Reionization, the only phase transition in the Universe since recombination, is a key event in the cosmic history of baryonic matter. We derive, in the context of the large-scale bias expansion, the imprints of the epoch of reionization in the large-scale distribution of galaxies and identify two contributions of particular importance. First, the Compton scattering of cosmic microwave background photons off the free electrons lead to a drag force on the baryon fluid. This drag induces a relative velocity between baryons and cold dark matter, which is of the same order of magnitude as the primordially induced relative velocity, and enters in the evolution of the relative velocity as calculated by Boltzmann codes. This leads to a unique contribution to galaxy bias involving the matter velocity squared. The second important effect is a modulation of the galaxy density by the ionizing radiation field through radiative-transfer effects, which is captured in the bias expansion by so-called higher-derivative terms. We constrain both of these imprints using the power spectrum of the BOSS DR12 galaxy sample. While they do not lead to a shift in the baryon acoustic oscillation scale, including these terms is important for unbiased cosmology constraints from the shape of the galaxy power spectrum.

We examine systematically the (in)consistency between cosmological constraints as obtained from various current data sets of the expansion history, large-scale-structure (LSS), and cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature and polarization from Planck. We run (dis)concordance tests within each set and across the three sets using a recently introduced index of inconsistency (IOI) capable of dissecting inconsistencies between two or more data sets. First, we compare the constraints on $H_0$ from five different methods and find that the IOI drops from 2.85 to 0.88 (on Jeffreys’s scales) when the local $H_0$ measurements are removed. This seems to indicate that the local measurement is an outlier compared to the others, thus favoring a systematics-based explanation. We find a moderate inconsistency ($\mathrm{IOI}=2.61$) between Planck temperature and polarization data sets. We find that current LSS data sets including the WiggleZ power spectrum, SDSS redshift space distortion, CFHTLenS weak lensing, CMB lensing, and cluster count from SZ effect, are consistent one with another and also when all combined. However, we find a persistent moderate inconsistency between Planck and individual or combined LSS probes. For Planck $\mathrm{TT}+\mathrm{lowTEB}$ versus individual LSS probes, the IOI spans the range 2.92–3.72 and increases to 3.44–4.20 when the polarization data is added in. The joint LSS versus the combined Planck temperature and polarization has an IOI of 2.83 in the most conservative case. But if Planck low-$\ell$ temperature and polarization is also added to the joint LSS to constrain $\tau$ and break degeneracies, the inconsistency between Planck and joint LSS data increases to the high end of the moderate range with $\mathrm{IOI}=4.81$. Whether due to systematic effects in the data or to the underlying model, these inconsistencies need to be resolved. Finally, we perform forecast calculations using the Large Sky Synoptic Survey (LSST) and find that the discordance between Planck and future LSS data, if it persists as present, can rise up to a high IOI of 17, thus falling in the strong range of inconsistency.

When coupling fermions to gravity, torsion is naturally induced. We consider the possibility that fermion bilinears can act as a source for torsion, altering the dynamics of the early universe such that the big bang gets replaced with a classical nonsingular bounce. We extend previous studies in several ways: we allow more general fermion couplings, consider both commuting and anticommuting spinors, and demonstrate that with an appropriate choice of potential one can easily obtain essentially arbitrary equations of state, including violations of the null energy condition, as required for a bounce. As an example, we construct a model of ekpyrotic contraction followed by a nonsingular bounce into an expanding phase. We analyze cosmological fluctuations in these models, and show that the perturbations can be rewritten in real fluid form. We find indications that spinor bounces are stable, and exhibit several solutions for the perturbations. Interestingly, spinor models do not admit a scalar-vector-tensor decomposition, and consequently some types of scalar fluctuations can act as a source for gravitational waves already at linear order. We also find that the first order dynamics are directionally dependent, an effect which might lead to distinguished observational signatures.

The success of a given inflationary model crucially depends upon two features: its predictions for observables such as those of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and its insensitivity to the unknown UV physics such as quantum gravitational effects. Extranatural inflation is a well-motivated scenario that is insensitive to UV physics by construction. In this five-dimensional model, the fifth dimension is compactified on a circle, and the zero mode of the fifth component of a bulk $U(1)$ gauge field acts as the inflaton. In this work, we study simple variations of the minimal extranatural inflation model in order to improve its CMB predictions while retaining its numerous merits. We find that it is possible to obtain CMB predictions identical to those of, e.g., the $\mathcal{R}+{\mathcal{R}}^2$ Starobinsky model of inflation and show that this can be done in the most minimal way by having two additional light fermionic species in the bulk, with the same $U(1)$ charges. We then find the constraints that CMB observations impose on the parameters of the model.

