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Ning Jiang

Publications and source records attributed to Ning Jiang.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
arXiv2026

A Unified Timescale Relation for Quasi-Periodic Eruptions and Repeated Nuclear Transients

Quasi-periodic eruptions (QPEs) and recurrent nuclear transients (RNTs) exhibit recurrent high-amplitude flares from galactic nuclei, yet their characteristic timescales remain poorly understood. In this work, we compile a sample of these systems and investigate empirical scaling relations between flare timescales and black hole masses. We find that the recurrence timescale exhibits a positive but highly scattered dependence on black hole mass in the combined QPE and RNT sample, approximately following $t_{\rm rec}\propto M_{\rm BH}^{1.19^{+0.52}_{-0.47}}$ with an intrinsic scatter of 0.95 dex. Remarkably, we uncover a tight nearly linear relation between recurrence time and flare timescale for QPEs and RNTs, described by $t_{\rm rec}\propto t_{\rm rise}^{1.00\pm0.07}$ with an intrinsic scatter of 0.29 dex. This relation extends across timescales from hours for QPEs to months and years for nuclear transients. We further find that QPEs and RNTs approximately follow a common empirical relation between recurrence time and flare rise time, although the physical origin of this relation remains uncertain. Our findings reveal a common phenomenological timescale link across RNTs, providing a practical framework for characterizing their temporal behavior.

astro-ph.HE↗
arXiv2026

Dynamically driven collapse of a thermally stable accretion disk in a nova-like system

While standard disk instability theory predicts thermal-steady, outburst-free disks in nova-like variables due to their high mass transfer rates, mass transfer variations are prevailingly invoked to explain the occasional flaring/fading phenomena observed in these systems. Here we report the observational evidence for a dynamical collapse of a thermally stable accretion disk, captured serendipitously by TESS during a fading episode of the VY Scl-type nova-like system MASTER OT J072703.91-631952.8, and traced by the emergence of an unusual negative superhump that evolves toward its orbital frequency. Simultaneously, the system underwent an anomalous eruptive event featuring a remarkably symmetric 45-day light-curve profile, indicative of a mild energy-release mechanism fundamentally distinct from documented eruptive events in cataclysmic variables. Notably, the concurrence of the eruption and the disk collapse is difficult to reconcile with the paradigm of mass transfer variations: the eruption implies enhanced mass transfer, whereas the disk collapse indicates a decline. The morphological disk evolution over $\sim 700$ days, characterized by both negative and positive superhumps, indicates a transition from a circular disk to an eccentric disk, followed by a tilted state and ultimately a minimal disk configuration. This evolutionary sequence provides evidence for a previously unrecognized dynamics-driven cycle operating in the thermally stable accretion disk of a VY Scl-type nova-like star.

astro-ph.SR↗
arXiv2026

Commutator Estimates Uniform in the Screening Parameter and Mean-Field Limits for Yukawa Interactions

We study quantitative mean-field limits for classical particles with Yukawa (screened Coulomb) interactions in every fixed dimension $d\ge2$, uniformly as the screening parameter $\kappa$ tends to zero. Our main result is a first-order commutator estimate in the natural Yukawa modulated energy, with an additive error of order $N^{-2/d}$ for $d\ge3$ and $(1+\log N)/N$ for $d=2$. It requires only a bounded reference density and a Lipschitz transport field, with no uniform lower bound on interparticle distances and no negative power of $\kappa$. The modified Helmholtz operator $-\Delta+\kappa^2$ creates the main new difficulty. Truncating the potential to a constant inside each truncation ball produces a surface charge and a positive volume charge whose total mass is strictly less than one. We keep the reference density unchanged and control this loss of mass through an exact Green function representation and renormalized energy identities. A stress-energy identity with interface terms and averaging over the truncation radii then give the uniform commutator estimate. Combined with the modulated energy dissipation identity and a normalized quadratic transport cost, this estimate yields weak--strong stability, propagation of chaos, and time-integrated control of the mean-square difference between empirical and mean-field forces. We also prove a quantitative Yukawa-to-Coulomb limit. For smooth product data, $N\to\infty$ and $\kappa\downarrow0$ may be taken simultaneously with no relation between their rates; in dimension three, a direct comparison at the particle level also holds for general symmetric initial laws with finite initial error.

