Search

Indirect dark matter detection methods are used to observe the products of dark matter annihilations or decays originating from astrophysical objects where large amounts of dark matter are thought to accumulate. With neutrino telescopes, an excess of neutrinos is searched for in nearby dark matter reservoirs, such as the Sun and the Galactic Centre, which could potentially produce a sizeable flux of Standard Model particles. The KM3NeT infrastructure, currently under construction, comprises the ARCA and ORCA undersea \v{C}erenkov neutrino detectors located at two different sites in the Mediterranean Sea, offshore of Italy and France, respectively. The two detector configurations are optimised for the detection of neutrinos of different energies, enabling the search for dark matter particles with masses ranging from a few GeV/c$^2$ to hundreds of TeV/c$^2$. In this work, searches for dark matter annihilations in the Galactic Centre and the Sun with data samples taken with the first configurations of both detectors are presented. No significant excess over the expected background was found in either of the two analyses. Limits on the velocity-averaged self-annihilation cross section of dark matter particles are computed for five different primary annihilation channels in the Galactic Centre. For the Sun, limits on the spin-dependent and spin-independent scattering cross sections of dark matter with nucleons are given for three annihilation channels.

The recent detection of extended $\gamma$-ray emission around middle-aged pulsars is interpreted as inverse-Compton scattering of ambient photons by electron-positron pairs escaping the pulsar wind nebula, which are confined near the system by unclear mechanisms. This emerging population of $\gamma$-ray sources was first discovered at TeV energies and remains underexplored in the GeV range. To address this, we conducted a systematic search for extended sources along the Galactic plane using 14 years of Fermi-LAT data above 10 GeV, aiming to identify a number of pulsar halo candidates and extend our view to lower energies. The search covered the inner Galactic plane ($\lvert l\rvert\leq$ 100$^{\circ}$, $\lvert b\rvert\leq$ 1$^{\circ}$) and the positions of known TeV sources and bright pulsars, yielding broader astrophysical interest. We found 40 such sources, forming the Second Fermi Galactic Extended Sources Catalog (2FGES), most with 68% containment radii smaller than 1.0$^{\circ}$ and relatively hard spectra with photon indices below 2.5. We assessed detection robustness using field-specific alternative interstellar emission models and by inspecting significance maps. Noting 13 sources previously known as extended in the 4FGL-DR3 catalog and five dubious sources from complex regions, we report 22 newly detected extended sources above 10 GeV. Of these, 13 coincide with H.E.S.S., HAWC, or LHAASO sources; six coincide with bright pulsars (including four also coincident with TeV sources); six are associated with 4FGL point sources only; and one has no association in the scanned catalogs. Notably, six to eight sources may be related to pulsars as classical pulsar wind nebulae or pulsar halos., Comment: 43 pages, 17 figures, 11 tables

The KM3NeT Collaboration has tackled a common challenge faced by the astroparticle physics community, namely adapting the experiment-specific simulation software to work with the CORSIKA air shower simulation output. The proposed solution is an extension of the open-source code gSeaGen, allowing for the transport of muons generated by CORSIKA to a detector of any size at an arbitrary depth. The gSeaGen code was not only extended in terms of functionalities but also underwent a thorough redesign of the muon propagation routine, resulting in a more accurate and efficient simulation. This paper presents the capabilities of the new gSeaGen code as well as prospects for further developments., Comment: 27 pages, 13 figures

In the literature on stochastic frontier models until the early 2000s, the joint consideration of spatial and temporal dimensions was often inadequately addressed, if not completely neglected. However, from an evolutionary economics perspective, the production process of the decision-making units constantly changes over both dimensions: it is not stable over time due to managerial enhancements and/or internal or external shocks, and is influenced by the nearest territorial neighbours. This paper proposes an extension of the Fusco and Vidoli [2013] SEM-like approach, which globally accounts for spatial and temporal effects in the term of inefficiency. In particular, coherently with the stochastic panel frontier literature, two different versions of the model are proposed: the time-invariant and the time-varying spatial stochastic frontier models. In order to evaluate the inferential properties of the proposed estimators, we first run Monte Carlo experiments and we then present the results of an application to a set of commonly referenced data, demonstrating robustness and stability of estimates across all scenarios., Comment: 14 pages, 3 figures, 5 tables, presented at the SEA2024: XVIII World Conference of Spatial Econometrics Association (A tribute to Jean Paelinck). Spatial Econometrics: Past and future 50 years, 24-25 June 2024, Groningen, the Netherlands

