We discuss cosmic domain walls described by a tension redshifting with the expansion of the Universe. These melting domain walls emit gravitational waves with the low-frequency spectral shape ${\mathrm{\Omega }}_{gw}\propto f^2$ corresponding to the spectral index $\gamma =3$ favored by the recent NANOGrav 15 yrs data. We discuss a concrete high-energy physics scenario leading to such a melting domain wall network in the early Universe. This scenario involves a feebly coupled scalar field, which can serve as a promising dark matter candidate. We identify parameters of the model matching the gravitational wave characteristics observed in the NANOGrav data. The dark matter mass is pushed to the ultralight range below ${10}^{-11}-{10}^{-12}\mathrm{eV}$ which is accessible through planned observations thanks to the effects of superradiance of rotating black holes.

Observational searches for large-scale vorticity modes in the late time Universe are underexplored. Within the standard $\mathrm{\Lambda }\mathrm{CDM}$ model, this is well motivated given the observed properties of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). However, this means that searches for cosmic vorticity modes can serve as a powerful consistency test of our cosmological model. We show that through combining CMB measurements of the kinetic Sunyaev-Zel’dovich and the moving lens effects with galaxy survey data we can constrain vorticity fields independently from the large scale cosmic velocity field. This approach can provide stringent constraints on the largest scale modes and can be achieved by a simple change in the standard estimators. Alternatively, if one assumes there are no cosmic vorticity modes, this estimator can be used to test for systematic biases in existing analyses of kinetic Sunyaev-Zel’dovich effect in a manner analogous to curl-lensing.

Detecting and coherently characterizing thousands of gravitational-wave signals is a core data-analysis challenge for the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA). Transient artifacts, or “glitches”, with disparate morphologies are expected to be present in the data, potentially affecting the scientific return of the mission. We present the first joint reconstruction of short-lived astrophysical signals and noise artifacts. Our analysis is inspired by glitches observed by the LISA Pathfinder mission, including both acceleration and fast displacement transients. We perform full Bayesian inference using LISA time-delay interferometric data and gravitational waveforms describing mergers of massive black holes. We focus on a representative binary with a detector-frame total mass of $6\times {10}^7{M}_{\odot }$ at redshift 5, yielding a signal lasting $\sim 30\mathrm{h}$ in the LISA sensitivity band. We explore two glitch models of different flexibility, namely a fixed parametric family and a shapelet decomposition. In the most challenging scenario, we report a complete loss of the gravitational-wave signals if the glitch is ignored; more modest glitches induce biases on the black-hole parameters. On the other hand, a joint inference approach fully sanitizes the reconstruction of both the astrophysical and the glitch signal. We also inject a variety of glitch morphologies in isolation, without a superimposed gravitational signal, and show we can identify the correct transient model. Our analysis is an important stepping stone toward a realistic treatment of LISA data in the context of the highly sought-after “global fit”.

The pattern of neutrino flavor oscillations could be altered by the influence of noisy perturbations such as those arising from a gravitational wave background (GWB). A stochastic process that is consistent with a GWB has been recently reported by the independent analyses of pulsar timing array (PTA) datasets collected over a decadal timescale by the North American Nanohertz Observatory for gravitational waves, the European PTA jointly with the Indian Pulsar Timing Array, the Parkes PTA, and the Chinese PTA collaborations. We investigate the modifications in the neutrino flavor oscillations under the influence of the GWB reported by the PTA collaborations and we discuss how such effects could be potentially revealed in near-future neutrino detectors, possibly helping the discrimination of different models for the GWB below the nHz frequency range.

We delve deeper into the potential composition of dark matter as stable scalar glueballs from a confining dark $SU(N)$ gauge theory, focusing on $N=\{3,4,5\}$. To predict the relic abundance of glueballs for the various gauge groups and scenarios of thermalization of the dark gluon gas, we employ a thermal effective theory that accounts for the strong-coupling dynamics in agreement with lattice simulations. We compare our methodology with previous works and discuss the possible sources of discrepancy. The results are encouraging and show that glueballs can account for the totality of dark matter in many unconstrained scenarios with a phase transition scale $20\mathrm{MeV}\lesssim \mathrm{\Lambda }\lesssim {10}^{10}\mathrm{GeV}$, thus opening the possibility of exciting future studies.

We reanalyze some critical exponents of the $O(N)$ model within the functional renormalization group (FRG) approach in the local potential approximation (LPA). We use recent advances which are based on the observation that the FRG flow equation in LPA can be put into the form of an advection-diffusion equation. This allows to employ well-tested hydrodynamical algorithms for its solution to better estimate various sources of errors. Our results complement previous results for the critical exponents obtained within the FRG approach in LPA and compare favorably with those obtained via other methods.

