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01.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-12

CPAM: Context-Preserving Adaptive Manipulation for Zero-Shot Real Image Editing

Editing natural images using textual descriptions in text-to-image diffusion models remains a significant challenge, particularly in achieving consistent generation and handling complex, non-rigid objects. Existing methods often struggle to preserve textures and identity, require extensive fine-tuning, and exhibit limitations in editing specific spatial regions or objects while retaining background details. This paper proposes Context-Preserving Adaptive Manipulation (CPAM), a novel zero-shot framework for complicated, non-rigid real image editing. Specifically, we propose a preservation adaptation module that adjusts self-attention mechanisms to preserve and independently control the object and background effectively. This ensures that the objects' shapes, textures, and identities are maintained while keeping the background undistorted during the editing process using the mask guidance technique. Additionally, we develop a localized extraction module to mitigate the interference with the non-desired modified regions during conditioning in cross-attention mechanisms. We also introduce various mask-guidance strategies to facilitate diverse image manipulation tasks in a simple manner. CPAM can be seamlessly integrated with multiple diffusion backbones, including SD1.5, SD2.1, and SDXL, demonstrating strong generalization across different model architectures. Extensive experiments on our newly constructed Image Manipulation BenchmArk (IMBA), a robust benchmark dataset specifically designed for real image editing, demonstrate that our proposed method is the preferred choice among human raters, outperforming existing state-of-the-art editing techniques. The source code and data will be publicly released at the project page: https://vdkhoi20.github.io/CPAM

02.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-24

Difference-Making without Making a Difference

arXiv:2606.24832v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Over a series of seven papers, Andreas & Günther have introduced seven definitions of actual causation and have classified them as belonging to three different, competing, types of accounts: factual difference-making, counterfactual difference-making, and regularity-based. I show that their most recent - factual difference-making - definition instantiates all three types, thereby proving that these are distinctions without a difference. I further compare their novel account to the other six accounts on several crucial examples, revealing that this undermines all seven of their accounts.

03.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-16

Forbidden transitions in superconducting artificial atoms

arXiv:2606.06069v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Artificial atoms built from Josephson junctions have become a powerful tool to explore the limits of quantum optics due to their strong coupling to electromagnetic fields and their sensitivity to changes at the single-photon level. This sensitivity to quantum fluctuations complements their metrological and computational use, which are based on the precise oscillating frequency of the underlying supercurrents. We present here a theory for Josephson junctions immersed in electromagnetic fields where focus is shifted from temporal correlations and towards spatial ones. Unlike the commonly used circuit and black-box descriptions, our work is based on a microscopic model that enables systematically accounting for the effect of the spatial and vectorial profile of an electromagnetic field over a junction. As an example of the interactions that emerge in such a setup, we investigate the possibility of driving a junction via a quadrupole transition, using typical experimental parameters in existing devices. With the transition being dependent on the gradient of the electric field – rather than its intensity – the junction can be excited in a region where the electric field vanishes.

04.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-15

ClinHallu: A Benchmark for Diagnosing Stage-Wise Hallucinations in Medical MLLM Reasoning

Building trustworthy medical multimodal large language models (MLLMs) is critical for reliable clinical decision support. Existing medical hallucination benchmarks mainly focus on data collection, but often ignore where hallucinations originate within the reasoning process. We find that hallucination sources vary across samples: errors may arise from visual misrecognition, incorrect medical knowledge recall, or flawed reasoning integration. To enable source-level hallucination diagnosis, we introduce ClinHallu, a benchmark for stage-wise hallucination diagnosis in medical MLLM reasoning. ClinHallu contains 7,031 validated instances, where each instance is augmented with a structured reasoning trace decomposed into Visual Recognition, Knowledge Recall, and Reasoning Integration. We also use stage-replacement interventions to measure how correcting specific stages affects the final answer. Beyond evaluation, we show that trace-supervised fine-tuning reduces stage-wise hallucinations. ClinHallu provides a fine-grained hallucination testbed for diagnosing and mitigating reasoning failures in medical MLLMs. The benchmark is publicly available at https://github.com/alibaba-damo-academy/ClinHallu.

