We extend the calculation of dark matter direct detection rates via electronic transitions in general dielectric crystal targets, combining state-of-the-art density functional theory calculations of electronic band structures and wave functions near the band gap, with semianalytic approximations to include additional states farther away from the band gap. We show, in particular, the importance of all-electron reconstruction for recovering large momentum components of electronic wave functions, which, together with the inclusion of additional states, has a significant impact on direct detection rates, especially for heavy mediator models and at $\mathcal{O}(10\mathrm{eV})$ and higher energy depositions. Applying our framework to silicon and germanium (that have been established already as sensitive dark matter detectors), we find that our extended calculations can appreciably change the detection prospects. Our calculational framework is implemented in an open-source program exceed-dm (Extended Calculation of Electronic Excitations for Direct detection of Dark Matter), to be released in an upcoming publication.

Stars that approach a supermassive black hole (SMBH) too closely can be disrupted by the tidal gravitational field of the SMBH. The resulting debris forms a tidal stream orbiting the SMBH, which can collide with itself due to relativistic apsidal precession. These self-collisions dissipate energy, causing the stream to circularize. We perform kinematic simulations of these stream self-collisions to estimate the efficiency of this circularization as a function of SMBH mass $M_{•}$ and penetration factor $\beta$, the ratio of the tidal radius to the pericenter distance. We uncover two distinct regimes depending on whether the time $t_c$ at which the most tightly bound debris circularizes is greater or less than the time $t_{\mathrm{fb}}$ at which the mass fallback rate peaks. The bolometric light curve of energy dissipated in the stream self-collisions has a single peak at $t>t_{\mathrm{fb}}$ in the slow circularization regime ($t_c>t_{\mathrm{fb}}$) but two peaks (one at $t<t_{\mathrm{fb}}$ and a second at $t_{\mathrm{fb}}$) in the fast circularization regime ($t_c<t_{\mathrm{fb}}$). Tidal streams will circularize in the slow (fast) regime for apsidal precession angles less (greater) than 0.2 radians, which occur for $\beta \lesssim (\gtrsim )(M_{•}/{10}^6{M}_{\odot }{)}^{-2/3}$. The observation of prominent double peaks in bolometric tidal disruption event light curves near the transition between these two regimes would strongly support our model of tidal-stream kinematics.

Does the value of the Higgs mass parameter affect the expectation value of local operators in the Standard Model? For essentially all local operators the answer to this question is “no”, and this is one of the avatars of the hierarchy problem: Nothing is “triggered” when the Higgs mass parameter crosses zero. In this article, we explore settings in which Higgs mass parameters can act as a “trigger” for some local operators ${\mathcal{O}}_T$. In the Standard Model, this happens for ${\mathcal{O}}_T=\mathrm{Tr}(G\tilde{G})$. We also introduce a “type-0” two Higgs doublet model, with a $Z_4$ symmetry, for which ${\mathcal{O}}_T=H_1{H}_2$ is triggered by the Higgs masses, demanding the existence of new Higgs states necessarily comparable to or lighter than the weak scale, with no wiggle room to decouple them whatsoever. Surprisingly, this model is not yet entirely excluded by collider searches, and will be incisively probed by the high-luminosity run of the LHC, as well as future Higgs factories. We also discuss a possibility for using this trigger to explain the origin of the weak scale, invoking a landscape of extremely light, weakly interacting scalars ${\varphi }_i$, with a coupling to ${\mathcal{O}}_T$ needed to make it possible to find vacua with small enough cosmological constant. The weak scale trigger links the tuning of the Higgs mass to that of the cosmological constant, while coherent oscillations of the ${\varphi }_i$ can constitute dark matter.

Black hole formation in a core-collapse supernova is expected to lead to a distinctive, abrupt drop in neutrino luminosity due to the engulfment of the main neutrino-producing regions as well as the strong gravitational redshift of those remaining neutrinos which do escape. Previous analyses of the shape of the cutoff have focused on specific trajectories or simplified models of bulk neutrino transport. In this article, we integrate over simple null geodesics to investigate potential effects on the cutoff profile of including all neutrino emission angles from a collapsing surface in the Schwarzschild metric, and from a contracting equatorial mass ring in the Kerr metric. We find that the nonradial geodesics contribute to a softening of the cutoff in both cases. In addition, extreme rotation introduces significant changes to the shape of the tail which may be observable in future neutrino detectors, or combinations of detectors.

