Papers for Tuesday, Feb 11 2025

The cosmic microwave background (CMB) traveled the cosmos long before it reached our telescopes today. Consequently, it is one of the best probes of fundamental processes in the early Universe that we could hope to observe. The cosmological information is encoded in two distinct ways. First, we can investigate how the CMB photons in one sky-direction are distributed across energy by focusing on information carried by the CMB frequency spectrum. Second, we can compare the flux of CMB photons that we receive from different directions, this time at a fixed frequency, to study the CMB anisotropies. In the past six decades since the serendipitous discovery of the CMB in 1965, cosmologists have advanced both frontiers in terms of theory and observation. In this chapter, I will give a broad-brush overview about how the CMB spectrum forms and evolves throughout cosmic history, mentioning CMB anisotropies only on the side. I will attempt to highlight some of the key theoretical ingredients that allowed us to establish the detailed picture of the Universe we have today. With this, I hope to convince you that, beyond the impressive past successes, the CMB still holds many treasures for us, and will keep generations of scientists busy for the decades to come.

In this paper, we derive the primordial black hole (PBH) mass function using the Press-Schechter formalism, particularly using the excursion set approach, which is a powerful statistical method for obtaining the mass functions and modeling the formation of PBHs in the early universe by invoking the concepts like random walks. The excursion set formalism provides a framework for calculating the mass function by tracking the evolution of density fluctuations in the primordial universe and their subsequent collapse into PBHs uponcrossing critical barriers. By applying this theory, we compute the PBH mass function and explore its dependence on key parameters such as the peak mass,standard deviation, and initial PBH fraction. We also incorporate the effects of observational constraints, including microlensing and Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) measurements, to place limits on the PBH population across different mass ranges. Our results offer important insights into the role of PBHs as potential dark matter candidates and their contribution to the overall matter content in the universe. The derived mass function provides a basis for further exploration of PBH formation, growth, and their possible detection through gravitational waves and other cosmological signatures.

In active galactic nuclei, X-ray illumination of the accretion disk around a supermassive black hole (SMBH) results in the production of the K$\alpha$ fluorescent line of iron, which provides insights into accretion physics and SMBH spins. In this work, we studied X-ray reflection from the accretion disk in the Seyfert 1 galaxy NGC 3783 using all the data collected by the Chandra High Energy Transmission Grating Spectrometer. We used hardness-ratio diagrams to distinguish between different spectral states and conducted spectral analysis of all the multi-epoch datasets, as well as the source in the observed spectral states. Our hardness analysis indicates that the source gradually evolved into a harder state (2013-2016) compared to the previous epochs (2000-2001). Our spectral modeling implies that the relativistically broadened iron emission from the innermost accretion disk is associated with a near-maximal SMBH spin ($a=0.98^{+0.02}_{-0.12}$) in all the datasets, even though the hard state was present in 17% of them, and a consistent spin is also found in different spectral states. In addition, the narrow, bright Fe K$\alpha$ line from distant regions has an excess velocity of $620^{+80}_{-70}$ km s$^{-1}$ relative to the rest frame, implying that some distant layers of the disk could be twisted. Our results suggest that, despite long-term changes in the X-ray brightness of NGC 3783, likely caused by eclipsing material, the relativistic reflection can be constrained thanks to the substantial counts provided by multi-epoch observations, while a warped disk structure may be present.

Weakly-collisional plasmas, such as the solar wind or the intra-cluster medium (ICM) of galaxy clusters, evolve in the presence of dynamically strong magnetic fields. The turbulent dynamo can amplify magnetic fields to such levels by converting turbulent kinetic energy into magnetic energy. While extensively studied in collisional magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulations, the weakly-collisional regime has only been explored recently. Here, we determine the properties of the weakly-collisional turbulent dynamo in the exponential ``kinematic" growth phase in both the subsonic and the previously unexplored supersonic regime of turbulence, using hybrid particle-in-cell (HPIC) and MHD simulations. We conduct a large parameter study, fixing the magnetic Reynolds number, Rm = 500, and the initial ratio of the magnetic to kinetic energy, $(E_{\rm{mag}}/E_{\rm{kin}})_{0} = 10^{-10}$, and then vary the kinetic Reynolds number, Re = 500, 50, and 5, for the MHD simulations. In the HPIC runs, only Rm = 500 is controlled, while Re emerges self-consistently from wave-particle interactions. We find that the velocity and magnetic field structures, probability distribution functions, and power spectra of the HPIC runs are similar to that of the MHD dynamo with Re ~ 50-500 and Re ~ 500 in the subsonic and supersonic regimes, respectively. Using MHD scaling relations, we infer $\text{Re}_{\rm inferred}=480^{+170}_{-250}$ and $690^{+360}_{-360}$ in the subsonic and supersonic weakly-collisional plasma, respectively. Overall, we find that the turbulent dynamo shares similar physical properties in both weakly-collisional and collisional plasmas. Our results of the weakly-collisional turbulent dynamo may have relevant applications to the solar wind, weakly-collisional shocks, and the hot ICM.

To unlock the vast potential of the CMB trispectrum, we require both robust estimators and efficient computational tools. In this work, we introduce the public code PolySpec: a suite of quartic estimators designed to measure the amplitudes of a wide variety of inflationary templates, including local non-Gaussianity, effective field theory models, direction-dependent trispectra, spinning massive particle exchange, and weak gravitational lensing. PolySpec includes a python/cython implementation of each estimator derived in Paper 1 and has been carefully optimized to ensure efficient use of computational resources. We perform a broad range of validation tests, which demonstrate that the estimator is unbiased and minimum-variance, both in Gaussian and non-Gaussian regimes. In addition, we forecast constraints on various types of trispectra; this highlights the utility of CMB polarization and demonstrates that many models of primordial physics are poorly correlated with the simple templates considered in previous studies. This work lays the foundation for the Planck trispectrum analyses performed in Paper 3.

The J-region Asymptotic Giant Branch (JAGB) is an overdensity of stars in the near-infrared, attributed to carbon-rich asymptotic giant branch stars, and recently used as a standard candle for measuring extragalactic distances and the Hubble constant. Using JWST in Cycle 2, we extend JAGB measurements to 6 hosts of 9 Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) (NGC 2525, NGC 3147, NGC 3370, NGC 3447, NGC 5468, and NGC 5861), with two at $D \sim 40$ Mpc, all calibrated by the maser host NGC 4258. We investigate the effects of incompleteness and find that we are unable to recover a robust JAGB measurement in one of the two most distant hosts at $R \sim 40$ Mpc, NGC 3147. We compile all JWST JAGB observations in SNe Ia hosts, 15 galaxies hosting 18 SNe Ia, from the SH0ES and CCHP programs and employ all literature measures (mode, mean, median, model). We find no significant mean difference between these distances and those from HST Cepheids, $-0.03\pm0.02$ (stat) $\pm$ 0.05 (sys) mag. We find a difference of 0.11 $\pm$ 0.02 mag between JAGB mode measurements in the CCHP analyses of two fields in NGC 4258, a feature also seen in two SH0ES fields (see field-to-field variations in Li et al. 2024a), indicating significant field-to-field variation of JAGB measurements in NGC 4258 which produce a large absolute calibration uncertainty. Variations are also seen in the shape of the JAGB LF across galaxies so that different measures produce different values of the Hubble constant. We look for but do not (yet) find a standardizing relation between JAGB LF skew or color dependence and the apparent variation. Using the middle result of all JAGB measures to calibrate SNe Ia yields a Hubble constant of $H_0$ = 73.3 $\pm$ 1.4 (stat) $\pm$ 2.0 (sys) km/s/Mpc with the systematic dominated by apparent differences across NGC 4258 calibrating fields or their measures.

We forecast neutrino mass constraints using Stage IV CMB and large-scale structure surveys, focusing on kSZ tomography as an independent probe of the growth of cosmic structure. We take into account several realistic factors, including the kSZ optical depth degeneracy. Our baseline setup consists of CMB S4 temperature and polarization (but not lensing) information, DESI BAO, the LSST galaxy power spectrum, and a Planck like $\tau$ prior, yielding $\sigma(\sum m_\nu) = 32\, \rm{meV}$. Adding kSZ tomography improves this by a few percent, while a kSZ optical depth prior can push this improvement to over $15\%$, giving $\sigma(\sum m_\nu) = 27\, \rm{meV}$. When CMB lensing is included in the baseline setup, kSZ does not further improve neutrino mass constraints. We find promising prospects for a scenario combining futuristic CMB and galaxy surveys.

We report that the neutral hydrogen (HI) mass density of the Universe ($\rho_{HI}$) increases with cosmic time since $z \sim 5$, peaks at $z \sim 3$, and then decreases toward $z \sim 0$. This is the first result of Qz5, our spectroscopic survey of 63 quasars at $z \gtrsim 5$ with VLT/X-SHOOTER and Keck/ESI aimed at characterizing intervening HI gas absorbers at $z \sim 5$. The main feature of Qz5 is the high resolution ($R \sim 7000 - 9000$) of the spectra, which allows us to (1) accurately detect high column density HI gas absorbers in an increasingly neutral intergalactic medium at $z \sim 5$ and (2) determine the reliability of previous $\rho_{HI}$ measurements derived with lower resolution spectroscopy. We find 5 intervening Damped Ly$\alpha$ absorbers (DLAs) at $z > 4.5$, which corresponds to the lowest DLA incidence rate ($0.034^{0.05}_{0.02}$) at $z \gtrsim 2$. We also measure the lowest $\rho_{HI}$ at $z \gtrsim 2$ from our sample of DLAs and subDLAs, corresponding to $\rho_{HI} = 0.56^{0.82}_{0.31} \times 10^8~$M$_{\odot}~$Mpc$^{-3}$ at $z \sim 5$. Taking into account our measurements at $z \sim 5$ and systematic biases in the DLA detection rate at lower spectral resolutions, we conclude that $\rho_{HI}$ doubles from $z \sim 5$ to $z \sim 3$. From these results emerges a qualitative agreement between how the cosmic densities of HI gas mass, molecular gas mass, and star-formation rate build up with cosmic time.

Cosmic Voids are a promising probe of cosmology for spectroscopic galaxy surveys due to their unique response to cosmological parameters. Their combination with other probes promises to break parameter degeneracies. Due to simplifying assumptions, analytical models for void statistics are only representative of a subset of the full void population. We present a set of neural-based emulators for void summary statistics of watershed voids, which retain more information about the full void population than simplified analytical models. We build emulators for the void size function and void density profiles traced by the halo number density using the Quijote suite of simulations for a broad range of the $\Lambda\mathrm{CDM}$ parameter space. The emulators replace the computation of these statistics from computationally expensive cosmological simulations. We demonstrate the cosmological constraining power of voids using our emulators, which offer orders-of-magnitude acceleration in parameter estimation, capture more cosmological information compared to analytic models, and produce more realistic posteriors compared to Fisher forecasts. We find that the parameters $\Omega_m$ and $\sigma_8$ in this Quijote setup can be recovered to $14.4\%$ and $8.4\%$ accuracy respectively using void density profiles; including the additional information in the void size function improves the accuracy on $\sigma_8$ to $6.8\%$. We demonstrate the robustness of our approach to two important variables in the underlying simulations, the resolution, and the inclusion of baryons. We find that our pipeline is robust to variations in resolution, and we show that the posteriors derived from the emulated void statistics are unaffected by the inclusion of baryons with the Magneticum hydrodynamic simulations. This opens up the possibility of a baryon-independent probe of the large-scale structure.

High-velocity stellar collisions in galactic nuclei produce ejecta that generate potentially observable electromagnetic radiation, making them promising nuclear transients. However, the photometric and spectroscopic properties of these collisions, which would more frequently involve main-sequence stars, remain largely unexplored. Here, using 3D hydrodynamics and 1D radiation-transfer simulations, we investigate the properties and observables of the debris produced in high-velocity collisions between terminal-age main-sequence stars, covering a wide range of collision configurations. The ejecta produce bright UV flares with bolometric luminosities typically peaking at $\gtrsim10^{43}$ erg s$^{-1}$, declining steeply as $t^{-2}-t^{-4}$ to reach $\gtrsim10^{41}-10^{42}$ erg s$^{-1}$ at 0.5\,d, and leveling off on a plateau at $10^{39}-10^{41.5}$ erg s$^{-1}$ ($M_V$ between $-$10 to $-$15\,mag) after a few days. Their spectra evolve considerably during the first few days, morphing from UV- to optical-dominated. The UV range shows numerous resonance transitions from metals like C, N, and O, whereas the optical primarily shows H{\,\sc i}\ Balmer lines. These properties are qualitatively similar to those observed, as well as obtained in models of Type II supernovae. Observables from these events exhibit clear correlations with collision configurations, including impact parameter, relative velocity, and stellar masses. We provide fitting formulae to describe these correlations. Detecting these flares requires sub-day cadence surveys such as ULTRASAT, combined with spectroscopic observations to disentangle degeneracies and infer collision characteristics.