Context. The new giant segmented mirror telescopes will use laser guide stars (LGS) for their adaptive optics (AO) systems. Two options to use as wavefront sensors (WFS) are the Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor (SHWFS) and the pyramid wavefront sensor (PWFS). Aims. In this paper, we compare the noise performance of the PWFS and the SHWFS. We aim to find which of the two WFS is the best to use in a single or tomographic configuration. Methods. To compute the noise performance we extended a noise model developed for the PWFS to be used with the SHWFS. To do this, we expressed the centroiding algorithm of the SHWFS as a matrix-vector multiplication, which allowed us to use the statistics of noise to compute its propagation through the AO loop. We validated the noise model with end-to-end simulations for telescopes of 8 and 16 m in diameter. Results. For an AO system with only one WFS, we found that, given the same number of subapertures, the PWFS outperforms the SHWFS. For a 40 m telescope, the limiting magnitude of the PWFS is around 1 magnitude higher than the SHWFS. When using multiple WFS and a Generalized least squares estimator to combine the signal, our model predicts that in a tomographic system, the SHWFS performs better than the PWFS having a limiting magnitude 0.3 magnitudes higher. If using sub-electron RON detectors for the PWFS, then the performances are almost identical between the two WFSs Conclusions. We conclude that when using a single WFS with LGS, the PWFS is a better alternative than the SH. However, for a tomographic system, either would have almost the same performance.

Neutrinos described as an open quantum system may interact with the environment which introduces stochastic perturbations to their quantum phase. This mechanism leads to a loss of coherence along the propagation of the neutrino $-$ a phenomenon commonly referred to as decoherence $-$ and ultimately, to a modification of the oscillation probabilities. Fluctuations in space-time, as envisaged by various theories of quantum gravity, are a potential candidate for a decoherence-inducing environment. Consequently, the search for decoherence provides a rare opportunity to investigate quantum gravitational effects which are usually beyond the reach of current experiments. In this work, quantum decoherence effects are searched for in neutrino data collected by the KM3NeT/ORCA detector from January 2020 to November 2021. The analysis focuses on atmospheric neutrinos within the energy range of a few GeV to $100\,\mathrm{GeV}$. Adopting the open quantum system framework, decoherence is described in a phenomenological manner with the strength of the effect given by the parameters $\Gamma_{21}$ and $\Gamma_{31}$. Following previous studies, a dependence of the type $\Gamma_{ij} \propto (E/E_0)^n$ on the neutrino energy is assumed and the cases $n = -2,-1$ are explored. No significant deviation with respect to the standard oscillation hypothesis is observed. Therefore, $90\,\%$ CL upper limits are estimated as $\Gamma_{21} < 4.6\cdot 10^{-21}\,$GeV and $\Gamma_{31} < 8.4\cdot 10^{-21}\,$GeV for $n = -2$, and $\Gamma_{21} < 1.9\cdot 10^{-22}\,$GeV and $\Gamma_{31} < 2.7\cdot 10^{-22}\,$GeV for $n = -1$, respectively., Comment: 17 pages, 5 figures

In Super-resolution, a varying-illumination image stack is required. This enriched the dataset typically necessitates precise mechanical control and micron scale optical alignment and repeatability. Here, we introduce a novel methodology for super-resolution microscopy called Stochastically Structured Illumination Microscopy (S2IM), which bypasses the need for illumination control instead exploiting the random, uncontrolled movement of the target object. We tested our methodology within the clinically relevant ophthalmoscopic setting, harnessing the inherent saccadic motion of the eye to induce stochastic displacement of the illumination pattern on the retina. We opted to avoid human subjects by utilizing a phantom eye model, featuring a retina composed of human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) retinal neurons, and replicating the ocular saccadic movements by custom actuators. Our findings demonstrate that S$^2$IM unlocks scan-less super-resolution with a resolution enhancement of 1.91, with promising prospects also beyond ophthalmoscopy applications such as active matter or atmospheric/astronomical observation.

