Primordial black holes (PBHs) can answer a plethora of cosmic conundrums, including the origin of cosmic magnetic fields. In particular, supermassive PBHs with masses $M_{\mathrm{PBH}}>{10}^{10}{M}_{\odot }$ and furnished with a plasma disk moving around them can generate through the Biermann battery mechanism a seed primordial magnetic field that can later be amplified to provide the magnetic field threading the intergalactic medium. In this article, we derive the gravitational-wave (GW) signal induced by the magnetic anisotropy of such a population of magnetized PBHs. Interestingly enough, by using GW constraints from big bang nucleosynthesis and an effective model for the galactic/turbulent dynamo amplification of the magnetic field, we set conservative upper bound constraints on the abundances of supermassive PBHs at formation time, ${\mathrm{\Omega }}_{\mathrm{PBH},\mathrm{f}}$ as a function of their masses, namely, that ${\mathrm{\Omega }}_{\mathrm{PBH},\mathrm{f}}\le 2.5\times {10}^{-10}{\left(\frac{M}{{10}^{10}{M}_{\odot }}\right)}^{45/22}$. Remarkably, these constraints are comparable and, in some mass ranges, even tighter compared to the constraints on ${\mathrm{\Omega }}_{\mathrm{PBH},\mathrm{f}}$ from large-scale structure probes, hence promoting the portal of magnetically induced GWs as a new probe to explore the enigmatic nature of supermassive PBHs.

Interfering signals such as radio frequency interference from ubiquitous satellite constellations are becoming an endemic problem in fields involving physical observations of the electromagnetic spectrum. To address this we propose a novel data cleaning methodology. Contamination is simultaneously flagged and managed at the likelihood level. It is modeled in a Bayesian fashion through a piecewise likelihood that is constrained by a Bernoulli prior distribution. The techniques described in this paper can be implemented with just a few lines of code.

We study the $T-\mu$ phase diagram of quark matter under the influence of a strong uniform magnetic field in the framework of a nonlocal extension of the Polyakov–Nambu–Jona-Lasinio model (PNJL). The existence of a critical endpoint (CEP) is found for the whole considered range of the magnetic field (up to $1{\mathrm{GeV}}^2$). We analyze the location of this CEP as a function of the external field and discuss the presence of inverse magnetic catalysis for nonzero chemical potentials. Our results show that the temperature of the CEP decreases with the magnetic field, in contrast to the behavior observed in local NJL/PNJL models.

Quasielastic scattering processes have long been thought of as providing the most promising signal for a first experimental detection of quantum vacuum nonlinearity. A prominent example of such a process is vacuum birefringence. However, these signals are typically strongly background dominated. This problem can be circumvented by inelastic scattering processes. In this study, we investigate the inelastic process of laser photon merging or equivalently frequency up-shifting in the collision of just two laser pulses under a finite angle, which provides signal photons of a distinct frequency outside the frequency spectrum of the background. To be precise, we consider the merging of three low-energy laser photons into a single outgoing photon in the absence of any additional background field. This can equivalently be framed as a frequency up-shifting process. As a key result, for the example of two laser beams of the same oscillation frequency, we demonstrate that by using high-intensity optical lasers and choosing an optimal collision angle photon merging should become accessible in experiment with state-of-the-art technology. In this case, three frequency $\omega$ laser photons are merged to a single $3\omega$ photon.

We extend our recently proposed formalism for calculating anomalies of global and gauge symmetries using the covariant derivative expansion to include a general class of operators that can appear in relativistic effective field theories (EFTs). This allows us to prove that EFT operators involving general scalar, vector, and tensor couplings to fermion bilinears only give rise to irrelevant anomalies, which can be removed by an appropriate choice of counterterms, thereby confirming the absence of new constraints from anomaly cancellation on the Standard Model EFT.

