We calculate the effective potentials of the octet baryon and heavy meson systems using the chiral effective field theory up to the next-to-leading order. We consider the contact terms, one-pseudoscalar-meson and two-pseudoscalar-meson exchange contributions, facilitating a comprehensive analysis of the short-, mid-, and long-range interactions in these systems. The low energy constants are correlated with those of the $\overline{N}N$ interaction using a quark-level Lagrangian approach. We also incorporate the decuplet baryon contributions in the loop diagrams. Our research provides new insights into several near-threshold charmed baryons [e.g., ${\mathrm{\Lambda }}_c(2940)$, ${\mathrm{\Xi }}_c(3055)$, and ${\mathrm{\Omega }}_c(3188)$, etc.] around 3 GeV from the hadronic molecular perspective. We also observe several molecular states, referred to as ${\mathrm{\Xi }}_c$, within the mass range of 3100–3500 MeV. Further measurements of their resonance parameters and decay patterns in experiments may help to discriminate the conventional baryon and hadronic molecule explanations for these near-threshold states.

A critical element of the LHC physics program is the search for an additional source of $CP$ violation. This is largely unexplored in the context of nonlinear Higgs physics, which is naturally described in Higgs effective field theory (HEFT). Relevant new higher-dimensional operators modify the production rate and branching ratios of the Higgs boson, decorrelating different Higgs multiplicities. In this work, we consider single Higgs and Higgs pair production via weak boson fusion from the perspective of gauge-Higgs $CP$ violation through the lens of Higgs nonlinearity. This generalizes existing rate-based searches and analyses by the ATLAS and CMS experiments. Particular focus is given to the phenomenological differences in the expected beyond Standard Model (BSM) sensitivity pattern when comparing HEFT constraints with Standard Model effective field theory (SMEFT) limits.

Rare processes in laboratory and within astrophysical environments can be highly sensitive probes of baryon-number-violating interactions at the TeV scale. We demonstrate the power of neutron stars to constrain baryon-number violation by considering a minimal extension of the standard model involving a TeV-mass scalar mediator and a GeV scale Majorana fermion $\psi$. We find that a $\mathrm{\Delta }B=2$ mass-loss process in binary pulsar systems via $n\to \gamma \psi$ and the subsequent scattering $\psi n\to {\pi }^{-}{K}^{+}$ places stringent constraints on the model parameter space. These limits will become much stronger, due to the possibility of $\mathrm{\Lambda }\to \gamma \psi$ decays at the tree level, if the neutron star equation of state is hyperonic. We compare these constraints with ongoing and future collider experiments, $n-\overline{n}$ oscillations, and dinucleon decay searches at future large-scale neutrino experiments, finding that the binary pulsars bounds on couplings are significantly tighter for specific flavor combinations.

We introduce a string-based parametrization for nucleon quark and gluon generalized parton distributions (GPDs) valid at all skewness values. The conformal moments of the GPDs are expressed as sums of the spin-j nucleon A-form factor and the skewness-dependent spin-j nucleon D-form factor. This representation, which fulfills the polynomiality condition (due to Lorentz invariance) and does not rely on model-specific assumptions, is derived from t-channel string exchanges in anti-de Sitter spaces. The spin-j nucleon D-form factor is closely related to the spin-j nucleon A-form factor. We use the Mellin moments from empirical parton distributions to model the spin-j nucleon A-form factors. Using only five Regge slope parameters, fixed from the electromagnetic and gravitational form factors, our string-based parametrization generates accurate singlet, nonsinglet, isovector, and flavor-separated nucleon quark GPDs, along with symmetric nucleon gluon GPDs from their Mellin-Barnes integral representations. Our isovector nucleon quark GPD is in agreement with existing lattice data. Our string-based parametrization should facilitate the empirical extraction and global analysis of nucleon GPDs in exclusive processes, bypassing the deconvolution challenge.