05.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-17

Learning in Matching Games with Bandit Feedback

arXiv:2506.03802v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: We introduce a learning problem in a generalized two-sided matching market, where agents select actions to interact with their match. Specifically, we consider a setting in which matched agents engage in zero-sum games with initially unknown payoff matrices, and we investigate whether a centralized procedure can learn an equilibrium from bandit feedback. We adopt the solution concept of a matching equilibrium, where a matching \( \mathfrak{m} \) and a set of agent strategies \( X \) form an equilibrium if no agent has an incentive to deviate from \( (\mathfrak{m}, X) \). To quantify deviations of a candidate solution \( (\mathfrak{m}, X) \) from the equilibrium \( (\mathfrak{m}^\star, X^\star) \), we introduce the notion of matching instability, which serves as a regret measure for the learning problem. We propose a UCB-based algorithm in which agents form preferences and select actions according to optimistic estimates of the payoffs. Our analysis establishes a sublinear, instance-independent regret upper bound, further supported by empirical evidence.

06.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-12

Deep Learning-based Algebraic Reynolds Stress Closures for RANS Simulations of Turbulent Flows

arXiv:2605.26358v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Turbulence is ubiquitous in engineering and science, yet direct simulation is prohibitively expensive. The Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations provide savings exceeding ten orders of magnitude but introduce unclosed terms (the closure problem). Offline-trained machine-learning (ML) closures suffer distribution shift in predictive simulations, while ML methods that bypass the governing equations struggle to generalise from scarce high-fidelity data. We develop a physics-derived deep learning closure model for RANS, the Deep Algebraic Reynolds Stress Model (DARSM), which can be trained on small datasets and accurately generalise across Reynolds numbers, to unseen geometries, and to different flow regimes. A neural network maps flow invariants to empirical parameters in an implicit algebraic Reynolds stress equation, derived from the Reynolds stress transport equations under the weak-equilibrium assumption, imposing physics-based structure on the ML closure. End-to-end optimisation through the governing PDEs and the coupled implicit closure eliminates distribution shift, but both unrolled and implicit automatic differentiation fail on the stiff coupled solver. We derive adjoint equations that exploit the solver's implicit-explicit structure for efficient optimisation. On canonical square-duct and periodic-hill benchmarks, DARSM reduces average test velocity error over baseline RANS by $2$-$4\times$ across Reynolds number, geometries, and flow regimes, with peak case-level reductions of $12\times$. The model trained on attached, anisotropy-dominated flows (square duct) accurately generalises without retraining to separated flows (periodic hills), a regime change in the underlying physics. DARSM also outperforms five established ML methods: offline training, tensor-basis neural networks, field-inversion machine learning, DeepONets, and physics-informed neural networks.

07.
medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-22

Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practices Regarding Maternal Nutrition Counselling Among Frontline Health Workers in Udupi, Karnataka, India: A Sequential Explanatory Mixed-Methods Study

Background Indias maternal nutrition profile is undergoing a dual-direction shift, with persistent undernutrition coexisting alongside rising overweight and micronutrient deficiencies. Despite national efforts through Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) and the National Health Mission (NHM), maternal dietary diversity remains suboptimal in India. Frontline health workers (FLWs) play a central role in delivering nutrition counselling; however, gaps remain between knowledge and its translation into practice, highlighting the need to strengthen training, applied competencies, and health system support within primary care settings. Objective To assess knowledge, attitudes, and practices (KAP) regarding maternal nutrition counselling among FLWs and to explore contextual factors influencing counselling delivery. Methods A sequential explanatory mixed-methods study was conducted in Udupi, Karnataka, India. In phase one, 46 FLWs- Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHA), Community Health Officers (CHO), and Primary Health Care Officers (PHCO) completed a validated Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practices (KAP) questionnaire. Data were analysed using descriptive statistics, Kruskal-Wallis test, Spearman correlation, and exploratory multiple linear regression. In phase two, one focus group discussion with 21 participants was conducted and analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. Results FLWs demonstrated moderate KAP scores (37.50 {+/-} 5.09), with lower scores observed in dietary diversity knowledge and counselling practices. CHOs and PHCOs had significantly higher knowledge (p < 0.001) and practice scores (p = 0.002) compared to ASHAs, while attitudes were similar across cadres. Knowledge was positively associated with practice ({rho} = 0.389, p = 0.008). Exploratory regression indicated that cadre and knowledge were associated with practice, while attitude was not statistically significant. Qualitative findings suggested that counselling was largely protocol-based and constrained by workload, limited counselling tools, economic barriers, and cultural food practices. Conclusion Despite positive attitudes towards maternal nutrition counselling, frontline health workers demonstrated gaps in knowledge and counselling practices. Mixed-methods findings suggest that counselling delivery is shaped by both provider competencies and health-system constraints, highlighting the need for implementation-focused strategies to strengthen maternal nutrition counselling in routine antenatal care.

