Models of asymmetric dark matter (ADM) with a sufficiently attractive and long-range force give rise to stable bound objects, analogous to nuclei in the Standard Model, called nuggets. We study the properties of these nuggets and compute their profiles and binding energies. Our approach, applicable to both elementary and composite fermionic ADM, utilizes relativistic mean field theory, and allows a more systematic computation of nugget properties, over a wider range of sizes and force mediator masses, compared to previous literature. We identify three separate regimes of nugget property behavior corresponding to (1) nonrelativistic and (2) relativistic constituents in a Coulomb-like limit, and (3) saturation in an anti-Coulomb limit when the nuggets are large compared to the force range. We provide analytical descriptions for nuggets in each regime. Through numerical calculations, we are able to confirm our analytic descriptions and also obtain smooth transitions for the nugget profiles between all three regimes. We also find that over a wide range of parameter space, the binding energy in the saturation limit is an $\mathcal{O}(1)$ fraction of the constituent’s mass, significantly larger than expectations in the nonrelativistic case. In a companion paper, we apply our results to the synthesis of ADM nuggets in the early Universe.

We consider an extension of the Standard Model with the global symmetry-breaking pattern $\mathrm{SO}(5)/\mathrm{SO}(4)$, where the Higgs boson arises as a pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone boson. The scalar content of the theory consists of a Standard-Model-like Higgs field and an extra real scalar field. The flavor sector of the model is extended by two right-handed neutrinos compatible with the observed light-neutrino phenomenology, and we find that the correct vacuum alignment determines the mass of the heavier neutrino eigenstate to be around 80 TeV. The new singlet-scalar state generates dynamically a Majorana mass term for the heavy-neutrino states. We show how the model leads to the correct baryon asymmetry of the Universe via leptogenesis in the case of two degenerate or hierarchical heavy neutrinos.

We show that, in the presence of bulk masses, sterile neutrinos propagating in large extra dimensions (LED) can induce electron-neutrino appearance effects. This is in contrast to what happens in the standard LED scenario, and hence LED models with explicit bulk masses have the potential to address the MiniBooNE and LSND appearance results as well as the reactor and Gallium anomalies. A special feature in our scenario is that the mixing of the first Kaluza-Klein modes to active neutrinos can be suppressed, making the contribution of heavier sterile neutrinos to oscillations relatively more important. We study the implications of this neutrino mass generation mechanism for current and future neutrino oscillation experiments and show that the Short Baseline Neutrino Program at Fermilab will be able to efficiently probe such a scenario. In addition, this framework leads to massive Dirac neutrinos and thus precludes any signal in neutrinoless double beta decay experiments.

We consider an extension of the Higgs sector in the standard model with six Higgs doublets. The gauge couplings are unified without supersymmetry in this model. The lightest of the extra Higgs particles, being stabilized by a discrete symmetry imposed from the outset, presents a plausible candidate for dark matter. For a specific acceptable benchmark point, we show that the model is viable regarding the constraints of relic density, direct detection, and invisible Higgs decay. We comment on the mean free path of the dark matter candidate.

We consider a model of dynamical electroweak symmetry breaking with a partially composite Goldstone Higgs boson. The model is based on a strongly interacting fermionic sector coupled to a fundamental scalar sector via Yukawa interactions. The $\mathrm{SU}(4)\times \mathrm{SU}(4)$ global symmetry of these two sectors is broken to a single SU(4) via Yukawa interactions. Electroweak symmetry breaking is dynamically induced by condensation due to the strong interactions in the new fermionic sector which further breaks the global symmetry $\mathrm{SU}(4)\to \mathrm{Sp}(4)$. The Higgs boson arises as a partially composite state which is an exact Goldstone boson in the limit where SM interactions are turned off. Terms breaking the SU(4) global symmetry explicitly generate a mass for the Goldstone Higgs boson. The model realizes in different limits both (partially) composite Higgs and (bosonic) technicolor models, thereby providing a convenient unified framework for phenomenological studies of composite dynamics. It is also a dynamical extension of the recent elementary Goldstone Higgs model.

