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Neural network potentials (NNPs) offer a fast and accurate alternative to ab-initio methods for molecular dynamics (MD) simulations but are hindered by the high cost of training data from high-fidelity Quantum Mechanics (QM) methods. Our work introduces the Implicit Delta Learning (IDLe) method, which reduces the need for high-fidelity QM data by leveraging cheaper semi-empirical QM computations without compromising NNP accuracy or inference cost. IDLe employs an end-to-end multi-task architecture with fidelity-specific heads that decode energies based on a shared latent representation of the input atomistic system. In various settings, IDLe achieves the same accuracy as single high-fidelity baselines while using up to 50x less high-fidelity data. This result could significantly reduce data generation cost and consequently enhance accuracy and generalization, and expand chemical coverage for NNPs, advancing MD simulations for material science and drug discovery. Additionally, we provide a novel set of 11 million semi-empirical QM calculations to support future multi-fidelity NNP modeling.

About twelve years ago the use of standard functional manipulations was demonstrated to imply an unexpected property satisfied by the fermionic Green's functions of QCD. This non-perturbative phenomenon is dubbed Effective Locality. In a much simpler way than in QCD, the most remarkable and intriguing aspects of Effective Locality have been presented in a recent letter in the Yang-Mills theory on Minkowski spacetime. While quickly recalled in the current paper, these results are used to calculate the problematic gluonic propagator in the Yang-Mills non-perturbative regime., Comment: 29 pages, one figure

Machine Learning Interatomic Potentials (MLIPs) are a highly promising alternative to force-fields for molecular dynamics (MD) simulations, offering precise and rapid energy and force calculations. However, Quantum-Mechanical (QM) datasets, crucial for MLIPs, are fragmented across various repositories, hindering accessibility and model development. We introduce the openQDC package, consolidating 37 QM datasets from over 250 quantum methods and 400 million geometries into a single, accessible resource. These datasets are meticulously preprocessed, and standardized for MLIP training, covering a wide range of chemical elements and interactions relevant in organic chemistry. OpenQDC includes tools for normalization and integration, easily accessible via Python. Experiments with well-known architectures like SchNet, TorchMD-Net, and DimeNet reveal challenges for those architectures and constitute a leaderboard to accelerate benchmarking and guide novel algorithms development. Continuously adding datasets to OpenQDC will democratize QM dataset access, foster more collaboration and innovation, enhance MLIP development, and support their adoption in the MD field.

Blazars are beamed active galactic nuclei known for their strong multi-wavelength variability on timescales from years down to minutes. We aim to investigate the suitability of the twisting jet model presented in previous works to explain the multi-wavelength behaviour of BL Lacertae, the prototype of one of the blazar classes. According to this model, the jet is inhomogeneous, curved, and twisting, and the long-term variability is due to changes in the Doppler factor due to variations in the orientation of the jet-emitting regions. We analysed optical data of the source obtained during monitoring campaigns organised by the Whole Earth Blazar Telescope (WEBT) in 2019-2022, together with radio data from the WEBT and other teams, and gamma-ray data from the Fermi satellite. In this period, BL Lacertae underwent an extraordinary activity phase, reaching its historical optical and gamma-ray brightness maxima. The application of the twisting jet model to the source light curves allows us to infer the wiggling motion of the optical, radio, and gamma-ray jet-emitting regions. The optical-radio correlation shows that the changes in the radio viewing angle follow those in the optical viewing angle by about 120 days, and it suggests that the jet is composed of plasma filaments, which is in agreement with some radio high-resolution observations of other sources. The gamma-ray emitting region is found to be co-spatial with the optical one, and the analysis of the gamma-optical correlation is consistent with both the geometric interpretation and a synchrotron self-Compton (SSC) origin of the high-energy photons. We propose a geometric scenario where the jet is made up of a pair of emitting plasma filaments in a sort of double-helix curved rotating structure, whose wiggling motion produces changes in the Doppler beaming and can thus explain the observed multi-wavelength long-term variability., Comment: In press for A&A