Shot noise is an important ingredient to any measurement or theoretical modeling of discrete tracers of the large scale structure. Recent work has shown that the shot noise in the halo power spectrum becomes increasingly sub-Poissonian at high mass. Interestingly, while the halo model predicts a shot noise power spectrum in qualitative agreement with the data, it leads to an unphysical white noise in the cross halo-matter and matter power spectrum. In this work, we show that absorbing all the halo model sources of shot noise into the halo fluctuation field leads to meaningful predictions for the shot noise contributions to halo clustering statistics and remove the unphysical white noise from the cross halo-matter statistics. Our prescription straightforwardly maps onto the general bias expansion, so that the renormalized shot noise terms can be expressed as combinations of the halo model shot noises. Furthermore, we demonstrate that non-Poissonian contributions are related to volume integrals over correlation functions and their response to long-wavelength density perturbations. This leads to a new class of consistency relations for discrete tracers, which appear to be satisfied by our reformulation of the halo model. We test our theoretical predictions against measurements of halo shot noise bispectra extracted from a large suite of numerical simulations. Our model reproduces qualitatively the observed sub-Poissonian noise, although it underestimates the magnitude of this effect.

The confining quark matter (CQM) model, in which the confinement and asymptotic freedom are modeled via the Richardson potential for quark-quark vector interaction and the chiral symmetry restoration at high density is described by the density-dependent quark mass, is extended to include isospin dependence of the quark mass. Within this extended isospin-dependent confining quark matter (ICQM) model, we study the properties of strange quark matter and quark stars. We find that including isospin dependence of the quark mass can significantly influence the quark matter symmetry energy, the stability of strange quark matter and the mass-radius relation of quark stars. In particular, we demonstrate that although the recently discovered large mass pulsars PSR J1614.2230 and PSR $\mathrm{J}0348+0432$ with masses around two times solar mass ($2M_{\odot }$) cannot be quark stars within the original CQM model, they can be well described by quark stars in the ICQM model if the isospin dependence of the quark mass is strong enough so that the quark matter symmetry energy is about four times that of a free quark gas. We also discuss the effects of the density dependence of quark mass on the properties of quark stars. Our results indicate that the heavy quark stars with mass around $2M_{\odot }$ (if exist) can put strong constraints on isospin and density dependence of the quark mass as well as the quark matter symmetry energy.

In this work, we perform a toy-model analysis for the unpolarized photo- and electroproduction of $\mathrm{\Lambda }(1405)\equiv {\mathrm{\Lambda }}^{*}$ via ${\gamma }^{(*)}p\to K^{+}{\pi }^{+}{\mathrm{\Sigma }}^{-}$ by employing the effective Lagrangian approach at the tree level only. We consider that ${\mathrm{\Lambda }}^{*}$ consists of the high-mass ($H$) and low-mass ($L$) poles as suggested by the chiral unitary model (ChUM). We determine all the model parameters including coupling constants and cutoff parameters for the phenomenological strong form factors by using the theoretical information from ChUM and available experimental data. The electromagnetic (EM) form factors for the two poles are parametrized appropriately being similar to that for the neutron by employing the ChUM estimates for the EM root-mean-squared (rms) radii for the two poles. We observe from the numerical calculations that, for the photoproduction of ${\mathrm{\Lambda }}^{*}$, the interference between the two poles turns out to be destructive, resulting in the single-peak line at $M_{{\pi }^{+}{\mathrm{\Sigma }}^{-}}\approx 1405\mathrm{MeV}$ in the invariant-mass distribution. On the contrary, there appear two peaks in the distribution for the electroproduction as observed in the CLAS/Jlab electroproduction data, due to the constructive interference, which is mainly caused by the Dirac form factors for the two poles. From this observation, we conclude that, in order to explain the photo- and electroproduction data simultaneously, i.e., single and double peaks, respectively, in the invariant-mass distribution, the interference patterns for the two poles should follow those suggested by ChUM. In turn, it is a strong theoretical and experimental supports for the two-pole structure scenario for ${\mathrm{\Lambda }}^{*}$.

We study the impact of attractive self-interactions on the nonequilibrium dynamics of relativistic quantum fields with large occupancies at low momenta. Our primary focus is on Bose-Einstein condensation and nonthermal fixed points in such systems. For a model system, we consider $\mathcal{O}(N)$-symmetric scalar field theories. We use classical-statistical real-time simulations as well as a systematic $1/N$ expansion of the quantum (two-particle-irreducible) effective action to next-to-leading order. When the mean self-interactions are repulsive, condensation occurs as a consequence of a universal inverse particle cascade to the zero-momentum mode with self-similar scaling behavior. For attractive mean self-interactions, the inverse cascade is absent, and the particle annihilation rate is enhanced compared to the repulsive case, which counteracts the formation of coherent field configurations. For $N\ge 2$, the presence of a nonvanishing conserved charge can suppress number-changing processes and lead to the formation of stable localized charge clumps, i.e., $Q$ balls.