RISTRETTO is the evolution of the original idea of coupling the VLT instruments SPHERE and ESPRESSO \cite{lovis_2016a}, aiming at High Dispersion Coronagraphy. RISTRETTO is a visitor instrument that should enable the characterization of the atmospheres of nearby exoplanets in reflected light, by using the technique of high-contrast, high-resolution spectroscopy. Its goal is to observe Prox Cen b and other planets placed at about 35mas from their star, i.e. $2\lambda/D$ at $\lambda$=750nm. The instrument is composed of an extreme adaptive optics, a coronagraphic Integral Field Unit, and a diffraction-limited spectrograph (R=140.000, $\lambda =$620-840 nm). We present the RISTRETTO XAO architecture that reach the specification, providing contrasts down to $5\times10^{-5}$ at 2$\lambda/D$ from the star in the visible, in the presence of atmosphere and low wind effect. This performance is allowed by a new two-sensors-one-dm architecture, some variations to the already known concepts of unmodulated pyWFS and zWFS, and exploiting to the maximum of their capabilities the state-of-the-art high speed, low noise cameras \& fast DM. We present the result of end-to-end simulations, that demonstrate stable closed loop operation of an unmodulated pyramid and a zernike WFS (together), and in presence of low wind effect., Comment: 13 pages, 12 figure, SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation, 2024, Yokohama, Japan

Motivated by online retail, we consider the problem of selling one item (e.g., an ad slot) to two non-excludable buyers (say, a merchant and a brand). This problem captures, for example, situations where a merchant and a brand cooperatively bid in an auction to advertise a product, and both benefit from the ad being shown. A mechanism collects bids from the two and decides whether to allocate and which payments the two parties should make. This gives rise to intricate incentive compatibility constraints, e.g., on how to split payments between the two parties. We approach the problem of finding a revenue-maximizing incentive-compatible mechanism from an online learning perspective; this poses significant technical challenges. First, the action space (the class of all possible mechanisms) is huge; second, the function that maps mechanisms to revenue is highly irregular, ruling out standard discretization-based approaches. In the stochastic setting, we design an efficient learning algorithm achieving a regret bound of $O(T^{3/4})$. Our approach is based on an adaptive discretization scheme of the space of mechanisms, as any non-adaptive discretization fails to achieve sublinear regret. In the adversarial setting, we exploit the non-Lipschitzness of the problem to prove a strong negative result, namely that no learning algorithm can achieve more than half of the revenue of the best fixed mechanism in hindsight. We then consider the $\sigma$-smooth adversary; we construct an efficient learning algorithm that achieves a regret bound of $O(T^{2/3})$ and builds on a succinct encoding of exponentially many experts. Finally, we prove that no learning algorithm can achieve less than $\Omega(\sqrt T)$ regret in both the stochastic and the smooth setting, thus narrowing the range where the minimax regret rates for these two problems lie., Comment: Paper accepted at ACM EC 2024

We present a complete analysis of Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) data of GRB 221009A, the brightest Gamma-Ray Burst (GRB) ever detected. The burst emission above 30 MeV detected by the LAT preceded by 1 s the low-energy (< 10 MeV) pulse that triggered the Fermi Gamma-Ray Burst Monitor (GBM), as has been observed in other GRBs. The prompt phase of GRB 221009A lasted a few hundred seconds. It was so bright that we identify a Bad Time Interval (BTI) of 64 seconds caused by the extremely high flux of hard X-rays and soft gamma rays, during which the event reconstruction efficiency was poor and the dead time fraction quite high. The late-time emission decayed as a power law, but the extrapolation of the late-time emission during the first 450 seconds suggests that the afterglow started during the prompt emission. We also found that high-energy events observed by the LAT are incompatible with synchrotron origin, and, during the prompt emission, are more likely related to an extra component identified as synchrotron self-Compton (SSC). A remarkable 400 GeV photon, detected by the LAT 33 ks after the GBM trigger and directionally consistent with the location of GRB 221009A, is hard to explain as a product of SSC or TeV electromagnetic cascades, and the process responsible for its origin is uncertain. Because of its proximity and energetic nature, GRB 221009A is an extremely rare event., Comment: 60 pages, 38 figures, 9 tables

