The observation of coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering ($\mathrm{CE}\nu \mathrm{NS}$) provides us opportunities to explore a wide class of new physics. In the Standard Model (SM), the $\mathrm{CE}\nu \mathrm{NS}$ process arises from the vector and axial-vector neutral currents through the exchange of $Z$ bosons, and the axial-vector current contribution turns out to be subdominant. It is, thus, natural to consider the extra contributions to $\mathrm{CE}\nu \mathrm{NS}$ from more generic new physics beyond the SM with (axial-)vector interactions associated with a new vector mediator $Z^{\prime }$. Besides ordinary $\mathrm{CE}\nu \mathrm{NS}$, the active neutrinos can convert into a new exotic fermion $\chi$ through the process $\nu N\to \chi N$ mediated by $Z^{\prime }$ without violating coherence. It would be interesting to consider the implication of this conversion for the new fermion sector beyond the SM. We consider the framework of a simplified neutrino model in which a new Dirac fermion $\chi$ interacts with active neutrinos and a leptophobic vector mediator $Z^{\prime }$. We evaluate both the tree-level and loop-level contributions to $\mathrm{CE}\nu \mathrm{NS}$, and, in particular, the loop diagrams produce active neutrino elastic scattering process $\nu N\to \nu N$ with the fermion $\chi$ inside the loops. When the interaction between $Z^{\prime }$ and the SM quarks is vector type and axial-vector type, the $\mathrm{CE}\nu \mathrm{NS}$ processes are, respectively, dominated by the tree-level and loop-level contributions. We investigate the constraints on the model parameters by fitting to the COHERENT data, assuming a wide range of $m_{\chi }$. The parameter space with $m_{\chi }$ larger than the maximal energy of incoming neutrinos can be constrained by including the loop-level contribution. More importantly, the inclusion of loop diagrams can place a constraint on axial-vector interaction whose tree-level process is absent in the coherent neutrino-nucleus scattering.

We propose a factorized approach to QED radiative corrections for inclusive and semi-inclusive deep-inelastic scattering to systematically account for QED and QCD radiation contributions to both processes on equal footing. This is achieved by utilizing factorization to resum logarithmically enhanced QED radiation into universal lepton distribution and fragmentation (or jet) functions. Numerical simulations suggest that the QED effects induced by the rotational distortion of the hadron transverse momentum, arising from the mismatch between the experimental Breit frame and the true photon-hadron frame, can be as large as 50% for moderate $Q$, and become increasingly important for large transverse momenta. Our framework provides a uniform treatment of radiative effects for extracting three-dimensional hadron structure from high-energy lepton-hadron scattering at current and future facilities, such as the Electron-Ion Collider.

Motivated by the recent discovery of the first hidden charm pentaquark state with strangeness $P_{cs}(4459)$ by the LHCb Collaboration, we study the likely existence of a three-body ${\mathrm{\Sigma }}_c\overline{D}\overline{K}$ bound state, which shares the same minimal quark content as $P_{cs}(4459)$. The ${\mathrm{\Sigma }}_c\overline{D}$ and $DK$ interactions are determined by reproducing $P_c(4312)$ and $D_{s0}^{*}(2317)$ as ${\mathrm{\Sigma }}_c\overline{D}$ and $\overline{D}\overline{K}$ molecules, respectively, while the ${\mathrm{\Sigma }}_c\overline{K}$ interaction is constrained by chiral effective theory. We indeed find a three-body bound state by solving the Schrödinger equation using the Gaussian expansion method, which can be viewed as an excited hidden charm exotic state with strangeness, $P_{cs}^{*}(4739)$, with $I(J^P)=1(1/2^{+})$ and a binding energy of ${77.8}_{-10.3}^{+25}\mathrm{MeV}$. We further study its strong decays via triangle diagrams and show that its partial decay widths into $D{\mathrm{\Xi }}_c^{\prime }$ and $D_s^{*}{\mathrm{\Sigma }}_c$ are of a few tens of MeV, with the former being dominant.

In this work we present the results from numerical simulations of an interacting ensemble of instanton dyons in the $SU(3)$ gauge group with $N_f=2$ flavors of massless quarks. Dynamical quarks are included via the effective interactions induced by the fermionic determinant evaluated in the subspace of topological zero modes. The eigenvalue spectrum of the Dirac operator is studied at different volumes to extract the chiral condensate and eigenvalue gap, with both observables providing consistent values of the chiral transition temperature $T_c$. We find that a sufficient density of dyons is responsible for generating the confining potential and breaking the chiral symmetry, both of which are compatible with second-order transitions.

