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Browse the failure-mode index

280 real negative results, null findings, and replication failures in Physics. Search the index →

WASTE indexes published research — it does not host or republish full papers. Each entry is a metadata record compiled from open scholarly databases; the abstract is shown in full only where the paper is openly licensed, otherwise a short excerpt under fair use. Classifications are automated and approximate.

Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics

Photometric metallicity of Galactic RR Lyrae stars in the Gaia DR3 era

Mahiguhappriya Prakash, Susmita Das, Harinder P. Singh et al. · 2026 · arXiv

We present a new, calibrated $G$-band relationship between pulsation period $P$, Fourier parameter $φ_{31}$, and metallicity [Fe/H] for galactic RR Lyrae stars from the Gaia survey. A set of 72 fundamental mode RR Lyrae stars were identified for deriving the relation in the $G$-band, after visual examination of their light curves. Unlike recent large-scale calibrations, our relation prioritizes calibration purity by anchoring exclusively to a homogeneously analyzed sample of high-resolution spectroscopic metallicities from the literature. Our best fit relation is $\text{[Fe/H]} = (-6.93 \pm 0.

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics

The Impact of Tandem Redundant/Sky-Based Calibration in MWA Phase II Data Analysis

Zheng Zhang, Jonathan C. Pober, Wenyang Li et al. · 2020 · arXiv

Precise instrumental calibration is of crucial importance to 21-cm cosmology experiments. The Murchison Widefield Array's (MWA) Phase II compact configuration offers us opportunities for both redundant calibration and sky-based calibration algorithms; using the two in tandem is a potential approach to mitigate calibration errors caused by inaccurate sky models. The MWA Epoch of Reionization (EoR) experiment targets three patches of the sky (dubbed EoR0, EoR1, and EoR2) with deep observations. Previous work in \cite{Li_2018} and \cite{Wenyang_2019} studied the effect of tandem calibration on th

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics

Improved effective vertices in the multi-orbital Two-Particle Self-Consistent method from Dynamical Mean-Field Theory

Karim Zantout, Steffen Backes, Aleksandar Razpopov et al. · 2022 · arXiv

In this work we present a multi-orbital form of the Two-Particle Self-Consistent approach (TPSC), here the effective local and static irreducible interaction vertices are determined by means of the Dynamical Mean-Field Theory (DMFT). This approach replaces the approximate ansatz equations for the double occupations $\langle n^{}_{α,σ}n^{}_{β,σ'}\rangle$ by sampling them directly for the same model using DMFT. Compared to the usual Hartree-Fock like ansatz, this leads to more accurate local vertices in the weakly correlated regime, and provides access to stronger correlated systems that were pr

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics

Density-operator evolution: Complete positivity and the Keldysh real-time expansion

V. Reimer, M. R. Wegewijs · 2018 · arXiv

We study the reduced time-evolution of open quantum systems by combining quantum-information and statistical field theory. Inspired by prior work [EPL 102, 60001 (2013) and Phys. Rev. Lett. 111, 050402 (2013)] we establish the explicit structure guaranteeing the complete positivity (CP) and trace-preservation (TP) of the real-time evolution expansion in terms of the microscopic system-environment coupling. This reveals a fundamental two-stage structure of the coupling expansion: Whereas the first stage defines the dissipative timescales of the system --before having integrated out the environm

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics

Why material slow light does not improve cavity-enhanced atom detection

B. Megyeri, A. Lampis, G. Harvie et al. · 2017 · arXiv

We discuss the prospects for enhancing absorption and scattering of light from a weakly coupled atom in a high-finesse optical cavity by adding a medium with large, positive group index of refraction. The slow-light effect is known to narrow the cavity transmission spectrum and increase the photon lifetime, but the quality factor of the cavity may not be increased in a metrologically useful sense. Specifically, detection of the weakly coupled atom through either cavity ringdown measurements or the Purcell effect fails to improve with the addition of material slow light. A single-atom model of

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics

Forget metamaterial: It does not improve sound absorption performance as it claims

Chao Shen, Yu Liu, Tianquan Tang et al. · 2023 · arXiv

The term `sub-wavelength' is commonly used to describe innovative sound-absorbing structures usually labeled as `metamaterials'. Such structures, however, inherently do not bring groundbreaking advancements. This study addresses the limitations imposed by the thickness criterion of Yang et al. by introducing the concept of equivalent mass-spring-damping parameters within the resonator framework. This innovative approach introduces an index of `half-absorption bandwidth' to effectively overcome the thickness restriction. Four practical cases are then presented to correct prevalent misleading co

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics

Does H2O improve the catalytic activity of Au1-4/MgO towards CO oxidation?

