The role of symmetries in what concerns entanglement entropy has been extensively explored in the last years and revealed a profound connection with the quantum field theory’s algebraic structure. Recently, it was found that some universal contributions to the entanglement entropy and mutual information may be nonuniquely defined in theories with generalized symmetries. Here, we study this issue in detail in the particular case of the entanglement entropy of the Maxwell theory in ($2+1$) dimensions for rotationally symmetric regions. In this setup, the problem can be dimensionally reduced to a half-line. We find that the only difference between the reduced problem for the Maxwell field and the reduced scalar free field stems from the Fourier angular $n=0$ mode. This simplification allows us to check explicitly the many issues that characterize models with broken global symmetries. Namely, we manifestly show that the additive algebras break Haag duality, and single out the nonlocal operators that are responsible for the failure of this property. More interestingly, we present concrete lattice realizations that confirm that the logarithmic “universal” term of the Maxwell entanglement entropy for disks depends on the details of the algebra assignation. This ambiguity hinders the identification of possible topological contributions characteristic of models with generalized symmetries and tarnishes its universal character. We further calculate the Maxwell mutual information for two nearly complementary concentric disks. We obtain the expected universal contribution with a log-log dependence and check that, unlike entropy, this is stable. Accordingly, this supports mutual information as the appropriate probe to sense additivity-duality breaking and the consequent universal topological contributions.

Ultralight axions (ULAs) are promising dark matter candidates that can have a distinct impact on the formation and evolution of structure on nonlinear scales relative to the cold, collisionless dark matter (CDM) paradigm. However, most studies of structure formation in ULA models do not include the effects of self-interactions, which are expected to arise generically. Here, we study how the tidal evolution of solitons is affected by ULA self-interaction strength and sign. Specifically, using the pseudospectral solver UltraDark.jl, we simulate the tidal disruption of self-interacting solitonic cores as they orbit a ${10}^{11}{M}_{\odot }$ Navarro-Frenk-White CDM host halo potential for a range of orbital parameters, assuming a fiducial ULA particle mass of ${10}^{-22}\mathrm{eV}$. We find that repulsive (attractive) self-interactions significantly accelerate (decelerate) soliton tidal disruption. We also identify a degeneracy between the self-interaction strength and soliton mass that determines the efficiency of tidal disruption, such that disruption timescales are affected at the $\sim 50\%$ level for variations in the dimensionless ULA self-coupling from $\lambda =-{10}^{-92}$ to $\lambda ={10}^{-92}$.

Nonstandard self-interactions can alter the evolution of cosmological neutrinos, mainly by damping free streaming, which should leave traces in cosmological observables. Although overall effects are opposite to those produced by neutrino mass and a larger $N_{\mathrm{eff}}$, they cannot be totally canceled by these last. We harness cosmological data that includes cosmic microwave background from Planck 2018, BAO measurements, local $H_0$, Ly-$\alpha$, and SNIa, to constrain massive neutrino self-interactions with a very light scalar mediator. We find that the effective coupling constant, at the 95% C.L., should be $g_{\mathrm{eff}}<1.94\times {10}^{-7}$ for only Planck 2018 data and $1.97\times {10}^{-7}$ when $\mathrm{Planck}+\mathrm{BAO}$ are considered. This bound relaxes to $2.27\times {10}^{-7}$ ($2.3\times {10}^{-7}$) for $H_0$ ($H_0+\mathrm{SNe}+\mathrm{Ly}$-$\alpha$) data. Using the $\mathrm{Planck}+\mathrm{BAO}$ dataset, the $H_0$ tension lowers from $4.3\sigma$ (for $\mathrm{\Lambda }\mathrm{CDM}$) to $3.2\sigma$. The Akaike information criterion penalizes the self-interacting model due to its larger parameter space for Planck or $\mathrm{Planck}+\mathrm{BAO}$ data, but favors the interacting model when we use local $H_0$ measurements. A somewhat larger value for $H_0$ is preferred when we include the whole data pool, which comes accompanied with a larger value of $N_{\mathrm{eff}}$ and a more constricted bound on $\mathrm{\Sigma }{m}_{\nu }$.

