We calculate the complete one-loop electroweak corrections to the inclusive $H\to ZZ$ and $H\to Z\gamma$ decays in the dimension-6 extension of the Standard Model Effective Field Theory (SMEFT). The corrections to $H\to ZZ$ are computed for on-shell $Z$ bosons and are a precursor to the physical $H\to Zf\overline{f}$ calculation. We present compact numerical formulas for our results and demonstrate that the logarithmic contributions that result from the renormalization group evolution of the SMEFT coefficients are larger than the finite next-to-leading-order contributions to the decay widths. As a byproduct of our calculation, we obtain the first complete result for the finite corrections to $G_{\mu }$ in the SMEFT.

Smolin’s generally covariant $G_{\text{Newton}}\to 0$ limit of 4d Euclidean gravity is a useful toy model for the study of the constraint algebra in loop quantum gravity (LQG). In particular, the commutator between its Hamiltonian constraints has a metric dependent structure function. While a prior LQG-like construction of nontrivial anomaly free constraint commutators for the model exists, that work suffers from two defects. First, Smolin’s remarks on the inability of the quantum dynamics to generate propagation effects apply. Second, the construction only yields the action of a single Hamiltonian constraint together with the action of its commutator through a continuum limit of corresponding discrete approximants; the continuum limit of a product of two or more constraints does not exist. Here, we incorporate changes in the quantum dynamics through structural modifications in the choice of discrete approximants to the quantum Hamiltonian constraint. The new structure is motivated by that responsible for propagation in an LQG-like quantization of paramatrized field theory and significantly alters the space of physical states. We study the off shell constraint algebra of the model in the context of these structural changes and show that the continuum limit action of multiple products of Hamiltonian constraints is (a) supported on an appropriate domain of states, (b) yields anomaly free commutators between pairs of Hamiltonian constraints, and (c) is diffeomorphism covariant. Many of our considerations seem robust enough to be applied to the setting of 4d Euclidean gravity.

We compute the large $N$ critical exponents $\eta$, ${\eta }_{\varphi }$ and $1/\nu$ in $d$ dimensions in the chiral Heisenberg Gross-Neveu model to several orders in powers of $1/N$. For instance, the large $N$ conformal bootstrap method is used to determine $\eta$ at $O(1/N^3)$ while the other exponents are computed to $O(1/N^2)$. Estimates of the exponents for a phase transition in graphene are given which are shown to be commensurate with other approaches. In particular the behavior of the exponents in $2<d<4$ is in qualitative agreement with a functional renormalization group analysis. The $\epsilon$ expansion of each exponent near four dimensions is in exact agreement with recent four loop perturbation theory.

We present and discuss a 4-parameter stationary axisymmetric solution of the Einstein-Maxwell equations, which is able to describe the exterior field of a rotating magnetized deformed mass. The solution arises as a system of two overlapping corotating magnetized nonequal black holes or hyperextreme disks, and we write it in a concise explicit form that is very suitable for concrete applications. An interesting peculiar feature of this electrovac solution is that it does not develop massless ring singularities outside the stationary limit surface, its first four electric multipole moments being equal to zero; it also has a nontrivial extreme limit, which we elaborate completely in terms of four polynomial factors.

In this article, we present a study on thermodynamics of a class of regular black holes. Such a class includes Bardeen and Hayward regular black holes. We obtained thermodynamic quantities like the Hawking temperature, entropy, and heat capacity for the entire class. As part of an effort to indicate some physical observable to distinguish regular black holes from singular black holes, we suggest that regular black holes are colder than singular black holes. Besides, contrary to the Schwarzschild black hole, that class of regular black holes may be thermodynamically stable. From a generalized uncertainty principle, we also obtained the quantum-corrected thermodynamics for the studied class. Such quantum corrections provide a logarithmic term for the quantum-corrected entropy.

A strong gravity naked singular region can give important clues toward understanding the classical as well as spontaneous nature of General Relativity. We propose here a model for energy emission from a naked singular region in a self-similar dust spacetime by gluing two self-similar dust solutions at the Cauchy horizon. The energy is defined and evaluated as a surface energy of a null hypersurface, the null shell. Also included are scenarios of the spontaneous creation or disappearance of a singularity, the end of inflation, black hole formation, and bubble nucleation. Our examples investigated here explicitly show that one can model unlimitedly luminous and energetic objects in the framework of General Relativity.

