Cycling safety policy and research have mostly focused on cycling infrastructure, cyclists' behavior, and safety equipment in the past decades. However, the role ofbuilt environment characteristics (BECs) in the safety of cyclists has not yet been fully examined. For the Netherlands, this is rather surprising given the significant modal share of bicycles in daily trips, the importance attributed to urban spatial planning, and it being one of the most planned countries in the world. Despite the considerable improvements that have ta1cen place in traffic safety over the decades, the ( actual) number of cyclist deaths between 2011 and 2020 increased by on average 2% per year; the cyclists bad a major portion oftraffic death (followed by passenger cars); also, almost onethird of traffic death happened in built-up a.reas (about 25% of fatalities occurred on 50km/h roads in urban areas) in this period. Considering the aim of construction of on average 75,000 new homes per year until 2025, as weil as promoting bicycle use in as a healthy and sustainable mode of transport in the N etherlands, underst.anding the relationships between the BECs and cycling safety is invaluable for improving the safety of cyclists.

There is a renewed fücus on active modes of transportation given their multiple advantages, whether für human health or the environment in general. Interest has grown especially in 2020 after the COVID-19 pandemic, when several cities quicldy implemented temporary facilities for walking and cycling in the context of physical distancing. Several measures piggyback.ed on existing programs such as the Montreal initiative for complete streets ('rues conviviales' or 'social/festive streets'') that selects streets each year für pilot projects and a final design implementation over a three-year period This resulted in seasonal pedestrianization of about ten streets each year since 2020. Though active transportation brings together pedestrians and cyclists und.er a large umbrella, these users have very different characteristics and tbere may be conflicts of use if mixed in tbe same space. Cycling is thus generally forbidden on pedestrian streets. Despite these rules, there is cycling traffic on pedestrian streets as cyclists also enjoy car-free facilities, especially when pedestrian traffic is low, which generates complaints by pedestrians. To reconcile and help botb categories of users coexist, two Montreal boroughs tried a new rule in the Summer of 2021, to 1et cyclists bik.e at walldng speed on pedestrian streets while avoiding conflicts with pedestrians. There are few studies on cyclist-pedestrian interactions, and, to the best ofthe authors' knowledge, none on interactions in pedestrian streets. This work aims to study the coexistence or cohabitation of pedestrians and cyclists in several pedestrian streets through video-based analysis. Data were collected at several sites and on several days during the Summer of 2021 along three different pedestrian streets, two of them. allowing cycling, to assess how cyclists and pedestrians interact, whether cycling is allowed or not.

Connected and automated vebicles (CA Vs) will shape traffic patterns in the future and greatly influence urban mobility. A particular challenge for CAVs is to anticipate the movements of other road users. This applies especially to micromobility vehicles (bicycles, smaU electric vehicles), whose traffic behaviour is difficult to predict and shaped from individual behaviour. The increasing coexistence of CAVs and other, conventionally driven modes of transport thus has a growing impact as well as multiple consequences for urban structures and public space. The following fundamental trends will shape the way people live together in cities in the coming years: 1. increasing share of CAVs and micromobility, 2. renaissance ofthe mixed and liveable city, 3. changes in mobility behaviour and the appreciation of public space ( especially due to climate change and the Covid 19-pandemic), as weil as 4. technical upgrading of infrastructure. These parallel developments will lead to both conflicts and opportunities for cities.[from Introduction]