We report a reanalysis of the reactor antineutrino energy spectra based on the new relative measurements of the ratio $R={{}^{e}S}_5/{{}^{e}S}_9$ between cumulative $\beta$ spectra from ${}^{235}\mathrm{U}$ and ${}^{239}\mathrm{Pu}$, performed at a research reactor in National Research Centre Kurchatov Institute (KI). A discrepancy with the $\beta$ spectra measured at Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL) was observed, indicating a steady excess of the ILL ratio by the factor of $1.054\pm 0.002$. We find a value of the ratio between inverse beta decay cross section per fission for ${}^{235}\mathrm{U}$ and ${}^{239}\mathrm{Pu}$: ${(}^5{\sigma }_f{/}^9{\sigma }_f{)}_{KI}=1.45\pm 0.03$, and then we reevaluate the converted antineutrino spectra for ${}^{235}\mathrm{U}$ and ${}^{238}\mathrm{U}$. We conclude that the new predictions are consistent with the results of Daya Bay and STEREO experiments.

The superconformal index of the $\mathcal{N}=4$ $SU(N)$ supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory counts the $1/16$-BPS (Bogomol’nyi-Prasad-Sommerfield) states in this theory, and has been used via the $\mathrm{AdS}/\mathrm{CFT}$ correspondence to count black hole microstates of $1/16$-BPS black holes. On one hand, this index may be related to the Euclidean partition function of the theory on $S^3\times S^1$ with complex chemical potentials, which maps by the $\mathrm{AdS}/\mathrm{CFT}$ correspondence to a sum over Euclidean gravity solutions. On the other hand, the index may be expressed as a sum over solutions to Bethe Ansatz (BA) equations. We show that the solutions to the BA equations that are known to have a good large $N$ limit, for the case of equal chemical potentials for the two angular momenta, have a one-to-one mapping to (complex) Euclidean black hole solutions on the gravity side. This mapping captures both the leading contribution from the classical gravity action (of order $N^2$), as well as nonperturbative corrections in $1/N$, which on the gravity side are related to wrapped D3-branes. Some of the BA solutions map to orbifolds of the standard Euclidean black hole solutions (which obey exactly the same boundary conditions as the other solutions). A priori there are many more gravitational solutions than Bethe Ansatz solutions, but we show that, by considering the nonperturbative effects, the extra solutions are ruled out, leading to a precise match between the solutions on both sides.

Gravitational-wave cosmology began in 2017 with the observation of the gravitational waves emitted in the merger of two neutron stars, and the coincident observation of the electromagnetic emission that followed. Although only a 30% measurement of the Hubble constant was achieved, future observations may yield more precise measurements either through other coincident events or through cross correlation of gravitational-wave events with galaxy catalogs. Here, we implement a new way to measure the Hubble constant without an electromagnetic counterpart and through the use of the binary-Love relations. These relations govern the tidal deformabilities of neutron stars in an equation of state insensitive way. Importantly, the Love relations depend on the component masses of the binary in the source frame. Since the gravitational-wave phase and amplitude depend on the chirp mass in the observer (and hence redshifted) frame, one can in principle combine the binary-Love relations with the gravitational-wave data to directly measure the redshift, and thereby infer the value of the Hubble constant. We implement this approach in both real and synthetic data through a Bayesian parameter estimation study in a range of observing scenarios. We find that for the LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA design sensitivity era, this method results in a similar measurement accuracy of the Hubble constant to those of current-day, dark-siren measurements. For third-generation detectors, this accuracy improves to $\lesssim 10\%$ when combining measurements from binary neutron star events in the LIGO Voyager era, and to $\lesssim 2\%$ in the Cosmic Explorer era.

