We examine the possibility that dark matter consists of charged massive particles (CHAMPs) in view of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies. The evolution of cosmological perturbations of CHAMPs with other components is followed in a self-consistent manner, without assuming that CHAMPs and baryons are tightly coupled. We incorporate for the first time the “kinetic recoupling” of the Coulomb scattering, which is characteristic of heavy CHAMPs. By a direct comparison of the predicted CMB temperature/polarization autocorrelations in CHAMP models and the observed spectra in the Planck mission, we show that CHAMPs leave sizable effects on them if it is lighter than $10^{11}\mathrm{GeV}$. Our result can be applicable to any CHAMP as long as its lifetime is much longer than the cosmic time at the recombination ($\sim 4\times 10^5\mathrm{yr}$). An application to millicharged particles is also discussed.

Motivated by the discovery of the nonthermal Fermi bubble features both below and above the Galactic plane, we investigate a scenario in which these bubbles are formed through galacto-centric outflow. Cosmic rays (CR) both diffusing and advecting within a galactic breeze outflow, interacting with the ambient gas present, give rise to $\gamma$-ray emission, providing an approximately flat surface brightness profile of this emission, as observed. Applying the same outflow profile further out within the disk, the resultant effects on the observable CR spectral properties are determined. A hardening in the spectra due to the competition of advective and diffusive propagation within a particular energy range is noted, even in the limiting case of equal CR diffusion coefficients in the disk and halo. It is postulated that this hardening effect may relate to the observed hardening feature in the CR spectrum at a rigidity of $\approx 200\mathrm{GV}$.

One of the simplest extensions of the Standard Model (SM) is the addition of a scalar gauge singlet, $S$. If $S$ is not forbidden by a symmetry from mixing with the Standard Model Higgs boson, the mixing will generate non-SM rates for Higgs production and decays. In general, there could also be unknown high energy physics that generates additional effective low energy interactions. We show that interference effects between the scalar resonance of the singlet model and the effective field theory (EFT) operators can have significant effects in the Higgs sector. We examine a non-$Z_2$ symmetric scalar singlet model and demonstrate that a fit to the 125 GeV Higgs boson couplings and to limits on high mass resonances, $S$, exhibit an interesting structure and possible large cancellations of effects between the resonance contribution and the new EFT interactions, that invalidate conclusions based on the renormalizable singlet model alone.

Recently LHCb experiments confirmed the findings of the two $P_c$ states in the ${\mathrm{\Lambda }}_b^0\to J/\psi p{\pi }^{-}$ decays. In the present work, we investigate both the ${\mathrm{\Lambda }}_b^0\to J/\psi K^{-}p$ and the ${\mathrm{\Lambda }}_b^0\to J/\psi p{\pi }^{-}$ decays, continuing the investigations of our former works on the interactions of $J/\psi N$ with its coupled channels by considering the s-/u-channel contributions, which are nontrivial in our results. We obtain consistent results with the previous works and the line shape of the $J/\psi N$ invariant mass distribution, which is analogous to the LHCb experiments, and favor the $P_c(4450)$ state as a ${\overline{D}}^{*}{\mathrm{\Sigma }}_c$ bound state in our theoretical model.

The mass spectra of the $\varphi \varphi$ and $J/\psi \varphi$ states in the decay $B_s^0\to J/\psi \varphi \varphi$ recently observed by LHCb are calculated in the model which takes into account the $J^P=0^{+},0^{-},2^{+}$ intermediate resonances $R_1$, $R_2$ in the $\varphi \varphi$ channel and the $J^P=1^{+}$ ones, $X_1$, $X_2$, in the $J/\psi \varphi$ channel. When obtaining the expressions for the effective amplitudes and mass spectra, the approximate threshold kinematics of the decay is used essentially. The $R_1-R_2$ and $X_1-X_2$ mixings arising due to the common decay modes $\varphi \varphi$ and $J/\psi \varphi$, respectively, are also taken into account. The obtained expressions for the mass spectra are applied for extracting the information about masses and coupling constants of the resonances in the $\varphi \varphi$ and $J/\psi \varphi$ final states.