Nukleare Brennelemente werden nach ihrem Betrieb mehrere Jahre in Nasslagerbecken gelagert, wo ihre Nachzerfallswärme durch elektrisch betriebene Kühlsysteme abgeführt wird. Bei Ausfall der Stromversorgung droht eine Überhitzung der Brennelemente und im schlimmsten Fall die Schädigung der Brennstabhüllen und der Austritt von radioaktivem Material in die Umwelt. Im Mittelpunkt der vorliegenden Dissertation steht die Untersuchung des komplexen Zusammenspiels von Strömung und Wärmetransport bei solch einem angenommenen Unfall, der zu teilweise freigelegten Brennelementen führt. Eine Auswertung des aktuellen Forschungsstandes verdeutlicht, dass die zugrundeliegenden physikalischen Prozesse zwar theoretisch verstanden sind, aber bisher keine speziellen Simulationsprogramme zur präzisen Vorhersage der Temperaturverteilung für mögliche Unfallszenarien existieren. Für die detaillierte Analyse der Vorgänge werden deshalb erstmals numerische Strömungssimulationen unter Berücksichtigung der exakten Geometrie und aller relevanten Wärmetransportmechanismen für ein teilweise freigelegtes Brennelement durchgeführt. Zur Gewährleistung eines praktikablen Rechenaufwands wird der instationäre Verdampfungsvorgang in mehrere, eigenständige Simulationen mit stationären Randbedingungen und jeweils konstantem Füllstand unterteilt. Die Validierung mit experimentellen Daten zeigt, dass dieser Ansatz bei niedriger Nachzerfallsleistung geeignet ist, um die Stabtemperaturen mit ausreichender Genauigkeit vorherzusagen. Durch eine umfassende Sensitivitätsanalyse wird darüber hinaus der Einfluss zahlreicher unsicherer Faktoren auf die Temperaturverteilung und Zusammensetzung im Brennelement untersucht, der sich rein auf Grundlage des Experiments nicht beurteilen lässt. Die Simulationsergebnisse zeigen, dass die maximale Stabtemperatur hauptsächlich vom Füllstand und der Leistung der Brennstäbe abhängt. Eine horizontal gerichtete Luftströmung oberhalb des Brennelements führt insgesamt zu einem Temperaturgefälle in Strömungsrichtung innerhalb des Brennelements. Die Ursache dafür ist ein charakteristisches Strömungsfeld, bei dem kaltes Gas an der stromabwärts gelegenen Wand des Brennelements nach unten und heißes Gas an der stromaufwärts gelegenen Wand nach oben befördert wird. Die alleinige Variation der Geschwindigkeit der Luftströmung bewirkt jedoch keine nennenswerte Änderung der maximalen Stabtemperatur. Erst durch die Verwendung realitätsnaher Randbedingungen für Geschwindigkeit, Temperatur und Zusammensetzung, die aus großskaligen Simulationen des gesamten Lagerbeckens gewonnen wurden, wird der Einfluss der Querströmung auf die Temperaturverteilung im Brennelement deutlich. Bedingt durch das Verhältnis aus Auftriebs- zu Trägheitskräften, steigt die Temperatur im Brennelement bei einer Kombination aus geringer Temperatur, geringem Dampfmassenanteil und hoher Geschwindigkeit der Querströmung signifikant an. Diese Ergebnisse ermöglichen die Ableitung gezielter Beladungsstrategien von Lagerbecken, sofern die Randbedingungen oberhalb der Brennelemente hinreichend genau bekannt sind bzw. vorhergesagt werden können. Im letzten Schritt wird eine Methode zur skalenübergreifenden Modellierung eines Lagerbeckenbereichs vorgestellt. Durch die Kopplung zweier Modellierungsansätze wird eine teilweise geometrieauflösende Simulation ermöglicht, bei der das zentrale Brennelement geometrisch aufgelöst und die benachbarten Brennelemente als poröse Körper modelliert werden. Diese Vorgehensweise verbessert die Übertragbarkeit der Ergebnisse auf ein ganzes Lagerbecken, weil die Auswertung im geometrisch aufgelösten Brennelement unabhängiger von den mit Unsicherheit behafteten Randbedingungen wird.:1 Einleitung 1 1.1 Chancen und Risiken der Kernenergienutzung 1 1.2 Randbedingungen für den Wärme- und Stofftransport im Lagerbecken 3 1.2.1 Zerfallsleistung 3 1.2.2 Brennelement-Typ und Aufbau 4 1.2.3 Wärmetransportmechanismen 6 1.2.4 Verdampfungsrate 8 1.2.5 Grenztemperaturen 9 1.3 Simulation des Wärme- und Stofftransports im Lagerbecken 10 1.3.1 Das Lagerbecken als Multiskalenproblem 10 1.3.2 Systemcodes und Codes für schwere Störfälle 12 1.3.3 CFD-Simulation mit Brennelementen als poröse Körper 13 1.3.4 Geometrieauflösende CFD-Simulation 15 1.4 Zielstellung und Aufbau der Arbeit 16 2 Modell für ein ausdampfendes Brennelement 19 2.1 Vorbetrachtungen 19 2.1.1 Strömungsform 19 2.1.2 Form des Wärmeübergangs 22 2.2 Physikalische Modellierung 23 2.2.1 Simulationsstrategie 23 2.2.2 Physikalische Modellgleichungen 24 2.2.3 Rechengebiet und Randbedingungen 27 2.3 Numerische Modellierung 32 2.3.1 Örtliche Diskretisierung 32 2.3.2 Zeitliche Diskretisierung 34 3 Sensitivitätsanalyse für ein ausdampfendes Brennelement 37 3.1 Vorgehensweise 37 3.2 Einfluss der Strahlungsmodellierung 39 3.2.1 Motivation 39 3.2.2 Bestimmung des Absorptionskoeffzienten 