Synergies between the {\em James Webb Space Telescope} ({\em JWST}) and the {\em Chandra} X-ray observatory have advanced the observational frontier by detecting a handful of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) beyond $z \sim$ 10. In particular, the recent discovery of a candidate $\rm 8 \times 10^7~M_{\odot}$ black hole (BH) in the galaxy GHZ9 at $z =$ 10.4 favors massive seed formation channels for these objects. Motivated by prospects for their detection in radio by recent studies, we estimate radio fluxes for GHZ9 and explore the possibility of their detection with the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) and next-generation Very Large Array (ngVLA). We find that ngVLA should be able to detect radio emission from GHZ9 for integration times as short as 1 hr while SKA will require integration times of up to 100 hr. We also find that radio emission from the BH can be distinguished from that due to H II regions and supernovae in its host galaxy. The detection of a few hundred nJy radio signal at frequencies $> 2$ GHz will be a smoking gun for the presence of a BH in GHZ9.

Recent radiation-thermochemical-magnetohydrodynamic simulations resolved formation of quasar accretion disks from cosmological scales down to ~300 gravitational radii $R_{g}$, arguing they were 'hyper-magnetized' (plasma $\beta\ll1$ supported by toroidal magnetic fields) and distinct from traditional $\alpha$-disks. We extend these, refining to $\approx 3\,R_{g}$ around a $10^{7}\,{\rm M_{\odot}}$ BH with multi-channel radiation and thermochemistry, and exploring a factor of 1000 range of accretion rates ($\dot{m}\sim0.01-20$). At smaller scales, we see the disks maintain steady accretion, thermalize and self-ionize, and radiation pressure grows in importance, but large deviations from local thermodynamic equilibrium and single-phase equations of state are always present. Trans-Alfvenic and highly-supersonic turbulence persists in all cases, and leads to efficient vertical mixing, so radiation pressure saturates at levels comparable to fluctuating magnetic and turbulent pressures even for $\dot{m}\gg1$. The disks also become radiatively inefficient in the inner regions at high $\dot{m}$. The midplane magnetic field remains primarily toroidal at large radii, but at super-Eddington $\dot{m}$ we see occasional transitions to a poloidal-field dominated state associated with outflows and flares. Large-scale magnetocentrifugal and continuum radiation-pressure-driven outflows are weak at $\dot{m}<1$, but can be strong at $\dot{m}\gtrsim1$. In all cases there is a scattering photosphere above the disk extending to $\gtrsim 1000\,R_{g}$ at large $\dot{m}$, and the disk is thick and flared owing to magnetic support (with $H/R$ nearly independent of $\dot{m}$), so the outer disk is strongly illuminated by the inner disk and most of the inner disk continuum scatters or is reprocessed at larger scales, giving apparent emission region sizes as large as $\gtrsim 10^{16}\,{\rm cm}$.

Galactic outflows driven by rapidly-accreting quasars at high redshift are widely expected to play a key role in the short- and long-term future evolution of their host galaxies. Using new and archival ALMA data, we observed the OH 119um doublet lines in order to search for cold molecular outflows in a sample of 11 unobscured, IR-luminous quasars at z>6. This represents the first survey for molecular winds in reionization-era quasars, and we detect unambiguous outflows in 8/11 (73%) of the quasars. The outflows we find are substantially faster, by ~300km/s on average, than outflows observed in a roughly co-eval sample of non-quasar IR-luminous galaxies, suggesting that the AGN drive the winds to higher velocities. On the other hand, the implied molecular outflow rates are relatively modest given the high luminosities, suggesting typical mass loading factors ~0.5 in the cold gas. The outflows are consistent with expectations for momentum-driven winds regardless of the driving source, but the kinetic energy in the outflows suggests that the AGN must be at least partially responsible for driving the winds. Accordingly, we find trends between the outflow properties and the Eddington ratio of the black hole accretion, though this may be linked to the underlying trend with AGN luminosity. We find that the kinetic power carried in the cold outflow phase is typically only ~0.1% of the total AGN luminosity. Our study provides evidence in favor of AGN feedback on the cold molecular gas in $z>6$ quasar host galaxies, demonstrating that cold outflows are very common and powerful in the most extreme reionization-era quasars.

We present a new radio detection from the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) Evolutionary Map of the Universe (EMU) survey associated with the reflection nebula (RN) VdB-80. The radio detection is determined to be a previously unidentified HII region, now named Lagotis. The RN is located towards Monoceros, centred in the molecular cloud feature known as the `Crossbones'. The 944 MHz EMU image shows a roughly semicircular HII region with an integrated flux density of 30.2$\pm$0.3 mJy. The HII region is also seen at 1.4 GHz by NVSS, yielding an estimated spectral index of 0.65$\pm$0.51, consistent with thermal radio emission. Gaia DR3 and 2MASS data give a distance to the stars associated with the HII region of $\sim$960 pc. This implies a size of 0.76$\times$0.68($\pm$0.09) pc for the HII region. We derive an HII region electron density of the bright radio feature to be 26 cm$^{-3}$, requiring a Lyman-alpha photon flux of $10^{45.6}$ s$^{-1}$, which is consistent with the expected Lyman flux of HD 46060, the B2II type star which is the likely ionising star of the region. The derived distance to this region implies that the Crossbones feature is a superposition of two filamentary clouds, with Lagotis embedded in the far cloud.

We point out a fundamental mismatch in the $Q$ stability parameter for Galactic discs: Toomre's $Q = 1$ defines the boundary between axisymmetric stability/instability, while simulations, observations, and theoretical expectations apply $Q$ in the region $Q > 1$ as a measure for spiral activity (e.g. swing amplification), for which $Q$ has not been designed. We suggest to redefine $Q$ to keep $Q = 1$ as the stability boundary, but to equally yield a consistent map between $Q$ and the maximum swing amplification factor. Using the Goldreich-Lynden-Bell formalism, we find that particularly the $Q$ for gas discs has been mismatched, and should be redefined to close to the square of the traditional definition. We provide new formulations of $Q$ for simple, two-component, and multi-component discs, including a discussion of vertically extended discs, providing a simple iterative formula for which we also provide code. We find $Q \approx 1.58$ for the Solar Neighbourhood under our definition, closer to results from simulations. We compare the Milky Way and M74, showing that, consistent with observations, the theory suggests a higher $m$ number for the Milky Way (arguing against a 2-arm pattern) for stellar-dominated patterns. Gas instability arises at much smaller scales ($m \gtrsim 10$), and we link both M74's gas pattern and local spurs in the Milky Way to this gas instability rather than stellar spiral arms.

In galaxy mergers, dual quasars - two actively accreting supermassive black holes (SMBHs) - provide a unique opportunity to study the interplay between galaxy dynamics and quasar activity. However, very little is known about their molecular gas, which fuels star formation and quasar activity. In this study, we map the kinematics of the cold molecular gas in J0749+2255, a 3.8 kpc separation dual quasar at z=2.17 using the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) Band 4. We detect CO(4-3)650um, which shows remarkably complex morphological and kinematic structures. While the integrated CO map suggested a lens-like ring, this feature disappears with kinematic decomposition. The kinematic analysis with ALMA resolves the ambiguities introduced by previous observations, further supporting the dual quasar interpretation of J0749+2255. We find two kinematically distinct molecular gas components: spatially extended, yet dynamically complex slow-moving gas (FWHM~130 km/s), and a compact, blueshifted, fast-moving, turbulent gas (FWHM~300 km/s). The disturbed kinematics, likely driven by the merger, show hints of rotation but no molecular outflows, suggesting circumnuclear flows. We estimate a large molecular gas reservoir ($M_{H2}\sim10^{10} M_{\odot}$), yet the starburst activity appears to exceed the available fuel. We detect an extended continuum in excess at rest-frame 455 GHz. The kinematic complexity of CO implicates the connection of mergers on the starburst and quasar activity in J0749+2255, yet whether J0749+2255 represents the dual quasar population remains unclear. Targeted kinematic studies of larger dual quasar samples will be essential to disentangling the nature of dual quasars.

Deep generative models have shown immense potential in generating unseen data that has properties of real data. These models learn complex data-generating distributions starting from a smaller set of latent dimensions. However, generative models have encountered great skepticism in scientific domains due to the disconnection between generative latent vectors and scientifically relevant quantities. In this study, we integrate three types of machine learning models to generate solar magnetic patches in a physically interpretable manner and use those as a query to find matching patches in real observations. We use the magnetic field measurements from Space-weather HMI Active Region Patches (SHARPs) to train a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN). We connect the physical properties of GAN-generated images with their latent vectors to train Support Vector Machines (SVMs) that do mapping between physical and latent spaces. These produce directions in the GAN latent space along which known physical parameters of the SHARPs change. We train a self-supervised learner (SSL) to make queries with generated images and find matches from real data. We find that the GAN-SVM combination enables users to produce high-quality patches that change smoothly only with a prescribed physical quantity, making generative models physically interpretable. We also show that GAN outputs can be used to retrieve real data that shares the same physical properties as the generated query. This elevates Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) from a means-to-produce artificial data to a novel tool for scientific data interrogation, supporting its applicability beyond the domain of heliophysics.

The companion GL229B was recently resolved by Xuan et al. (2024) as a tight binary of two brown dwarfs (Ba and Bb) through VLTI-GRAVITY interferometry and VLT-CRIRES+ RV measurements. Here, we present Bayesian models of the interferometric and RV data in additional detail, along with an updated outer orbit of the brown dwarf pair about the primary. To create a model of the inner orbit with robust uncertainties, we apply kernel phases to the GRAVITY data to address baseline redundancy in the raw closure phases. Using parallel tempering, we constrain the binary's orbit using only VLTI-GRAVITY data, despite each epoch having low visibility-plane coverage and/or SNR. We demonstrate very agreement the VLTI-GRAVITY and CRIRES+ datasets and find that the inner binary has a period of 12.1346$\pm$0.0011 days, eccentricity of 0.2317$\pm$0.0025, and total mass of 71.0$\pm$0.4 Mjup, with Ba and Bb having masses of 37.7$\pm$1.1Mjup and 33.4$\pm$1.0Mjup respectively. With new Keck/NIRC2 astrometry, we update the outer orbit GL229B around the primary. We find a semi-major axis of 42.9+3.0-2.4AU, eccentricity of 0.736$\pm$0.014, and a total mass for B of 71.7$\pm$0.6Mjup, consistent with that derived from the inner orbit. We find a mutual inclination of 31$\pm$2.5deg, below the threshold for Kozai-Lidov oscillations. The agreement on the mass of Ba+Bb between the inner and outer orbits is an important test of our ability to model RV, astrometry, and Hipparcos-Gaia proper motion anomaly. Our methodological advances in handling interferometric data with low SNR and sparse UV-coverage will benefit future observations of rapidly-orbiting companions with VLTI-GRAVITY.

Black holes, dark energy, and the Higgs field are all currently established, exciting, and mysterious, each in its own way. Cosmological data show that dark energy may evolve with time. The electroweak phase transition during stellar collapse can provide a mechanism via the Higgs field for dark energy to be trapped inside black holes at the time of their formation. Using the Oppenheimer-Snyder model of collapse, we calculate the total matter and dark energy densities in a black hole, to be in the ratio of 2 to 1 at the start of collapse. The solution for the scale factor a(t) is a cycloid with a collapse time of 57 \mu s. If black holes are cosmologically coupled and grow in mass as the universe expands, they can account for the evolution and quantity of the dark energy of the universe.

Laser frequency combs (LFCs) are an important component of Doppler radial velocity (RV) spectroscopy that pushes fractional precision to the $10^{-10}$ level, as required to identify and characterize Earth-like exoplanets. However, large intensity variations across the LFC spectrum that arise in nonlinear broadening limit the range of comb lines that can be used for optimal wavelength calibration with sufficient signal-to-noise ratio. Furthermore, temporal spectral-intensity fluctuations of the LFC, that are coupled to flux-dependent detector defects, alter the instrumental point spread function (PSF) and result in spurious RV shifts. To address these issues and improve calibration precision, spectral flattening is crucial for LFCs to maintain a constant photon flux per comb mode. In this work, we demonstrate a dynamic spectral shaping setup using a spatial light modulator (SLM) over the wavelength range of 800nm to 1300nm. The custom shaping compensates for amplitude fluctuations in real time and can also correct for wavelength-dependent spectrograph transmission, achieving a spectral profile that delivers the constant readout necessary for maximizing precision. Importantly, we characterize the out-of-loop properties of the spectral flattener to verify a twofold improvement in spectral stability. This technique, combined with our approach of pumping the waveguide spectral broadener out-of-band at 1550 nm, reduces the required dynamic range. While this spectral region is tailored for the LFC employed at the Habitable-zone Planet Finder (HPF) spectrograph, the method is broadly applicable to any LFC used for astronomical spectrograph calibration.