Colorelectric and colormagnetic structure of the flux tubes, connecting heavy quark and antiquark, is investigated in the framework of the field correlator method which describes all resulting fields in terms of correlators $D^E$ and $D_1^E$. The latter have been computed via gluelumps, which allows us to predict the resulting distribution of color fields $\mathbf{E}(\mathbf{r})$, and colormagnetic currents $\mathbf{k}(\mathbf{r})$ in the flux tubes. It is shown, that at large distances $r\gg \lambda \approx 0.2\mathrm{fm}$ the whole structure of fields and relations between them is similar to that of the dual superconductor theory, but the basic dynamics, including small distances, is given by field correlators of the real stochastic vacuum. The important contradiction between the strong screening of color fields in the width of flux tubes and almost no screening in the perturbative $Q\overline{Q}$ potential is resolved.

The symmetry breakdown pattern is studied in models containing one fermion flavor multiplet and a multicomponent scalar field, supplemented with a chiral Yukawa-interaction, and in presence of an explicit symmetry breaking source quadratic in the scalar field. In a detailed investigation of the model with $U_L(1)\times U_R(1)$ chiral symmetry, it is shown that by diminishing the strength of quadratic explicit symmetry breaking, one can still keep stable the mass ratio of the fermionic and the pseudo-Goldstone excitation. At the same time, the mass ratio of the two bosonic excitations appears to approach a unique limiting value depending only on the infrared value of the first ratio but not on the microscopic (ultraviolet) coupling values. These observations receive a general interpretation by the existence of a slowly drifting partial fixed line located in the symmetric phase. Understanding the general conditions for its existence allows the construction of a similar theory with $U_L(2)\times U_R(2)$ chiral symmetry. All results of the present investigation were obtained with a nonperturbative functional renormalization group technique making use of the first two approximations to the gradient expansion of the effective action.

Higgs factories will be able to measure Higgs properties, and in particular Higgs couplings with high precision. In a follow-up to an earlier analysis we study the impact of the Higgsstrahlung and vector boson fusion processes on the precision of the couplings determination. Provided theoretical uncertainties can be controlled, future Higgs factories will be able to measure Higgs couplings at the subpercent level. In spite of their different strengths, base-line circular and linear designs can expect a surprisingly similar performance.

In the light of latest data of neutrino oscillation experiments, we carry out a systematic investigation on the texture structures of Majorana neutrino mass matrix $M_{\nu }$, which contain one vanishing neutrino mass and an equality between two matrix elements. Among 15 logically possible patterns, it is found that for norm order ($m_3>m_2>m_1=0$) of neutrino masses only three of them are compatible with recent experimental data at the $3\sigma$ level, while for inverted order ($m_2>m_1>m_3=0$) two patterns is phenomenologically allowed. In the numerical analysis, we perform a scan over the parameter space of all viable patterns to get a large sample of scattering points. We present the implications of each allowed pattern for three mixing angles $({\theta }_{12},{\theta }_2,{\theta }_3)$, leptonic $CP$ violation and neutrinoless double-beta decay, predicting strong correlations between oscillation parameters. The theoretical realization of a concrete example is discussed in the framework of Froggatt-Nielsen mechanism.

Higgsplosion is a dynamical mechanism that introduces an exponential suppression of quantum fluctuations beyond the Higgsplosion energy scale $E_{*}$ and further guarantees perturbative unitarity in multi-Higgs production processes. By calculating the Higgsplosion scale for spin 0, $1/2$, 1 and 2 particles at leading order, we argue that Higgsplosion regulates all n-point functions, thereby embedding the standard model of particle physics and its extensions into an asymptotically safe theory. There are no Landau poles and the Higgs self-coupling stays positive. Asymptotic safety is of particular interest for theories of particle physics that include quantum gravity. We argue that in a Hippsloding theory one cannot probe shorter and shorter length scales by increasing the energy of the collision beyond the Higgsplosion energy and there is a minimal length set by $r_{*}\sim 1/E_{*}$ that can be probed. We further show that Higgsplosion is consistent and not in conflict with models of inflation and the existence of axions. There is also a possibility of testing Higgsplosion experimentally at future high energy experiments.

