We present cosmological constraints from the analysis of two-point correlation functions between galaxy positions and galaxy lensing measured in Dark Energy Survey (DES) Year 3 data and measurements of cosmic microwave background (CMB) lensing from the South Pole Telescope (SPT) and Planck. When jointly analyzing the DES-only two-point functions and the DES cross-correlations with $\mathrm{SPT}+Planck$ CMB lensing, we find ${\mathrm{\Omega }}_{\mathrm{m}}=0.344\pm 0.030$ and $S_8\equiv {\sigma }_8({\mathrm{\Omega }}_{\mathrm{m}}/0.3{)}^{0.5}=0.773\pm 0.016$, assuming $\mathrm{\Lambda }\mathrm{CDM}$. When additionally combining with measurements of the CMB lensing autospectrum, we find ${\mathrm{\Omega }}_{\mathrm{m}}={0.306}_{-0.021}^{+0.018}$ and $S_8=0.792\pm 0.012$. The high signal-to-noise of the CMB lensing cross-correlations enables several powerful consistency tests of these results, including comparisons with constraints derived from cross-correlations only, and comparisons designed to test the robustness of the galaxy lensing and clustering measurements from DES. Applying these tests to our measurements, we find no evidence of significant biases in the baseline cosmological constraints from the DES-only analyses or from the joint analyses with CMB lensing cross-correlations. However, the CMB lensing cross-correlations suggest possible problems with the correlation function measurements using alternative lens galaxy samples, in particular the redmagic galaxies and high-redshift maglim galaxies, consistent with the findings of previous studies. We use the CMB lensing cross-correlations to identify directions for further investigating these problems.

Cross-correlations of galaxy positions and galaxy shears with maps of gravitational lensing of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) are sensitive to the distribution of large-scale structure in the Universe. Such cross-correlations are also expected to be immune to some of the systematic effects that complicate correlation measurements internal to galaxy surveys. We present measurements and modeling of the cross-correlations between galaxy positions and galaxy lensing measured in the first three years of data from the Dark Energy Survey with CMB lensing maps derived from a combination of data from the $2500{\mathrm{deg}}^2$ SPT-SZ survey conducted with the South Pole Telescope and full-sky data from the Planck satellite. The CMB lensing maps used in this analysis have been constructed in a way that minimizes biases from the thermal Sunyaev Zel’dovich effect, making them well suited for cross-correlation studies. The total signal-to-noise of the cross-correlation measurements is 23.9 (25.7) when using a choice of angular scales optimized for a linear (nonlinear) galaxy bias model. We use the cross-correlation measurements to obtain constraints on cosmological parameters. For our fiducial galaxy sample, which consist of four bins of magnitude-selected galaxies, we find constraints of ${\mathrm{\Omega }}_{\mathrm{m}}={0.272}_{-0.052}^{+0.032}$ and $S_8\equiv {\sigma }_8\sqrt{{\mathrm{\Omega }}_{\mathrm{m}}/0.3}={0.736}_{-0.028}^{+0.032}$ (${\mathrm{\Omega }}_{\mathrm{m}}={0.245}_{-0.044}^{+0.026}$ and $S_8={0.734}_{-0.028}^{+0.035}$) when assuming linear (nonlinear) galaxy bias in our modeling. Considering only the cross-correlation of galaxy shear with CMB lensing, we find ${\mathrm{\Omega }}_{\mathrm{m}}={0.270}_{-0.061}^{+0.043}$ and $S_8={0.740}_{-0.029}^{+0.034}$. Our constraints on $S_8$ are consistent with recent cosmic shear measurements, but lower than the values preferred by primary CMB measurements from Planck.

Joint analyses of cross-correlations between measurements of galaxy positions, galaxy lensing, and lensing of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) offer powerful constraints on the large-scale structure of the Universe. In a forthcoming analysis, we will present cosmological constraints from the analysis of such cross-correlations measured using Year 3 data from the Dark Energy Survey (DES), and CMB data from the South Pole Telescope (SPT) and Planck. Here we present two key ingredients of this analysis: (1) an improved CMB lensing map in the SPT-SZ survey footprint and (2) the analysis methodology that will be used to extract cosmological information from the cross-correlation measurements. Relative to previous lensing maps made from the same CMB observations, we have implemented techniques to remove contamination from the thermal Sunyaev Zel’dovich effect, enabling the extraction of cosmological information from smaller angular scales of the cross-correlation measurements than in previous analyses with DES Year 1 data. We describe our model for the cross-correlations between these maps and DES data, and validate our modeling choices to demonstrate the robustness of our analysis. We then forecast the expected cosmological constraints from the galaxy survey-CMB lensing auto and cross-correlations. We find that the galaxy-CMB lensing and galaxy shear-CMB lensing correlations will on their own provide a constraint on $S_8={\sigma }_8\sqrt{{\mathrm{\Omega }}_{\mathrm{m}}/0.3}$ at the few percent level, providing a powerful consistency check for the DES-only constraints. We explore scenarios where external priors on shear calibration are removed, finding that the joint analysis of CMB lensing cross-correlations can provide constraints on the shear calibration amplitude at the 5% to 10% level.