The ongoing perplexing scenario with no hints of new physics at the Large Hadron Collider can be elucidated amicably if the exotic particle spectrum in many of the well-motivated theoretical models possesses degenerate mass. We investigate the usefulness of different kinematic variables sensitive to the compressed mass region, and propose a search strategy considering a phenomenological supersymmetric scenario where the top squark undergoes a four-body decay due to its extremely narrow mass difference with the lightest supersymmetric particle. Considering a challenging but relatively clean dileptonic decay channel, we demonstrate that one can effectively restrain the significant background from the top quark, which provides a complementary approach to the present CMS analysis. With the new strategic approach the current limit can be extended to a phase-space region that was not explored before.

The calculation of the ground state and thermodynamics of mass-imbalanced Fermi systems is a challenging many-body problem. Even in one spatial dimension, analytic solutions are limited to special configurations and numerical progress with standard Monte Carlo approaches is hindered by the sign problem. The focus of the present work is on the further development of methods to study imbalanced systems in a fully nonperturbative fashion. We report our calculations of the ground-state energy of mass-imbalanced fermions using two different approaches which are also very popular in the context of the theory of the strong interaction (quantum chromodynamics, QCD): (a) the hybrid Monte Carlo algorithm with imaginary mass imbalance, followed by an analytic continuation to the real axis; and (b) the complex Langevin algorithm. We cover a range of on-site interaction strengths that includes strongly attractive as well as strongly repulsive cases which we verify with nonperturbative renormalization group methods and perturbation theory. Our findings indicate that, for strong repulsive couplings, the energy starts to flatten out, implying interesting consequences for short-range and high-frequency correlation functions. Overall, our results clearly indicate that the complex Langevin approach is very versatile and works very well for imbalanced Fermi gases with both attractive and repulsive interactions.

We investigate the mass range of the quark-antiquark fluctuations of the photon that are active in producing the total photoabsorption cross section in the color dipole picture, emphasizing the notions of color transparency and saturation. We consider the implications of measurements at future extensions of the available electron-proton-scattering energy.

A measurement of the inclusive production cross section of isolated prompt photons in proton-antiproton collisions at center-of-mass energy $\sqrt{s}=1.96\mathrm{TeV}$ is presented. The results are obtained using the full Run II data sample collected with the Collider Detector at the Fermilab Tevatron, which corresponds to an integrated luminosity of $9.5{\mathrm{fb}}^{-1}$. The cross section is measured as a function of photon transverse energy, $E_T^{\gamma }$, in the range $30<E_T^{\gamma }<500\mathrm{GeV}$ and in the pseudorapidity region $|{\eta }^{\gamma }|<1.0$. The results are compared with predictions from parton-shower Monte Carlo models at leading order in QCD and from next-to-leading-order perturbative QCD calculations. The latter show good agreement with the measured cross section.

The gravitational consequence of local Lorentz violation (LV) should show itself in derivation of the characteristic quasinormal ringing of black hole mergers from their general relativity case. In this paper, we study quasinormal modes (QNMs) of the scalar and electromagnetic field perturbations to Einstein-aether black holes. We find that quasinormal ringing of the first kind aether black hole is similar to that of another Lorentz violation model—the QED-extension limit of standard model extension. These similarities between completely different backgrounds may imply that LV in gravity sector and LV in matter sector have some connections between themselves: damping quasinormal ringing of black holes more rapidly and prolonging its oscillation period. By compared to Schwarzschild black hole, both the first and the second kind aether black holes have larger damping rate and smaller real oscillation frequency of QNMs. And the differences are from 0.7 percent to 35 percents, those could be detected by new generation of gravitational antennas.

The static region outside the event horizon of an asymptotically anti–de Sitter black hole has a conformal timelike boundary $\mathcal{I}$ on which boundary conditions have to be imposed for the evolution of linear fields from initial data to be a well-posed problem. Only homogeneous Dirichlet, Neumann or Robin conditions preserve the action of the background isometry group on the solution space. We study the case in which the modal decomposition of the linear field leads to potentials not diverging at the conformal timelike boundary. We prove that there is always an instability if Robin boundary conditions with large enough $\gamma$ (the quotient between the values of the derivative of the field and the field at the boundary) are allowed. We explain the origin of this instability, show that for modes with non-negative potentials there is a single unstable state and prove a number of properties of this state. Although our results apply, in general, to $1+1$ wave equations on a half-infinite domain with a potential that is not singular at the boundary, our motivation is to analyze the gravitational stability of the four-dimensional Schwarzschild anti–de Sitter black holes in the context of the black hole nonmodal linear stability program initiated in Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 191101 (2014), and the related supersymmetric type of duality exchanging odd and even modes. We prove that this symmetry is broken except when a combination of Dirichlet conditions in the even sector and a particular Robin condition in the odd sector is enforced, or vice versa, and that only the first of these two choices leads to stable dynamics.

