It is argued that the results of recent precision measurements by LHCb of the lifetimes of charmed and bottom hyperons are very well consistent with the description within heavy quark expansion and allow to accurately determine matrix elements of light-flavor nonsinglet four-quark operators over the hyperons and to accurately reproduce the difference of lifemes of ${\mathrm{\Lambda }}_b$ and ${\mathrm{\Xi }}_b^{-}$. When combined with the recent LHCb results on the decay ${\mathrm{\Xi }}_b^{-}\to {\mathrm{\Lambda }}_b{\pi }^{-}$ this leads to a prediction of a lower bound on the rate of the decays ${\mathrm{\Xi }}_c\to {\mathrm{\Lambda }}_c\pi$.

We investigate the forward-jet energy spectrum within the color glass condensate framework at 5 TeV center-of-mass energy. In particular, we focus on the kinematic range covered by the CMS-CASTOR calorimeter. We show that our saturation-model calculations are compatible with the CASTOR measurements and that to optimally reproduce the data, effects of multiparton interactions need to be included. We predict a significant nuclear suppression—reaching down to 50% at the lowest considered jet energies $E_{\text{jet}}\sim 500\mathrm{GeV}$.

We study the thermal properties of the lowest multiplet of the QCD light-flavor scalar resonances, including the $f_0(500)/\sigma$, $K_0^{*}(700)/\kappa$, $f_0(980)$ and $a_0(980)$, in the framework of unitarized $U(3)$ chiral perturbation theory. After the successful fits to the meson-meson scattering inputs, such as the phase shifts and inelasticities, we obtain the unknown parameters and further calculate the resonance poles and their residues at zero temperature. By including the finite-temperature effects in the unitarized meson-meson scattering amplitudes, the thermal behaviors of the scalar resonance poles in the complex energy plane are studied. The masses of $\sigma$ and $\kappa$ are found to considerably decrease when increasing the temperatures, while their widths turn out to be still large when the temperatures reach around 200 MeV. In contrast, both the masses and widths of the $f_0(980)$ and $a_0(980)$ are only slightly changed.

There is a well-known $2\sigma$ tension in the measurements of the solar $\mathrm{\Delta }{m}^2$ between KamLAND and SNO/Super-KamioKANDE. Precise determination of the solar $\mathrm{\Delta }{m}^2$ is especially important in connection with current and future long baseline $CP$ violation measurements. Seo and Parke [Phys. Rev. D 99, 033012 (2019)] points out that currently running short baseline reactor neutrino experiments, Daya Bay and RENO, can also constrain solar $\mathrm{\Delta }{m}^2$ value as demonstrated by a GLoBES simulation with a limited systematic uncertainty consideration. In this work, the publicly available data, from Daya Bay (1958 days) and RENO (2200 days) are used to constrain the solar $\mathrm{\Delta }{m}^2$. Verification of our method through $\mathrm{\Delta }{m}_{ee}^2$ and ${\sin }^2{\theta }_{13}$ measurements is discussed in Appendix A. Using this verified method, reasonable constraints on the solar $\mathrm{\Delta }{m}^2$ are obtained using above Daya Bay and RENO data, both individually and combined. We find that the combined data of Daya Bay and RENO set an upper limit on the solar $\mathrm{\Delta }{m}^2$ of $18\times {10}^{-5}{\mathrm{eV}}^2$ at the 95% C.L., including both systematic and statistical uncertainties. This constraint is slightly more than twice the KamLAND value. As this combined result is still statistics limited, even though driven by Daya Bay data, the constraint will improve with the additional running of this experiment.