Accurate numerical-relativity simulations are essential to study the rich phenomenology of binary neutron star systems. In this work, we focus on the material that is dynamically ejected during the merger process and on the kilonova transient it produces. Typically, radiative transfer simulations of kilonova light curves from ejecta make the assumption of homologous expansion, but this condition might not always be met at the end of usually very short numerical-relativity simulations. In this article, we adjust the infrastructure of the bam code to enable longer simulations of the dynamical ejecta with the aim of investigating when the condition of homologous expansion is satisfied. In fact, we observe that the deviations from a perfect homologous expansion are about $\lesssim 30\%$ at roughly 100 ms after the merger. While the calculation of the kilonova light curves is affected by the resolution as well as our method of simplifying the ejecta simulation, these deviations from the homologous expansion also bias the results. We determine this influence by extracting the ejecta data for different reference times and use them as input to radiative transfer simulations. Our results show that the light curves for extraction times later than 80 ms after the merger deviate by $\lesssim 0.4\mathrm{mag}$ and are mostly consistent with numerical noise. Accordingly, deviations from the homologous expansion for the dynamical ejecta component are negligible from $\sim 80\mathrm{ms}$ for the purpose of kilonova modeling.

Using recent results in four-derivative 5d $\mathcal{N}=2$ minimal gauged supergravity, we evaluate the regularized on-shell action of the Euclidean solution in this theory that admits a Lorentzian continuation to an ${\mathrm{AdS}}_5$ black hole with one electric charge and two angular momenta. We focus on the supersymmetric limit of this solution and employ holography to show that the result can be expressed purely in terms of angular momentum fugacities and the ’t Hooft anomalies for the $\mathrm{U}(1{)}_{\mathrm{R}}$ R symmetry of the dual 4d $\mathcal{N}=1$ superconformal field theory. This holographic calculation is in perfect agreement with recent studies of the 4d $\mathcal{N}=1$ superconformal index “on the second sheet.” We illustrate the utility of these results in two classes of 4d $\mathcal{N}=1$ holographic SCFTs that have ’t Hooft anomalies with suitable large-$N$ behavior that leads to nontrivial corrections at first subleading order in the $1/N$ expansion. We also explicitly calculate the Wald entropy of the black hole solution and delineate the leading four-derivative corrections to the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy.

We analyze the time evolution of several physical observables, namely the pressure anisotropy, the scalar condensate, the charge density, and also, for the first time, the nonequilibrium entropy for a Bjorken expanding strongly coupled $\mathcal{N}=4$ supersymmetric Yang-Mills plasma charged under an Abelian $U(1)$ subgroup of the global $SU(4)$ $R$ symmetry. This represents a far-from-equilibrium, hot and dense strongly coupled quantum fluid with a critical point in its phase diagram. For some sets of initial data preserving all the energy conditions, dynamically driven transient violations of the dominant and the weak energy conditions are observed when the plasma is still far from the hydrodynamic regime. The energy conditions violations get stronger at larger values of the chemical potential to temperature ratio, $\mu /T$, indicating that those violations become more relevant as the strongly coupled quantum fluid approaches its critical regime. For some of those energy conditions violations, a clear correlation with different plateau structures formed in the far from equilibrium entropy is observed, indicating the presence of transient, early time windows where the Bjorken expanding plasma has zero entropy production even while being far from equilibrium. The hydrodynamization of the pressure anisotropy and also the much later thermalization of the scalar condensate are generally found to be delayed, within small relative tolerances, as $\mu /T$ is increased toward criticality. The value of $\mu /T$ in the medium is enhanced by increasing its initial charge density and/or also by reducing its initial energy density.