40 3.2.3 Einfluss der Gasstrahlung 41 3.2.4 Einfluss der numerischen Parameter 44 3.3 Einfluss unsicherer Randbedingungen 46 3.3.1 Wärmeverlust über die Isolierschicht 46 3.3.2 Verteilung des Dampfmassenstroms an der Wasseroberfläche 51 3.4 Einfluss der effektiv freigelegten Länge der Heizstäbe 56 3.5 Einfluss der Stableistung 58 4 Wechselwirkung zwischen Querüberströmung und Wärmetransport im Brennelement 63 4.1 Rechengebiet und Randbedingungen 63 4.2 Physikalische und numerische Modellierung 65 4.2.1 Physikalische Modellierung 65 4.2.2 Numerische Einstellungen 67 4.3 Ergebnisse und Diskussion 67 4.3.1 Generelles Vorgehen 67 4.3.2 Temperaturentwicklung und Strömung im Stabbereich 69 4.3.3 Temperatur und Strömung im Überströmkanal 75 5 Ansätze zur skalenübergreifenden Modellierung eines Lagerbeckens 81 5.1 Einordnung 81 5.2 Co-Simulation des Wärme- und Stoffaustauschs zwischen Einzelbrennelement und Lagerbeckenatmosphäre 81 5.2.1 Konfiguration 81 5.2.2 Einfluss der Konvektionsströmung oberhalb der Brennelemente 86 5.3 Gekoppelte Simulation eines Lagerbeckenbereichs 92 5.3.1 Motivation 92 5.3.2 Parametrierung des porösen Körpers 92 5.3.3 Vergleich der Simulationsansätze 94 5.3.4 Simulation der Brennelement-Gruppe 96 6 Zusammenfassung und Ausblick 101 Literaturverzeichnis 115 Symbol- und Abkürzungsverzeichnis 119 / After their operation, spent nuclear fuel assemblies are stored for several years in wet storage pools, where their decay heat is removed by electrically operated cooling systems. If the power supply fails, this poses the risk of overheating of the fuel assemblies and, in the worst case, damage to the fuel rod cladding and the release of radioactive material into the environment. This dissertation focuses on the investigation of the complex interaction of flow and heat transport in such an assumed accident, which leads to partially uncovered fuel assemblies. A review of the current state of research illustrates that although the underlying physical processes are theoretically understood, no specific simulation programmes exist to date to accurately predict the temperature distribution for possible accident scenarios. For the detailed analysis of the processes, numerical flow simulations taking into account the exact geometry and all relevant heat transport mechanisms are therefore carried out for a partially uncovered fuel assembly for the first time. To ensure a manageable computational effort, the transient evaporation process is subdivided into several, independent simulations with steady boundary conditions and a constant water level in each case. The validation with experimental data shows that this approach is suitable for predicting the rod temperatures with sufficient accuracy for low decay heat. A comprehensive sensitivity analysis also identifies the influence of numerous uncertain factors on the temperature distribution and composition in the fuel assembly, which cannot be assessed purely on the basis of the experiment. The simulation results show that the maximum rod temperature depends mainly on the water level and the power of the fuel rods. A horizontally directed air flow above the fuel assembly leads to an overall temperature gradient in the flow direction within the fuel assembly. This is caused by a characteristic flow field in which cold gas is transported down the downstream wall of the fuel assembly and hot gas is transported up the upstream wall. However, varying the velocity of the airflow alone does not cause a significant change in the maximum rod temperature. The influence of the crossflow on the temperature distribution in the fuel assembly only becomes clear by using realistic boundary conditions for velocity, temperature and composition, obtained from large-scale simulations of the entire storage pool. Determined by the ratio of buoyant to inertial forces, the temperature in the fuel assembly increases significantly with a combination of low temperature, low steam mass fraction and high velocity of the crossflow. These results provide information on how to best arrange fuel assemblies in spent fuel pools, provided that the boundary conditions above the fuel assemblies are known or can be predicted with sufficient accuracy. Finally, a method for modelling a larger part of the spent fuel pool is presented. The combination of two modelling approaches enables a partially geometry-resolving simulation in which the central fuel assembly is geometrically resolved and the neighbouring fuel assemblies are modelled