Stimulated by the newly reported doubly charmed tetraquark state $T_{cc}^{+}$ by LHCb, we carry out a systematic investigation of the $S$-wave interactions between the charmed meson ($D$, $D^{*}$) in $H$-doublets and the charmed meson ($D_1$, $D_2^{*}$) in $T$-doublets by adopting the one-boson exchange model. Both the $S$-$D$ wave mixing effect and the coupled channel effect are taken into account. By performing a quantitative calculation, we suggest that the $S$-wave $D^{*}{D}_1$ states with $I(J^P)=0(0^{-},1^{-})$ and the $S$-wave $D^{*}{D}_2^{*}$ states with $I(J^P)=0(1^{-},2^{-})$ should be viewed as the most promising candidates of the doubly charmed molecular tetraquark states, and the $S$-wave $D{D}_1$ state with $I(J^P)=0(1^{-})$ and the $S$-wave $D{D}_2^{*}$ state with $I(J^P)=0(2^{-})$ are the possible doubly charmed molecular tetraquark candidates. With the accumulation of experimental data at Run III and after a High-Luminosity LHC upgrade, these predicted doubly charmed molecular tetraquark states can be accessible at LHCb in the near future.

MINERvA presents a new analysis of inclusive charged-current neutrino interactions on a hydrocarbon target. We report single and double-differential cross sections in muon transverse and longitudinal momentum. These measurements are compared to neutrino interaction generator predictions from GENIE, NuWro, GiBUU, and NEUT. In addition, comparisons against models with different treatments of multinucleon correlations, nuclear effects, resonant pion production, and deep inelastic scattering are presented. The data recorded corresponds to $10.61\times {10}^{20}$ protons on target with a peak neutrino energy of approximately 6 GeV. The higher energy and larger statistics of these data extend the kinematic range for model testing beyond previous MINERvA inclusive charged-current measurements. The results are not well modeled by several generator predictions using a variety of input models.

This paper aims at investigating the nonperturbative functional renormalization group for tensorial group field theories with nontrivial kinetic action and closure constraint. We consider the quartic melonic just-renormalizable $[U(1){]}^6$ model and show that due to this closure constraint the first order Ward-Takahashi identity takes the trivial form as for the models with propagators proportional to identity. We then construct the new version of the effective vertex expansion applicable to this class of models, which in particular allows us to close the hierarchical structure of the flow equations in the melonic sector. As a consequence, there are no additional constraints on the flow equations, and then we can focus on the existence of the physical Wilson-Fisher fixed-points in the symmetric phase.

We look for UV fixed points of non-Abelian $SU(n_c)$ gauge theories in $4+2\epsilon$ dimensions with $n_f$ Dirac fermions in the fundamental representation, using the available five-loop $\overline{\mathrm{MS}}$ $\beta$-function and employing Padé-Borel resummation techniques and Padé approximants to the series expansion in $\epsilon$. We find evidence for a five-dimensional UV fixed point for $SU(2)$ theories with $n_f\le 4$ and pure $SU(n_c)$ theories for $n_c\le 4$. We also compute the anomalous dimensions $\gamma$ and ${\gamma }_g$ of respectively the fermion mass bilinear and the gauge kinetic term operator at the UV fixed point.

We demonstrate that the positive frequency modes for a complex scalar field in constant electric field (Schwinger modes), in three different gauges, can be represented as exact Lorentzian worldline path integral amplitudes. Although the mathematical forms of the mode functions differ in each gauge, we show that a simple prescription for Lorentzian worldlines’ boundary conditions dispenses the Schwinger modes in all three gauges (that we considered) in a unified manner. Following that, using our formalism, we derive the exact Bogoliubov coefficients and, hence, the particle number, without appealing to the well-known connection formulas for parabolic cylinder functions. This result is especially relevant in view of the fact that in a general electromagnetic field configuration, one does not have the luxury of closed-form solutions. We argue that the real-time worldline path integral approach may be a promising alternative in such nontrivial cases. We also demonstrate, using Picard-Lefschetz theory, how the so-called worldline instantons emerge naturally from relevant saddle points that are complex.

In this study we present evolving wormhole configurations in third-order Lovelock gravity and investigate the possibility that these solutions satisfy the energy conditions. Using a generalized Friedmann-Robertson-Walker spacetime, we derive evolving wormhole geometries by considering a constraint on the Ricci scalar. In standard cosmological models, the Ricci scalar is independent of the radial coordinate $r$ and is only a function of time. We use this property to introduce dynamic wormhole solutions expanding in an inflationary cosmological background and explore the effects of higher-order Lovelock terms on the dynamics of such wormholes. Our analysis shows that for suitable third-order Lovelock coefficients, there are wormhole solutions that respect the weak energy condition (WEC). In addition to this, we also present other wormhole solutions that satisfy the WEC throughout their respective evolution.