A search for low mass narrow vector resonances decaying into quark-antiquark pairs is presented. The analysis is based on data collected in 2017 with the CMS detector at the LHC in proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of $41.1{\mathrm{fb}}^{-1}$. The results of this analysis are combined with those of an earlier analysis based on data collected at the same collision energy in 2016, corresponding to $35.9{\mathrm{fb}}^{-1}$. Signal candidates will be recoiling against initial state radiation and are identified as energetic, large-radius jets with two pronged substructure. The invariant jet mass spectrum is probed for a potential narrow peaking signal over a smoothly falling background. No evidence for such resonances is observed within the mass range of 50–450 GeV. Upper limits at the 95% confidence level are set on the coupling of narrow resonances to quarks, as a function of the resonance mass. For masses between 50 and 300 GeV these are the most sensitive limits to date. This analysis extends the earlier search to a mass range of 300–450 GeV, which is probed for the first time with jet substructure techniques.

We derive a simple relation between strangeness neutrality and baryon-strangeness correlations. In heavy-ion collisions, the former is a consequence of quark number conservation of the strong interactions while the latter are sensitive probes of the character of QCD matter. This relation allows us to directly extract baryon-strangeness correlations from the strangeness chemical potential at strangeness neutrality. The explicit calculations are performed within a low-energy theory of QCD with $2+1$ dynamical quark flavors at finite temperature and density. Nonperturbative quark and hadron fluctuations are taken into account within the functional renormalization group. The results show the pronounced sensitivity of baryon-strangeness correlations on the QCD phase transition and the crucial role that strangeness neutrality plays for this observable.

In this paper we discuss a formulation of extended phase space thermodynamics of black holes in anti–de Sitter (AdS) spacetimes from the contact geometry point of view. Thermodynamics of black holes can be understood within the framework of contact geometry as flows of vector fields generated by Hamiltonian functions on equilibrium submanifolds in the extended phase space that naturally incorporates the structure of a contact manifold. Deformations induced by the contact vector fields are used to construct various maps among thermodynamic quantities. Thermodynamic variables and equations of state of Schwarzschild black holes are mapped to that of Reissner-Nordström black holes in AdS, with charge as the deformation parameter. In addition, the equations of state of general black holes in AdS are shown to emerge from the high-temperature ideal gas limit equations via suitable deformations induced by contact vector fields. The Hamilton-Jacobi formalism analogous to mechanics is set up, and the corresponding characteristic curves of contact vector fields are explicitly obtained to model thermodynamic processes of black holes. Extension to thermodynamic cycles in this framework is also discussed.

We study the topologically twisted index of $\mathcal{N}=6$ supersymmetric Chern-Simons matter theory with $U(N{)}_k\times U(N{)}_{-k}$ gauge group in the ’t Hooft limit, that is, for $N,k\to \infty$ with $\lambda =N/k$ fixed. In the regime where $\lambda$ is fixed and large we find an analytical expression for the leading order term of the index. The leading term of the index matches precisely the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy of the dual asymptotically ${\mathrm{AdS}}_4$ magnetically charged black holes embedded in IIA supergrvity on ${\mathrm{AdS}}_4\times {\mathbb{CP}}^3$, after a standard Legendre transformation. We numerically explore the genus expansion of the topologically twisteed index beyond the leading order, focusing on the genus one contribution, that is, $N^0$. We find qualitative agreement with the topological expansion of the free energy on $S^3$ at genus one. Our logarithmic in $\lambda$ term constitutes a prediction for the one-loop effective action on the IIA supergravity side.

In this paper, we discuss the Bhabha and Compton scattering for the quantum electrodynamics defined in the framework of SIM(2) very special relativity (VSR). The main aspect of the VSR setting is that it admits different types of interactions appearing in a nonlocal form due to the modified gauge invariance. We explore the richness of these new couplings in the evaluation of the differential cross section for these tree-level processes. We assess the behavior of the leading VSR Lorentz violation modifications by considering some special limits for the Bhabha and Compton cross section expressions.

