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Quantum low-density parity-check codes are promising candidates for quantum error correcting codes as they might offer more resource-efficient alternatives to surface code architectures. In particular, bivariate bicycle codes have recently gained attention due to their 2D-local structure, high encoding rate, and promising performance under simulation. In this work, we will explore how one can transform bivariate bicycle codes defined on lattices with periodic boundary conditions to codes with the same locality properties on a 2D lattice with open boundary conditions. For this, we introduce the concept of pruning quantum codes. We explain how pruning bivariate bicycle codes is always possible when the codes are hypergraph products of two classical cyclic codes. We also indicate that this might be possible for more general bivariate bicycle codes by constructing explicit examples. Finally, we investigate fault-tolerant quantum computation using the constructed pruned codes by describing fold-transversal gates., Comment: 16 pages, comments welcome

We present the detection and characterization of TOI-4994b (TIC 277128619b), a warm Saturn-sized planet discovered by the NASA Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). TOI-4994b transits a G-type star (V = 12.6 mag) with a mass, radius, and effective temperature of $M_{\star} =1.005^{+0.064}_{-0.061} M_{\odot}$, $R_{\star} = 1.055^{+0.040}_{-0.037} R_{\odot}$, and $T_{\rm eff} = 5640 \pm 110$ K. We obtained follow-up ground-based photometry from the Las Cumbres Observatory (LCO) and the Antarctic Search for Transiting ExoPlanets (ASTEP) telescopes, and we confirmed the planetary nature of TOI-4994b with multiple radial velocity observations from the PFS, CHIRON, HARPS, FEROS, and CORALIE instruments. From a global fit to the photometry and radial velocities, we determine that TOI-4994b is in a 21.5-day, eccentric orbit ($e = 0.32 \pm 0.04$) and has a mass of $M_{P}= 0.280^{+0.037}_{-0.034} M_{J}$, a radius of $R_{P}= 0.762^{+0.030}_{-0.027}R_{J}$, and a Saturn-like bulk density of $\rho_{p} = 0.78^{+0.16}_{-0.14}$ $\rm g/cm^3$. We find that TOI-4994 is a potentially viable candidate for follow-up stellar obliquity measurements. TOI-4994b joins the small sample of warm Saturn analogs and thus sheds light on our understanding of these rare and unique worlds., Comment: 17 pages, 10 figures. Accepted to AJ

The design of fast reactors burning MOX fuels requires accurate capture and fission cross sections. For the particular case of neutron capture on 242Pu, the NEA recommends that an accuracy of 8-12% should be achieved in the fast energy region (2 keV-500 keV) compared to their estimation of 35% for the current uncertainty. Integral irradiation experiments suggest that the evaluated cross section of the JEFF-3.1 library overestimates the 242Pu(n,{\gamma}) cross section by 14% in the range between 1 keV and 1 MeV. In addition, the last measurement at LANSCE reported a systematic reduction of 20-30% in the 1-40 keV range relative to the evaluated libraries and previous data sets. In the present work this cross section has been determined up to 600 keV in order to solve the mentioned discrepancies. A 242Pu target of 95(4) mg enriched to 99.959% was irradiated at the n TOF-EAR1 facility at CERN. The capture cross section of 242Pu has been obtained between 1 and 600 keV with a systematic uncertainty (dominated by background subtraction) between 8 and 12%, reducing the current uncertainties of 35% and achieving the accuracy requested by the NEA in a large energy range. The shape of the cross section has been analyzed in terms of average resonance parameters using the FITACS code as implemented in SAMMY, yielding results compatible with our recent analysis of the resolved resonance region.The results are in good agreement with the data of Wisshak and K\"appeler and on average 10-14% below JEFF-3.2 from 1 to 250 keV, which helps to achieve consistency between integral experiments and cross section data. At higher energies our results show a reasonable agreement within uncertainties with both ENDF/B-VII.1 and JEFF-3.2. Our results indicate that the last experiment from DANCE underestimates the capture cross section of 242Pu by as much as 40% above a few keV., Comment: 20 pages, 19 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev. C