A stationary and spherically symmetric black hole (e.g., Reissner-Nordström black hole or Kerr-Newman black hole) has, at most, one singularity and two horizons. One horizon is the outer event horizon and the other is the inner Cauchy horizon. Can we construct static and spherically symmetric black hole solutions with $N$ horizons and $M$ singularities? The de Sitter cosmos has only one apparent horizon. Can we construct cosmos solutions with $N$ horizons? In this article, we present the static and spherically symmetric black hole and cosmos solutions with $N$ horizons and $M$ singularities in the vector-tensor theories. Following these motivations, we also construct the black hole solutions with a firewall. The deviation of these black hole solutions from the usual ones can be potentially tested by future measurements of gravitational waves or the black hole continuum spectrum.

Recent observations of gravitational waves motivate investigations for the existence of primordial black holes (PBHs). We propose the observation of gravitational microlensing of distant quasars for the range of infrared to the submillimeter wavelengths by sublunar PBHs as lenses. The advantage of observations in the longer wavelengths, comparable to the Schwarzschild radius of the lens (i.e., $R_{\mathrm{sch}}\simeq \lambda$) is the detection of the wave optics features of the gravitational microlensing. The observation of diffraction pattern in the microlensing light curve of a quasar can break the degeneracy between the lens parameters and determine directly the lens mass as well as the distance of the lens from the observer. We estimate the wave optics optical-depth, also calculate the rate of $\sim 0.1$ to $\sim 0.3$ event per year per a quasar, assuming that hundred percent of dark matter is made of sublunar PBHs. Also, we propose a long-term survey of quasars with the cadence of almost one hour to few days to resolve the wave optics features of the light curves to discover PBHs and determine the fraction of dark matter made of sublunar PBHs as well as their mass function.

It has been considered that baryogenesis models without a generation of $B-L$ asymmetry such as the GUT baryogenesis do not work since the asymmetry is washed out by the electroweak sphalerons. Here, we point out that helical hypermagnetic fields can be generated through the chiral magnetic effect with a chiral asymmetry generated in such baryogenesis models. The helical hypermagnetic fields then produce baryon asymmetry mainly at the electroweak symmetry breaking, which remains until today. Therefore, the baryogenesis models without $B-L$ asymmetry can still be the origin of the present baryon asymmetry. In particular, if it can produce chiral asymmetry mainly carried by right-handed electrons of order of ${10}^{-3}$ in terms of the chemical potential to temperature ratio, the resultant present-day baryon asymmetry can be consistent with our Universe, although simple realizations of the GUT baryogenesis are hard to satisfy the condition. We also argue the way to overcome the difficulty in the GUT baryogenesis. The intergalactic magnetic fields with $B_0\sim {10}^{-16–17}\mathrm{G}$ and ${\lambda }_0\sim {10}^{-2–3}\mathrm{pc}$ are the smoking gun of the baryogenesis scenario as discussed before.

Joint electromagnetic and gravitational-wave (GW) observation is a major goal of both the GW astronomy and electromagnetic astronomy communities for the coming decade. One way to accomplish this goal is to direct follow-up of GW candidates. Prompt electromagnetic emission may fade quickly, therefore it is desirable to have GW detection happen as quickly as possible. A leading source of latency in GW detection is the whitening of the data. We examine the performance of a zero-latency whitening filter in a detection pipeline for compact binary coalescence (CBC) GW signals. We find that the filter reproduces signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) sufficiently consistent with the results of the original high-latency and phase-preserving filter for both noise and artificial GW signals (called “injections”). Additionally, we demonstrate that these two whitening filters show excellent agreement in ${\chi }^2$ value, a discriminator for GW signals.

We consider theories with a large number $N_F$ of charged fermions and compute the renormalization group equations for the gauge, Yukawa and quartic couplings resummed at leading order in $1/N_F$. We construct extensions of the standard model where SU(2) and/or SU(3) are asymptotically safe. When the same procedure is applied to the Abelian U(1) factor, we find that the Higgs quartic can not be made asymptotically safe and stay perturbative at the same time.

