When one spacetime dimension is compactified on $S^1$, QCD exhibits a chiral phase transition at some critical radius. When we further turn on a background $\theta$ term which depends on the $S^1$ compactified coordinate, a topological ordered phase appears at low energy via the winding of $\theta$. We discuss what kind of theories can describe the physics near the critical point by requiring the matching of topological field theories in the infrared. As one of the possibilities, we propose a scenario where the $\rho$ and $\omega$ mesons form a $U(N_f)$ gauge theory near the critical point. In the phase where chiral symmetry is restored, they become the dual gauge boson of the gluon related by the level-rank duality between the three-dimensional gauge theories $SU(N{)}_{N_f}$ and $U(N_f{)}_{-N}$.

We extend the fixed-charge semiclassical approach to compute conformal field theory (CFT) data for generic non-Abelian Higgs dynamics by also identifying the proper family of related operators. As an example, we consider the $\mathrm{U}(\mathrm{N})\times \mathrm{U}(\mathrm{N})$ non-Abelian Higgs theory in four minus epsilon dimensions. We observe that the semiclassical method and state-operator correspondence can be used for complex CFTs, which are naturally related to walking dynamics.

In the present paper, we investigate the influence of a grounded perfectly conducting surface on the photon self-energy of a $2+1\mathrm{D}$ system of massless Dirac fermions, whose electron interaction is described by pseudoquantum electrodynamics. We calculate the temporal component of the polarization tensor up to 2-loop perturbation order in the presence of the conducting surface and, applying the Kubo formula, we obtain the longitudinal and optical conductivities of such system. When the distance between the system and the plate tends to infinity, we recover the correspondent results found in the literature. Since pseudoquantum electrodynamics proved to give a good description of the transport properties of graphene, our results can be useful as an alternative way to control the longitudinal and optical conductivities of this material.

Black hole-neutron star (BHNS) mergers are thought to be sources of gravitational waves (GWs) with coincident electromagnetic (EM) counterparts. To further probe whether these systems are viable progenitors of short gamma-ray bursts (SGRBs) and kilonovas, and how one may use (the lack of) EM counterparts associated with LIGO/Virgo candidate BHNS GW events to sharpen parameter estimation, we study the impact of neutron star spin in BHNS mergers. Using dynamical spacetime magnetohydrodynamic simulations of BHNSs initially on a quasicircular orbit, we survey configurations that differ in the BH spin ($a_{\mathrm{BH}}/M_{\mathrm{BH}}=0$ and 0.75), the NS spin ($a_{\mathrm{NS}}/M_{\mathrm{NS}}=-0.17$, 0, 0.23, and 0.33), and the binary mass ratio ($q\equiv M_{\mathrm{BH}}:M_{\mathrm{NS}}=3:1$ and $5:1$). The general trend we find is that increasing the NS prograde spin increases both the rest mass of the accretion disk onto the remnant black hole, and the rest mass of dynamically ejected matter. By a time $\mathrm{\Delta }t\sim 3500–5500M\sim 88–138(M_{\mathrm{NS}}/1.4M_{\odot })\mathrm{ms}$ after the peak gravitational-wave amplitude, a magnetically driven jet is launched only for $q=3:1$ regardless of the initial NS spin. The lifetime of the jets [$\mathrm{\Delta }t\sim 0.5–0.8(M_{\mathrm{NS}}/1.4M_{\odot })\mathrm{s}$] and their outgoing Poynting luminosity [$L_{\text{Poyn}}\sim {10}^{51.5\pm 0.5}\mathrm{erg}/\mathrm{s}$] are consistent with typical SGRBs’ luminosities and expectations from the Blandford-Znajek mechanism. By the time we terminate our simulations, we do not observe either an outflow or a large-scale magnetic-field collimation for the other systems we consider. The mass range of dynamically ejected matter is ${10}^{-4.5}–{10}^{-2}(M_{\mathrm{NS}}/1.4M_{\odot })M_{\odot }$, which can power kilonovas with peak bolometric luminosities $L_{\text{knova}}\sim {10}^{40}–{10}^{41.4}\mathrm{erg}/\mathrm{s}$ with rise times $\lesssim 6.5\mathrm{h}$ and potentially detectable by the LSST.

