Physical Review D

How galaxies expel gas is a big unknown and limits surveys in what they can measure. In this pair of papers, the DESI and ACT collaborations combine galaxy redshifts from DESI DR2 with high-resolution microwave maps from ACT DR6 to study the gas distribution around galaxies to unprecedented precision using the kinematic Sunyaev-Zel’dovich effect. They find strong evidence that the gas does not trace dark matter profiles and that there is gas redistribution beyond gravitational collapse.

F. J. Qu et al. (DESI Collaboration)
Phys. Rev. D 114, 083540 (2026)

Classical relativistic scattering of a gravitational wave off a non-spinning compact object is approached in this paper as Compton scattering of a graviton using worldline quantum field theory (WQFT) methods. The amplitude is computed to the 4th post-Minkowskian (4PM) order. This impressive result corresponds to a three-loop computation in WQFT. Its consistency with independent black hole perturbation theory methods is established.

This paper completes another segment in understanding and classifying the 5-dimensional supersymmetric conformal field theories (SCFT). The authors show that a class of 5-dimensional special unitary quiver gauge theories admit a UV (high energy) completion in terms of 5-dimensional conformal matter SCFTs, which can be explicitly engineered via M-theory on a singular Calabi-Yau threefold.

The information available from the oriented stacking of astrophysical fields is shown to be recoverable through the use of an appropriately constructed cross-power spectrum that takes account of the spin associated with the preferred orientation. The method is applicable to effects like the moving lens effect and the directional Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect.

Coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering provides crucial information for precision studies of neutrinos as well as searches for dark matter and other new physics. This paper develops a comprehensive Effective Field Theory treatment up to dimension eight which can account for new physics effects from energies above 100 GeV down to nuclear scales in a consistent manner. The authors include renormalization effects, careful power counting and matching of different theories at the appropriate scales, and possible UV completions of the effective operators.

Gravitational waves lensed by galaxies and clusters can also be diffracted by the stars and compact remnants embedded within them, leaving frequency-dependent signatures in the observed signal that are computationally expensive to model. This paper introduces Reduced-Order Stochastic Diffraction, an efficient framework for modeling these complex microlensing effects with a computationally inexpensive surrogate model. The method can be readily incorporated into Bayesian GW analyses and adapted to different detectors, sources, and microlens populations. It therefore opens a new avenue for probing stellar populations through gravitational-wave lensing.