We consider an extension of the standard model (SM) with an inert Higgs doublet and three Majorana singlet fermions to address both origin and the smallness of neutrino masses and dark matter (DM) problems. In this setup, the lightest Majorana singlet fermion plays the role of DM candidate and the model parameter space can be accommodated to avoid different experimental constraints such as lepton flavor violating processes and electroweak precision tests. The neutrino mass is generated at one-loop level a la Scotogenic model and its smallness is ensured by the degeneracy between the $CP$-odd and $CP$-even scalar members of the inert doublet. Interesting signatures at both leptonic and hadronic colliders are discussed.

We evaluate the strange nucleon electromagnetic form factors using an ensemble of gauge configurations generated with two degenerate maximally twisted mass clover-improved fermions with mass tuned to approximately reproduce the physical pion mass. In addition, we present results for the disconnected light quark contributions to the nucleon electromagnetic form factors. Improved stochastic methods are employed leading to high-precision results. The momentum dependence of the disconnected contributions is fitted using the model-independent z-expansion. We extract the magnetic moment and the electric and magnetic radii of the proton and neutron by including both connected and disconnected contributions. We find that the disconnected light quark contributions to both electric and magnetic form factors are nonzero and at the few percent level as compared to the connected. The strange form factors are also at the percent level but more noisy yielding statistical errors that are typically within one standard deviation from a zero value.

We study the features of a nonlocal SU(3) Polyakov-Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model that includes wave-function renormalization. Model parameters are determined from vacuum phenomenology considering lattice-QCD-inspired nonlocal form factors. Within this framework, we analyze the properties of light scalar and pseudoscalar mesons at finite temperature and chemical potential determining characteristics of deconfinement and chiral restoration transitions.

We apply the newly developed theory of permutation-symmetric $O(6)$ hyperspherical harmonics to the quantum-mechanical problem of three nonrelativistic quarks confined by a spin-independent three-quark potential. We use our previously derived results to reduce the three-body Schrödinger equation to a set of coupled ordinary differential equations in the hyper-radius $R$ with coupling coefficients expressed entirely in terms of (i) a few interaction-dependent $O(6)$ expansion coefficients and (ii) $O(6)$ hyperspherical harmonics matrix elements that have been evaluated in our previous paper. This system of equations allows a solution to the eigenvalue problem with homogeneous three-quark potentials, the class of which includes a number of standard Ansätze for the confining potentials, such as the Y- and $\mathrm{\Delta }$-string ones. We present analytic formulas for the $\mathrm{K}=2$, 3, 4, 5 shell states’ eigenenergies in homogeneous three-body potentials, which we then apply to the Y and $\mathrm{\Delta }$ strings as well as the logarithmic confining potentials. We also present numerical results for power-law pairwise potentials with the exponent ranging between $-1$ and $+2$. In the process, we resolve the 25-year-old Taxil and Richard vs Bowler et al. controversy regarding the ordering of states in the $\mathrm{K}=3$ shell, in favor of the former. Finally, we show the first clear difference between the spectra of $\mathrm{\Delta }$- and Y-string potentials, which appears in $\mathrm{K}\ge 3$ shells. Our results are generally valid, not just for confining potentials but also for many momentum-independent permutation-symmetric homogenous potentials that need not be pairwise sums of two-body terms. The potentials that can be treated in this way must be square integrable under the $O(6)$ hyperangular integral, the class of which, however, does not include the Dirac $\delta$ function.

We extend our previous studies of double-parton scattering (DPS) to simultaneous production of $c\overline{c}$ and $b\overline{b}$ and production of two pairs of $b\overline{b}$. The calculation is performed within a factorized ansatz. Each parton scattering is calculated within the $k_T$-factorization approach. The hadronization is done with the help of fragmentation functions. Production of $D$ mesons in our framework was tested in our previous works. Here, we present our predictions for $B$ mesons. A good agreement is achieved with the LHCb data. We present our results for $c\overline{c}b\overline{b}$ and $b\overline{b}b\overline{b}$ final states. For completeness, we compare results for double- and single-parton scattering (SPS). As for the $c\overline{c}c\overline{c}$ final state, the DPS dominates over the SPS, especially for small transverse momenta. We present several distributions and integrated cross sections with realistic cuts for simultaneous production of $D^0{B}^{+}$ and $B^{+}{B}^{+}$, suggesting future experimental studies at the LHC.