We report the discovery and characterization of three new transiting giant planets orbiting TOI-6628, TOI-3837 and TOI-5027, and one new warm sub-Saturn orbiting TOI-2328, whose transits events were detected in the lightcurves of the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite \textbf{(TESS)} space mission. By combining TESS lightcurves with ground-based photometric and spectroscopic follow-up observations we confirm the planetary nature of the observed transits and radial velocity variations. TOI-6628~$b$ has a mass of 0.75$\pm$0.06~$M_\mathrm{J}$, a radius of 0.98$\pm$0.05~$R_J$ and is orbiting a metal-rich star with a period of 18.18424$\pm{0.00001}$ days and an eccentricity of 0.667$\pm0.016$, making it one of the most eccentric orbits of all known warm giants. TOI-3837~$b$ has a mass of 0.59$\pm$0.06~$M_\mathrm{J}$, a radius of 0.96$\pm$0.05~$R_J$ and orbits its host star every 11.88865$\pm$0.00003~days, with a moderate eccentricity of 0.198$^{+0.046}_{-0.058}$. With a mass of 2.01$\pm$0.13~$M_\mathrm{J}$ and a radius of 0.99$^{+0.07}_{-0.12}$ $R_J$, TOI-5027~$b$ orbits its host star in an eccentric orbit with $e$~=~0.395$^{+0.032}_{-0.029}$ every 10.24368$\pm{0.00001}$~days. TOI-2328~$b$ is a Saturn-like planet with a mass of 0.16$\pm$0.02~$M_\mathrm{J}$ and a radius of 0.89$\pm$0.04~$R_J$, orbiting its host star in a nearly circular orbit with $e$~=~0.057$^{+0.046}_{-0.029}$ at an orbital period of 17.10197$\pm{0.00001}$ days. All four planets have orbital periods above 10 days, and our planet interior structure models are consistsent a rocky-icy core with a H/He envelope, providing evidence supporting the core accretion model of planet formation for this kind of planets., Comment: 23 pages, 12 figures

The study of ultralight dark matter helps constrain the lower bound on minimally coupled dark matter models. The granular structure of ultralight dark matter density fields produces metric perturbations which have been identified as a potentially interesting probe of this model. For dark matter masses $m \gtrsim 10^{-17} \, \mathrm{eV}$ these perturbations would fluctuate on timescales similar to observational timescales. In this paper, we estimate the expected time delay these fluctuations would generate in simulated pulsar signals. We simulate arrays of mock pulsars in a fluctuating granular density field. We calculate the expected Shapiro time delay and gravitational redshift and compare analytical estimates with the results of simulations. Finally, we provide a comparison with existing pulsar observation sensitivities., Comment: to be submitted to phys rev D, comments welcome

We take initial steps towards a general framework for constructing logical gates in general quantum CSS codes. Viewing CSS codes as cochain complexes, we observe that cohomology invariants naturally give rise to diagonal logical gates. We show that such invariants exist if the quantum code has a structure that relaxes certain properties of a differential graded algebra. We show how to equip quantum codes with such a structure by defining cup products on CSS codes. The logical gates obtained from this approach can be implemented by a constant-depth unitary circuit. In particular, we construct a $\Lambda$-fold cup product that can produce a logical operator in the $\Lambda$-th level of the Clifford hierarchy on $\Lambda$ copies of the same quantum code, which we call the copy-cup gate. For any desired $\Lambda$, we can construct several families of quantum codes that support gates in the $\Lambda$-th level with various asymptotic code parameters., Comment: 40 pages

We investigate general observables of the complex Liouville string with worldsheet boundaries. We develop a universal formalism that reduces such observables to ordinary closed string amplitudes without boundaries, applicable to any worldsheet string theory, but particularly simple in the context of 2d or minimal string theories. We apply this formalism to the duality of the complex Liouville string with the matrix integral proposed in arXiv:2409.18759 and arXiv:2410.07345 and showcase the formalism by finding appropriate boundary conditions for various matrix model quantities of interest, such as the resolvent or the partition function. We also apply this formalism towards the computation of non-perturbative effects on the worldsheet mediated by ZZ-instantons. These are known to be plagued by extra subtleties which need input from string field theory to resolve. These computations probe and uncover the duality between the complex Liouville string and the matrix model at the non-perturbative level., Comment: 47 pages + appendices