Traditional molecular string representations, such as SMILES, often pose challenges for AI-driven molecular design due to their non-sequential depiction of molecular substructures. To address this issue, we introduce Sequential Attachment-based Fragment Embedding (SAFE), a novel line notation for chemical structures. SAFE reimagines SMILES strings as an unordered sequence of interconnected fragment blocks while maintaining compatibility with existing SMILES parsers. It streamlines complex generative tasks, including scaffold decoration, fragment linking, polymer generation, and scaffold hopping, while facilitating autoregressive generation for fragment-constrained design, thereby eliminating the need for intricate decoding or graph-based models. We demonstrate the effectiveness of SAFE by training an 87-million-parameter GPT2-like model on a dataset containing 1.1 billion SAFE representations. Through targeted experimentation, we show that our SAFE-GPT model exhibits versatile and robust optimization performance. SAFE opens up new avenues for the rapid exploration of chemical space under various constraints, promising breakthroughs in AI-driven molecular design., Comment: Code, data and models available at: https://github.com/datamol-io/safe/

Recently, pre-trained foundation models have enabled significant advancements in multiple fields. In molecular machine learning, however, where datasets are often hand-curated, and hence typically small, the lack of datasets with labeled features, and codebases to manage those datasets, has hindered the development of foundation models. In this work, we present seven novel datasets categorized by size into three distinct categories: ToyMix, LargeMix and UltraLarge. These datasets push the boundaries in both the scale and the diversity of supervised labels for molecular learning. They cover nearly 100 million molecules and over 3000 sparsely defined tasks, totaling more than 13 billion individual labels of both quantum and biological nature. In comparison, our datasets contain 300 times more data points than the widely used OGB-LSC PCQM4Mv2 dataset, and 13 times more than the quantum-only QM1B dataset. In addition, to support the development of foundational models based on our proposed datasets, we present the Graphium graph machine learning library which simplifies the process of building and training molecular machine learning models for multi-task and multi-level molecular datasets. Finally, we present a range of baseline results as a starting point of multi-task and multi-level training on these datasets. Empirically, we observe that performance on low-resource biological datasets show improvement by also training on large amounts of quantum data. This indicates that there may be potential in multi-task and multi-level training of a foundation model and fine-tuning it to resource-constrained downstream tasks.

Radio and near-infrared observations have observed dozens of protoplanetary disks that host spiral arm features. Numerical simulations have shown that companions may excite spiral density waves in protoplanetary disks via companion-disk interaction. However, the lack of direct observational evidence for spiral-driving companions poses challenges to current theories of companion-disk interaction. Here we report multi-epoch observations of the binary system HD 100453 with the Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch (SPHERE) facility at the Very Large Telescope. By recovering the spiral features via robustly removing starlight contamination, we measure spiral motion across 4 yr to perform dynamical motion analyses. The spiral pattern motion is consistent with the orbital motion of the eccentric companion. With this first observational evidence of a companion driving a spiral arm among protoplanetary disks, we directly and dynamically confirm the long-standing theory on the origin of spiral features in protoplanetary disks. With the pattern motion of companion-driven spirals being independent of companion mass, here we establish a feasible way of searching for hidden spiral-arm-driving planets that are beyond the detection of existing ground-based high-contrast imagers., Comment: Accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysics; 12 pages, 9 figures

The ExoClock project has been created with the aim of increasing the efficiency of the Ariel mission. It will achieve this by continuously monitoring and updating the ephemerides of Ariel candidates over an extended period, in order to produce a consistent catalogue of reliable and precise ephemerides. This work presents a homogenous catalogue of updated ephemerides for 450 planets, generated by the integration of $\sim$18000 data points from multiple sources. These sources include observations from ground-based telescopes (ExoClock network and ETD), mid-time values from the literature and light-curves from space telescopes (Kepler/K2 and TESS). With all the above, we manage to collect observations for half of the post-discovery years (median), with data that have a median uncertainty less than one minute. In comparison with literature, the ephemerides generated by the project are more precise and less biased. More than 40\% of the initial literature ephemerides had to be updated to reach the goals of the project, as they were either of low precision or drifting. Moreover, the integrated approach of the project enables both the monitoring of the majority of the Ariel candidates (95\%), and also the identification of missing data. The dedicated ExoClock network effectively supports this task by contributing additional observations when a gap in the data is identified. These results highlight the need for continuous monitoring to increase the observing coverage of the candidate planets. Finally, the extended observing coverage of planets allows us to detect trends (TTVs - Transit Timing Variations) for a sample of 19 planets. All products, data, and codes used in this work are open and accessible to the wider scientific community., Comment: Recommended for publication to ApJS (reviewer's comments implemented). Main body: 13 pages, total: 77 pages, 7 figures, 7 tables. Data available at http://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/P298N