RISTRETTO is a visible high-resolution spectrograph fed by an extreme adaptive optics (AO) system, to be proposed as a visitor instrument on ESO VLT. The main science goal of RISTRETTO is to pioneer the detection and atmospheric characterisation of exoplanets in reflected light, in particular the temperate rocky planet Proxima b. RISTRETTO will be able to measure albedos and detect atmospheric features in a number of exoplanets orbiting nearby stars for the first time. It will do so by combining a high-contrast AO system working at the diffraction limit of the telescope to a high-resolution spectrograph, via a 7-spaxel integral-field unit (IFU) feeding single-mode fibers. Further science cases for RISTRETTO include the study of accreting protoplanets such as PDS70b/c through spectrally-resolved H-alpha emission, and spatially-resolved studies of Solar System objects such as icy moons and the ice giants Uranus and Neptune. The project is in the manufacturing phase for the spectrograph sub-system, and the preliminary design phase for the AO front-end. Specific developments for RISTRETTO include a novel coronagraphic IFU combining a phase-induced amplitude apodizer (PIAA) to a 3D-printed microlens array feeding a bundle of single-mode fibers. It also features an XAO system with a dual wavefront sensor aiming at high robustness and sensitivity, including to pupil fragmentation. RISTRETTO is a pathfinder instrument in view of similar developments at the ELT, in particular the SCAO-IFU mode of ELT-ANDES and the future ELT-PCS instrument., Comment: 6 pages, 1 figure, SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation, 2024, Yokohama, Japan

We consider a nonlinear control system with vector-valued measures as controls and with dynamics depending on time delayed states. First, we introduce a notion of discontinuous, bounded variation solution associated with this system and establish an equivalent representation formula for it, inspired by the approach known in delay-free impulsive control as the `graph completions' method. Then, thanks to this equivalent formulation, we prove well-posedness properties of these solutions and also derive necessary optimality conditions in the form of a Maximum Principle for an associated minimization problem.

Precise direct cosmic-ray (CR) measurements provide an important probe to study the energetic particle sources in our Galaxy, and the interstellar environment through which these particles propagate. Uncertainties on hadronic models, ion-nucleon cross sections in particular, are currently the limiting factor towards obtaining more accurate CR ion flux measurements with calorimetric space-based experiments. We present an energy-dependent measurement of the inelastic cross section of protons and helium-4 nuclei (alpha particles) on a Bi$_4$Ge$_3$O$_{12}$ target, using 88 months of data collected by the DAMPE space mission. The kinetic energy range per nucleon of the measurement points ranges from 18 GeV to 9 TeV for protons, and from 5 GeV/n to 3 TeV/n for helium-4 nuclei. Our results lead to a significant improvement of the CR flux normalisation. In the case of helium-4, these results correspond to the first cross section measurements on a heavy target material at energies above 10 GeV/n., Comment: 17 pages, submitted to PRD

Multi-GPU nodes are increasingly common in the rapidly evolving landscape of exascale supercomputers. On these systems, GPUs on the same node are connected through dedicated networks, with bandwidths up to a few terabits per second. However, gauging performance expectations and maximizing system efficiency is challenging due to different technologies, design options, and software layers. This paper comprehensively characterizes three supercomputers - Alps, Leonardo, and LUMI - each with a unique architecture and design. We focus on performance evaluation of intra-node and inter-node interconnects on up to 4096 GPUs, using a mix of intra-node and inter-node benchmarks. By analyzing its limitations and opportunities, we aim to offer practical guidance to researchers, system architects, and software developers dealing with multi-GPU supercomputing. Our results show that there is untapped bandwidth, and there are still many opportunities for optimization, ranging from network to software optimization.

Heterogeneous supercomputers have become the standard in HPC. GPUs in particular have dominated the accelerator landscape, offering unprecedented performance in parallel workloads and unlocking new possibilities in fields like AI and climate modeling. With many workloads becoming memory-bound, improving the communication latency and bandwidth within the system has become a main driver in the development of new architectures. The Grace Hopper Superchip (GH200) is a significant step in the direction of tightly coupled heterogeneous systems, in which all CPUs and GPUs share a unified address space and support transparent fine grained access to all main memory on the system. We characterize both intra- and inter-node memory operations on the Quad GH200 nodes of the new Swiss National Supercomputing Centre Alps supercomputer, and show the importance of careful memory placement on example workloads, highlighting tradeoffs and opportunities.