We propose a new type of Kähler moduli stabilization mechanisms in type IIB superstring theory on Calabi-Yau manifolds with the positive Euler number. The overall Kähler modulus can be perturbatively stabilized by radiative corrections due to sparticles. Its minimum is the anti-de Sitter vacuum, where supersymmetry is broken. We can uplift it to the de Sitter vacuum by introducing anti-D-branes, keeping the modulus stabilized. Although our numerical results depend on the choice of the cutoff scale and degeneracies of sparticles, at any rate there exist the parameter spaces where the masses of Kaluza-Klein and stringy modes are larger than the cutoff scale. Furthermore, this stabilization scenario predicts an ultralight axion.

In this work, we show how states with conserved numbers of dynamical defects (strings, domain walls, etc.) can be understood as possessing generalized global symmetries even when the microscopic origins of these symmetries are unknown. Using this philosophy, we build an effective theory of a $2+1$-dimensional fluid state with two perpendicular sets of immersed elastic line defects. When the number of defects is independently conserved in each set, then the state possesses two one-form symmetries. Normally, such viscoelastic states are described as fluids coupled to Goldstone bosons associated with spontaneous breaking of translational symmetry caused by the underlying microscopic structure—the principle feature of which is a transverse sound mode. At the linear, nondissipative level, we verify that our theory, based entirely on symmetry principles, is equivalent to a viscoelastic theory. We then build a simple holographic dual of such a state containing dynamical gravity and two two-form gauge fields, and use it to study its hydrodynamic and higher-energy spectral properties characterized by nonhydrodynamic, gapped modes. Based on the holographic analysis of transverse two-point functions, we study consistency between low-energy predictions of the bulk theory and the effective boundary theory. Various new features of the holographic dictionary are explained in theories with higher-form symmetries, such as the mixed-boundary-condition modification of the quasinormal mode prescription that depends on the running coupling of the boundary double-trace deformations. Furthermore, we examine details of low- and high-energy parts of the spectrum that depend on temperature, line defect densities and the renormalization group scale.

With the outstanding results from the detection and observation of gravitational waves from coalescing black holes and neutron star inspirals, it is essential that pathways to further improve the sensitivities of the LIGO and VIRGO detectors are explored. There are a number of factors that potentially limit the sensitivities of the detectors. One such factor is thermal noise, a component of which results from the mechanical loss in the bond material between the silica fibre suspensions and the test mass mirrors. To calculate its magnitude, the Young’s modulus of the bond material has to be known with reasonable accuracy. In this paper we present a new combination of ultrasonic technology and Bayesian analysis to measure the Young’s modulus of hydroxide catalysis bonds between fused silica substrates. Using this novel technique, we measure the bond Young’s modulus to be $18.5{\pm }_{2.3}^{2.0}\mathrm{GPa}$. We show that by applying this value to thermal noise models of bonded test masses with suitable attachment geometries, a reduction in suspension thermal noise consistent with an overall design sensitivity improvement allows a factor of 5 increase in event rate to be achieved.

We report on a new all-sky search for periodic gravitational waves in the frequency band 475–2000 Hz and with a frequency time derivative in the range of $[-1.0,+0.1]\times 10^{-8}\mathrm{Hz}/\mathrm{s}$. Potential signals could be produced by a nearby spinning and slightly nonaxisymmetric isolated neutron star in our Galaxy. This search uses the data from Advanced LIGO’s first observational run O1. No gravitational-wave signals were observed, and upper limits were placed on their strengths. For completeness, results from the separately published low-frequency search 20–475 Hz are included as well. Our lowest upper limit on worst-case (linearly polarized) strain amplitude $h_0$ is $\sim 4\times 10^{-25}$ near 170 Hz, while at the high end of our frequency range, we achieve a worst-case upper limit of $1.3\times 10^{-24}$. For a circularly polarized source (most favorable orientation), the smallest upper limit obtained is $\sim 1.5\times 10^{-25}$.