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Na Wang

Publications and source records attributed to Na Wang.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

Recurrent double-peaked $γ$-ray sub-flares in PKS 1424-418

We report a hint of recurrent double-peaked $γ$-ray sub-flares in PKS~1424--418 during two similar major active epochs, MJD 56117--56498 and MJD 59669--59978. The candidate double-peaked sub-flares show a characteristic intra-subflare peak separation of $\sim 11.8$ d and a neighbouring-subflare spacing of $\sim 67$ d. Red-noise Monte Carlo tests indicate that the candidate recurrent double-peaked morphology is not easily reproduced by stochastic variability alone, with false-alarm probabilities of $p_{\rm a}=0.0216$ and $p_{\rm b}=0.0006$ for the two active epochs, respectively. In the simulations of the entire \textit{Fermi} Large Area Telescope (LAT) light curve, no red-noise realisation reproduces both epoch-like structures. The spectral energy distribution (SED) modelling shows similar radiative properties for the two peaks of one double-peaked candidate, while changes in the Doppler factor appear to play an important role in the flaring activity. Together with the previously reported near-zero lag between the millimetre and $γ$-ray emission, these results suggest that the recurrent activity may be associated with the compact mm/sub-mm core region. We discuss a possible structured-jet scenario in which a single disturbance propagates through a chain of quasi-stationary recollimation shocks. In this picture, repeated interactions between the disturbance and the shock structure may qualitatively account for both the double-peaked sub-flare profiles and the observed $\sim 11.8$ d and $\sim 67$ d time-scales. Further active epochs are required to determine whether this similarity represents a recurrent long-term behaviour.

astro-ph.HE↗

Action-level characterization of gravitational-wave propagation in dynamical Barbero--Immirzi gravity

We investigate which operators in first-order dynamical Barbero--Immirzi (BI) gravity control cosmological tensor propagation at the action level. Within a bosonic, two-derivative, curvature-linear Einstein--Cartan class, eliminating the algebraic Lorentz connection reveals a separation between the scalar sector and the tensor kinetic normalization. In particular, the Holst-to-Palatini ratio determines the scalar kinetic structure, whereas the transverse-traceless tensor mode is normalized by the parity-even Hilbert--Palatini coefficient. As a consequence, a minimal dynamical Holst sector with fixed parity-even normalization remains exactly on the general-relativistic tensor-propagation surface and does not generate anomalous gravitational-wave friction. We then construct a regular nonminimal parity-even realization in which the tensor normalization evolves cosmologically, derive the corresponding standard-siren observable, and apply current GWTC-3, GWTC-4.0, and GWTC-5.0 information as an observational test of this action-level tensor sector. The resulting constraints should therefore be interpreted as limits on the evolution of the tensor kinetic normalization rather than direct constraints on minimal BI torsion dynamics.

gr-qc↗

Quasi-periodic Eruptions from Recurrent Satellite Black Hole Transits through Magnetized Galactic Nucleus Accretion Disks

Quasi-periodic eruptions (QPEs) are recurrent soft X-ray flares from galactic nuclei, but their origin remains uncertain. The delayed ultraviolet (UV) counterpart detected in ZTF19acnskyy provides a new constraint on viable models. We present a two-channel model in which a satellite black hole (sBH) repeatedly crosses a nuclear accretion disk threaded by a large-scale magnetic field. Gravitational focusing and dynamical drag generate hot, optically thick ejecta whose expansion and photon diffusion power the soft X-ray QPE. For fiducial Bondi-scale parameters, the model yields a characteristic X-ray duration of $\sim10^3\ \mathrm{s}$ and luminosity of $\sim10^{42}\ \mathrm{erg\,s^{-1}}$. For ZTF19acnskyy, the model reproduces the observed day-scale X-ray duration and energetics. Simultaneously, the sBH motion compresses and bends the background magnetic field, triggering in-disk reconnection. The reconnection channel provides the energy budget and photon-diffusion delay required for the variable UV component. Unfavorable magnetic fields or diffusion times longer than the QPE recurrence period can weaken or smear out the UV signal, potentially explaining the lack of clear UV counterparts in other QPE sources.