We present a detailed investigation of the azimuthal asymmetries and acoplanarity in lepton pair production in ultraperipheral collisions (UPCs). These observables provide a unique opportunity to test the soft colliner effective theory resummation formalism, given the exceptionally high photon flux in UPCs, which enables precise measurements of these processes. We improve the accuracy of the previous calculations by including the soft photon contributions beyond the double leading logarithm approximation. Notably, the single logarithmic terms arising from the collinear region are greatly enhanced by the small mass of the leptons. Our findings demonstrate the accessibility of these subleading resummation effects through the analysis of angular correlations in lepton pairs produced in UPCs at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider and the Large Hadron Collider.

Conventional scenarios of purely gravitationally produced dark matter with masses below the Hubble parameter at the end of inflation are in tension with cosmic microwave background (CMB) constraints on the isocurvature power spectrum. We explore a more general scenario with a nonminimal coupling between the scalar dark matter field and gravity, which allows for significantly lighter scalar dark matter masses compared to minimal coupling predictions. By imposing relic abundance, isocurvature, Lyman-$\alpha$, and big bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) constraints, we show the viable parameter space for these models. Our findings demonstrate that the presence of a nonminimal coupling expands the parameter space, yielding a dark matter mass lower bound of $2\times {10}^{-4}\mathrm{eV}$.

We present an algorithm to compute correlation functions for systems with the quantum numbers of many identical mesons from lattice quantum chromodynamics (QCD). The algorithm is numerically stable and allows for the computation of $n$-pion correlation functions for $n\in \{1,\dots ,N\}$ using a single $N\times N$ matrix decomposition, improving on previous algorithms. We apply the algorithm to calculations of correlation functions with up to 6144 charged pions using two ensembles of gauge field configurations generated with quark masses corresponding to a pion mass $m_{\pi }=170\mathrm{MeV}$ and spacetime volumes of $({4.4}^3\times 8.8){\mathrm{fm}}^4$ and $({5.8}^3\times 11.6){\mathrm{fm}}^4$. We also discuss statistical techniques for the analysis of such systems, in which the correlation functions vary over many orders of magnitude. In particular, we observe that the many-pion correlation functions are well-approximated by log-normal distributions, allowing the extraction of the energies of these systems. Using these energies, the large-isospin-density, zero-baryon-density region of the QCD phase diagram is explored. A peak is observed in the energy density at an isospin chemical potential ${\mu }_I\sim 1.5m_{\pi }$, signaling the transition into a Bose-Einstein condensed phase. The isentropic speed of sound, $c_s$, in the medium is seen to exceed the ideal-gas (conformal) limit ($c_s^2\le 1/3$) over a wide range of chemical potential before falling towards the asymptotic expectation at ${\mu }_I\sim 15m_{\pi }$. These, and other thermodynamic observables, indicate that the isospin chemical potential must be large for the system to be well described by an ideal gas or perturbative QCD.

The partial decay widths and production mechanism of the three pentaquark states, $P_{\psi }^N(4312)$, $P_{\psi }^N(4440)$, and $P_{\psi }^N(4457)$, discovered by the LHCb Collaboration in 2019, are still under debate. In this work, we employ the contact-range effective field theory approach to construct the ${\overline{D}}^{(*)}{\mathrm{\Sigma }}_c^{(*)}$, ${\overline{D}}^{*}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_c$, $\overline{D}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_c$, $J/\psi p$, and ${\eta }_{c}p$ coupled-channel interactions to dynamically generate the multiplet of hidden-charm pentaquark molecules by reproducing the masses and widths of $P_{\psi }^N(4312)$, $P_{\psi }^N(4440)$, and $P_{\psi }^N(4457)$. Assuming that the pentaquark molecules are produced in the ${\mathrm{\Lambda }}_b$ decay via the triangle diagrams, where ${\mathrm{\Lambda }}_b$ first decays into $D_s^{(*)}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_c$, then $D_s^{(*)}$ scatters into ${\overline{D}}^{(*)}K$, and finally the molecules are dynamically generated by the ${\overline{D}}^{(*)}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_c$ interactions, we calculate the branching fractions of the decays ${\mathrm{\Lambda }}_b\to P_{\psi }^{N}K$ using the effective Lagrangian approach. With the partial decay widths of these pentaquark molecules, we further estimate the branching fractions of the decays ${\mathrm{\Lambda }}_b\to (P_{\psi }^N\to J/\psi p)K$ and ${\mathrm{\Lambda }}_b\to (P_{\psi }^N\to {\overline{D}}^{*}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_c)K$. Our results show that the pentaquark states $P_{\psi }^N(4312)$, $P_{\psi }^N(4440)$, and $P_{\psi }^N(4457)$ as hadronic molecules can be produced in the ${\mathrm{\Lambda }}_b$ decay, and on the other hand their heavy quark spin symmetry partners are invisible in the $J/\psi p$ invariant mass distribution because of the small production rates. Our studies show that it is possible to observe some of the pentaquark states in the ${\mathrm{\Lambda }}_b\to {\overline{D}}^{*}{\mathrm{\Lambda }}_{c}K$ decays.