math.AP↗
arXiv2026

Quantitative mean-field limits for repulsive Coulomb flows at bounded density and Riesz weak--strong stability

We establish quantitative mean-field convergence and propagation of chaos for repulsive Coulomb gradient flows at the bounded-density regularity of the limiting equation. The argument couples the dissipative modulated-energy identity with the normalized quadratic transport cost of the full $N$-particle law. The remaining negative mean-square force-error term is used through an exact completion of squares after mollification: the non-Lipschitz remainder is absorbed by this negative term, while a sharp first-order commutator estimate is applied to the mollified Lipschitz field. For the Coulomb equation, the sharp $L^\infty$ decay gives the density envelope $m(t)=\|\rho_0\|_{L^\infty}/(1+t\|\rho_0\|_{L^\infty})$. A density-adapted transport weight and mollification scale $m(t)^{-1/d}$ yield an Osgood comparison. Thus, for every $d\ge2$ and $\rho_0\in\mathcal P_2(\mathbb R^d)\cap L^\infty(\mathbb R^d)$, we obtain quantitative comparison with the global bounded-density Coulomb solution on every prescribed finite interval. For tensorized initial data, the normalized squared Wasserstein distance of the full $N$-particle law, the expected modulated energy, and the time-integrated mean-square force error are bounded by $N^{-2\gamma_{T,d}/d}$ for $d\ge3$ and $((1+\log N)/N)^{\gamma_{T,2}}$ for $d=2$, where $\gamma_{T,d}=(1+T\|\rho_0\|_{L^\infty})^{-c_d}$. For $d-2<s<d$, we also prove Riesz weak--strong stability for prescribed reference solutions in $L^\infty(0,T;B^{s-d+2}_{\infty,q})$, with Gronwall, Bihari, and Osgood comparisons according to $q$, together with uniqueness in the stated Besov class. Finally, an outlier construction separates modulated-energy convergence and Kac chaos from normalized Wasserstein convergence of the full $N$-particle law.

math.AP↗
arXiv2026

Abnormal Nitrogen Abundance in the X-ray Spectrum of Quasi-periodically Erupting Source AT2019wzc

Quasi-periodic eruptions (QPEs) are rapid, recurring soft X-ray bursts, whose nature is still in dispute. A compelling case of QPEs has emerged in the slowly evolving optical transient AT2019wzc, possibly associated with the tidal disruption of a post-main-sequence star by a supermassive black hole. Further evidence of a tidal disruption event (TDE) is crucial to understand the nature of AT2019wzc and establish the link between TDE and QPEs. Here we report the detection of a narrow, blueshifted N VI absorption line in its high-resolution X-ray spectra obtained by XMM-Newton, but weak or undetectable absorption lines from other elements of similar ionization states such as carbon and oxygen. The absorption line features can be reproduced by an ionized gas with ionization parameter $\log \xi \sim 0.3\ {\rm erg~cm~s^{-1}}$ and column density $N_{\rm H}\sim 10^{20}\ {\rm cm^{-2}}$, under the condition of a nitrogen abundance of $11.6_{-7.8}^{+19.6}$ times the solar value. This abnormal nitrogen abundance favors a TDE origin for AT2019wzc, and the absorbing gas may originate from the outflow induced by self-collision of the TDE's debris stream.

astro-ph.HE↗
arXiv2026

A Hierarchical Validity-Audit Framework for Neural Mass Models in Simulation-Based Inference: From Observational Coverage to Mechanistic Interpretation

