Tootfinder

Really silly dream
I had a really silly #dream recently. I dreamt that my CFL broke. Or more specifically, it kept trying to turn out, successive parts of it were lighting up, then it all went off and tried again. And it looked like it had a bunch of cuts across it, and around these cuts little thunder sparks started appearing, like some kind of STALKER-like anomaly.
I finally flipped the switch, but the anomaly remained, and I wanted to get rid of it in case the sparks could jump onto my hardware and damage something. So I threw a metal bowl towards it, supposing the thunder would jump onto it. While it was flying near the anomaly, it slowed down and started turning back like a boomerang. On top of that, pieces of cat food (don't ask me why I threw a full bowl) were getting out of it and staying in the air levitating. When the bowl reached the floor and started turning again, Mr Ek came close to it and started levitating himself; he was sitting a few centimeters above the floor.
In the middle of all this, I've figured out I should record it. I took a bunch of photos with my phone, before I managed to switch to recording video.
Once I've recorded the fascinating flying bowls and levitating cat food, I needed to go back to discharging the thing. I threw a second metal bowl, and that one started levitating as well. I've figured out that's stupid, and I've found some big ass hammer with a metal end and a wooden handle. I held the end near the lamp to charge it, then tried to find something to discharge it to. I've tried some small stuff like the door handle, but obviously that wasn't sufficient. Finally, I've figured out to use the electricity box, since it is grounded. I held the hammer to it, watching sparks light the semi-darkness; I've recorded that as well.
And that's how much of it I remember.

Anisotropy by design in superconducting Nb thin films via ultrashort pulse laser irradiation
Javier Frechilla (Instituto de Nanociencia y Materiales de Arag\'on), Nicolas Lejeune (D\'epartement de Physique, Q-MAT, CESAM, Universit\'e de Li\`ege, B-4000, Belgium), Elena Mart\'inez (Instituto de Nanociencia y Materiales de Arag\'on), Emile Fourneau (D\'epartement de Physique, Q-MAT, CESAM, Universit\'e de Li\`ege, B-4000, Belgium), Alejandro Frechilla (Institu…

Anisotropy by design in superconducting Nb thin films via ultrashort pulse laser irradiation
The ability to fabricate anisotropic superconducting layers a la carte is desired in technologies such as fluxon screening or removal in field-resilient devices, flux lensing in ultra-sensitive sensors, or in templates for imprinting magnetic structures in hybrid magnetic/superconducting multilayers. In this work, we demonstrate tailored superconductivity in polycrystalline niobium thin films exposed to femtosecond ultraviolet laser pulses. The samples exhibit significant changes in their super…

A Greedy PDE Router for Blending Neural Operators and Classical Methods
Sahana Rayan, Yash Patel, Ambuj Tewari
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.24814 https://arx…

A Greedy PDE Router for Blending Neural Operators and Classical Methods
When solving PDEs, classical numerical solvers are often computationally expensive, while machine learning methods can suffer from spectral bias, failing to capture high-frequency components. Designing an optimal hybrid iterative solver--where, at each iteration, a solver is selected from an ensemble of solvers to leverage their complementary strengths--poses a challenging combinatorial problem. While the greedy selection strategy is desirable for its constant-factor approximation guarantee to …

Third-order quantum phase transitions of bosonic non-Abelian fractional quantum Hall states
Kai-Wen Huang, Xiang-Jian Hou, Ying-Hai Wu
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.17113 https://

Third-order quantum phase transitions of bosonic non-Abelian fractional quantum Hall states
We study phase transitions in bilayer and trilayer bosonic quantum Hall systems. In the absence of interlayer tunneling and interaction, each layer is chosen to have filling factor $ν=1/2$ or $1$ to realize the Laughlin state or the Moore-Read state. By tuning interlayer tunneling and/or interaction, multiple phases can be generated. In the absence of interlayer interaction, three phase transitions appear when interlayer tunneling becomes sufficiently strong: (1) from two decoupled $ν=1/2$ La…