We propose a duality between the complex Liouville string and a two-matrix integral. The complex Liouville string is defined by coupling two Liouville theories with complex central charges $c = 13 \pm i \lambda$ on the worldsheet. The matrix integral is characterized by its spectral curve which allows us to compute the perturbative string amplitudes recursively via topological recursion. This duality constitutes a controllable instance of holographic duality. The leverage on the theory is provided by the rich analytic structure of the string amplitudes that we discussed in arXiv:2409.18759 and allows us to perform numerous tests on the duality., Comment: 52 pages + appendices

We introduce a new two-dimensional string theory defined by coupling two copies of Liouville CFT with complex central charge $c=13\pm i \lambda$ on the worldsheet. This string theory defines a novel, consistent and controllable model of two-dimensional quantum gravity. We use the exact solution of the worldsheet theory to derive stringent constraints on the analytic structure of the string amplitudes as a function of the vertex operator momenta. Together with other worldsheet constraints, this allows us to completely pin down the string amplitudes without explicitly computing the moduli space integrals. We focus on the case of the sphere four-point amplitude and torus one-point amplitude as worked examples. This is the first in a series of papers on the complex Liouville string: three subsequent papers will elucidate the holographic duality with a two-matrix integral, discuss worldsheet boundaries and non-perturbative effects, and connect the theory to de Sitter quantum gravity., Comment: 52 pages + appendices

We introduce the complex Liouville string, a solvable string theory defined by coupling two Liouville theories with complex conjugate central charges $c \in 13+i \mathbb{R}$ on the worldsheet. We compute its amplitudes from first principles and establish a duality with a double-scaled two-matrix integral. We also analyze general worldsheet boundaries and non-perturbative effects in the genus expansion. This theory is capable of capturing aspects of de Sitter quantum gravity in both two and three dimensions, which leads to a precise version of de Sitter holography., Comment: 5 pages, overview paper

We prove a monoidal equivalence, called universal Koszul duality, between genuine equivariant K-motives on a Kac-Moody flag variety and constructible monodromic sheaves on its Langlands dual. The equivalence is obtained by a Soergel-theoretic description of both sides which extends results for finite-dimensional flag varieties by Taylor and the first author. Universal Koszul duality bundles together a whole family of equivalences for each point of a maximal torus. At the identity, it recovers an ungraded version of Beilinson-Ginzburg-Soergel's and Bezrukavnikov-Yun's Koszul duality for equivariant and unipotently monodromic sheaves. It also generalizes Soergel-theoretic descriptions for monodromic categories on finite-dimensional flag varieties by Lusztig-Yun, Gouttard and the second author. For affine Kac-Moody groups, our work sheds new light on the conjectured quantum Satake equivalences by Cautis-Kamnitzer and Gaitsgory. On our way, we establish foundations on six functors for reduced K-motives and introduce a formalism of constructible monodromic sheaves.

Unmeasured confounding is a major challenge for identifying causal relationships from non-experimental data. Here, we propose a method that can accommodate unmeasured discrete confounding. Extending recent identifiability results in deep latent variable models, we show theoretically that confounding can be detected and corrected under the assumption that the observed data is a piecewise affine transformation of a latent Gaussian mixture model and that the identity of the mixture components is confounded. We provide a flow-based algorithm to estimate this model and perform deconfounding. Experimental results on synthetic and real-world data provide support for the effectiveness of our approach.

