Kavli Affiliate: Renxin Xu | Summary:Thermal X-ray pulse-profile modeling depends on the angular and spectral properties of neutron star atmosphere emission. We construct a compact empirical approximation to the specific intensity using eight coefficients for the angular dependence and five for a normalized spectral kernel. The angular prescription is motivated by the formal solution of […]

Kavli Affiliate: Feng Long| Summary: High-dimensional mean testing is challenging under strong dependence and heavy tails, since classical Hotelling statistics are ill posed and regularized versions based on sample moments remain sensitive to outliers. This paper develops a robust regularized Hotelling framework for one-sample mean inference under elliptical distributions. The proposed HRST statistic combines a […]

Kavli Affiliate: Luis Ho | Summary:Star-forming structures of scale $sim0.5-1,mathrmkpc$, dubbed ‘giant’ star-forming clumps, are routinely detected in unlensed surveys of $z > 1$ galaxies. Two scenarios are usually invoked to explain their existence — genuine physical structures or resolution-driven artifacts — yet distinguishing between them requires characterizing their internal structure. In this work, part […]

Kavli Affiliate: Luis Ho | Summary:Dense star-forming regions in $z>1$ galaxies, often termed ‘clumps’, have been studied across two distinct regimes of telescope resolution, each motivating interpretations in tension with the other. In the SCALES series (Star-Forming Clumps As Layered Emergent Structures), we aim to connect star-forming structures across scales, from the $sim100,mathrmpc$ clumps in […]

Kavli Affiliate: Renxin Xu | Summary:Thermal X-ray pulse profiles constrain neutron-star masses and radii through the effects of gravitational light bending and rotation on surface emission. The precision anticipated from the enhanced X-ray Timing and Polarimetry (eXTP) mission motivates more accurate analytic light-bending formulae that retain the efficiency needed for repeated model evaluations. We derive […]