Read and download the papers

Two manuscripts are drafted from the same evidence base. The LaTeX sources in manuscript/ and manuscript-quan/ are authoritative; these PDFs are regenerated by make paper and make quan and copied into the site only after a successful build.

A. Two devices, one operator

The method paper: the outgoing complex-frequency mode expansion, its geometry gradient, both the Quan–Lončar and the multilayer Design23 campaigns, and the finding that ascent directions transfer to an independent solver while absolute linewidths do not.

• Main manuscript PDF — 11 pages, two-column
• Supplementary Information PDF — 37 pages, 19 sections
• Combined preprint PDF — 48 pages

B. One device, in full

A separate, narrower draft: the simplest complete account of a single optimization. One cavity, 45 variables, 56 accepted steps, the field profile before and after, quality factor against iteration, and an independent solver holding a veto outside the loop. It uses the indefinite campaign run rather than the three-step Phase-58 endpoint that paper A quotes, so its numbers are different by construction.

• Single-device paper PDF — 16 pages, single-column

Draft boundary

Neither paper's quality factors are publication-final. Paper A states the matched convergence panel still required. Paper B bounds its own numbers explicitly: the largest improvement it measured over a full photon lifetime is 2.12×, and every larger figure it quotes rests on ringdown fits that did not observe a full decay.