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We calculate the electrical conductivity of suspended and supported monolayer MoS2 at terahertz (THz) frequencies by means of EMC–FDTD, a multiphysics simulation tool combining an ensemble Monte Carlo (EMC) solver for electron transport and a finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) solver for full-wave electrodynamics. We investigate the role of carrier and impurity densities, as well as substrate choice (SiO2 or hexagonal boron nitride, hBN), in frequency-dependent electronic transport. Owing to the dominance of surface-optical-phonon scattering, MoS2 on SiO2 has the lowest static conductivity, but also the weakest overall frequency dependence of the conductivity. In fact, at high THz frequencies, the conductivity of MoS2 on SiO2 exceeds that of either suspended or hBN-supported MoS2. We extract the parameters for Drude-model fits to the conductivity versus frequency curves obtained from microscopic simulation, which may aid in the experimental efforts toward MoS2 THz applications. 

Membrane processes are widely used in industrial applications such water purification, food processing and pharmaceutical manufacturing. During their operation, the accumulation of foulants in membrane pores and on membrane surfaces lead to the reduction in flux, membrane lifetime and increase in operational cost, and the understanding of the fouling phenomenon is important for mitigating these problems. In this paper we report the application of Raman chemical imaging as a means of identify and map foulants on a membrane surface. The surface of a Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) membrane was studied by Raman chemical imaging before and after fouling during desalination via membrane distillation. Information about location and concentration of three different salts namely CaSO4, BaSO4 and CaCO3 was studied. The three salts showed different distribution patterns, and their distribution was analyzed by correlation mapping and multivariate curve resolution. It was observed that CaSO4 agglomerated in specific places while the BaSO4 and CaCO3 were more distributed. Raman imaging appears to be a powerful tool for studying membrane foulants and can be effective in identifying the distribution of different species on a membrane surface. 

We report the first search for the flavor-changing neutral-current decays $B\to X_s\nu \overline{\nu }$ , where $X_s$ is a hadronic system with strangeness equal to 1, in data collected with the Belle II detector at the SuperKEKB asymmetric-energy $e^{+}{e}^{-}$ collider. The data sample corresponds to an integrated luminosity of $365{\mathrm{fb}}^{-1}$ collected at the $\mathrm{\Upsilon }\left(4S\right)$ resonance and $43{\mathrm{fb}}^{-1}$ collected at a center-of-mass energy 60 MeV below resonance for estimation of $e^{+}{e}^{-}\to q\overline{q}$ continuum background. One of the $B$ mesons from the $\mathrm{\Upsilon }\left(4S\right)\to B\overline{B}$ decay is fully reconstructed in a hadronic decay mode. The $B\to X_s\nu \overline{\nu }$ decay is reconstructed with a sum-of-exclusives approach that uses 30 $X_s$ decay modes. This approach provides high sensitivity to the inclusive decay, despite the presence of two undetected neutrinos. The search is performed in three regions of the $X_s$ mass, $M_{X_s}^{\mathrm{true}}$ , chosen to separate contributions from $K$ , $K^{*}\left(892\right)$ , and heavier strange final states. We do not observe a significant signal and set upper limits at 90% confidence level on the partial branching fractions for the regions $0.0<M_{X_s}^{\mathrm{true}}<0.6\mathrm{GeV}/c^2$ , $0.6<M_{X_s}^{\mathrm{true}}<1.0\mathrm{GeV}/c^2$ , and $1.0\mathrm{GeV}/c^2<M_{X_s}^{\mathrm{true}}$ of $2.2\times {10}^{-5}$ , $9.3\times {10}^{-5}$ , and $30.9\times {10}^{-5}$ , respectively. Combining the three mass regions, we obtain the upper limit on the branching fraction, $B(B\to X_s\nu \overline{\nu })<3.3\times {10}^{-4}$ . 

Abstract Rotating nonaxisymmetric neutron stars (NSs) are promising sources for continuous gravitational waves (CWs). CWs may, if detected, inform us about the internal structure and equation of state of NSs. Here, we present a narrowband search for CWs from known pulsars, for which a matched-filter search can be applied. Narrowband searches are robust to mismatches between electromagnetic (EM) and gravitational emissions, in contrast to fully targeted searches where they are assumed to be phase-locked. In this work, we search for the CW counterparts emitted by 34 pulsars using data from the first and second parts of the fourth LIGO–Virgo–KAGRA observing run. We use the 5n-vector narrowband pipeline, which applies frequency-domain matched filtering. In previous searches, it covered a narrow range in the frequency—frequency time derivative (f— $\dot{f}$ ) space. Here, we also explore a range in the second time derivative of the frequency $\ddot{f}$ around the EM observations. Additionally, for the first time, we target sources in a binary system with this kind of search. We find no evidence for CWs and therefore set upper limits on the strain amplitude emitted by each pulsar. For 20 analyses, we report an upper limit below the theoretical spin-down limit. The tightest constraint is for pulsar PSR J0534+2200 (the Crab pulsar), for which our strain upper limit on the CW amplitude corresponds to ≤0.04% of the spin-down power being radiated in the CW channel. 

Abstract We detail the population properties of binary neutron star, neutron star–black hole binary, and binary black hole mergers using 158 events from the cumulative Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog 4.0. The black hole primary mass distribution consists of a power-law-like continuum that steepens above 35M_⊙with overdensities at 10M_⊙and 35M_⊙. Binary black holes with primary masses near 10M_⊙are more likely to have less massive secondaries, with a mass ratio distribution peaking at $q=0.71_{-0.11}^{+0.12}$ , potentially a signature of stable mass transfer during binary evolution. Black hole spins are inferred to be nonextremal, with 90% of black holes havingχ < 0.6, and preferentially aligned with binary orbits, implying many merging binaries form in isolation. However, we find that a significant fraction, 0.23–0.41, of binaries have negative effective inspiral spins, suggesting many could be formed dynamically in gas-free environments. We find evidence for correlation between effective inspiral spin and mass ratio, driven either by variation in the mode of the distribution or the width. The binary black hole merger rate increases with redshift, consistent with the cosmic star formation density. While there is no evidence of the mass spectrum evolving with redshift, the distribution of effective inspiral spin is found to broaden as redshift increases out toz ≈ 1. We infer the local merger rates (atz= 0) to be 8.8–250 Gpc⁻³yr⁻¹for binary neutron stars, 9.3–86 Gpc⁻³yr⁻¹for neutron star–black hole binaries, and 13–26 Gpc⁻³yr⁻¹for binary black holes; all values reflect central 90% credible intervals.