astro-ph.HE↗

StepAudio 3 Gen Technical Report

We introduce StepAudio 3 Gen, a general-purpose audio generation model that supports zero-shot text-to-speech (TTS), voice design, vocal generation, sound effects, music, vibe speech, and mixtures of multiple audio types within a unified framework. At its core, StepAudio 3 Gen is a discrete autoregressive generator that models audio directly over residual vector quantization (RVQ) tokens, departing from the diffusion Transformer-based continuous generation paradigm prevalent in recent general audio models. Its StepAudio Tokenizer represents general audio at 12.5 Hz in a shared $16 \times 2048$ residual code space, jointly quantizing semantic and waveform-level acoustic features so that each code layer preserves both types of information. For generation, the backbone predicts the first codebook along the time axis using autoregressive modeling, while a lightweight causal Transformer completes the remaining fifteen codebooks along the codebook axis. Our study further identifies three key design principles: (1) interference-aware progressive pretraining for acquiring audio capabilities while preserving the textual abilities of the large language model, (2) RVQ Adaptor for effectively incorporating multi-codebook acoustic representations, and (3) discrete autoregressive modeling over a shared representation across general audio domains. With progressive pretraining, multi-task instruction training, and supervised fine-tuning, StepAudio 3 Gen achieves state-of-the-art performance on both TTS and voice design, while retaining strong generation capabilities across speech, vocals, sound effects, and music. Audio samples are available at https://stepaudiollm.github.io/step-audio-3-gen/.

cs.SD↗

Nuclear equation-of-state effects on the two-dimensional post-outburst thermal evolution of magnetized neutron-star crusts

We present a controlled two-dimensional study of nuclear-equation-of-state (EOS) effects on the post-outburst thermal relaxation of magnetized neutron-star crusts. Six EOS models are evolved at a fixed gravitational mass of $1.4 M_{\odot}$ with EOS-specific TOV backgrounds, crust compositions, and transport inputs under identical magnetic-field and heating prescriptions. Our analysis combines self-consistent multi-EOS evolution with a BSk-family factorization that separates structural, microphysical, and interaction contributions, together with an accepted-step energy ledger and a numerical-sensitivity budget. The models show EOS-dependent changes in both the early response and the later redistribution of heat between the surface, crust, and inner boundary; light-curve crossings near $10^2$ days demonstrate that the EOS effect is not a simple luminosity rescaling. By 1000 days the cumulative surface-photon energy fraction differs by less than one percentage point, whereas the internal energy partition differs much more strongly. The updated sensitivity tests show that the late-time luminosity differences and the largest peak contrasts exceed the corresponding BSk24 numerical-sensitivity scales, while the smallest early peak contrast remains less securely resolved. The calculations are intended as a reproducible EOS-sensitivity benchmark rather than an observational fit.

astro-ph.HE↗

Timing, Polarization, and Single-Pulse Properties of Long-Period FAST Pulsars

We present phase-connected timing and polarization measurements for two long-period FAST-CRAFTS pulsars, PSRs J0000+6252 and J2131+3642, and extend single-pulse emission-state analysis to a five-source sample including PSRs J1903+1407, J1502+4653, and J2112+4058. FAST L-band timing baselines span 414 to 511 days; the two pulsars have spin periods of 1.11 to 1.55 s, period derivatives of $(3.99$ to $4.06)\times10^{-15}~{\rm s~s^{-1}}$, characteristic ages of 4.34 to 6.16 Myr, surface magnetic fields of $(2.15$ to $2.52)\times10^{12}$ G, and spin-down luminosities of $(4.21\times10^{31}$ to $1.16\times10^{32})~{\rm erg~s^{-1}}$. Their rotation measures are $70.2\pm26.7$ and $-44.6\pm7.6~{\rm rad~m^{-2}}$, with linear polarization fractions of 17.6\% to 27.2\%. PSR J2131+3642 shows a short monotonic PA segment permitting a formal rotating-vector-model fit, though limited longitude coverage leaves the geometric parameters poorly constrained; PSR J0000+6252 has too few PA points for such a fit. Gaussian mixture modeling (GMM) of single-pulse energy distributions identifies null, weak, and burst components in PSRs J0000+6252, J1903+1407, J1502+4653, and J2112+4058, while J2131+3642 shows only weak and burst states. We also identify bright single pulses (peak intensity $\geq10\times$ the integrated average profile): 42 in J0000+6252, four each in J1903+1407 and J2112+4058, and none in J2131+3642 or J1502+4653. These bright pulses occur within the main emission window with no evidence of periodic recurrence, consistent with sporadic enhancements of the normal radio-emission beam. For J2112+4058, we measure a scattering timescale $τ_{\rm sc}=5.84\pm0.18$ ms at $ν_{\rm ref}=1.25$ GHz. Together, these results highlight the diversity of magnetospheric variability among slowly rotating neutron stars.