We present a calculation of $H+j$ at next-to-leading order including the effect of a finite top mass. Where possible we include the complete dependence on $m_t$. This includes the leading order amplitude, the infrared poles of the two-loop amplitude and the real radiation amplitude. The remaining finite piece of the virtual correction is considered in an asymptotic expansion in $m_t$, which is accurate to $m_t^{-4}$. By successively including more $m_t$-exact pieces, the dependence on the asymptotic series diminishes and we find convergent behavior for $p_{T,H}>m_t$ for the first time. Our results justify rescaling by the $m_t$-exact leading-order (LO) cross section to model top-mass effects in effective field theory results up to $p_T$ of 250 to 300 GeV. We show that the error made by using the LO rescaling becomes comparable to the next-to-next-to-leading-order scale uncertainty for such large energies. We implement our results into the Monte Carlo code mcfm.

An inclusive search for supersymmetry using razor variables is performed in events with four or more jets and no more than one lepton. The results are based on a sample of proton-proton collisions corresponding to an integrated luminosity of $2.3{\mathrm{fb}}^{-1}$ collected with the CMS experiment at a center-of-mass energy of $\sqrt{s}=13\mathrm{TeV}$. No significant excess over the background prediction is observed in data, and 95% confidence level exclusion limits are placed on the masses of new heavy particles in a variety of simplified models. Assuming that pair-produced gluinos decay only via three-body processes involving third-generation quarks plus a neutralino, and that the neutralino is the lightest supersymmetric particle with a mass of 200 GeV, gluino masses below 1.6 TeV are excluded for any branching fractions for the individual gluino decay modes. For some specific decay mode scenarios, gluino masses up to 1.65 TeV are excluded. For decays to first- and second-generation quarks and a neutralino with a mass of 200 GeV, gluinos with masses up to 1.4 TeV are excluded. Pair production of top squarks decaying to a top quark and a neutralino with a mass of 100 GeV is excluded for top squark masses up to 750 GeV.

Using the explicit string scattering calculation and the linear T-dual ward identity, we evaluate the string theory disc amplitude of one Ramond-Ramond field $C^{(p+1)}$ and two Neveu-Schwarz B-fields in the presence of a single $D_p$-brane in type $IIB$ string theory. From this amplitude we extract the $O({\alpha }^{\prime 2})$ (or equivalently four-derivative) part of the $D_p$-brane couplings involving these fields.

We study, as a model of Lorentz symmetry breaking, the quantization and renormalization of an extension of QED in a flat spacetime where the photons and electrons propagate differently and do not share the same lightcone. We will refer to this model as bimetric QED (BIMQED). As a preliminary we discuss the formulation of electrodynamics in a premetric formalism showing nevertheless that there is, on the basis of a simple criteron, a preferred metric. Arising from this choice of metric is a Weyl-like tensor (WLT). The Petrov classification of the WLT gives rise to a corresponding classification of Lorentz symmetry breaking. We do not impose any constraint on the strength of the symmetry breaking and are able to obtain explicit dispersion relations for photon propagation in each of the Petrov classes. The associated birefringence appears in some cases as two distinct polarization dependent lightcones and in other cases as a more complicated structure that cannot be disentangled in a simple way. We show how in BIMQED the renormalization procedure can, in addition to its effect on standard parameters such as charge and mass, force the renormalization of the metrics and the WLT. Two particularly tractable cases are studied in detail for which we can obtain renormalization group flows for the parameters of the model together with an analysis of fixed point structure. Of course these results are consistent with previous studies but we are not constrained to treat Lorentz symmetry breaking as necessarily weak. As we found in a previous study of a scalar field theory model an acceptable causal structure for the model imposes constraints on relationship between the various lightcones in BIMQED.