Neural mass models describe population activity with low-dimensional dynamics, but simulation-based posterior recovery does not ensure that a model fits real observations or that inferred parameters support physiological interpretation. We introduce NMM-SBI Audit, a hierarchical framework that evaluates whether a model configuration covers observed data, assesses recoverability across multilevel parameter coordinates and summary representations, and examines joint parameter compensation and cross-track consistency. In experiments with known ground truth, the framework controlled empirical error rates and detected prespecified failures. Applied to real data, a single-source Epileptor model failed to cover core seizure statistics of SOZ-local iEEG, rendering simulation-recoverable targets unsuitable for patient-specific mechanistic interpretation. In contrast, a CMC-inspired auditory network model showed no systematic representation-level mismatch and supported conditional recovery of selected superficial-layer and inhibitory gains, while revealing parameter compensation, summary information loss, and instability of the active structure. These results show that observation fit, target recoverability, and joint interpretability provide distinct levels of evidence. NMM-SBI Audit offers a scalable approach to limiting unsupported mechanistic claims in simulation-based inference of neural dynamics.

q-bio.QM↗
arXiv2026

Early Near-Infrared Excess and Rapid Disk-Corona Evolution in the Tidal Disruption Event 2024aepd

We present multi-wavelength observations of the tidal disruption event (TDE) 2024aepd, spanning primarily the first $\sim$300 days after discovery. The X-ray spectrum is initially dominated by a thermal disk component accompanied by a hard excess. From $\sim$178 days onward, the spectrum becomes power-law dominated and subsequently hardens, indicating the rapid emergence and strengthening of a hot corona. A prominent near-infrared (NIR) excess is detected as early as $\sim40$ days. Its nearly flat power-law spectrum strongly deviates from the Rayleigh-Jeans tail of the UV-optical blackbody. Although a conventional dust-echo origin cannot be completely ruled out, free-free emission from a reprocessing photospheric envelope provides a more plausible explanation. Moreover, the UV-optical-to-NIR break shifts to higher frequencies as the density-profile index remains nearly constant, implying evolving reprocessing conditions within a broadly unchanged density structure. Together with AT2019azh and TDE 2025abcr, TDE 2024aepd is the third TDE reported to exhibit an early-time NIR excess. A larger sample with early-time NIR coverage is needed to determine whether such excesses are common among TDEs.

astro-ph.HE↗
arXiv2026

Revisiting Shape and Texture Reliance with Category-Separability-Calibrated Suppression

Feature-suppression evaluations infer model reliance on shape or texture from the accuracy loss caused by attenuating each type of information. Such losses, however, conflate feature reliance with the amount of category-relevant information removed by the corresponding transformation. Because shape and texture are suppressed using different operators, their effects are not directly comparable. We introduce the Semantic Degradation Index (SDI), which quantifies the suppression-induced reduction in category separability relative to clean images in a fixed clean-reference discriminative space constructed from handcrafted features. On an ImageNet16-like benchmark, we use SDI to compare Gaussian blur for texture suppression with grid distortion for shape suppression over their overlapping degradation range. At comparable SDI values, all five evaluated ImageNet-trained convolutional neural networks (CNNs) retain less accuracy under Gaussian blur than under grid distortion. This results supports stronger texture than shape reliance under the evaluated operators, contrasting with the shape-dominant conclusion obtained from unmatched suppression conditions. The evaluated Vision Transformers (ViTs) also generally retain more accuracy than CNNs under both operators. To determine whether this advantage extends beyond classification, We evaluate fixed brain-encoding models using clean and suppressed images from the Natural Scenes Dataset. Under both operators, ViT features show smaller suppression-induced decreases in noise-ceiling-normalized explained variance than CNN features. These findings establish category separability as an important reference for interpreting suppression-based feature reliance and show that the CNN-ViT robustness difference extends to model representations predictive of human visual cortical responses.

cs.CV↗
arXiv2026

Radio and X-ray flux rebrightening six years after outburst in a partially-obscured extreme changing-look AGN