astro-ph.HE↗

Dynamical Barbero--Immirzi field coupled to quintessence: gravitational-wave propagation constraints and next-generation forecasts

We investigate the imprints of a dynamical Barbero--Immirzi (BI) field $γ(x)$ coupled to a quintessence scalar field $ϕ$ on gravitational-wave (GW) propagation. In the framework of Einstein--Cartan--Holst gravity, promoting $γ$ to a dynamical scalar introduces a stress--energy that back-reacts on the metric, modifying the GW friction term. A minimal coupling $\proptoβ\,ϕ^2γ^2$ between the BI field and quintessence leads to a two-parameter extension of the Belgacem--Maggiore parametrization, characterized by $\xBI$ (from the isolated BI field) and $\xcp$ (from the coupling). Using the LIGO--Virgo--KAGRA GWTC-3 dark-siren constraint $Ξ_0=1.2^{+0.7}_{-0.7}$, we obtain the first simultaneous constraints: $|\xBI|\lesssim0.7$ and $|\xcp|\lesssim0.13$ at 90\% credibility. We then forecast the sensitivity of next-generation detectors Einstein Telescope (ET) and Cosmic Explorer (CE), showing that a 10-year observation campaign can improve these bounds by roughly one to two orders of magnitude depending on the parameter---a factor of $\sim\!20$ for $\xBI$ and $\sim\!20$ for $\xcp$---reaching $σ(\xBI)\sim3\times10^{-2}$ and $σ(\xcp)\sim1.2\times10^{-2}$. Translated into microscopic parameters, this corresponds to $γ_{\rm dyn}\lesssim10^{-12}$ and $β\lesssim10^{-3}$, providing a powerful new observational window into the interplay between quantum-gravity phenomenology and dark energy.

gr-qc↗

Booster-based beam recycling for swap-out injection at the High Energy Photon Source

Fourth-generation synchrotron light sources employ ultralow-emittance storage rings with stringent injection requirements. On-axis swap-out injection alleviates the dependence on storage-ring dynamic aperture, but high-charge operation requires an efficient injector architecture capable of producing high-charge replacement bunches. This paper presents the accelerator physics design and performance analysis of a booster-based beam-recycling swap-out injection scheme implemented at the High Energy Photon Source (HEPS). In this approach, the full-energy booster serves as both an injector and a high-energy accumulator. An extracted storage-ring bunch is returned to the booster, merged with a low-charge bunch previously injected from the linac and accelerated to full energy. Following high-energy damping, the merged bunch is reinjected into the original storage-ring bucket. The scheme avoids the need for a dedicated accumulator ring while enabling high-charge bunch replacement. The recycling scheme was commissioned through staged machine studies. Full recycling-chain simulations, commissioning studies, and measured performance analysis are presented. The measured results characterize the recycling operation and quantify the transmission efficiency and performance limitations of the complete recycling loop. These results demonstrate the feasibility of the booster-based beam-recycling architecture and establish its operational basis for high-charge swap-out injection in future fourth-generation synchrotron light sources.

physics.acc-ph↗

Probing strange quark matter objects with future space-based gravitational wave detectors DECIGO and BBO