Wave optics may need to be considered when studying the lensed waveforms of gravitational waves (GWs). However, the computation of the diffraction integral (amplification factor) in wave optics is challenging and time consuming. It is vital to develop an accurate and efficient method to calculate the amplification factor for detecting lensed GW systems. In this paper, we investigate the convergence of the diffraction integral for gravitational lensing of GWs and analyze the accuracy and efficiency of a number of numerical methods that can be used to calculate this integral, including the integral mean method, asymptotic expansion method, Levin’s method, zero points integral method, etc. We further introduce a new method by combining the zero points integral and the asymptotic expansion methods to calculate the diffraction integral, which provides an efficient and accurate way to calculate the lensed waveform of GWs.

With the recent strong developments of TianQin and Taiji, we now have an increasing chance to make a correlation analysis in the mHz band by operating them together with LISA. Assuming two LISA-like triangular detectors at general geometrical configurations, we develop a simple formulation to evaluate the network sensitivity to an isotropic gravitational wave background. In our formulation, we fully use the symmetry of data channels within each triangular detector and provide tractable expressions without directly employing cumbersome detector tensors. We concretely evaluate the expected network sensitivities for various potential detector combinations, including the LISA-TianQin pair.

Scalar fields like dilaton appear in quantum field theory (QFT) due to scale symmetry breaking. Their appeal also extends to modified theories of gravity, like $F(R)$ gravity, Horva Lifshitz gravity etc. In unified theories they make their appearance through compactification of the extra dimension. Apart from resolving the issues of compactification scale and size, the particles of their fields can also turn out to be excellent candidate to solve the dark energy (DE) and dark matter (DM) problem of the universe. In this work we study their mixing dynamics with photons in a magnetized media, by incorporating the effect of parity violating part of the photon polarization tensor, evaluated in a finite density magnetized media. This piece, though in general is odd in the external magnetic field strength $eB$; in this work we however have retained terms to $O(eB)$. We are able to demonstrate in this work that, in magnetized medium a dilatonic scalar field $(\varphi )$ can excite the two transverse degrees of freedom (DOF) of the photons. One due to direct coupling and the other indirectly through the parity violating term originating due to magnetized medium effects. This results in the mixing dynamics being governed by, $3\times 3$ mixing matrices. This mixing results in making the underlying media optically active. In this work we focus on the spectro-polarimetric imprints of these particles, on the spectra of the electromagnetic (EM) fields of gamma ray bursters (GRB). Focusing on a range of parameters (i.e., magnetic field strength, plasma frequency $({\omega }_p)$, size of the magnetized volume, coupling strength to photons and their mass) we make an attempt to point out how space-borne detectors should be designed to optimize their detection possibility.

We for the first time provide self-consistent axisymmetric phase-space distribution models for the Milky Way’s dark matter (DM) halo which are carefully matched against the latest kinematic measurements through Bayesian analysis. By using broad priors on the individual galactic components, we derive conservative estimates for the astrophysical factors entering the interpretation of direct and indirect DM searches. While the resulting DM density profiles are in good agreement with previous studies, implying ${\rho }_{\odot }\approx {10}^{-2}{M}_{\odot }/{\mathrm{pc}}^3$, the presence of baryonic disc leads to significant differences in the local DM velocity distribution in comparison with the standard halo model. For direct detection, this implies roughly 30% stronger cross section limits at DM masses near detectors maximum sensitivity and up to an order of magnitude weaker limits at the lower end of the mass range. Furthermore, by performing Monte Carlo simulations for the upcoming DARWIN and DarkSide-20k experiments, we demonstrate that upon successful detection of heavy DM with coupling just below the current limits, the carefully constructed axisymmetric models can eliminate bias and reduce uncertainties by more then 50% in the reconstructed DM coupling and mass, but also help in a more reliable determination of the scattering operator. Furthermore, the velocity anisotropies induced by the baryonic disc can lead to significantly larger annual modulation amplitude and sizable differences in the directional distribution of the expected DM-induced events. For indirect searches, we provide the differential $J$ factors and compute several moments of the relative velocity distribution that are needed for predicting the rate of velocity-dependent annihilations. However, we find that accurate predictions are still hindered by large uncertainties regarding the DM distribution near the galactic center.