The way physics of loop quantum gravity is affected by the underlying quantization ambiguities is an open question. We address this issue in the context of loop quantum cosmology using gauge-covariant fluxes. Consequences are explored for two choices of regularization parameters: ${\mu }_0$ and $\overline{\mu }$ in the presence of a positive cosmological constant, and two choices of regularizations of the Hamiltonian constraint in loop quantum cosmology: the standard and the Thiemann regularization. We show that novel features of singularity resolution and bounce, occurring due to gauge-covariant fluxes, exist also for Thiemann-regularized dynamics. The ${\mu }_0$ scheme is found to be unviable as in standard loop quantum cosmology when a positive cosmological constant is included. Our investigation brings out a surprising result that the nature of emergent matter in the prebounce regime is determined by the choice of regulator in the Thiemann regularization of the scalar constraint whether or not one uses gauge-covaraint fluxes. Unlike the $\overline{\mu }$ scheme where the emergent matter is a cosmological constant, the emergent matter in the ${\mu }_0$ scheme behaves as a string gas.

Loop quantum cosmology is a symmetry reduced quantization of cosmological spacetimes based on loop quantum gravity. While it has been successful in resolution of various cosmological singularities and connecting Planck scale physics to phenomenology, its connection with loop quantum gravity has remained elusive. It is therefore important to integrate more and more features of the full theory into this framework and understand the reliability of physical predictions. In particular, if one wishes to connect the effective Hamiltonian in loop quantum cosmology to an expectation value of the scalar constraint operator in suitable coherent states for the full theory, one has to go beyond the standard setting of loop quantum cosmology. One possibility is to introduce gauge-covariant fluxes, which become necessary because the presence of a finite regularization parameter causes functions built out of the standard discretized variables to be in general not gauge invariant. Following the construction of gauge-covariant fluxes pioneered by Thiemann [Quantum spin dynamics (QSD): VII. Symplectic structures and continuum lattice formulations of gauge field theories, Classical Quantum Gravity 18, 3293 (2001)], we show that the physics of loop quantum cosmology is affected in a nontrivial way. The bounce turns out to be generically asymmetric with a rescaling of Newton’s constant in the prebounce branch. Gauge-covariant fluxes result in a higher order quantum difference equation in comparison to loop quantum cosmology. Even the behavior of matter, which behaves innocuously in loop quantum cosmology, is enriched resulting in an effective nonminimal coupling. These effects are shown to be common to different choices of regularization parameters.

We present a comprehensive construction of scalar, vector, and tensor harmonics on maximally symmetric three-dimensional spaces. Our formalism relies on the introduction of spin-weighted spherical harmonics and a generalized helicity basis which, together, are ideal tools for decomposing harmonics into their radial and angular dependencies. We provide a thorough and self-contained set of expressions and relations for these harmonics. Being general, our formalism also allows us to build harmonics of higher tensor type by recursion among radial functions, and we collect the complete set of recursive relations which can be used. While the formalism is readily adapted to computation of CMB transfer functions, we also collect explicit forms of the radial harmonics which are needed for other cosmological observables. Finally, we show that in curved spaces, normal modes cannot be factorized into a local angular dependence and a unit norm function encoding the orbital dependence of the harmonics, contrary to previous statements in the literature.

A powerful result in theoretical cosmology states that a subset of anisotropic Bianchi models can be seen as the homogeneous limit of (standard) linear cosmological perturbations. Such models are precisely those leading to Friedmann spacetimes in the limit of zero anisotropy. Building on previous works, we give a comprehensive exposition of this result, and perform the detailed identification between anisotropic degrees of freedom and their corresponding scalar, vector, and tensor perturbations of standard perturbation theory. In particular, we find that anisotropic models very close to open (i.e., negatively curved) Friedmann spaces correspond to some type of supercurvature perturbations. As a consequence, provided anisotropy is mild, its effects on all types of cosmological observables can always be computed as simple extensions of the standard techniques used in relativistic perturbation theory around Friedmann models. This fact opens the possibility to consistently constrain, for all cosmological observables, the presence of large scale anisotropies on the top of the stochastic fluctuations.