Motivated by its potential use in constraining the structure of 6D renormalization group flows, we determine the low energy dilaton-axion effective field theory of conformal and global symmetry breaking in 6D conformal field theories (CFTs). While our analysis is largely independent of supersymmetry, we also investigate the case of 6D superconformal field theories (SCFTs), where we use the effective action to present a streamlined proof of the 6D $a$-theorem for tensor branch flows, as well as to constrain properties of Higgs branch and mixed branch flows. An analysis of Higgs branch flows in some examples leads us to conjecture that in 6D SCFTs, an interacting dilaton effective theory may be possible even when certain four-dilaton four-derivative interaction terms vanish, because of large momentum modifications to four-point dilaton scattering amplitudes. This possibility is due to the fact that in all known $D>4$ CFTs, the approach to a conformal fixed point involves effective strings which are becoming tensionless.

High-order perturbative calculations for thermodynamic quantities in QCD are complicated by the physics of dynamical screening that affects the soft, long-wavelength modes of the system. Here, we provide details for the evaluation of this soft contribution to the next-to-next-to-next-to-leading order (${\mathrm{N}}^3\mathrm{LO}$) pressure of high-density, zero-temperature quark matter (QM), complementing our accompanying Letter [T. Gorda et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 127, 162003 (2021)]. Our calculation requires the determination of the pressure of the hard-thermal-loop effective theory to full two-loop order at zero temperature, which we go through in considerable detail. In addition to this, we comprehensively discuss the structure of the weak-coupling expansion of the QM pressure, and lay out a roadmap towards the evaluation of the contributions missing from a full ${\mathrm{N}}^3\mathrm{LO}$ result for this quantity.

This work studies the formation and growth of boson stars and their surrounding miniclusters by gravitational condensation using nonlinear dynamical numerical methods. Fully dynamical attractive and repulsive self-interactions are also considered for the first time. In the case of pure gravity, we numerically prove that the growth of boson stars inside halos slows down and saturates as has been previously conjectured, and detail its conditions. Self-interactions are included using the Gross-Pitaevskii-Poisson equations. We find that in the case of strong attractive self-interactions the boson stars can become unstable and collapse, in agreement with previous stationary computations. At even stronger coupling, the condensate fragments. Repulsive self-interactions, as expected, promote boson star formation, and lead to solutions with larger radii.

We consider the one-dimensional (1D) conformal field theory defined by the half-BPS Wilson line in planar $\mathcal{N}=4$ super Yang-Mills. Using analytic bootstrap methods we derive the four-point function of the superdisplacement operator at fourth order in a strong coupling expansion. Via AdS/CFT, this corresponds to the first three-loop correlator in anti–de Sitter ever computed. To do so we address the operator mixing problem by considering a family of auxiliary correlators. We further extract the anomalous dimension of the lightest nonprotected operator and find agreement with the integrability-based numerical result of Grabner, Gromov, and Julius.

We find constrained instantons in Einstein gravity with and without a cosmological constant. These configurations are not saddle points of the Einstein-Hilbert action, yet they contribute to nonperturbative processes in quantum gravity. In some cases we expect that they give the dominant contribution from spacetimes with certain fixed topologies. With negative cosmological constant, these metrics describe wormholes connecting two asymptotic regions. We find many examples of such wormhole metrics and for certain symmetric configurations establish their perturbative stability. We expect that the Euclidean versions of these wormholes encode the energy level statistics of anti–de Sitter black hole microstates. In the de Sitter and flat space settings we find new homogeneous and isotropic bounce and big bang/crunch cosmologies.

We present constraints on extensions to the $\mathrm{\Lambda }\mathrm{CDM}$ cosmological model from measurements of the $E$-mode polarization autopower spectrum and the temperature-$E$-mode cross-power spectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) made using 2018 SPT-3G data. The extensions considered vary the primordial helium abundance, the effective number of relativistic degrees of freedom, the sum of neutrino masses, the relativistic energy density and mass of a sterile neutrino, and the mean spatial curvature. We do not find clear evidence for any of these extensions, from either the SPT-3G 2018 dataset alone or in combination with baryon acoustic oscillation and Planck data. None of these model extensions significantly relax the tension between Hubble-constant, $H_0$, constraints from the CMB and from distance-ladder measurements using Cepheids and supernovae. The addition of the SPT-3G 2018 data to Planck reduces the square-root of the determinants of the parameter covariance matrices by factors of 1.3–2.0 across these models, signaling a substantial reduction in the allowed parameter volume. We also explore CMB-based constraints on $H_0$ from combined SPT, Planck, and ACT DR4 datasets. While individual experiments see some indications of different $H_0$ values between the $TT$, $TE$, and $EE$ spectra, the combined $H_0$ constraints are consistent between the three spectra. For the full combined datasets, we report $H_0=67.49\pm 0.53\mathrm{km}{\mathrm{s}}^{-1}{\mathrm{Mpc}}^{-1}$, which is the tightest constraint on $H_0$ from CMB power spectra to date and in $4.1\sigma$ tension with the most precise distance-ladder-based measurement of $H_0$. The SPT-3G survey is planned to continue through at least 2023, with existing maps of combined 2019 and 2020 data already having $\sim 3.5\times \mathrm{lower}$ noise than the maps used in this analysis.

