Yiguo Zhang | Searcharxiv

arXiv2026

The Iris Illusion in the Tropical Sky Seen Through Two Decades of Aura MLS Ice Water Contents

I analyzed ice water content (IWC) data from the Aura Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) and sea surface temperature (SST) data from NOAA's Optimum Interpolation SST (OISST) product from 2004 to 2024. Using these data, I derived monthly infrared (IR) leakage over the tropics and computed derivatives of both the IR leakage and tropical SST time series from 2005 to 2023. These two derivatives produced a Pearson correlation of -0.49, indicating that IR leakage decreases when SST increases. This behavior contradicts the trend predicted by the Iris hypothesis, suggesting that tropical cirrus clouds strengthen, rather than weaken, as the ocean warms.

physics.ao-ph↗

arXiv2025

Centipedes Leap into the Quantum Realm

The centipede game is a two-player non-zero-sum game. Each turn, a player can choose whether they want to take or pass a growing reward. The classical, rational solution of this game shows defection in the first round, when in reality, players cooperate much more often. Inspired by prior work employing quantum strategies in the prisoners dilemma, we showed that when similar quantum mechanics principles are applied to the centipede game, it leads to two new quantum Nash equilibria that are superior to the classical solution. Furthermore, by implementing our algorithm on Qiskit, we confirmed that leveraging quantum strategies, rather than strategies like backward induction, to solve the centipede game provided better payoffs for both players and more accurately modeled the games real-life outcomes. Ultimately, we propose a generalized conjecture for similarly structured quantum games.

quant-ph↗