Hot and warm Jupiters might have undergone the same formation and evolution path, but the two populations exhibit different distributions of orbital parameters, challenging our understanding on their actual origin. The present work, which is the results of our warm Jupiters survey carried out with the CHIRON spectrograph within the KESPRINT collaboration, aims to address this challenge by studying two planets that could help bridge the gap between the two populations. We report the confirmation and mass determination of a hot Jupiter (orbital period shorter than 10 days), TOI-2420\,b, and a warm Jupiter, TOI-2485\,b. We performed a joint analysis using a wide variety of spectral and photometric data in order to characterize these planetary systems. We found that TOI-2420\,b has an orbital period of P$_{\rm b}$=5.8 days, a mass of M$_{\rm b}$=0.9 M$_{\rm J}$ and a radius of R$_{\rm b}$=1.3 R$_{\rm J}$, with a planetary density of 0.477 \gc; while TOI-2485\,b has an orbital period of P$_{\rm b}$=11.2 days, a mass of M$_{\rm b}$=2.4 M$_{\rm J}$ and a radius of R$_{\rm b}$=1.1 R$_{\rm J}$ with density 2.36 \gc. With current parameters, the migration history for TOI-2420\,b and TOI-2485\,b is unclear: the high-eccentricity migration scenarios cannot be ruled out, and TOI-2485\,b's characteristics may rather support this scenario.

We define a filtration of a standard Whittaker module over a complex semisimple Lie algebra and and establish its fundamental properties. Our filtration specialises to the Jantzen filtration of a Verma module for a certain choice of parameter. We prove that embeddings of standard Whittaker modules are strict with respect to our filtration, and that the filtration layers are semisimple. This provides a generalisation of the Jantzen conjectures to Whittaker modules. We prove these statements in two ways. First, we give an algebraic proof which compares Whittaker modules to Verma modules using a functor introduced by Backelin. Second, we give a geometric proof using mixed twistor $\mathcal{D}$-modules.

For a real affine hyperplane arrangement, we define an integer intersection matrix with a natural $q$-deformation related to the intersections of bounded chambers of the arrangement. By connecting the integer matrix to a bilinear form of Schechtman-Varchenko, we show that there is a closed formula for its determinant that only depends on the combinatorics of the underlying matroid. We conjecture an analogous formula for its $q$-deformation. Our work also applies more generally in the setting of affine oriented matroids. Additionally, we give a representation-theoretic interpretation of our $q$-intersection matrix using Braden-Licata-Proudfoot-Websters's hypertoric category $\mathcal{O}$ (or more generally Kowalenko-Mautner's category $\mathcal{O}$ for oriented matroid programs). This paper is part of a broader program to categorify matroidal Schur algebras defined by Braden-Mautner.

Quantum low-density parity-check (qLDPC) codes offer a promising route to scalable fault-tolerant quantum computation with constant overhead. Recent advancements have shown that qLDPC codes can outperform the quantum memory capability of surface codes even with near-term hardware. The question of how to implement logical gates fault-tolerantly for these codes is still open. We present new examples of high-rate bivariate bicycle (BB) codes with enhanced symmetry properties. These codes feature explicit nice bases of logical operators (similar to toric codes) and support fold-transversal Clifford gates without overhead. As examples, we construct $[[98,6,12]]$ and $[[162, 8, 12]]$ BB codes which admit interesting fault-tolerant Clifford gates. Our work also lays the mathematical foundations for explicit bases of logical operators and fold-transversal gates in quantum two-block and group algebra codes, which might be of independent interest., Comment: 21 pages, comments welcome