Martin Amft, Natalia V. Skorodumova · 2011 · arXiv

The present density functional theory study addresses the question whether the presence of H2O influences the catalytic activity of small gold clusters, Au1-4/MgO(100), towards the oxidation of carbon monoxide. To this end, we studied the (co-)adsorption of H2O and CO/O2 on these gold clusters. The ground state structures in the presence of all three molecular species, that we found, are Au1O2/MgO and Au2-4CO/MgO with H2O adsorbed on the surface in the proximity of the clusters-molecule complex. In this configuration the catalytic activity of Au1-4/MgO is indifferent to the presence of H2O. We

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics

Influence of Ta insertions on the magnetic properties of MgO/CoFeB/MgO films probed by ferromagnetic resonance

Maria Patricia Rouelli Sabino, Sze Ter Lim, Michael Tran · 2014 · arXiv

We show by vector network analyzer ferromagnetic resonance measurements that low Gilbert damping α down to 0.006 can be achieved in perpendicularly magnetized MgO/CoFeB/MgO thin films with ultra-thin insertions of Ta in the CoFeB layer. While increasing the number of Ta insertions allows thicker CoFeB layers to remain perpendicular, the effective areal magnetic anisotropy does not improve with more insertions, and also comes with an increase in α.

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics

Assessment of valley coherence in a high-quality monolayer molybdenum diselenide

Yuto Urano, Xue Mengsong, Kenji Watanabe et al. · 2023 · arXiv

We investigate the valley coherence in high and low-quality monolayer MoSe2 by polarization-resolved photoluminescence spectroscopy. The observed valley coherence is on the order of 10 % regardless of the sample quality, proving that the suppression of extrinsic effects does not improve the valley coherence. The valley decoherence time estimated based on the valley coherence time and exciton lifetime is sub-picosecond at the longest, which suggests that intrinsic scattering sources, such as phonons, strongly limit the valley coherence.

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics

Slave-boson based configuration-interaction approach for the Hubbard model

G. Seibold · 2008 · arXiv

Based on the Kotliar-Ruckenstein slave-boson scheme we develop a configuration-interaction (CI) approach which is suitable to improve the energy of symmetry-broken saddle-point solutions. The theory is applied to spin-polaron states in the Hubbard model and compared with analogous results obtained within the Hartree-Fock approximation. In addition we show that within the infinite ${\cal D}$ prescription of the Gutzwiller method a CI approach does not improve the variational result since in the thermodynamic limit matrix elements between different inhomogeneous states vanish due to an 'orthogon

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics

Decoherence in adiabatic quantum computation

M. H. S. Amin, Dmitri V. Averin, James A. Nesteroff · 2007 · arXiv

We have studied the decoherence properties of adiabatic quantum computation (AQC) in the presence of in general non-Markovian, e.g., low-frequency, noise. The developed description of the incoherent Landau-Zener transitions shows that the global AQC maintains its properties even for decoherence larger than the minimum gap at the anticrossing of the two lowest energy levels. The more efficient local AQC, however, does not improve scaling of the computation time with the number of qubits $n$ as in the decoherence-free case. The scaling improvement requires phase coherence throughout the computat

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Failed Experiment ReportOpen accessPhysics

An Analysis of the Mapping Approach to Surface Hopping

Jan Vavřín · 2025 · arXiv

Recently, the mapping approach to surface hopping (MASH) was proposed as a method to simulate the non-adiabatic dynamics of two-level systems. It was shown that the method possesses many desirable qualities, both theoretically and through numerical simulations. We explain this success by proving that, out of similar mapping methods, MASH dynamics is unique in guaranteeing correct thermalisation, but that many different "estimators" can be used on top of it. We also show that MASH can successfully calculate multi-time correlation functions, which can be used for the simulation of 2D spectra. We