A Hawking-Page phase transition between anti–de Sitter (AdS) thermal and AdS black hole was presented as a mechanism for explaining the QCD deconfinement phase transition within holographic models. In order to implement temperature dependence in the confined phase we use a hard-wall AdS/QCD model, where the geometry at low temperatures is described also by a black hole metric. We then investigate the temperature dependence of glueball states described as gravitons propagating in deformed background spaces. Finally, we use potential models to physically describe the implications of our study.

The possible occurrence of crystalline or inhomogeneous phases in the QCD phase diagram at large chemical potential has been under investigation for over thirty years. Such phases are present in models of QCD such as the Gross-Neveu model in $1+1$ dimensions, Nambu–Jona-Lasinio (NJL) and quark meson models. Yet, no unambiguous confirmation exists from actual QCD. In this work, we propose a new approach for a stability analysis that is based on the two-particle irreducible effective action and compatible with full QCD calculations within the framework of functional methods. As a first test, we reproduce a known NJL model result within this framework. We then discuss the additional difficulties which arise in QCD due to the nonlocality of the quark self-energy and suggest a method to overcome them. As a proof of principle and as an illustration of the analysis, we consider the Wigner-Weyl solution of the quark Dyson-Schwinger equation (DSE) within a simple truncation of QCD in the chiral limit and analyze its stability against homogeneous chiral-symmetry breaking fluctuations. For temperatures above and below the tricritical point we find that the boundary of the instability region coincides well with the second-order phase boundary or the left spinodal, respectively, obtained from the direct solutions of the DSEs. Finally, we outline how this method can be generalized to study inhomogeneous fluctuations.

The quasi-two-body $B\to D(R\to )K\pi$ decays are calculated in PQCD approach based on the $k_T$ factorization by introducing the wave functions of $K\pi$ pair associated with the resonances $K^{*}(892)$, $K_0^{*}(1430)$, and $K_2^{*}(1430)$. The results show that most branching fractions are at the order of ${10}^{-7}$ or even smaller. However, for $B^0\to D^0(K^{*}\to )K\pi$ decays enhanced by the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa (CKM) element $V_{cs}$, their branching fractions are at the order of ${10}^{-6}$, which are measurable in the current ongoing experiments. Based on the narrow-width-approximation we also extract the branching fractions of the corresponding two-body $B\to D{K}^{*}$ decays and the results are in good agreement with previous predictions. Because these decays are only governed by the tree operators, there are no $CP$ asymmetries in these decays in standard model.

The quasielastic cross section of charged-current neutrino and antineutrino scattering on ${}^{12}\mathrm{C}$ is calculated using an improved superscaling model with relativistic effective mass. Our model encompasses two-particle emission induced by neutrinos, which we distinguish into two contributions. The first contribution arises from meson-exchange currents, and its calculation is performed at a microscopic level. The second contribution is phenomenological and extracted from the high-energy tail of the scaling function, assumed to be produced by 2p2h mechanisms where the one-body current plays a role, such as short-range correlations and interferences with MEC, final-state interaction, etc. The model explicitly includes the modification of the relativistic effective mass of the nucleon within the relativistic mean field model of nuclear matter. The meson exchange currents are also consistently calculated within the same model. With this model, we present predictions for the neutrino and antineutrino cross sections of ${}^{12}\mathrm{C}$ that have been measured in accelerator experiments.

Neutron production in antineutrino interactions can lead to bias in energy reconstruction in neutrino oscillation experiments, but these interactions have rarely been studied. MINERvA previously studied neutron production at an average antineutrino energy of $\sim 3\mathrm{GeV}$ in 2016 and found deficiencies in leading models. In this paper, the MINERvA 6 GeV average antineutrino energy dataset is shown to have similar disagreements. A measurement of the cross section for an antineutrino to produce two or more neutrons and have low visible energy is presented as an experiment-independent way to explore neutron production modeling. This cross section disagrees with several leading models’ predictions. Neutron modeling techniques from nuclear physics are used to quantify neutron detection uncertainties on this result.

