Sericin Promotes Fibroin Silk I Stabilization Across a Phase-Separation.

Natural silk spinning offers several advantages over the synthetic fiber spinning, although the underlying mechanisms of this process are yet to be fully elucidated. Silkworm silks, specifically B. mori, comprise two main proteins: fibroin, which forms the fiber, and sericin, a coextruded coating that acts as a matrix in the resulting nonwoven composite cocoon. To date, most studies have focused on fibroin's self-assembly and gelation, with the influence of sericin during spinning receiving little to no attention. This study investigates sericin's effects on the self-assembly of fibroin via their natural phase-separation. Through changes in sample opacity, FTIR, and XRD, we report that increasing sericin concentration retards the time to gelation and β-sheet formation of fibroin, causing it to adopt a Silk I conformation. Such findings have important implications for both the natural silk spinning process and any future industrial applications, suggesting that sericin may be able to induce long-range conformational and stability control in silk fibroin, while being in a separate phase, a factor that would facilitate long-term storage or silk feedstocks

Scaling and universality in the phase diagram of the 2D Blume-Capel model

We review the pertinent features of the phase diagram of the zero-field Blume-Capel model, focusing on the aspects of transition order, finite-size scaling and universality. In particular, we employ a range of Monte Carlo simulation methods to study the 2D spin-1 Blume-Capel model on the square lattice to investigate the behavior in the vicinity of the first-order and second-order regimes of the ferromagnet-paramagnet phase boundary, respectively. To achieve high-precision results, we utilize a combination of (i) a parallel version of the multicanonical algorithm and (ii) a hybrid updating scheme combining Metropolis and generalized Wolff cluster moves. These techniques are combined to study for the first time the correlation length of the model, using its scaling in the regime of second-order transitions to illustrate universality through the observed identity of the limiting value of $\xi/L$ with the exactly known result for the Ising universality class.Comment: 16 pages, 7 figures, 1 table, submitted to Eur. Phys. J. Special Topic

Search for Gravitational Waves Associated with Gamma-Ray Bursts Detected by Fermi and Swift during the LIGO-Virgo Run O3b

We search for gravitational-wave signals associated with gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) detected by the Fermi and Swift satellites during the second half of the third observing run of Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo (2019 November 1 15:00 UTC-2020 March 27 17:00 UTC). We conduct two independent searches: A generic gravitational-wave transients search to analyze 86 GRBs and an analysis to target binary mergers with at least one neutron star as short GRB progenitors for 17 events. We find no significant evidence for gravitational-wave signals associated with any of these GRBs. A weighted binomial test of the combined results finds no evidence for subthreshold gravitational-wave signals associated with this GRB ensemble either. We use several source types and signal morphologies during the searches, resulting in lower bounds on the estimated distance to each GRB. Finally, we constrain the population of low-luminosity short GRBs using results from the first to the third observing runs of Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo. The resulting population is in accordance with the local binary neutron star merger rate. © 2022. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society

Narrowband Searches for Continuous and Long-duration Transient Gravitational Waves from Known Pulsars in the LIGO-Virgo Third Observing Run

Isolated neutron stars that are asymmetric with respect to their spin axis are possible sources of detectable continuous gravitational waves. This paper presents a fully coherent search for such signals from eighteen pulsars in data from LIGO and Virgo's third observing run (O3). For known pulsars, efficient and sensitive matched-filter searches can be carried out if one assumes the gravitational radiation is phase-locked to the electromagnetic emission. In the search presented here, we relax this assumption and allow both the frequency and the time derivative of the frequency of the gravitational waves to vary in a small range around those inferred from electromagnetic observations. We find no evidence for continuous gravitational waves, and set upper limits on the strain amplitude for each target. These limits are more constraining for seven of the targets than the spin-down limit defined by ascribing all rotational energy loss to gravitational radiation. In an additional search, we look in O3 data for long-duration (hours-months) transient gravitational waves in the aftermath of pulsar glitches for six targets with a total of nine glitches. We report two marginal outliers from this search, but find no clear evidence for such emission either. The resulting duration-dependent strain upper limits do not surpass indirect energy constraints for any of these targets. © 2022. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society

Construction status and prospects of the Hyper-Kamiokande project

The Hyper-Kamiokande project is a 258-kton Water Cherenkov together with a 1.3-MW high-intensity neutrino beam from the Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex (J-PARC). The inner detector with 186-kton fiducial volume is viewed by 20-inch photomultiplier tubes (PMTs) and multi-PMT modules, and thereby provides state-of-the-art of Cherenkov ring reconstruction with thresholds in the range of few MeVs. The project is expected to lead to precision neutrino oscillation studies, especially neutrino CP violation, nucleon decay searches, and low energy neutrino astronomy. In 2020, the project was officially approved and construction of the far detector was started at Kamioka. In 2021, the excavation of the access tunnel and initial mass production of the newly developed 20-inch PMTs was also started. In this paper, we present a basic overview of the project and the latest updates on the construction status of the project, which is expected to commence operation in 2027

