In this work, we compare the tetraquark mixing model and meson molecules in describing the two physical nonets in the $J^P=0^{+}$ channel; the light nonet [$a_0(980)$, $K_0^{*}(700)$, $f_0(500)$, $f_0(980)$] and the heavy nonet [$a_0(1450)$, $K_0^{*}(1430)$, $f_0(1370)$, $f_0(1500)$]. In particular, we focus on whether successful aspects of the tetraquark mixing model that apply to all members of each nonet can be reproduced from a model of meson molecules. By combining two mesons in the lowest-lying pseudoscalar nonet, we construct ${\mathrm{SU}}_f(3)$ molecular nonets that can be tested for the two physical nonets. This molecular approach can make two flavor nonets just as the tetraquark mixing model but this model has some difficulties in describing the universal features of the two nonets such as mass splitting between the two nonets, and enhancement or suppression of the coupling strengths of the two nonets into two pseudoscalar mesons. We also compare the fall-apart modes of the tetraquark mixing model and the two-meson modes from the molecular model. A clear distinction can be seen by the two-pion modes in the isovector resonances. The two-pion modes appear in the molecular model, but not in the tetraquark mixing model. The absence of the two-pion modes is supported by the experimental decay modes of the isovector resonances.

We construct fermionic conformal field theories (CFTs) whose spectra are characterized by quantum stabilizer codes. We exploit our construction to search for fermionic CFTs with supersymmetry by focusing on quantum stabilizer codes of the Calderbank-Shor-Steane type, and derive simple criteria for the theories to be supersymmetric. We provide several examples of fermionic CFTs that meet the criteria, and find quantum codes that realize $\mathcal{N}=4$ supersymmetry. Our work constitutes a new application of quantum codes and paves the way for the methodical search for supersymmetric CFTs.

We present a framework for constructing generalized parton distributions (GPDs) using holographic QCD in the large $N_c$ limit, with a focus on low-x and finite skewness. Our approach utilizes holographic amplitudes for exclusive electroproduction processes to extract the spin-$j$ conformal (Gegenbauer) moments of GPDs, which are then evolved to higher resolution scales using QCD evolution equations. Our evolved GPDs (reconstructed from their evolved conformal moments) are applied to analyze the electroproduction of ${\rho }^{0,+}$ and $\varphi$ mesons, and we account for nonperturbative contributions in the $s+u$-channel using holographic QCD. The results compare well with the existing experimental data. Our GPDs provide detailed information about partonic distributions and are useful for future experimental studies and global data analyses.

We introduce a technique to realize brane wrapping and double dimensional reduction in the context of Alexandrov-Kontsevich-Schwarz-Zaboronsky (AKSZ) topological sigma models and also in their target spaces, which are symplectic $L_n$ algebroids (i.e., $QP$ manifolds). Our procedure involves a novel coisotropic reduction combined with an AKSZ transgression that realizes degree shifting; the reduced $QP$ manifold depends on topological data of the “wrapped” cycle. We check our procedure against the known rules for fluxes under wrapping in the context of M-theory/type IIA duality, and we also find a new relation between Courant algebroids and Poisson manifolds.

Exploiting the generalization of the Weierstrass $\wp$ function to genus 2 given by Komori, we give the exact connection of the related monodromy problem for genus 2 and the classical weak $n$-point correlation functions. We also provide the Green function of an Helmholtz operator on genus-2 surfaces and prove the real analyticity of the higher genus Green’s function. This gives at the nonperturbative level, through the continuation method, the real analyticity of the conformal factor and of the accessory parameters in the presence of sources.

Stable light rings, which are associated with spacetime instabilities, are known to exist in four-dimensional stationary axisymmetric spacetimes that solve the Einstein-Maxwell equations (so-called electrovacuum solutions, with Faraday tensor $F_{\mu \nu }\ne 0$); however, they are not permitted in pure vacuum ($F_{\mu \nu }=0$). In this work, we extend this result to spacetimes with a nonzero cosmological constant $\mathrm{\Lambda }$. In particular, we demonstrate that stable light rings are permitted in $\mathrm{\Lambda }$-electrovacuum ($F_{\mu \nu }\ne 0$, $\mathrm{\Lambda }\ne 0$), but ruled out in $\mathrm{\Lambda }$-vacuum ($F_{\mu \nu }=0$, $\mathrm{\Lambda }\ne 0$).