This paper reports the first measurement of muon neutrino charged-current interactions without pions in the final state using multiple detectors with correlated energy spectra at T2K. The data was collected on hydrocarbon targets using the off-axis T2K near detector (ND280) and the on-axis T2K near detector (INGRID) with neutrino energy spectra peaked at 0.6 GeV and 1.1 GeV, respectively. The correlated neutrino flux presents an opportunity to reduce the impact of the flux uncertainty and to study the energy dependence of neutrino interactions. The extracted double-differential cross sections are compared to several Monte Carlo neutrino-nucleus interaction event generators showing the agreement between both detectors individually and with the correlated result.

Present and next generation of long-baseline accelerator experiments are bringing the measurement of neutrino oscillations into the precision era with ever-increasing statistics. One of the most challenging aspects of achieving such measurements is developing relevant systematic uncertainties in the modeling of nuclear effects in neutrino-nucleus interactions. To address this problem, state-of-the-art detectors are being developed to extract detailed information about all particles produced in neutrino interactions. To fully profit from these experimental advancements, it is essential to have reliable models of propagation of the outgoing hadrons through nuclear matter able to predict how the energy is distributed between all the final-state observed particles. In this article, we investigate the role of nuclear deexcitation in neutrino-nucleus scattering using two Monte Carlo cascade models: NuWro and INCL coupled with the deexcitation code ABLA. The ablation model ABLA is used here for the first time to model deexcitation in neutrino interactions. As input to ABLA, we develop a consistent simulation of nuclear excitation energy tuned to electron-scattering data. The paper includes the characterization of the leading proton kinematics and of the nuclear cluster production during cascade and deexcitation. The observability of nuclear clusters as vertex activity and their role in a precise neutrino energy reconstruction is quantified.

We construct a replica technique to perturbatively compute the odd entanglement entropy (OEE) for bipartite mixed states in $\mathrm{T}\overline{\mathrm{T}}$ deformed ${\mathrm{CFT}}_2\mathrm{s}$. This framework is then utilized to obtain the leading-order correction to the OEE for two disjoint intervals, two adjacent intervals, and a single interval in $\mathrm{T}\overline{\mathrm{T}}$ deformed thermal ${\mathrm{CFT}}_2\mathrm{s}$ in the large central charge limit. The field theory results are subsequently reproduced in the high-temperature limit from holographic computations for the entanglement wedge cross sections in the dual bulk finite cutoff Bañados-Teitelboim-Zanelli geometries. We further show that for finite size $\mathrm{T}\overline{\mathrm{T}}$ deformed ${\mathrm{CFT}}_2\mathrm{s}$ at zero temperature the corrections to the OEE are vanishing to the leading order from both field theory and bulk holographic computations.

In constructive quantum field theory (CQFT) it is customary to first regularize the theory at finite UV and IR cutoff. Then one first removes the UV cutoff using renormalization techniques applied to families of CQFTs labeled by finite UV resolutions and then takes the thermodynamic limit. Alternatively, one may try to work directly without IR cutoff. More recently, wavelets have been proposed to define the renormalization flow of CQFTs which is natural as they come accompanied with a multiresolution analysis. However, wavelets so far have been mostly studied in the noncompact case. Practically useful wavelets that display compact support and some degree of smoothness can be constructed on the real line using Fourier space techniques but explicit formulas as functions of position are rarely available. Compactly supported wavelets can be periodized by summing over period translates keeping orthogonality properties but still yielding to rather complicated expressions which generically lose their smoothness and position locality properties. It transpires that a direct approach to wavelets in the compact case is desirable. In this contribution we show that the Dirichlet-Shannon kernels serve as a natural scaling function to define generalized orthonormal wavelet bases on tori or copies of real lines, respectively. These generalized wavelets are smooth, are simple explicitly computable functions, display quasilocal properties close to the Haar wavelet, and have compact momentum support. Accordingly they have a built-in cutoff in both position and momentum, making them very useful for renormalization applications.

The Hamiltonian renormalization program motivated by constructive quantum field theory and Osterwalder-Schrader reconstruction that was recently launched for bosonic field theories is extended to fermions. As fermion quantization is not in terms of measures, the scheme has to be mildly modified accordingly. We exemplify the scheme for free fermions for both compact and noncompact spatial topologies, respectively (i.e., with and without IR cutoff) and demonstrate that the convenient Dirichlet or Shannon coarse-graining kernels recently advertised in a companion paper lead to a manifestly doubler free flow.