We obtain the analytical solutions of the classical and quantum cosmological models with exponential dependence of the fundamental scalar-field potential in homogeneous and inhomogeneous cases. At the homogeneous scalar field, we get the equation for the description of the dynamics of the scale factor for any type of Universe. The solution of such equation gives linear time dependence of the scale factor. At the inhomogeneous change of the scalar field, we find the new solution describing the formation of the Universe.

We discuss the perturbative decay of the energy density of a nonstandard inflaton field ${\rho }_{\varphi }$ and the corresponding creation of the energy density of the relativistic fields ${\rho }_r$ at the end of inflation, in the perfect fluid description, refining some concepts and providing some new computations. In particular, the process is characterized by two fundamental timescales. The first one, $t_{\max }$, occurs when the energy density ${\rho }_r$ reaches its largest value, slightly after the beginning of the reheating phase. The second one, $t_{\mathrm{reh}}$, is the time in which the reheating is completely realized and the thermalization is attained. By assuming a noninstantaneous reheating phase, we are able to derive the energy densities and the temperatures of the produced relativistic bath at $t_{\max }$ and $t_{\mathrm{reh}}$, as well as the value of the corresponding horizon entropy $S_{\mathrm{hor}}$, for an equation-of-state parameter $w\ne 0$.

A new code for computing fully general relativistic solutions of strongly magnetized rapidly rotating compact stars is developed as a part of the Compact Object CALculator (cocal) code. The full set of Einstein’s equations, Maxwell’s equations, and magnetohydrodynamic equations are consistently solved assuming perfect conductivity, stationarity, and axisymmetry, and strongly magnetized solutions associated with mixed poloidal and toroidal components of magnetic fields are successfully obtained in generic (noncircular) spacetimes. We introduce the formulation of the problem and the numerical method in detail, then present examples of extremely magnetized compact star solutions and their convergence tests. It is found that, in extremely magnetized stars, the stellar matter can be expelled from the region of strongest toroidal fields. Hence, we conjecture that a toroidal electrovacuum region may appear inside of the extremely magnetized compact stars, which may seem like the neutron star becoming the strongest toroidal solenoid coil in the Universe.

The low-energy threshold and the large detector size of Precision IceCube Next Generation Upgrade (PINGU) can make the study on neutrino oscillations with a planet-scale baseline possible. In this task, we consider the configuration that neutrinos are produced at CERN and detected in the PINGU detector, as a benchmark. We discuss its sensitivity of measuring the size of nonstandard interactions (NSIs) in matter, which can be described by the parameter ${\epsilon }_{\alpha \beta }$ ($\alpha$ and $\beta$ are flavors of neutrinos). We find that the CERN-PINGU configuration improves ${\tilde{\epsilon }}_{\mu \mu }\equiv {\epsilon }_{\mu \mu }-{\epsilon }_{\tau \tau }$ and ${\epsilon }_{\mu \tau }$ significantly compared to the next-generation accelerator neutrino experiments. Most of the degeneracy problems in the precision measurements can be resolved, except the one for ${\tilde{\epsilon }}_{\mu \mu }\sim -0.035$. Moreover, we point out that this configuration can also be used to detect the $CP$ violation brought by NSIs. Finally, we compare the physics potential in this configuration to that for DUNE, T2HK, and P2O, and find that the CERN-PINGU configuration can significantly improve the sensitivity to NSIs.