If supersymmetry is broken in metastable vacua, it is not clear why we are now in there rather than supersymmetric vacua. Moreover, it is natural to expect that we were in supersymmetric vacua, which have higher symmetry than metastable vacua, in the early Universe. In this paper, we reexamine and improve the previous analysis on the cosmological evolution of the vacuum structure in the Intriligator, Seiberg, and Shih (ISS) model of metastable supersymmetry breaking by taking into account constraints on the reheating temperature, which is needed to avoid the overproduction of gravitinos. It turns out that the desired phase transition from a supersymmetric vacuum to a metastable vacuum is allowed only in the light gravitino mass region $m_{3/2}<4.7\mathrm{eV}$. This is achieved by either rolling down potential or tunneling processes depending on the reheating temperature. We show that when the tunneling processes are realized, abundant gravitational waves could be produced from collisions of runaway bubbles. The resulting gravitational waves are detectable with the future gravitational wave interferometers like LISA and DECIGO.

We present cosmological parameter constraints from a blinded joint analysis of galaxy-galaxy weak lensing, $\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Sigma }(R)$, and the projected correlation function, $w_{\mathrm{p}}(R)$, measured from the first-year HSC (HSC-Y1) data and SDSS spectroscopic galaxies over $0.15<z<0.7$. We use luminosity-limited samples as lens samples for $\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Sigma }$ and as large-scale structure tracers for $w_{\mathrm{p}}$ in three redshift bins, and use the HSC-Y1 galaxy catalog to define a secure sample of source galaxies at $z_{\mathrm{ph}}>0.75$ for the $\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Sigma }$ measurements, selected based on their photometric redshifts. As a theoretical template, we use the “minimal bias” model for the cosmological clustering observables for the flat $\mathrm{\Lambda }\mathrm{CDM}$ cosmological model. We compare the model predictions with the measurements in each redshift bin on large scales, $R>12$ and $8h^{-1}\mathrm{Mpc}$ for $\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Sigma }(R)$ and $w_{\mathrm{p}}(R)$, respectively, where the perturbation-theory-inspired model is valid. As part of our model, we account for the effect of lensing magnification bias on the $\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Sigma }$ measurements. When we employ weak priors on cosmological parameters, without cosmic microwave background (CMB) information, we find $S_8=0.936_{-0.086}^{+0.092}$, ${\sigma }_8=0.85_{-0.11}^{+0.16}$, and ${\mathrm{\Omega }}_{\mathrm{m}}=0.283_{-0.035}^{+0.12}$ (mode and 68% credible interval) for the flat $\mathrm{\Lambda }\mathrm{CDM}$ model. Although the central value of $S_8$ appears to be larger than those inferred from other cosmological experiments, we find that the difference is consistent with expected differences due to sample variance, and our results are consistent with the other results to within the statistical uncertainties. When combined with the Planck 2018 likelihood for the primary CMB anisotropy information ($\mathrm{TT},\mathrm{TE},\mathrm{EE}+\mathrm{lowE}$), we find $S_8=0.817_{-0.021}^{+0.022}$, ${\sigma }_8=0.892_{-0.056}^{+0.051}$, ${\mathrm{\Omega }}_{\mathrm{m}}=0.246_{-0.035}^{+0.045}$, and the equation-of-state parameter of dark energy, $w_{\mathrm{de}}=-1.28_{-0.19}^{+0.20}$ for the flat $w\mathrm{CDM}$ model, which is consistent with the flat $\mathrm{\Lambda }\mathrm{CDM}$ model to within the error bars.