The phase diagram of QCD is investigated by varying number of colors $N_c$ within a Polyakov loop quark-meson chiral model. In particular, our attention is focused on the critical point(s); the critical point present for $N_c=3$ moves toward the ${\mu }_q$-axis and disappears as soon as the number of color is increased. Yet, a distinct critical point emerges along the temperature axis for $N_c=53$ and moves toward finite density when increasing $N_c$ further. Thus, the phase diagram at large $N_c$ looks specular with respect to the $N_c=3$ results, with the first-order transition in the upper-left and crossover in the lower-right regions of the $({\mu }_q,T)$-plane. The pressure is also evaluated in dependence of $N_c$, showing a scaling with $N_c^0$ in the confined and chirally broken phase and with $N_c^2$ in the deconfined one. Moreover, the presence of a chirally symmetric but confined “quarkyonic phase” at large density and moderate temperature with a pressure proportional to $N_c$ is confirmed.

We derive exact analytic solutions for density and velocity fields to all orders in Eulerian standard perturbation theory for $\mathrm{\Lambda }\mathrm{CDM}$ cosmology. In particular, we show that density- and velocity-field kernels can be written in a separable form in time and momenta at each perturbative order. The kernel solutions are built from an analytic basis of momentum operators and their time-dependent coefficients, which solve a set of recursive differential equations. We also provide an exact closed perturbative solution for such coefficients, expanding around the (quasi-)Einstein–de Sitter (EdS) approximation. We find that the perturbative solution rapidly converges towards the numerically obtained solutions and its leading-order result suffices for any practical requirements. To illustrate our findings, we compute the exact two-loop dark matter density- and velocity power spectra in $\mathrm{\Lambda }\mathrm{CDM}$ cosmology. We show that the difference between the exact $\mathrm{\Lambda }\mathrm{CDM}$ and the (quasi-)EdS approximated result can reach the level of several percent (at redshift zero, for wave numbers $k<1h/\mathrm{Mpc}$). This deviation can be partially mitigated by exploiting the degeneracy with the effective field theory counterterms. As an additional benefit of our algorithm for the solutions of time-dependent coefficients, the computational complexity of power-spectra loops in $\mathrm{\Lambda }\mathrm{CDM}$ is comparable to the EdS case. In performing the two-loop computation, we devise an explicit method to implement the so-called IR cancellations, as well as the cancellations arising as a consequence of mass and momentum conservation.

Superconducting nanowires, a mature technology originally developed for quantum sensing, can be used as a target and sensor with which to search for dark matter interactions with electrons. Here we report on a 180-hour measurement of a tungsten silicide superconducting nanowire device with a mass of 4.3 nanograms. We use this to place new constraints on dark matter–electron interactions, including the strongest terrestrial constraints to date on sub-MeV (sub-eV) dark matter that interacts with electrons via scattering (absorption) processes.

At zero temperature and finite chemical potential, $d$-dimensional loop integrals with complex-valued integrands in the imaginary-time formalism yield results dependent on the integration order. We observe this even with the simplest one-loop dimensionally regularized integrals. Computing such integrals by evaluating the spatial ${\mathrm{d}}^{d}p$ integral before the temporal $\mathrm{d}{p}_0$ integral yields results consistent with those obtained at small but nonvanishing temperatures. Computing the temporal integral first by applying the residue theorem to the integrand yields a different answer. The same holds for general complexified propagators. In this work we aim to understand the theoretical background behind this difference, in order to fully enable the powerful techniques of residue calculus in applications. We cast the difference into the form of a derivative term related to Dirac deltas, and further demonstrate how the difference originates from the zero-temperature limit of the Fermi–Dirac occupation functions treated as complex-valued functions. We also discuss a generalization to propagators raised to noninteger powers.

In the gravitational collapse of matter beyond spherical symmetry, gravitational waves are necessarily present. On the other hand, gravitational waves can collapse to a black hole even without matter. One might therefore wonder how the interaction and competition between the matter fields and gravitational waves affects critical phenomena at the threshold of black hole formation. As a toy model for this, we study the threshold of black-hole formation in $4+1$ dimensions, where we add a massless minimally coupled scalar matter field to the gravitational wave ansatz of Bizón, Chmaj, and Schmidt (in a nutshell, Bianchi IX on $S^3\times \text{radius}\times \mathrm{time}$). In order to find a stable discretization of the equation governing the gravitational waves in $4+1$ physical dimensions, which has the same principal part as the spherical wave equation in $9+1$ dimensions, we first revisit the problem of critical spherical scalar field collapse in $n+2$ dimensions with large $n$. Returning to the main problem, we find numerically that weak gravitational wave perturbations of the scalar field critical solution decay, while weak scalar perturbations of the gravitational wave critical solution also decay. A dynamical systems picture then suggests the existence of a codimension-2 attractor. We find numerical evidence for this attractor by evolving mixed initial data and fine-tuning both an overall amplitude and the relative strength of the two fields.

