We introduce a diffusion-based generative model to describe the distribution of galaxies in our Universe directly as a collection of points in 3D space (coordinates) optionally with associated attributes (e.g., velocities and masses), without resorting to binning or voxelization. The custom diffusion model can be used both for emulation, reproducing essential summary statistics of the galaxy distribution, as well as inference, by computing the conditional likelihood of a galaxy field. We demonstrate a first application to massive dark matter haloes in the quijote simulation suite. This approach can be extended to enable a comprehensive analysis of cosmological data, circumventing limitations inherent to summary statistics, as well as neural simulation-based inference methods.

Weak gravitational lensing is an invaluable tool for understanding fundamental cosmological physics. An unresolved issue in weak lensing cosmology is to accurately reconstruct the lensing convergence $\kappa$ maps from discrete shear catalog with survey masks, which the seminal Kaiser-Squire (KS) method is not designed to address. We present the accurate kappa reconstruction algorithm for masked shear catalog (AKRA) to address the issue of mask. AKRA is built upon the prior-free maximum-likelihood map making method (or the unbiased minimum variance linear estimator). It is mathematically robust in dealing with mask, numerically stable to implement, and practically effective in improving the reconstruction accuracy. Using simulated maps with mask fractions ranging from 10% to 50% and various mask shapes, we demonstrate that AKRA outperforms KS at both the map level and summary statistics such as the autopower spectrum $C_{\kappa }$ of the reconstructed map, its cross-correlation coefficient $r_{\ell }$ with the true $\kappa$ map, the scatter plot and the localization measure. Unlike the Wiener filter method, it adopts no priors on the signal power spectrum, and therefore avoids the Wiener filter related biases at both the map level and cross-correlation statistics. If we only use the reconstructed map in the unmasked regions, the reconstructed $C_{\kappa }$ is accurate to 1% or better and $1-r_{\ell }\lesssim 1\%$, even for extreme cases of mask fraction and shape. As the first step, the current version of AKRA only addresses the mask issue and therefore ignores complexities such as curved sky and inhomogeneous shape measurement noise. AKRA is capable of dealing with these issues straightforwardly, and will be addressed in the next version.

Perturbative renormalization provides the bedrock of understanding quantum field theories. In this work, I point out an alternative way of renormalizing quantum field theories, which is naturally encountered and well-known for the case of large $N$ scalar field theories. In terms of bare parameters, this nonperturbative alternative renormalization differs qualitatively from its perturbative cousin: in the continuum limit, the bare coupling constant goes to zero instead of infinity, and there is no wave-function counterterm. Despite these differences, the resulting $n$-point functions of the theory are finite. I provide explicit results for alternative renormalization for the O(N) model and QCD with $N_f=12$ flavors in $3+1$ dimensions.

Axion and axionlike particles are a prominent candidate for physics beyond the Standard Model and can play an important role in cosmology, serving as dark matter or dark energy, or both, drawing motivation in part from the string theory axiverse. Axionlike particles can also arise as composite degrees of freedom following chiral symmetry breaking in a dark confining gauge theory, analogous to the Standard Model (SM) pion. A dark sector with arbitrary $N_f$ flavors of dark quarks leads to $N_f^2-1$ axionlike states, effectively a field theory axiverse (or “$\pi$-axiverse”). A portal to the visible sector can be achieved through the standard kinetic mixing between the dark photon and SM photon, generating millicharges for the dark quarks and consequently couplings, both parity even and parity odd, between the SM and the dark pions. This scenario has been studied for the $N_f=2$ case and more recently for a dark Standard Model with $N_f=6$. In this work, we study the spectrum of this field theory axiverse for an arbitrary number of flavors and apply this to the example $N_f=10$. We calculate the couplings to the SM photon analogous to the conventional axion-photon coupling, including the $N_f$ and $N_c$ dependence, and compute the present and future constraints on the $N_f=10$ $N_c=3$ $\pi$-axiverse. We elucidate the accompanying “baryverse” of superheavy dark baryons, namely, an ensemble of charged and neutral dark baryons with a mass set by the dark pion decay constant.

By using the analytic continuation method, a polarized Polykov-loop potential at finite real angular velocity is constructed from the lattice results at finite imaginary angular velocity. The chiral and deconfinement phase transitions under rotation have been simultaneously investigated in the polarized-Polyakov-loop Nambu–Jona-Lasinio (PPNJL) model. It is observed that both critical temperatures of deconfinement and chiral phase transition increase with the angular velocity, which is in consistent with lattice results. The spin alignment of vector meson has the negative deviation of ${\rho }_{00}-1/3$ under rotation, and the deviation in the PPNJL model is much more significant than that in the NJL model and the quark coalescence model, which revealing the important role of rotating gluons on the quark polarization.