Discovering transiting exoplanets with relatively long orbital periods ($>$10 days) is crucial to facilitate the study of cool exoplanet atmospheres ($T_{\rm eq} < 700 K$) and to understand exoplanet formation and inward migration further out than typical transiting exoplanets. In order to discover these longer period transiting exoplanets, long-term photometric and radial velocity campaigns are required. We report the discovery of TOI-2447 b ($=$ NGTS-29b), a Saturn-mass transiting exoplanet orbiting a bright (T=10.0) Solar-type star (T$_{\rm eff}$=5730 K). TOI-2447 b was identified as a transiting exoplanet candidate from a single transit event of 1.3% depth and 7.29 h duration in $TESS$ Sector 31 and a prior transit event from 2017 in NGTS data. Four further transit events were observed with NGTS photometry which revealed an orbital period of P=69.34 days. The transit events establish a radius for TOI-2447 b of $0.865 \pm 0.010\rm R_{\rm J}$, while radial velocity measurements give a mass of $0.386 \pm 0.025 \rm M_{\rm J}$. The equilibrium temperature of the planet is $414$ K, making it much cooler than the majority of $TESS$ planet discoveries. We also detect a transit signal in NGTS data not caused by TOI-2447 b, along with transit timing variations and evidence for a $\sim$150 day signal in radial velocity measurements. It is likely that the system hosts additional planets, but further photometry and radial velocity campaigns will be needed to determine their parameters with confidence. TOI-2447 b/NGTS-29b joins a small but growing population of cool giants that will provide crucial insights into giant planet composition and formation mechanisms., Comment: 16 pages, 12 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRAS

This paper describes a distributed implementation of Apache Arrow that can leverage cluster-shared load-store addressable memory that is hardware-coherent only within each node. The implementation is built on the ThymesisFlow prototype that leverages the OpenCAPI interface to create a shared address space across a cluster. While Apache Arrow structures are immutable, simplifying their use in a cluster shared memory, this paper creates distributed Apache Arrow tables and makes them accessible in each node., Comment: Presented at the 3rd Workshop on Heterogeneous Composable and Disaggregated Systems (HCDS 2024)

Large language models (LLMs) have gained widespread interest due to their ability to process human language and perform tasks on which they have not been explicitly trained. However, we possess only a limited systematic understanding of the chemical capabilities of LLMs, which would be required to improve models and mitigate potential harm. Here, we introduce "ChemBench," an automated framework for evaluating the chemical knowledge and reasoning abilities of state-of-the-art LLMs against the expertise of chemists. We curated more than 2,700 question-answer pairs, evaluated leading open- and closed-source LLMs, and found that the best models outperformed the best human chemists in our study on average. However, the models struggle with some basic tasks and provide overconfident predictions. These findings reveal LLMs' impressive chemical capabilities while emphasizing the need for further research to improve their safety and usefulness. They also suggest adapting chemistry education and show the value of benchmarking frameworks for evaluating LLMs in specific domains.

The seasonal human influenza virus undergoes rapid evolution, leading to significant changes in circulating viral strains from year to year. These changes are typically driven by adaptive mutations, particularly in the antigenic epitopes, the regions of the viral surface protein haemagglutinin targeted by human antibodies. Here we describe a consistent set of methods for data-driven predictive analysis of viral evolution. Our pipeline integrates four types of data: (1) sequence data of viral isolates collected on a worldwide scale, (2) epidemiological data on incidences, (3) antigenic characterization of circulating viruses, and (4) intrinsic viral phenotypes. From the combined analysis of these data, we obtain estimates of relative fitness for circulating strains and predictions of clade frequencies for periods of up to one year. Furthermore, we obtain comparative estimates of protection against future viral populations for candidate vaccine strains, providing a basis for pre-emptive vaccine strain selection. Continuously updated predictions obtained from the prediction pipeline for influenza and SARS-CoV-2 are available on the website https://previr.app., Comment: 30 pages, 6 figures

We study the high-energy limit of $2 \to 2$ one-loop string amplitudes at fixed momentum transfer. For the closed string, the high-energy behaviour of the amplitudes can be determined from Regge theory just like in field theory, as was first discussed by Amati, Ciafaloni and Veneziano. However, field theory intuition partially breaks down for the open-string amplitude, where amplitudes can exhibit surprising asymptotics in the high-energy limit depending on the topology of the diagram. We call this phenomenon Regge attenuation. We extract Regge limits by a combination of unitarity cuts and saddle-point analysis. We show that the leading contribution of the planar open-string amplitude is sufficiently simple that we can extract it at any loop order. This allows us to resum the genus expansion in a certain limit and demonstrate that the leading Regge trajectory remains linear in that limit., Comment: 46 pages