In a general framework, valid for any $H\to H^{\prime }{\ell }^{-}{\overline{\nu }}_{\ell }$ semileptonic decay, we analyze the $d^2\mathrm{\Gamma }/(d\omega d\cos {\theta }_{\ell })$ and $d^2\mathrm{\Gamma }/(d\omega d{E}_{\ell })$ distributions, with $\omega$ being the product of the hadron four-velocities, ${\theta }_{\ell }$ the angle made by the three-momenta of the charged lepton and the final hadron in the $W^{-}$ center of mass frame and $E_{\ell }$ the charged lepton energy in the decaying hadron rest frame. Within the Standard Model (SM), $d^2\mathrm{\Gamma }/(d\omega d{E}_{\ell })\propto (c_0(\omega )+c_1(\omega )E_{\ell }/M+c_2(\omega )E_{\ell }^2/M^2)$, with $M$ the initial hadron mass. We find that $c_2(\omega )$ is independent of the lepton flavor and thus it is an ideal candidate to look for lepton flavor universality (LFU) violations. We also find a correlation between the $a_2(\omega )$ structure function, which governs the $(\cos {\theta }_{\ell }{)}^2$ dependence of $d^2\mathrm{\Gamma }/(d\omega d\cos {\theta }_{\ell })$, and $c_2(\omega )$. Apart from trivial kinematical and mass factors, the ratio of $a_2(\omega )/c_2(\omega )$ is a universal function that can be measured in any semileptonic decay, involving not only $b\to c$ transitions. These two SM predictions can be used as new tests in the present search for signatures of LFU violations. We also generalize the formalism to account for some new physics (NP) terms, and show that neither $c_2$ nor $a_2$ are modified by left and right scalar NP terms, being however sensitive to left and right vector corrections. We also find that the $a_2/c_2$ ratio is not modified by these latter NP contributions. Finally, and in order to illustrate our findings, we apply our general framework to the ${\mathrm{\Lambda }}_b\to {\mathrm{\Lambda }}_c\ell {\overline{\nu }}_{\ell }$ decay. We show that a measurement of $c_2$ (or $a_2$) for $\tau$ decay would not only be a direct measurement of the possible existence of NP, but it would also allow to distinguish from NP fits to $b\to c\tau {\overline{\nu }}_{\tau }$ anomalies in the meson sector, which otherwise give the same total and differential $d\mathrm{\Gamma }/d\omega$ widths. We show that the same occurs for the other two terms, $c_0$ and $c_1$, that appear in $d^2\mathrm{\Gamma }/(d\omega d{E}_{\ell })$, and for the $\cos {\theta }_{\ell }$ linear term of the angular distribution.

We study a ($3+1$)-dimensional $U(N)$ gauge theory with $N$-flavor fundamental scalar fields, whose color-flavor locked (CFL) phase has topologically stable non-Abelian vortices. The $U(1)$ charge of the scalar fields must be $Nk+1$ for some integer $k$ in order for them to be in the representation of $U(N)$ gauge group. This theory has a ${\mathbb{Z}}_{Nk+1}$ one-form symmetry, and it is spontaneously broken in the CFL phase, i.e., the CFL phase is topologically ordered if $k\ne 0$. We also find that the world sheet of topologically stable vortices in CFL phase can generate this one-form symmetry.

We study a dark energy cubic bi-Galileons field model based on truncation of the recently proposed generalized covariant multi-Galileons model. We investigate the cosmological dynamic of the model by the theory of dynamical systems through the analysis of the properties of the fixed points in each cosmological epoch. We show the existence of two tracker solutions, one of which is that of the cubic single Galileon model and the other solution is the signature of the second Galileon field. Exploiting the competition between the two Galileon fields, we find a dark energy solution that avoids the approach to the tracker solution with dark energy equation of state $w_{\mathrm{DE}}=-2$ during the matter epoch which is disfavored by the observational data. We study also the growth rate of matter perturbations. Using recent $f{\sigma }_8$ redshift space distortion (RSD) and model-independent observational Hubble (OHD) datasets, we place observational constraints on the coupling constant and cosmological parameters of the bi-Galileons model through the Monte Carlo numerical method based on the Metropolis-Hastings algorithm. We find that the amplitude of growth matter fluctuations is consistent with the Planck15 data and eases the tension between early and later clustering, and fits better the data from the DES survey over the data from the KiDS-450 survey. We also find that the best fit value for the Hubble constant is compatible with new measurements of Cepheid-supernovae distance scale. Finally, we performed a model selection through the Bayes factor and found that the bi-Galileons model is disfavored in comparison to the $\mathrm{\Lambda }\mathrm{CDM}$ model, but slightly preferred to the $w\mathrm{CDM}$ model.