Stars emit MeV neutrinos during their evolution via nuclear syntheses and thermal processes, and detecting them could provide insights into stellar structure beyond what is accessible through electromagnetic wave observations. So far, MeV neutrinos have been observed from the Sun and SN 1987A. It has been suggested that pre-supernova stars in the oxygen and silicon burning stages would emit enough MeV neutrinos to be detectable on Earth, provided they are in the local universe. In this study, we investigate the prospect of detecting neutrinos from red supergiants (RSGs) in the carbon-burning phase. In our Galaxy, around a thousand RSGs have been cataloged, and several are expected to be in the carbon-burning phase. We first calculate the luminosity and energy spectrum of neutrinos emitted during the post-main-sequence evolution of massive stars. For a nearby carbon-burning RSG located $\sim200$ pc away, we estimate the neutrino flux reaching Earth to be as large as $\sim10^5$ cm$^{-2}$s$^{-1}$ with a spectrum peaking $\sim0.6$ MeV. We then assess the feasibility of detecting these neutrinos in underground facilities, particularly in hybrid detectors equipped with water-based liquid scintillator and ultra-fast photodetectors. In detectors with a volume comparable to Super-Kamiokande, for the above flux, we anticipate up to $\sim50$ neutrino events per year with directional information. Although this is a fair number, the number of events from radioactive backgrounds would be much larger. Our results indicate that studying neutrinos from carbon-burning RSGs and predicting supernovae well in advance before their explosion would be challenging with currently available detector technologies.

The discovery of quiescent, dark matter (DM)-deficient ultra-diffuse galaxies (UDGs) with overluminous globular clusters (GCs) has challenged galaxy formation models within the Lambda Cold Dark Matter ($\Lambda$CDM) cosmological paradigm. Previously, such galaxies were only identified in the NGC 1052 group, raising the possibility that they are the result of unique, group-specific processes, and limiting their broader significance. The recent identification of FCC 224, a putative DM-deficient UDG on the outskirts of the Fornax Cluster, suggests that such galaxies are not confined to the NGC 1052 group but rather represent a broader phenomenon. We aim to investigate the DM content of FCC 224 and to explore its similarities to the DM-free dwarfs in the NGC 1052 group, DF2 and DF4, to determine whether or not it belongs to the same class of DM-deficient UDGs. We use high-resolution Keck Cosmic Web Imager (KCWI) spectroscopy to study the kinematics, stellar populations, and GC system of FCC 224, enabling direct comparisons with DF2 and DF4. We find that FCC 224 is also DM-deficient and exhibits a distinct set of traits shared with DF2 and DF4, including slow and prolate rotation, quiescence in low-density environments, coeval formation of stars and GCs, flat stellar population gradients, a top-heavy GC luminosity function, and monochromatic GCs. These shared characteristics signal the existence of a previously unrecognized class of DM-deficient dwarf galaxies. This diagnostic framework provides a means of identifying additional examples and raises new questions for galaxy formation models within $\Lambda$CDM cosmology.

The filamentary nebula encompassing the central galaxy of the Perseus Cluster, NGC 1275, is a complex structure extending dozens of kiloparsecs from NGC 1275. Decades of previous works have focused on establishing the primary formation and ionization mechanisms in different filaments. These studies have pointed to a lack of star formation in the majority of the filaments, the importance of magnetic fields and turbulence in several regions, and the role of interactions between the intercluster medium (ICM) and the cool gas in the filaments, as well as the role of interaction between the central radio source, 3C84, and the filaments. In this paper, we present multi-filter observations of the entire filamentary system that cover the optical bandpass, using the SITELLE instrument at the Canada-France-Hawai'i Telescope. Here, we use the data analysis software, \href{this https URL}{\texttt{LUCI}}, to produce flux maps of the prominent emission lines present in the filters: \oii{}$\lambda$3726/3729, \oiii{}$\lambda$5007, H$\beta$, \nii{}$\lambda$6548, \nii{}$\lambda$6583, and H$\alpha$. We use these maps to produce BPT and WHAN diagrams to study the ionization mechanisms at play in each distinct region of the filamentary nebula. First, we confirm the absence of \oiii{}$\lambda$5007 in the extended filaments, although we detect this line in the central core, revealing a compact region where photoionization by the AGN might affect local conditions. Our findings corroborate previous claims that the ionization in the extended filaments could be caused by the cooling ICM via collisional excitation and/or mixing. Moreover, they support the conclusion that magnetic fields play an important role in the formation and continued existence of the filaments.

In this work, we propose to utilize the observed ratio of spherically-averaged distance to the sound horizon scale from Baryon Acoustic Oscillation (BAO) data to test the cosmic distance duality relation (CDDR) by comparing the luminosity distances (LDs) obtained from Type Ia supernovae (SNIa) observations with angular diameter distances (ADDs) derived from these ratio measurements, using a cosmological-model-independent method. To match the LDs with the ADDs at the identical redshifts, we employ two methods: a compressed form of the Pantheon sample and a hybrid approach that combines the binning method with an artificial neural network (ANN). The Hubble parameter $H(z)$ at any redshift is reconstructed from the observed Hubble parameter data with the ANN to derive the ADD. To avoid potential biases resulted from the specific prior values of the absolute magnitude $M_{\rm B}$ of SNIa and the sound horizon scale $r_{\rm d}$ from BAO measurements, we introduce the fiducial parameter $\kappa\equiv10^{M_{\rm B} \over 5}\, r_{\rm d}^{3 \over 2} $ and marginalize their impacts by treating them as nuisance parameters with flat prior distributions in our statistical analysis. Subsequently, we update the measurements of ratio of the transverse comoving distance to the sound horizon scale from the latest BAO data released by the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) collaboration for CDDR testing. Our results indicate that BAO observation provides a powerful tool for testing the CDDR, independent of both the absolute magnitude $M_{\rm B}$ and sound horizon scale $r_{\rm d}$, as well as any cosmological model.

LSST Camera CCDs produced by the manufacturer e2v exhibit strong and novel residual charge images when exposed to bright sources. These manifest in images following bright exposures both in the same pixel areas as the bright source, and in the pixels trailing between the source and the serial register. Both of these pose systematic challenges to the Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time instrument signature removal. The latter trail region is especially impactful as it affects a much larger pixel area in a less well defined position. In our study of this effect at UC Davis, we imaged bright spots to characterize these residual charge effects. We find a strong dependence of the residual charge on the parallel clocking scheme, including the relative levels of the clocking voltages, and the timing of gate phase transition during the parallel transfer. Our study points to independent causes of residual charge in the bright spot region and trail region. We propose potential causes in both regions and suggest methodologies for minimizing residual charge. We consider the trade-offs to these methods including decreasing the camera's full well and dynamic range at the high end. Some of these results and suggestions have been reviewed by the camera commissioning team and may result in changes made to the clocking voltage scheme on the LSST Camera.

We investigated the possibility of using two recently characterised triply eclipsing triple systems to constrain stellar model parameters. We specifically focused on evaluating the influence of the underlying astrophysical assumptions employed in the characterisation of the system to fix absolute values of the radii, effective temperatures, and metallicity. We used dense grids of pre-computed stellar models to fit the data for the triply eclipsing systems with a modified version of the SCEPtER pipeline. We achieve an excellent agreement with observational data for TIC 650024463, which comprises three low-mass main-sequence (MS) stars. We find it has an age of $9.0^{+1.4}_{-1.1}$ Gyr and a multimodal posterior density. Characterising TIC 323486857 proved more challenging. This system comprises two intermediate-mass MS stars and a slightly more massive tertiary in the red giant branch phase. For this last system we tested alternative scenarios for convective core overshooting. When all stars were assumed to have the same overshooting efficiency, significant discrepancies arose with the observed data for the tertiary star. This discrepancy may arise from the different assumptions regarding overshooting efficiency made for the observational characterisation of the system, in which an increasing overshooting efficiency with stellar mass was adopted. By allowing independent overshooting efficiencies for all stars, we recovered a solution close to that adopted in the system observational characterisation. Encouragingly, despite the relevant differences between the adopted stellar models and those used for the observational characterisation, we found a system age of $2.33^{+0.18}_{-0.16}$ Gyr in all the tested scenarios, and this age is in agreement with independent determinations.

White dwarfs (WDs) showing transits from orbiting planetary debris provide significant insights into the structure and dynamics of debris disks. This is a rare class of objects with only eight published systems. In this work, we perform a systematic search for such systems within 500 pc in the Gaia-eDR3 catalog of WDs using the light curves from the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) and present six new candidates. Our selection process targets the top 1% most photometrically variable sources identified using a combined variability metric from ZTF and Gaia eDR3 photometry, boosted by a metric space we define using von Neumann statistics and Pearson-Skew as a novel discovery tool to identify these systems. This is followed by optical spectroscopic observations of visually selected variables to confirm metal pollution. Four of the six systems show long-timescale photometric variability spanning several months to years, resulting either from long-term evolution of transit activity or dust and debris clouds at wide orbits. Among them, WD J1013-0427 shows an indication of reddening during the long-duration dip. Interpreting this as dust extinction makes it the first system to indicate an abundance of small dust grains (radius $\lesssim$$0.3~{\rm \mu m}$) in the occulting material. The same object also shows metal emission lines that map an optically thick eccentric gas disk orbiting within the star's Roche limit. For each candidate, we infer the abundances of the photospheric metals and estimate accretion rates. We show that transiting debris systems tend to have higher inferred accretion rates compared to the general population of metal-polluted WDs. Growing the number of these systems will further illuminate such comparative properties in the near future. Separately, we also serendipitously discovered an AM CVn showing a very long-duration outburst $-$ only the fourth such system to be known.

Understanding the equation of state (EOS) of neutron stars (NSs) is a fundamental challenge in astrophysics and nuclear physics. A first-order phase transition (FOPT) at high densities could lead to the formation of a quark core, significantly affecting NS properties. This review explores observational and theoretical constraints on such transitions using multi-messenger astrophysics. X-ray observations, including mass-radius measurements from NICER and spectral features like quasi-periodic oscillations (QPOs) and cyclotron resonance scattering features (CRSFs), provide indirect evidence of EOS modifications. Gravitational wave detections, particularly from binary NS mergers such as GW170817, constrain tidal deformability and post-merger oscillations, which may carry signatures of phase transitions. Pulsar timing offers additional constraints through measurements of mass, spin evolution, and glitches, with millisecond pulsars exceeding twice the solar mass posing challenges to purely hadronic EOSs. Theoretical models and numerical simulations predict that an FOPT could impact gravitational wave signals, twin-star configurations, and NS cooling. Future advancements, including next-generation gravitational wave detectors, high-precision X-ray telescopes, and improved theoretical modeling, will enhance our ability to probe phase transitions in NSs. A combination of these approaches will provide crucial insights into the existence and properties of deconfined quark matter in NS interiors.

Galactic cosmic rays (CRs) generally share common propagation features, leading to consistent spectral observations of secondary nuclei such as Li, Be, and B. However, the Li spectrum predicted by the CR diffusion coefficient inferred from B/C is significantly lower than the latest measurement of AMS-02. This anomaly may be attributed to the missing contributions from the heavy nuclei components in cosmic rays. By including these missing contributions the excess of the Li spectrum disappears. However, another inconsistency still exists since the calculated Li spectrum is now overestimated compared to the data. In this work, we update the cross-section model used to calculate the Li production according to more cross-section measurements. We find that the cross sections of these added reactions are systematically overestimated, and should be renormalized to the interpolations of available data. As a result, our prediction of the total Li spectrum is consistent with the measurement without discrepancy, and our prediction of the $\rm^6Li$ and $\rm^7Li$ spectra are consistent with the preliminary measurements of AMS-02 within the cross-section uncertainties.

Understanding the equation of state (EOS) of neutron stars (NSs) is a fundamental challenge in astrophysics and nuclear physics. A first-order phase transition (FOPT) at high densities could lead to the formation of a quark core, significantly affecting NS properties. This review explores observational and theoretical constraints on such transitions using multi-messenger astrophysics. X-ray observations, including mass-radius measurements from NICER and spectral features like quasi-periodic oscillations (QPOs) and cyclotron resonance scattering features (CRSFs), provide indirect evidence of EOS modifications. Gravitational wave detections, particularly from binary NS mergers such as GW170817, constrain tidal deformability and post-merger oscillations, which may carry signatures of phase transitions. Pulsar timing offers additional constraints through measurements of mass, spin evolution, and glitches, with millisecond pulsars exceeding twice the solar mass posing challenges to purely hadronic EOSs. Theoretical models and numerical simulations predict that an FOPT could impact gravitational wave signals, twin-star configurations, and NS cooling. Future advancements, including next-generation gravitational wave detectors, high-precision X-ray telescopes, and improved theoretical modeling, will enhance our ability to probe phase transitions in NSs. A combination of these approaches will provide crucial insights into the existence and properties of deconfined quark matter in NS interiors.