We determine polarized parton distribution functions (PPDFs) and structure functions from recent experimental data of polarized deep inelastic scattering (DIS) on nucleons at next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) approximation in perturbative quantum chromodynamics (pQCD). The nucleon polarized structure functions are computed using the Jacobi polynomial approach while target mass corrections (TMCs) are included in our fitting procedure. Having extracted the polarized spin structure functions, we extend our study to describe ${}^3\mathrm{He}$ and ${}^3\mathrm{H}$ polarized structure functions, as well as the Bjorken sum rule. We also explore the importance of the nuclear corrections on the polarized nuclear structure functions at small and large values of $x$. Our results are compared with the recent available and high precision polarized ${}^3\mathrm{He}$ and ${}^3\mathrm{H}$ experimental data.

The topological susceptibility, ${\chi }^4$, following the work of Witten and Veneziano, plays a key role in identifying the relative magnitude of the ${\eta }^{\prime }$ mass, the so-called $U(1{)}_A$ problem. A nonzero ${\chi }^4$ is caused by the Veneziano ghost, the occurrence of an unphysical massless pole in the correlation function of the topological current $K_{\mu }$. In this paper, we investigate the topological susceptibility, ${\chi }^4$, in $SU(3)$ and $SU(2)$ Euclidean Yang-Mills theory using an appropriate Padé approximation tool and a nonperturbative gluon propagator, within a Becchi-Rouet-Stora-Tyutin invariant framework and by taking into account Gribov copies in a general linear covariant gauge.

A future electron ion collider (EIC) will be able to provide collisions of polarized electrons with protons and heavy ions over a wide range of center-of-mass energies (20 GeV to 140 GeV) at an instantaneous luminosity of $10^{33}-{10}^{34}{\mathrm{cm}}^{-2}{\mathrm{s}}^{-1}$. One of its promising physics programs is the study of the partonic structure of quasireal photons. Measuring dijets in quasireal photoproduction events, one can effectively access the underlying parton dynamics of the photons. In this paper, we discuss the feasibility of tagging resolved photon processes and measuring the dijet cross section as a function of jet transverse momentum in the range of $0.01<x_{\gamma }^{\mathrm{rec}}<1$ at an EIC. It will be shown that both unpolarized and polarized parton distributions in the photon can be extracted, and that the flavor of the parton can be tagged at an EIC.

We describe a strategy for constructing a neural network jet substructure tagger which powerfully discriminates boosted decay signals while remaining largely uncorrelated with the jet mass. This reduces the impact of systematic uncertainties in background modeling while enhancing signal purity, resulting in improved discovery significance relative to existing taggers. The network is trained using an adversarial strategy, resulting in a tagger that learns to balance classification accuracy with decorrelation. As a benchmark scenario, we consider the case where large-radius jets originating from a boosted resonance decay are discriminated from a background of nonresonant quark and gluon jets. We show that in the presence of systematic uncertainties on the background rate, our adversarially trained, decorrelated tagger considerably outperforms a conventionally trained neural network, despite having a slightly worse signal-background separation power. We generalize the adversarial training technique to include a parametric dependence on the signal hypothesis, training a single network that provides optimized, interpolatable decorrelated jet tagging across a continuous range of hypothetical resonance masses, after training on discrete choices of the signal mass.

We compute perturbative corrections to matching coefficients of QCD to heavy quark effective theory (HQET) for the matrix element of the $\mathrm{\Delta }B=2$ operator that determines the mass difference in $B^0\text{−}{\overline{B}}^0$ system of states. This involves the technical point of choosing the operator basis in HQET, separating physical operators from evanescent ones. We obtain an analytical result for some of the two-loop corrections at order ${\alpha }_s^2$.

We report results from the first search for sterile neutrinos mixing with active neutrinos through a reduction in the rate of neutral-current interactions over a baseline of 810 km between the NOvA detectors. Analyzing a 14-kton detector equivalent exposure of $6.05\times {10}^{20}$ protons-on-target in the NuMI beam at Fermilab, we observe 95 neutral-current candidates at the Far Detector compared with $83.5\pm 9.7(\mathrm{stat})\pm 9.4(\mathrm{syst})$ events predicted assuming mixing only occurs between active neutrino species. No evidence for ${\nu }_{\mu }\to {\nu }_s$ transitions is found. Interpreting these results within a $3+1$ model, we place constraints on the mixing angles ${\theta }_{24}<20.8°$ and ${\theta }_{34}<31.2°$ at the 90% C.L. for $0.05{\mathrm{eV}}^2\le \mathrm{\Delta }{m}_{41}^2\le 0.5{\mathrm{eV}}^2$, the range of mass splittings that produce no significant oscillations over the Near Detector baseline.

We consider a conformal field theory in two dimensions in which an external perturbation is placed. We study the energy flux and entanglement entropy for one, two and multiple intervals and give a suggestion relating the two in some cases. We show that both the energy flux and the entanglement entropy exhibit a light-cone singularity which strongly depends on the regularization we choose.