August 2026 – Page 6 – Kavli Institute Pre-Print Publications

The VariableTNG project: how baryonic mechanisms shape galaxy properties

Posted by klaurent August 18, 2026August 25, 2026Peking, This Week: Astrophysics

Kavli Affiliate: Luis Ho | Summary:We use 50 Sobol-sampled VariableTNG simulations, varying eight subgrid parameters at fixed cosmology and initial conditions, to determine which baryonic processes regulate galaxies and black holes at $z=6$ and $z=8$. We compare the simulations with recent high-redshift measurements of the stellar mass function, star-forming main sequence, stellar and gas-phase mass-metallicity […]

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Elevated recessive lethal frequencies drive hatching failure following near extinction in ‘Alalā, the Hawaiian crow

Posted by klaurent August 18, 2026August 25, 2026Rockefeller, This Week: Neuroscience

Kavli Affiliate: Erich Jarvis | Authors: Christopher C. Kyriazis, Stefanie Grosser, Yasmin Foster, Bryce Masuda, Alison M. Flanagan, Jennifer Balacco, Erin Datlof, Olivier Fedrigo, Giulio Formenti, Catherine E. Grueber, Jacqueline A. Robinson, Jolene T. Sutton, Alan Tracey, Jonathan M.D. Wood, Erich D. Jarvis, Oliver A. Ryder, Bruce C. Robertson and Aryn P. Wilder | Summary: […]

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Investigating The Effects of Early Dark Energy on Large-scale Structure Within the EDENS Suite

Posted by klaurent August 17, 2026August 25, 2026Chicago, This Week: Astrophysics

Kavli Affiliate: Katrin Heitmann | Summary:Early Dark Energy (EDE) models have been suggested as a possible solution to the so-called Hubble Tension, a discrepancy of the measurement of the Hubble constant at early and late times. In this paper, we investigate the effects of EDE on large-scale structure probes of cosmology via the EDENS (Early […]

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Confirmation of the Finch Flatter-Fainter Relation for the Quadruple Images of Lensed Point Sources

Posted by klaurent August 17, 2026August 25, 2026MIT, This Week: Astrophysics

Kavli Affiliate: Paul Schechter | Summary:Finch et al (2002) derived relations for the summed absolute magnifications of quadruply lensed images that vary inversely with flattening in two alternative isothermal gravitational potential models. However, they did not elaborate on the selection effects this "flatter-fainter” relation induces in actual lensed systems. We test the relation against the […]

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The Roman Coronagraph Community Participation Program: pre-launch reference star list and impact of reference star properties on post-processing performance

Posted by klaurent August 17, 2026August 25, 2026Stanford, This Week: Astrophysics

Kavli Affiliate: Bruce Macintosh | Summary:The upcoming Roman Coronagraph will be the first high-contrast instrument in space capable of high-order wavefront sensing and control technologies, a critical technology demonstration for the proposed Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) that aims to directly image and characterize habitable exoEarths. The nominal Roman Coronagraph observing plan involves alternating observations of […]

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The VariableTNG project: Unveiling the physical drivers of galaxy quenching

Posted by klaurent August 17, 2026August 25, 2026Peking, This Week: Astrophysics

Kavli Affiliate: Luis Ho | Summary:Understanding the physical processes that regulate galaxy quenching is a key challenge in galaxy formation and evolution. The VariableTNG (VTNG) project provides a laboratory to investigate these processes, as it systematically varies eight parameters of galaxy formation while keeping the initial conditions fixed, allowing the effects of individual feedback prescriptions […]

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Sr and Ba yields of the First Generation(s) of stars: Constraints from metal-poor stars

Posted by klaurent August 17, 2026August 25, 2026MIT, This Week: Astrophysics

Kavli Affiliate: Anna Frebel | Summary:We present our chemical abundance analysis of ten new extremely metal-poor stars with $-4.05leqmbox[Fe/H]leq-2.33$, based on high-resolution (R $sim28,000$) Magellan/MIKE spectra. Eight of our stars have low heavy-element abundances of $mbox[Sr/H]<-4.5$ and $mbox[Ba/H]<-4.0$, making them Small Accreted Stellar System (SASS) stars. Four are hyper neutron-capture-element poor with $mbox[Sr/H]<-5.0$, including Gaia […]

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Large population sizes shape genome evolution in barnacles

Posted by dbos August 17, 2026August 25, 2026Columbia, This Week: Neuroscience

Kavli Affiliate: Scott Small | Authors: Angel G Rivera-Colón, Scott T Small, Erin Jezuit, John P Wares and Andrew D Kern | Summary: Population size is a key factor underlying the mode and tempo of evolution, particularly as it relates to the strength of selection and drift. While the mechanisms underlying the interactions between population […]

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Cyclops: LiDAR as a Camera That Dreams in Color

Posted by klaurent August 17, 2026Caltech

Kavli Affiliate: Wei Gao| Summary:Conventionally, robotic perception relies heavily on cameras due to the rich semantic texture they provide. However, their performance degrades significantly in low-light or high-dynamic-range environments. Conversely, while Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) captures illumination-invariant geometric and intensity properties, the resulting data are typically single-channel and sparse, creating a significant modality gap […]

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Monolithic high density integrated photonics on bulk lithium niobate

Posted by klaurent August 16, 2026Delft

Kavli Affiliate: Simon Groblacher | Summary:Functional electro-optic (EO) tunable photonic integrated circuits are crucial to next-generation information processing and advanced computing, where ferroelectric materials such as lithium niobate (LiNbO3) provide outstanding optical properties and versatile tuning mechanisms. However, beyond achieving high-performance devices, practical deployment of LiNbO3 photonic integrated circuits requires rapid and cost-effective scale-up, which […]

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