08.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-24

Quantum Metric Bound State of Light

arXiv:2606.22479v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: The spatial confinement of defect-induced bound states is conventionally governed by the effective mass in dispersive bands. More recently, Compact Localized States (CLSs) arising from exact destructive interference have been utilized to achieve confinement in flat bands. However, CLSs rely on pristine lattice symmetries and fine-tuned defect profiles. The introduction of a generic local impurity inevitably breaks these strict phase-matching conditions, resulting in extensive bound states whose fundamental length scale has remained an open question. Here, we establish a third regime of confinement: the quantum metric bound state. We provide a rigorous mathematical proof demonstrating that in the absence of kinetic energy and CLS protection, the exponential decay length of these states is lower-bounded by the quantum metric of the unperturbed flat band. We demonstrate the tightness of this geometric limit by constructing a family of highly tunable flat-band generators, and we verify its universality across diverse realistic architectures. Ultimately, this classification establishes the independently measurable quantum metric as a predictive design principle for engineering confined modes in synthetic wave platforms.

09.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-18

When Does Trajectory-Level Supervision Permit Efficient Offline Reinforcement Learning?

arXiv:2606.18531v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Offline reinforcement learning is typically analyzed under process-level reward supervision, yet many sequential decision datasets record only trajectory-level outcomes. We develop a statistical theory for offline policy optimization from such outcome-level supervision. We first study the canonical setting where the target remains the expected cumulative reward, but each offline trajectory provides only a scalar label whose conditional mean is the cumulative return. We propose OPAC, a pessimistic actor-critic algorithm that learns a latent reward model and optimizes a policy from trajectory-level labels. We prove a high-probability guarantee of order $\widetilde O(H^2\sqrt{C_{sa}(\pi^\star)/n})$ and a matching lower bound, characterizing the sharp statistical cost of replacing process-level rewards with one trajectory-level label. We then extend the principle to preference-based feedback, preserving the leading horizon and concentrability dependence up to preference-model constants. Finally, we study generalized outcome-based offline RL, where both the supervision and the objective are trajectory-level quantities induced by a nonlinear aggregation of latent per-step rewards. This problem is not learnable in general: for all-success objectives, any offline learner may require $\Omega(2^H)$ trajectories even with deterministic transitions and constant concentrability. We then identify a tractable regime through two structural coefficients, $\kappa_\mu(\sigma)$ and $\chi_\mu(\sigma)$, capturing information loss in outcome aggregation and generalized Bellman updates, under which generalized OPAC achieves polynomial sample complexity. Together, our results delineate when outcome-level supervision enables sample-efficient offline control and when missing process-level rewards create fundamental statistical barriers.