We present new high-contrast images in near-infrared wavelengths ($\lambda$ = 1.04, 1.24, 1.62, 2.18 and 3.78$\mu$m) of the young variable star CQ Tau, aiming to constrain the presence of companions in the protoplanetary disc. We reached a Ks-band contrast of 14 magnitudes with SPHERE/IRDIS at separations greater than 0."4 from the star. Our mass sensitivity curve rules out giant planets above 4 M$_{\rm Jup}$ immediately outside the spiral arms at $\sim$60 au and above 2-3 M$_{\rm Jup}$ beyond 100 au to 5$\sigma$ confidence assuming hot-start models. We do, however, detect four spiral arms, a double-arc and evidence for shadows in scattered light cast by a misaligned inner disc. Our observations may be explained by an unseen close-in companion on an inclined and eccentric orbit. Such a hypothesis would also account for the disc CO cavity and disturbed kinematics., Comment: 10 figures, 14 pages. Accepted for publication in MNRAS on 25 July 2022

About twelve years ago the use of standard functional manipulations was demonstrated to imply an unexpected property satisfied by the fermionic Green's functions of $QCD$. This non-perturbative phenomenon is dubbed Effective Locality. In a much simpler way than in $QCD$, the most remarkable and intriguing aspects of Effective Locality are presented here, in the Yang--Mills theory on Minkowski spacetime., Comment: 10 pages, 0 figures

About ten years ago the use of standard functional manipulations was demonstrated to imply an unexpected property satisfied by the fermionic Green's functions of QCD and dubbed Effective Locality. This feature of QCD is nonperturbative as it results from a full gauge invariant integration of the gluonic degrees of freedom. In this review article, a few salient theoretical aspects and phenomenological applications of this property are summarized., Comment: 32 pages, 6 figures

Understanding how giant planets form requires observational input from directly imaged protoplanets. We used VLT/NACO and VLT/SPHERE to search for companions in the transition disc of 2MASS J19005804-3645048 (hereafter CrA-9), an accreting M0.75 dwarf with an estimated age of 1-2 Myr. We found a faint point source at $\sim$0.7'' separation from CrA-9 ($\sim$108 au projected separation). Our 3-epoch astrometry rejects a fixed background star with a $5\sigma$ significance. The near-IR absolute magnitudes of the object point towards a planetary-mass companion. However, our analysis of the 1.0-3.8$\mu$m spectrum extracted for the companion suggests it is a young M5.5 dwarf, based on both the 1.13-$\mu$m Na index and comparison with templates of the Montreal Spectral Library. The observed spectrum is best reproduced with high effective temperature ($3057^{+119}_{-36}$K) BT-DUSTY and BT-SETTL models, but the corresponding photometric radius required to match the measured flux is only $0.60^{+0.01}_{-0.04}$ Jovian radius. We discuss possible explanations to reconcile our measurements, including an M-dwarf companion obscured by an edge-on circum-secondary disc or the shock-heated part of the photosphere of an accreting protoplanet. Follow-up observations covering a larger wavelength range and/or at finer spectral resolution are required to discriminate these two scenarios., Comment: 24 pages, 14 figures, 4 tables, to be published in MNRAS

In the past years, high angular resolution observations have revealed that circumstellar discs appear in a variety of shapes with diverse substructures being ubiquitous. This has given rise to the question of whether these substructures are triggered by planet-disc interactions. Besides direct imaging, one of the most promising methods to distinguish between different disc shaping mechanisms is to study the kinematics of the gas disc. In particular, the deviations of the rotation profile from Keplerian velocity can be used to probe perturbations in the gas pressure profile that may be caused by embedded planets. In this paper we aim to analyze the gas brightness temperature and kinematics of the transitional disc around the CQ Tau star in order to resolve and characterize substructure in the gas, caused by possible perturbers. For our analysis we use spatially resolved ALMA observations of 12CO, 13CO and C18O (J=2-1). We further extract robust line centroids for each channel map and fit a number of Keplerian disc models to the velocity field. The gas kinematics of the CQ Tau disc present non-Keplerian features, showing bent and twisted iso-velocity curves in 12CO and 13CO. Significant spiral structures are detected between 10-180 au in both the brightness temperature and the rotation velocity of 12CO after subtraction of an azimuthally symmetric model, which may be tracing planet-disc interactions with an embedded planet or low-mass companion. We identify three spirals, two in the brightness temperature and one in the velocity residuals, spanning a large azimuth and radial extent. The brightness temperature spirals are morphologically connected to spirals observed in NIR scattered light in the same disc, indicating a common origin. Together with the observed large dust and gas cavity, the spirals support the hypothesis of a massive embedded companion in the CQ Tau disc., Comment: 16 pages, 15 figures; accepted for publication in A&A