Control over quantum electrodynamics (QED) radiative corrections is critical for precise determination of neutrino oscillation probabilities from observed (anti)neutrino detection rates. It is particularly important to understand any difference between such corrections for different flavors of (anti)neutrinos in charged-current interactions. We provide theoretical foundations for calculating these corrections. Using effective field theory, the corrections are shown to factorize into soft, collinear, and hard functions. The soft and collinear functions contain large logarithms in perturbation theory but are computable from QED. The hard function parametrizes hadronic structure but is free from large logarithms. Using a simple model for the hard function, we investigate the numerical impact of QED corrections in charged-current (anti)neutrino-nucleon elastic cross sections and cross-section ratios at GeV energies. We consider the implications of mass singularity theorems that govern the lepton-mass dependence of cross sections for sufficiently inclusive observables and demonstrate the cancellation of leading hadronic and nuclear corrections in phenomenologically relevant observables.

We introduce an algorithm to piecewise dualize linear quivers into their mirror dual. The algorithm uses two basic duality moves and the properties of the $S$-wall which can all be derived by iterative applications of Seiberg-like dualities.

The peak-patch algorithm is used to identify the densest minicluster seeds in the initial axion density field simulated from string decay. The fate of these dense seeds is found by tracking the subsequent gravitational collapse in cosmological $N$-body simulations. We find that miniclusters at late times are well described by Navarro-Frenk-White profiles, although for around 80% of simulated miniclusters a single power-law density profile of $r^{-2.9}$ is an equally good fit due to the unresolved scale radius. Under the assumption that all miniclusters with an unresolved scale radius are described by a power-law plus axion star density profile, we identify a significant number of miniclusters that might be dense enough to give rise to gravitational microlensing if the axion mass is $0.2\mathrm{meV}\lesssim m_a\lesssim 3\mathrm{meV}$. Higher resolution simulations resolving the inner structure and axion star formation are necessary to explore this possibility further.

We present a reduced-order surrogate model of gravitational waveforms from nonspinning binary black hole systems with comparable to large mass-ratio configurations. This surrogate model, BHPTNRSur1dq1e4, is trained on waveform data generated by point-particle black hole perturbation theory (ppBHPT) with mass ratios varying from 2.5 to 10,000. BHPTNRSur1dq1e4 extends an earlier waveform model, EMRISur1dq1e4, by using an updated transition-to-plunge model, covering longer durations up to $\text{30}\text{,}\text{500}{m}_1$ (where $m_1$ is the mass of the primary black hole), includes several more spherical harmonic modes up to $\ell =10$, and calibrates subdominant modes to numerical relativity (NR) data. In the comparable mass-ratio regime, including mass ratios as low as 2.5, the gravitational waveforms generated through ppBHPT agree surprisingly well with those from NR after this simple calibration step. We also compare our model to recent SXS and RIT NR simulations at mass ratios ranging from 15 to 32, and find the dominant quadrupolar modes agree to better than $\approx {10}^{-3}$. We expect our model to be useful to study intermediate-mass-ratio binary systems in current and future gravitational-wave detectors.

We study the linear polarization from the accretion disk around a class of static traversable wormholes. Applying the simplified model of a magnetized fluid ring orbiting in the equatorial plane, we search for characteristic signatures, which could distinguish wormhole from black hole spacetimes by their polarization properties. For the purpose we analyze the direct polarized images for different inclination angles, the strongly lensed indirect images, and the polarized radiation which reaches the asymptotic observer through the wormhole throat, and compare to the Schwarzschild black hole. For small inclination angles the two types of compact objects lead to a very similar polarization pattern of the direct images. More significant distinctions are observed for the strongly lensed indirect images, where the polarization intensity in the wormhole spacetimes can grow up to an order of magnitude compared to the Schwarzschild black hole. Detecting radiation from the region across the wormhole throat leads to the formation of an additional structure of ring images with distinct polarization properties. The twist of the polarization vector around the ring is less pronounced, thus modifying the polarization pattern, and the polarization intensity can increase with an order of magnitude compared to the radiation from our Universe. Thus, while it could be difficult to distinguish wormhole spacetimes by their direct polarized images, the strongly lensed images and the polarization of the radiation through the wormhole throat provide characteristic signatures which can serve as probes for horizonless objects.