10.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-12

Normative Robustness as a Frontier for Non-Verifiable Reasoning in LLMs

arXiv:2606.12731v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: As LLMs increasingly serve in advisory and deliberative roles, users rely on them for non-verifiable reasoning in domains lacking objective ground truths. However, traditional evaluations of LLM reasoning focus almost exclusively on fact-based domains, such as mathematics and science, leaving uncertainty over whether and to what degree models can handle ambiguous, subjective, or value-laden problems over time. To address this concern, we propose moral reasoning as a paradigmatic subdomain of non-verifiable reasoning. We define moral robustness as a model's capacity to exhibit sound moral reasoning across time and contexts, and we introduce a scalable, adversarial, multi-turn evaluation framework to empirically measure this capability. We simulate 48,000 user-agent moral deliberations across four frontier LLMs, varying premise relevance, premise order, conversation duration, and the user's stated moral view. We find that models successfully ignore morally-irrelevant distractors, but shift their reasoning by up to 6.5%, on average, towards the user's stated preferred moral view, and varying their reasoning depending on factors such as order (altering moral judgments by order in 13-22% of the cases) and duration (altering moral judgments between single-turn and multi-turn in 10-24% of the cases). Our analysis indicates that models tailor not just their final verdicts but their underlying justifications to align with a user's moral viewpoint - a failure mode we characterize as moral deliberative sycophancy.

11.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-15

TSA: Temporal Slot Activation for Persistent Object-Centric Video Representation

Unsupervised video object-centric learning aims to decompose dynamic scenes into temporally persistent entity representations. Existing recurrent video slot-attention methods propagate a fixed set of slots across frames, but typically assume unconditional slot propagation: every slot is updated and decoded at every frame, regardless of whether its corresponding object is visible. We show that this design violates a basic lifecycle requirement for persistent slots: when an object is absent or fully occluded, its slot should preserve its previous state and avoid explaining unrelated visible content. Instead, unconditional propagation creates two failure pathways: update-induced state drift, where current-frame evidence overwrites the absent object's representation, and decoder-induced reconstruction interference, where the inactive slot remains coupled to reconstruction through decoder attention. We propose Temporal Slot Activation (TSA), a mechanism that learns a per-slot, per-frame activation score $\alpha_{k,t} \in (0, 1)$ without visibility supervision. TSA uses this activation as a shared latent control variable for slot lifecycle modeling. When a slot is inactive, TSA anchors its state to the previous slot via activation-gated updating and suppresses its decoder participation through an activation-dependent additive bias on attention logits before softmax normalization. This jointly reduces state drift and reconstruction-driven interference. To improve decisions under partial occlusion and gradual reappearance, TSA further conditions activation prediction on a per-slot temporal memory produced by a Temporal Context Encoder. We evaluate TSA on MOVi-C/E, YT-VIS, and OVIS benchmarks using both standard and tracking-based metrics (FG-ARI, mBO, IDF1, HOTA). TSA consistently improves object decomposition and temporal identity preservation, with large gains on long, heavily occluded videos.

12.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-24

A Benchmark of State-Space Models vs. Transformers and BiLSTM-based Models for Historical Newspaper OCR

End-to-end OCR for historical newspapers remains challenging, as models must handle long text sequences, degraded print quality, and complex layouts. While Transformer-based recognizers dominate current research, their quadratic complexity limits efficient paragraph-level transcription and large-scale deployment. We investigate linear-time State-Space Models (SSMs), specifically Mamba, as a scalable alternative to Transformer-based sequence modeling for OCR. We present to our knowledge, the first OCR architecture based on SSMs, combining a CNN visual encoder with bi-directional and autoregressive Mamba sequence modeling, and conduct a large-scale benchmark comparing SSMs with Transformer- and BiLSTM-based recognizers. Multiple decoding strategies (CTC, autoregressive, and non-autoregressive) are evaluated under identical training conditions alongside strong neural baselines (VAN, DAN, DANIEL) and widely used off-the-shelf OCR engines (PERO-OCR, Tesseract OCR, TrOCR, Gemini). Experiments on historical newspapers from the Bibliotheque nationale du Luxembourg, with newly released >99% verified gold-standard annotations, and cross-dataset tests on Fraktur and Antiqua lines, show that all neural models achieve low error rates (~2% CER), making computational efficiency the main differentiator. Mamba-based models maintain competitive accuracy while halving inference time and exhibiting superior memory scaling (1.26x vs 2.30x growth at 1000 chars), reaching 6.07% CER at the severely degraded paragraph level compared to 5.24% for DAN, while remaining 2.05x faster. We release code, trained models, and standardized evaluation protocols to enable reproducible research and guide practitioners in large-scale cultural heritage OCR available at https://github.com/MarcoPerson/ssm-ocr-benchmark.