How does the cavity size in circumbinary discs depend on disc and binary properties? We investigate by simulating disc cavities carved by binary companions using smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH). We find that a cavity is quickly opened on the dynamical time, while the cavity size is set on the viscous time. In agreement with previous findings, we find long term cavity sizes of 2-5 times the binary semi-major axis, increasing with eccentricity and decreasing with disc aspect ratio. When considering binaries inclined with respect to the disc we find three regimes: i) discs that evolve towards a coplanar orbit have a large cavity, slightly smaller than that of an initially coplanar disc; ii) discs that evolve towards a polar orbit by breaking have a small cavity, equal in size to that of an initially polar disc; iii) discs that evolve towards a polar orbit via warping have an intermediate-sized cavity. We find typical gas depletions inside the cavity of $\gtrsim 2$ orders of magnitude in surface density., Comment: 12 pages, 13 figures, accepted to MNRAS

In order to obtain a complete census of the stellar and sub-stellar population, down to a few M$_{Jup}$ in the $\sim1$ Myr old Orion Nebula Cluster, we used the infrared channel of the Wide Field Camera 3 of the Hubble Space Telescope with the F139M and F130N filters. These bandpasses correspond to the $1.4 \mu$m H$_2$O absorption feature and an adjacent line-free continuum region. Out of $4,504$ detected sources, $3,352$ (about $75\%$) appear fainter than m$_{130}=14$ (Vega mag) in the F130N filter, a brightness corresponding to the hydrogen-burning limit mass (M$\simeq 0.072 M_\odot$) at $\sim 1$ Myr. Of these, however, only $742$ sources have a negative F130M-139N color index, indicative of the presence of H$_2$O vapor in absorption, and can therefore be classified as bona-fide M and L dwarfs, with effective temperatures T$\lesssim 2850$ K at an assumed $1$ Myr cluster age. On our color-magnitude diagram, this population of sources with H$_2$O absorption appears clearly distinct from the larger background population of highly reddened stars and galaxies with positive F130M-F139N color index, and can be traced down to the sensitivity limit of our survey, m$_{130}\simeq 21.5$, corresponding to a $1$ Myr old $\simeq 3 $M$_{Jup}$, planetary mass object under about 2 magnitudes of visual extinction. Theoretical models of the BT-Settl family predicting substellar isochrones of $1, 2$ and $3$ Myr (down to $\sim 1 $M$_{Jup}$) fail to reproduce the observed H$_2$O color index at M$\lesssim 20 $M$_{Jup}$. We perform a Bayesian analysis to determine extinction, mass and effective temperature of each sub-stellar member of our sample, together with its membership probability., Comment: Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal. The resolution of several figures has been downgraded to comply with the size limit of arXiv submissions

We report the discovery of a low-mass stellar companion around the young Herbig Be star MWC 297. We performed multi-epoch high-contrast imaging in the near infrared (NIR) with the Very Large Telescope (VLT)/Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch (SPHERE) instrument. The companion is found at projected separation of 244.7$\pm$13.2 au and a position angle of 176.4$\pm$0.1 deg. The large separation supports formation via gravitational instability. From the spectrum, we estimate a mass of 0.1-0.5 M$_{\odot}$, the range conveying uncertainties in the extinction of the companion and in evolutionary models at young ages. The orbit coincides with a gap in the dust disk inferred from the Spectral Energy Distribution (SED). The young age ($\lesssim$ 1 Myr) and mass ratio with the central star ($\sim 0.01$) makes the companion comparable to PDS 70~b, suggesting a relation between formation scenarios and disk dynamics., Comment: 4 figures