In certain scalar-field extensions to general relativity, scalar charges can develop on compact objects in an inspiraling binary—an effect known as dynamical scalarization. This effect can be modeled using effective-field-theory methods applied to the binary within the post-Newtonian approximation. Past analytic investigations focused on the adiabatic (or quasistationary) case for quasicircular orbits. In this work, we explore the full dynamical evolution around the phase transition to the scalarized regime. This allows for generic (eccentric) orbits and to quantify nonadiabatic (e.g., oscillatory) behavior during the phase transition. We also find that even in the circular-orbit case, the onset of scalarization can only be predicted reliably when taking the full dynamics into account, i.e., the adiabatic approximation is not appropriate. Our results pave the way for accurate post-Newtonian predictions for dynamical scalarization effects in gravitational waves from compact binaries.

We present a new approach to studies of bubble dynamics in fluids. Relying on particle-based simulations, this method is general and suitable for cases where the commonly used perfect fluid description fails. We study expanding true vacuum bubbles surrounded by free or self-interacting particles and quantify how self-interactions affect the terminal bubble wall velocity. We find that, for sufficiently strongly self-interacting fluids, local thermal equilibrium is maintained around the bubble wall and the fluid profile is similar to that obtained with the perfect fluid description.

We examine the effect of neutrino flavor transformation by the fast flavor instability (FFI) on long-term mass ejection from accretion disks formed after neutron star mergers. Neutrino emission and absorption in the disk set the composition of the disk ejecta, which subsequently undergoes $r$-process nucleosynthesis upon expansion and cooling. Here we perform 28 time-dependent, axisymmetric, viscous-hydrodynamic simulations of accretion disks around hypermassive neutron stars (HMNSs) of variable lifetime, using a 3-species neutrino leakage scheme for emission and an annular-lightbulb scheme for absorption. We include neutrino flavor transformation due the FFI in a parametric way, by modifying the absorbed neutrino fluxes and temperatures, allowing for flavor mixing at various levels of flavor equilibration, and also in a way that aims to respect the lepton-number preserving symmetry of the neutrino self-interaction Hamiltonian. We find that for a promptly-formed black hole (BH), the FFI lowers the average electron fraction of the disk outflow due to a decrease in neutrino absorption, driven primarily by a drop in electron neutrino/antineutrino flux upon flavor mixing. For a long-lived HMNS, the disk emits more heavy lepton neutrinos and reabsorbs more electron neutrinos than for a BH, with a smaller drop in flux compensated by a higher neutrino temperature upon flavor mixing. The resulting outflow has a broader electron fraction distribution, a more proton-rich peak, and undergoes stronger radiative driving. Disks with intermediate HMNS lifetimes show results that fall in between these two limits. In most cases, the impact of the FFI on the outflow is moderate, with changes in mass ejection, average velocity, and average electron fraction of order $\sim 10\%$, and changes in the lanthanide/actinide mass fraction of up to a factor $\sim 2$.

Experimental refinements and technical innovations in the field of extensive air shower telescopes have enabled measurements of Galactic cosmic-ray interactions in the sub-PeV range, providing new avenues for the search for new physics and dark matter. For the first time, we exploit sub-PeV (1 TeV–1 PeV) observations of Galactic diffuse gamma rays by HAWC and Tibet $\mathrm{AS}\gamma$ to search for an axionlike-particle (ALP) induced gamma-ray signal directly linked to the origin of the IceCube extragalactic high-energy neutrino flux. Indeed, the production of high-energy neutrinos in extragalactic sources implies the concomitant production of gamma rays at comparable energies. Within the magnetic field of the neutrino emitting sources, gamma rays may efficiently convert into ALPs, escape their host galaxy unattenuated, propagate through intergalactic space, and reconvert into gamma rays in the magnetic field of the Milky Way. Such a scenario creates an all-sky diffuse high-energy gamma-ray signal in the sub-PeV range. Accounting for the guaranteed Galactic astrophysical gamma-ray contributions from cosmic-ray interactions with gas and radiation and from subthreshold sources, we set competitive upper limits on the photon-ALP coupling constant $g_{a\gamma \gamma }$. We find $g_{a\gamma \gamma }<2.1\times {10}^{-11}{\mathrm{GeV}}^{-1}$ for ALP masses $m_a\le 2\times {10}^{-7}\mathrm{eV}$ at a 95% confidence level. Our results are comparable to previous limits on ALPs derived from the TeV gamma-ray domain and progressively close the mass gap toward ADMX limits.