Stochastic search processes are a fundamental part of natural and artificial systems. In such settings, the number of searchers is rarely constant: new agents may be recruited while others can abandon the search. Despite the ubiquity of these dynamics, their combined influence on search efficiency remains unexplored. Here we present a general framework for stochastic search in which independent agents progressively join and leave the process, a mechanism we term “dynamic redundancy and mortality” (DRM). Under minimal assumptions on the underlying search dynamics, this framework yields exact first-passage time statistics. It further reveals surprising connections to stochastic resetting, including a regime in which the resetting mean first-passage time emerges as a universal lower bound for DRM, as well as regimes in which DRM search is faster. We illustrate our results through a detailed analysis of one-dimensional Brownian DRM search. Altogether, this Letter provides a rigorous foundation for studying first-passage processes with a fluctuating number of searchers, with direct relevance across physical, biological, and algorithmic systems.

While molecular conformational changes significantly influence drop pinch-off, the governing mechanisms by which conformational evolution reshapes capillary-driven breakup remain elusive. Here, we isolate the role of conformation using charge regulation to drive conformational transitions in weak polyelectrolytes. We demonstrate that dissociation-driven chain expansion and counterion-mediated screening compete to generate nonmonotonic pinch-off dynamics. Furthermore, a slip-dominated intermediate thinning regime is identified, which is suppressed by concentration-dependent topological constraints. These results establish a physical picture in which conformation reorganizes pinch-off dynamics, while topological constraints select the route to breakup.

Many animals exhibit remarkable regenerative abilities, yet the mechanical processes that drive large-scale tissue reshaping remain challenging to characterize. Direct measurements of stress during such remodeling are difficult, while changes in morphology are readily observed. Motivated by wound healing in Clytia jellyfish, we introduce a theoretical framework that infers mechanical stress directly from shape evolution. We model the transformation as a morphoelastic process in quasi-two-dimensional geometry and exploit conformal mappings to obtain analytical expressions for the stress distribution. This data-driven approach provides a general method to connect observed shapes with the underlying mechanics of regeneration, offering a quantitative framework to study morphogenesis.

In the presence of a weak gravitational wave (GW) background, astrophysical binary systems act as high-quality resonators, with efficient transfer of energy and momentum between the orbit and a harmonic GW leading to potentially detectable orbital perturbations. In this Letter, we develop and apply a novel modeling and analysis framework that describes the imprints of GWs on binary systems in a fully time-resolved manner to study the sensitivity of lunar laser ranging, satellite laser ranging, and pulsar timing to both resonant and nonresonant GW backgrounds. We demonstrate that optimal data collection, modeling, and analysis lead to projected sensitivities that are orders of magnitude stronger than previously appreciated, opening up a new possibility for probing the physics-rich but notoriously challenging-to-access $\mathrm{\mu }\mathrm{Hz}$ frequency band. This improvement arises from retaining accumulated orbital dephasing in the measured residual and scales quadratically with the ratio of the observing time to the unperturbed binary period, up to eccentricity-dependent factors. We also discuss improved prospects for the detection of the stochastic fluctuations of ultralight dark matter, which may analogously perturb the binary orbits.

Using $(10087\pm 44)\times {10}^{6}J/\psi$ events collected with the BESIII detector, we study the semileptonic decay ${\mathrm{\Xi }}^{-}\to \mathrm{\Lambda }{e}^{-}{\overline{\nu }}_e$ for the first time at an electron-positron collider. The absolute branching fraction is determined for the first time to be $(3.60\pm 0.40_{\mathrm{stat}}\pm 0.10_{\mathrm{syst}})\times {10}^{-4}$, which is 3.9 standard deviations below the world average. In addition, using an 11-dimensional angular analysis, the axial-vector to vector coupling $g_{\text{av}}$ is determined to be $0.18\pm 0.07_{\mathrm{stat}}\pm 0.01_{\mathrm{syst}}$. These results are used to test various SU(3)-flavor effective models. Under the SU(3)-flavor symmetry limit, the axial charge is found to be $g_A^H=0.22\pm 0.08_{\mathrm{stat}}\pm 0.02_{\mathrm{syst}}$. Despite using only 5% of the statistics of previous experiments, this analysis achieves a comparable precision for the axial charge.

We map the phase diagram of a two-mode atom-molecule Bose-Einstein condensate with Fano-Feshbach and coherent three-body recombination (cTBR) terms. The standard second-order phase transition observed as the molecular energy is tuned through the Fano-Feshbach resonance is replaced by a first-order transition when cTBR becomes prominent, due to a double-well structure in the free energy landscape. This transition is associated with atom-molecule entanglement, bistability, and molecular metastability. Our results establish cTBR as a powerful knob for quantum state engineering and control of reaction dynamics in ultracold chemistry.