Local non-Gaussianities in the initial conditions of the Universe, parametrized by $f_{\mathrm{NL}}$, induce a scale dependence in the large-scale bias of halos in the late Universe. This effect is a promising path to constrain multifield inflation theories that predict nonzero $f_{\mathrm{NL}}$. While most existing constraints from the halo bias involve autocorrelations of the galaxy distribution, cross-correlations with probes of the matter density provide an alternative channel with fewer systematics. We present the strongest large-scale structure constraint on local primordial non-Gaussianity that utilizes cross-correlations alone. We use the cosmic infrared background (CIB) consisting of dusty galaxies as a halo tracer and cosmic microwave background (CMB) lensing as a probe of the underlying matter distribution, both from Planck data. Milky Way dust is one of the key challenges in using the large-scale modes of the CIB. Importantly, the cross-correlation of the CIB with CMB lensing is far less affected by Galactic dust compared to the autospectrum of the CIB, since the latter picks up an additive bias from Galactic dust. We find no evidence for primordial non-Gaussianity and obtain $-87<f_{\mathrm{NL}}<19$, with a Gaussian $\sigma (f_{\mathrm{NL}})\approx 41$, assuming universality of the halo mass function, or $-179<f_{NL}<39$ for a more aggressively cleaned patch of sky, on which we find a much better fit. We find that future CMB lensing data from Simons Observatory and CMB-S4 could achieve $\sigma (f_{\mathrm{NL}})$ of 23 and 20 respectively. The constraining power of such an analysis is limited by current Galactic dust cleaning techniques which introduce a multiplicative bias on very large scales, requiring us to choose a minimum multipole of $\ell =70$. If this challenge is overcome with improved analysis techniques or external data, constraints as tight as $\sigma (f_{\mathrm{NL}})=4$ can be achieved through the cross-correlation technique. More optimistically, constraints better than $\sigma (f_{\mathrm{NL}})=2$ could be achieved if the CIB autospectrum is dust-free down to the largest scales.

In scenarios of physical interest in loop quantum cosmology, with a preinflationary epoch where the kinetic energy of the inflaton dominates, the analytic study of the dynamics of the primordial fluctuations has been carried out by neglecting the inflaton potential in those stages of the evolution. In this work we develop approximations to investigate the influence of the potential as the period of kinetic dominance gives way to the inflationary regime, treating the potential as a perturbation. Specifically, we study how the potential modifies the effective mass that dictates the dynamics of the scalar perturbations in the preinflationary epochs, within the framework of the so-called hybrid prescription for loop quantum cosmology. Moreover, we motivate and model a transition period that connects the kinetically dominated regime with inflation, allowing us to study the interval of times where the contribution of the potential is no longer negligible but an inflationary description is not yet valid. Finally, we include the main modifications coming from a slow-roll correction to a purely de Sitter evolution of the perturbations during inflation. We analytically solve the dynamics of the perturbations in each of these different epochs of cosmological evolution, starting from initial conditions fixed by the criterion of asymptotic Hamiltonian diagonalization. This enables us to compute and quantitatively analyze the primordial power spectrum in a specific case, using a quadratic inflaton potential.