We present a free field realization for the vertex operator algebra associated to the genus-two, class $\mathcal{S}$ superconformal field theory of type ${\mathfrak{a}}_1$. The free field realization is in the style of recent work by the authors, and is formulated in terms of a one-dimensional isotropic lattice vertex algebra along with two pairs of symplectic fermions. Our realization makes manifest an enhanced USp(4) outer automorphism group of the vertex operator (super)algebra that is inherited from the symplectic fermion system. This extends an SU(2) outer automorphism that has been observed in recent work of Kiyoshige and Nishinaka and significantly simplifies the structure of the algebra. Along the way, we also produce a realization of the generic subregular Drinfel’d-Sokolov $\mathcal{W}$ algebra of type ${\mathfrak{c}}_2$ in terms of the generic principle $\mathcal{W}$ algebra of type ${\mathfrak{c}}_2$ and a one-dimensional isotropic lattice vertex algebra.

Small-scale inhomogeneities in the baryon density around recombination have been proposed as a solution to the tension between local and global determinations of the Hubble constant. These baryon clumping models make distinct predictions for the cosmic microwave background anisotropy power spectra on small angular scales. We use recent data from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope to test these predictions. No evidence for baryon clumping is found, assuming a range of parametrizations for time-independent baryon density probability distribution functions. The inferred Hubble constant remains in significant tension with the SH0ES measurement.

Deep conceptual problems associated with classical black holes can be addressed in string theory by the “fuzzball” paradigm, which provides a microscopic description of a black hole in terms of a thermodynamically large number of regular, horizonless, geometries with much less symmetry than the corresponding black hole. Motivated by the tantalizing possibility to observe quantum gravity signatures near astrophysical compact objects in this scenario, we perform the first $3+1$ numerical simulations of a scalar field propagating on a large class of multicenter geometries with no spatial isometries arising from $\mathcal{N}=2$ four-dimensional supergravity. We identify the prompt response to the perturbation and the ringdown modes associated with the photon sphere, which are similar to the black-hole case, and the appearance of echoes at later time, which is a smoking gun of some structure at the horizon scale and of the regular interior of these solutions. The response is in agreement with an analytical model based on geodesic motion in these complicated geometries. Our results provide the first numerical evidence for the dynamical linear stability of fuzzballs, and pave the way for an accurate discrimination between fuzzballs and black holes using gravitational-wave spectroscopy.

Low-scale baryogenesis could be discovered at $B$ factories and the LHC. In the $B$-Mesogenesis paradigm [G. Elor, M. Escudero, and A. E. Nelson, Phys. Rev. D 99, 035031 (2019)], the $CP$-violating oscillations and subsequent decays of $B$ mesons in the early Universe simultaneously explain the origin of the baryonic and the dark matter of the Universe. This mechanism for baryo- and dark matter genesis from $B$ mesons gives rise to distinctive signals at collider experiments, which we scrutinize in this paper. We study $CP$-violating observables in the $B_q^0-{\overline{B}}_q^0$ system, discuss current and expected sensitivities for the exotic decays of $B$ mesons into a visible baryon and missing energy, and explore the implications of direct searches for a TeV-scale colored scalar at the LHC and in meson-mixing observables. Remarkably, we conclude that a combination of measurements at BABAR, Belle, Belle II, LHCb, ATLAS, and CMS can fully test $B$-Mesogenesis.