The early dark energy (EDE) scenario aims to increase the value of the Hubble constant ($H_0$) inferred from cosmic microwave background (CMB) data over that found in the standard cosmological model ($\mathrm{\Lambda }\mathrm{CDM}$), via the introduction of a new form of energy density in the early Universe. The EDE component briefly accelerates cosmic expansion just prior to recombination, which reduces the physical size of the sound horizon imprinted in the CMB. Previous work has found that nonzero EDE is not preferred by Planck CMB power spectrum data alone, which yield a 95% confidence level (C.L.) upper limit $f_{\mathrm{EDE}}<0.087$ on the maximal fractional contribution of the EDE field to the cosmic energy budget. In this paper, we fit the EDE model to CMB data from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) data release 4. We find that a combination of ACT, large-scale Planck TT (similar to WMAP), Planck CMB lensing, and BAO data prefers the existence of EDE at $>99.7\%\mathrm{C}.\mathrm{L}.$: $f_{\mathrm{EDE}}=0.091_{-0.036}^{+0.020}$, with $H_0={70.9}_{-2.0}^{+1.0}\mathrm{km}/\mathrm{s}/\mathrm{Mpc}$ (both 68% C.L.). From a model-selection standpoint, we find that EDE is favored over $\mathrm{\Lambda }\mathrm{CDM}$ by these data at roughly $3\sigma$ significance. In contrast, a joint analysis of the full Planck and ACT data yields no evidence for EDE, as previously found for Planck alone. We show that the preference for EDE in ACT alone is driven by its TE and EE power spectrum data. The tight constraint on EDE from Planck alone is driven by its high-$\ell \mathrm{TT}$ power spectrum data. Understanding whether these differing constraints are physical in nature, due to systematics, or simply a rare statistical fluctuation is of high priority. The best-fit EDE models to ACT and Planck exhibit coherent differences across a wide range of multipoles in TE and EE, indicating that a powerful test of this scenario is anticipated with near-future data from ACT and other ground-based experiments.

The successful transition from core-collapse supernova simulations using classical neutrino transport to simulations using quantum neutrino transport will require the development of methods for calculating neutrino flavor transformations that mitigate the computational expense. One potential approach is the use of angular moments of the neutrino field, which has the added appeal that there already exist simulation codes which make use of moments for classical neutrino transport. Evolution equations for quantum moments based on the quantum kinetic equations can be straightforwardly generalized from the evolution of classical moments based on the Boltzmann equation. We present an efficient implementation of neutrino transformation using quantum angular moments in the free streaming, spherically symmetric bulb model. We compare the results against analytic solutions and the results from more exact multiangle neutrino flavor evolution calculations. We find that our moment-based methods employing scalar closures predict, with good accuracy, the onset of collective flavor transformations seen in the multiangle results. However in some situations they overestimate the coherence of neutrinos traveling along different trajectories. More sophisticated quantum closures may improve the agreement between the inexpensive moment-based methods and the multiangle approach.

We study the evolution of the doubly charmed state $T_{cc}^{+}$ in a hot hadron gas produced in the late stage of heavy-ion collisions. We use effective Lagrangians to calculate the thermally averaged cross sections of $T_{cc}^{+}$ production in reactions such as $D^{(*)}{D}^{(*)}\to T_{cc}^{+}\pi ,T_{cc}^{+}\rho$ and its absorption in the corresponding inverse processes. We then solve the rate equation to follow the time evolution of the $T_{cc}^{+}$ multiplicity and determine how it is affected by the considered reactions during the expansion of the hadronic matter. We compare the evolution of the $T_{cc}^{+}$ abundance treated as a hadronic $S$-wave molecule and as a tetraquark state. Our results show that the tetraquark yield increases by a factor of about 2 at freeze-out, but it is still almost 2 orders of magnitude smaller than the final yield of molecules formed from hadron coalescence. We also analyze the dependence of the yields with the system size, represented by $\mathcal{N}={[d{N}_{ch}/d\eta (\eta <0.5)]}^{1/3}$. We make predictions that can be confronted with data, when they are available.

We study vector-boson scattering of the physical, gauge-invariant states in a reduced standard-model setup on the lattice for various parameter sets. To this end, the phase shift in the scalar channel is determined using a Lüscher-type analysis. The results can be readily interpreted in terms of the Higgs properties and a reunitarized Fröhlich-Morchio-Strocchi analysis at the Born level. The only deviation appears for a Higgs mass below the elastic threshold, where we find a negative scattering length indicative of the bound-state nature of the physical scalar degree of freedom. We assess the possible implications for an experimental detection of the effect.

We study one pion emission decay of the first excited state of the nucleon with negative parity $N(1535)\equiv N^{*}$ in the holographic model of QCD. The excited state is described as a vibrational mode along the extra $z$ direction in the five-dimensional space-time of the model. We have obtained an analytic formula for the axial coupling of $g_A^{N{N}^{*}}$. The off diagonal axial coupling is obtained at the decaying pion momentum $|\mathit{k}|=448\mathrm{MeV}$ as $g_A^{N{N}^{*}}\sim 0.32$ and hence, a partial decay width ${\mathrm{\Gamma }}_{N^{*}\to \pi N}\sim 30\mathrm{MeV}$, which is smaller than but reasonably compared to the experimental data.