Motivated by electromagnetic-field confinement due to plasma near accreting black holes, we continue our exploration of the linear dynamics of an electromagnetic field propagating in curved spacetime in the presence of plasma by including three effects that were neglected in our previous analysis: collisions in the plasma, thermal corrections, and the angular momentum of the background black hole spacetime. We show that: (i) the plasma-driven long-lived modes survive in a collisional plasma except when the collision timescale is unrealistically small; (ii) thermal effects, which might be relevant for accretion disks around black holes, do not affect the axial long-lived modes; (iii) in the case of a spinning black hole the plasma-driven modes become superradiantly unstable at the linear level; (iv) the polar sector in the small-frequency regime admits a reflection point due to the resonant properties of the plasma. Dissipative effects such as absorption, formation of plasma waves, and nonlinear dynamics play a crucial role in the vicinity of this resonant point.

We show that kinematics of charged particles allows us to model the growth of particles’ energy by consecutive particle splits, once a spherical mirror as a perfectly reflective boundary is placed outside a charged black hole. We consider a charged version of the Penrose process, in which a charged particle decays into two fragments, one of them has negative energy and the other has positive energy that is larger than that of the parent particle. The confinement system with the mirror makes the particles’ energy amplified each time a split of the parent particle occurs. Thus, the energy is a monotonically increasing function of time. However, the energy does not increase unboundedly, but rather asymptotes to a certain finite value, implying no instability of the system in this respect.

The Minkowski functionals are useful statistics to quantify the morphology of various random fields. They have been applied to numerous analyses of geometrical patterns, including various types of cosmic fields, morphological image processing, etc. In some cases, including cosmological applications, small deviations from the Gaussianity of the distribution are of fundamental importance. Analytic formulas for the expectation values of Minkowski functionals with small non-Gaussianity have been derived in limited cases to date. We generalize these previous works to derive an analytic expression for expectation values of Minkowski functionals up to second-order corrections of non-Gaussianity in a space of general dimensions. The derived formula has sufficient generality to be applied to any random fields with weak non-Gaussianity in a statistically homogeneous and isotropic space of any dimensions.

We present new observational constraints on the elastic scattering of dark matter with electrons for dark matter masses between 10 keV and 1 TeV. We consider scenarios in which the momentum-transfer cross section has a power-law dependence on the relative particle velocity, with a power-law index $n\in \{-4,-2,0,2,4,6\}$. We search for evidence of dark matter scattering through its suppression of structure formation. Measurements of the cosmic microwave background temperature, polarization, and lensing anisotropy from Planck 2018 data and of the Milky Way satellite abundance measurements from the Dark Energy Survey and Pan-STARRS1 show no evidence of interactions. We use these datasets to obtain upper limits on the scattering cross section, comparing them with exclusion bounds from electronic recoil data in direct detection experiments. Our results provide the strongest bounds available for dark matter–electron scattering derived from the distribution of matter in the Universe, extending down to sub-MeV dark matter masses, where current direct detection experiments lose sensitivity.

Scalar fields with an energy density dominated by its kinetic part may have played a relevant role in the very early stages of the Universe. Compared to the standard inflationary paradigm, they may lead to modifications in observable quantities, e.g., the anisotropies found in the cosmic microwave background. Kinetically dominated regimes arise in classical fast-roll scenarios as well as in quantum bouncing cosmologies. For instance, kinetic dominance is typical in interesting preinflationary phases of loop quantum cosmology. In this work, we analyze the leading-order effects that the presence of a scalar field potential causes on the primordial cosmological perturbations in these kinetically dominated epochs. These effects can be grouped in two sets, namely, those that affect the effective mass of the perturbations and those that affect the choice of their vacuum state. The effective mass is modified directly by terms that include the potential, but also indirectly by the change in the background dynamics and the relation between the parameterization of these dynamics and the conformal time, usually employed to describe the evolution of the perturbations. On the other hand, away from de Sitter inflation, the Bunch-Davies state is no longer the most natural vacuum at all scales. Recent proposals suggest to modify it by carrying out certain Hamiltonian diagonalization with a suitable asymptotic behavior at large wave number scales. Both this diagonalization condition and the imposed asymptotic behavior depend on the effective mass of the perturbations, and therefore the selected vacuum state varies in the presence of the scalar field potential.