KM3NeT/ORCA is a water Cherenkov neutrino detector under construction and anchored at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea. The detector is designed to study oscillations of atmospheric neutrinos and determine the neutrino mass ordering. This paper focuses on an initial configuration of ORCA, referred to as ORCA6, which comprises six out of the foreseen 115 detection units of photo-sensors. A high-purity neutrino sample was extracted, corresponding to an exposure of 433 kton-years. The sample of 5828 neutrino candidates is analysed following a binned log-likelihood method in the reconstructed energy and cosine of the zenith angle. The atmospheric oscillation parameters are measured to be $\sin^2\theta_{23}= 0.51^{+0.04}_{-0.05}$, and $ \Delta m^2_{31} = 2.18^{+0.25}_{-0.35}\times 10^{-3}~\mathrm{eV^2} \cup \{-2.25,-1.76\}\times 10^{-3}~\mathrm{eV^2}$ at 68\% CL. The inverted neutrino mass ordering hypothesis is disfavoured with a p-value of 0.25., Comment: 29 pages, 12 figures

In online learning, a decision maker repeatedly selects one of a set of actions, with the goal of minimizing the overall loss incurred. Following the recent line of research on algorithms endowed with additional predictive features, we revisit this problem by allowing the decision maker to acquire additional information on the actions to be selected. In particular, we study the power of \emph{best-action queries}, which reveal beforehand the identity of the best action at a given time step. In practice, predictive features may be expensive, so we allow the decision maker to issue at most $k$ such queries. We establish tight bounds on the performance any algorithm can achieve when given access to $k$ best-action queries for different types of feedback models. In particular, we prove that in the full feedback model, $k$ queries are enough to achieve an optimal regret of $\Theta\left(\min\left\{\sqrt T, \frac Tk\right\}\right)$. This finding highlights the significant multiplicative advantage in the regret rate achievable with even a modest (sublinear) number $k \in \Omega(\sqrt{T})$ of queries. Additionally, we study the challenging setting in which the only available feedback is obtained during the time steps corresponding to the $k$ best-action queries. There, we provide a tight regret rate of $\Theta\left(\min\left\{\frac{T}{\sqrt k},\frac{T^2}{k^2}\right\}\right)$, which improves over the standard $\Theta\left(\frac{T}{\sqrt k}\right)$ regret rate for label efficient prediction for $k \in \Omega(T^{2/3})$.

The exponential growth of data traffic and the increasing complexity of networked applications demand effective solutions capable of passively inspecting and analysing the network traffic for monitoring and security purposes. Implementing network probes in software using general-purpose operating systems has been made possible by advances in packet-capture technologies, such as kernel-bypass frameworks, and by multi-queue adapters designed to distribute the network workload in multi-core processors. Modern SmartNICs, in addition, have introduced stateful mechanisms to associate actions to network flows such as forwarding packets or updating traffic statistics for an individual flow. In this paper, we describe our experience in exploiting those functionalities in a modern network probe and we perform a detailed study of the performance characteristics under different scenarios. Compared to pure CPU-based solutions, SmartNICs with flow-offload technologies provide substantial benefits when implementing forwarding applications. However, the main limitation of having to keep large flow tables in the host memory remains largely unsolved for realistic monitoring and security applications., Comment: Presented at NetCell-AI workshop part of IEEE HPSR 2024, https://hpsr2024.ieee-hpsr.org/

The Pandora's Box problem models the search for the best alternative when evaluation is costly. In its simplest variant, a decision maker is presented with $n$ boxes, each associated with a cost of inspection and a distribution over the reward hidden within. The decision maker inspects a subset of these boxes one after the other, in a possibly adaptive ordering, and obtains as utility the difference between the largest reward uncovered and the sum of the inspection costs. While this classic version of the problem is well understood (Weitzman 1979), recent years have seen a flourishing of the literature on variants of the problem. In this paper, we introduce a general framework -- the Pandora's Box Over Time problem -- that captures a wide range of variants where time plays a role, e.g., as it might constrain the schedules of exploration and influence both costs and rewards. In the Pandora's Box Over Time problem, each box is characterized by time-dependent rewards and costs, and inspecting it might require a box-specific processing time. Moreover, once a box is inspected, its reward may deteriorate over time, possibly differently for each box. Our main result is an efficient $21.3$-approximation to the optimal strategy, which is NP-hard to compute in general. We further obtain improved results for the natural special cases where boxes have no processing time, or when costs and reward distributions do not depend on time (but rewards may deteriorate after inspecting).