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics

Temporal coherence of optical fields in the presence of entanglement

Yunxiao Zhang, Nan Huo, Liang Cui et al. · 2022 · arXiv

In classical coherence theory, coherence time is typically related to the bandwidth of the optical field. Narrowing the bandwidth will result in the lengthening of the coherence time. This will erase temporal distinguishability of photons due to time delay in pulsed photon interference. However, this is changed in an SU(1,1)-type quantum interferometer where quantum entanglement is involved. In this paper, we investigate how the temporal coherence of the fields in a pulse-pumped SU(1,1) interferometer changes with the bandwidth of optical filtering. We find that, because of the quantum entangl

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics

Entanglement production by independent quantum channels

Örs Legeza, Florian Gebhard, Jörg Rissler · 2005 · arXiv

For the one-dimensional Hubbard model subject to periodic boundary conditions we construct a unitary transformation between basis states so that open boundary conditions apply for the transformed Hamiltonian. Despite the fact that the one-particle and two-particle interaction matrices link nearest and next-nearest neighbors only, the performance of the density-matrix renormalization group method for the transformed Hamiltonian does not improve. Some of the new interactions act as independent quantum channels which generate the same level of entanglement as periodic boundary conditions in the o

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Failed Experiment ReportOpen accessPhysics

Device-scale modeling of valley photovoltaics

Daixi Xia, Hassan Allami, Jacob J. Krich · 2025 · arXiv

We present a Poisson/drift-diffusion model that includes valley scattering effects for simulating valley photovoltaic devices. The valley photovoltaic concept is a novel implementation of a hot-carrier solar cell and leverages the valley scattering effect under large electric field to potentially achieve high voltage and high efficiency. Fabricated devices have shown S-shaped current-voltage curves, low fill factor, and thus low efficiency. We hence develop the first device model for valley photovoltaics. Our model includes electric-field-dependent valley scattering rates extracted from previo

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics

The thermodynamics of prediction

Susanne Still, David A. Sivak, Anthony J. Bell et al. · 2012 · arXiv

A system responding to a stochastic driving signal can be interpreted as computing, by means of its dynamics, an implicit model of the environmental variables. The system's state retains information about past environmental fluctuations, and a fraction of this information is predictive of future ones. The remaining nonpredictive information reflects model complexity that does not improve predictive power, and thus represents the ineffectiveness of the model. We expose the fundamental equivalence between this model inefficiency and thermodynamic inefficiency, measured by dissipation. Our result

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics

Is Externally Corrected Coupled Cluster Always Better than the Underlying Truncated Configuration Interaction?

Ilias Magoulas, Karthik Gururangan, Piotr Piecuch et al. · 2021 · arXiv

The short answer to the question in the title is 'no'. We identify classes of truncated configuration interaction (CI) wave functions for which the externally corrected coupled-cluster (ec-CC) approach using the three-body ($T_{3}$) and four-body ($T_{4}$) components of the cluster operator extracted from CI does not improve the results of the underlying CI calculations. Implications of our analysis, illustrated by numerical examples, for the ec-CC computations using truncated and selected CI methods are discussed. We also introduce a novel ec-CC approach using the $T_{3}$ and $T_{4}$ amplitud

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics

Good and Proper: Self-similarity of N-body Simulations with Proper Force Softening

Lehman H. Garrison, Michael Joyce, Daniel J. Eisenstein · 2021 · arXiv

Analysis of self-similarity in scale-free $N$-body simulations reveals the spatial and temporal scales for which statistics measured in cosmological simulations are converged to the physical continuum limit. We examine how the range of scales in which the two-point correlation function is converged depends on the force softening length and whether it is held constant in comoving or proper coordinates. We find that a proper softening that reaches roughly 1/30th of the inter-particle spacing by the end of the simulation resolves the same spatial and temporal scales as a comoving softening of the