We present a detailed survey of electric, magnetic, and quadrupole form factors of light and heavy spin-1 vector mesons. It complements our analogous analysis of the electromagnetic form factors of pseudoscalar and scalar mesons reported earlier. Our formalism is based upon the Schwinger-Dyson equations treatment of a vector $\times$ vector contact interaction and the Bethe-Salpeter equation description of relativistic two-body bound states. We compute the form factors, associated moments, and charge radii, comparing these quantities to earlier theoretical studies and experimental results if and when possible. We also investigate the quark-mass dependence of the charge radii and find the anticipated hierarchy such that it decreases with increasing dressed quark masses. In addition, our analysis shows that the magnetic moment is independent of the mass of the light and heavy mesons. Our results agree with most measurements reported earlier, finding a negative quadrupole moment, implying the charge distribution is oblate.

We investigate quark-gluon plasma at nonzero density by using two holographic models for QCD based on either brane or Einstein-Maxwell-dilaton actions. We determine the parameters of these models through a systematic statistical fitting procedure to lattice QCD data, which encompasses the equation of state (through the entropy density) and the two lowest baryon number susceptibilities. The predictions from the two models for the higher-order susceptibilities and the equation of state at nonzero density are strikingly similar. In particular, both models suggest the presence of a critical point on the $({\mu }_{\mathrm{B}},T)$-phase diagram near ${\mu }_{\mathrm{B}}/T\approx 6$. The results for the equation of state are in agreement with lattice data for higher-order susceptibilities and experimental data for the cumulants of the net-proton number from the beam energy scan program at the Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider.

Recently, the generating system that describes interacting symmetric higher-spin gauge fields at the level of equations of motion was proposed. The interaction vertices it offers are “off the mass shell” unless constrained by the prescribed factorization condition that properly removes traceful components. In this paper, we detail the structure of the unconstrained, i.e., traceful vertices. We derive their manifest form to all orders along with a net of the associated dualities, thus providing the complete higher-spin vertex analysis at the unconstrained level for the bosonic theory in any dimension. These vertices are shown to be the minimal space-time local and have a form of the peculiar integrals over a space of closed polygons, which we scrutinize in the paper. The obtained results directly apply to the holomorphic sector of the four-dimensional theory, where the interaction is on shell, producing the all-order chiral higher-spin vertices.

Thermal QCD systems like strongly coupled quark gluon plasma require not only a large ’t Hooft coupling but also a finite gauge coupling [Natsuume, arXiv:hep-ph/0701201] in the large-$N$ gravity dual. Unlike almost all top-down holographic models in the literature, holographic large-$N$ thermal QCD models based on this assumption, therefore, necessarily require addressing this limit from $\mathcal{M}$ theory. In the context of strongly coupled (very large ’t Hooft coupling) thermal QCD-like theories, the bulk-viscosity($\zeta$)-to-shear-viscosity($\eta$) ratio using the type-IIA-theory dual of thermal QCD-like theories was shown to vary like $\frac{1}{3}-c_s^2$ [Czajka et al., Bulk viscosity at extreme limits: From kinetic theory to strings, J. High Energy Phys. 07 (2019) 145] ($c_s$ being the speed of sound), and the same ($\frac{\zeta }{\eta }$) at weak coupling using kinetic theory and finite temperature field theory was shown and is known to vary like ${(\frac{1}{3}-c_s^2)}^2$ [Czajka et al., Bulk viscosity at extreme limits: From kinetic theory to strings, J. High Energy Phys. 07 (2019) 145, and references therein]. The novelties of the results of this paper are that we not only show for the first time from $\mathcal{M}$ theory that at intermediate coupling, with the inclusion of the $\mathcal{O}(R^4)$ corrections, the result obtained for $\frac{\zeta }{\eta }$ interpolates between the strong- and weak-coupling results in a way consistent with lattice computations of $SU(3)$ gluodynamics [Meyer, Calculation of the bulk viscosity in SU(3) gluodynamics, Phys. Rev. Lett. 100, 162001 (2008)] within statistical errors (and within the temperature range permissible by our $\mathcal{M}$-theory uplift), but also observe that this behavior is related to the existence of contact 3-structures that exist only at intermediate coupling effected by the intermediate-$N$ “MQGP” limit of Misra and Yadav [arXiv:2211.13186]. We also obtain an explicit dependence of $\frac{\zeta }{\eta }$ on (fractional powers of) the temperature-dependent and running gauge coupling (and its temperature derivative) and verify that the weak-coupling result dominates at large temperatures. We further conjecture that the aforementioned fractional-power dependence of $\frac{\zeta }{\eta }$ on the gauge coupling is related to the lack of “$N$-connectedness” in the parameter space of contact 3-structures (as shown in arXiv:2211.13186).

