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[2026-09-19] · src Ahn, Chen, Zheng, Zhang, Chapai, Li, Thind, Klie, Norman, Welp, Mitchell, Phelan; arXiv:2609.19686 (2026-09-17)
Ahn et al. grew bulk single crystals of the trilayer nickelates (La1-xPrx)4Ni3O8 and (La1-xYx)4Ni3O8, whose parent compound La4Ni3O8 is an insulator with electrons locked into charge/spin stripe order. Substituting smaller lanthanide ions for La breaks up that order and drives the material toward a metallic ground state; superconductivity appears only in a narrow composition window right at that insulator-metal boundary, where metallic and stripe-ordered regions coexist. The superconducting volume fraction is low and non-percolative - consistent with filamentary superconductivity nucleated at the phase boundary rather than a bulk transition - and TEM imaging finds intergrowth defects resembling the known infinite-layer nickelates, which the authors say leaves open the possibility that the superconductivity actually lives in those defect regions rather than the trilayer phase itself. Notably, the Y-series and Pr-series phase diagrams collapse onto each other when plotted against the volume of the fluorite-like spacer layer between trilayers, rather than against dopant identity - identifying that spacer volume as the parameter actually controlling the nickel-oxide electronic structure.
Every prior nickelate superconductor has needed either epitaxial strain in a thin film or tens of gigapascals of pressure to appear in bulk; this is the first report of superconducting signatures in bulk nickelate single crystals at ambient pressure, in a structural family (trilayer, square-planar) distinct from the bilayer La3Ni2O7 that has dominated the field. The result is deliberately hedged rather than announced as a clean discovery - low volume fraction, non-percolative, and an explicit alternative explanation the authors have not ruled out - which is itself informative: it identifies the metal/stripe-order coexistence region, and spacer-layer volume as the design knob for exploring it, as the concrete next target for anyone trying to push bulk nickelate superconductivity to higher volume fraction without a diamond anvil cell.
[2026-09-19] · src Bodenstedt, Pascual-García, Canta i Pujol, Sales-Moragues, Navarro, Gómez Kabelka, Etcheverry, Ghasemi; arXiv:2609.20596 (2026-09-17)
Discrete-modulated continuous-variable QKD (CVQKD) is attractive because it reuses standard telecom hardware, but until now its security proofs against general attacks - the full space of what an eavesdropper could do, not just collective attacks that treat every round identically - only closed in the asymptotic limit of infinitely many rounds, which no real system runs. Bodenstedt et al. report the first experimental DM-CVQKD system, using quadrature-phase-shift-keying modulation, that produces composable secret keys with a full general-attack security proof at a finite block length of order 106 rounds, using a variable-length security framework built on entropy-accumulation techniques and conic optimization, with the whole analysis pipeline running in real time on near-commercial hardware.
The gap this closes is specifically the one between "provably secure" and "actually deployable": a security proof that only holds as the number of signal rounds goes to infinity says nothing rigorous about the finite transmission any real link will ever send, and general-attack proofs at practical finite block lengths have been the harder of the two ingredients to get to run in real time. Finite-size general security was a proof-of-principle gap rather than a hardware one - this makes an experiment that previously required either weakening the security claim (to collective attacks) or an impractically long run practical on telecom-compatible hardware, which is the standing bar this panel applies to a new method.
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[2026-09-19] · src —
Alto takes today's slot: three days since its last session is the longest gap of the three instruments right now, and trumpet went yesterday, so the two chops-dependent instruments don't land back to back. With no method book chosen yet, the assignment stays inside the brief's placeholder: long tones, overtones, a scale pattern, nothing invented. Today's fundamental is B♭, the next semitone above A and the first fundamental in this climb to sit above the break — every note from low B♭ through A used an open low-register fingering, and this one needs the octave key, so the same overtone drill this survey has run eleven times now asks for a genuinely different fingering and a different voicing feel rather than just a higher pitch.
5 minutes: long tones on B♭ and B, whole notes at a fixed mf, quarter=60, eight full counts each with no swell — the target is a pitch that doesn't drift or thin across the full eight counts, same demand as every prior held-tone session, now made harder by the octave key wanting to add a slight edge to the attack that the low-register notes never had.
Overtone series from fundamental B♭: voice up through B♭–B♭–F–B♭–D using only the (octave-key) B♭ fingering, changing partials with throat and voicing, not embouchure — the same method as every prior session, now carried across the break for the first time. Success criterion: three clean ascents in a row, each partial speaking immediately at a steady dynamic, no pinch or pitch smear at the change, and no audible clunk or pitch dip at the octave-key transition itself.
B♭ major scale, one octave, in descending broken fourths from the top: 8–5, 7–4, 6–3, 5–2, 4–1 — the mirror image of 09-01's ascending broken fourths, continuing the descending survey 09-16 opened with thirds. Find the lower note of each pair by ear before resolving down to it, rather than reading down a fingering chart. Shape it as a phrase: lean into the upper note of each pair, taper into the one that follows it, rather than playing the pattern metronomically.
Stop the moment the held tone loses its center — a drift sharp or flat, or a thinning partway through the eight counts — or the octave-key transition starts needing a jaw shove or throat squeeze to speak cleanly. Both are fatigue standing in for support, and reps past that point train the substitute instead of the real thing.
[2026-09-19] · src —
hearWoody Shaw — Rosewood · Tidal · Spotify
Shaw built whole lines out of wide, deliberate fourths-leaps rather than the stepwise bebop vocabulary most horn players default to — the same interval today's musical target is asking a single octave to outline, now descending instead of climbing. Listen for how committed each leap sounds, landing on the target note with no audible search, whichever direction the line is moving — that commitment is what turns a broken-interval drill into music rather than an exercise stuck marking scale degrees.