Prospects for neutrino astrophysics with Hyper-Kamiokande

Hyper-Kamiokande is a multi-purpose next generation neutrino experiment. The detector is a two-layered cylindrical shape ultra-pure water tank, with its height of 64 m and diameter of 71 m. The inner detector will be surrounded by tens of thousands of twenty-inch photosensors and multi-PMT modules to detect water Cherenkov radiation due to the charged particles and provide our fiducial volume of 188 kt. This detection technique is established by Kamiokande and Super-Kamiokande. As the successor of these experiments, Hyper-K will be located deep underground, 600 m below Mt. Tochibora at Kamioka in Japan to reduce cosmic-ray backgrounds. Besides our physics program with accelerator neutrino, atmospheric neutrino and proton decay, neutrino astrophysics is an important research topic for Hyper-K. With its fruitful physics research programs, Hyper-K will play a critical role in the next neutrino physics frontier. It will also provide important information via astrophysical neutrino measurements, i.e., solar neutrino, supernova burst neutrinos and supernova relic neutrino. Here, we will discuss the physics potential of Hyper-K neutrino astrophysics

Search for gravitational-wave transients associated with magnetar bursts in advanced LIGO and advanced Virgo data from the third observing run

Gravitational waves are expected to be produced from neutron star oscillations associated with magnetar giant f lares and short bursts. We present the results of a search for short-duration (milliseconds to seconds) and longduration (∼100 s) transient gravitational waves from 13 magnetar short bursts observed during Advanced LIGO, Advanced Virgo, and KAGRA’s third observation run. These 13 bursts come from two magnetars, SGR1935 +2154 and SwiftJ1818.0−1607. We also include three other electromagnetic burst events detected by FermiGBM which were identified as likely coming from one or more magnetars, but they have no association with a known magnetar. No magnetar giant flares were detected during the analysis period. We find no evidence of gravitational waves associated with any of these 16 bursts. We place upper limits on the rms of the integrated incident gravitational-wave strain that reach 3.6 × 10−²³ Hz at 100 Hz for the short-duration search and 1.1 ×10−²² Hz at 450 Hz for the long-duration search. For a ringdown signal at 1590 Hz targeted by the short-duration search the limit is set to 2.3 × 10−²² Hz. Using the estimated distance to each magnetar, we derive upper limits upper limits on the emitted gravitational-wave energy of 1.5 × 1044 erg (1.0 × 1044 erg) for SGR 1935+2154 and 9.4 × 10^43 erg (1.3 × 1044 erg) for Swift J1818.0−1607, for the short-duration (long-duration) search. Assuming isotropic emission of electromagnetic radiation of the burst fluences, we constrain the ratio of gravitational-wave energy to electromagnetic energy for bursts from SGR 1935+2154 with the available fluence information. The lowest of these ratios is 4.5 × 103

Open data from the third observing run of LIGO, Virgo, KAGRA, and GEO

The global network of gravitational-wave observatories now includes five detectors, namely LIGO Hanford, LIGO Livingston, Virgo, KAGRA, and GEO 600. These detectors collected data during their third observing run, O3, composed of three phases: O3a starting in 2019 April and lasting six months, O3b starting in 2019 November and lasting five months, and O3GK starting in 2020 April and lasting two weeks. In this paper we describe these data and various other science products that can be freely accessed through the Gravitational Wave Open Science Center at https://gwosc.org. The main data set, consisting of the gravitational-wave strain time series that contains the astrophysical signals, is released together with supporting data useful for their analysis and documentation, tutorials, as well as analysis software packages

A joint Fermi-GBM and Swift-BAT analysis of gravitational-wave candidates from the third gravitational-wave observing run

We present Fermi Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (Fermi-GBM) and Swift Burst Alert Telescope (Swift-BAT) searches for gamma-ray/X-ray counterparts to gravitational-wave (GW) candidate events identified during the third observing run of the Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo detectors. Using Fermi-GBM onboard triggers and subthreshold gamma-ray burst (GRB) candidates found in the Fermi-GBM ground analyses, the Targeted Search and the Untargeted Search, we investigate whether there are any coincident GRBs associated with the GWs. We also search the Swift-BAT rate data around the GW times to determine whether a GRB counterpart is present. No counterparts are found. Using both the Fermi-GBM Targeted Search and the Swift-BAT search, we calculate flux upper limits and present joint upper limits on the gamma-ray luminosity of each GW. Given these limits, we constrain theoretical models for the emission of gamma rays from binary black hole mergers