We investigate the inclusive emission in unpolarized proton collisions of a charm-flavored hadron in association with a Higgs boson, featuring large transverse momenta and produced with a large rapidity distance. Taking advantage of a narrow timing coincidence between the ATLAS detector and the future Forward Physics Facility ones, we study the behavior of cross sections and azimuthal correlations for ultraforward rapidities of the detected hadron. We provide evidence that the hybrid high-energy and collinear factorization, encoding the Balitsky-Fadin-Kuraev-Lipatov resummation of large energy logarithms and supplemented by collinear densities and fragmentation functions, offers a fair description of this process and comes out as an important tool to deepen our understanding of strong interactions in ultraforward production regimes.

We undertake the challenging task to reveal the properties of dressed light-quarks in the space- and time-like regions. For that aim, we solved the Dyson-Schwinger equation (DSE) in Minkowski space for the quark propagator in a QCD inspired model, focusing on the realization of dynamical chiral symmetry breaking in the large coupling regime. The DSE is considered in the quenched approximation within the rainbow-ladder truncation with a massive gluon and a Pauli-Villars term, which is used to tune the IR physics of the model. The solution of the DSE in Minkowski space is performed by resorting to the integral representation of the quark self-energy and propagator, which leads to a coupled set of closed self-consistent equations for the spectral densities, taking into account finite on-mass-shell renormalization. The parameters of the model are chosen such that the gluon mass scale is consistent with recent lattice QCD calculations, the Pauli-Villars mass is lowered down to about 1 GeV to concentrate strength in the infrared momentum region, and the coupling constant and renormalized mass are tuned to reproduce lattice QCD results for the quark mass function in the Landau gauge. Future application to study the pion consistently with dynamical chiral symmetry breaking within the Bethe-Salpeter framework with self-energies in Minkowski space is also delineated.

The pion cloud is important in nuclear physics and in a variety of low-energy hadronic phenomena. We argue that it is natural to expect it to also be important in lepton-proton deep inelastic scattering and Drell-Yan studies of proton structure. We compute the necessary consequences of the pion cloud in connection with the recent SeaQuest data. The effects are detailed by using the exact kinematics of the experiment. Good agreement with the measurements is obtained. Thus, the universality of pionic effects is understood.

In this paper we propose a strategy for discerning if new physics in the Wilson coefficient ${\mathcal{C}}_{9\mu }$ is dominantly lepton flavor universality violating or if it contains a sizable lepton flavor universal component (${\mathcal{C}}_9^{\mathrm{U}}$). Distinguishing among these two cases, for which the model independent fit of the related scenarios exhibits similar pulls with respect to the Standard Model, is crucial to advance our understanding of the $B$ anomalies. We first identify the origin of the degeneracy of these two cases and point out the key observables that can break it. In particular, while the observables measured so far that test lepton flavor universality exhibit similar dependencies to all the relevant Wilson coefficients, the forthcoming measurement of $Q_5=P_5^{\prime \mu }-P_5^{\prime e}$ is particularly sensitive to ${\mathcal{C}}_{9\mu }-{\mathcal{C}}_{9e}$. In fact, if $Q_5$ were found to be small (i.e., close to its Standard Model value), this would imply a small ${\mathcal{C}}_{9\mu }-{\mathcal{C}}_{9e}$ but a sizable ${\mathcal{C}}_9^{\mathrm{U}}$, given the preference of global fits for a large negative new physics contribution in ${\mathcal{C}}_{9\mu }$. We discuss the possible origins of ${\mathcal{C}}_9^{\mathrm{U}}$, in particular how it could originate from new physics. Here, a promising scenario that could even link $b\to s{\ell }^{+}{\ell }^{-}$ to $R_{D^{(*)}}$ is the one in which ${\mathcal{C}}_9^{\mathrm{U}}$ is generated from a tau loop via an off shell photon penguin diagram. This setup predicts the branching ratios of $B_s\to {\tau }^{+}{\tau }^{-}$ and $B\to K^{(*)}{\tau }^{+}{\tau }^{-}$ to lie within the reach of LHCb, CMS, and Belle II. Alternatively, in case of a nonobservation of these tauonic processes, we show that the most natural possibility to generate ${\mathcal{C}}_9^{\mathrm{U}}$ is a $Z^{\prime }$ with partially lepton flavor universal couplings.