We present a detailed analysis of the extended structure detected around the young and close-by Herbig Ae/Be star RCrA. This is a young triple system with an intermediate mass central binary whose separation is of the order of a few tens of the radii of the individual components, and an M-star companion at about 30 au. Our aim is to understand the nature of the extended structure by means of combining integral-field and high-resolution spectroscopy. We conducted the analysis based on FEROS archival optical spectroscopy data and adaptive optics images and integral-field spectra obtained with SINFONI and SPHERE at the VLT. The observations reveal a complex extended structure that is composed of at least two components: a non-uniform wide cavity whose walls are detected in continuum emission up to 400~au, and a collimated wiggling-jet detected in the emission lines of Helium and Hydrogen. Moreover, the presence of [FeII] emission projected close to the cavity walls suggests the presence of a slower moving wind, most likely a disk wind. The multiple components of the optical forbidden lines also indicate the presence of a high-velocity jet co-existing with a slow wind. We constructed a geometrical model of the collimated jet flowing within the cavity using intensity and velocity maps, finding that its wiggling is consistent with the orbital period of the central binary. The cavity and the jet do not share the same position angle, suggesting that the jet is itself experiencing a precession motion possibly due to the wide M-dwarf companion. We propose a scenario that closely agrees with the general expectation of a magneto-centrifugal-launched jet. These results build upon the extensive studies already conducted on RCrA., Comment: 13 pages, 9 figures

Using previously described functional techniques for some non-perturbative, gauge invariant, renormalized QCD processes, a simplified version of the amplitudes - in which forms akin to Pomerons naturally appear - provides fits to ISR and LHC-TOTEM pp elastic scattering data. Those amplitudes rely on a specific function $\phi(b)$ which describes the fluctuations of the transverse position of quarks inside hadrons., Comment: 6 Pages, 8 figures. Presented at EDS Blois 2019 Conference, Quy Nhon, Vietnam, June 23--28, 2019

The combination of high resolution and sensitivity offered by ALMA is revolutionizing our understanding of protoplanetary discs, as their bulk gas and dust distributions can be studied independently. In this paper we present resolved ALMA observations of the continuum emission ($\lambda=1.3$ mm) and CO isotopologues ($^{12}$CO, $^{13}$CO, C$^{18}$O $J=2-1$) integrated intensity from the disc around the nearby ($d = 162$ pc), intermediate mass ($M_{\star}=1.67\,M_{\odot}$) pre-main-sequence star CQ Tau. The data show an inner depression in continuum, and in both $^{13}$CO and C$^{18}$O emission. We employ a thermo-chemical model of the disc reproducing both continuum and gas radial intensity profiles, together with the disc SED. The models show that a gas inner cavity with size between 15 and 25 au is needed to reproduce the data with a density depletion factor between $\sim 10^{-1}$ and $\sim 10^{-3}$. The radial profile of the distinct cavity in the dust continuum is described by a Gaussian ring centered at $R_{\rm dust}=53\,$au and with a width of $\sigma=13\,$au. Three dimensional gas and dust numerical simulations of a disc with an embedded planet at a separation from the central star of $\sim20\,$au and with a mass of $\sim 6\textrm{-} 9\,M_{\rm Jup}$ reproduce qualitatively the gas and dust profiles of the CQ Tau disc. However, a one planet model appears not to be able to reproduce the dust Gaussian density profile predicted using the thermo-chemical modeling.

Using previously described functional techniques for some non--perturbative, gauge invariant, renormalized QCD processes, a simplified version of the amplitudes --- in which forms akin to Pomerons naturally appear --- provides fits to ISR and LHC--TOTEM $pp$ elastic scattering data. Those amplitudes rely on a specific function $\varphi (\vec b)$ which describes the fluctuations of the transverse position of quarks inside hadrons., Comment: 23 pages, 12 figures. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1611.02691