We report on the optical spectroscopic observations of the host galaxy of the hyperactive repeating fast radio burst, FRB 20240114A. The host galaxy is a dwarf galaxy at a redshift of $z=0.1306\pm0.0002$. With a rest-frame coverage of 4300-7900 Å, we have detected H$\rm{\alpha}$, H$\rm{\beta}$, [O III]$\lambda\lambda$4959,5007, [N II]$\lambda\lambda$6548,6583, and [S II]$\lambda$6716 emission lines. The emission line ratios suggest that the ionization in the host galaxy is dominated by star formation. The star formation rate (SFR) derived from the H$\rm{\alpha}$ emission line is $(0.06 \pm 0.01) \ \rm{M_{\odot} \ yr^{-1}}$, and the SED fitting suggests the lower limit of the SFR(UV) is $0.09 \ \rm{M_{\odot} \ yr^{-1}}$. The stellar mass is $(\rm 4.0 \pm 1.8) \times 10^8 \ M_{\odot}$, making the specific star formation rate $\rm log \ sSFR(H\rm \alpha) = -9.17 \pm 0.07 \ yr^{-1}$. The line ratios indicate an upper limit of a metallicity of $\rm 12+log_{10} ([O/H]) \sim 8.5$. As the nearest dwarf host galaxy with a repeating FRB, the activity of FRB 20240114A and the properties of this host galaxy closely resemble those of FRB 20121102A and FRB 20190520B. The H$\rm{\alpha}$-traced dispersion measure (DM) provided by the ionized gas of the host galaxy has a moderate contribution of $\sim 200 \rm \ pc \ cm^{-3}$, assuming a warm ionized gas. We found that the distributions of the stellar mass versus SFR are significantly different between repeating and one-off FRBs, as determined by the MANOVA test with $p=0.0116$.

After a successful kick-off meeting in 2021. two workshops in 2022 and 2023 on the future Global Cosmic-Ray Observatory (GCOS) focused mainly on a straw man design of the detector and science possibilities for astro- and particle physics. About 100 participants gathered for in-person and hybrid panel discussions. In this report, we summarize these discussions, present a preliminary straw-man design for GCOS and collect short write-ups of the flash talks given during the focus sessions.

We reported the results of observations of small-scale variability in the hydrogen Balmer lines in Vega. Spectral observations were carried out with low-resolution spectrograph (R $\simeq$ 600) installed in the Main Astronomical Observatory, Ukraine. Spectra were obtained with a time resolution in the second range. It has been found that Vega shows variations in the hydrogen lines $H_{\beta} $, $H_{\gamma} $, $H_{ \delta} $. This can be interpreted that their variations are non-radial pulsations. The characteristic time of the observed variations ranges from 300 to 1200 sec. The horizontal scale for oscillating elements is about 800 Mm, which is comparable to the solar radius. The radial velocity of the variations is about 36 km/s.

Context: 3C 273, a well-studied active galactic nucleus (AGN), displays characteristics of both jetted-AGN and Seyfert galaxies, making it an excellent source to study the disc-jet connection in AGN. Aims: To investigate the disk-jet scenario in 3C 273 using broadband (0.3--78 keV) X-ray spectra from {\it XMM-Newton} and {\it NuSTAR}. Methods: We used simultaneous {\it XMM-Newton} and {\it NuSTAR} observations of 3C 273 carried out between 2012 and 2024. The 0.3--78 keV X-ray spectra were first fit with a simple power-law (PL) and then with the accretion-ejection-based JeTCAF model. The JeTCAF model accounts for emission from the jet, extending up to the sonic surface. In this framework, a reflection hump above 10 keV can also arise due to the bulk motion Comptonization of coronal photons by the jet. Results: We found that the simple PL did not provide a good fit, leaving significant residuals at energies below 1.5 keV. All the spectra were fitted well by the JeTCAF model. The weighted-averaged black hole mass of (7.77$\pm$0.30) $\times 10^8 M_\odot$ obtained from the JeTCAF model is comparable with the previous estimates based on reverberation mapping observations and accretion disk models. Conclusions: The 0.3--78 keV X-ray emission of 3C 273 can be fit by the accretion-ejection-based model in which the corona and the jet on top of it make significant contributions to the X-ray flux. The Doppler boosting factor estimated from the jet flux ranges from 1.6 to 2.2, consistent with the lower limit from the literature.

The selection of candidate high-redshift galaxies using the dropout technique targeting the Lyman-break signature sometimes results in very bright objects, which would be too luminous to be easily explained if they are indeed at the expected redshifts. Here we present a systematic study of very bright dropouts selected through successive bands of the NIRCam instrument onboard the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Using the public NIRCam data in four blank fields over 500~arcmin$^2$, 300 such objects were found. They have magnitudes in F356W $<25.1$~mag or $<26.0$~mag depending on the dropout passband, and the vast majority of them ($>80\%$) have very red F115W$-$F356W colors $> 2.0$~mag, which make them qualify as ``extremely red objects'' (EROs). We focus on the 137 objects that also have mid-IR observations from the JWST MIRI instrument. The analysis of their spectral energy distributions shows that these very bright dropouts are dominated by low-redshift ($z\sim 1$--4) galaxies ($\gtrsim 67\%$). However, a non-negligible fraction ($\gtrsim 7\%$) could be at high redshifts. Seven of our objects have secure spectroscopic redshifts from the JWST NIRSpec identifications, and the results confirm this picture: while six are low-redshift galaxies at $z\approx 3$, one is a known galaxy at $z=8.679$ recovered in our sample. If more objects from our sample are confirmed to be at high redshifts, they could pose a severe challenge in explaining their properties, such as the extremely high star formation rates and stellar masses.

The Milky Way's disk-halo interface mediates energy and mass exchange between the interstellar thin disk and the halo. In the first detailed study of the Perseus arm's disk-halo interface, we combine HST/STIS and COS absorption spectra toward 6 stars and 23 AGNs projected behind a narrow section (95 degree < l <145 degree, -46 degree < b <0 degree), providing a unique dataset that bridges the disk and its extended vertical structure in these directions. We detect S II, Si IV, and C IV absorption, along with HI 21 cm emission, within -70 pc to -3.3 kpc from the mid-plane. The arm's southern vertical structure exhibits complexity beyond simple exponential scaling: HI and S II column densities sharply decline with height up to 1.5 kpc before flattening, while high ion (Si IV and C IV) column densities remain relatively constant. In this region, where warm neutral medium (WNM) dominates, S II and the high ions show similar kinematics, and we find a remarkably uniform CIV/SiIV ratio (<C IV/Si IV> = 2.5 pm 0.5) within -0.9 to -3.25 kpc. Both the kinematic correspondence and high-ion ratio are consistent with the high ions probing turbulent mixing layers at the interfaces between warm/cool and hot gas phases. AGN sightlines reveal minimal circumgalactic medium (CGM) contribution in the low-velocity gas at |v_{LSR}|< 100 km/s, suggesting the observed properties may be attributed to previous fountain activity.

Hot Dust-Obscured Galaxies (Hot DOGs), discovered by the "W1W2 dropout" selection at high redshifts ($z\sim$ 2-4), are a rare population of hyper-luminous obscured quasars. Their number density is comparable to similarly luminous type 1 quasars in the same redshift range, potentially representing a short, yet critical stage in galaxy evolution. The evolution in their number density towards low redshift, however, remains unclear as their selection function is heavily biased against objects at $z\lesssim2$. We combine data from the WISE and Herschel archives to search for Hot DOGs at $z<0.5$ based on their unique spectral energy distributions. We find 68 candidates, and spectroscopic observations confirm that 3 of them are at $z<0.5$. For those 3 we find their black hole accretion is close to the Eddington limit, with lower bolometric luminosities and black hole masses than those of higher-$z$ Hot DOGs. Compared to high-$z$ systems, these low-$z$ systems are closer to the local relation between host galaxy stellar mass and black hole mass but still lie above it, and we discuss several possible scenarios for it. Finally, we also find the surface number density of $z<$0.5 Hot DOGs is $\rm 2.4 \times 10^{-3}$ deg$^{-2}$, about an order of magnitude lower than high-$z$ Hot DOGs but comparable to hyper-luminous unobscured quasars in the same redshift range. These results further support the idea that Hot DOGs may be a transitional phase of galaxy evolution.

[abridged] The $\eta$CDM framework is a new cosmological model aimed to cure some drawbacks of the standard $\Lambda$CDM scenario, such as the origin of the accelerated expansion at late times, the cosmic tensions, and the violation of the cosmological principle due to the progressive development of inhomogeneous/anisotropic conditions in the Universe during structure formation. To this purpose, the model adopts a statistical perspective envisaging a stochastic evolution of large-scale patches in the Universe with typical sizes $10-50\, h^{-1}$ Mpc, which is meant to describe the complex gravitational processes leading to the formation of the cosmic web. The stochasticity among different patches is technically rendered via the diverse realizations of a multiplicative noise term (`a little ado') in the cosmological equations, and the overall background evolution of the Universe is then operationally defined as an average over the patch ensemble. In this paper we show that such an ensemble-averaged evolution in $\eta$CDM can be described in terms of a spatially flat cosmology and of an `emergent' dark energy with a time-dependent equation of state, able to originate the cosmic acceleration with the right timing and to solve the coincidence problem. Then we test the $\eta$CDM model against the most recent supernova type-I$a$, baryon acoustic oscillations and structure growth rate datasets, finding an excellent agreement. Remarkably, we demonstrate that $\eta$CDM is able to alleviate simultaneously both the $H_0$ and the $f\sigma_8$ tensions. Finally, we discuss that the Linders' diagnostic test could be helpful to better distinguish $\eta$CDM from the standard scenario in the near future via upcoming galaxy redshift surveys at intermediate redshifts such as those being conducted by the Euclid mission.

We present a dedicated automated pipeline to construct spatially resolved emission H$\alpha$+[NII] maps and to derive the spectral energy distributions (SEDs) in 12 optical filters (five broad and seven narrow/medium) of H$\alpha$ emission line regions in nearby galaxies (z $<$ 0.0165) observed by the Javalambre Photometric Local Universe Survey (J-PLUS). We used the $J0660$ filter of $140$Å width centered at $6600$Å to trace H$\alpha$ + [NII] emission and $r$ and $i$ broad bands were used to estimate the stellar continuum. We create pure emission line images after the continnum subtraction, where the H$\alpha$ emission line regions were detected. This method was also applied to Integral Field Unit (IFU) spectroscopic data from PHANGS-MUSE, CALIFA and MaNGA surveys by building synthetic narrow-bands based on J-PLUS filters. The studied sample includes the cross-matched catalog of these IFU surveys with J-PLUS third data release (DR3), amounting to $2$ PHANGS-MUSE, $78$ CALIFA, and $78$ MaNGA galaxies at $z < 0.0165$, respectively. We compared the H$\alpha$+[NII] radial profiles from J-PLUS and the IFU surveys, finding good agreement within the expected uncertainties. We also compared the SEDs from the emission line regions detected in J-PLUS images, reproducing the main spectral features present in the spectroscopic data. Finally, we compared the emission fluxes from the J-PLUS and IFU surveys accounting for scale differences, finding a difference of only 2% with a dispersion of 7% in the measurements. The J-PLUS data provides reliable spatially resolved H$\alpha$+[NII] emission maps for nearby galaxies. We provide the J-PLUS DR3 catalog for the $158$ galaxies with IFU data, including emission maps, SEDs of star-forming clumps, and radial profiles.

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are luminous, millisecond-duration transients that offer great potential for probing the universe, yet their physical origins remain unclear. The dispersion measure (DM) and scattering time ($\tau$) distributions provide key insights into FRBs' properties, including source population, redshift, and energy distribution. We use a simplified model of FRB source population and intrinsic Schechter function-like energy distribution, coupled with a thorough assessment of various contributors to dispersion and scattering, to replicate the joint distribution of DM and $\tau$ in the CHIME/FRB catalog. A mixed FRB source population, including both young and old progenitors, is considered. Contributions to the DM and $\tau$ from interstellar medium (ISM), circumgalactic medium (CGM) within host and foreground halos are informed by the IllustrisTNG simulation, while contributions from the Milky Way, intergalactic medium (IGM), and local environmental are estimated by updated models. Using MCMC simulations, we identify optimal model that well reproduce the DM distribution and broadly reproduce the $\tau$ distribution in the CHIME/FRB catalog. Our model suggests that the fraction of FRBs tracing star-formation rate is $\rm{f_{PSFR}=0.58^{+0.16}_{-0.27}}$, while $\rm{log_{10}E_*[erg]=42.27^{+1.17}_{-1.18}}$ and $\gamma=-1.60^{+0.11}_{-0.13}$ in the energy distribution function. Scattering predominantly arises from the circumburst medium or the ISM and CGM of hosts, which cause a DM of $\sim 10\, \rm{pc\,cm^{-3}}$. Using our optimal model, we estimate FRB redshifts with two methods: DM-only and combined DM-$\tau$. Evaluation with 68 localized FRBs reveals an RMS error $0.11-0.12$, and incorporation of $\tau$ has a minor effect. We further argue that the host galaxy properties of localized FRBs could be a potential tool to validate our model in the future.