We study the phenomenology of a vector dark matter (VDM) in a $U(1{)}_X$ gauged extension of the Standard Model (SM), which is set in a type II seesaw framework. When this $U(1{)}_X$ symmetry is spontaneously broken by the vacuum expectation value (VEV) of a newly introduced complex scalar singlet, the gauge boson $Z^{\prime }$ becomes massive. The stability of the dark matter (DM) is ensured by the presence of an exact charge conjugation symmetry resulting from the structure of the Lagrangian. On the other hand, the $SU(2{)}_L$ triplet scalar facilitates light neutrino masses via the type II seesaw mechanism. We have studied the phenomenology of the usual WIMP DM, considering all possible theoretical and experimental constraints that are applicable. Due to the presence of a triplet scalar, the present framework can also accommodate the observed $2\sigma$ deviation in $h\to Z\gamma$ decay rate, recently measured at the LHC. The possibility of nonthermal production of DM from the decay of the singlet scalar has also been briefly discussed.

We investigate the cosmological expansion of the 3D space in a 6D model compactified on a sphere, beyond the 4D effective theory analysis. We focus on a case where the initial temperature is higher than the compactification scale. In such a case, the pressure for the compact space affects the moduli dynamics and induces the moduli oscillation even if they are stabilized at the initial time. Under some plausible assumptions, we derive the explicit expressions for the 3D scale factor and the moduli background in terms of analytic functions. Using them, we evaluate the transition times between different cosmological eras as functions of the model parameters and the initial temperature.

We study the large mass hierarchy and $CP$ violation in the modular symmetric quark flavor models without fine-tuning. Mass matrices are written in terms of modular forms. Modular forms near the modular fixed points are approximately given by ${ϵ}^p$, where $ϵ$ and $p$ denote the small deviation from the fixed points and their residual charges. Thus, mass matrices have the hierarchical structures depending on the residual charges and have a possibility describing the large mass hierarchy without fine-tuning. Similar structures of mass matrices are also obtained in Froggatt-Nielsen models. Nevertheless, it seems to be difficult to induce a sufficient amount of $CP$ violation by a single small complex parameter $ϵ$. To realize the large mass hierarchy as well as sizable $CP$ violation, multimoduli are required. We show the mass matrix structures with multimoduli that are consistent with quark flavor observables including the $CP$ phase. We also discuss the origins of the large mass hierarchy and $CP$ violation in such mass matrix structures.

We investigate the generation of the baryon asymmetry within the framework of cosmological gravitational particle production, employing the Bogoliubov approach. We examine two well-known baryogenesis scenarios, namely baryogenesis in grand unified theories (GUT) and leptogenesis, while considering reheating temperatures sufficiently low for thermal processes to be negligible. Considering $\alpha$–attractor T-models for the inflaton potential, we demonstrate that GUT baryogenesis from scalar decays can be successful across a large range of conformal couplings with gravity, without necessitating substantial levels of $CP$ violation. In the case of leptogenesis, we find that the reheating temperature should be $T_{\mathrm{RH}}\lesssim {10}^6\mathrm{GeV}$ for right-handed neutrino masses $M_1\lesssim 6\times {10}^{12}\mathrm{GeV}$ to generate the observed asymmetry.

We consider the axial-vector together with its induced pseudoscalar form factor of the nucleon as computed from the chiral Lagrangian with nucleon and isobar degrees of freedom. The form factors are evaluated at the one-loop level, where particular emphasis is put on the use of on-shell masses in the loop expressions. Our results are presented in terms of a novel set of basis functions that generalize the Passarino-Veltman scheme to the case where power-counting violating structures are to be subtracted. The particularly important role of the isobar degrees of freedom is emphasized. We obtain a significant and simultaneous fit to the available lattice QCD results based on flavor SU(2) ensembles for the baryon masses and form factors up to pion masses of about 500 MeV. Our fit includes sizeable finite volume effects that are implied by using in-box values for the hadron masses entering our one-loop expressions. We conclude that from flavor SU(2) ensembles it appears not possible to predict the empirical form factor at the desired precision. Effects from strange quarks are expected to remedy the situation.