SDSS J1548+2208 is a unique partially-obscured nuclear transient that exhibits multiwavelength outbursts in mid-infrared, X-ray and radio. We present the results from multiwavelength photometric and spectroscopic follow-up observations with a time span of ~2500 days since its discovery. We find that the mid-infrared and X-ray emission (with a hard X-ray spectrum) are still in a high flux level relative to the pre-flare state, suggesting a sudden increased, and possibly long-sustained accreting activity from central black hole. This is supported by the slowly-evolving high-ionization coronal lines. The mid-infrared color turns blue slowly in the rising phase, which is distinct from stellar tidal disruption events (TDEs). All these properties point to the origin of outbursts from an extreme changing-look AGN and the scenario with a normal TDE seems disfavored. The radio spectral energy distribution (SED) in ~0.65-15 GHz is unusual, displaying a double-peak feature with distinct variability characteristics. In addition, we find evidence for the late-time radio rebrightening more than six years since the initial outburst, as well as a possibly new X-ray flare, though the significance for the latter is not high. The peculiar radio flux and SED evolution could be explained by a nascent outflow expanding into and shocking circumnuclear diffuse medium filled by denser clouds. In this case, SDSS J1548+2208 represents a rare changing-look AGN which can launch radio outflows. Continued multiwavelength observations are required to map the dust and gas distribution on pc-scales, providing new insights into the environmental properties that could regulate AGN changing-look phenomenon.

astro-ph.HE↗
arXiv2026

Unified Face Attack Detection via Fine-Grained Semantic Guidance

The growing applications of facial recognition systems are accompanied by increasingly diverse security threats. Existing datasets lack detailed textual descriptions of forgery cues, leading most prior methods to treat face attack detection primarily as a visual recognition task. In this paper, building upon the large-scale MS-UFAD dataset which contains over 8 million attack images, we enrich each image with a fine-grained textual description of forgery cues. Furthermore, we propose a Dual Alignment Forgery Network(DAF-Net) to better leverage these textual information. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our approach extracts more generalizable and semantically meaningful forgery representations from attack images, outperforming both vision-only methods and approaches based on coarse-grained descriptions.

cs.CV↗
arXiv2026

Exploring Tidal Disruption Events with SKA and VLBI: Unveiling the Mystery of Black Hole Feeding and Outflows

Tidal disruption events (TDEs) probe the birth and evolution of black hole accretion flows and jets on human timescales. Radio emission traces shocks and outflows from thermal TDEs and powerful relativistic jets in the rare jetted class. SKA Mid, phased for VLBI and used together with global networks, will deliver milliarcsecond imaging, tens of microarcsecond astrometry, and microJy sensitivity, enabling: (i) proper motion measurements that discriminate off axis relativistic jets from subrelativistic winds; (ii) resolved morphologies and magnetic field diagnostics via polarimetry; and (iii) precise nuclear localization to distinguish SMBH vs. IMBH and to reveal recoiling or binary systems. SKA's wide frequency coverage (0.35 to 15.4 GHz) and 1h continuum sensitivities of 3 to 10 microJy per beam, together with multibeam tiedarray VLBI and a transient buffer for rapid triggers, are transformational. LSST, Einstein Probe, and SVOM will increase TDE alerts to hundreds per year, and late time radio flares appear common, ensuring rich SKA VLBI samples. We provide observing strategies, detection forecasts, and predictions, e.g., about 5 proper motion detections of jetted (or off axis) TDEs per year and routine core shift constraints at the microarcsecond level. This program will establish TDEs as laboratories for exploring jet launching, particle acceleration (including neutrinos), black hole accretion history and demographics, and properties of circumnuclear medium.

astro-ph.HE↗
arXiv2026

Fast Optical Variability of the TeV Blazar PKS 1725+123 Observed by SVOM-VT and Insights from Multi-wavelength Follow-up Observations