The nature of a neutrino, whether it is a Dirac type or Majorana type, may be comprehensively probed using their quantum statistical properties. If the neutrino is a Majorana fermion, then by definition it is identical and indistinguishable from the corresponding antineutrino. When a Majorana neutrino and antineutrino are pair produced, the corresponding state has to obey the Pauli principle unlike in the Dirac case. We use this property to distinguish between the two cases using the process $B^0\to {\mu }^{-}{\mu }^{+}{\nu }_{\mu }{\overline{\nu }}_{\mu }$. We show that the two cases differ dramatically in a special kinematic scenario where, in the rest frame of the parent $B$ meson, the muons fly away back-to-back (i.e., fly with 3-momenta of equal magnitudes but opposite directions), and so do the neutrino and antineutrino. Unlike any other scenario, we know the energies and magnitudes of 3-momenta of both the neutrino and the antineutrino in this back-to-back configuration without even directly measuring them. This provides a way of avoiding the constraint imposed by the “practical Dirac-Majorana confusion theorem,” as one need not fully integrate over neutrino and antineutrino in this case. As a true signature of the universal principle of quantum statistics which does not depend on the size of the mass of the particle but its spin, the difference between Dirac and Majorana cases in this special kinematic configuration does survive independent of the neutrino mass as long as neutrino mass is nonzero. The analysis presented here is applicable immediately to several other processes with the same final state as in the case of $B^0$ decay without any major change.

Recent studies have revealed intriguing similarities between the contribution of wormholes to the gravitational path integral and the phenomenon of replica symmetry breaking observed in spin glasses and other disordered systems. Interestingly, these configurations may also be important for the explanation of the information paradox of quantum black holes. Motivated by these developments, we investigate the thermodynamic properties of a $PT$-symmetric system composed of two random non-Hermitian Hamiltonians with no explicit coupling between them. After performing ensemble averaging, we identify numerically and analytically a robust first-order phase transition in the free energy of two models with quantum chaotic dynamics: the elliptic Ginibre ensemble of random matrices and a non-Hermitian Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model. The free energy of the Ginibre model is temperature independent in the low-temperature phase. The SYK model has similar behavior for sufficiently low temperature, and then it experiences a possible continuous phase transition to a phase with a temperature-dependent free energy before the first-order transition takes place at a higher temperature. We identify the order parameter of the first-order phase transition and obtain analytical expressions for the critical temperature. The mechanism behind the transition is the existence of replica symmetry breaking configurations coupling left and right replicas that control the low-temperature limit of the partition function. We speculate that quantum chaos may be necessary for the observed dominance of off-diagonal replica symmetry breaking configurations in the low-temperature limit.

We demonstrate how observables of slowly rotating neutron stars can be used to constrain the nuclear equation of state. By building a Bayesian framework, we demonstrate how combining different types of neutron star measurements, motivated by the upcoming multimessenger era, provide informative posterior distributions of commonly used equation-of-state parametrizations. Exemplarily, we choose the Read et al. four parameter model that is widely used to represent realistic equations of states in neutron star physics. Since future observational campaigns will not only provide mass, radius, and rotation rate measurements, but also neutron star oscillation modes, a unified framework to analyze the joint knowledge becomes necessary. While several attempts exist in the literature, the here-presented framework explicitly takes into account rotational effects by using state-of-the-art universal relations for their oscillation spectra. To demonstrate its performance, we apply it to observables that take into account rotational effects to the best possible precision and use our independent model for the reconstruction. Only a few high precision neutron star measurements are required to put tight constraints on the underlying equation of state.