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics

Free energy approximations in simple lattice proteins

Dirk Reith, Thomas Huber, Florian Mueller-Plathe et al. · 2000 · arXiv

This work addresses the question of whether it is possible to define simple pair-wise interaction terms to approximate free energies of proteins or polymers. Rather than ask how reliable a potential of mean force is, one can ask how reliable it could possibly be. In a two-dimensional, infinite lattice model system one can calculate exact free energies by exhaustive enumeration. A series of approximations were fitted to exact results to assess the feasibility and utility of pair-wise free energy terms. Approximating the true free energy with pair-wise interactions gives a poor fit with little t

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics

Cu_{2}O as nonmagnetic semiconductor for spin transport in crystalline oxide electronics

I. Pallecchi, L. Pellegrino, N. Banerjee et al. · 2010 · arXiv

We probe spin transport in Cu_{2}O by measuring spin valve effect in La_{0.7}Sr_{0.3}MnO_{3}/Cu_{2}O/Co and La_{0.7}Sr_{0.3}MnO_{3}/Cu_{2}O/La_{0.7}Sr_{0.3}MnO_{3} epitaxial heterostructures. In La_{0.7}Sr_{0.3}MnO_{3}/Cu_{2}O/Co systems we find that a fraction of out-of-equilibrium spin polarized carrier actually travel across the Cu_{2}O layer up to distances of almost 100 nm at low temperature. The corresponding spin diffusion length dspin is estimated around 40 nm. Furthermore, we find that the insertion of a SrTiO_{3} tunneling barrier does not improve spin injection, likely due to the ma

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics

Influence of Gender Composition in Pedestrian Single-File Experiments

Sarah Paetzke, Maik Boltes, Armin Seyfried · 2023 · arXiv

Various studies address the question of what factors are relevant to the course of the fundamental diagram in single-file experiments. Some indicate that there are differences due to group composition when gender is taken into account. For this reason, further single-file experiments with homogeneous and heterogeneous group compositions were conducted. A Tukey HSD test was performed to investigate whether there are differences between the mean of velocity in different density ranges. A comparison of different group compositions shows that the effect of gender can only be seen, if at all, in a

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics

Binary Classification of Light and Dark Time Traces of a Transition Edge Sensor Using Convolutional Neural Networks

Elmeri Rivasto, Katharina-Sophie Isleif, Friederike Januschek et al. · 2025 · arXiv

The Any Light Particle Search II (ALPS II) is a light shining through a wall experiment probing the existence of axions and axion-like particles using a 1064 nm laser source. While ALPS II is already taking data using a heterodyne based detection scheme, cryogenic transition edge sensor (TES) based single-photon detectors are planned to expand the detection system for cross-checking the potential signals, for which a sensitivity on the order of $10^{-24}$ W is required. In order to reach this goal, we have investigated the use of convolutional neural networks (CNN) as binary classifiers to dis

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics

Forecasting Periods of Strong Southward Magnetic Field Following Interplanetary Shocks

T. M. Salman, N. Lugaz, C. J. Farrugia et al. · 2018 · arXiv

Long periods of strong southward magnetic fields are known to be the primary cause of intense geomagnetic storms. The majority of such events are caused by the passage over Earth of a magnetic ejecta. Irrespective of the interplanetary cause, fast-forward shocks often precede such strong southward B$_{z}$ periods. Here, we first look at all long periods of strong southward magnetic fields as well as fast-forward shocks measured by the \textit{Wind} spacecraft in a 22.4-year span. We find that 76{\%} of strong southward B$_{z}$ periods are preceded within 48 hours by at least a fast-forward sho

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics

Modeling and Optimization of Two-Terminal Spin-Orbit-Torque MRAM

Md Nahid Haque Shazon, Piyush Kumar, Luqiao Liu et al. · 2025 · arXiv

This paper presents physical modeling and benchmarking for two-terminal spin-orbit torque magnetic random-access memory (2T-SOT-MRAM). The results indicate that the common SOT materials that provide only in-plane torque can provide little to no improvement over spin-transfer-torque (STT) MRAM in terms of write energy. However, emerging SOT materials that provide out-of-plane torques with efficiencies as small as 0.1 can result in significant improvements in the write energy for such 2-terminal devices, especially when the magnet lateral dimensions are scaled down to 30 or 20 nm. Additionally,