PKS 1725+123 is a flat-spectrum radio quasar (FSRQ) with a redshift of $z=0.586$. The detection of this object in the TeV band was reported by the MAGIC telescopes and H.E.S.S. in August 2025. Subsequently, we promptly initiated Target-of-Opportunity observations using the Space-based multi-band astronomical Variable Objects Monitor (SVOM) satellite. By analyzing the observational optical data from SVOM-VT and comprehensively examining the Fermi-LAT and Swift-XRT observational data, it was found that the source is in a high-flux state across the optical, X-ray, and GeV $\gamma$-ray bands around the time of the TeV detections. Its optical flux reaches a historically unprecedented high level and shows significant variability on timescale as short as minutes. The variability is accompanied by changes in the color index, exhibiting a bluer when brighter behavior during the high-flux state. Based on the simultaneous multi-wavelength data, we construct the broadband spectral energy distribution (SED) of the source in the high-flux state. PKS 1725+123 demonstrates a remarkably high synchrotron peak frequency, which is distinctly different from that of other FSRQs. We propose a two-zone spine-sheath jet model to reproduce this SED. The optical--X-ray emission is generated by the synchrotron process of the relativistic electrons within a compact zone. The inverse Compton (IC) scattering processes of the same electron population contribute to the low-energy end of the Fermi-LAT spectrum, while the high-energy end of the Fermi-LAT spectrum is ascribed to the IC scattering of the synchrotron photons within the compact zone by the higher-energy electrons in an extended region.

astro-ph.HE↗
arXiv2026

VLA Observations Confirm AT 2023mfm as an Off-nuclear Tidal Disruption Event

We report new radio observations of the tidal disruption event (TDE) AT 2023mfm, which we identified as a high-confidence candidate in a systematic search for off-nuclear TDEs. High-resolution NSF Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array C-band (6 GHz) imaging resolves two radio sources: one consistent with the host-galaxy nucleus and one offset by $0.651\pm0.036^{\prime\prime}$ ($1.06\pm0.06$ kpc), consistent with the Zwicky Transient Facility and Pan-STARRS1 positions of AT 2023mfm. These observations confirm the off-nuclear nature of AT 2023mfm, demonstrating the power of high-resolution radio imaging to validate off-nuclear TDE candidates and reveal hidden off-nuclear massive black holes.

astro-ph.HE↗
arXiv2026

New Benchmarking Shows Limited Generalization Power of TCR Antigenic Epitope Prediction Models

Accurate computational prediction of T cell receptor (TCR) antigen specificity would transform the study of T cell biology and enable scalable immune engineering, yet existing models lack sufficient sensitivity and specificity for broad applications. A major limitation is the absence of rigorously defined, unseen benchmark datasets that allow unbiased evaluation of model performance and generalizability. Here, we describe two complementary classes of datasets that meet this criterion and argue that they provide both a robust framework for model assessment and a foundation for next-generation TCR-antigen prediction algorithm development.

cs.LG↗
arXiv2026

An Obscured Tidal Disruption Event Uncovered by Its Mid- and Near-Infrared Dust Echo in a Star-Forming Galaxy

We present a comprehensive study of an infrared (IR) flare in the star-forming galaxy SDSS J010320.39+140152.5, which is selected from the sample of mid-IR (MIR) outbursts in nearby galaxies (MIRONG). Its MIR luminosity rose rapidly to a peak of $\sim5.4\times10^{43}$ \lum, maintained in the high state for about a year, and decreased continuously afterward. No optical variability was detected throughout the IR flare. Near-IR follow-up observations around the peak pinpointed the flare's location to spatially coincide with the galactic nucleus, with a $3\sigma$ upper limit of the offset of $\lesssim100$ pc. The IR spectral energy distribution (SED) of the flare is consistent with thermal emission of dust with temperatures of $\sim900$ K. Using a dust radiative transfer model, we inferred a peak UV luminosity of $\sim(4-10)\times10^{44}$ erg s$^{-1}$ and a total energy of $\sim(0.9-2)\times10^{52}$ ergs released. We ruled out the possibility of a supernova, and prefer that the IR flare originated from an obscured tidal disruption event (TDE) rather than a changing-look active galactic nucleus (AGN). This flare stands as one of the most compelling cases to date for the emerging class of dust-obscured TDEs in recent years. They are missed by optical surveys, partly accounting for the observed bias in TDE host galaxies, and represent a crucial, yet often overlooked, component for a complete understanding of the TDE population.

