arXiv subjects

Karthik Iyer

Publications and source records attributed to Karthik Iyer.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Orbital dynamics and precession in magnetized Kerr spacetime

We study the orbital structure and precession dynamics of neutral test particles in the magnetized Kerr black hole (MKBH) spacetime-an exact electrovacuum solution of the Einstein-Maxwell equations that self-consistently incorporates the curvature effects of an external magnetic field. This geometry allows a unified treatment of gravitational and magnetic influences across weak to ultra-strong regimes. The analysis reveals a critical magnetic field strength above which no circular geodesics, timelike or null, can exist, establishing an upper magnetic bound for orbital motion. For subcritical fields, the photon circular orbit admits two real roots, the outer of which defines an outermost stable circular orbit (OSCO), complementing the conventional innermost stable circular orbit (ISCO) and confining stable motion within a finite radial domain. Exact expressions for the orbital, radial, and vertical epicyclic frequencies, and their associated precession rates, show substantial deviations from Kerr behavior, including a magnetically induced reversal of periastron precession within a finite radial range. For astrophysically relevant magnetic field strengths, the retrograde precession could be observable at large radii around astrophysical BHs, offering a potential diagnostic of large-scale magnetization. These findings highlight the geometric influence of magnetic curvature on strong-field dynamics, providing a self-consistent framework to interpret quasi-periodic oscillation phenomenology and potential magnetic imprints in precision timing observations of compact objects.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2026

Semantic IDs for Recommender Systems at Snapchat: Use Cases, Technical Challenges, and Design Choices

Effective item identifiers (IDs) are an important component for recommender systems (RecSys) in practice, and are commonly adopted in many use cases such as retrieval and ranking. IDs can encode collaborative filtering signals within training data, such that RecSys models can extrapolate during the inference and personalize the prediction based on users' behavioral histories. Recently, Semantic IDs (SIDs) have become a trending paradigm for RecSys. In comparison to the conventional atomic ID, an SID is an ordered list of codes, derived from tokenizers such as residual quantization, applied to semantic representations commonly extracted from foundation models or collaborative signals. SIDs have drastically smaller cardinality than the atomic counterpart, and induce semantic clustering in the ID space. At Snapchat, we apply SIDs as auxiliary features for ranking models, and also explore SIDs as additional retrieval sources in different ML applications. In this paper, we discuss practical technical challenges we encountered while applying SIDs, experiments we have conducted, and design choices we have iterated to mitigate these challenges. Backed by promising offline results on both internal data and academic benchmarks as well as online A/B studies, SID variants have been launched in multiple production models with positive metrics impact.

cs.IR↗

arXiv2025

Spin Precession in magnetized Kerr spacetime

We present an exact analytical investigation of spin precession for a test gyroscope in the magnetized Kerr spacetime--an exact electrovacuum solution to the Einstein-Maxwell equations. Our approach accommodates arbitrary magnetic field strengths, enabling a unified treatment across both weak and ultra-strong field regimes. The analysis reveals distinct spin precession behaviors near rotating collapsed objects, which differ characteristically between black holes and naked singularities, offering a potential observational means to differentiate them. The external magnetic field induces a nontrivial modification of the precession frequency through its interaction with the spacetime's gravitoelectromagnetic structure. In the weak-field limit, magnetic fields generally reduce the precession rate, though the effect depends sensitively on the motion and orientation of the test gyro close to the collapsed object. As a special case, we show that in the presence of magnetic fields, the spin precession frequency due to gravitomagnetic effect acquires a long-range $1/r$ (where $r$ is the distance from the central object to the test gyro) correction in contrast to the standard $1/r^3$ falloff. In addition, we obtain the exact geodetic precession (gravitoelectric effect) frequency for a gyroscope in magnetized Schwarzschild spacetime, showing that the magnetic field enhances ($\propto r^{1/2}$) geodetic precession in contrast to the standard $1/r^{5/2}$ falloff. Our results provide observationally testable predictions relevant for black holes in strong magnetic environments, including those possibly realized near magnetars or in the early universe. In particular, the strong-field behavior of spin precession could have important implications for transmuted black holes formed via collapse or mergers of magnetized progenitors in both astrophysical and cosmological contexts.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2019

Determining rough first order perturbations of the polyharmonic operator

We show that the knowledge of Dirichlet to Neumann map for rough $A$ and $q$ in $(-Δ)^m +A\cdot D +q$ for $m \geq 2$ for a bounded domain in $\mathbb{R}^n$, $n \geq 3$ determines $A$ and $q$ uniquely. This unique identifiability is proved via construction of complex geometrical optics solutions with sufficient decay of remainder terms, by using property of products of functions in Sobolev spaces.

math.AP↗

arXiv2017

Cloaking for a quasi-linear elliptic partial differential equation

In this article we consider cloaking for a quasi-linear elliptic partial differential equation of divergence type defined on a bounded domain in $\mathbb{R}^N$ for $N=2,3$. We show that a perfect cloak can be obtained via a singular change of variables scheme and an approximate cloak can be achieved via a regular change of variables scheme. These approximate cloaks though non-degenerate are anisotropic. We also show, within the framework of homogenization, that it is possible to get isotropic regular approximate cloaks. This work generalizes to quasi-linear settings previous work on cloaking in the context of Electrical Impedance Tomography for the conductivity equation.

math.AP↗