as porous bodies. This approach improves the transferability of the results to an entire spent fuel pool, because the evaluation in the geometrically resolved fuel assembly becomes more independent from the uncertain boundary conditions.:1 Einleitung 1 1.1 Chancen und Risiken der Kernenergienutzung 1 1.2 Randbedingungen für den Wärme- und Stofftransport im Lagerbecken 3 1.2.1 Zerfallsleistung 3 1.2.2 Brennelement-Typ und Aufbau 4 1.2.3 Wärmetransportmechanismen 6 1.2.4 Verdampfungsrate 8 1.2.5 Grenztemperaturen 9 1.3 Simulation des Wärme- und Stofftransports im Lagerbecken 10 1.3.1 Das Lagerbecken als Multiskalenproblem 10 1.3.2 Systemcodes und Codes für schwere Störfälle 12 1.3.3 CFD-Simulation mit Brennelementen als poröse Körper 13 1.3.4 Geometrieauflösende CFD-Simulation 15 1.4 Zielstellung und Aufbau der Arbeit 16 2 Modell für ein ausdampfendes Brennelement 19 2.1 Vorbetrachtungen 19 2.1.1 Strömungsform 19 2.1.2 Form des Wärmeübergangs 22 2.2 Physikalische Modellierung 23 2.2.1 Simulationsstrategie 23 2.2.2 Physikalische Modellgleichungen 24 2.2.3 Rechengebiet und Randbedingungen 27 2.3 Numerische Modellierung 32 2.3.1 Örtliche Diskretisierung 32 2.3.2 Zeitliche Diskretisierung 34 3 Sensitivitätsanalyse für ein ausdampfendes Brennelement 37 3.1 Vorgehensweise 37 3.2 Einfluss der Strahlungsmodellierung 39 3.2.1 Motivation 39 3.2.2 Bestimmung des Absorptionskoeffzienten 40 3.2.3 Einfluss der Gasstrahlung 41 3.2.4 Einfluss der numerischen Parameter 44 3.3 Einfluss unsicherer Randbedingungen 46 3.3.1 Wärmeverlust über die Isolierschicht 46 3.3.2 Verteilung des Dampfmassenstroms an der Wasseroberfläche 51 3.4 Einfluss der effektiv freigelegten Länge der Heizstäbe 56 3.5 Einfluss der Stableistung 58 4 Wechselwirkung zwischen Querüberströmung und Wärmetransport im Brennelement 63 4.1 Rechengebiet und Randbedingungen 63 4.2 Physikalische und numerische Modellierung 65 4.2.1 Physikalische Modellierung 65 4.2.2 Numerische Einstellungen 67 4.3 Ergebnisse und Diskussion 67 4.3.1 Generelles Vorgehen 67 4.3.2 Temperaturentwicklung und Strömung im Stabbereich 69 4.3.3 Temperatur und Strömung im Überströmkanal 75 5 Ansätze zur skalenübergreifenden Modellierung eines Lagerbeckens 81 5.1 Einordnung 81 5.2 Co-Simulation des Wärme- und Stoffaustauschs zwischen Einzelbrennelement und Lagerbeckenatmosphäre 81 5.2.1 Konfiguration 81 5.2.2 Einfluss der Konvektionsströmung oberhalb der Brennelemente 86 5.3 Gekoppelte Simulation eines Lagerbeckenbereichs 92 5.3.1 Motivation 92 5.3.2 Parametrierung des porösen Körpers 92 5.3.3 Vergleich der Simulationsansätze 94 5.3.4 Simulation der Brennelement-Gruppe 96 6 Zusammenfassung und Ausblick 101 Literaturverzeichnis 115 Symbol- und Abkürzungsverzeichnis 119

We are living in the time of the digital revolution in which the world we know changes beyond recognition every decade. The positive aspect is that these changes also drive the progress in quality and availability of digital assets crucial for our societies. To name a few examples, these are broadly available communication channels allowing quick exchange of knowledge over long distances, systems controlling automatic share and distribution of renewable energy in international power grid networks, easily accessible applications for early disease detection enabling self-examination without burdening the health service, or governmental systems assisting citizens to settle official matters without leaving their homes. Unfortunately, however, digitalization also opens opportunities for malicious actors to threaten our societies if they gain control over these assets after successfully exploiting vulnerabilities in the complex computing systems building them. Protecting these systems, which are called high-assurance security systems, is therefore of utmost importance. For decades, humanity has struggled to find methods to protect high-assurance security systems. The advancements in the computing systems security domain led to the popularization of hardware-assisted security techniques, nowadays available in commodity computers, that opened perspectives for building more sophisticated defense mechanisms at lower costs. However, none of these techniques is a silver bullet. Each one targets particular use cases, suffers from limitations, and is vulnerable to specific attacks. I argue that some of these techniques are synergistic and help overcome limitations and mitigate specific attacks when used together. My reasoning is supported by regulations that legally bind