The Strange Quark Matter (SQM) hypothesis posits that objects composed of SQM could exist across a wide mass range, from strange planets (SPs) to strange stars (SSs). It has been proposed that gravitational waves (GWs) emitted by inspiraling SS-SP systems may be detectable by ground-based GW observatories such as advanced LIGO and the Einstein Telescope. Nevertheless, such a system may undergo an extended period of orbital evolution in a close configuration before entering the inspiraling phase. During this time, it can generate continuous GW signals at frequencies ranging from milli-hertz (mHz) to deci-hertz (dHz). The detailed characteristics of these GWs have not yet been thoroughly explored. In this study, we delve into the continuous GW features of SS-SP systems, with a focus on exploring the physically viable parameter space. We compared the GW signals emitted by these systems to the sensitivity curves of next-generation space-based GW detectors like the Deci-hertz Interferometer Gravitational wave Observatory (DECIGO) and the Big Bang Observer (BBO). Our analyses demonstrate that both the DECIGO and BBO detectors are capable of detecting continuous GWs from SS-SP systems across a broad parameter space. These GWs carry important information for testing the SQM hypothesis, as well as for advancing our understanding of supernovae and compact star merger processes.

astro-ph.HE↗

Radio pulse search from Aql X-1

We present 12 observations of the accreting millisecond X-ray pulsar Aql X-1, taken from August 2022 to October 2023 using the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope at 1250 MHz. These observations covered both the quiescence and X-ray outburst states, as determined by analyzing the X-ray data from the Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer and the Monitor of All-sky X-ray Image. Periodicity and single-pulse searches were conducted for each observation, but no pulsed signals were detected. The obtained upper limit flux densities are in the range of 2.86-5.73 uJy, which provide the lowest limits to date. We discuss several mechanisms that may prevent detection, suggesting that Aql X-1 may be in the radio-ejection state during quiescence, where the radio pulsed emissions are absorbed by the matter surrounding the system.

astro-ph.HE↗

Search for continuous gravitational waves from the pulsar J0435+3233

We perform a search for continuous gravitational waves from J0435+3233 using LIGO O4a public data. J0435+3233 is unique among millisecond pulsars as it exhibits an exceptionally large spin-down and marks the first pulsar observed to date with a spin-down larger than $10^{-12}$ Hz/s in the sub $10$ ms spin period range, making it a potentially strong source of continuous gravitational waves. We target signals at exactly twice the rotation frequency, a narrow band around this frequency, and also signals corresponding to r-modes. Our results are consistent with a non-detection. Our most stringent upper limit on the intrinsic gravitational wave amplitude at 95\% confidence is $h_0=5.8\times10^{-27}$. With an estimated source distance of 1.2 kpc this upper limit constraints the ellipticity to be smaller greater than $1.6\times10^{-8}$. If the observed spin-down is all intrinsic, this is the first source for which the spin-down upper limit is beaten by over an order of magnitude and the ellipticity is constrained to the physically very interesting range of the low $10^{-8}$ region.

gr-qc↗

SMR: Scheduler with Multi-Channel Map-Encoded Reinforcement Learning for Radio Telescopes

Observation scheduling for large single-dish radio telescopes is a multi-objective optimization problem: schedulers must maximize on-source scientific return under strict mechanical and environmental constraints. Previous dynamic scheduling relies on expert-designed heuristics, while existing reinforcement-learning (RL) approaches often struggle with variable-length target lists and lack an intrinsic representation of sky geometry. We present SMR (Scheduler with Map-encoded Reinforcement Learning), which projects discrete targets onto an azimuth--elevation (Az--El) grid in the local horizon frame. The resulting aligned multi-channel sky maps encode target attributes together with direction-dependent cues such as satellite-interference risk and elevation-dependent receiver gain. This representation provides an explicit spatial inductive bias and enables SMR to learn directly from the sky state. Simulations based on real catalogs and site parameters show that, compared with a tuned look-ahead greedy baseline, SMR achieves about a 10\% relative improvement in time utilization by learning non-myopic scheduling strategies. In the full three-channel setting, SMR further achieves joint trade-off among efficiency, interference avoidance, and observation quality, with up to 17\% higher LIER and 54\% higher HGOR relative to an MLP baseline while maintaining higher utilization across both 12 h and 24 h horizons. Overall, SMR provides a simple and extensible way for data-driven single-dish scheduling.