We investigate the impact of different assumptions in the modeling of one-loop galaxy bias on the recovery of cosmological parameters, as a follow-up of the analysis done in the first paper of the series at fixed cosmology. To carry out these tests we focus on the real-space galaxy-power spectrum from a set of three different synthetic galaxy samples whose clustering properties are meant to match the ones of the CMASS and LOWZ catalogs of BOSS and the SDSS Main Galaxy Sample. We investigate the relevance of allowing for either short range nonlocality or scale-dependent stochasticity by fitting the real-space galaxy autopower spectrum or the combination of galaxy-galaxy and galaxy-matter power spectrum. From a comparison among the goodness of fit (${\chi }^2$), unbiasedness of cosmological parameters (FoB), and figure of merit (FoM) of the model, we find that a simple four-parameter model (linear, quadratic, cubic nonlocal bias, and constant shot noise) with fixed quadratic tidal bias provides a robust modeling choice for the autopower spectrum of the three galaxy samples, up to $k_{\max }=0.3h{\mathrm{Mpc}}^{-1}$ and for an effective volume of $6h^{-3}{\mathrm{Gpc}}^3$. Instead, a joint analysis of the two observables fails at larger scales, and a model extension with either higher derivatives or scale-dependent shot noise is necessary to reach a similar $k_{\max }$, with the latter providing the most accurate and stable results. Throughout the majority of the paper, we fix the description of the nonlinear matter evolution using a hybrid perturbative-N-body approach, respresso, that was found in the first paper to be the closest performing to the measured matter spectrum. We also test the impact of different modeling assumptions based on perturbative approaches, such as galilean-invariant Renormalised Perturbation Theory (gRPT) and effective field theory (EFT). In all cases, we find the inclusion of scale-dependent shot noise to increase the range of validity of the model in terms of FoB and ${\chi }^2$. Interestingly, these model extensions with additional free parameters do not necessarily lead to an increase in the maximally achievable FoM for the cosmological parameters $(h,{\mathrm{\Omega }}_c{h}^2,A_s)$, which are generally consistent with those of the simpler model at smaller $k_{\max }$.

We develop a formalism to calculate the response of a model gravitational wave detector to a quantized gravitational field. Coupling a detector to a quantum field induces stochastic fluctuations (“noise”) in the length of the detector arm. The statistical properties of this noise depend on the choice of quantum state of the gravitational field. We characterize the noise for vacuum, coherent, thermal, and squeezed states. For coherent states, corresponding to classical gravitational configurations, we find that the effect of gravitational field quantization is small. However, the standard deviation in the arm length can be enhanced—possibly significantly—when the gravitational field is in a noncoherent state. The detection of this fundamental noise could provide direct evidence for the quantization of gravity and for the existence of gravitons.

Liquid argon time projection chambers (LArTPCs) are particle imaging detectors recording 2D or 3D images of trajectories of charged particles. Identifying points of interest in these images, namely, the initial and terminal points of track-like particle trajectories such as muons and protons, and the initial points of electromagnetic shower-like particle trajectories such as electrons and gamma rays, is a crucial step in identifying and analyzing these particles and impacts the inference of physics signals such as neutrino interaction. The Point Proposal Network is designed to discover these specific points of interest. The algorithm predicts with a subvoxel precision their spatial location, and also determines the category of the identified points of interest. Using as a benchmark the PILArNet public LArTPC data sample in which the voxel resolution is $3\mathrm{mm}/\mathrm{voxel}$, our algorithm successfully predicts 96.8% and 97.8% of 3D points within a distance of 3 and 10 voxels from the provided true point locations, respectively. For the predicted 3D points within 3 voxels of the closest true point locations, the median distance is found to be 0.25 voxels, achieving subvoxel-level precision. In addition, we report our analysis of the mistakes where our algorithm prediction differs from the provided true point positions by more than 10 voxels. Among the mistakes we visually scanned 50 events: 25 were due to the definition of true position location, 15 were legitimate mistakes where a physicist cannot visually disagree with the algorithm’s prediction, and 10 were genuine mistakes that we wish to improve in the future. Further, using these predicted points, we demonstrate a simple algorithm to cluster 3D voxels into individual track-like particle trajectories with a clustering efficiency, purity, and adjusted Rand index of 96%, 93%, and 91%, respectively.