high-assurance security systems' owners to provide strong security guarantees. These requirements can be fulfilled with the help of diverse technologies that have been standardized in the last years. In this thesis, I introduce new techniques for hardening high-assurance security systems that execute in remote execution environments, such as public and hybrid clouds. I implemented these techniques as part of a framework that provides technical assurance that high-assurance security systems execute in a specific data center, on top of a trustworthy operating system, in a virtual machine controlled by a trustworthy hypervisor or in strong isolation from other software. I demonstrated the practicality of my approach by leveraging the framework to harden real-world applications, such as machine learning applications in the eHealth domain. The evaluation shows that the framework is practical. It induces low performance overhead (<6%), supports software updates, requires no changes to the legacy application's source code, and can be tailored to individual trust boundaries with the help of security policies. The framework consists of a decentralized monitoring system that offers better scalability than traditional centralized monitoring systems. Each monitored machine runs a piece of code that verifies that the machine's integrity and geolocation conform to the given security policy. This piece of code, which serves as a trusted anchor on that machine, executes inside the trusted execution environment, i.e., Intel SGX, to protect itself from the untrusted host, and uses trusted computing techniques, such as trusted platform module, secure boot, and integrity measurement architecture, to attest to the load-time and runtime integrity of the surrounding operating system running on a bare metal machine or inside a virtual machine. The trusted anchor implements my novel, formally proven protocol, enabling detection of the TPM cuckoo attack. The framework also implements a key distribution protocol that, depending on the individual security requirements, shares cryptographic keys only with high-assurance security systems executing in the predefined security settings, i.e., inside the trusted execution environments or inside the integrity-enforced operating system. Such an approach is particularly appealing in the context of machine learning systems where some algorithms, like the machine learning model training, require temporal access to large computing power. These algorithms can execute inside a dedicated, trusted data center at higher performance because they are not limited by security features required in the shared execution environment. The evaluation of the framework showed that training of a machine learning model using real-world datasets achieved 0.96x native performance execution on the GPU and a speedup of up to 1560x compared to the state-of-the-art SGX-based system. Finally, I tackled the problem of software updates, which makes the operating system's integrity monitoring unreliable due to false positives, i.e., software updates move the updated system to an unknown (untrusted) state that is reported as an integrity violation. I solved this problem by introducing a proxy to a software repository that sanitizes software packages so that they can be safely installed. The sanitization consists of predicting and certifying the future (after the specific updates are installed) operating system's state. The evaluation of this approach showed that it supports 99.76% of the packages available in Alpine Linux main and community repositories. The framework proposed in this thesis is a step forward in verifying and enforcing that high-assurance security systems execute in an environment compliant with regulations. I anticipate that the framework might be further integrated with industry-standard security information and event management tools as well as other security monitoring mechanisms to provide a comprehensive solution hardening high-assurance security systems.

We review our recent work on how to compute optimal repairs, optimal compliant anonymizations, and optimal safe anonymizations of ABoxes containing possibly anonymized individuals. The results can be used both to remove erroneous consequences from a knowledge base and to hide secret information before publication of the knowledge base, while keeping as much as possible of the original information. / Updated on August 27, 2021. This is an extended version of an article accepted at DL 2021.