The first generation of ELT instruments includes an optical-infrared high-resolution spectrograph, indicated as ELT-HIRES and recently christened ANDES (ArmazoNes high Dispersion Echelle Spectrograph). ANDES consists of three fibre-fed spectrographs ([U]BV, RIZ, YJH) providing a spectral resolution of $\sim$100,000 with a minimum simultaneous wavelength coverage of 0.4-1.8 $\mu$m with the goal of extending it to 0.35-2.4 $\mu$m with the addition of a U arm to the BV spectrograph and a separate K band spectrograph. It operates both in seeing- and diffraction-limited conditions and the fibre feeding allows several, interchangeable observing modes including a single conjugated adaptive optics module and a small diffraction-limited integral field unit in the NIR. Modularity and fibre-feeding allow ANDES to be placed partly on the ELT Nasmyth platform and partly in the Coud\'e room. ANDES has a wide range of groundbreaking science cases spanning nearly all areas of research in astrophysics and even fundamental physics. Among the top science cases, there are the detection of biosignatures from exoplanet atmospheres, finding the fingerprints of the first generation of stars, tests on the stability of Nature's fundamental couplings, and the direct detection of the cosmic acceleration. The ANDES project is carried forward by a large international consortium, composed of 35 Institutes from 13 countries, forming a team of almost 300 scientists and engineers which include the majority of the scientific and technical expertise in the field that can be found in ESO member states., Comment: SPIE astronomical telescope and instrumentation 2024, in press

High-significance evidences of the existence of a high-energy diffuse flux of cosmic neutrinos have emerged in the last decade from several observations by the IceCube Collaboration. The ANTARES neutrino telescope took data for 15 years in the Mediterranean Sea, from 2007 to 2022, and collected a high-purity all-flavour neutrino sample. The search for a diffuse cosmic neutrino signal using this dataset is presented in this article. This final analysis did not provide a statistically significant observation of the cosmic diffuse flux. However, this is converted into limits on the properties of the cosmic neutrino spectrum. In particular, given the sensitivity of the ANTARES neutrino telescope between 1 and 50 TeV, constraints on single-power-law hypotheses are derived for the cosmic diffuse flux below 20 TeV, especially for power-law fits of the IceCube data with spectral index softer than 2.8.

We study the isoperimetric problem for capillary surfaces with a general contact angle $\theta \in (0, \pi)$, outside convex infinite cylinders with arbitrary two-dimensional convex section. We prove that the capillary energy of any surface supported on any such convex cylinder is strictly larger than that of a spherical cap with the same volume and the same contact angle on a flat support, unless the surface is itself a spherical cap resting on a facet of the cylinder. In this class of convex sets, our result extends for the first time the well-known Choe-Ghomi-Ritor\'e relative isoperimetric inequality, corresponding to the case $\theta = \pi/2$, to general angles.