GDL, a free interpreter for the IDL language, continues to develop smoothly, driven by feedback and requests from an increasingly active and growing user base, especially since GDL was made available on GitHub. Among the most notable features introduced in recent years are stable Widgets; extensive testing on M1, M2, and M3 processors; excellent computational performance (including OpenMP support) demonstrated across a comprehensive benchmark; simplified compilation and installation processes; and the availability of SHMMAP and Bridge functions, which enable concurrent GDL runs on shared RAM in HPC environments. As developers of GDL, we believe this language holds a valuable place in today's world, where efficiency and low-power computing are essential. GDL (not to mention IDL), written in C/C++, demonstrates exceptional efficiency in "real-world" benchmarks, making it one of the few interpreted languages that can truly be considered "green." Moreover, it is likely the only interpreter accompanied by a vast collection of free, well-tested, and proven astronomical procedures developed by colleagues over the years. GDL also stands out for its suitability for long-term projects, thanks to its stable and reliable syntax.

At cosmic dawn, the first stars and galaxies are believed to form from and be deeply embedded in clouds of dense, pristine gas. Here we present a study of the JWST/NIRSpec data of the most distant, spectroscopically confirmed galaxy observed to date, JADES-GS-z14-0 (GS-z14 for short), at $z=14.179$, combined with recent far-infrared measurements of the [OIII]-$88\mu$m and [CII]-$158\mu$m line transitions and underlying dust-continuum emission. Based on the observed prominent damped Lyman-$\alpha$ (DLA) absorption profile, we determine a substantial neutral atomic hydrogen (HI) column density, $\log (N_{\rm HI} / {\rm cm^{-2}}) = 22.27^{+0.08}_{-0.09}$, consistent with previous estimates though seemingly at odds with the dynamical and gas mass of the galaxy. Using various independent but complementary approaches, considering the implied neutral gas mass from the DLA measurement, the star-formation rate surface density, and the metal abundance, we demonstrate that the total gas mass of GS-z14 is of the order $\log (M_{\rm gas} / M_\odot) = 9.8\pm 0.3$. This implies a substantial gas mass fraction, $f_{\rm gas} \gtrsim 0.9$ and that the bulk of the interstellar medium (ISM) is in the form of HI. We show that the derived gas mass is fully consistent with the non-detection of [CII]-$158\mu$m, assuming an appropriate scaling to the neutral gas. The low dust-to-gas ratio, $A_V/N_{\rm HI} = (1.3\pm 0.6)\times 10^{-23}$\,mag\,cm$^2$, derived in the line-of-sight through the DLA further indicates that the absorbing gas is more pristine than the central, star-forming regions probed by the [OIII]-$88\mu$m emission. These results highlight the implications for far-infrared line-detection searchers attainable with ALMA and demonstrate that the bright, relatively massive galaxy GS-z14 at $z=14.179$ is deeply embedded in a substantial, pristine HI gas reservoir dominating its baryonic matter content.

In protoplanetary disks around young stars, magnetic fields play an important role for disk evolution and planet formation. Polarized thermal emission from magnetically aligned grains is one of the reliable methods to trace magnetic fields. However, it has been difficult to observe magnetic fields from dust polarization in protoplanetary disks because other polarization mechanisms involving grown dust grains become efficient. Here, we report multi-wavelength (0.87 mm, 1.3 mm, 2.1 mm, and 2.7 mm) observations of polarized thermal emission in the protoplanetary disk around HD 142527, showing the lopsided dust distribution. We revealed that the smaller dust still exhibits magnetic alignment in the southern part of the disk. Furthermore, angular offsets between the observed magnetic field and the disk azimuthal direction were discovered, which can be used as a method to measure the relative strengths of each component (radial ($B_r$), azimuthal ($B_\phi$), and vertical ($B_z$)) of 3D magnetic field. Applying this method, we derived the magnetic field around a 200-au radius from the protostar as $|B_r |:|B_\phi |:|B_z | \sim 0.26:1:0.23$ and a strength of $\sim 0.3$ milli-Gauss. Our observations provide some key parameters of magnetic activities including the plasma beta, which have only been assumed in theoretical studies. In addition, the radial and vertical angular momentum transfer are found to be comparable, which poses a challenge to theoretical studies of protoplanetary disks.

Understanding the generation and development of the continuous outflow from the Sun requires tracing the physical conditions from deep in the corona to the heliosphere. Detailed global observations of plasma state variables and the magnetic field are needed to provide critical constraints to the underlying physics driving models of the corona and solar wind. Key diagnostics of the solar wind require measurements at its formation site and during its outflow to continuously track it across rapidly changing regions of space. A unified view of the solar wind is only possible through coordinated remote and in situ observations that probe these different regions. Here, we discuss current observational coverage and gaps of different plasma properties and review recent coordinated studies. We highlight how these efforts may become more routine with the launch of upcoming and planned missions.

The classic theory of cold-trapped ice on the Moon and some alternatives are reviewed and compared with observational constraints. The emphasis is on fundamental theoretical concepts. The "standard model" of lunar ice involves moderate modifications of the classical ideas and is consistent with major observational constraints. Only a few less established observational claims are unaccounted for. The text assumes some familiarity with the topic of lunar polar volatiles.

We present the results of spectroscopic observations of host galaxies of eleven candidate giant radio galaxies (GRGs), powered by active galactic nuclei (AGNs), conducted with the 2-m Himalayan Chandra Telescope (HCT). The primary aim of these observations, performed with the Hanle Faint Object Spectrograph Camera (HFOSC), was to secure accurate spectroscopic redshifts, enabling precise calculations of their projected linear sizes. Based on these measurements, we confirm all eleven sources as giants, with linear sizes ranging from 0.7 to 2.9 Mpc, including ten GRGs and one giant radio quasar (GRQ). One of the GRGs shows evidence of a potential AGN jet-driven ionized outflow, extending up to $\sim$12 kpc, which, if confirmed, would represent a rarely observed feature. Two of the confirmed GRGs exceed 2 Mpc in size, which are relatively rare examples of GRG. The redshifts of the host galaxies span 0.09323 $\leq$ z $\leq$ 0.41134. Using the obtained spectroscopic data, we characterised their AGN states based on the optical emission line properties. To complement these observations, archival radio and optical survey data were utilised to characterise their large-scale radio morphology and estimate projected linear sizes, arm-length ratios, flux densities, luminosities, and core dominance factors. These results provide new insights into the properties of GRSs and form a critical foundation for further detailed studies of their environments, AGN activity, and evolution using future high-sensitivity optical and radio datasets.

We employed Mutual Information (MI) analysis to investigate the relationship between galaxy properties and the assembly history of their host dark matter (DM) haloes from the IllustrisTNG simulations. Focusing on central and satellite galaxies with stellar masses between $10^{9} \, - \, 10^{11.5}\, h^{-1} M_\odot$, we examined the correlation between halo assembly time and galaxy assembly time, specific star formation rate (sSFR), color $(g-i)$, and galaxy formation efficiency $F_\star$. Our results indicate a strong correlation between $F_\star$ and the halo assembly time for low-mass central galaxies, suggesting a co-evolutionary relationship. In contrast, sSFR and color $(g-i)$ exhibit weaker correlations with halo assembly time, indicating that additional factors should influence these galaxy properties. Satellite galaxies show negligible correlation between their properties and halo assembly time, highlighting the impact of environmental processes on their evolution. We further extended our analysis to cluster observables, including the magnitude gap, the satellite richness, and the distances to the satellites. Although these cluster properties display weak overall correlations with halo assembly time, the richness consistently increases with stellar mass. This trend suggests that richness is more closely linked to formation history in more massive haloes, where satellite accretion dominates the growth of their host DM haloes. These findings establish $F_\star$ as a more sensitive indicator of halo assembly history than colour $(g-i)$, sSFR, or cluster observables, offering new insights into the complex interplay between galaxy evolution and the hierarchical growth of their host dark matter haloes.

While cloud-cloud collisions (CCCs) have been proposed as a mechanism for triggering massive star formation, it is suggested that higher collision velocities ($v_{\rm col}$) and lower GMC mass ($M_{\rm GMC}$) or/and density ($\Sigma_{\rm GMC}$) tend to suppress star formation. In this study, we choose the nearby barred galaxy NGC 3627 to examine the SFR and SFE of a colliding GMC ($m^\star_{\rm CCC}$ and $\epsilon_{\rm CCC}$) and explore the connections between $m^\star_{\rm CCC}$ and $\epsilon_{\rm CCC}$, $M_{\rm GMC}$($\Sigma_{\rm GMC}$) and $v_{\rm col}$, and galactic structures (disk, bar, and bar-end). Using ALMA CO(2--1) data (60~pc resolution), we estimated $v_{\rm col}$ within 500~pc apertures, based on line-of-sight GMC velocities, assuming random motion in a two-dimensional plane. We extracted apertures where at least 0.1 collisions occur per 1 Myr, identifying them as regions dominated by CCC-driven star formation, and then calculated $m^\star_{\rm CCC}$ and $\epsilon_{\rm CCC}$ using attenuation-corrected H$\alpha$ data from VLT MUSE. We found that both $m^\star_{\rm CCC}$ and $\epsilon_{\rm CCC}$ are lower in the bar (median values: $10^{3.84}~M_\odot$ and $0.18~\%$), and higher in the bar-end ($10^{4.89}~M_\odot$ and $1.10~\%$) compared to the disk ($10^{4.28}~M_\odot$ and $0.75~\%$). Furthermore, we found that structural differences within the parameter space of $v_{\rm col}$ and $M_{\rm GMC}$($\Sigma_{\rm GMC}$), with higher $M_{\rm GMC}$($\Sigma_{\rm GMC}$) in the bar-end and higher $v_{\rm col}$ in the bar compared to the disk, lead to higher star formation activity in the bar-end and lower activity in the bar. Our results support the scenario that variations in CCC properties across different galactic structures can explain the observed differences in SFE on a kpc scale within a disk galaxy.

Gravitational wave (GW) memory, a permanent distortion of the space-time metric, is anticipated during the acceleration of relativistic jets in gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). While the precise mechanism behind GRBs is not yet fully understood, detecting GW memory may contribute to clarifying their nature. In this paper, we consider various scenarios of GW memory emission, including both single and multiple shells with thin- and thick-shells. In particular, the memory spectrum for each scenario is compared with the sensitivity of next-generation detectors, namely DECIGO and ET-D. Physical properties spread over a broad-band region, emphasizing the importance of combined and wide-band observations. We also simulate GW memory based on nearby, realistic scenarios and demonstrate its detectability.

Extreme mass ratio inspiral (EMRI) systems composed of low-mass white dwarfs (WDs, $0.1 - 0.3$ $\mathrm{M}_{\odot } $) and intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs, $10^{3} - 10^{5}$ $\mathrm{M}_{\odot } $) are ideal objects for multi-messenger astronomy because they produce both gravitational wave (GW) and electromagnetic (EM) signals. Both relativistic effects and the mass transfer (MT) process are important for determining orbital dynamics, but the current model has not taken these ingredients fully into account. Here we use a perturbed Keplerian framework and the post-Newtonian (PN) formalism to model the relativistic orbit of a WD around a spinning IMBH. We pay special attention to the dynamical evolution during a narrow phase near the orbital pericenter where the WD fills the Roche lobe and starts MT. We find that gravitational radiation and MT have opposing effects on orbital evolution. When MT predominates, the orbital period and eccentricity could may increase, sometimes enabling the WD to escape and avoid tidal disruption. Additionally, we estimate the time required for the GW phase to shift by one radian due to the MT process and identify cases where this phase shift will be detectable by future GW observations. The temporal expansion of the orbit during MT offers a potential explanation for the disappearance of quasi-periodic eruptions (QPEs) found in several X-ray transients, highlighting the importance of including both the relativistic and MT processes in the WD-IMBH model.