Falls are responsible for a large proportion of serious injuries and deaths among cyclists [1-4]. A common fall scenario is loss of balance during an emergency braking maneuver to avoid another vehicle [5-7]. Automated Vehicles (AV) have the potential to prevent these critical scenarios between bicycle and cars. However, current Threat Assessment Algorithms (TAA) used by AVs only consider collision avoidance to decide upon safe gaps and decelerations when interacting wih cyclists and do not consider bicycle specific balance-related constraints. To date, no studies have addressed this risk of falls in safety critical scenarios. Yet, given the bicycle dynamics, we hypothesized that the existing TAA may be inaccurate in predicting the threat of cyclist falls and misclassify unsafe interactions. To test this hypothesis, this study developed a simple Newtonian mechanics-based model that calculates the performance of two existing TAAs in four critical scenarios with two road conditions. Tue four scenarios are: (1) a crossing scenario and a bicycle following lead car scenario in which the car either (2) suddenly braked, (3) halted or (4) accelerated from standstill. These scenarios have been identified by bicycle-car conflict studies as common scenarios where the car driver elicits an emergency braking response of the cyclist [8-11] and are illustrated in Figure 1. The two TAAs are Time-to-Collision (TTC) and Headway (H). These TAAs are commonly used by AVs in the four critical scenarios that will be modelled. The two road conditions are a flat dry road and also a downhill wet road, which serves as a worst-case condition for loss of balance during emergency braking [12].

While cycling is promoted as a sustainable and healthy mode of transport in many eitles in the Global North [1, 2], there are increasing concerns about the safety of cyclists. The increasing bicycle use in urban areas leads to a more intensely used cycling network, resulting in safety risks for cyclists [3]. Since 2010, the number of bicycle fatalities stagnated and the number of severely injured cyclists increased by 28% until 2018 in the European Union [4]. lt is therefore necessary to examine how bicycle use and motorized vehicle use in cities affects the nunber of bicycle crashes. To investigate this, the effect of the network-wide hourly exposure to cyclists and motorized vehicles on bicycle crash frequency is examined. That is, the total number of cyclists and motorized vehicles in the whole road network for each hour of the week were estimated and used as the network-wide hourly exposure. This approach allowed us to capture safety impacts of temporal variation in the numbers of cyclists and motorized vehicles in the same network more accurately. lt is a different approach compared to most bicycle safety studies, which often only use the daily average of bicycle and motorized vehicle volumes. The work presented here is based on our publication in Safety Science [5].

Scale symmetry is notoriously fickle: even when (approximately) present at the classical level, quantum fluctuations often break it, sometimes rather dramatically. Indeed, contemporary physics encompasses the study of very different phenomena at very different scales, e.g., from the (nominally) meV scale of spin systems, via the eV of electronic band structures, to the GeV of elementary particles, and possibly even the 10¹⁹ GeV of quantum gravity. However, there are often – possibly surprising – analogies between systems across these seemingly disparate settings. Studying the possible emergence of quantum scale symmetry and its breakdown is one way to systematically exploit these similarities, and in fact allows one to make testable predictions within a unified technical framework (viz., the renormalization group). The aim of this thesis is to do so for a few explicit scenarios. In the first four of these, quantum scale symmetry emerges in the long-wavelength limit near a quantum phase transition, over length scales of the order of the correlation length. In the fifth example, quantum scale symmetry is restored at very high energies (i.e., at and above the Planck scale), but severely constrains the phenomenology at 'low' energies (e.g., at accelerator scales), despite scale invariance being badly broken there. We begin with the Gross–Neveu (= chiral) SO(3) transition in D = 2+1 spacetime dimensions, which notably has been proposed to describe the transition of certain spin-orbital liquids to antiferromagnets. The chiral fermions that suffer a spontaneous breakdown of their isospin symmetry in this setting are fractionalized excitations (called spinons), and are as such difficult to observe directly in experiment. However, as gapless degrees of freedom, they leave their imprint on critical exponents, which may