Aims. R Coronae Australis (R CrA) is the brightest star of the Coronet nebula of the Corona Australis (CrA) star forming region. It has very red colors, probably due to dust absorption and it is strongly variable. High contrast instruments allow for an unprecedented direct exploration of the immediate circumstellar environment of this star. Methods. We observed R CrA with the near-IR channels (IFS and IRDIS) of SPHERE at VLT. In this paper, we used four different epochs, three of them from open time observations while one is from the SPHERE guaranteed time. The data were reduced using the DRH pipeline and the SPHERE Data Center. On the reduced data we implemented custom IDL routines with the aim to subtract the speckle halo.We have also obtained pupil-tracking H-band (1.45-1.85 micron) observations with the VLT/SINFONI near-infrared medium-resolution (R~3000) spectrograph. Results. A companion was found at a separation of 0.156" from the star in the first epoch and increasing to 0.18400 in the final one. Furthermore, several extended structures were found around the star, the most noteworthy of which is a very bright jet-like structure North-East from the star. The astrometric measurements of the companion in the four epochs confirm that it is gravitationally bound to the star. The SPHERE photometry and the SINFONI spectrum, once corrected for extinction, point toward an early M spectral type object with a mass between 0.3 and 0.55 M?. The astrometric analyis provides constraints on the orbit paramenters: e~0.4, semi-major axis at 27-28 au, inclination of ~ 70{\deg} and a period larger than 30 years. We were also able to put constraints of few MJup on the mass of possible other companions down to separations of few tens of au., Comment: 11 pages, 13 figures, accepted by A&A

We have measured astrometry for members of the Orion Nebula Cluster with images obtained in 2015 with the Wide Field Camera 3 on board the Hubble Space Telescope. By comparing those data to previous measurements with NICMOS on Hubble in 1998, we have discovered that a star in the Kleinmann-Low Nebula, source x from Lonsdale et al. (1982), is moving with an unusually high proper motion of 29 mas/yr, which corresponds to 55 km/s at the distance of Orion. Previous radio observations have found that three other stars in the Kleinmann-Low Nebula (BN and sources I and n) have high proper motions (5-14 mas/yr) and were near a single location ~540 years ago, and thus may have been members of a multiple system that dynamically decayed. The proper motion of source x is consistent with ejection from that same location 540 years ago, which provides strong evidence that the dynamical decay did occur and that the runaway star BN originated in the Kleinmann-Low Nebula rather than the nearby Trapezium cluster. However, our constraint on the motion of source n is significantly smaller than the most recent radio measurement, which indicates that it did not participate in the event that ejected the other three stars., Comment: Astrophysical Journal Letters, in press

Using previously described functional techniques for exact, non-perturbative, gauge-invariant renormalized QCD processes, a simplified version of the amplitudes - in which forms akin to Pomerons naturally appear - provides fits to ISR Elastic pp scattering data. Extension of this work to LHC reactions is presently underway., Comment: 12 pages, 9 figures

This letter is meant to be a brief survey of several recent publications providing a simple, sequential explanation of Dark Energy, Inflation and Dark Matter, which leads to a simple picture of the why and the how of the Big Bang, and thence to a possible understanding of the birth and death of a Universe., Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure

A new non-perturbative, gauge-invariant model QCD renormalization is applied to high energy elastic pp-scattering. The differential cross-section deduced from this model displays a diffraction dip that resembles those of experiments. Comparison with ISR and LHC data is currently underway., Comment: Conference proceedings for 4th International Conference on New Frontiers in Physics, ICNFP2015. Greece, 2015. subsequent work of Ann. Phys. 359, (2015); or arXiv:1412.2072, and arXiv:1502.04378

A particular choice of renormalization, within the simplifications provided by the non-perturbative property of Effective Locality, leads to a completely finite, renormalized theory of QCD, in which all correlation functions can, in principle, be defined and calculated. In this Model of renormalization, only the Bundle chain-Graphs of the cluster expansion are non-zero. All Bundle graphs connecting to closed quark loops of whatever complexity, and attached to a single quark line, provided no 'self-energy' to that quark line, and hence no effective renormalization. However, the exchange of momentum between one quark line and another, involves only the cluster-expansion's chain graphs, and yields a set of contributions which can be summed and provide a finite color-charge renormalization that can be incorporated into all other QCD processes. An application to high energy elastic pp scattering is now underway., Comment: 30 pages, 8 figures,Minor revision in RevTeX 4.1, subsequent work of Eur. Phys. J. C65, 395-411 (2010), Ann. Phys. 327, 2666-2690 (2012), Ann. Phys. 338, 107-122 (2013), and Ann. Phys. 344, 78-96 (2014); or arXiv:0903.2644, arXiv:1003.2936, arXiv:1103.4179, arXiv:1104.4663, arXiv:1203.6137, arXiv:1204.2038, and arXiv:1207.5017