We generalize known results for heavy quarkonium in a thermal bath to the case of a finite baryonic density, and provide a number of formulas for the energy shift and decay width that hold at weak coupling for sufficiently large temperature and/or chemical potential. We find that a nonvanishing decay width requires a temperature larger than the typical binding energy, no matter how large the chemical potential is. This implies that at zero temperature the dissociation mechanism of heavy quarkonium is due entirely to screening, unlike in the finite temperature case. We use several effective theories in order to sort out the contributions of the relevant energy and momentum scales. In particular, we consider contributions of the so-called quasistatic magnetic modes. The generalization to the case of a finite isospin/strangeness chemical potential is trivial. We discuss possible applications to the SIS and NICA conditions, and compare with available lattice results.

In this study, we focus on the bosonic decays of a light charged Higgs boson (i.e., with $M_{H^{\pm }}<m_t-m_b$) in the 2-Higgs Doublet Model (2HDM) Type-I. To study the signal of such a charged Higgs state at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), in a scenario where the $H^0$ boson is the Standard Model (SM)-like one already discovered, we assume that it decays mainly via $h^0{W}^{\pm *}$ and/or $H^{\pm }\to A^0{W}^{\pm *}$ (i.e., via an off-shell $W^{\pm }$ boson), which can reach a sizable branching ratio (BR) for $\tan \beta \ge 4$, when the exclusion bounds from $H^{\pm }\to \tau \nu$ and $cs$ searches get weaker. By using six benchmark points (BPs), which are consistent with current LHC constraints, we perform a Monte Carlo (MC) study and examine the sensitivity of the LHC to a light charged Higgs boson decaying via the above bosonic modes and produced in top decay following both single top and top pair production processes. Our findings demonstrate that, when the integrated luminosity can reach $300{\mathrm{fb}}^{-1}$, the LHC has the potential to either discover or rule out most of these BPs via either of these two production and decay channels or both.

We consider the possibility of an axionlike particle (ALP) that is a ghost, with wrong-sign kinetic and mass terms. Such an ALP can arise as the partner to an ordinary particle in theories with higher-derivative quadratic terms. We compute the photon regeneration probability in light-shining-through-wall experiments and show that the presence of such a ghostly ALP can lead, in principle, to discernible effects.

We generalize the modular invariance approach to include the half-integral weight modular forms. Accordingly the modular group should be extended to its metaplectic covering group for consistency. We introduce the well-defined half-integral weight modular forms for congruence subgroup $\mathrm{\Gamma }(4N)$ and show that they can be decomposed into the irreducible multiplets of finite metaplectic group ${\tilde{\mathrm{\Gamma }}}_{4N}$. We construct concrete expressions of the half-integral/integral modular forms for $\mathrm{\Gamma }(4)$ up to weight 6 and arrange them into the irreducible multiplets of ${\tilde{\mathrm{\Gamma }}}_4$. We present three typical models with ${\tilde{\mathrm{\Gamma }}}_4$ modular symmetry for neutrino masses and mixing, and the phenomenological predictions of each model are analyzed numerically.

The energy-momentum tensor (EMT) characterizes the response of the vacuum as well as the thermal medium under the color electromagnetic fields. We define the EMT by means of the gradient-flow formalism and study its spatial distribution around a static quark in the deconfined phase of SU(3) Yang-Mills theory on the lattice. Although no significant difference can be seen between the EMT distributions in the radial and transverse directions except for the sign, the temporal component is substantially different from the spatial ones near the critical temperature $T_c$. This is in contrast to the prediction of the leading-order thermal perturbation theory. The lattice data of the EMT distribution also indicate the thermal screening at long distance and the perturbative behavior at short distance.

Pion electro- and photoproduction off the nucleon close to threshold is studied in covariant baryon chiral perturbation theory at $\mathrm{O}(p^3)$ in the extended-on-mass-shell scheme, with the explicit inclusion of the $\mathrm{\Delta }(1232)$ resonance. The relevant low energy constants are fixed by fitting the available experimental data with the theoretical model. The inclusion of the $\mathrm{\Delta }$ resonance as an explicit degree of freedom substantially improves the agreement with data and the convergence of the model.