Quantum spin liquids are elusive long-range entangled states. Motivated by experiments in Rydberg quantum simulators, recent excitement has centered on the possibility of dynamically preparing a state with quantum spin-liquid correlations even when the ground-state phase diagram does not exhibit such a topological phase. Understanding the microscopic nature of such quantum spin “lake” states and their relationship to equilibrium spin-liquid order remains an essential question. Here, we extend the use of approximately symmetric neural quantum states for real-time evolution and directly simulate the dynamical preparation in systems of up to $N=384$ atoms. We analyze a variety of spin-liquid diagnostics as a function of the preparation protocol and optimize the extent of the quantum spin lake thus obtained. In the optimal case, the prepared state shows spin-liquid properties extending over half the system size, with a topological entanglement entropy plateauing close to $\gamma =\ln 2$. We extract two physical length scales, ${\lambda }_e$ and ${\xi }_m$, which constrain the extent of the quantum spin lake $\ell$ from above and below.

Acoustic levitation enables noncontact manipulation using sound waves. While conventional methods entrap particles at pressure nodes (zero-pressure region surrounded by high pressure), we demonstrate stable acoustic levitation and translation in midair within a high-pressure axial core of a zero-order Bessel beam for the first time. The trap operates at a long working distance, up to 397 mm ($46.6\lambda$), supports simultaneous multiparticle levitation, and maintains stability over obstacles. Our work establishes a new paradigm for single-sided acoustic manipulation in midair.

We investigate the mechanisms involved in the thermomigration of interstitial hydrogen in metals. Using irreversible thermodynamics, we develop a comprehensive mechanistic model to capture the controlling effects. Crucially, through validation against published experimental data, our results demonstrate that an electron-wind effect plays a significant role, particularly for materials in which the thermomigration direction matches the heat flux. These findings provide new insights into the factors that affect the localization of solutes in metals. Moreover, our results indicate that atomistic models may be inadequate for detailed thermomigration studies due to the omission of electronic effects.

Random walkers usually diffuse according to Fick’s law. On average, they move down the gradient of their concentration and, in the absence of external force, tend to distribute themselves uniformly. In some experiments, however, this familiar notion is at odds with observation. Sand grains, for instance, gather along the nodal lines of a vibrated elastic plate to form a Chladni figure, thus accumulating where fluctuations are weak—a fact that escapes the reach of Fick’s law. On theoretical grounds, Büttiker [Transport as a consequence of state-dependent diffusion, Z. Phys. B Condens. Matter 68, 161 (1987)] and Landauer [Motion out of noisy states, J. Stat. Phys. 53, 233 (1988)] proposed that particles submitted to a nonuniform temperature field would indeed gather where the temperature is low. They also predicted that, in the presence of a potential force, a nonuniform temperature could drive a steady current of particles, powered only by noise. Here, we present an experimental realization of these phenomena in a macroscopic system, which confirms the quantitative predictions of Büttiker.

Understanding the thermal behavior of quantum many-body pure states is one of the most fundamental issues in quantum thermodynamics. It is widely known that typical pure states yield vanishing work, just as thermal states do, when one restricts to local operations that cannot access correlations among subsystems. However, it remains unclear whether this equivalence to thermal states persists under local operations and classical communication (LOCC), where classically accessible correlations can be exploited for work extraction. In this Letter, we establish criteria for determining whether many-body pure states remain equivalent to thermal states even under LOCC, and show that this thermal equivalence is governed by their multipartite quantum correlation structure. We show that states with asymptotically maximal multipartite entanglement, such as Haar-random states, cannot yield extensive work under LOCC, whereas some states with limited multipartite entanglement, such as constant-degree graph states, allow extensive work extraction despite being locally indistinguishable from thermal states. Thus, our Letter provides a refined operational notion of thermal equivalence beyond the traditional local regime, which is becoming increasingly important due to the recent expansion of experimentally accessible operations.

Using the worldline quantum field theory formalism, we compute conservative contributions to the scattering angle and impulse for classical black hole scattering at fifth post-Minkowskian and second self-force order. This four-loop calculation involves nonplanar Feynman integrals and requires advanced integration-by-parts reduction, novel differential-equation strategies, and efficient boundary-integral algorithms to solve a system of hundreds of master integrals in four integral families on high-performance computing systems. The resulting function space includes multiple polylogarithms as well as iterated integrals with a $K3$ period, which generate a spurious velocity divergence at $v/c=\sqrt{8}/3$, $\gamma =3$. This divergence is present in the potential region and must be canceled by contributions from the radiative memory region, while its dimensional-regularization pole should cancel against the radiative tail region. As the standard use of Feynman propagators fails to ensure this cancellation, we instead propose a “($\gamma -3$)” conservative prescription that realizes both cancellations, leading to a physically sensible answer. All available low-velocity checks of our result against the post-Newtonian literature are satisfied.