We engineer compact contours on the moduli spaces of genus-zero Riemann surfaces that achieve analytic continuation from Euclidean to Lorentzian worldsheets. These generalized Pochhammer contours are based on the combinatorics of associahedra and make the analytic properties of tree-level amplitudes entirely manifest for any number and type of external strings. We use them in practice to perform first numerical computations of open and closed string amplitudes directly in the physical kinematics for $n=4,5,6,7,8,9$. We provide a code that allows anyone to do such computations., Comment: 27 pages, ancillary Mathematica notebook for numerical string amplitude computations

We report the discovery and characterization of three giant exoplanets orbiting solar-analog stars, detected by the \tess space mission and confirmed through ground-based photometry and radial velocity (RV) measurements taken at La Silla observatory with \textit{FEROS}. TOI-2373\,b is a warm Jupiter orbiting its host star every $\sim$ 13.3 days, and is one of the two most massive known exoplanet with a precisely determined mass and radius around a star similar to the Sun, with an estimated mass of m$_p$ = $9.3^{+0.2}_{-0.2}\,M_{\mathrm{jup}}$, and a radius of $r_p$ = $0.93^{+0.2}_{-0.2}\,R_{\mathrm{jup}}$. With a mean density of $\rho = 14.4^{+0.9}_{-1.0}\,\mathrm{g\,cm}^{-3}$, TOI-2373\,b is among the densest planets discovered so far. TOI-2416\,b orbits its host star on a moderately eccentric orbit with a period of $\sim$ 8.3 days and an eccentricity of $e$ = $0.32^{+0.02}_{-0.02}$. TOI-2416\,b is more massive than Jupiter with $m_p$ = 3.0$^{+0.10}_{-0.09}\,M_{\mathrm{jup}}$, however is significantly smaller with a radius of $r_p$ = $0.88^{+0.02}_{-0.02},R_{\mathrm{jup}}$, leading to a high mean density of $\rho = 5.4^{+0.3}_{-0.3}\,\mathrm{g\,cm}^{-3}$. TOI-2524\,b is a warm Jupiter near the hot Jupiter transition region, orbiting its star every $\sim$ 7.2 days on a circular orbit. It is less massive than Jupiter with a mass of $m_p$ = $0.64^{+0.04}_{-0.04}\,M_{\mathrm{jup}}$, and is consistent with an inflated radius of $r_p$ = $1.00^{+0.02}_{-0.03}\,R_{\mathrm{jup}}$, leading to a low mean density of $\rho = 0.79^{+0.08}_{-0.08}\,\mathrm{g\,cm}^{-3}$. The newly discovered exoplanets TOI-2373\,b, TOI-2416\,b, and TOI-2524\,b have estimated equilibrium temperatures of $860^{+10}_{-10}$ K, $1080^{+10}_{-10}$ K, and $1100^{+20}_{-20}$ K, respectively, placing them in the sparsely populated transition zone between hot and warm Jupiters.

We further develop the description of three-dimensional quantum gravity with negative cosmological constant in terms of Virasoro TQFT formulated in our previous paper arXiv:2304.13650. We compare the partition functions computed in the Virasoro TQFT formalism to the semiclassical evaluation of Euclidean gravity partition functions. This matching is highly non-trivial, but can be checked directly in some examples. We then showcase the formalism in action, by computing the gravity partition functions of many relevant topologies. For holographic applications, we focus on the partition functions of Euclidean multi-boundary wormholes with three-punctured spheres as boundaries. This precisely quantifies the higher moments of the structure constants in the proposed ensemble boundary dual and subjects the proposal to thorough checks. Finally, we investigate in detail the example of the figure eight knot complement as a hyperbolic 3-manifold. We show that the Virasoro TQFT partition function is identical to the partition function computed in Teichm\"uller theory, thus giving strong evidence for the equivalence of these TQFTs. We also show how to produce a large class of manifolds via Dehn surgery on the figure eight knot., Comment: 54 pages