hence serve as a diagnostic tool for such unconventional excitations. These may be computed using (comparatively) conventional field-theoretic techniques. Here, we employ three complementary methods: a three-loop expansion in D = 4 - ε spacetime dimensions, a second-next-leading order expansion in large flavour number N , and a non-perturbative calculation using the functional renormalization group in the improved local potential approximation. The results are in fair agreement with each other, and yield combined best-guess estimates that may serve as benchmarks for numerical simulations, and possibly experiments on candidate spin liquids. We next turn our attention to spontaneous symmetry breaking at zero temperature in quasi-planar (electronic) semimetals. We begin with Luttinger semimetals, i.e., semimetals where two bands touch quadratically at isolated points of the Brioullin zone; Bernal-stacked bilayer graphene (BBLG) within certain approximations is one example. Luttinger semimetals are unstable at infinitesimal 4-Fermi interaction towards an ordered state (i.e., the field theory is asymptotically free rather than safe). Nevertheless, since the interactions are marginal, there are several pathologies in the critical behaviour. We show how these pathologies may be understood as a collision between the IR-stable Gaußian fixed point and a critical fixed point distinct from the Gaußian one in d = 2 + ε spatial dimensions. Observables like the order-parameter expectation value develop essential rather than power-law singularities; their exponent, as shown herein by explicit computation for the minimal model of two-component ‘spinors’, is distinct from the mean-field one. More tellingly, although finite critical exponents often default to canonical power-counting values, the susceptibility exponent turns out to be one-loop exact, and, in said minimal model takes the value γ = 2γᵐᵉᵃⁿ⁻ᶠᶦᵉˡᵈ = 2. Such an exact yet non-mean-field prediction can serve as a useful benchmark for numerical methods. We then proceed to scenarios in D = 2 + 1 spacetime dimensions where Dirac fermions can arise from Luttinger fermions due to low rotational symmetry. In BBLG, the 'Dirac from Luttinger' mechanism can occur both due to explicit and spontaneous breaking of rotational symmetry. The explicit symmetry breaking is due to the underlying honeycomb lattice, which only has C₃ symmetry around the location of the band crossings (so-called K points). As a consequence, the quadratic band crossing points each split into four Dirac cones, which is shown explicitly by computing the two-loop self-energy in the 4-Fermi theory. Within our approximations, we can estimate the critical coupling up to which a semimetallic state survives; it is finite (unlike a quadratic band touching point with high rotational symmetry), but significantly smaller than a 'vanilla' Dirac semimetal. Based on the ordering temperature of BBLG, our rough estimate further shows that the (effective) coupling strength in BBLG may be close to the critical value, in sharp contrast to other quasi-planar Dirac semimetals (such as monolayer graphene). Rotational symmetry in BBLG may also be broken spontaneously, i.e., due to the presence of nematic order, whereby a quadratic band crossing splits into two Dirac cones. Such a scenario is also very appealing for BBLG, since the precise nature of the ordered ground state of BBLG has not been established unambiguously: whilst some experiments show an insulating ground state with a full bulk gap, others show a partial gap opening with four isolated linear band crossings. Here, we show within a simplified phenomenological model using mean-field theory that there exists an extended region of parameter space with coexisting nematic and layer-polarized antiferromagnetic order, with a gapless nematic phase on one side and a gapped antiferromagnetic phase on the other. We then show that the nematic-to-coexistence quantum phase transition has emergent Lorentz invariance to one-loop in D = 2 + ε as well as D = 4 - ϵ dimensions, and thus falls into the celebrated Gross-Neveu-Heisenberg universality class. Combining previous higher-order field-theoretic results, we derive best-guess estimates for the critical exponents of this transition, with the theoretical uncertainty coming out somewhat smaller than in the monolayer counterpart due to the enlarged number of fermion components. Overall, BBLG may hence be a promising candidate for experimentally accessible Gross–Neveu quantum criticality in D = 2 + 1 spacetime dimensions. Finally, we turn our attention to the 'low-energy' consequences of transplanckian quantum scale symmetry. Extensions to the Standard Model that tend to lower the Higgs mass have many phenomenologically attractive properties (e.g., it would allow one to