This paper deals with the problem of defining off-shell conserved charges in a set of theories known as the Chern-Simons-like theories of gravity. The method is derived in a general way, which may find applications in a wide set of theories, and then specified to the case of generalized minimal massive gravity, where known results of the central charge and black hole entropy are reproduced. The results for the charges are useful to the community and can be applied to all three-dimensional gravity theories within the class of Chern-Simons-like theories of gravity which includes almost all of them. The given specific examples show a consistency check of the more general method.

We reanalyze inflation and subsequent cosmological dynamics in $f(R)=R+\alpha R^n-\beta R^{2-n}$ model, which was proposed by Artimowski and Lalak to explain both inflation and dark energy. First, we reevaluate the condition for $n$ by applying the latest data from Planck satellite. We find a new condition, $1.97<n<2$, which is completely different from the previous result based on BICEP2 data. Next, we employ the viability conditions for subsequent cosmological evolution, which were derived by Amendola et al. for the present model. We find that the model satisfies all the conditions to realize radiation era, matter era, and dark energy era. We also evaluate the parameter $\beta$ from the observational data for the late-time acceleration.

Non-Gaussian correlations induced in cosmic microwave background (CMB) power spectra by gravitational lensing must be included in likelihood analyses for future CMB experiments. We present a simple but accurate likelihood model which includes these correlations and use it for Markov Chain Monte Carlo parameter estimation from simulated lensed CMB maps in the context of $\mathrm{\Lambda }\mathrm{CDM}$ and extensions which include the sum of neutrino masses or the dark energy equation of state $w$. If lensing-induced covariance is not taken into account for a CMB-S4 type experiment, the errors for one combination of parameters in each case would be underestimated by more then a factor of two and lower limits on $w$ could be misestimated substantially. The frequency of falsely ruling out the true model or finding tension with other data sets would also substantially increase. Our analysis also enables a separation of lens and unlensed information from CMB power spectra, which provides for consistency tests of the model and, if combined with other such measurements, a nearly lens-sample-variance free test for systematics and new physics in the unlensed spectrum. This parameterization also leads to a simple effective likelihood that can be used to assist model building in case consistency tests of $\mathrm{\Lambda }\mathrm{CDM}$ fail.

To investigate whether dark energy evolves over time, we propose two null tests and constrain them using the data combination of cosmic microwave background radiation, baryonic acoustic oscillations, Type Ia supernovae, Planck-2015 lensing, and cosmic chronometers. We find that, for these two models, there is no evidence of the dynamical dark energy at the $1.2\sigma$ confidence level. Interestingly, both models could slightly alleviate (i) the current Hubble constant ($H_0$) tension between the global fitting derivation by the Planck collaboration and the local observation by Riess et al.; (ii) the root-mean-square density fluctuations (${\sigma }_8$) tension between the Planck-2015 data and several low-redshift large scale structure probes.

Recently, several $B$-physics experiments have reported an appreciable deviation from the standard model (SM) in the tree-level observables $R_{D^{(*)}}$; the combined weighted average now stands at $\approx 4\sigma$. We first show the anomaly necessarily implies model-independent collider signals of the form $pp\to b\tau \nu$ that should be expeditiously searched for at ATLAS/CMS as a complementary test of the anomaly. Next we suggest a possible interconnection of the anomaly with the radiative stability of the standard model Higgs boson and point to a minimal effective supersymmetric scenario with $R$-parity violation as the underlying cause. We also comment on the possibility of simultaneously explaining the recently reported $R_{K^{(*)}}$ anomaly in this setup.

We study hadronic molecular states in a coupled system of $J/\psi N-{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_c{\overline{D}}^{(*)}-{\mathrm{\Sigma }}_c^{(*)}{\overline{D}}^{(*)}$ in the $I(J^P)=\frac{1}{2}({\frac{3}{2}}^{-})$ channel, using the complex scaling method combined with the Gaussian expansion method. We construct the potential including one pion exchange and one $D^{(*)}$ meson exchange with $S$-wave orbital angular momentum. We find that the contribution of the $J/\psi N$ channel is very small. We extend our analysis to a coupled system of ${\mathrm{\Lambda }}_c{D}^{(*)}-{\mathrm{\Sigma }}_c^{(*)}{D}^{(*)}$ in the $I(J^P)=\frac{1}{2}({\frac{3}{2}}^{-})$ channel. We find that there exists a doubly charmed baryon of $ccqq\overline{q}$ type as a hadronic molecule, the mass and width of which are quite close to those of $P_c(4380)$.