A QED-based model of a new version of Vacuum Energy has recently been suggested, which leads to a simple, finite, one parameter representation of Dark Energy. An elementary, obvious, but perhaps radical generalization is then able to describe both Dark Energy and Inflation in the same framework of Vacuum Energy. One further, obvious generalization then leads to a relation between Inflation and the Big Bang, to the automatic inclusion of Dark Matter, and to a possible understanding of the birth (and death) of a Universe., Comment: 10 pages and 1 figure There has been a minor modification in the previous version (arXiv:1403.2651v1, 03/12/2014) : a reference has been added in [3] and an Appendix has been added

A QED--based "bootstrap" mechanism is suggested as an explanation for the vacuum energy that furnished the initial impulse for Inflation, and continues on to provide present day Dark Energy. Virtual vacuum fluctuations are assumed to generate effective electromagnetic fields whose average value corresponds to an effective c--number $A_{\mu}^{\rm vac}(x)$, which is itself equal to the vacuum expectation value of the operator $A_{\mu}(x)$ in the presence of that $A_{\mu}^{\rm vac}(x)$. Lorentz invariance is manifest, as every observer would measure the same electric field in his or her own reference frame. The model has one arbitrary parameter $\xi$, and fits the energy density of present day Dark Energy for $\xi\sim O(1)$., Comment: 12 pages, 1 figure. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:hep-th/0310095, arXiv:hep-th/0303108

Removal of the quenched approximation in the mechanism which produced an analytic estimate of quark-binding potentials, along with a reasonable conjecture of the color structure of the nucleon formed by such a binding potential, is shown to generate an effective, nucleon scattering and binding potential. The mass-scale factor on the order of the pion mass, previously introduced to define transverse imprecision of quark coordinates, is again used, while the strength of the potential is proportional to the square of a renormalized QCD coupling constant. The potential so derived does not include corrections due to spin, angular momentum, nucleon structure, and electroweak interactions; rather, it is qualitative in nature, showing how Nuclear Physics can arise from fundamental QCD., Comment: 25 pages, 3 figures in REVTeX. The fifth of a series on Non-Perturbative QCD (Eur. Phys. J. C65, 395 (2010) or arXiv:0903.2644 [hep-th], arXiv:1003.2936 [hep-th], arXiv:1103.4179 [hep-th] and arXiv:1104.4663 [hep-th].)

A QED-based symmetry breaking/bootstrap mechanism, appearing at sufficiently small space-time distances, is suggested as an explanation for the vacuum energy that furnished the initial impulse for Inflation, and continues on, to the present day, to provide the "Dark Energy" which is apparently forcing our Universe apart. Very high frequency virtual vacuum currents are assumed to generate weak, effective electromagnetic fields, corresponding to the appearance of an effective 4-potential A_vac (x), which is itself equal to the vacuum expectation value of the operator A(x) in the presence of that A_vac (x). Lorentz invariance is manifest, as every observer would measure the same electric field in his or her own reference frame. Such an effective vacuum field would have no relevance to the motion of ordinary charged particules until particle energies on the order of 10^5 TeV are possible. The model is sufficiently constrained so that one parameter is needed to fit the vacuum energy densities and relevant times for the onset and end of Inflation, as well as those parameters of present day Dark Energy., Comment: 13 pages, one Figure. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:hep-th/0310095 and arXiv:hep-th/0303108 We have just found a much better way of treating both dark Energy and Inflation, and would like to submit these as separate papers. The first manuscript is now ready for submission to arXiv; its title is: "QED Vacuum Loops and Dark Energy"