13.
medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-15

Prevalence and Clinical Impact of Pathogenic Variants in Cardiomyopathy Genes Among Individuals with Cardiac Conduction Disorders

Importance: Cardiac conduction disorders have traditionally been regarded as a secondary manifestation of underlying structural heart diseases. However, isolated conduction disorders may precede the onset of heart failure (HF) suggesting shared mechanisms. Objective: To evaluate the prevalence and clinical significance of pathogenic/likely pathogenic (P/LP) rare variants in cardiomyopathy genes among individuals with conduction disorders. Design, Setting, and Participants: Biobank analysis of 192,834 participants with whole genome sequence data from Vanderbilt's BioVU and 353,092 participants from the All of Us Research Program (AoU). Participants with primary conduction disorder (left bundle branch block [LBBB], right bundle branch block [RBBB], high-grade atrioventricular block [AVB]) were identified after excluding secondary causes. Exposures: P/LP variants in cardiomyopathy genes. Main Outcomes and Measures: Primary outcome was P/LP carrier status by age and HF status. Secondary outcomes included incident HF and composite ventricular arrhythmias/sudden cardiac death/mortality (VA/SCD/mortality). Results: Among 16,959 participants with conduction disorders in BioVU and 13,442 in AoU, 432 (2.6%) and 206 (1.5%) were P/LP carriers, respectively. Conduction disorder was independently associated with carrier status (BioVU p

14.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-18

Recursive Joint Simulation in Games

arXiv:2402.08128v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Game-theoretic dynamics between AI agents could differ from traditional human-human interactions in various ways. One such difference is that it may be possible to accurately simulate an AI agent, for example because its source code is known. Such an agent would then be fundamentally uncertain whether it is in the real world or in a simulation. Our aim is to explore ways of leveraging this possibility to achieve more cooperative outcomes in strategic settings. In this paper, we study an interaction between AI agents where the agents run a recursive joint simulation. That is, the agents first jointly observe a simulation of the situation they face. This simulation in turn recursively includes additional simulations (with a small chance of failure, to avoid infinite recursion), and the results of all these nested simulations are observed before an action is chosen. We show that the resulting interaction is strategically equivalent to an infinitely repeated version of the original game, allowing a direct transfer of existing results such as the various folk theorems. As evidence that the equivalence is robust, we show that it holds even when we relax some of the assumptions and that it also holds ``from the inside'' – meaning, for an agent that finds itself inside the game and has self-locating uncertainty.

15.
medRxiv (Medicine) 2026-06-24

Study protocol and statistical analysis plan for a randomized controlled trial evaluating the safety and feasibility of the recombinant human platelet-derived growth factor B (rhPDGF-BB)-enhanced collagen plug for complex perianal fistula healing

Background A drug-repurposing-specific phenome-wide association study (PheWAS) demonstrated that patients with a single nucleotide variant that decreases expression of platelet-derived growth factor receptor beta (PDGFR{beta}) have a higher prevalence of fistulas, suggesting that PDGFR{beta} signaling is important for tissue repair. Recombinant human platelet derived growth factor B (rhPDGF) is an FDA-approved protein-based therapeutic that signals through PDGFR{beta} to heal and regenerate cutaneous skin wounds, periodontal tissue, and orthopedic bone with a strong safety profile. We hypothesize that rhPDGF will benefit other conditions identified by PheWAS with a similar physiological mechanism as the existing indications, such as complex perianal fistulas that are ineligible for a fistulotomy. Methods and analysis This prospective, blinded, single-site study aims to enroll 12 participants, randomized at a ratio of 2:1, comparing implantation of rhPDGF-enhanced collagen to routine care procedures, and stratified by fistula etiology, idiopathic versus Crohns disease (CD)-related. The primary outcome of this study will evaluate the technical performance of the rhPDGF-enhanced collagen implant for treatment of complex perianal fistulas as measured by the proportion of participants with successful implantation of the intervention without any intervention-related serious adverse events. The secondary outcomes will assess the preliminary safety and efficacy of the intervention based on all intervention-related adverse events, total fistulas healed, rate of fistula recurrence, and change in patient-reported symptoms. Complex perianal fistulas, idiopathic or CD-related, remain a major clinical challenge in need of new multimodal treatments aimed at tissue repair and regeneration. Pharmaceutical rhPDGF stimulation of PDGFR{beta} signaling promotes healing of skin, bone, and soft tissue. PheWAS revealed fistulas as a novel indication for repurposing rhPDGF. This protocol aims to evaluate the technical performance, preliminary safety and efficacy, and feasibility of rhPDGF-enhanced collagen for healing and remission of complex perianal fistulas. Ethics and dissemination This trial was approved by the Vanderbilt University Medical Center institutional review board (IRB#240585). Results will be submitted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal.