The Gaia optical observations are not the most suitable spectral domain for studying the low-mass, faintest and reddest part of the main sequence. Nevertheless, the large number of objects observed with an unprecedented precision, including trigonometric parallax, makes it an unrivaled dataset for studying the stellar-substellar boundary. In this paper, I review the contribution of the successive catalogues offered by the Gaia mission to study the low-mass, ultra-cool objetcs. I also present further characterisations and scientific exploitations of the Gaia sample.

Observations have established that the masses of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) correlate tightly with the stellar masses of their host galaxies, albeit with substantial scatter. The size of this scatter as a function of galaxy mass and redshift contains valuable information about the origin of SMBHs and the physical nature of their co-evolution with galaxies. In this work, we highlight this connection by studying the scatter in the $M_{\mathrm{BH}} - M_{\star}$ relation for massive galaxies in the Illustris, IllustrisTNG (TNG), and EAGLE cosmological simulations. We find that the scatter in TNG is significantly lower than in Illustris and EAGLE, reflecting their different BH feedback models. By performing various numerical experiments, we quantify different contributions to the scatter in the simulations, and also identify a suitably defined intrinsic scatter. The intrinsic scatter in Illustris and EAGLE is $\sim0.3$ dex at $z=0$, and is dominated by variations from BH accretion, whereas the smaller scatter of TNG is rather dominated by hierarchical merging, suggesting that the massive galaxies in TNG are more tightly quenched. Variations in the BH seed mass can contribute to the scatter of the $M_{\rm BH}-M_{\star}$ relation as well, but whether this still plays a role at $z=0$ depends on the feedback model. Simulations with disabled AGN feedback produce much higher scatter for low-mass galaxies than seen in our cosmological simulations, demonstrating the crucial influence of feedback for determining the co-evolution of SMBHs and their host galaxies in this regime. In contrast, an important factor in reducing the scatter for massive galaxies is hierarchical merging of mostly quenched systems. Based on our results, we expect that the scatter in the $M_{\mathrm{BH}} - M_{\star}$ relation at high redshift could be particularly powerful in providing clues to the origin of SMBHs.

Two key questions of the chemistry of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) in the interstellar medium (ISM) are addressed: i) the way carbon is returned from PAHs to the interstellar gas after the very efficient accretion of C+ ions onto PAHs; ii) the PAH contribution to the high abundance of small carbon molecules observed in UV-irradiated regions. They are addressed based on the structure and stability of the various isomers of the complexes formed by PAHs and their cations with atomic carbon. Carbon complexes with coronene are studied by B3LYP/6-311+ZPVE(B3LYP/6-31G*) calculations, in order to figure out the behaviour of C+ and C complexes with larger pericondensed interstellar PAHs, which are thought to be dominant in the ISM. The most stable forms of [C-coronene]+ cation include 7C and 4C rings, C+ insertion into a CH bond, and a 5C ring with a short exocyclic cumulene chain, and similarly for neutral [C-coronene]. The subsequent evolution of similar complexes with pericondensed PAHs, in diffuse clouds, is discussed under the action of interstellar UV photons and H atoms, as function of the PAH size. Despite the complexity of such a processing, it seems probable that, for small PAHs, these complexes efficiently lose a C2H2 molecule from repeated photodissociations. However, this conclusion needs to be confirmed by the identification of reaction paths and the computation of activation energies. The case of the evolution of larger [C-PAH] complexes is less clear. Such a processing may explain the observed balance between C+ and PAHs, at least in the diffuse ISM. Such a formation of C2H2 from PAH catalysis is a key input for the chemistry of small carbon molecules in diffuse clouds. C+ accretion might frequently form stable PAHs that contain a peripheral pentagonal ring and form a significant fraction of interstellar PAHs.

Hierarchical merging of galaxies plays an important role in galaxy formation and evolution. Mergers could trigger key evolutionary phases such as starburst activities and active accretion periods onto supermassive black holes at the centres of galaxies. We aim to detect mergers and merger stages (pre- and post-mergers) across cosmic history and test whether it is better to detect mergers and their merger stages simultaneously or hierarchically. In addition, we want to test the impact of merger time relative to the coalescence of merging galaxies. First, we generated realistic mock JWST images of simulated galaxies selected from the IllustrisTNG cosmological hydrodynamical simulations. Then we trained deep learning (DL) models in the Zoobot Python package to classify galaxies into merging/non-merging galaxies and their merger stages. We used two different set-ups: (i) two-stage, in which we classify galaxies into mergers and non-mergers and then classify the mergers into pre-mergers and post-mergers, and (ii) one-stage, in which merger/non-merger and merger stages are classified simultaneously. We found that the one-stage classification set-up moderately outperforms the two-stage set-up, offering better overall accuracy and precision, particularly for the non-merger class. Pre-mergers can be classified with the highest precision in both set-ups, possibly due to the more recognisable merging features and the presence of merging companions. The image signal-to-noise ratio affects the performance of the DL classifiers, but not much after a certain threshold is crossed. Both precision and recall of the classifiers depend strongly on merger time, finding it more difficult to identify true mergers observed at stages that are more distant to coalescence. For pre-mergers, we recommend selecting mergers which will merge in the next 0.4 Gyrs, to achieve a good balance between precision and recall.

We presented the first photometric light curve solutions of four W Ursae Majoris (W UMa)-type contact binary systems. This investigation utilized photometric data from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and Gaia Data Release 3 (DR3). We used the PHysics Of Eclipsing BinariEs (PHOEBE) Python code and the Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method for these light curve solutions. Only TIC 249064185 among the target systems needed a cold starspot to be included in the analysis. Based on the estimated mass ratios for these total eclipse systems, three of them are categorized as low mass ratio contact binary stars. The absolute parameters of the systems were estimated using the Gaia DR3 parallax method and the orbital period and semi-major axis ($P-a$) empirical relationship. We defined that TIC 318015356 and TIC 55522736 systems are A-subtypes, while TIC 249064185 and TIC 397984843 are W-subtypes, depending on each component's effective temperature and mass. We estimated the initial masses of the stars, the mass lost by the binary system, and the systems' ages. We displayed star positions in the mass-radius, mass-luminosity, and total mass-orbital angular momentum diagrams. In addition, our findings indicate a good agreement with the mass-temperature empirical parameter relationship for the primary stars.

On 13 March 2023, when the Parker Solar Probe was situated on the far side of the Sun as seen from Earth, a large solar eruption took place creating a strong solar energetic particle (SEP) event observed by multiple spacecraft (S/C). The energetic event was observed at six well-separated locations: Parker Solar Probe, Solar Orbiter, BepiColombo, STEREO~A, near-Earth S/C, and MAVEN. An in-situ shock crossing and a related energetic storm particle (ESP) event were observed at all inner-heliospheric S/C, suggesting that the interplanetary coronal mass ejection (CME)-driven shock extended all around the Sun. However, the solar event was accompanied by a series of pre-event CMEs. We aim to characterize this extreme widespread SEP event and to provide an explanation for the unusual observation of a circumsolar interplanetary shock and corresponding circumsolar ESP event. We analyse data from seven space missions to characterize the solar eruption at the Sun, the energetic particle event, and the interplanetary context at each observer location as well as the magnetic connectivity of each observer to the Sun. We employ magnetohydrodynamic simulations of the solar wind in which we inject various CMEs that were launched before as well as contemporaneously with the solar eruption under study. In particular, we test two different scenarios that could have produced the observed global ESP event: 1) a single circumsolar blast-wave-like shock launched by the associated solar eruption, and 2) the combination of multiple CMEs driving shocks into different directions. By comparing the simulations of the two scenarios with observations we find that both settings are able to explain the observations. However, the blast-wave scenario performs slightly better in terms of the predicted shock arrival times at the various observers.

Context: Numerous studies of diffuse interstellar band (DIB) profiles have detected substructures, implying large molecules as their carriers. However, some of the narrowest DIBs generally do not show such substructure, suggesting the possibility of very small carriers. Aims: Based on the previously found tight correlation of the three narrow DIBs at 6196, 6440 and 6623 A and the present detection of weaker side DIBs to each of them in the extensive data set from the ESO Diffuse Interstellar Bands Large Exploration Survey, we investigate whether they may stem from small linear carrier molecules. This approach can lead to concrete DIB carrier suggestions, which can be tested in laboratory measurements in future studies. Methods: We suggest that the DIBs we study here represent individual rotational transitions of a small molecule. We determined the molecular constants from observation and compared them with data from a large set of quantum-chemical calculations to confine possible carrier candidates. Furthermore, we determined rotational temperatures by fitting line ratios using the fitted molecular models. Results: We determined molecular constants for three DIB systems and the corresponding transition types. The fitted rotational temperatures lie within the range of known interstellar diatomic molecules. We identified several DIB carrier candidates, almost all of them molecular ions. Some of them are metastable species, indicating the possibility of collision complexes as DIB carriers. Conclusions: If our hypothesis holds, this would be a major step toward the identification of a carrier molecule of the 6196 A DIB, the strongest among the narrow DIBs.

Accreting supermassive black hole binaries are powerful multimessenger sources emitting both gravitational and electromagnetic (EM) radiation. Understanding the accretion dynamics of these systems and predicting their distinctive EM signals is crucial to informing and guiding upcoming efforts aimed at detecting gravitational waves produced by these binaries. To this end, accurate numerical modeling is required to describe both the spacetime and the magnetized gas around the black holes. In this paper, we present two key advances in this field of research. First, we have developed a novel 3D general relativistic magnetohydrodynamics (GRMHD) framework that combines multiple numerical codes to simulate the inspiral and merger of supermassive black hole binaries starting from realistic initial data and running all the way through merger. Throughout the evolution, we adopt a simple but functional prescription to account for gas cooling through the emission of photons. Next, we have applied our new computational method to follow the time evolution of a circular, equal-mass, non-spinning black hole binary for ${\sim\!200}$ orbits starting from a separation of ${20\,r_g}$ and reaching the post-merger evolutionary stage of the system. We have identified how and when the minidisks dissolve as the binary compresses. We also show that even when the binary ``decouples'' from its surrounding disk, its luminosity decreases by only a factor of a few and abruptly increases by ${\sim\!50\%}$ at the time of merger, accompanied by an equally abrupt change in spectrum. Finally, the magnetic flux brought to the spin-parameter ${\sim\!0.68}$ merger remnant is able to drive a relativistic, Poynting-flux-dominated jet.

As a major interstellar medium, the atomic neutral hydrogen (HI) plays an important role in the galaxy evolution. It provides the ingredient for star formation, and sensitively traces the internal processes and external perturbations influencing the galaxy. With the beginning of many new radio telescopes and surveys, HI may make a more significant contribution to the understanding of galaxies in the near future. This review discusses the major development of the $21\,\text{cm}$ emission-line HI observations and studies in the past few years, including its scaling relations with other galaxy properties, its kinematics and structures, its role in environmental studies, and its constraints on hydrodynamical simulations. The local-Universe HI scaling relations of stellar-mass--selected samples extend smoothly to $10^9\,\text{M}_\odot$ stellar mass, with a tentative evolution to the redshift of ${\sim}0.1$. The development of measurement techniques enables better estimations of HI non-circular motion, dispersion, and thickness, and new observations revealed extended or extra-planar HI structures, both helpfully constraining the gas accretion, stellar feedback, and star formation processes of galaxy evolution models. HI is very useful for tracing the on-going satellite evolution in dense environments, the studies of which would benefit from ongoing blind HI surveys. Though simulations still cannot fully reproduce HI gas properties, they help to understand the role of possible factors in regulating HI properties. We also discuss possible future progress with new observations at FAST.

Forbidden coronal lines has traditionally called the attention due to the high-energy photons required for their production (IP $>$100~eV, where IP is the ionisation potential of the transitions that originate the line). As such, they are regarded as the most highly ionised component of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN). For decades, it was thought that they were only formed in the inner portions of the narrow line region (NLR). Nowadays, due to the larger sensitivity of the detectors and the availability of integral field unit (IFU) spectrographs, that emission in addition to the nuclear component is found to be extended up to a few kiloparsecs away from the active centre. In this review, we highlight the most important aspects of the coronal emission and discuss the recent developments in the field. In particular, we emphasize the discovery that they can be used to determine the mass of the central supermassive black hole, to reconstruct the SED, as well as to trace the most energetic feedback component of the ionised gas in AGN.