The recent IRLOS upgrade for VLT/MUSE narrow field mode (NFM) introduced a full-pupil mode to enhance sensitivity and sky coverage. This involved replacing the 2x2 Shack-Hartmann sensor with a single lens for full-aperture photon collection, which also enabled the engagement of the linearized focal-plane technique (LIFT) wavefront sensor instead. However, initial on-sky LIFT experiments have highlighted a complex point spread function (PSF) structure due to strong and polychromatic non-common path aberrations (NCPAs), complicating the accurate retrieval of tip-tilt and focus using LIFT. This study aims to conduct the first on-sky validation of LIFT on VLT/UT4, outline challenges encountered during the tests, and propose solutions for increasing the robustness of LIFT in on-sky operations. We developed a two-stage approach to focal-plane wavefront sensing, where tip-tilt and focus retrieval done with LIFT is preceded by the NCPA calibration step. The resulting NCPA estimate is subsequently used by LIFT. To perform the calibration, we proposed a method capable of retrieving the information about NCPAs directly from on-sky focal-plane PSFs. We verified the efficacy of this approach in simulated and on-sky tests. Our results demonstrate that adopting the two-stage approach has led to a significant improvement in the accuracy of the defocus estimation performed by LIFT, even under challenging low-flux conditions. The efficacy of LIFT as a slow and truth focus sensor in practical scenarios has been demonstrated. However, integrating NCPA calibration with LIFT is essential to verifying its practical application in the real system. Additionally, the proposed calibration step can serve as an independent and minimally invasive approach to evaluate NCPA on-sky., Comment: 14 pages, 12 figures. To access the code, see: https://github.com/EjjeSynho/LIFT; https://github.com/EjjeSynho/DIP

The Cassiop\'ee project aims to develop the key technologies that will be used to deploy very high-performance Adaptive Optics for future ELTs. The ultimate challenge is to detect earth-like planets and characterize the composition of their atmosphere. For this, imaging contrasts of the order of 109 are required, implying a leap forward in adaptive optics performance, with high density deformable mirrors (120x120 actuators), low-noise cameras and the control of the loop at few kHz. The project brings together 2 industrial partners: First Light Imaging and ALPAO, and 2 academic partners: ONERA and LAM, who will work together to develop a new camera for wavefront sensing, a new deformable mirror and their implementation in an adaptive optics loop. This paper will present the development of the fast large infrared e-APD camera which will be used in the wavefront sensor of the system. The camera will integrate the latest 512x512 Leonardo e-APD array and will benefit from the heritage of the first-light imaging's C-RED One camera. The most important challenges for the application are the autonomous operation, vibration control, background limitation, compactness, acquisition speed and latency., Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2208.00381

Maximizing monotone submodular functions under cardinality constraints is a classic optimization task with several applications in data mining and machine learning. In this paper we study this problem in a dynamic environment with consistency constraints: elements arrive in a streaming fashion and the goal is maintaining a constant approximation to the optimal solution while having a stable solution (i.e., the number of changes between two consecutive solutions is bounded). We provide algorithms in this setting with different trade-offs between consistency and approximation quality. We also complement our theoretical results with an experimental analysis showing the effectiveness of our algorithms in real-world instances., Comment: To appear at ICML 24

We address a generalization of the bandit with knapsacks problem, where a learner aims to maximize rewards while satisfying an arbitrary set of long-term constraints. Our goal is to design best-of-both-worlds algorithms that perform optimally under both stochastic and adversarial constraints. Previous works address this problem via primal-dual methods, and require some stringent assumptions, namely the Slater's condition, and in adversarial settings, they either assume knowledge of a lower bound on the Slater's parameter, or impose strong requirements on the primal and dual regret minimizers such as requiring weak adaptivity. We propose an alternative and more natural approach based on optimistic estimations of the constraints. Surprisingly, we show that estimating the constraints with an UCB-like approach guarantees optimal performances. Our algorithm consists of two main components: (i) a regret minimizer working on \emph{moving strategy sets} and (ii) an estimate of the feasible set as an optimistic weighted empirical mean of previous samples. The key challenge in this approach is designing adaptive weights that meet the different requirements for stochastic and adversarial constraints. Our algorithm is significantly simpler than previous approaches, and has a cleaner analysis. Moreover, ours is the first best-of-both-worlds algorithm providing bounds logarithmic in the number of constraints. Additionally, in stochastic settings, it provides $\widetilde O(\sqrt{T})$ regret \emph{without} Slater's condition.