We present forecasted cosmological constraints from combined measurements of galaxy cluster abundances from the Simons Observatory and galaxy clustering from a DESI-like experiment on two well-studied modified gravity models, the chameleon-screened Hu-Sawicki $f(R)$ model and the nDGP braneworld Vainshtein model. A Fisher analysis is conducted using ${\sigma }_8$ constraints derived from thermal Sunyaev-Zel’dovich (tSZ) selected galaxy clusters as well as linear and quasilinear redshift-space 2-point galaxy correlation functions. We find that the cluster abundances drive the constraints on the nDGP model while $f(R)$ constraints are led by galaxy clustering. The two tracers of the cosmological gravitational field are found to be complementary, and their combination significantly improves constraints on the $f(R)$ in particular in comparison to each individual tracer alone. For a model of $f(R)$ with a general relativity (GR) fiducial case ($f_{R0}=0$), we find a $2\text{−}\sigma$ upper limit of $f_{R0}\le 5.68\times {10}^{-7}$. For the well-studied log-based fiducial parameter value in $f(R)$, ${\log }_{10}(f_{R0})=-5$, paired with the parameter value $n=1$, we find combined $1\text{−}\sigma$ constraints of $\sigma ({\log }_{10}(f_{R0}))=0.12$ and $\sigma (n)=0.36$. For the nDGP model with fiducial $n_{\mathrm{nDGP}}=1$ we find $\sigma (n_{\mathrm{nDGP}})=0.087$. Our results present the exciting potential to utilize upcoming galaxy and CMB survey data available in the near future to discern and/or constrain cosmic deviations from GR.

We compute the cosmological boost factor at high redshifts of $z=10–100$ by integrating the nonlinear matter power spectrum measured from high-resolution cosmological $N$-body simulations. An accurate boost factor is required to estimate the energy injection from dark matter annihilation, which may affect the cosmological reionization process. We combined various box-size simulations (side lengths of 1 kpc–10 Mpc) to cover a wide range of scales, i.e., $k=1–{10}^7{\mathrm{Mpc}}^{-1}$. The boost factor is consistent with the linear theory prediction at $z\gtrsim 50$ but strongly enhanced at $z\lesssim 40$ as a result of nonlinear matter clustering. Although dark matter free-streaming damping was imposed at $k_{\mathrm{fs}}={10}^6{\mathrm{Mpc}}^{-1}$ in the initial power spectrum, the damping disappears at later times of $z\lesssim 40$ as a result of the power transfer from large to small scales. Because the simulations do not explore very small-scale clustering at $k>{10}^7{\mathrm{Mpc}}^{-1}$, our result is a lower bound on the boost factor at $z\lesssim 40$. A simple fitting function of the boost factor is also presented.

In this work, we extend our previous study of the bulk viscosity of hot and dense $npe$ matter induced by the Urca processes in the neutrino trapped regime to $npe\mu$ matter by adding the muonic Urca processes as well as the purely leptonic electroweak processes involving electron-muon transition. The nuclear matter is modeled in a relativistic density functional approach with two different parametrizations which predict neutrino dominated matter (DDME2 model) and antineutrino dominated matter (NL3 model) at temperatures for which neutrinos/antineutrinos are trapped. In the case of neutrino-dominated matter, the main equilibration mechanism is lepton capture, whereas in the case of antineutrino-dominated matter this is due to neutron decay. We find that the equilibration rates of Urca processes are higher than that of the pure leptonic processes, which implies that the Urca-process-driven bulk viscosity can be computed with the leptonic reactions assumed to be frozen. We find that the bulk viscosity decreases with temperature as $\zeta \sim T^{-2}$ at moderate temperatures. At high temperatures this scaling breaks down by sharp drops of the bulk viscosity close to the temperature where the proton fraction is density-independent and the matter becomes scale-invariant. This occurs also when the matter undergoes a transition from the antineutrino-dominated regime to the neutrino-dominated regime where the bulk viscosity attains a local maximum. We also estimate the bulk viscous dissipation timescales and find that these are in the $\mathrm{range}\gtrsim 1\mathrm{s}$ for temperatures above the neutrino trapping temperature. These timescales would be relevant only for long-lived objects formed in binary neutron star mergers and hot proto-neutron stars formed in core-collapse supernovas.

The scattering of light dark matter off thermal electrons inside the Sun produces a “fast” subcomponent of the dark matter flux that may be detectable in underground experiments. We update and extend previous work by analyzing the signatures of dark matter candidates which scatter via light mediators. Using numerical simulations of the dark matter-electron interaction in the solar interior, we determine the energy spectrum of the reflected flux, and calculate the expected rates for direct detection experiments. We find that large Xenon-based experiments (such as XENON1T) provide the strongest direct limits for dark matter masses below a few MeV, reaching a sensitivity to the effective dark matter charge of $\sim {10}^{-9}e$.