In the context of tomographic cosmic shear surveys, there exists a nulling transformation of weak lensing observations (also called BNT transform) that allows us to simplify the correlation structure of tomographic cosmic shear observations, as well as to build observables that depend only on a localized range of redshifts and thus independent from the low-redshift/small-scale modes. This procedure renders possible accurate, and from-first-principles, predictions of the convergence and aperture mass one-point distributions (PDF). We here explore other consequences of this transformation on the (reduced) numerical complexity of the estimation of the joint PDF between nulled bins and demonstrate how to use these results to make theoretical predictions.

We study the evolution of the energy distribution and equation of state of the Universe from the end of inflation until the onset of either radiation domination (RD) or a transient period of matter domination (MD). We use both analytical techniques and lattice simulations. We consider two-field models where the inflaton $\mathrm{\Phi }$ has a monomial potential after inflation $V(\mathrm{\Phi })\propto |\mathrm{\Phi }-v{|}^p$ ($p\ge 2$) and is coupled to a daughter field $X$ through a quadratic-quadratic interaction $g^2{\mathrm{\Phi }}^2{X}^2$. We consider two situations, depending on whether the potential has a minimum at (i) $v=0$, or (ii) $v>0$. In the scenario ($i$), the final energy transferred to $X$ is independent of $g^2$ and entirely determined by $p$: it is negligible for $p<4$, and of order $\sim 50\%$ for $p\ge 4$. The system goes to MD at late times for $p=2$, while it goes to RD for $p>2$. In the later case, we can calculate exactly the number of $e$-folds until RD as a function of $g^2$, and hence predict accurately inflationary observables like the scalar tilt $n_s$ and the tensor-to-scalar ratio $r$. In the scenario (ii), the energy is always transferred completely to $X$ for $p>2$, as long as its effective mass $m_X^2=g^2(\mathrm{\Phi }-v{)}^2$ is not negligible. For $p=2$, the final ratio between the energy densities of $X$ and $\mathrm{\Phi }$ depends strongly on $g^2$. For all $p\ge 2$, the system always goes to MD at late times.

We present a new analytic model describing gravitational-wave emission in the postmerger phase of binary neutron star mergers. The model is described by a number of physical parameters that are related to various oscillation modes, quasilinear combination tones or nonlinear features that appear in the postmerger phase. The time evolution of the main postmerger frequency peak is taken into account and it is described by a two-segment linear expression. The effectiveness of the model, in terms of the fitting factor or, equivalently, the reduction in the detection rate, is evaluated along a sequence of equal-mass simulations of varying mass. We find that all parameters of the analytic model correlate with the total binary mass of the system. For high masses, we identify new spectral features originating from the nonlinear coupling between the quasiradial oscillation and the antipodal tidal deformation, the inclusion of which significantly improves the fitting factors achieved by the model. We can thus model the postmerger gravitational-wave emission with an analytic model that achieves high fitting factors for a wide range of total binary masses. Our model can be used for the detection and parameter estimation of the postmerger phase in upcoming searches with upgraded second-generation detectors, such as $\mathrm{aLIGO}+$ and $\mathrm{aVirgo}+$, with future, third-generation detectors (Einstein Telescope and Cosmic Explorer) or with dedicated, high-frequency detectors.

An $N$-element interferometer measures correlations among pairs of array elements. Closure invariants associated with closed loops among array elements are immune to multiplicative, element-based (“local”) corruptions that occur in these measurements. Till recently, it has been unclear how a complete set of independent invariants can be analytically determined. We view the local, element-based corruptions in copolar correlations as gauge transformations belonging to the gauge group $\mathrm{GL}(1,\mathbb{C})$. Closure quantities are then naturally gauge invariant. We use this to provide a simple and effective formalism and identify the complete set of independent closure invariants from copolar interferometric correlations using only quantities defined on $(N-1)(N-2)/2$ elementary and independent triangular loops. The $(N-1)(N-2)/2$ closure phases and $N(N-3)/2$ closure amplitudes (totaling $N^2-3N+1$ real invariants), familiar in astronomical interferometry, naturally emerge from this formalism, which unifies what has required separate treatments until now. We do not require autocorrelations but can easily include them if reliably measured. This unified view clarifies issues relating to noise and inference of object model parameters. It also allows us to extend the rule of parallel transport associated with Pancharatnam phase in optics to apply to amplitudes as well. The framework presented here extends to $\mathrm{GL}(2,\mathbb{C})$ for full polarimetric interferometry as presented in a companion paper, which generalizes and clarifies earlier work. Our findings are relevant to state of the art copolar and full polarimetric very long baseline interferometry measurements to determine features very near the event horizons of black holes at the centers of M87, Centaurus A, and the Milky Way.