This paper applies the analytic forms of a recent non-perturbative, manifestly gauge- and Lorentz-invariant description (of the exchange of all possible virtual gluons between quarks ($Q$) and/or anti-quarks ($\bar{Q}$) in a quenched, eikonal approximation) to extract analytic forms for the binding potentials generating a model $Q$-$\bar{Q}$ "pion", and a model $QQQ$ "nucleon". Other, more complicated $Q$, $\bar{Q}$ contributions to such color-singlet states may also be identified analytically. An elementary minimization technique, relevant to the ground states of such bound systems, is adopted to approximate the solutions to a more proper, but far more complicated Schroedinger/Dirac equation; the existence of possible contributions to the pion and nucleon masses due to spin, angular momentum, and "deformation" degrees of freedom is noted but not pursued. Neglecting electromagnetic and weak interactions, this analysis illustrates how the one new parameter making its appearance in this exact, realistic formalism may be evaluated, along with a qualitative estimate of the lowest quark mass and the energy contributions to the ground states of the gluon fields, from a knowledge of the pion and (ground state) nucleon masses., Comment: 12 pages, no figures; The fourth piece of a series on Non-Perturbative QCD (Eur. Phys. J. C65, 395 (2010), arXiv:1003.2936 [hep-th] and arXiv:1103.4179 [hep-th])

A functional method to achieve the summation of all Feynman graphs relevant to a particular Field Theory process is suggested, and applied to QED, demonstrating manifestly gauge invariant calculations of the dressed photon propagator in approximations of increas- ing complexity. These lead in a natural way to the extraction of the leading logarithmic divergences of every perturbative order, and to a demonstration of the possible cancellation of all such divergences in the calculation of the (inverse of the) photon's wavefunction renormalization constant Z3. This analysis provides a qualitative understanding of why the measured value of the renormalized fine structure constant is, approximately, 1/137.

The interpretation of virtual gluons as ghosts in the non-linear gluonic structure of QCD permits the formulation and realization of a manifestly gauge-invariant and Lorentz covariant theory of interacting quarks/anti-quarks, for all values of coupling. The simplest example of quark/anti-quark scattering in a high-energy, quenched, eikonal model at large coupling is shown to be expressible as a set of finite, local integrals which may be evaluated numerically; and before evaluation, it is clear that the result will be dependent only on, and is damped by increasing momentum transfer, while displaying physically-reasonable color dependence in a manner underlying the MIT Bag Model and an effective, asymptotic freedom. A similar but more complicated integral will result from all possible gluonic-radiative corrections to this simplest eikonal model. Our results are compatible with an earlier, field-strength analysis of Reinhardt et al., Comment: 35 pages, no figures

It is suggested that charged tachyons of extremely large mass M could not only contribute to the dark matter needed to fit astrophysical observations, but could also provide an explanation for gamma ray bursts and ulta high energy cosmic rays. The present paper defines a quantum field theory of tachyons, particles similar to ordinary leptons, but with momenta larger than energy. The theory is invariant under the full CPT transformation, but separately violates P and T invariance. Micro causality is broken for space-time intervals smaller than 1/M, but is effectively preserved for larger separations. Charged fermionic, rather than charged scalar tachyons are considered in order to minimize the probability of Cerenkov-like radiation by the tachyon, thereby permitting a high energy tachyon to retain its energy over galactic distances. Topics treated include the choice and Schwinger Action Principle variations of an appropriate Lagrangian, spinorial wave functions, relevant Green's functions, a functional description of an S-Matrix and generating functional, and a variety of interesting kinematical processes, including photon emission and reabsorption, and relevant annihilation and scattering effects. A version of Ehrenfest's theorem is developed, in order to provide a foundation for a classical description of charged tachyons in an external electromagnetic field. Applications are then made to three outstanding astrophysical puzzles : dark matter, gamma ray bursts and ultra high energy cosmic rays., Comment: 25 pages

It is suggested that Schwinger's (1951) vacuum persistence probability against pair production by an intense but constant electric field is a very good approximation to the corresponding quantity if the field does not vary appreciably over distances less than m/e/E/5 pages, Comment: 5 pages

It is suggested that charged tachyons of extremely large mass M could not only contribute to the dark matter needed to fit astrophysical observations, but could also provide an explanation for gamma ray bursts and ultra high energy cosmic rays. The present paper defines a quantum field theory of tachyons, the latter similar to ordinary leptons, but with momenta larger than energy., Comment: 19 pages

A physically reasonable model is introduced in order to estimate, in a functional way, the vast number of distinct graphs which are conventionally neglected in eikonal scattering models that lead to total cross sections increasing with energy in the form of the Froissart bound., Comment: 23 pages, 5 figures

We present new, non trivial generalizations of the recent Tomaras, Tsamis and Woodard extension of the original Schwinger formula for charged pair production in a constant field., Comment: 11 pages