We construct a geometric realization of categories of representations of affine Hecke algebras and split reductive $p$-adic groups via a $K$-motivic Springer theory. We suggest a connection to the coherent Springer theory of Ben-Zvi, Chen, Helm, and Nadler through a categorical Chern character and outline results and conjectures on $K$-motives within the Langlands program. To achieve our results, we introduce a six functor formalism for reduced $K$-motives applicable to linearly reductive stacks and establish formality for categories of Springer $K$-motives. We work within a broader framework of Hecke algebras derived from Springer data. This makes the results applicable, for example, to the ($K$-theoretic) quiver Hecke and Schur algebra. Moreover, we relate our constructions to prior geometric realizations for graded Hecke algebras., Comment: Fixed some typos

This study leverages graph neural networks to integrate MELC data with Radiomic-extracted features for melanoma classification, focusing on cell-wise analysis. It assesses the effectiveness of gene expression profiles and Radiomic features, revealing that Radiomic features, particularly when combined with UMAP for dimensionality reduction, significantly enhance classification performance. Notably, using Radiomics contributes to increased diagnostic accuracy and computational efficiency, as it allows for the extraction of critical data from fewer stains, thereby reducing operational costs. This methodology marks an advancement in computational dermatology for melanoma cell classification, setting the stage for future research and potential developments., Comment: Paper accepted at the German Conference on Medical Image Computing 2024

The exponential growth of data has outpaced human ability to process information, necessitating innovative approaches for effective human-data interaction. To transform raw data into meaningful insights, storytelling, and visualization have emerged as powerful techniques for communicating complex information to decision-makers. This article offers a comprehensive, systematic review of the utilization of storytelling in visualizations. It organizes the existing literature into distinct categories, encompassing frameworks, data and visualization types, application domains, narrative structures, outcome measurements, and design principles. By providing a well-structured overview of this rapidly evolving field, the article serves as a valuable guide for educators, researchers, and practitioners seeking to harness the power of storytelling in data visualization., Comment: 25 pages, 9 Figures

We have studied the decay pattern of the $J^{\pi} = 1_{4742~\mathrm{keV}}^{-}$ state of $^{88}$Sr to probe its quadrupole-octupole coupled two-phonon structure. In particular, a unique fingerprint to prove the two-phonon nature is the $E2$ decay strength of the $1_{4742~\mathrm{keV}}^{-} \to 3_{1}^{-}$ transition into the one-octupole-phonon state. $\gamma$-ray spectroscopy was performed after the $\beta$-decay of $^{88}$Rb to obtain the necessary sensitivity for this weak-intensity decay branch. Sufficient amounts of $^{88}$Rb (T$_{1/2}$ = 17.8 min) were produced by neutron activation of natural Rb in the TR IGA Mark II reactor. The results show that the $B(E2)$ value of the $1_{4742~\mathrm{keV}}^{-} \to 3_{1}^{-}$ transition is equal to the $B(E2)$ of the $2_{1}^{+} \to 0_{1}^{+}$ transition, directly demonstrating the quadrupole-octupole coupled two-phonon nature of the $1^-$ state. A comparison of the results with energy-density functional plus quasiparticle-phonon model calculations shows rema rkable agreement, corroborating this assignment.

In this first of a series of articles on standard extension algebras we study standard perverse sheaves on varieties with $\mathbb{G}_m$-actions. Based on Braden's hyperbolic localisation, we describe their extension algebra geometrically via a convolution structure on the intersections of attracting with repelling cells. We introduce a multiplicative structure on open Richardson varieties which provides a practical way to compose these extensions in case of flag varieties. For open Richardson varieties in Grassmannians we construct two explicit cell decompositions, of Gauss- and of Deodhar-type. It is shown that the latter is a stratification with the same combinatorics as Deodhar's decomposition. We introduce a calculus of Fukaya diagrams to encode the geometry of the decompositions. It provides a model for the cohomology of open Richardson varieties and thus for standard extensions. The calculus is motivated by the Mak-Smith Fukaya-Seidel category of a natural Lefschetz fibration and should allow to compute morphism spaces in there. We finally discuss the relation of our work to extensions of (parabolic) Verma modules in category O as well as to the computation of R- and R'-polynomials.