astro-ph.IM↗

The Analysis of the Influence of Coordinate Error of Observation Station On the Construction Accuracy of Pulsar Time

\abstract{Errors in observatory coordinates directly impact the precision of pulsar time-scale construction. Using the pulsar timing software TEMPO2, this study simulates various station position errors within the three-dimensional terrestrial reference frame for three different types of millisecond pulsars, over periods of 13 days and 5 years, and analyzes their effects on pulsar timing results.The findings demonstrate that,for both 13-day and 5-year observation spans, station coordinate errors substantially reduce the accuracy of pulsar timescale construction when the zenith angle exhibits long-term variations. This effect is independent of pulsar type and the daily observable time of the station antenna for the pulsar. A linear relationship is found between station coordinate errors and the Root-Mean-Square (RMS) of pulsar timing residuals, with fitted linear coefficients ranging from $1.36 \times 10^{-11}$ to $1.61 \times 10^{-9}$ for the three pulsars. The Roemer delay error caused by coordinate inaccuracies is notably larger than other delay and correction terms. Errors along the x- and y-axes have comparable influences on timing precision, whereas errors along the z-axis have a relatively smaller effect. Kendall correlation analysis between station error-induced Roemer delay and RMS yields a correlation coefficient $r = 1.67\%$ and $p = 100\%$ in all cases, indicating that, at current timing precision levels, coordinate errors primarily affect the Roemer delay term and thus the pulse arrival times, which is highly consistent with theoretical models.While these findings offer valuable insights into the key factors influencing pulsar timescale accuracy and related applications, they may not hold under conditions of a constant zenith angle or limited elevation angles, such as those at FAST.}

astro-ph.IM↗

Analog photonic simulator for large-scale transport

Transport equations describe how physical quantities -- such as mass, energy, momentum, concentration, probability, or fields -- are carried, propagated, or redistributed through space and time, forming a foundational class of partial differential equations across science and engineering. However, high-dimensional partial differential equations are difficult to represent on digital grids because the number of degrees of freedom grows exponentially with dimension. Continuous-variable quantum photonics on the other hand can represent and evolve these large-scale fields without first discretizing space into a discrete grid. We demonstrate a large-scale analog photonic simulator for the constant-coefficient advection equation, a transport equation that is a fundamental benchmark for scientific computing. The solution of a $d$-variable advection equation is encoded into $d$ optical modes, so that the partial differential equation evolution maps directly to programmable phase-space displacements generated by optical quadrature momenta. Using a time-domain continuous-variable quantum photonic platform, we validate programmable control with $20,000$ single-mode squeezed states and $20,000$ two-mode squeezed states, and implement transport dynamics on a $20,000$-mode cluster-state resource. Homodyne measurements then verifies mode-resolved displacement control, which can provide first and second-order moment information of the solution to the advection equation, with final achievable relative error as low as $0.8\%$ and $0.92\%$ for first and second-order moment observables respectively. Our results establish continuous-variable photonics as a suitable programmable analog platform for large-scale advection equations.

quant-ph↗

StepAudio 2.5 Technical Report

Unified audio-language modeling has emerged as a prominent trend in modern speech systems, promising to bring the reasoning capabilities of large language models to auditory tasks. However, existing unified foundations often struggle to match the depth of specialized systems across automatic speech recognition (ASR), text-to-speech synthesis (TTS), and realtime spoken interaction. Bridging this gap remains an open challenge. This report presents StepAudio 2.5, a unified audio-language foundation model that matches or exceeds specialized systems across all three capabilities. Rather than treating these tasks as architecturally distinct, we operate on the premise that once text and audio share a multimodal representational space, task specialization becomes a matter of operational regimes: data construction, optimization targets, and decoding constraints. Guided by this insight, we advance the post-training paradigm from standard supervised learning to task-tailored Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF), using it as the primary mechanism to define complex optimization targets. We leverage this RLHF-centric alignment, alongside specialized decoding, to shape a shared backbone into three distinct operational modes. Concretely, the ASR branch advances transcription efficiency via verifiable multi-token decoding; the TTS branch achieves controllable, expressive synthesis through preference-based RLHF and context-rich supervision; and the Realtime branch realizes low-latency, persona-consistent dialogue via generative reward modeling within an RLHF framework. On standard benchmarks, StepAudio 2.5 achieves state-of-the-art results across ASR, TTS, and Realtime, demonstrating that a singular audio-language foundation can successfully internalize the distinct deployment objectives of speech understanding, generation, and live interaction.