We investigate the gravitational form factors of a strongly coupled scalar theory that mimic the interaction between the nucleon and the pion. The nonperturbative calculation is based on the light-front Hamiltonian formalism. We renormalize the energy-momentum tensor with a Fock sector dependent scheme. We also systematically analyze the Lorentz structure of the energy-momentum tensor and identify the suitable hadron matrix elements to extract the form factors, avoiding the contamination of spurious contributions. We verify that the extracted form factors obey momentum conservation as well as the mechanical stability condition. From the gravitational form factors, we compute the energy and pressure distributions of the system. Furthermore, we show that utilizing the Hamiltonian eigenvalue equation, the off-diagonal Fock sector contributions from the interaction term can be converted to diagonal Fock sector contributions, yielding a systematic nonperturbative light-front wave function representation of the energies and forces inside the system.

We present a recast in different benchmark models of the recent CMS search that uses the end cap muon detector system to identify displaced showers produced by decays of long-lived particles (LLPs). The exceptional shielding provided by the steel between the stations of the muon system drastically reduces the Standard Model background that limits other existing ATLAS and CMS searches. At the same time, by using the muon system as a sampling calorimeter, the search is sensitive to LLPs energies rather than masses. We show that, thanks to these characteristics, this new search approach is sensitive to LLPs masses even lighter than a GeV, and can be complementary to proposed and existing dedicated LLP experiments.

We investigate the inflationary cosmology involving an $SU(5)$ GUT (grand unified theory) singlet scalar with nonminimal coupling to the Ricci scalar. In this scenario the scale of grand unification is set by the inflaton vacuum expectation value when the inflaton rolls down its potential towards its minimum $v$, thereby relating inflationary dynamics to GUT symmetry breaking with a prediction of $r\simeq 0.025$ for the tensor-to-scalar ratio to be tested by the next generation of CMB experiments. We show in this inflationary framework involving an inflection point how a suitable choice of parameters in $SU(5)$ leads to a bump in the scalar power spectrum with the production of primordial blackholes (PBH) of masses ${10}^{17}–{10}^{18}\mathrm{g}$ (${10}^{-16}–{10}^{-15}{M}_{\odot }$). We derive the constraints on the self-quartic and mixed-quartic couplings of the inflaton in $SU(5)$ that are consistent with the inflationary analysis. Moreover, we also show that this scenario leads to large amplitude induced second-order tensor perturbations propagating as gravitational waves (GWs) with an amplitude ${\mathrm{\Omega }}_{\mathrm{GW}}{h}^2\sim 5\times {10}^{-10}–{10}^{-8}$ and peak frequency $f_{\mathrm{peak}}\sim (0.1–300)\mathrm{Hz}$, which can be detected in the next-generation GW observatories like LISA, BBO, ET, etc. Thus, we unify the $SU(5)$ framework with PBH via inflection-point inflation showing how the upcoming measurements of PBH and GW will enable us to probe the scale of $SU(5)$ symmetry breaking, and thereby complementing the laboratory-based experiments. We also discuss scenarios involving the Pati-Salam and trinification gauge groups and its impact on quartic and mixed-quartic couplings that may lead to PBH and detectable GW signals.

The freeze-in mechanism has been shown to allow the simultaneous generation of cosmic dark matter and a viable matter-antimatter asymmetry in the Universe. When the underlying interactions are described by higher-dimensional, nonrenormalizable operators, the relevant freeze-in processes take place close to the highest considered cosmic temperatures. In this paper we study how the presence of a fluid that temporarily dominates the energy content of the early Universe affects the predictions of this “ultraviolet freeze-in baryogenesis” scenario. We find that this additional cosmic component has a significant impact on the predictions of concrete microscopic models, allowing for reheating temperatures which are much lower than those required in the simplest cosmological scenario. Moreover, we show that inflationary observables can constrain the parameter space of such models, once the latter are examined in conjunction with concrete models of inflation.