We review the existing distance estimates to the black hole X-ray binary Swift J1727.8$-$1613 with a discussion of the accuracies and caveats of the associated methodologies. As part of this, we present new line-of-sight HI absorption spectra captured using the MeerKAT radio telescope. We estimate a maximum radial velocity with respect to the local standard of rest of $24.8 \pm 2.8$ km s$^{-1}$, which is significantly lower than that found towards an extragalactic reference source. Given the location of Swift J1727.8$-$1613 at Galactic longitude and latitude $(l, b) \approx (8.6°, 10.3°)$, we explore the feasibility of the HI absorption method. From this we derive a near kinematic distance of $d_{\rm{near}} = 3.6 \pm 0.3\ (stat) \pm 2.3\ (sys)$ kpc as lower bound for the distance to Swift J1727.8$-$1613. We compare our results with those derived from different distance determination methods including the use of colour excess or reddening along the line of sight, which we constrain to $E(B-V) = 0.37 \pm 0.01\ (stat) \pm 0.025\ (sys)$ using near-UV spectra. By combining this with donor star magnitudes reported by Mata Sánchez et al. (2024b), we suggest an increased distance of $5.5^{+1.4}_{-1.1}$ kpc, which would imply a natal kick velocity of $190 \pm 30$ km s$^{-1}$.

In July 2024, Sunrise completed its third successful science flight. The Sunrise III observatory had been upgraded significantly after the two previous successful flights in 2009 and 2013. Three completely new instruments focus on the small-scale physical processes and their complex interaction from the deepest observable layers in the photosphere up to chromospheric heights. Previously poorly explored spectral regions and lines are exploited to paint a three-dimensional picture of the solar atmosphere with unprecedented completeness and level of detail. The full polarimetric information is captured by all three instruments to reveal the interaction between the magnetic fields and the hydrodynamic processes. Two slit- based spectropolarimeters, the Sunrise UV Spectropolarimeter and Imager (SUSI) and the Sunrise Chromospheric Infrared spectro-Polarimeter (SCIP), focus on the near-ultraviolet and the near-infrared regions respectively, and the imaging spectropolarimeter Tunable Magnetograph (TuMag) simultaneously obtains maps of the full field-of-view of $46 \times 46$ Mm$^2$ in the photosphere and the chromosphere in the visible. The instruments are operated in an orchestrated mode, benefiting from a new Image Stabilization and Light Distribution unit (ISLiD), with the Correlating Wavefront Sensor (CWS) providing the autofocus control and an image stability with a root-mean-square value smaller than 0.005''. A new gondola was constructed to significantly improve the telescope pointing stability, required to achieve uninterrupted observations over many hours. Sunrise III was launched successfully on July 10, 2024, from the Esrange Space Center near Kiruna (Sweden). It reached the landing site between the Mackenzie River and the Great Bear Lake in Canada after a flight duration of 6.5 days. In this paper, we give an overview of the Sunrise III observatory and its instruments.

As the environment harbouring the majority of galaxies, filaments are thought to play a key role in the co-evolution of galaxies and the cosmic web. In this first part of a series to understand the link between galaxies and filaments through cosmological simulations, we address two major current obstacles on this path: the difficulty of meaningful filament identification, and their poorly constrained properties and internal structure. We use the public EAGLE and TNG100 simulations to build physically motivated filament catalogues with the DisPerSE algorithm, based on the dark matter (DM) field at redshift z = 0 and z = 2, explicitly accounting for the multi-scale nature of filaments and with careful validation of results. Filament widths, lengths, and densities vary by factors ~5-100 in both simulations, highlighting the heterogeneous nature of filaments as a cosmic environment. All filaments are relatively thin, with overdensity profiles of galaxies, DM, and gas dropping to the cosmic mean within <3 Mpc from their spines. Contrary to groups and clusters, filament cores are highly substructure dominated, by as much as ~80 per cent. Filament gas maps reveal rich temperature and density structures that limit the applicability of simple cylindrically symmetric models. EAGLE and TNG100 agree that z = 2 filament spines are traced by overdense cool gas in pressure equilibrium with a >10x hotter envelope. However, significant differences in detail between their predicted gas property maps imply that individual simulations cannot yet describe the baryon structure of filaments with certainty. Finally, we compare our fiducial filament network to one constructed from galaxies. The two differ in many aspects, but the distance of a galaxy to its nearest galaxy-based filament still serves as a statistical proxy for its true environment.

High reddening near the Galactic plane hampers observations and proper characterization of the globular clusters (GCs) located toward the inner regions of the Milky Way. The VISTA Variables in the Via Lactea (VVV) survey observed the Galactic bulge and adjacent disk for several years, providing multi-epoch, near-infrared images for 41 Galactic GCs. Detecting RRLyrae variables belonging to these GCs will aid in their accurate parameterization. By fully leveraging the astrometric, photometric, and variability VVV catalogs, we searched for RRLyrae stars associated with GCs. Our selection criteria, based on proper motions, proximity to the cluster centers, and distances inferred from their period-luminosity-metallicity relations, enable us to accurately identify the RRLyrae population in these GCs and determine color excesses and distances in a homogeneous manner. Since the VVV catalogs cover from the innermost regions of the GCs to their outskirts, we can provide a comprehensive picture of the entire RRLyrae population in these GCs. We have discovered significant RRLyrae populations in two highly reddened Galactic GCs: UKS1 and VVV-CL160, previously unknown to host RRLyrae stars. Additionally, we have detected one RRLyrae candidate in each of Terzan4 and Terzan9, also new to RRLyrae detection. We further confirm and increase the number of RRLyrae stars detected in 22 other low-latitude Galactic GCs. The RRLyrae distances place most of these GCs within the Galactic bulge, aligning well with the few GCs in our sample with reliable Gaia or Hubble Space Telescope measurements. However, most of the VVV GCs lack accurate Gaia distances, and literature distances are generally significantly smaller than those derived in this work. As a byproduct of our analysis, we have obtained the proper motions for all the VVV GCs, independently confirming Gaia results, except for UKS1 and 2MASS-GC02.

Accurate determinations of metallicity for large, complete stellar samples are essential for advancing various studies of the Milky Way. In this paper, we present a data-driven algorithm that leverages photometric data from the KiDS and the VIKING surveys to estimate stellar absolute magnitude, effective temperature and metallicities. The algorithm is trained and validated using spectroscopic data from LAMOST, SEGUE, APOGEE, and GALAH, as well as a catalog of very metal-poor stars from the literature, and Gaia EDR3 data. This approach enables us to estimate metallicities, effective temperatures, and g-band absolute magnitudes for approximately 0.8 million stars in the KiDS dataset. The photometric metallicity estimates exhibit an uncertainty of around 0.28 dex when compared to spectroscopic studies, within the metallicity range of -2 dex to 0.5 dex. The photometric effective temperature estimates have an uncertainty of around 149 K, while the uncertainty in the absolute magnitude is approximately 0.36 mag. The metallicity estimates are reliable for values down to about -2 dex. This catalog represents a valuable resource for studying the structure and chemical properties of the Milky Way, offering an extensive dataset for future investigations into Galactic formation and evolution.

The census of planets around M dwarfs in the solar neighbourhood meets two challenges: detecting the best targets for the future characterisation of planets with ELTs, and studying the statistics of planet occurrence that are crucial to formation scenarios. The radial velocity (RV) method remains the most appropriate for such a census as it is sensitive to the widest ranges of masses and periods. HARPS, mounted on the 3.6 m telescope at La Silla Observatory (ESO, Chile), has been obtaining velocity measurements since 2003, and can therefore be used to analyse a very large and homogeneous dataset. We performed a homogeneous analysis of the RV time series of 200 M dwarfs observed with HARPS from 2003 to 2019 (gathering more than 15000 spectra), with the aim of understanding detectable signals such as stellar and planetary companions and activity signals. The RVs were computed with a template matching method before carrying out the time series analysis. First, we focused on the systematic analysis of the presence of a dominant long-term pattern in the RV time series (linear or quadratic trend and sine function). Then, we analysed higher-frequency perdiodic signals using periodograms of the residual time series and Keplerian function fitting. We found long-term variability in 57 RV time series (28.5%). This led to the revision of the parameters of the massive planet (GJ9482 b), as well as the detection of four substellar and stellar companions (around GJ3307, GJ4001, GJ4254, andGJ9588), for which we characterised inclinations and masses by combining RV and astrometry. The periodic analysis allowed us to recover 97% of the planetary systems already published in this sample, but also to propose three new planetary candidates orbiting GJ300 (7.3Me), GJ654(5Me), and GJ739 (39Me), which require additional measurements before they can be confirmed.

We present a study of the molecular gas reservoirs and dust contents in three quiescent galaxies (QGs) located in the core of the $z=3.09$ SSA22 proto-cluster. Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), we detect CO(3--2) emission in one galaxy, ADF22-QG1, marking the first direct detection of molecular gas in a quiescent galaxy from the early universe. The detected galaxy, ADF22-QG1, has a molecular gas mass of log$M_{\rm H_2}$/M$_\odot = 10.26 \pm 0.07$ assuming a CO-to-H$2$ conversion factor $\alpha_{\rm CO} = 4.4$ (log$M_{\rm H_2}$/M$_\odot = 9.52 \pm 0.07$ for $\alpha_{\rm CO} = 0.8$), corresponding to a gas mass fraction of $f_{\rm gas} \approx 14\%$ (2.5\%). The gas-to-dust ratio $\delta _{\rm gdr}\gtrsim170$ ($\delta_{\rm gdr}\gtrsim30$) for $\alpha_{\rm CO} = 4.4$ ($\alpha_{\rm CO} =0.8$) is also derived for the first time for a QG at the epoch. For the other two galaxies, ADF22-QG2 and ADF22-QG3, non detections of CO(3--2) emission provide upper limits, $f_{\rm gas} \approx 17\%$ (3.1\%) and $f_{\rm gas} \approx 13\%$ (2.4\%), respectively. The inferred gas-consumption history of ADF22-QG1, based on its star-formation history, suggests that (i) dusty star-forming galaxies (DSFGs) at $z = 4$--$6$ are plausible progenitors, and (ii) the cessation of gas accretion from cosmic web filaments plays an important role in their evolution to quenched systems. Furthermore, the presence of a detectable molecular gas reservoir in ADF22-QG1 indicates that additional mechanisms, such as morphological quenching, may be required to fully explain its quiescent nature.

We re-determine planetary occurrences around M dwarfs using 20 years of observations from HARPS on 197 targets. The first aim of this study is to propose more precise occurrence rates using the large volume of the sample but also variations to previous calculations, particularly by considering multiplicity, which is now an integral part of planetary occurrence calculations. The second aim is to exploit the extreme longevity of HARPS to determine occurrence rates in the unexplored domain of very long periods. This work relies entirely on the 197 radial velocity time series obtained and analysed in our previous study. By considering they are cleaned of any detectable signal, we convert them into detection limits. We use these 197 limits to produce a detectability map and combine it with confirmed planet detections to establish our occurrence rates. Finally, we also convert the detection limits from orbital period to insolation in order to construct an occurrence statistics for the temperate zone. We find a strong prevalence of low-mass planets around M dwarfs, with an occurrence rate of 120% for planets with a mass between 0.75 and 3 Me. In addition, we compute an occurrence rate of 45.3% +20-16% for temperate zone planets around M dwarfs. We obtain an occurrence rate of a few percent for giant planets with wide separations. In our sample these giant planets with wide separations are only detected around the most massive M dwarfs.

One of the major open questions related to the production of jets by accreting black holes is: why do sources with similar accretion powers produce so vastly different jet powers? What conditions are required to make a powerful jet? If jets are powered by the Blandford-Zjanek mechanism, two further parameters control the jet power besides the black hole mass - black hole spin and the magnetic flux threading it. Since highly spinning black holes without jets appear to exist, the jet production efficiency may depend on whether the black hole managed to accrete high enough magnetic flux in the past. The highest-efficiency jets in this picture are launched from magnetically arrested disks (MADs). Here we discuss a method to test this hypothesis using VLBI core-shift measurements to estimate the jet magnetic flux.

We present first results from James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec), Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), and Keck Cosmic Webb Imager (KCWI) integral field spectroscopy of the powerful but highly obscured host-galaxy of the jetted radio source Cygnus A. We detect 169 infrared emission lines at 1.7--27 micron and explore the kinematics and physical properties of the extended narrow-line region (NLR) in unprecedented detail. The density-stratified NLR appears to be shaped by the initial blow-out and ongoing interaction of the radio jet with the interstellar medium, creating a multi-phase bicone with a layered structure composed of molecular and ionized gas. The NLR spectrum, with strong coronal emission at kpc-scale, is well-modeled by AGN photoionization. We find evidence that the NLR is rotating around the radio axis, perhaps mediated by magnetic fields and driven by angular momentum transfer from the radio jet. The overall velocity field of the NLR is well described by 250 km/s outflow along biconical spiral flow lines, combining both rotation and outflow signatures. There is particularly bright [Fe II] 1.644 micron emission from a dense, high-velocity dispersion, photoionized clump of clouds found near the projected radio axis. Outflows of 600--2000 km/s are found in bullets and streamers of ionized gas that may be ablated by the radio jet from these clouds, driving a local outflow rate of 40 Msun/yr.

