

Continue..

Clinical Relevant Immunosuppressive Drugs Differentially Modulate Axonal Outgrowth from Human Stem Cell Derived Neurons

Posted by dbos July 2, 2026July 8, 2026This Week: Neuroscience, UCSD / Salk

Kavli Affiliate: Mark H. Tuszynski | Authors: Gunnar H.D. Poplawski, Chase Weinholtz, Grace Woodruff, Ruhel Ahmad, Wyatt Bunner, Rodrigo Gonzales and Mark H. Tuszynski | Summary: Neural stem cell (NSC) transplantation is a promising strategy for repairing the injured spinal cord, but transplanted cells typically require immunosuppressive therapy to prevent rejection—even for induced pluripotent stem […]

Continue..

Uncovering internal states with a robust shared-state multi-neuron GLM-HMM framework

Posted by dbos July 2, 2026July 8, 2026Hopkins, This Week: Neuroscience

Kavli Affiliate: Adam S. Charles and Patricia Janak | Authors: Aamna Lawrence, Eva Yezerets, Patricia H Janak and Adam Charles | Summary: Neural systems exhibit multiple firing states that reflect an organism’s internal state and modulate the relationship between external environmental stimuli and behavior. Several studies have inferred these latent states by supplementing the traditional […]

Continue..

A 3D Brain Geometry Toolkit for Multisite Neuroimaging Analysis

Posted by dbos July 2, 2026July 8, 2026This Week: Neuroscience, UCSD / Salk

Kavli Affiliate: Anders Dale | Authors: Yanghee Im, Melody J.Y. Kang, Boris A. Gutman, Pravesh Parekh, Diliana Pecheva, Anders M. Dale, Ole A. Andreassen, Paul M. Thompson, Christopher R.K. Ching and for the ENIGMA Bipolar Disorder Working Groupz | Summary: Compared to traditional gross volumetrics, surface-based models provide greater spatial precision for understanding brain alterations […]

Continue..

One More Time: Revisiting Neural Quantum States from a Reinforcement Learning Perspective

Posted by klaurent July 2, 2026July 6, 2026Delft, This Week: Nanoscience

Kavli Affiliate: Eliska Greplova | Summary:Neural quantum states (NQS) provide a flexible and scalable framework for approximating quantum many-body wavefunctions. Among NQS parameterizations, autoregressive models are especially attractive because they enable exact, independent sampling from the Born distribution, avoiding the autocorrelation and mixing issues of Markov chain methods. Yet their optimization remains comparatively underexplored: Adam […]

Continue..

Pulsar Backend for 21 CentiMeter Array: Implementation of Data Acquisition and Initial Results

Posted by klaurent July 2, 2026July 6, 2026Peking, This Week: Astrophysics

Kavli Affiliate: Kejia Lee | Summary:We implemented a data acquisition system for 21 CentiMeter Array (21CMA), enabling baseband observations targeting pulsars and fast radio bursts. Based on the Radio Frequency System-on-Chip (RFSoC) platform, the new backend is capable of instantaneously covering the effective bandwidth from 50 to 350 MHz, with multi-board synchronization achieved at the […]

Continue..

Refined Sensitivity Estimates for Single-Molecule Magnet Dark Matter Detectors

Posted by klaurent July 2, 2026July 6, 2026This Week: Astrophysics, Tokyo

Kavli Affiliate: Shigeki Matsumoto | Summary:We revisit the sensitivity of Single Molecule Magnet (SMM) crystals as detectors for low-mass dark matter. In previous work, we established the concept of the “magnetic bubble chamber”, where energy deposited by dark matter triggers a magnetic avalanche in a metastable crystal. The original sensitivity estimates relied on a conservative […]

Continue..

TESS’s First Bound Microlensing Planet: A Binary Microlensing Event Revealing a Planetary Companion toward the Galactic Plane

Posted by klaurent July 2, 2026July 6, 2026MIT, This Week: Astrophysics

Kavli Affiliate: Michael Fausnaugh | Summary:We report the discovery of Gaia23bra b, the first gravitationally bound microlensing planet detected by the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). Initially flagged as a single-lens event by the Gaia Science Alerts system, Gaia23bra was serendipitously observed by TESS over two consecutive sectors. During those TESS sectors, the light curve […]

Continue..

Lattice study of primordial black hole formation in bumpy axion inflation

Posted by klaurent July 2, 2026July 6, 2026This Week: Astrophysics, Tokyo

Kavli Affiliate: Masahiro Kawasaki | Summary:We study primordial black hole (PBH) formation in axion $U(1)$ inflation using lattice simulations. In axion $U(1)$ inflation with a bumpy potential, the curvature perturbations can be enhanced in a narrow range of wavenumbers, potentially leading to PBH formation. After confirming that our lattice simulations reproduced the known curvature power […]

Continue..