Recently, the existence of a candidate $a$-function for renormalizable theories in three dimensions was demonstrated for a general theory at leading order and for a scalar-fermion theory at next-to-leading order. Here we extend this work by constructing the $a$-function at next-to-leading order for an $\mathcal{N}=2$ supersymmetric Chern-Simons theory. This increase in precision for the $a$-function necessitated the evaluation of the underlying renormalization-group functions at four loops.

In Abbott et al. [Phys. Rev. X 6, 041014 (2016)], the properties of the first gravitational wave detected by LIGO, GW150914, were measured by employing an effective-one-body (EOB) model of precessing binary black holes whose underlying dynamics and waveforms were calibrated to numerical-relativity (NR) simulations. Here, we perform the first extensive comparison of such an EOBNR model to 70 precessing NR waveforms that span mass ratios from 1 to 5, dimensionless spin magnitudes up to 0.5, generic spin orientations, and length of about 20 orbits. We work in the observer’s inertial frame and include all $\ell =2$ modes in the gravitational-wave polarizations. We introduce new prescriptions for the EOB ringdown signal concerning its spectrum and time of onset. For total masses between $10{\mathrm{M}}_{\odot }$ and $200{\mathrm{M}}_{\odot }$, we find that precessing EOBNR waveforms have unfaithfulness within about 3% to NR waveforms when considering the Advanced-LIGO design noise curve. This result is obtained without recalibration of the inspiral-plunge signal of the underlying nonprecessing EOBNR model. The unfaithfulness is computed with maximization over time and phase of arrival, sky location, and polarization of the EOBNR waveform, and it is averaged over sky location and polarization of the NR signal. We also present comparisons between NR and EOBNR waveforms in a frame that tracks the orbital precession.

We consider gravitational wave production by bubble collisions during a cosmological first-order phase transition. In the literature, such spectra have been estimated by simulating the bubble dynamics, under so-called thin-wall and envelope approximations in a flat background metric. However, we show that, within these assumptions, the gravitational wave spectrum can be estimated in an analytic way. Our estimation is based on the observation that the two-point correlator of the energy-momentum tensor $⟨T(x)T(y)⟩$ can be expressed analytically under these assumptions. Though the final expressions for the spectrum contain a few integrations that cannot be calculated explicitly, we can easily estimate it numerically. As a result, it is found that the most of the contributions to the spectrum come from single-bubble contribution to the correlator, and in addition the fall-off of the spectrum at high frequencies is found to be proportional to $f^{-1}$. We also provide fitting formulas for the spectrum.

Numerical studies of gravitational collapse to black holes make use of apparent horizons, which are intrinsically foliation dependent. We expose the problem and discuss possible solutions using the Hawking-Hayward quasilocal mass. In spherical symmetry, we present a physically sensible approach to the problem by restricting to spherically symmetric spacetime slicings. In spherical symmetry, the apparent horizons enjoy a restricted gauge independence in any spherically symmetric foliation, but physical quantities associated with them, such as surface gravity and temperature, are fully gauge dependent. The widely used comoving and Kodama foliations, which are of particular interest, are discussed in detail as examples.

The extended Higgs sector, such as by a second Higgs doublet of type II, provides portals to the dark sector which contain missing particles at the LHC, e.g., dark matter particles. In this paper, working in the simplified model and taking into consideration the wide decay-width effect of the mediator, we analyze the characteristic signatures of mono-$b+\mathrm{MET}$ and $2b+\mathrm{MET}$ at the LHC. The latter signature was believed to be ineffective, while we found that, with the aid of razor shape analysis, it should be as important as the mono-$b$ signature. In the region of relatively low mediator mass (below a few hundred GeV), by requiring a signal-to-background ratio greater than a few percent, the $2b$-tagged razor analysis has comparable sensitivity to the mono-$b$ search; it is even better for a mediator lighter than $\sim 200\mathrm{GeV}$.

We present results of the numerical simulation of the two-dimensional Thirring model at finite density and temperature. The severe sign problem is dealt with by deforming the domain of integration into complex field space. This is the first example where a fermionic sign problem is solved in a quantum field theory by using the holomorphic gradient flow approach, a generalization of the Lefschetz thimble method.