16.
arXiv (CS.CV) 2026-06-11

Causal Clothes-Invariant Feature Learning for Cloth-Changing Person Re-ID

In cloth-changing person re-identification (CCReID), it is critical to learn clothes-invariant feature, which can provide discriminative ID features that remain robust against clothing changes. However, a spurious correlation currently limits existing ReID methods from effectively extracting these clothing-invariant features. This spurious correlation arises from clothing ownership: clothing is rarely shared across different identities, so models tend to memorize clothing cues for identity recognition, and this strategy generalizes poorly to unseen clothing. In this paper, we propose Causal Clothes-Invariant Learning (CCIL), which explicitly shifts CC-ReID from likelihood learning P (Y|X) to causal intervention learning P (Y|do(X)) to block the clothing shortcut. CCIL realizes this intervention through three modules: a Confounder Dictionary, an Intervention Module, and Disentangle Regularization. The causality-based modeling makes the entire model naturally clothes-invariant, effectively preventing the capture of spurious correlations in feature learning. Extensive experiments validate the effectiveness of CCIL. On PRCC and DeepChange datasets, CCIL achieves Rank-1 accuracies of 66.4% and 59.2%, outperforming state-of-the-art methods by 1.4 and 4.1 percentage points, respectively.

17.
arXiv (CS.AI) 2026-06-18

Model Collapse Is Not a Bug but a Feature in Machine Unlearning for LLMs

arXiv:2507.04219v5 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Current unlearning methods for LLMs optimize on the private information they seek to remove by incorporating it into their fine-tuning data. We argue this not only risks reinforcing exposure to sensitive data, but also fundamentally contradicts the principle of minimizing its use. As a remedy, we propose a novel unlearning method-Partial Model Collapse (PMC), which does not require unlearning targets in the unlearning objective. Our approach is inspired by recent observations that training generative models on their own generations leads to distribution collapse, effectively removing information from model outputs. Our central insight is that model collapse can be leveraged for machine unlearning by deliberately triggering it for data we aim to remove. We theoretically analyze that our approach converges to the desired outcome, i.e. the model unlearns the data targeted for removal. We empirically demonstrate that PMC overcomes four key limitations of existing unlearning methods that explicitly optimize on unlearning targets, and more effectively removes private information from model outputs while preserving general model utility. Overall, our contributions represent an important step toward more comprehensive unlearning that better aligns with real-world privacy constraints. Code available at https://www.cs.cit.tum.de/daml/partial-model-collapse/.

18.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-11

Invariants of Sequential Circuits and Generalized Non-Abelian Statistics

arXiv:2606.11527v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Non-invertible symmetries in quantum many-body systems generally give rise to sequential unitary circuits that move symmetry defects. In this paper, we investigate invariants defined by sequences of such circuits, which move non-invertible defects and generate a Berry phase evaluated on quantum states with defects. We show that this Berry phase generally defines an invariant under local deformations, provided that the sequential circuits preserve the locality of those deformations. This invariant also rules out a short-range-entangled state that preserves the non-invertible symmetry, thereby signaling the 't Hooft anomaly of a non-invertible symmetry purely in terms of unitary operators acting on a state. We then apply this framework to loop excitations in three spatial dimensions and identify a new loop excitation in the (3+1)D $\mathbb{D}_4$ topological order, which we dub a non-Abelian fermionic loop. Using the invariant of sequential circuits, we characterize the statistics of non-Abelian fermionic loops. In addition, we find a new (3+1)D mixed topological order with a single non-Abelian fermionic loop, whose long-range entanglement is protected by an invariant of sequential circuits.