We develop an effective field theory of a generic massive particle of any spin and, as an example, apply this to study higher-spin dark matter (DM). Our formalism does not introduce unphysical degrees of freedom, thus avoiding the potential inconsistencies that may appear in other field-theoretical descriptions of higher spin. Being a useful reformulation of the Weinberg’s original idea, the proposed effective field theory allows for consistent computations of physical observables for general-spin particles, although it does not admit a Lagrangian description. As a specific realization, we explore the phenomenology of a general-spin singlet with ${\mathbb{Z}}_2$-symmetric Higgs portal couplings, a setup which automatically arises for high spin, and show that higher spin particles with masses above $O(10)\mathrm{TeV}$ can be viable thermally produced DM candidates. Most importantly, if the general-spin DM has purely parity-odd couplings, it naturally avoids all DM direct detection bounds, in which case, its mass can lie below the electroweak scale. Our formalism reproduces the existing results for low-spin DM and allows one to develop consistent higher-spin particle physics phenomenology for high- and low-energy experiments and cosmology.

Free fall is only approximately universal in general relativity: different extended bodies can fall in different ways, depending on their internal dynamics. Nevertheless, certain aspects of free fall are independent of those dynamics. This paper derives universal constraints on extended-body motion which hold in all vacuum type D spacetimes. Working in the quadrupole approximation, we show that in addition to the (previously known) constraints imposed by Killing vectors, two components of the gravitational torque must vanish. Furthermore, of the ten components of a body’s quadrupole moment, four are found to be irrelevant, two can affect only the force, and the remaining four can affect both forces and torques. As an application, we consider the capabilities of a hypothetical spacecraft which controls its motion by controlling its internal structure. In the Schwarzschild spacetime, such a spacecraft can control its mass, and by doing so, it can stabilize unstable orbits, escape from bound orbits, and more—all without a rocket.

In previous works, we obtained the leading, next-to-leading, and next-to-next-to-leading (NNL) post-Newtonian (PN) corrections in the conservative tidal interactions between two compact nonspinning objects using a Lagrangian of effective field theory (EFT) in harmonic coordinates. In the present paper, we compute the corresponding NNL PN tidal effective Hamiltonian in ADM-like and isotropic coordinates, with contributions from mass quadrupole, current quadrupole, and mass octupole tidal interactions, consistently included at that level. We also derive the NNL tidal Hamiltonian in Delaunay variables. We find full agreement in the overlap with recent results that were derived using tools from scattering amplitudes and the EFT to second post-Minkowskian order.

We consider the process of catastrophic expansion of a spacelike wormhole after a violation of its equilibrium state. The dynamics of deformation of the comoving reference frame is investigated. We show that the deformation has a very specific anisotropic feature. The statement made earlier by other authors, that in the process of expanding the wormhole connecting two universes these universes ultimately unite into one universe, is not correct. We show that the transverse size of the wormhole (its throat) increases and the length of the corridor decreases which does not correspond to the de Sitter model.

We investigate static and rotating charged spherically symmetric solutions in the framework of $f(\mathcal{R})$ gravity, allowing additionally the electromagnetic sector to depart from linearity. Applying a convenient, dual description for the electromagnetic Lagrangian, and using as an example the square-root $f(\mathcal{R})$ correction, we solve analytically the involved field equations. The obtained solutions belong to two branches, one that contains the Kerr-Newman solution of general relativity as a particular limit, and one that arises purely from the gravitational modification with no general relativity limit. The novel black hole solution has a true central singularity which is hidden behind a horizon; however, for particular parameter regions the horizon disappears and the singularity becomes a naked one. Furthermore, we investigate the thermodynamical properties of the solutions, such as the temperature, energy, entropy, heat capacity, and Gibbs free energy. We extract the entropy and quasilocal energy positivity conditions, we show that negative-temperature, ultracold, black holes are possible, and we show that the obtained solutions are thermodynamically stable for suitable model parameter regions.

Gravitational waves provide a window to probe general relativity (GR) under extreme conditions. The recent observations of GW190412 and GW190814 are unique high-mass-ratio mergers that enable the observation of gravitational-wave harmonics beyond the dominant $(\ell ,m)=(2,2)$ mode. Using these events, we search for physics beyond GR by allowing the source parameters measured from the subdominant harmonics to deviate from that of the dominant mode. All results are consistent with GR. We constrain the chirp mass as measured by the $(\ell ,m)=(3,3)$ mode to be within $0_{-3}^{+5}\%$ of the dominant mode when we allow both the masses and spins of the subdominant modes to deviate. If we allow only the mass parameters to deviate, we constrain the chirp mass of the (3,3) mode to be within $\pm 1\%$ of the expected value from GR.