All Disciplines – Page 2 – Kavli Institute Pre-Print Publications

I-Band Asymptotic Giant Branch (IAGB) Stars: II. A First Estimate of their Precision and a Differential Zero Point

Posted by klaurent February 15, 2026February 18, 2026Chicago, This Week: Astrophysics

Kavli Affiliate: Wendy Freedman | Summary:Hubble Space Telescope (HST) observations of 92 galaxies that have a strong showing of I-band Asymptotic Giant Branch (IAGB) stars in their color-magnitude diagrams (CMDs), are used to measure the relative offset between the mean apparent I-band magnitudes of the IAGB population and the corresponding apparent I-band magnitudes of the […]

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I-Band Asymptotic Giant Branch (IAGB) Stars: I. Exploring a New Standard Candle for the Extragalactic Distance Scale

Posted by klaurent February 15, 2026February 18, 2026Chicago, This Week: Astrophysics

Kavli Affiliate: Wendy Freedman | Summary:In the I-band color-magnitude diagrams (CMD) of resolved nearby galaxies, the reddest asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars form a previously unremarked-upon, but nevertheless distinct and easily-identified population of high-luminosity stars. Hereafter we refer to this population as being comprised of I-Band AGB (IAGB) stars. Identifying these stars in the Large […]

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S-PLUS: Beyond Spectroscopy IV. Stellar Parameters and Elemental-abundance Ratios for Six Million Stars from DR4 and First Results for the Magellanic Clouds

Posted by klaurent February 15, 2026February 18, 2026Peking, This Week: Astrophysics

Kavli Affiliate: Huawei Zhang | Summary:We combine narrow/medium-band filter photometry from the Southern Photometric Local Universe Survey (S-PLUS) DR4 with ultra broad-band filter photometry from Gaia EDR3 to derive fundamental stellar parameters ($T_rm eff$, $log g$, [Fe/H], ages) and elemental-abundance ratios ([C/Fe] and [$α$/Fe]) for 5.4 million stars in the Galaxy (4.9 million dwarfs and […]

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VENUS: Strong-lensing model of MACS J1931.8-2635 — revealing the farthest multiply imaged supernova

Posted by klaurent February 15, 2026February 18, 2026Peking, This Week: Astrophysics

Kavli Affiliate: Kohei Inayoshi | Summary:We present a parametric strong-lensing model for the galaxy cluster MACS J1931.8-2635 ($z_l = 0.35$), accompanying the detection of the spectroscopically confirmed SN Eos at $z = 5.13$ (Coulter et al. 2026). We identify 10 new multiple-image systems in recent VENUS JWST/NIRCam imaging, so that the model is constrained with […]

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Zebra finch females flexibly communicate with each other and with AI-driven acoustic interaction models

Posted by dbos February 14, 2026February 18, 2026Columbia, This Week: Neuroscience

Kavli Affiliate: Sarah Woolley | Authors: Logan S James, Benjamin Hoffman, Jen-Yu Liu, Marius Miron, Milad Alizadeh, Emmanuel Fernandez, Matthieu Geist, Diane Kim, Aza Raskin, Jon T Sakata, Emmanuel Chemla, Olivier Pietquin and Sarah C Woolley | Summary: Vocal interactions are widespread across animals and important for many social behaviors (1–4). For example, during human […]

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Cortical maps diverge, representations converge along cortical hierarchy

Posted by dbos February 14, 2026February 18, 2026Hopkins, This Week: Neuroscience

Kavli Affiliate: Martin Lindquist | Authors: Bogdan Petre, Martin A Lindquist and Tor Wager | Summary: Brain maps (e.g. retinotopy, somatotopy) vary across individuals. This is thought to reflect underlying computational differences. However, artificial neural networks (ANNs) show that similar performance and internal representations can coexist with diverse circuit layouts. Consequently, we tested the presumption […]

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Magnonic spontaneous oscillation induced by parametric pumping

Posted by klaurent February 14, 2026February 18, 2026Chicago, This Week: Astrophysics

Kavli Affiliate: Clarence Chang | Summary:Spontaneous dynamic systems have attracted significant attention for their rich underlying physics such as phase-locking and synchronization. In this work, we report a new mechanism of generating magnetic spontaneous oscillation via parametric pumping. By applying a pump tone to excite propagating spin waves in a yttrium iron garnet delay line, […]

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Flux Pumped Kerr-Free Parametric Amplifier

Posted by klaurent February 14, 2026February 18, 2026Berkeley, This Week: Nanoscience

Kavli Affiliate: Irfan Siddiqi | Summary:We propose a flux-pumped superconducting parametric amplifier based on symmetrically threaded superconducting quantum interference devices (SQUIDs) that achieves a Kerr-free operating point under suitable drive conditions. Eliminating the Kerr nonlinearity is advantageous for quantum-limited amplification, as it mitigates unwanted distortions in squeezing and prevents degradation of both gain and quantum […]

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Programmable RNA detection generates DNA barcodes for multiplexed phage-host interaction screening

Posted by dbos February 13, 2026February 18, 2026This Week: Neuroscience, UCSF

Kavli Affiliate: Seth Shipman | Authors: Jihoon Han and Seth Shipman | Summary: Here, we introduce Detectrons, modular biosensors that couples programmable toehold switches with retron-mediated reverse transcription to transduce RNA inputs into unique DNA barcodes. The ability to convert dynamic RNA signals into durable DNA records within living cells unlocks powerful new modes of […]

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Sequential BP-based Decoding of QLDPC Codes

Posted by klaurent February 13, 2026February 18, 2026Chicago, This Week: Astrophysics

Kavli Affiliate: Salman Habib | Summary:Quantum low-density parity-check (QLDPC) codes are a leading approach to quantum error correction, yet conventional belief propagation (BP) decoders often perform poorly, primarily due to non-convergence exacerbated by stabilizer constraints, which induce short cycles and degeneracy. We propose two scheduling variants, sequential check node scheduling (SCNS) and sequential variable node […]

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