We study anomalies of non-Abelian discrete symmetries; which part of non-Abelian group is anomaly free and which part can be anomalous. It is found that the anomaly-free elements of the group $G$ generate a normal subgroup $G_0$ of $G$ and the residue class group $G/G_0$, which becomes the anomalous part of $G$, is isomorphic to a single cyclic group. The derived subgroup $D(G)$ of $G$ is useful to study the anomaly structure. This structure also constrains the structure of the anomaly-free subgroup; the derived subgroup $D(G)$ should be included in the anomaly-free subgroup. We study the detail structure of the anomaly-free subgroup from the structure of the derived subgroup in various discrete groups. For example, when $G=S_n\simeq A_n⋊Z_2$ and $G=\mathrm{\Delta }(6n^2)\simeq \mathrm{\Delta }(3n^2)⋊Z_2$, in particular, $A_n$ and $\mathrm{\Delta }(3n^2)$ are at least included in the anomaly-free subgroup, respectively. This result holds in any arbitrary representations.

Electron beam fixed target experiments such as NA64 and LDMX use missing energy-momentum to detect the production of dark matter and other long-lived states. The most studied production mechanism is dark Bremsstrahlung through a vector mediator. In this work, we explore a complementary source of missing energy-momentum signals: Bremsstrahlung photons can convert to hard vector mesons in exclusive photoproduction processes, which then decay to dark matter or other invisible particles, such as neutrinos. We find that existing NA64 data can improve the leading constraints on invisible light vector meson decays, while a future run of LDMX could improve them by up to 5 orders of magnitude. For the examples of a dark photon and a $U(1{)}_B$ gauge boson mediator, accounting for meson decays substantially enhances these experiments’ sensitivity, especially to thermal relic dark matter of mass $m_{\chi }\gtrsim 0.1\mathrm{GeV}$.

We study a light thermal scalar dark matter (DM) model with a light scalar mediator mixed with the standard model Higgs boson, including both the theoretical bounds and the current experimental constraints. The thermal scalar DM with the mass below a few GeV is usually strongly constrained by the observation of cosmic microwave background and/or indirect detection experiments because the leading annihilation mode is S-wave. However, we find that two parameter regions remain, which are the resonant annihilation region and the forbidden annihilation region. For both cases, higher partial waves dominantly contribute to the annihilation at the freeze-out era, and the constraint from the cosmological observation is weaker. We consider typical cases of these regions quantitatively, mainly focusing on the mixing angle and the mass of the new particles. Finally, we also discuss the testability of this model in future experiments.

Asymptotically nonlocal field theories represent a sequence of higher-derivative theories whose limit point is a ghost-free, infinite-derivative theory. Here, we extend previous work on pure scalar and Abelian gauge theories to asymptotically nonlocal non-Abelian theories. In particular, we confirm that there is a limit in which the Lee-Wick spectrum can be decoupled, but where the hierarchy problem is resolved via an emergent nonlocal scale that regulates loop diagrams and that is hierarchically smaller than the lightest Lee-Wick resonance.

The nuclear medium effects are studied in the ${\nu }_{\tau }/{\overline{\nu }}_{\tau }$ interactions from nuclei in the deep inelastic scattering region and applied to the ${}^{40}\mathrm{Ar}$ nucleus to obtain the scattering cross sections in the energy region of the proposed DUNE experiment. The free nucleon structure functions [$F_{iN}(x,Q^2)$; ($i=1–5$)] have been calculated at the next-to-leading order using Martin–Motylinski–Harland-Lang–Thorne 2014 as well as the Coordinated Theoretical-Experimental Project on QCD parametrizations for parton distribution functions (PDFs) and including the effect of perturbative and nonperturbative QCD corrections [Ansari et al., Phys. Rev. D 102, 113007 (2020)]. These free nucleon structure functions are then convoluted with the nucleon spectral function in the nucleus to obtain the nuclear structure functions [$F_{iA}(x,Q^2)$; ($i=1–5$)]. The nucleon spectral function takes into account the Fermi motion and the binding energy of the nucleons as well as the nucleon correlations within the nucleus. These nuclear structure functions are then used to calculate the deep inelastic scattering cross sections. Moreover, the contribution of $\pi$ and $\rho$ mesons as well as the corrections due to the shadowing and antishadowing effects in the relevant kinematic region of the Bjorken variable $x$ are also included. The numerical results for the nuclear structure functions and scattering cross sections have been presented and compared with the results obtained in the phenomenological approach using nuclear PDFs from nCTEQ15 and nCTEQnu.