astro-ph.GA↗
arXiv2026

QPEs from Warped Disk Collisions with EMRIs: Brightness-Recurrence Diagram and Gravitational-Wave Follow-up

Quasi-Periodic Eruptions (QPEs) display correlated long/short and strong/weak patterns that remain unexplained by existing flat-disk collision models. We propose that these features arise from an extreme-mass-ratio inspiral (EMRI) colliding with a warped accretion disk, likely formed after a tidal disruption event. The warp modulates both recurrence time and burst energy, encoding the disk geometry -- and thus the spin of the central supermassive black hole (SMBH) -- into the X-ray light curve. We introduce the Brightness-Recurrence Diagram (BRD) to visualize this correlation, where QPE bursts trace an elliptical trajectory driven by the EMRI's apsidal precession; the tilt of this ellipse encodes whether the EMRI is prograde or retrograde relative to the SMBH spin. Applying this model to the prototypical QPE source GSN 069 successfully reproduces the observed patterns. The data are consistent with either a prograde stellar secondary or a retrograde stellar-mass black hole. In the stellar-mass black hole scenario, ongoing orbital decay could render the EMRI detectable by LISA within a few decades, facilitating gravitational-wave follow-up and independent multimessenger constraints on the system.

astro-ph.HE↗
arXiv2026

Discovery of a Featureless Tidal Disruption Event at z~1 with the Wide Field Survey Telescope

We report the discovery of tidal disruption event (TDE) WFST250820mmsw/AT2025wet by the 2.5-meter Wide Field Survey Telescope (WFST). It exhibits a blue nuclear flare throughout the observed evolution with a g-band peak magnitude ~22, which is about 3 magnitudes brighter than its host galaxy. A Keck/LRIS spectrum taken near the optical peak reveals a featureless blue continuum, with no discernible emission lines. However, its redshift can be accurately determined to be 1.037 by its host galaxy absorption lines. Blackbody fits to the multiband spectral energy distribution (SED) of AT2025wet yield a constant temperature of ~19,000K and a peak luminosity of (8.27 +0.92 -0.71)*10^44 erg s^-1 while actually the SED likely peaks at a much shorter wavelength than a 19,000K blackbody. The SED modeling of the host galaxy implies a stellar mass of ~10^11.2 M_odot and an estimated central black hole mass of ~10^8 M_odot, with no evidence of significant active galactic nucleus activity prior to the flare. All of these observations are well consistent with a featureless TDE scenario, making it the highest-redshift non-jetted TDE known to date. TDEs at such high redshift provide us a unique opportunity to explore the intrinsic SEDs of TDEs, particularly to test whether they peak in the extreme-UV regime, thereby addressing the missing energy puzzle and the origin of optical emission in TDEs. Ongoing surveys represented by WFST and the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) are expected to discover an increasing number of TDEs at higher redshifts, which will extend our census of SMBHs across redshift space and help unravel the mysteries of optical TDEs through direct probes of their UV emission.

astro-ph.HE↗
arXiv2026

Compressible Navier-Stokes-Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert system: derivations and well-posedness

In this paper, we first derive the compressible Navier-Stokes/Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert (NS-LLG) model for magnetoelastic materials via the energetic variational approach (EnVarA). It is important to emphasize that the manner in which the evolution of magnetoelastic materials is influenced by the fluid motion--specifically through the deformation gradient--determines the kinematics of the magnetization and consequently leads to distinct governing equations. Subsequently, we establish the local-in-time existence of solutions to the compressible NS-LLG system under finite initial energy. Finally, near the constant equilibrium for magnetoelasticity in the absence of an external magnetic field, we reformulate the evolutionary model, which allows an additional dissipative term to be identified from the elastic stress. Based on this reformulation, we justify the global well-posedness of the evolutionary magnetoelasticity system with zero external magnetic field, provided the initial data are sufficiently small. In particular, when the magnetic field $M$ vanishes, this model reduces to the viscoelastic model. Our results significantly relax the previous initial data requirements, only assume the most basic structural condition $\rho_{0} \operatorname{det} F_{0} = 1$.

math.AP↗