In order to examine the pulse profile from a pulsar, we derive the formula for describing the flux from antipodal hot spots with any static, spherically symmetric spacetime. We find that the pulse profiles are almost independent of the gravitational geometry outside the star when the compactness of neutron stars is low enough, e.g., the stellar mass and radius are $1.4M_{\odot }$ and 14 km, respectively. On the other hand, the pulse profiles depend strongly on the gravitational geometry when the compactness of neutron stars is so high, e.g., the stellar mass and radius are $1.8M_{\odot }$ and 10 km, respectively. Thus, one may probe the spacetime geometry outside the star and even distinguish gravitational theories via the observation of pulse profile with the help of another observations for the stellar compactness, if the compactness of the central object is high enough. We also derive the first and second order approximation of the flux with respect to a parameter defined by the ratio of the gravitational radius of considered spacetime to the stellar radius. Then, we find that the relative error from full order numerical results in the bending angle becomes $\sim 20\%–30\%$ with the first order and $\sim 5\%–10\%$ with the second order approximations for a typical neutron star, whose mass and radius are $1.4M_{\odot }$ and 12 km, respectively. Our results with the first order approximation for the Schwarzschild spacetime are different from those obtained in the literature, which suggests that the first order approximation has been misunderstood to yield a highly accurate prediction.

Starting from the action of the scalar-tensor modified gravity theory coupled to the power law nonlinear electrodynamics and making use of the suitable transformation relations, the corresponding action of the Einstein-power-Maxwell-dilaton gravity theory has been obtained. Thermodynamical properties of the new charged dilatonic black holes have been investigated in the presence of a power Maxwell field as the nonlinear electrodynamics. Making use of a special form of a scalar field, it has been found that the scalar potential can be written as the linear combination of three Liouville-type potentials. Three new classes of spherically symmetric charged dilatonic black hole solutions have been obtained as the exact solutions to the field equations of the Einstein-power-Maxwell-dilaton theory. The conserved and thermodynamical quantities, related to the new black hole solutions, have been calculated from geometrical and thermodynamical approaches separately. Through comparison of the results obtained from these two alternative approaches, the validity of the first law of black hole thermodynamics has been confirmed for either of three new black hole solutions. Thermal stability or phase transition of the new black hole solutions has been analyzed, making use of the canonical ensemble method, and by calculating the black hole heat capacity at the fixed black hole charge. The points of type one and type two phase transitions as well as the ranges at which the black holes are locally stable have been determined precisely. The nonlinearly charged string black hole solutions have been obtained from their Einstein’s counterparts. The thermodynamical properties as well as the thermal stability of the new charged string black holes have been investigated by utilizing the canonical ensemble method.

We study the impact of thermal inflation on the formation of cosmological structures and present astrophysical observables which can be used to constrain and possibly probe the thermal inflation scenario. These are dark matter halo abundance at high redshifts, satellite galaxy abundance in the Milky Way, and fluctuation in the 21-cm radiation background before the epoch of reionization. The thermal inflation scenario leaves a characteristic signature on the matter power spectrum by boosting the amplitude at a specific wave number determined by the number of e-foldings during thermal inflation ($N_{bc}$), and strongly suppressing the amplitude for modes at smaller scales. For a reasonable range of parameter space, one of the consequences is the suppression of minihalo formation at high redshifts and that of satellite galaxies in the Milky Way. While this effect is substantial, it is degenerate with other cosmological or astrophysical effects. The power spectrum of the 21-cm background probes this impact more directly, and its observation may be the best way to constrain the thermal inflation scenario due to the characteristic signature in the power spectrum. The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) in phase 1 (SKA1) has sensitivity large enough to achieve this goal for models with $N_{bc}\gtrsim 26$ if a 10000-hr observation is performed. The final phase SKA, with anticipated sensitivity about an order of magnitude higher, seems more promising and will cover a wider parameter space.