The most challenging and impactful uncertainties that future accelerator-based measurements of neutrino oscillations must overcome stem from our limited ability to model few-GeV neutrino-nucleus interactions. In particular, it is crucial to better understand the nuclear effects which can alter the final state topology and kinematics of neutrino interactions, inducing possible biases in neutrino energy reconstruction. The upgraded ND280 near detector of the T2K experiment will directly confront neutrino interaction uncertainties using a new suite of detectors with full polar angle acceptance, improved spatial resolutions, neutron detection capabilities and reduced tracking thresholds. In this manuscript we explore the physics sensitivity that can be expected from the upgraded detector, specifically focusing on the additional sensitivity to nuclear effects and how they can be constrained with future measurements of kinematic variables constructed using both outgoing lepton and nucleon kinematics.

By analyzing an $e^{+}{e}^{-}$ annihilation data sample with an integrated luminosity of $2.93{\mathrm{fb}}^{-1}$ taken at the center-of-mass energy of 3.773 GeV with the BESIII detector, we determine the absolute branching fractions of the hadronic decays $D^0\to K^{-}{\pi }^{+}\omega$, $D^0\to K_S^0{\pi }^0\omega$, and $D^{+}\to K_S^0{\pi }^{+}\omega$ to be $(3.392\pm 0.044_{\mathrm{stat}}\pm 0.085_{\mathrm{syst}})\%$, $(0.848\pm 0.046_{\mathrm{stat}}\pm 0.031_{\mathrm{syst}})\%$, and $(0.707\pm 0.041_{\mathrm{stat}}\pm 0.029_{\mathrm{syst}})\%$, respectively. The accuracy of the branching fraction measurement of the decay $D^0\to K^{-}{\pi }^{+}\omega$ is improved by a factor of seven compared to the world average value. The $D^0\to K_S^0{\pi }^0\omega$ and $D^{+}\to K_S^0{\pi }^{+}\omega$ decays are observed for the first time.

M-theory compactified on a $G_2$ manifold with resolved $E_8$ singularity is a promising candidate for a unified theory. The experimentally observed masses of quarks and charged leptons put a restriction on the moduli of the $G_2$ manifold. These moduli in turn uniquely determine the Dirac interactions of the neutrinos. In the paper, we explicitly compute the Dirac terms for neutrino mass matrix using the moduli from a localized model with resolved $E_8$ singularities on a $G_2$ manifold. This is a novel approach as the Dirac terms are not assumed but derived from the structure of quarks’ and charged leptons’ masses. Using known mass splittings and mixing angles of neutrinos, we show the acceptable region for Majorana terms. We also analyze the theoretical region for Majorana terms induced from the expectation values of right-handed neutrinos through the Kolda-Martin mechanism. The intersection of the two regions indicates a restriction on neutrino masses. In particular, the lightest neutrino must have small but nonzero mass. Moreover, this also puts constraints on possible Majorana contributions from Kähler potential and superpotential, which can be traced down to a restriction on the geometry. We conclude that the masses of the two heavier light neutrinos are about 0.05 eV and 0.009 eV (0.05 eV and 0.05 eV) for normal (inverted) hierarchy. In both hierarchies, we predict the light neutrinos are mostly Dirac type. Hence neutrinoless double-beta decay will be small. This is a testable result in a near future. Some bounds on heavy neutrinos are also derived.

For quantum gravity states associated with open spin network graphs, we study how the entanglement entropy of the boundary degrees of freedom (spins on open edges) is affected by the bulk data, specifically by its combinatorial structure and by the quantum correlations among intertwiner degrees of freedom. For a specific assignment of bulk edge spins and slightly entangled intertwiners, we recover the Ryu-Takayanagi formula (with a properly discrete geometric notion of area, thanks to the underlying quantum gravity formalism) and its corrections due to the entanglement entropy of the bulk state. We also show that the presence of a region with highly entangled intertwiners deforms the minimal-area surface, which is then prevented from entering that region when the entanglement entropy of the latter exceeds a certain bound. This entanglement-based mechanism leads thus to the formation of a black hole–like region in the bulk.