Form factors are a crucial theory input in order to extract $|V_{cb}|$ from $B\to D^{(*)}\ell \nu$ decays, to calculate the Standard Model prediction for $\mathcal{R}(D^{(*)})$ and to assess the impact of new physics. In this context, the dispersive matrix approach, a first-principle calculation of the form factors, using no experimental data but rather only lattice QCD results as input, was recently applied to $B\to D^{(*)}\ell \nu$. It predicts (within the Standard Model) a much milder tension with the $\mathcal{R}(D^{*})$ measurements than the other form factor approaches, while at the same time giving a value of $|V_{cb}|$ compatible with the inclusive value. However, this comes at the expense of creating tensions with differential $B\to D^{*}\ell \nu$ distributions (with light leptons). In this article, we explore the implications of using the dispersive matrix method form factors, in light of the recent Belle (II) measurements of the longitudinal polarization fraction of the $D^{*}$ in $B\to D^{*}\ell \nu$ with light leptons, $F_L^{\ell }$, and the forward-backward asymmetry, $A_{\mathrm{FB}}^{\ell }$. We find that the dispersive matrix approach predicts a Standard Model value of $F_L^{\ell }$ that is in significant tension with these measurements, while mild deviations in $A_{\mathrm{FB}}^{\ell }$ appear. Furthermore, $F_L^{\ell }$ is very insensitive to new physics such that the latter cannot account for the tension between dispersive matrix predictions and its measurement. While this tension can be resolved by deforming the original dispersive matrix form factor shapes within a global fit, a tension in $\mathcal{R}(D^{*})$ reemerges. As this tension is milder than for the other form factors, it can be explained by new physics not only in the tau lepton channel but also in the light lepton modes.

We extend the framework of analyzing the 2HDM in its orbit space to study the one-loop effective potential before and after electroweak symmetry breaking. In this framework, we present a comprehensive analysis of global symmetries of the one-loop thermal effective potential in the Higgs family space, demonstrating when the global symmetries in the Higgs family space of the tree-level 2HDM potential are broken by loop contributions. By introducing light-cone coordinates and generalizing the bilinear notation around the vacuum, we present a geometric view of the scalar mass matrix and on-shell renormalization conditions.

We propose a novel scenario for DM in which weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) can freeze-in due to a first-order phase transition (FOPT) in the early Universe. The FOPT dilutes the preexisting DM density to zero and leads to a sudden change in DM mass, preventing WIMPs from reequilibrating due to their large mass-to-temperature ratio. Following the FOPT, WIMPs are produced via a freeze-in process, even though their interactions are not feeble. We demonstrate this concept using a simplified model and then apply it to a realistic model with a delayed electroweak phase transition. Our work presents a promising new direction for the freeze-in mechanism, and also extends the category of WIMP DM.

We consider the 2 Higgs doublet model (2HDM) and compare two effective field theory (EFT) approaches to it, according to whether the heavy degrees of freedom are integrated out before [standard model EFT (SMEFT)] or after [Higgs EFT (HEFT)] spontaneous symmetry breaking. By requiring decoupling and perturbativity in the 2HDM, we define a consistent EFT expansion in inverse powers of the heavy masses which is applied to both the SMEFT and the HEFT tree-level matchings to the 2HDM. We organize this expansion with a dimensionless parameter $\xi$, and investigate the tree-level scatterings $hh\to hh$ and $WW\to hh$ up to $\mathcal{O}({\xi }^2)$. We find no differences between the HEFT and the SMEFT approaches at this order. We show scenarios where even including dimension-8 operators of the SMEFT is insufficient to obtain an accurate matching to the 2HDM.

The paradigm of portal matter represents a well-motivated extension to models with kinetic mixing/vector portal dark matter. In previous work, we constructed a simple leptonic portal matter model in which the portal matter fields could mediate a new physics correction to the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon consistent with the observed discrepancy between the measured value for this quantity and the SM prediction. Here, we present a version of this mechanism by constructing a model with an extended dark gauge sector in which SM and portal matter fields exist as members of the same dark gauge multiplets, which provides a natural extension of simple portal matter models. We find a rich phenomenology in this extended model, including nontrivial novel characteristics that do not appear in our earlier minimal construction, and discuss current experimental constraints and future prospects for this model. We find that a multi-TeV muon collider has excellent prospects for constraining or measuring the crucial parameters of this model.