The collision of two equilibrium ground state solutions of the Schrödinger-Poisson (SP) system, in orthogonal states, is proposed as a formation mechanism of mixed state solutions of the SP system with spherical and first dipolar components. The collisions are simulated by solving numerically the SP system for two orthogonal states, considering head-on encounters, and using various mass ratios between the initial configurations with different head-on momentum. The results indicate that the less massive of the configurations pinches off the more massive one, and redistributes its density along the axis of collision. The averaged in time density of the two states resembles the distribution of matter of bistate equilibrium configurations with monopolar and dipolar contributions.

Scalar field dark matter (SFDM) has become a popular alternative to standard collisionless cold dark matter (CDM), because of its potential to resolve the small-scale problems that has plagued the latter for decades. Typically, SFDM consists of a single species of bosons of ultralight mass, $m\gtrsim {10}^{-22}\mathrm{eV}/{\mathrm{c}}^2$, in a state of Bose-Einstein condensation, hence also called BEC-DM. In this paper, we continue the study of $\mathrm{\Lambda }\mathrm{SFDM}$ cosmologies, which differ from $\mathrm{\Lambda }\mathrm{CDM}$ in that CDM is replaced by SFDM, by calculating the evolution of the background Universe, as well as the formation of linear perturbations, focusing on scalar modes. We consider models with complex scalar field, where we include a strongly repulsive, quartic self-interaction (SI), also called SFDM-TF, as well as complex-field models without SI, referred to as fuzzy dark matter (FDM). To this end, we modify the Boltzmann code class, in order to incorporate the physics of complex SFDM which has as one of its characteristics that it leads to a non-standard, early expansion history, where complex SFDM (or FDM) dominates over all the other cosmic components, even over radiation, in the very early Universe, because its equation of state is maximally stiff. We calculate various observables, such as the temperature anisotropies of the cosmic microwave background, the matter power spectra and the unconditional Press-Schechter halo mass function for various models, and thereby expand previous findings in the literature that were limited either to the background, or to a semianalytical approach to SFDM density perturbations neglecting the early stiff phase. We also compare our results of each, SFDM and FDM, with ultralight axion models (ULAs) without SI and modeled as real fields. Thereby, we characterize in detail the differences between $\mathrm{\Lambda }\mathrm{SFDM}$, $\mathrm{\Lambda }\mathrm{FDM}$ and $\mathrm{\Lambda }\mathrm{ULA}$ in terms of their background evolution and their linear structure growth. Our calculations confirm previous results of recent literature, implying that SFDM models with $\gtrsim$ kpc-size halo cores are disfavored, which questions the ability of SFDM to explain the small-scale problems on dwarf-galactic scales. Furthermore, we find that the gain in kinetic energy of SFDM due to the phase of the complex field leads to marked differences between SFDM/FDM versus ULAs. The mild falloff in the SFDM matter power spectrum toward high $k$ is explained by an evolution history of perturbations similar to that of CDM, although based on different physical effects, namely the rapidly shrinking Jeans mass for SFDM as opposed to the Meszaros effect for CDM. In addition, we find that the sharp cutoff in the matter power spectrum of ULAs is also followed by a mild falloff, albeit at very small power.

Active galactic nuclei (AGN) are a promising source for high-energy astrophysical neutrinos (HEANs). In 2024, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory (Rubin) will begin to observe $\gtrsim 10\mathrm{million}$ AGN with a regular and high cadence. Here, we evaluate the capacity of Rubin, in tandem with various current and upcoming neutrino telescopes, to establish AGN as HEAN emitters. To do so, we assume that the neutrino luminosity from any given AGN at any given time is proportional to the electromagnetic luminosity. We then estimate the error with which this fraction can be measured through spatial and temporal cross-correlation of Rubin light curves with IceCube, KM3NeT, and Bakail-GVD. We find that it may be possible to detect AGN contributions at the $\sim 3\sigma$ level to the HEAN flux even if these AGN contribute only $\sim 10\%$ of the HEAN flux. The bulk of this information comes from spatial correlations, although the temporal information improves the sensitivity a bit. The results also imply that if an angular correlation is detected with high signal-to-noise, there may be prospects to detect a correlation between AGN variability and neutrino arrival times. The small HEAN fraction estimated here to be accessible to the entirety of the Rubin AGN sample suggests that valuable information on the character of the emitting AGN may be obtained through similar analyses on different subpopulations of AGN.