Position calibration in the deep sea is typically done by means of acoustic multilateration using three or more acoustic emitters installed at known positions. Rather than using hydrophones as receivers that are exposed to the ambient pressure, the sound signals can be coupled to piezo ceramics glued to the inside of existing containers for electronics or measuring instruments of a deep sea infrastructure. The ANTARES neutrino telescope operated from 2006 until 2022 in the Mediterranean Sea at a depth exceeding 2000m. It comprised nearly 900 glass spheres with 432mm diameter and 15mm thickness, equipped with photomultiplier tubes to detect Cherenkov light from tracks of charged elementary particles. In an experimental setup within ANTARES, piezo sensors have been glued to the inside of such - otherwise empty - glass spheres. These sensors recorded signals from acoustic emitters with frequencies from 46545 to 60235Hz. Two waves propagating through the glass sphere are found as a result of the excitation by the waves in the water. These can be qualitatively associated with symmetric and asymmetric Lamb-like waves of zeroth order: a fast (early) one with $v_e \approx 5$mm/$\mu$s and a slow (late) one with $v_\ell \approx 2$mm/$\mu$s. Taking these findings into account improves the accuracy of the position calibration. The results can be transferred to the KM3NeT neutrino telescope, currently under construction at multiple sites in the Mediterranean Sea, for which the concept of piezo sensors glued to the inside of glass spheres has been adapted for monitoring the positions of the photomultiplier tubes., Comment: submitted to "Experimental Astronomy"

Specific and effective breast cancer therapy relies on the accurate quantification of PD-L1 positivity in tumors, which appears in the form of brown stainings in high resolution whole slide images (WSIs). However, the retrieval and extensive labeling of PD-L1 stained WSIs is a time-consuming and challenging task for pathologists, resulting in low reproducibility, especially for borderline images. This study aims to develop and compare models able to classify PD-L1 positivity of breast cancer samples based on WSI analysis, relying only on WSI-level labels. The task consists of two phases: identifying regions of interest (ROI) and classifying tumors as PD-L1 positive or negative. For the latter, two model categories were developed, with different feature extraction methodologies. The first encodes images based on the colour distance from a base color. The second uses a convolutional autoencoder to obtain embeddings of WSI tiles, and aggregates them into a WSI-level embedding. For both model types, features are fed into downstream ML classifiers. Two datasets from different clinical centers were used in two different training configurations: (1) training on one dataset and testing on the other; (2) combining the datasets. We also tested the performance with or without human preprocessing to remove brown artefacts Colour distance based models achieve the best performances on testing configuration (1) with artefact removal, while autoencoder-based models are superior in the remaining cases, which are prone to greater data variability.

Gamma-ray bursts are promising candidate sources of high-energy astrophysical neutrinos. The recent GRB 221009A event, identified as the brightest gamma-ray burst ever detected, provides a unique opportunity to investigate hadronic emissions involving neutrinos. The KM3NeT undersea neutrino detectors participated in the worldwide follow-up effort triggered by the event, searching for neutrino events. In this letter, we summarize subsequent searches, in a wide energy range from MeV up to a few PeVs. No neutrino events are found in any of the searches performed. Upper limits on the neutrino emission associated with GRB 221009A are computed., Comment: 11 pages, 2 PDF figures. Submitted to JCAP

The use of artificial Laser Guide Stars (LGS) is planned for the new generation of giant segmented mirror telescopes, to extend the sky coverage of their adaptive optics systems. The LGS, being a 3D object at a finite distance will have a large elongation that will affect its use with the Shack-Hartmann (SH) wavefront sensor. In this paper, we compute the expected performance for a Pyramid WaveFront Sensor (PWFS) using a LGS for a 40 m telescope affected by photon noise, and also extend the analysis to a flat 2D object as reference. We developed a new way to discretize the LGS, and a new, faster method of propagating the light for any Fourier Filtering wavefront sensors (FFWFS) when using extended objects. We present the use of a sensitivity model to predict the performance of a closed-loop adaptive optic system. We optimized a point source calibrated interaction matrix to accommodate the signal of an extended object, by means of computing optical gains using a convolutional model. We found that the sensitivity drop, given the size of the extended laser source, is large enough to make the system operate in a low-performance regime given the expected return flux of the LGS. The width of the laser beam, rather than the thickness of the sodium layer was identified as the limiting factor. Even an ideal, flat LGS will have a drop in performance due to the flux of the LGS, and small variations in the return flux will result in large variations in performance. We conclude that knife-edge-like wavefront sensors, such as the PWFS, are not recommended for their use with LGS for a 40 m telescope, as they will operate in a low-performance regime, given the size of the extended object.