Emerging sampling algorithms based on normalizing flows have the potential to solve ergodicity problems in lattice calculations. Furthermore, it has been noted that flows can be used to compute thermodynamic quantities which are difficult to access with traditional methods. This suggests that they are also applicable to the density-of-states approach to complex action problems. In particular, flow-based sampling may be used to compute the density directly, in contradistinction to the conventional strategy of reconstructing it via measuring and integrating the derivative of its logarithm. By circumventing this procedure, the accumulation of errors from the numerical integration is avoided completely and the overall normalization factor can be determined explicitly. In this proof-of-principle study, we demonstrate our method in the context of two-component scalar field theory where the internal $O(2)$ symmetry is explicitly broken by an imaginary external field. First, we concentrate on the zero-dimensional case which can be solved exactly. We show that with our method, the Lee-Yang zeroes of the associated partition function can be successfully located. Subsequently, we confirm that the flow-based approach correctly reproduces the density computed with conventional methods in one- and two-dimensional models.

Electromagnetic dipole polarizabilities are fundamental properties of a hadron that represent its resistance to deformation under external fields. For a charged hadron, the presence of acceleration and Landau levels complicates the isolation of its deformation energy in the conventional background field method. In this work, we explore a general method based on four-point functions in lattice QCD that takes into account all photon, quark, and gluon interactions. The electric polarizability (${\alpha }_E$) has been determined from the method in a previous proof-of-principle simulation. Here we focus on the magnetic polarizability (${\beta }_M$) using the same quenched Wilson action on a ${24}^3\times 48$ lattice at $\beta =6.0$ with pion mass from 1100 to 370 MeV. The results from the connected diagrams show a large cancellation between the elastic and inelastic contributions, leading to a relatively small and negative value for ${\beta }_M$ consistent with chiral perturbation theory. We also discuss the mechanism for ${\alpha }_E+{\beta }_M$ from combining the two studies.

We calculate the double-virtual $\eta \to {\gamma }^{*}{\gamma }^{*}$ transition form factor ${\mathcal{F}}_{\eta \to {\gamma }^{*}{\gamma }^{*}}(q_1^2,q_2^2)$ from first principles using a lattice QCD simulation with $N_f=2+1+1$ quark flavors at the physical pion mass and at one lattice spacing and volume. The kinematic range covered by our calculation is complementary to the one accessible from experiment and is relevant for the $\eta$-pole contribution to the hadronic light-by-light scattering in the anomalous magnetic moment $a_{\mu }=(g-2)/2$ of the muon. From the form factor calculation we extract the partial decay width $\mathrm{\Gamma }(\eta \to \gamma \gamma )=338(87{)}_{\mathrm{stat}}(17{)}_{\mathrm{syst}}\mathrm{eV}$ and the slope parameter $b_{\eta }=1.34(28{)}_{\mathrm{stat}}(14{)}_{\mathrm{syst}}{\mathrm{GeV}}^{-2}$. For the $\eta$-pole contribution to $a_{\mu }$ we obtain $a_{\mu }^{\eta \text{-pole}}=13.8(5.2{)}_{\mathrm{stat}}(1.5{)}_{\mathrm{syst}}\times {10}^{-11}$.

We study the leading twist gluon generalized parton distributions and the gluon angular momentum inside the proton within a light-cone spectator model. Using the light-cone wave functions derived from the model, we provide the expressions of these distributions at the particular kinematical point $\xi =0$ in the overlap representation. The numerical results of the $H^g$, $E^g$, ${\tilde{H}}^g$, $H_T^g$, and $E_T^g$ as functions of $x$ at different ${\mathrm{\Delta }}_T$ are presented. Particularly, $H^g$, ${\tilde{H}}^g$ at nonzero ${\mathrm{\Delta }}_T$ are different from their forward counterparts, the unpolarized distribution $f_1^g$ and the helicity distribution $g_1^g$, respectively. We also obtain the total angular momentum of the gluon contributed to the proton spin $J^g=0.19$, which is consistent with the recent lattice calculation after the uncertainties are considered. The kinetic orbital angular momentum is also calculated and is negative in our model.