Massive stars are able to pursue their evolution through the whole sequence of burning phases. They are born hot and luminous, and live a short life before exploding as a supernova or collapsing directly into a black hole. They have a strong impact on their surrounding, injecting mechanical energy, ionising radiation, and nucleosynthetic products in the interstellar medium. They are the driver of galaxy evolution and trigger star formation. Their high luminosity makes them visible in distant galaxies, and some of them are standard candles we use to root the distance ladder of the Universe. This chapter describes the status of our knowledge about massive stars and the nucleosynthetic path they go through the different phases of their evolution.

The Voyager spacecrafts have been measuring since 2012 the rates of electron and nuclei of the cosmic radiation beyond the solar cavity at a distance of more than $10^{13}$ $meters$ from the Earth. A record of unique and notable findings have been reported and, among them, the electron-to-proton flux ratio of 50 to 100 below energies of $50$ $MeV$. This ratio is thoroughly opposite of that of 0.01 measured at higher energies in the range 10 $GeV$ to 10 $TeV$. The difference amounts to four orders of magnitude. Arguments and calculations to show how this surprising and fundamental ratio lends support to the empirical evidence of the ubiquitous electrostatic field in the Milky Way Galaxy are presented. In other respects this paper examines and calculates, for the first time, the electric charge balance in the solar system delimited by the $termination$ $shock$ of the solar wind.

We reconstruct the non-linear matter power spectrum $P(k)$ using a joint analysis of gravitational lensing of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and lensing of galaxies. This reconstruction is motivated by the $S_8$ tension between early-universe CMB predictions and late-time observables. We use CMB lensing data from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope DR6 and cosmic shear data from the Dark Energy Survey (DES) Y3 release to perform a gravity-only (i.e. no baryonic feedback) fit to $P(k)$ in bins of wave-number, within $\rm{\Lambda CDM}$. We find that with DES cosmic shear data alone, $P(k)$ departs from the early-universe CMB prediction on all scales. The joint fit with CMB lensing is consistent on large scales $k<0.2 \;{\rm Mpc}^{-1}$ but shows a $\sim 2 \sigma$ deviation from scale-independence when extending to $k = 10 \;h/\mathrm{Mpc}$. We compare our agnostic $P(k)$ reconstruction to baryonic feedback models and non-standard dark matter models: reasonable variations of both scenarios can recover the shape and amplitude of the suppression. We discuss the advances needed to disentangle these physical effects with a full mapping of $P(k,z)$.

We demonstrate the potential of new adaptive optical technology to expand the detection horizon of gravitational-wave observatories. Achieving greater quantum-noise-limited sensitivity to spacetime strain hinges on achieving higher circulating laser power, in excess of 1~MW, in conjunction with highly-squeezed quantum states of light. The new technology will enable significantly higher levels of laser power and squeezing in gravitational-wave detectors, by providing high-precision, low-noise correction of limiting sources of thermal distortions directly to the core interferometer optics. In simulated projections for LIGO~A+, assuming an input laser power of 125~W and an effective injected squeezing level of 9~dB entering the interferometer, an initial concept of this technology can reduce the noise floor of the detectors by up to 20\% from 200~Hz to 5~kHz, corresponding to an increment of 4~Mpc in the sky-averaged detection range for binary neutron star mergers. This work lays the foundation for one of the key technology improvements essential to fully utilize the scientific potential of the existing 4-km LIGO facilities, to observe black hole merger events past a redshift of~5, and opens a realistic pathway towards a next-generation 40-km gravitational-wave observatory in the United States, Cosmic~Explorer.

We report here on new results of the systematic monitoring of southern glitching pulsars at the Argentine Institute of Radioastronomy. In particular, we study in this work the new major glitch in the Vela pulsar (PSR J0835$-$4510) that occurred on 2024 April 29. We aim to thoroughly characterise the rotational behaviour of the Vela pulsar around its last major glitch and investigate the statistical properties of its individual pulses around the glitch. We characterise the rotational behaviour of the pulsar around the glitch through the pulsar timing technique. We measured the glitch parameters by fitting timing residuals to the data collected during the days surrounding the event. In addition, we study Vela individual pulses during the days of observation just before and after the glitch. We selected nine days of observations around the major glitch on 2024 April 29 and studied their statistical properties with the Self-Organizing Maps (SOM) technique. We used Variational AutoEncoder (VAE) reconstruction of the pulses to separate them clearly from the noise. We obtain a precise timing solution for the glitch. We find two recovery terms of $\sim 3~\mathrm{days}$ and $\sim 17~\mathrm{days}$. We find a correlation of high amplitude with narrower pulses while not finding notable qualitative systematic changes before and after the glitch.

Cold molecular gas, largely traced by CO emission, is the primary fuel for star formation, making it essential for understanding galaxy evolution. ALMA has made significant progress in the study of the cosmic evolution of cold molecular gas. Here, we exploit the ALMACAL survey to address issues relating to small sample sizes and cosmic variance, utilising calibration data from ALMA to compile a statistically significant and essentially unbiased sample of CO-selected galaxies. By employing a novel statistical approach to emission-line classification using semi-analytical models, we place strong constraints on the CO luminosity function and the cosmic evolution of molecular gas mass density ($\rho_{H_2}$) back to $z \sim 6$. The cosmic molecular gas mass density increases with redshift, peaking around $z \sim 1.5$, then slowly declines towards higher redshifts by $\sim 1$ dex. Our findings confirm the key role of molecular gas in fuelling star formation. The new $\rho_{H_2}$ estimates allow us to revisit the cosmic baryon cycle, showing that the ratio of molecular gas-to-stellar mass density is consistent with the so-called 'bathtub model' of baryons, which implies a continuous replenishment of gas. The cosmic gas depletion timescale, estimated on a global scale, is shown to be fairly constant at all redshifts. We emphasise the importance of surveys using multiple small fields rather than a single contiguous area to mitigate the effects of cosmic variance.

In this work, we study neutrino spin oscillations in the case when they are gravitationally scattered off a rotating Kerr black hole surrounded by a thick magnetized accretion disk. We consider only toroidal magnetic field inside the disk. Neutrino spin precession is caused by the interaction of the neutrino magnetic moment with the magnetic field in the disk. Our treatment of the spin oscillations of the observed neutrino fluxes is based on numerical simulations of the propagation of a large number of incoming test neutrinos using High Performance Parallel Computing. We briefly discuss our results and their applications in the observations of astrophysical neutrinos.

We obtain novel constraints on new scalar fields interacting with Standard Model fermions through Lorentz-violating couplings, bridging searches for scalar particles and Lorentz-symmetry tests. These constraints arise from torsion-balance experiments, magnetometer searches, and an excessive energy loss in Red Giant stars. Torsion-balance experiments impose stringent constraints, benefitting from large macroscopic sources such as the Earth, Moon, and Sun. Magnetometer-based searches, which detect pseudo-magnetic fields through spin precession, offer additional limiting power to low-mass scalar fields. Meanwhile, observations of Red Giant stars place strong limits on additional energy loss mechanisms, extending these constraints to higher scalar mass ranges and a wider range of Lorentz-violating couplings. Combining data from laboratory experiments and astrophysical observations, this approach strengthens constraints on Lorentz-violating interactions and paves the way for future investigations into physics beyond the Standard Model.

It has been shown that black hole quasinormal modes are subject to spectral instability, typically triggered by metric perturbations. These perturbations, which can introduce a minor bump in the effective potential of the wave equation, give rise to a novel branch of asymptotic quasinormal modes, dubbed the {\it echo modes}, which lie mainly parallel to the real frequency axis. This study explores the evolution of the echo modes and their interplay with the outward spiral motion observed in low-lying quasinormal modes. As the bump in the effective potential moves away from the central black hole, the echo modes collectively shift toward the real axis, with the spacing between successive modes decreasing uniformly. This collective motion occurs simultaneously with the spiral of the low-lying modes until the echo modes eventually take over the fundamental quasinormal mode. In the time domain, such a takeover coincides with a transition point for the temporal waveform, where the distinction between the original black hole's ringdown and the echoes becomes clear. This marks a transition in the characteristics of the waveform from primarily damped oscillations, dominated by the damping rate of the fundamental mode, to echo waves, characterized by periodic echo pulses. We argue that this phenomenon is universal by employing analytical and numerical analyses. We first elucidate our arguments using explicit but simplified toy models, where the effective potential barriers are disjoint. The derivations are then generalized to scenarios where perturbations are introduced on top of a black hole metric with a continuous effective potential. The observational implications, particularly the causality dilemma, are elaborated. We show that the echo modes can be extracted by applying the Fourier transform to ringdown waveforms, which can be important for gravitational wave observations.

The model of vacuum energy compensation due to interaction of a scalar field $\phi$ with curvature scalar of the form $\beta R \phi^2 f(\phi) $ is proposed. It is shown that with a simple power form of $f(\phi)$ the exponential expansion, induced by vacuum energy (or what is the same by cosmological constant), is transformed into canonical cosmological evolution of the universe dominated by relativistic matter.

Extreme Solar Energetic Particle Events (ESPEs) were identified almost a decade ago, providing context for super events unleashed by our host star, the Sun. Their assumed solar origin drives the question of their ``worst-case" impact, which could be profound, multifaceted, and devastating for our technological society. A methodology that directly relates the soft X-ray flux $F_{SXR}$ of the driving solar flare of a Solar Energetic Particle event to its ``worst-case" integral fluence spectrum has recently been proposed by Papaioannou et al. (2023). We employ this method to the ESPEs that have been confirmed in cosmogenic radionuclide records up to date, retrieve their ``worst-case" integral spectrum, and compare the latter to the actual -- independently obtained -- recent reconstructions based on the radionuclide records. We first show that our method allows us to estimate the integral fluence spectra of one of the paleo events, i.e., AD774/775, one of the strongest ESPEs found within the cosmogenic radionuclide records so far. We then implement a mean ESPE utilizing four confirmed paleo ESPEs (i.e., AD993/994, AD774/775, 660 BCE, and 7176 BCE) and test the resulting spectrum against the estimated one. Finally, we test the same methodology for a series of strong SEPs recorded on the Earth's surface as Ground Level Enhancements (GLEs). In all investigated cases, the recent re-calibration of $F_{SXR}$ by Hudson et al. (2024) is considered. We conclude that the methodology can adequately estimate the ``worst-case" integral fluence spectra for both strong and extreme SEP events, quantifying their impact up to an integral energy of $\sim$ E $>$ 1 GeV.

We show that gravity field equations based on a tensor with rank greater than 2 have consistency problems in the sense that integration constants in the solutions, such as the parameter $m$ in the Schwarzschild metric, do not allow for an interpretation in terms of conserved quantities in the theory. The recently introduced Conformal Killing Gravity, an interesting extension of General Relativity that inherits all the solutions of the latter, and defined with a rank-3 tensor field equation that does not arise from a diffeomorphism-invariant action, is plagued with this problem. In this theory, it is not clear at all how one can define the energy and angular momentum for black hole solutions, or define the analogues of the formulas, such as the quadrupole formula, in the weak field limit for gravitational waves emitted by compact sources.

In this manuscript, we provide a comprehensive study of gravitational lensing by dark compact objects predicted by a Modified Gravity (MOG) based on the Scalar-Vector-Tensor action, and the aim is to analyze new insights into the nature of gravitational interactions. We compute weak and strong deflection angles for the specified static, spherically symmetric MOG spacetime. Additionally, we dedicate a section to explore observational implications in the weak field limit. By employing a supermassive galactic black hole as a gravitational lens, we compare various parameters in MOG with those of the Schwarzschild black hole as lens in strong-field scenarios. Specifically, we model the black holes M87${^*}$ and Sgr A${^*}$ as lenses within the MOG framework, calculating the corresponding lensing coefficients and distortion parameters in the weak field regime.

We study the background and perturbations in two classes of $k$-inflation models with the potential characterized by an inflection point. We demonstrate that these models enjoy scaling properties which could be used to redefine input parameters so that the perturbations spectra satisfy correct normalization at the CMB pivot scale. The background and perturbation equations are integrated numerically for two specific models.

Our standard model of the Universe predicts the distribution of dark matter to $1\%$ at the scales needed for upcoming experiments, yet our predictions for how the luminous matter -which has interactions besides gravity- is distributed remain highly uncertain. Understanding how much gas and stars there are in the Universe and where they preferentially live is challenging, and the uncertainty affects how well we can understand the cosmological model itself. For example, it compromises our ability to tell apart different models for dark energy, the mysterious force driving the accelerated expansion of the Universe. In this Essay, I will touch upon many recent developments that suggest we will be able to overcome this limitation before data from new experiments become available. More excitingly, I will describe how our efforts to model luminous and dark matter jointly will create new possibilities for constraining the physics of supermassive black holes, galaxies, and gas over time.