In this work, we study the quantization of Carrollian conformal scalar theories, including two-dimensional (2D) magnetic scalar and three-dimensional (3D) electric and magnetic scalars. We discuss two different quantization schemes, depending on the choice of the vacuum. We show that the standard canonical quantization corresponding to the induced vacuum yields a unitary Hilbert space and the 2-point correlation functions in this scheme match exactly with the ones computed from the path integral. In the canonical quantization, the BMS symmetry can be realized without anomaly. On the other hand, for the quantization based on the highest-weight vacuum, it does not have a unitary Hilbert space. In 2D, the correlators in the highest-weight vacuum agree with the ones obtained by taking the $c\to 0$ limit of the 2D CFT, and there is an anomalous term in the commutation relations between the Virasoso generators, whose form is similar to the one in 2D CFT. In 3D, there is no good definition of the highest-weight vacuum without breaking the rotational symmetry. In our study, we find that the usual state-operator correspondence in CFT does not hold in the Carrollian case.

We elucidate the dependence of the Casimir energy on the trace anomaly coefficients for a six-dimensional (6D) conformal field theory on $R\times S^5$. This extends the universal dependence on the central charge in two dimensions and the relation by Cappelli and Coste in four dimensions, unveiling the role of the trivial total derivatives in the anomaly that renders the Casimir energy scheme dependent. We obtain ${\mathcal{E}}_c=-\frac{15}{8}{a}_6-\frac{5}{12}(g_5+\frac{1}{4}{g}_7+\frac{1}{2}{g}_8-10g_9+g_{10})$, with $a_6$ being the type A central charge and the $g$’s, the coefficients of five out of six terms that form a basis for trivial total derivatives. The derivation is based on the Polyakov formulas (conformal primitive) resulting from the integration of the trace anomaly. Alternatively, on a 6D conformally flat background the above basis is redundant, and one can simplify further to get, in terms of the Schouten scalar $J$ and the Schouten tensor $V$, Branson’s basis for trivial total derivatives ${\nabla }^2{\nabla }^{2}J$, ${\nabla }^2{J}^2$, and ${\nabla }^2|V{|}^2+2\nabla ·(V·\nabla J)$ with coefficients ${\gamma }_1$, ${\gamma }_2$, and ${\gamma }_3$, respectively, ${\mathcal{E}}_c=-\frac{15}{8}{a}_6-\frac{1}{24}({\gamma }_1-{\gamma }_2-\frac{1}{8}{\gamma }_3)$. For completeness, we also report the energy-momentum tensor in full generality, which leads to an alternative derivation of the above relation.

We illustrate how the conformal Ward identities in momentum space completely determine the structure of a parity-odd three-point correlator involving currents, energy-momentum tensors, and at least one scalar operator in $d=4$. Conformal invariance fixes almost all such possible correlators to vanish. The only exceptions are given by the $⟨JJO{⟩}_{\mathrm{odd}}$ and the $⟨TTO{⟩}_{\mathrm{odd}}$ which in momentum space are protected by chiral and conformal anomalies. Specifically, one can obtain a nonvanishing solution by considering scalar operators such as $O=\nabla ·J_A$, $O=g_{\mu \nu }{T}^{\mu \nu }$, or their shadow transforms. We comment on the implications of these results that constrain the coupling of axions and dilatons in a conformal phase of the early universe.