We investigate whether the two cosmological discrepancies on the Hubble constant ($H_0$) and the matter fluctuation parameter (${\sigma }_8$) are suggesting and compatible with the existence of an additional one on the present value of the matter density (${\mathrm{\Omega }}_{\mathrm{M}}$). Knowing that the latter effects on observables is degenerate with those coming from $H_0$ and ${\sigma }_8$, we combined different probes in a way to break these degeneracies while adopting the agnostic approach of, either relaxing the calibration parameters in each probe in order to be set by the data, or by only including priors with the condition that they are obtained independently from the discrepant parameters. We also compiled and used a dataset from previous direct measurements of ${\mathrm{\Omega }}_{\mathrm{M}}$ obtained in a model independent way using the Oort technique. We found when combining, as our baseline, $\mathrm{galaxy}\mathrm{cluster}\mathrm{counts}+\text{cluster}\mathrm{gas}\mathrm{mass}\mathrm{fraction}\mathrm{probe}+\text{cosmic}\mathrm{chronometers}+\text{direct}{\mathrm{\Omega }}_{\mathrm{M}}+\mathrm{priors}\mathrm{from}\mathrm{BBN}\mathrm{and}\mathrm{CMB}$, that both parameters, $H_0$ and ${\sigma }_8$, are consistent with those inferred from local probes, with ${\sigma }_8=0.745\pm 0.05$ while $H_0=73.8\pm 3.01$, and that for a value of ${\mathrm{\Omega }}_{\mathrm{M}}=0.22\pm 0.01$ at more than $3\sigma$ from that usually determined by cosmic microwave background (CMB). We also found similar preferences when replacing cosmic chronometers (CC) by the supernovae (SN) data while allowing its calibration parameter to vary. However discrepancies appeared when we combined SN in addition to CC suggesting either inconsistencies between the SN sample and the other probes used or a serious challenge to our hypothesis. To further investigate the later, we performed some stress tests by adding constraints from baryonic acoustic oscillations and found that $H_0$ reverts back to lower values at the expense however of a value of ${\sigma }_8$ noncompatible with its local inferred ones, while only a prior on the matter density obtained from the CMB data keeps ${\sigma }_8$ within the values usually obtained when adopting the calibration parameters of the low redshift growth of structures probes. We conclude from our adopted analysis that, either both tensions are compatible with the local inferred low values of matter density at odd with those obtained by CMB, reviving by then an overlooked discrepancy, or that further evidences are indicating that the $\mathrm{\Lambda }$ cold dark matter model is facing more difficulties to accommodate simultaneously all the current available observations.

We show that the baryon asymmetry of the Universe cannot be explained by a large initial value before inflation because it inevitably predicts correlated baryon isocurvature perturbations that are already excluded by cosmic microwave background observations. Similar arguments can generally be applied to some models of dark matter.

We study, using the Mathisson-Papapetrou-Dixon equations, the spin oscillation of neutrinos when the latter are coupled to the scalar field of screening models of dark energy. First, we derive the transition probability formula for a left-handed neutrino to become a right-handed neutrino within a general static and spherically symmetric metric. We then apply our general formula to neutrinos deflected around a central mass described by the Schwarzschild metric. Our results show that, contrary to what one might expect, the scalar field of chameleonlike and symmetronlike screening models would not show any effect on the spin oscillations of neutrinos. The origin of such an outcome is discussed.

This research explores the correlation between the absolute magnitude and the redshift of type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) with a model-independent approach. The Pantheon sample of SNe Ia and strong gravitational lensing systems (SGLS) are used. With the cosmic distance-duality relation (CDDR), the evolution parameter of the magnitude, the light curve parameters of SNe Ia, and the parameters of the SGLS geometric model are constrained simultaneously. Considering the consistency of the redshifts, we selected a subsample of SNe Ia in which the redshift of each SNe Ia is close to the corresponding redshift of the SGLS sample. Two parametric models are used to describe this evolution, which can be written as ${\delta }_M=ϵz$ and ${\delta }_M=ϵ\log (1+z)$, respectively. Our analysis reveals that $ϵ=-0.036_{-0.339}^{+0.357}$ in the first parametric model and $ϵ=-0.014_{-0.630}^{+0.588}$ in the second model, indicating that no significant evolution ($ϵ=0$) is supported at the $1\sigma$ confidence level in this study. These results represent a significant advancement in our understanding of the intrinsic properties of SNe Ia and provide important constraints for future SNe Ia study.

We present a Bayesian parameter estimation progress to infer the stellar mass binary black hole properties by TianQin, LISA, and $\mathrm{TianQin}+\mathrm{LISA}$. Two typical stellar mass black hole binary systems, GW150914 and GW190521 are chosen as the fiducial sources. In this work, we establish the ability of TianQin to infer the parameters of those systems and first apply the full frequency response in TianQin’s data analysis. We obtain the parameter estimation results and explain the correlation between them. We also find the $\mathrm{TianQin}+\mathrm{LISA}$ could marginally increase the parameter estimation precision and narrow the $1\sigma$ area compared with TianQin and LISA individual observations. We finally demonstrate the importance of considering the effect of spin when the binaries have a nonzero component spin and great deviation will appear especially on mass, coalescence time, and sky location.