eess.AS↗

Uncovering Latent Pathological Signatures in Pulmonary CT via Cross-Window Knowledge Distillation

Multi-window CT imaging captures complementary pathological information across anatomical structures of differing densities, yet existing deep learning methods fuse representations only at later stages, missing cross-density interactions. We propose a cross-window knowledge distillation framework in which student encoders learn latent clinical priors from a teacher trained on the most informative window. Evaluated retrospectively on three cohorts - COPD-CT-DF (n=719), RSNA PE (n=1,433), and an in-house CTEPD dataset (n=161) - distillation improved per-window AUC by 10.1-16.5 percentage points on COPD-CT-DF (0.75-0.81 to 0.90-0.94; all P<0.001), with ensemble AUC reaching 0.9960. Similar gains were observed on RSNA PE (0.80-0.83 to 0.90-0.92) and CTEPD (AUC 0.7481 vs. 0.6264). Cross-window distillation internalises pathological signatures invisible to supervised approaches, offering a generalisable solution for multi-window pulmonary CT analysis.

eess.IV↗

East Asian VLBI Network astrometry toward the star-forming region G040.96+02.48 in the Extreme Outer Galaxy

Accurate astrometric measurements for star-forming regions located on the far side of the Milky Way remain scarce. In this work, we present the astrometric results for a 22\,GHz water maser associated with star-forming region G040.96+02.48 located on the far side of the Milky Way, using the East Asian VLBI Network. The target water maser's proper motion was determined to be ($μ_α\cosδ, μ_δ$) = ($-2.06_{-0.51}^{+0.53}$, $-2.95_{-0.44}^{+0.45}$)~mas~yr$^{-1}$. The derived three-dimensional kinematic distance to the star-forming region is 20.2$\pm$3.2\,kpc, placing it slightly outside the Outer Scutum$-$Centaurus Arm. The corresponding vertical height of 872$\pm$139\,pc indicates a significant warp of the outer Galactic disk, which is in good agreement with the latest precessing warp model. Moreover, the resulting peculiar motions reveal a complex kinematic pattern, characterized by a large outward radial velocity of $-32\pm$18\,km~s$^{-1}$. Our observations substantially expand the valuable sample of star-forming regions with accurate astrometric measurements in the Extreme Outer Galaxy.

astro-ph.GA↗

Detectability of continuous gravitational waves from planetary-mass companions orbiting compact stars

Binary systems with ultrashort-period planetary-mass companions are expected to radiate continuous gravitational waves (GWs). However, earlier studies found that the detectability of such systems by the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) is unlikely. In this study, we investigate the detectability of GWs from planetary-mass companions orbiting pulsars (PSRs) or white dwarfs (WDs) whose fundamental parameters, essential for calculating GW properties, have been measured. We compare the GW signals from our sample with the sensitivity curves of space-based GW detectors. We find that fourteen sources achieve a signal-to-noise ratio (\(\text{S/N}\)) of \(\gtrsim 5\) within four years of observations. Among these, three sources have PSR primaries (2S 0918-549 b, 4U 0513-40 b, and 4U 1543-62), and eleven systems possess WD primaries (BW Scl b, CP Eri b, CR Boo b, EF Eri b, GP Com b, GW Lib b, SDSS J0926+3624 b, SDSS J1507+5230 b, SMSS J1606-1000 b, SRGeJ0453 b, and WZ Sge b). We note that their detectability is less probable with near-term missions such as LISA, TianQin, and Taiji. Nevertheless, they could be detected by more advanced, future-generation observatories, such as the Deci-hertz Interferometer Gravitational wave Observatory (DECIGO) and the Big Bang Observer (BBO). This offers the potential to investigate the formation and evolution of ultrashort-period planetary-mass companions around compact stars through joint GW and electromagnetic surveys.

astro-ph.HE↗