accommodate a more stable electroweak vacuum). Dark matter is one well-motivated candidate for such an extension. However, even in the most conservative settings, one usually has to contend with a significantly enlarged number of free parameters, and a concomitant reduction of predictivity. Here, we investigate how asymptotic safety (i.e., imposing quantum scale symmetry at the Planck scale and above) may constrain the Higgs mass in Standard Model (plus quantum gravity) when coupled to Yukawa dark matter via a Higgs portal. Working in a toy version of the Standard Model consisting of the top quark and the radial mode of the Higgs, we show within certain approximations that the Higgs mass may be lowered by the necessary amount if the dark scalar undergoes spontaneous symmetry breaking, as a function of the dark scalar mass, which is the only free parameter left in the theory.:1 Introduction 1.1 Scale invariance – why and where 1.1.1 Fundamental quantum field theories 1.1.2 Universality 1.1.3 Novel phases of matter 1.2 Outline of this thesis 2 Renormalization Group: A Brief Review 2.1 Quantum fluctuations and generating functionals 2.2 Renormalization group flow 2.3 Basic notions 2.4 Scale transformations, scale symmetry and RG fixed points 2.5 Characterization and interpretation of RG fixed points 2.5.1 Formal aspects 2.5.2 Scaling at (quantum) phase transitions 2.5.3 Predictivity in fundamental physics 2.5.4 Effective asymptotic safety in particle physics and condensed matter 3 Gross–Neveu SO(3) Quantum Criticality in 2 + 1 Dimensions 3.1 Effective field theory 3.2 Renormalization and critical exponents 3.2.1 4 - ϵ expansion 3.2.1.1 Method 3.2.1.2 Flow equations 3.2.1.3 Critical exponents 3.2.2 Large-N expansion 3.2.2.1 Method 3.2.2.2 Critical exponents 3.2.3 Non-perturbative FRG 3.2.3.1 Flow equations 3.2.3.2 Representation of the effective potential 3.2.3.3 Choice of regulator 3.2.3.4 Limiting behaviour 3.3 Discussion 3.3.1 General behaviour and qualitative aspects 3.3.2 Quantitative estimates for D = 3 3.4 Summary and outlook 4 Luttinger Fermions in Two Spatial Dimensions 4.1 Introduction 4.2 Action from top-down construction 4.3 Renormalization 4.3.1 4-Fermi formulation 4.3.2 Yukawa formulation 4.4 Fixed-point analysis 4.5 Non-mean-field behaviour 4.5.1 Order-parameter expectation value 4.5.2 Susceptibility exponent 4.6 Bottom-up construction: Spinless fermions on kagome lattice 4.6.1 Tight-binding dispersion 4.6.2 From Hubbard to Fermi 4.6.3 Fate of particle-hole asymmetry 4.7 Discussion 5 Dirac from Luttinger I: Explicit Symmetry Breaking 5.1 From lattice to continuum 5.1.1 Fermions on Bernal-stacked honeycomb bilayer 5.1.2 Continuum limit 5.1.3 Interactions 5.2 Mean-field theory 5.3 Renormalization-group analysis 5.3.1 Flow equations 5.3.2 Basic flow properties 5.3.3 Phase diagrams 5.4 Discussion 5.5 Summary and outlook 6 Dirac from Luttinger II: Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking 6.1 Model 6.2 Phase diagram and transitions 6.3 Emergent Lorentz symmetry 6.3.1 Loop expansion near lower critical dimension 6.3.1.1 Minimal 4-Fermi model 6.3.1.2 Gross–Neveu–Heisenberg fixed point 6.3.1.3 Fate of rotational symmetry breaking 6.3.2 Loop expansion near upper critical dimension 6.3.2.1 Gross–Neveu–Yukawa–Heisenberg model 6.3.2.2 Gross–Neveu–Yukawa–Heisenberg fixed point 6.3.2.3 Fate of rotational symmetry breaking 6.4 Critical exponents 6.5 Discussion 7 Higgs Mass in Asymptotically Safe Gravity with a Dark Portal 7.1 Review: The asymptotic safety scenario for quantum gravity and matter 7.2 Review: Higgs mass, and RG flow in the SM and beyond 7.2.1 Higgs mass in the SM 7.2.2 Higgs mass bounds in bosonic portal models 7.2.3 Higgs mass in asymptotic safety 7.2.4 Higgs Portal and Asymptotic Safety 7.3 Higgs mass in an asymptotically safe dark portal model 7.3.1 The UV regime 7.3.2 Flow towards the IR 7.3.3 Infrared masses 7.3.4 From the UV to the IR – Contrasting effective field theory and asymptotic safety 7.4 Discussion 8 Conclusions Appendices A Position-space propagator for C₃-symmetric QBT B Two-sided Padé approximants for C₃-symmetric QBTs C Corrections to the mean-field nematic order-parameter effective potential due to explicit symmetry breaking D Self-energy in anisotropic Yukawa theory E Master integrals for anisotropic Yukawa theory Bibliography

This thesis presents significant advancements in the field of driver’s chest localization and breathing detection using FMCW radar. It introduces a neural network model for predicting the 3D location of the driver’s chest and a novel algorithm for detecting breathing patterns and localizing the chest position. These scientific breakthroughs contribute to the development of an adaptive safety system for level 3 and above autonomous driving within the IFAS project (FKZ 19A19009E).