The covariant spectator quark model, tested before in a variety of electromagnetic baryon excitations, is applied here to the ${\gamma }^{*}N\to N^{*}(1520)$ reaction in the timelike regime. The transition form factors are first parametrized in the spacelike region in terms of a valence quark core model together with a parametrization of the meson cloud contribution. The form factor behavior in the timelike region is then predicted, as well as the $N^{*}(1520)\to \gamma N$ decay width and the $N^{*}(1520)$ Dalitz decay, $N^{*}(1520)\to e^{+}{e}^{-}N$. Our results may help in the interpretation of dielectron production from elementary $pp$ collisions and from the new generation of HADES results using a pion beam. In the $q^2=0–1{\mathrm{GeV}}^2$ range, we conclude that the QED approximation (a $q^2$ independent form factor model) underestimates the electromagnetic coupling of the $N^{*}(1520)$ from 1 up to 2 orders of magnitude. We conclude also that the $N^{*}(1520)$ and $\mathrm{\Delta }(1232)$ Dalitz decay widths are comparable.

It has been recently argued that inserting a probe $\overline{\mathrm{D}3}$-brane in a flux background breaks supersymmetry spontaneously instead of explicitly, as previously thought. In this paper we argue that such spontaneous breaking of supersymmetry persists even when the probe $\overline{\mathrm{D}3}$-brane is kept in a curved background with an internal space that does not have to be a Calabi-Yau manifold. To show this we take a specific curved background generated by fractional 3-branes and fluxes on a non-Kähler resolved conifold where supersymmetry breaking appears directly from certain worldvolume fermions becoming massive. In fact this turns out to be a generic property even if we change the dimensionality of the antibrane, or allow higher-order fermionic interactions on the antibrane. We argue for the former by taking a probe $\overline{\mathrm{D}7}$-brane in a flux background and demonstrate the spontaneous breaking of supersymmetry using worldvolume fermions. We argue for the latter by constructing an all-order fermionic action for the $\overline{\mathrm{D}3}$-brane from which the spontaneous nature of supersymmetry breaking can be demonstrated by bringing it to a $\kappa$-symmetric form.

Within the twistorial parametrization of loop quantum gravity, we investigate the consequences of choosing a spacelike normal vector in the linear simplicity constraints. The amplitudes for the SU(2) boundary states of loop quantum gravity, given by most of the current spin foam models, are constructed in such a way that even in the bulk only spacelike building blocks occur. Using a spacelike normal vector in the linear simplicity constraints allows us to distinguish spacelike from timelike 2-surfaces. We propose in this paper a quantum theory that includes both spatial and temporal building blocks and hence a more complete picture of quantum spacetime. At the classical level, we show how we can describe ${\mathrm{T}}^{*}\mathrm{SU}(1,1)$ as a symplectic quotient of 2-twistor space ${\mathbb{T}}^2$ by area matching and simplicity constraints. This provides us with the underlying classical phase space for SU(1,1) spin networks describing timelike boundaries and their extension into the bulk. Applying a Dirac quantization, we show that the reduced Hilbert space is spanned by SU(1,1) spin networks and hence is able to give a quantum description of both spacelike and timelike faces. We discuss in particular the spectrum of the area operator and argue that for spacelike and timelike 2-surfaces it is discrete.

It has been found that surface operators have a significant role in Alday-Gaiotto-Tachikawa (AGT) relation. This duality is an outstanding consequence of $M$-theory, but it is actually encoded into the brane web for which the topological string can work. From this viewpoint, the surface defect in AGT relation is geometrically engineered as a toric brane realization. Also, there is a class of the brane configuration in $M$-theory called $M$-strings which can be translated into the language of the topological string. In this work, we propose a new $M$-string configuration which can realize AGT relation in the presence of the surface defect by utilizing the geometric transition in the refined topological string.