19.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-11

AI Coding Agents Can Reproduce Social Science Findings

Recent anecdotal evidence suggests that AI coding agents can reproduce published findings when provided with original data and code; yet systematic evaluation across social sciences remains limited. Existing evaluation benchmarks are insufficient, either small or conflate agent performance with problems in the reproduction materials themselves, such as code that fails to execute correctly. Here we introduce SocSci-Repro-Bench, a benchmark of 221 tasks spanning four disciplines and 13 substantive domains, constructed from studies whose results are either fully reproducible with available materials or demonstrably non-reproducible due to missing data, allowing us to isolate agents' reproduction capacity. Evaluating two frontier coding agents, Claude Code and Codex, we find that both can reproduce a large share of social science findings, with Claude Code substantially outperforming Codex. These reproduction rates considerably exceed those previously reported for general-purpose LLM-based agents on comparable reproducibility benchmarks. Both agents also perform strongly on a reasoning task requiring identification of underlying research questions, and additional analyses suggest that results are not primarily driven by memorization. Providing the original paper PDF alongside replication materials modestly improves performance but introduces bias on tasks where reproduction is impossible. We also show that agents can be nudged toward confirmatory specification search through subtle prompt framing. Together, these findings suggest that at least some frontier coding agents can serve as reliable executors of computational workflows while underscoring the need for careful benchmarking and prompt design as AI systems assume larger roles in scientific production.

20.
arXiv (CS.CL) 2026-06-15

Same-Origin Policy for Agentic Browsers

Agentic browsers integrate autonomous AI agents into web browsers, enabling users to accomplish web tasks through natural-language instructions. The same-origin policy (SOP) is a fundamental browser security mechanism that prevents unauthorized automated cross-origin data flows induced by scripts. However, whether SOP remains effective in agentic browsers is an open question that has not been systematically studied. In this work, we bridge this gap. We first observe that an agentic browser can itself serve as an automated channel for cross-origin data flows, potentially leading to SOP violations. To investigate this phenomenon, we construct SOPBench, a benchmark for evaluating SOP violations in agentic browsers. Our evaluation shows that existing agentic browsers frequently violate SOP, both in benign settings and under attacks. To address this problem, we propose SOPGuard, an SOP enforcement mechanism tailored to agentic browsers. We implement SOPGuard in BrowserOS, an open-source agentic browser. Extensive evaluations demonstrate that SOPGuard effectively enforces SOP while preserving utility and incurring only a small runtime overhead. Our code and data are available at https://github.com/wxl-lxw/BrowserOS-SOPGuard.

21.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-18

Task-Adaptive Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning for Weather Foundation Models

arXiv:2509.22020v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: While recent advances in machine learning have equipped Weather Foundation Models (WFMs) with substantial generalization capabilities across diverse downstream tasks, the escalating computational requirements associated with their expanding scale increasingly hinder practical deployment. Current Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning (PEFT) methods, designed for vision or language tasks, fail to address the unique challenges of weather downstream tasks, such as variable heterogeneity, resolution diversity, and spatiotemporal coverage variations, leading to suboptimal performance when applied to WFMs. To bridge this gap, we introduce WeatherPEFT, a novel PEFT framework for WFMs incorporating two synergistic innovations. First, during the forward pass, Task-Adaptive Dynamic Prompting (TADP) dynamically injects the embedding weights within the encoder to the input tokens of the pre-trained backbone via internal and external pattern extraction, enabling context-aware feature recalibration for specific downstream tasks. Furthermore, during backpropagation, Stochastic Fisher-Guided Adaptive Selection (SFAS) not only leverages Fisher information to identify and update the most task-critical parameters, thereby preserving invariant pre-trained knowledge, but also introduces randomness to stabilize the selection. We demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of WeatherPEFT on three downstream tasks, where existing PEFT methods show significant gaps versus Full-Tuning, and WeatherPEFT achieves performance parity with Full-Tuning using fewer trainable parameters. The code of this work is available at https://github.com/ShileiCao/WeatherPEFT.