We reveal the quark exchange effects related to both the kinetic energy and various interactions in the single flavored dibaryon bound states with ${}^1{S}_0$ in the quark models. The hadron covalent bond can be established by the shared identical quarks due to the quark exchange effect between two colorless baryons. Such hadron covalent bond plays a decisive role in the deuteronlike di-${\mathrm{\Omega }}_{ccc}$ and di-${\mathrm{\Omega }}_{bbb}$ covalent molecule states. The $\sigma$-meson exchange is indispensable in the deuteronlike di-${\mathrm{\Delta }}^{++}$ and compact di-$\mathrm{\Omega }$ states. The hadron covalent bond clearly appears in the di-${\mathrm{\Delta }}^{++}$ state but is hidden in the di-$\mathrm{\Omega }$ state. The chromomagnetic interaction is always repulsive in the di-${\mathrm{\Delta }}^{++}$, di-$\mathrm{\Omega }$, di-${\mathrm{\Omega }}_{ccc}$, and di-${\mathrm{\Omega }}_{bbb}$ states. The color-electric interaction is strongly attractive in the di-$\mathrm{\Omega }$ state but weakly attractive or repulsive in the di-${\mathrm{\Delta }}^{++}$, di-${\mathrm{\Omega }}_{ccc}$, and di-${\mathrm{\Omega }}_{bbb}$ states.

QCD Laplace sum rules are used to examine the constituent mass spectrum of $J^P\in \{0^{+},1^{+}\}$ (scalar, axial vector) heavy-light $[Qq]$ diquarks with $Q\in \{c,b\}$ (charm, bottom) and $q\in \{u,d,s\}$ (up, down, strange). As in previous sum-rule studies, the negative parity $J^P\in \{0^{-},1^{-}\}$ (pseudoscalar, vector) $[Qq]$ diquark mass predictions do not stabilize, so the sum-rule analysis focuses on positive parity $[Qq]$ diquarks. Doubly strange $J^P=1^{+}$ (axial vector) $[ss]$ diquarks are also examined, but the resulting sum rules do not stabilize. Hence there is no sum-rule evidence for $J^P=1^{+}$ $[ss]$ diquark states, aiding the interpretation of sum-rule analyses of fully strange tetraquark states. The $SU(3)$ flavor splitting effects for $[Qq]$ diquarks are obtained by calculating QCD correlation functions of $J^P\in \{0^{+},1^{+}\}$ diquark composite operators up to next-to-leading order in perturbation theory, leading-order in the strange quark mass, and in the chiral limit for nonstrange ($u$, $d$) quarks with an isospin-symmetric vacuum $⟨\overline{n}n⟩=⟨\overline{u}u⟩=⟨\overline{d}d⟩$. Apart from the strange quark mass parameter $m_s$, the strange quark condensate parameter $\kappa =⟨\overline{s}s⟩/⟨\overline{n}n⟩$ has an important impact on $SU(3)$ flavor splittings. A Laplace sum-rule analysis methodology is developed for the mass difference $M_{[Qs]}-M_{[Qn]}$ between the strange and nonstrange heavy-light diquarks to reduce the theoretical uncertainties from all other QCD input parameters. The mass splitting is found to decrease with increasing $\kappa$, providing an upper bound on $\kappa$ where the $M_{[Qs]}-M_{[Qn]}$ mass hierarchy reverses. In the typical QCD sum-rule range $0.56<\kappa <0.74$, $55\mathrm{MeV}\lesssim M_{[cs]}-M_{[cn]}\lesssim 100\mathrm{MeV}$ and $75\mathrm{MeV}\lesssim M_{[bs]}-M_{[bn]}\lesssim 150\mathrm{MeV}$, with a slight tendency for larger splittings for the $J^P=1^{+}$ axial-vector channels. These constituent mass splitting results are discussed in comparison with values used in constituent diquark models for tetraquark and pentaquark hadronic states.