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics

The effects of radiation on Gallium Arsenide radiation detectors

R. L. Bates, C. Da'Via, S. D'Auria et al. · 1997 · arXiv

Semi-insulating, undoped, Liquid Encapsulated Czochralski (SI-U LEC) GaAs detectors have been irradiated with 1MeV neutrons, 24GeV/c protons, and 300MeV/c pions. The maximum fluences used were 6, 3, and 1.8~10$^{14}$ particles/cm$^{2}$ respectively. For all three types of irradiation the charge collection efficiencies (cce) of the detector are reduced due to the reduction in the electron and hole mean free paths. Pion and proton irradiations produce a greater reduction in cce than neutron irradiation with the pions having the greatest effect. The effect of annealing the detectors at room tempe

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics

Lee-Huang-Yang dynamics emergent from a direct Wigner representation

King Lun Ng, Maciej Bartłomiej Kruk, Piotr Deuar · 2026 · arXiv

We demonstrate how the beyond-mean-field Lee-Huang-Yang (LHY) corrections and its related physics can be naturally incorporated into the representation of an ultracold Bose gas using the truncated Wigner approach without invoking effective energy terms or local density assumptions. By generating a Bogoliubov ground-state representation with appropriately tailored bare interaction strength $g_0$ and condensate density $n_0$, the expected initial energy and densities are obtained while retaining access to quantum effects beyond the reach of the extended Gross-Pitaevskii equation (EGPE) formulati

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics

Path-Extrema Upper Bounds on Mean Entropy Production

Surachate Limkumnerd · 2026 · arXiv

Fluctuation relations imply the second-law inequality $\langleΣ_T\rangle\ge0$, but path extrema can also constrain how large the mean entropy production can be. For steady-state processes with entropy-production martingale $M_t=e^{-Σ_t}$, we show that knowing only the positive running maximum of $Σ_t$ gives no improvement over the trivial endpoint bound: rare negative entropy-production excursions can still carry the exponential weight required by the fluctuation relation. Using the running extrema $L_T=\inf M_t$ and $H_T=\sup M_t$, we derive a path-extrema upper envelope $\mathcal{U}_{\rm ext

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics

Beyond the RPA on the cheap: improved correlation energies with the efficient "Radial Exchange Hole" kernel

Tim Gould · 2012 · arXiv

The "ACFD-RPA" correlation energy functional has been widely applied to a variety of systems to successfully predict energy differences, and less successfully predict absolute correlation energies. Here we present a parameter-free exchange-correlation kernel that systematically improves absolute correlation energies, while maintaining most of the good numerical properties that make the ACFD-RPA numerically tractable. The "RXH" kernel is constructed to approximate the true exchange kernel via a carefully weighted, easily computable radial averaging. Correlation energy errors of atoms with two t

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics

Primordial $^4\text{He}$ constraints on inelastic macro dark matter revisited

David M. Jacobs, Gwyneth Allwright, Mpho Mafune et al. · 2015 · arXiv

At present, the best model for the evolution of the cosmos requires that dark matter make up approximately $25\%$ of the energy content of the Universe. Most approaches to explain the microscopic nature of dark matter, to date, have assumed its composition to be of intrinsically weakly interacting particles; however, this need not be the case to have consistency with all extant observations. Given decades of inconclusive evidence to support any dark matter candidate, there is strong motivation to consider alternatives to the standard particle scenario. One such example is macro dark matter, a

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessPhysics

Simulated Annealing with Tsallis Weights - A Numerical Comparison

Ulrich H. E. Hansmann · 1997 · arXiv

We discuss the use of Tsallis generalized mechanics in simulated annealing algorithms. For a small peptide it is shown that older implementations are not more effective than regular simulated annealing in finding ground state configurations. We propose a new implementation which leads to an improvement over regular simulated annealing.

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