22.
arXiv (math.PR) 2026-06-25

Spectral bounds and heat kernel upper estimates for Dirichlet forms

arXiv:2509.01115v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: We use a Harnack-type inequality on exit times and spectral bounds to characterize upper bounds of the heat kernel associated with any regular Dirichlet form without killing part, where the scale function may vary with position. We further show that this Harnack-type inequality is preserved under quasi-symmetric changes of metric on uniformly perfect metric spaces. This generalized the work of Mariano and Wang [Stochastic Process. Appl. 189 (2025) 104707)].

23.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-18

Toward Simultaneously Optimal Regret in U-Calibration

arXiv:2606.18527v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: U-calibration studies online forecasting algorithms whose predictions can be consumed by any unknown downstream agent, guaranteeing sublinear regret simultaneously for all proper loss functions. Existing U-calibration algorithms achieve worst-case optimal $O(\sqrt{T})$ regret for every bounded proper loss, but they fail to adapt to easier losses: as we show, even for smooth losses such as squared loss, they incur $\Omega(\sqrt{T})$ regret instead of the optimal $O(\log T)$ regret. In this work, we show that this limitation is not inherent. Specifically, we design a single forecast algorithm that simultaneously achieves $\tilde O(\sqrt{T})$ regret for every bounded proper loss and $O(\log T)$ regret for every bounded smooth proper loss. More generally, our algorithm also attains logarithmic regret for losses that are smooth relative to the log-barrier, which include several non-Lipschitz examples. Our approach is based on a novel variant of Follow-the-Perturbed-Leader (FTPL) in which perturbations are applied directly in the prediction space using self-concordant noise. The resulting analysis also departs substantially from prior FTPL analyses due to the complex nature of this noise and may be of independent interest.

24.
arXiv (CS.LG) 2026-06-12

Single vs. Multiple Branches in DeepONet and S-DeepONet: Network Architecture Follows Coupling in Multiphysics Systems

arXiv:2507.03660v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: `Real-time prediction of complex physical systems requires surrogate models that learn from data while representing strong multiphysics coupling. Deep Operator Networks have shown success in single-physics problems, yet their effectiveness in capturing nonlinear interactions in coupled systems (such as thermo-mechanical or electro-thermal coupling) remains underexplored. Here we pose a practical question: should the architecture of a neural operator reflect the strength of physical coupling it aims to model? We compare single-branch and multi-branch designs, in both feedforward and sequential recurrent forms, across three representative systems: a reaction–diffusion problem with heterogeneous sources, a nonlinear thermo-electrical problem with temperature-dependent conductivity and Joule heating, and a viscoplastic thermo-mechanical model of steel solidification. Single-branch networks consistently outperform multi-branch variants in tightly coupled regimes by encouraging shared latent representations, whereas multi-branch designs remain favorable for decoupled or single-physics tasks. Once trained, these surrogates deliver full-field predictions up to $1.8 \times 10^4$ times faster than physics-based solvers.

25.
arXiv (quant-ph) 2026-06-15

Resurgence of the Thermal Transition between Bounce and Sphaleron

arXiv:2606.13778v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: We study the thermal transition between the bounce and the sphaleron in quantum mechanics with a metastable vacuum from the viewpoint of Borel resurgence. For two models representing a second-order and a first-order transition, we compute the perturbative expansion of the thermal free energy to high orders and extract the leading Borel singularity data $(A,b,S)$ as functions of temperature. The Borel singularity location $A$ reproduces the on-shell action of the dominant saddle on both sides of the transition, joining smoothly in the second-order case and developing a kink in the first-order case. The characteristic exponent $b$ jumps between $0$ and $1/2$ across the transition, counting the zero modes of the corresponding saddle. The Stokes constant $S$ matches the one-loop determinant around the saddle. The perturbative expansion around the false vacuum thus determines the transition temperature, the order of the transition, and the decay rate including the one-loop prefactor without relying on semiclassical inputs.