The gravitational wave (GW) signal offers a promising window into the dynamics of the early Universe. The recent results from the pulsar timing arrays (PTAs) could be the first glimpse of such new physics. In particular, they could point to new details during inflation, which cannot be probed by other means. We explore the possibility that the new results could come from the secondary GWs sourced by curvature perturbations, generated by a first-order phase transition during inflation. Based on the results of a field-theoretic lattice simulation of the phase transition process, we show that the GW signal generated through this mechanism can account for the new results from the PTAs. We analyze the spectral shape of the signal in detail. Future observations can use such information to distinguish the GW signal considered here from other possible sources.

We discuss the field independent additive constant in Wilson actions carefully within the exact renormalization group formalism. The additive constant does not affect the correlation functions of fields normalized by the partition function, and for that reason it is often ignored. But it is an essential part of the partition function, and in the limit where the UV cutoff goes to zero, the constant gives a renormalized vacuum energy density. We discuss some concrete examples: the massless and massive Gaussian theory for a single component scalar field and a Dirac fermion and the linear sigma model in the large $N$ limit.

Vectorlike quarks have been predicted in various new physics scenarios beyond the Standard Model. In a simplified modelling of a $(B,Y)$ doublet including a vectorlike quark $Y$, with charge $-\frac{4}{3}\mathrm{e}$, there are only two free parameters: the $Y$ coupling ${\kappa }_Y$ and mass $m_Y$. In the five flavor scheme, we investigate the single production of the $Y$ state decaying into $Wb$ at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) run-III and High-Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) operating at $\sqrt{s}=14\mathrm{TeV}$, the possible High-Energy LHC (HE-LHC) with $\sqrt{s}=27\mathrm{TeV}$ as well as the Future Circular Collider in hadron-hadron mode (FCC-hh) with $\sqrt{s}=100\mathrm{TeV}$. Through detailed signal-to-background analyses and detector simulations, we assess the exclusion capabilities of the $Y$ state at the different colliders. We find that this can be improved significantly with increasing collision energy, especially at the HE-LHC and FCC-hh, both demonstrating an obvious advantage with respect to the HL-LHC in the case of high $m_Y$. Assuming a 10% systematic uncertainty on the background event rate, the exclusion capabilities are summarized as follows: (1) the LHC run-III can exclude the correlated regions of ${\kappa }_Y\in [0.06,0.5]$ and $m_Y\in [1500\mathrm{GeV},3800\mathrm{GeV}]$ with integrated luminosity $L=300{\mathrm{fb}}^{-1}$; (2) the HL-LHC can exclude the correlated regions of ${\kappa }_Y\in [0.05,0.5]$ and $m_Y\in [1500\mathrm{GeV},3970\mathrm{GeV}]$ with $L=3{\mathrm{ab}}^{-1}$; (3) the HE-LHC can exclude the correlated regions of ${\kappa }_Y\in [0.06,0.5]$ and $m_Y\in [1500\mathrm{GeV},6090\mathrm{GeV}]$ with $L=3{\mathrm{ab}}^{-1}$; (4) the FCC-hh can exclude the correlated regions of ${\kappa }_Y\in [0.08,0.5]$ and $m_Y\in [1500\mathrm{GeV},10080\mathrm{GeV}]$ with $L=3{\mathrm{ab}}^{-1}$.

We present a first lattice QCD calculation of the unpolarized nucleon’s isovector transverse-momentum-dependent parton distribution functions (TMDPDFs), which are essential to predict observables of multiscale, semi-inclusive processes in the standard model. We use a $N_f=2+1+1$ MILC ensemble with valence clover fermions on a highly improved staggered quark (HISQ) sea to compute the quark momentum distributions in a large-momentum nucleon on the lattice. The state-of-the-art techniques in renormalization and extrapolation in the correlation distance on the lattice are adopted. The perturbative kernel up to next-to-next-to-leading order is taken into account, and the dependence on the pion mass and the hadron momentum is explored. Our results are qualitatively comparable with phenomenological TMDPDFs, which provide an opportunity to predict high energy scatterings from first principles.