We use the machine learning technique to search the polytope which can result in an orientifold Calabi-Yau hypersurface and the “naive type IIB string vacua.” We show that neural networks can be trained to give a high accuracy for classifying the orientifold property and vacua based on the newly generated orientifold Calabi-Yau database with $h^{1,1}(X)\le 6$ [R. Altman, J. Carifio, X. Gao, and B. Nelson, Orientifold Calabi-Yau threefolds with divisor involutions and string landscape, arXiv:2111.03078]. This indicates the orientifold symmetry may already be encoded in the polytope structure. In the end, we try to use the trained neural networks model to go beyond the database and predict the orientifold signal of polytope for higher $h^{1,1}(X)$.

We study the influence of nonlinear terms quartic of the condensates on the phase structure of a holographic model with a multicondensate in the probe limit. We include one s-wave order and one p-wave order charged under the same U(1) gauge field in the holographic model and study the influence of the three quartic nonlinear terms with coefficients ${\lambda }_s$, ${\lambda }_p$ and ${\lambda }_{sp}$ on the phase structure. The quartic terms in action result in cubic nonlinear terms in equations of motion, which do not affect the critical points of a single condensate because the infinitesimal condensate value vanishes the nonlinear contributions. However, the quartic terms have a clear influence on the phase structure of systems containing multicondensates. We show the influence of each of the three parameters on the phase diagram with the other two set to zero, respectively. With these nonlinear terms, we get new power on tuning the phase structure of the holographic systems showing multicondensates, and realize a reentrant phase transition as an example.

We investigate the wave optical imaging of black holes with Hawking radiation. The spatial correlation function of Hawking radiation is expressed in terms of transmission and reflection coefficients for scalar wave modes and evaluated by numerically summing over angular quantum numbers for the Unruh-Hawking state of the Kerr-de Sitter black hole. Then, wave optical images of an evaporating black hole are obtained by the Fourier transformation of the spatial correlation function. For a short wavelength, the image of the black hole with the outgoing mode of the Unruh-Hawking state has the appearance of a star with its surface given by the photon sphere. It is found that interference between incoming modes from the cosmological horizon and reflected modes due to the scattering of the black hole can enhance brightness of images in the vicinity of the photon sphere. For a long wavelength, the entire field of view is bright, and the emission region of Hawking radiation cannot be identified.

The LISA Data Challenges Working Group within the LISA Consortium has started publishing datasets to benchmark, compare, and build LISA data analysis infrastructure as the Consortium prepares for the launch of the mission. We present our solution to the dataset from LISA Data Challenge (LDC) 1A containing a single massive black hole binary signal. This solution is built from a fully automated and graphics-processing-unit-accelerated pipeline consisting of three segments: a brute-force initial search, a refining search that uses the efficient likelihood computation technique of heterodyning (also called relative binning) to locate the maximum likelihood point, and a parameter estimation portion that also takes advantage of the speed of the heterodyning method. This pipeline takes tens of minutes to evolve from randomized initial parameters throughout the prior volume to a converged final posterior distribution. Final posteriors are shown for both datasets from LDC 1A: one noiseless data stream and one containing additive noise. A posterior distribution including higher harmonics is also shown for a self-injected waveform with the same source parameters as is used in the original LDC 1A dataset. This higher-mode posterior is shown in order to provide a more realistic distribution on the parameters of the source.

We construct metric perturbations of two families of isotropic expanding universes describing gravitational waves propagating through these universes. The waves are nonplanar and owe their wave front expansion solely to the expansion of the universes. The presence of this radiation leads to a small perturbation of the perfect fluid matter content of the universes by the appearance of an anisotropic stress. We then construct exact models of gravity waves in these universes. In this case the matter content of the models consists of the perfect fluid matter supplemented by anisotropic stress and lightlike matter traveling with the waves. Under appropriate conditions of approximation the lightlike matter can be neglected and the exact models coincide with the perturbative models.

It is well known that only the axial piece of the torsion couples minimally to fermions in a Riemann-Cartan geometry, while the other ones decouple. In this paper, we consider the Dirac field minimally coupled to a dynamical background with torsion and compute its contribution to the fermionic one-loop effective action. Such a contribution owns the topological nature since it can be linked with topological invariants from Riemann-Cartan spaces, like Nieh-Yan and Pontryagin (Chern-Pontryagin) terms. Furthermore, we propose a novel modified theory of gravity constructed by adding the aforementioned one-loop contribution to the Einstein-Cartan action. The modified field equations reduce to those ones of GR under certain circumstances, providing therefore trivial solutions. However, in particular, we find a nontrivial solution where the modified field equations do not reduce to the GR ones.