We study the gravitational Bose-Einstein condensation of a massive vector field in the kinetic regime and the nonrelativistic limit using nonlinear dynamical numerical methods. Gravitational condensation leads to the spontaneous formation of solitons. We measure the condensation time and growth rate, and compare to analytical models in analogy to the scalar case. We find that the condensation time of the vector field depends on the correlation between its different components. For fully correlated configurations, the condensation time is the same as that for a scalar field. On the other hand, uncorrelated or partially correlated configurations condense slower than the scalar case. As the vector soliton grows, it can acquire a net spin angular momentum even if the total spin angular momentum of the initial conditions is zero.

The Laser Interferometry Space Antenna (LISA) mission is the future space-based gravitational-wave (GW) observatory of the European Space Agency. It is formed by three spacecraft exchanging laser beams in order to form multiple interferometers. The data streams to be used in order to extract the large number and variety of GW sources are time-delay interferometry (TDI) data. One important processing step to produce these data is the TDI on-ground processing, which recombines multiple interferometric on-board measurements to remove certain noise sources from the data, such as laser frequency noise or spacecraft jitter noise. The LISA noise budget is therefore expressed at the TDI level in order to account for the different TDI transfer functions applied for each noise source and thus estimate their real weight on mission performance. In this study, we present an update model for the beams, measurements and TDI, with several approximations to derive the noise transfer functions. The laser locking and noise correlation are taken into account to see their impact in the transfer functions. A methodology for such a derivation has been established in detail, as well as verification procedures against simulated data. It results in a set of transfer functions, which are now used by the LISA project, in particular in its performance model. Using these transfer functions, realistic noise curves for various instrumental configurations are provided to data analysis algorithms and used for instrument design.

Finite volume effects are studied both with low-momentum cutoff and with momentum discretization in the framework of an (axial) vector meson extended quark-meson model with Polyakov-loop variables. In the momentum cutoff scenario, the critical endpoint (CEP) moves to lower temperatures and larger quark chemical potentials as the characteristic system size is reduced, however, the treatment of the vacuum term significantly affects its trajectory. The size dependence of the baryon fluctuations is also studied by the kurtosis and the skewness, both of which show moderate dependence on temperature and some dependence on quark chemical potential. The order of the phase transition is also studied near the chiral limit at finite system size and found to be second order only at vanishing explicit breaking. The implementation of the finite size effect with momentum discretization is more complicated and shows peculiar behavior due to the different modes dropping below the Fermi surface and strong dependence on the type of the boundary condition chosen. We found that both the different boundary conditions and the treatment of the vacuum term cause significant changes in the trajectory of the CEP as the characteristic system size is changed.

We consider the small excesses around 95 GeV found in several searches for a new scalar in $\gamma \gamma$, $\tau \tau$, and $b\overline{b}$ final states. Instead of trying to accommodate them all, as is usually done in the literature, in the context of a given Standard Model (SM) extension, we investigate whether it would be possible that one or two of these excesses correspond to an actual new scalar, while the remaining ones are merely statistical fluctuations. To this end, we use as benchmark model the UN2HDM, a SM extension with one scalar doublet, one scalar singlet, and an extra $\mathrm{U}(1{)}^{\prime }$ symmetry, which has been previously studied in the context of multiboson cascade decays. We show that most of the possibilities where the excesses in one or two of these channels disappear in the future can be accommodated by type-I or type-III UN2HDMs.

We combine gradient flow, step-scaling, and finite-temperature boundary conditions to scale-set $2+1+1$ flavor QCD lattices with physical HISQ quarks at multiple spacings down to $a=0.01378\mathrm{fm}$, such that they represent the same temperature at the percent level and the same quark mass to a few percent. This preparatory work will allow the evaluation and continuum extrapolation of the topological susceptibility at up to 1 GeV temperatures with good control over quark-mass effects.