In this work, we expand on the XENON1T nuclear recoil searches to study the individual signals of dark matter interactions from operators up to dimension eight in a chiral effective field theory (ChEFT) and a model of inelastic dark matter (iDM). We analyze data from two science runs of the XENON1T detector totaling $1\mathrm{t}\times \mathrm{yr}$ exposure. For these analyses, we extended the region of interest from $[4.9,40.9]{\mathrm{keV}}_{\mathrm{NR}}$ to $[4.9,54.4]{\mathrm{keV}}_{\mathrm{NR}}$ to enhance our sensitivity for signals that peak at nonzero energies. We show that the data are consistent with the background-only hypothesis, with a small background overfluctuation observed peaking between 20 and $50{\mathrm{keV}}_{\mathrm{NR}}$, resulting in a maximum local discovery significance of $1.7\sigma$ for the $\mathrm{Vector}\otimes {\text{Vector}}_{\text{strange}}$ ChEFT channel for a dark matter particle of $70\mathrm{GeV}/c^2$ and $1.8\sigma$ for an iDM particle of $50\mathrm{GeV}/c^2$ with a mass splitting of $100\mathrm{keV}/c^2$. For each model, we report 90% confidence level upper limits. We also report upper limits on three benchmark models of dark matter interaction using ChEFT where we investigate the effect of isospin-breaking interactions. We observe rate-driven cancellations in regions of the isospin-breaking couplings, leading to up to 6 orders of magnitude weaker upper limits with respect to the isospin-conserving case.

We explore the phase-space of homogeneous and anisotropic spacetimes within symmetric teleparallel $f(Q)$ gravity. Specifically, we consider the Kantowski-Sachs and locally rotational Bianchi III geometries to describe the physical space. By analyzing the phase-space, we reconstruct the cosmological history dictated by $f(Q)$ gravity and comment about the theory’s viability. Our findings suggest that the free parameters of the connection must be constrained to eliminate nonlinear terms in the field equations. Consequently, new stationary points emerge, rendering the theory cosmologically viable. We identify the existence of anisotropic accelerated universes, which may correspond to the preinflationary epoch.

We analyze the near horizon structure of the extremal spacelike stretched black holes, exact solutions of topologically massive gravity. We show that the algebra of the improved canonical generator is realized as a single centrally extended Virasoro algebra. We obtain the entropy of the solution by using the Cardy formula and compare the results with the corresponding nonextremal case.

We provide a formulation of stochastic inflation in full general relativity that goes beyond the slow-roll and separate universe approximations. We show how gauge-invariant Langevin source terms can be obtained for the complete set of Einstein equations in their Arnowitt-Deser-Misner formulation by providing a recipe for coarse-graining the spacetime in any small gauge. These stochastic source terms are defined in terms of the only dynamical scalar degree of freedom in single-field inflation and all depend simply on the first two time derivatives of the coarse-graining window function, on the gauge-invariant mode functions that satisfy the Mukhanov-Sasaki evolution equation, and on the slow-roll parameters. It is shown that this reasoning can also be applied to include gravitons as stochastic sources, thus enabling the study of all relevant degrees of freedom of general relativity for inflation. We validate the efficacy of these Langevin dynamics directly using an example in uniform field gauge, obtaining the stochastic $e$-fold number in the long wavelength limit without the need for a first-passage-time analysis. As well as investigating the most commonly used gauges in cosmological perturbation theory, we also derive stochastic source terms for the coarse-grained Baumgarte-Shapiro-Shibata-Nakamura formulation of Einstein’s equations, which enables a well-posed implementation for $3+1$ numerical relativity simulations.

In astronomy, we frequently face the decision problem: does this data contain a signal? Typically, a statistical approach is used, which requires a threshold. The choice of threshold presents a common challenge in settings where signals and noise must be delineated, but their distributions overlap. Gravitational-wave astronomy, which has gone from the first discovery to catalogs of hundreds of events in less than a decade, presents a fascinating case study. For signals from colliding compact objects, the field has evolved from a frequentist to a Bayesian methodology. However, the issue of choosing a threshold and validating noise contamination in a catalog persists. Confusion and debate often arise due to the misapplication of statistical concepts, the complicated nature of the detection statistics, and the inclusion of astrophysical background models. We introduce conformal prediction ($CP$), a framework developed in machine learning to provide distribution-free uncertainty quantification to point predictors. We show that $CP$ can be viewed as an extension of the traditional statistical frameworks whereby thresholds are calibrated such that the uncertainty intervals are statistically rigorous and the error rate can be validated. Moreover, we discuss how $CP$ offers a framework to optimally build a metapipeline combining the outputs from multiple independent searches. We introduce $CP$ with a toy cosmic-ray detector, which captures the salient features of most astrophysical search problems and allows us to demonstrate the features of $CP$ in a simple context. We then apply the approach to a recent gravitational-wave mock data challenge using multiple search algorithms for compact binary coalescence signals in interferometric gravitational-wave data. Finally, we conclude with a discussion on the future potential of the method for gravitational-wave astronomy.