We study the thermodynamic properties of a rotating electrically charged Einstein-Euler-Heisenberg black hole solution. This describes a QED generalization of the Kerr-Newman solution, which endows the vacuum with an effective dielectric constant. The QED-induced modifications to the thermodynamic quantities are presented and discussed. The Penrose process and the extraction of energy from the black hole at the event horizon are reviewed. We also analyze the Euler-Heisenberg nonlinear effects in the cases of supermassive, stellar, and primordial black holes. The evaporation of the black hole is analyzed as blackbody radiation.

By considering realistic equations of state (EoSs) to describe the ordinary matter of the stellar crust, in this study, we explore the effect of a dark energy core, made of Chaplygin dark fluid (CDF), on neutron stars (NSs). To accomplish this purpose, we solve the stellar structure equations and investigate the impact of the CDF parameters on the several macroscopic properties of NSs such as mass-radius ($M-R$) relation, and tidal deformabilities of a single star and of a binary system, the latter being of great importance when analyzing gravitational-wave signals coming from the merger of such compact objects. We also present an analysis of the radial oscillation modes for the rapid phase transition, with the aim of distinguishing regions consisting of dynamically stable stars from those of unstable ones. Specifically, our outcomes reveal that an increase in the energy density jump (controlled by a parameter $\alpha$) leads to an increase in the radial stability of the NS with a CDF core. Furthermore, our theoretical results are consistent with the observational $M-R$ measurements of millisecond pulsars from NICER data and tidal deformability constraints from the GW170817 event.

We generalize Phinney’s “practical theorem” to account for modified graviton dispersion relations motivated by certain cosmological scenarios. Focusing on specific examples, we show how such modifications can induce characteristic localized distortions—bumps—in the frequency profile of the stochastic gravitational wave background emitted from distant binary sources. We concentrate on gravitational waves at nanohertz frequencies probed by pulsar timing arrays, and we forecast the capabilities of future experiments to accurately probe parameters controlling modified dispersion relations. Our predictions are based on properties of gravitational waves emitted in the first inspiral phase of the binary process and do not rely on assumptions of nonlinear effects occurring during the binary merging phase.

We investigate in this work the evolution of the collective fast neutrino flavor conversion (FFC) in a three-dimensional (3D) cubic box with periodic boundary condition for three different neutrino angular distributions that are axially asymmetric. We find that the system evolves toward a quasistationary state where the angular distribution of the spatially averaged neutrino electron-minus-muon lepton number (ELN) does not contain any crossings. In the quasistationary state, near flavor equilibration is achieved in one angular domain enclosed by the initial ELN angular crossing contour, similar to the conclusion derived based on simplified one-dimensional (1D) system with axially symmetric neutrino angular distributions. We have also performed additional simulations in coordinates where the initial first ELN angular moment has only one nonvanishing spatial component by using the original axially asymmetric ELN angular distributions as well as the corresponding axisymmetric ELN distributions and find interesting similarity between these two sets. Finally, we propose three different analytical prescriptions generalized from earlier 1D models to 3D models and evaluate their performances in predicting the post-FFC moments. Our findings suggest that further development of effective classical transport models in multidimensions to capture the effect of FFC is promising.

The spin of intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) growing through repeated black hole mergers in stellar clusters statistically asymptotes to zero. Putative observations of IMBHs with dimensionless spin parameter $\chi \gtrsim 0.6$ would require a phase of coherent gas accretion to spin up the black hole. We estimate the amount of gas necessary to produce a given IMBH spin. If the observed IMBH mass and spin are $M\gtrsim 1000M_{\odot }$ and $\chi \gtrsim 0.6$, respectively, the IMBH must have coherently accreted at least $\sim 100M_{\odot }$ of gas. In this scenario, as long as the spin is not maximal, the IMBH can only accrete at most half of its mass. Our estimates can constrain the relative contribution of accretion and mergers to the growth of IMBHs in dense stellar environments.