We apply harmonic analysis to study the $T\overline{T}$-deformed torus partition function. We first express the CFT partition functions in terms of Maass waveforms, including the Eisenstein series and cusp forms. These basis functions turn out to deform in a very simple way under the $T\overline{T}$ deformation. The spectral decomposition provides a numerically stable and efficient method to compute the partition function at finite values of the deformation parameter $\lambda$, allowing us to clearly resolve the analytic structure of the partition function as a function of $\lambda$. The resulting deformed partition function exhibits a Hagedorn singularity. Building on the harmonic analysis approach, we propose a natural analytic continuation beyond the Hagedorn singularity, which enables us to compute the full partition function for any value of $\lambda$.

A measurement of the flavor-untagged decay-time-integrated $CP$ asymmetry in the flavor-specific decay $B_s^0\to D_s^{-}{\pi }^{+}$, $⟨A_{\text{untagged}}^s⟩$, is performed using proton-proton collision data collected by the LHCb experiment between 2016 and 2018 at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV, corresponding to a total integrated luminosity of $5.4{\mathrm{fb}}^{-1}$. The $CP$ asymmetry is measured in two $D_s^{-}$ meson decay modes, $D_s^{-}\to K^{-}{K}^{+}{\pi }^{-}$ and $D_s^{-}\to {\pi }^{-}{\pi }^{+}{\pi }^{-}$. The combined result, $⟨A_{\text{untagged}}^s⟩=(-1.4\pm 5.9(\mathrm{stat})\pm 1.1(\mathrm{syst}))\times {10}^{-3}$, is consistent with the Standard Model expectation and provides a direct constraint on new physics in tree-level $b$-hadron decays.

We present the first calculation of hadron production in deep-inelastic scattering (DIS) at finite transverse momentum to next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) in perturbative QCD. To overcome the long-standing challenge of infrared divergences in semi-inclusive processes with identified final state hadrons at finite transverse momentum, we implement the recently developed $q_T$-subtraction framework based on the recoil-free jet definition. By utilizing the winner-take-all recombination scheme, we achieve a consistent factorization for hadron-jet associated production, enabling the inclusion of $\mathcal{O}({\alpha }_s^3)$ corrections. Our NNLO results generally demonstrate an improved convergence of the perturbative expansion and a reduction in scale uncertainties compared to previous next-to-leading order ones, especially for comparisons to multiplicity data from the ZEUS Collaboration. This Letter provides a high precision theoretical foundation for the upcoming electron-ion collider era and establishes a new benchmark for the exploration of the nucleon’s three-dimensional structure.

Nonthermal attractors govern the emergent self-similar dynamics of far-from-equilibrium quantum systems, from ultrarelativistic nuclear collisions to cold-atom experiments. Within the framework of adiabatic hydrodynamization, the approach to a nonthermal attractor is described by the decay of excited states of an effective Hamiltonian. Using an exactly solvable kinetic theory—the longitudinally expanding, overoccupied gluon plasma dominated by small-angle elastic scattering—we establish a direct correspondence between the eigenmodes of adiabatic hydrodynamization and the quasinormal mode spectrum of the nonthermal attractor. This equivalence suggests a general framework for identifying universal dynamical structures in nonequilibrium systems. As a byproduct, we derive analytic prescaling solutions for strongly longitudinally expanding systems.

Significant research advances have led to a consensus that the Fermi-Hubbard model and its extended variants are archetypical frameworks for elucidating the intertwined relationship between stripe orders and superconductivity in hole-doped high-$T_c$ materials. Notably, the Hubbard quantum simulator has recently achieved several remarkable breakthroughs, e.g., being cooled down to the cryogenic regime and enabling the observation of stable fluctuating stripes. However, the microscopic mechanism underlying the $d$-wave pairing of electrons in the presence of stripes at low temperatures remains poorly understood due to the intricate interplay between strongly correlated effects and non-negligible thermal fluctuations. Here, we conduct a close investigation of a partially filled stripe in the representative $t\text{−}J$ and $t\text{−}{t}^{\prime }\text{−}U$ models with both numerical and analytical methods. Analogous to quantum gas microscopy, the perfect sampling technique allows us to obtain the high-confidence-level statistics of the Fock basis states appearing in the ground-state wave function. In a novel physical paradigm, these data demonstrate that two spinons with opposite chiralities tend to pair spontaneously into a singlet state, thereby naturally giving rise to the $d$-wave pairing pattern. Then, using the updated effective theory of quantum colored string, we have reconstructed the wave function and have determined the nature of spinon pairing and its connection to the $d$-wave sign structure of pair-pair correlation. Furthermore, spinon singlet pairs enable the establishment of a long-range pair-pair correlation between the two stripes. Our Letter offers new insights into the microscopic physics of stripes and paves the way for further exploration of multistripe-mediated pairing mechanisms in the Fermi-Hubbard model.