We present a neural network classification model for detecting the presence of hyperonic degrees of freedom in neutron stars. The models take radii and/or tidal deformabilities as input and give the probability for the presence of hyperons in the neutron star composition. Different numbers of observations and different levels of uncertainty in the neutron star properties are tested. The models have been trained on a dataset of well-calibrated microscopic equations of state of neutron star matter based on a relativistic mean-field formalism. Real data and data generated from a different description of hyperonic matter are used to test the performance of the models.

Axionlike particles (ALPs) with lepton flavor-violating (LFV) interactions are predicted within a wide range of flavored ALP models. The proposed $\mu \mathrm{TRISTAN}$ high-energy $e^{-}{\mu }^{+}$ and ${\mu }^{+}{\mu }^{+}$ collider will provide a good opportunity to explore flavor physics in the charged lepton sector. In this work, based on a model-independent effective Lagrangian describing the ALP leptonic interactions, we investigate the potential of $\mu \mathrm{TRISTAN}$ to probe ALP LFV couplings. We analyze the testability of selected ALP production channels with potential sensitivity at $\mu \mathrm{TRISTAN}$, considering different beams and collision energies, including $e^{-}{\mu }^{+}\to a\gamma$, $e^{-}{\mu }^{+}\to e^{-}{\tau }^{+}a$, ${\mu }^{+}{\mu }^{+}\to {\mu }^{+}{\tau }^{+}a$, and $e^{-}{\mu }^{+}\to {\tau }^{-}{\mu }^{+}a$. The produced ALP $a$ is either long-lived or can promptly decay to flavor-violating or flavor-conserving charged lepton final states. In particular, combining the above LFV ALP production modes with a suitable LFV decay mode, one can identify signatures that are virtually free of Standard Model background. We show the resulting sensitivity of $\mu \mathrm{TRISTAN}$ to LFV ALP couplings and compare it with multiple low-energy leptonic constraints and the future improvements thereof. We find that $\mu \mathrm{TRISTAN}$ can be generally complementary to searches for low-energy LFV processes and measurements of the leptonic magnetic dipole moments and has the capability to explore unconstrained parameter space for ALP masses in the $\mathcal{O}(1)–\mathcal{O}(100)\mathrm{GeV}$ range. In the light ALP regime, however, the parameter space that $\mu \mathrm{TRISTAN}$ is sensitive to has been already excluded by low-energy searches for LFV decays.

We show that a phase transition may take place in the early Universe at a temperature $T_{*}$ resulting a temperature dependent mass for right-handed neutrinos (RHN) which finally relaxes to a constant value after electroweak symmetry breaking (EWSB). As a result, a requisite amount of lepton asymmetry can be produced near $T_{*}$ satisfying the observed baryon asymmetry of the Universe via the sphaleron process even when zero temperature masses of the RHNs fall below the electroweak scale enhancing the detection possibility of RHNs. Interestingly, the framework is also capable of predicting a primordial lepton asymmetry (generated after EWSB) as hinted by helium abundance measurements, indicating a correlation with the early phase of leptogenesis.

We present a lattice quantum chromodynamics (QCD) calculation of the $x$-dependent pion and kaon distribution amplitudes (DA) in the framework of large momentum effective theory. This calculation is performed on a fine lattice of $a=0.076\mathrm{fm}$ at physical pion mass, with the pion boosted to 1.8 GeV and kaon boosted to 2.3 GeV. We renormalize the matrix elements in the hybrid scheme and match to $\overline{\mathrm{MS}}$ with a subtraction of the leading renormalon in the Wilson-line mass. The perturbative matching is improved by resumming the large logarithms related to the small quark and gluon momenta in the soft-gluon limit. After resummation, we demonstrate that we are able to calculate a range of $x\in [x_0,1-x_0]$ with $x_0=0.25$ for pion and $x_0=0.2$ for kaon with theoretical systematic errors under control. The kaon DA is shown to be slighted skewed, and narrower than pion DA. Although the $x$-dependence cannot be direct calculated beyond these ranges, we estimate higher moments of the pion and kaon DAs by complementing our calculation with short-distance factorization.