It is shown that a component of the dynamical affine connection, which is independent of the metric, can drive inflation in agreement with observations. This provides a geometrical origin for the inflaton. It is also found that the decays of this field, which has spin 0 and odd parity, into Higgs bosons can reheat the Universe up to a sufficiently high temperature.

We perform the first application of the wavelet scattering transform (WST) to actual galaxy observations, through a WST analysis of the BOSS DR12 CMASS dataset. We included the effects of redshift-space anisotropy, nontrivial survey geometry, systematic weights, and the Alcock-Paczynski distortion effect, following the commonly adopted steps for the power spectrum analysis. In order to capture the cosmological dependence of the WST, we use galaxy mocks obtained from the state-of-the-art ABACUSSUMMIT simulations, tuned to match the anisotropic correlation function of the BOSS CMASS sample in the redshift range $0.46<z<0.60$. Using our model for the WST coefficients, as well as for the first 2 multipoles of the galaxy power spectrum, that we use as reference, we perform a likelihood analysis of the CMASS data. We obtain the posterior probability distributions of four cosmological parameters, $\{{\omega }_b,{\omega }_c,n_s,{\sigma }_8\}$, as well as the Hubble constant, derived from a fixed value of the angular size of the sound horizon at last scattering measured by the Planck satellite, all of which are marginalized over the seven nuisance parameters of the halo occupation distribution model. The WST is found to deliver a substantial improvement in the values of the predicted $1\sigma$ errors compared to the regular power spectrum, which are tighter by a factor of 3–5 in the case of flat and uninformative priors and by a factor of 3–8, when a big bang nucleosynthesis prior is applied on the value of ${\omega }_b$. Our results are investigative and subject to certain approximations, which we discuss in the text.

We review a dynamical dark energy model scarcely studied in the literature and we introduce two possible generalizations. We discuss separately the behavior of the original model and a minimal extension of it by exploring some early and late times limits, we find that the cosmic components are related by their parameters state. In order to have access to the phantom regime we present two dark energy densities inspired from the holographic approach and from the emergent entropic forces model in the early universe. For the first case we obtain a type-III singularity and in the second proposal we have a transition from decelerated to accelerated cosmic expansion that starts as phantom type. However, the final stage of the universe is a de Sitter state.

We present a new Planck CMB lensing-CMB temperature cross-correlation likelihood that can be used to constrain cosmology via the integrated Sachs-Wolfe (ISW) effect. CMB lensing is an excellent tracer of ISW, and we use the latest PR4 Planck data maps and lensing reconstruction to produce the first public Planck likelihood to constrain this signal. We demonstrate the likelihood by constraining the CMB background temperature from Planck data alone, where the ISW-lensing cross-correlation is a powerful way to break the geometric degeneracy, substantially improving constraints from the CMB and lensing power spectra alone.

We investigate the primordial curvature perturbation by the observation of the dark matter substructure. Assuming a bump in the spectrum of the curvature perturbation in the wave number of $k>1{\mathrm{Mpc}}^{-1}$, we track the evolution of the host halo and subhalos in a semianalytic way. Taking into account possible uncertainties in the evaluation of the tidal stripping effect on the subhalo growth, we find a new robust bound on the curvature perturbation with a bump from the number of observed dwarf spheroidal galaxies in our Galaxy and the observations of the stellar stream. The upper limit on the amplitude of the bump is $\mathcal{O}({10}^{-7})$ for $k\sim {10}^3{\mathrm{Mpc}}^{-1}$. Furthermore, we find the boost factor, which is crucial for the indirect detection of dark matter signals, is up to $\mathcal{O}({10}^4)$ due to the bump that is allowed in the current observational bounds.

We derive relativistic second-order dissipative fluid-dynamical equations of motion for massive spin-$1/2$ particles from kinetic theory using the method of moments. Besides the usual conservation laws for charge, energy, and momentum, such a theory of relativistic dissipative spin hydrodynamics features an equation of motion for the rank-3 spin tensor, which follows from the conservation of total angular momentum. Extending the conventional method of moments for spin-0 particles, we expand the spin-dependent distribution function near local equilibrium in terms of moments of the momentum and spin variables. We work to next-to-leading order in the Planck constant $\hslash$. As shown in previous work, at this order in $\hslash$ the Boltzmann equation for spin-$1/2$ particles features a nonlocal collision term. From the Boltzmann equation, we then obtain an infinite set of equations of motion for the irreducible moments of the deviation of the single-particle distribution function from local equilibrium. In order to close this system of moment equations, a truncation procedure is needed. We employ the “$14+24$-moment approximation”, where “14” corresponds to the components of the charge current and the energy-momentum tensor and “24” to the components of the spin tensor, which completes the derivation of the equations of motion of second-order dissipative spin hydrodynamics. For applications to heavy-ion phenomenology, we also determine dissipative corrections to the Pauli-Lubanski vector.

Recently, the LHCb Collaboration observed a doubly charmed tetraquark candidate $T_{cc}^{+}$ and claimed its isospin to be zero due to the absence of $T_{cc}^{++}$. However, the absence of the $T_{cc}^{++}$ in the LHCb experiment may be due to their low yield in $pp$ collisions; thus, the isospin of $T_{cc}^{+}$ still needs to be clarified. We propose an efficient way to investigate the isospin property of $T_{cc}^{+}$ from the Dalitz plot distribution of $T_{cc}^{+}\to D^{+}{D}^0{\pi }^0$. This method can also be applied to other exotic candidates.

Higgs boson pair production is a well-known probe of the structure of the electroweak symmetry breaking sector. We illustrate this using the gluon-fusion processes $pp\to H\to hh\to (b\overline{b})(b\overline{b})$ in the framework of two-Higgs-doublet models and show how a machine learning approach (three-stream convolutional neural network) can substantially improve the signal-background discrimination and thus improve the sensitivity coverage of the relevant parameter space. We further show that such $gg\to hh\to b\overline{b}b\overline{b}$ processes can probe the parameter space currently allowed by higgssignals and higgsbounds at the HL-LHC. Results are presented for 2HDM types I through IV.

We discuss the implementation of lattice gauge theories on digital quantum computers, focusing primarily on the number of quantum gates required to simulate their time evolution. We find that to compile quantum circuits, using available state-of-the-art methods with our own augmentations, the cost of a single time step of an elementary plaquette is beyond what is reasonably practical in the current era of quantum hardware. However, we observe that such costs are highly sensitive to the truncation scheme used to derive different Hamiltonian formulations of non-Abelian gauge theories, emphasizing the need for low-dimensional truncations of such models in the same universality class as the desired theories.

A common feature of recent functional renormalization group investigations of effective low-energy QCD is the appearance of a backbending behavior of the chiral phase transition line at low temperatures together with a negative entropy density in the symmetric regime. The regulator scheme dependence of this phenomenon and the necessary modifications at finite densities are analyzed within a two-flavor quark-meson model. The flows at finite densities for three different regulators of three- or four-dimensional momenta are confronted with each other. It is found that the backbending behavior and the negative entropy density can be traced back to the explicit momentum dependence of the regulator shape function. While it persists for the often-used three-dimensional flat regulator, it vanishes for Callan-Symanzik type regulators. This points to truncation artifacts in the lowest order of the derivative expansion. A careful theoretical as well as numerical exploration is given.

Pion superfluid phase transition under external magnetic field including the inverse magnetic catalysis (IMC) effect is investigated by the Pauli-Villars regularized Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model. Based on Goldstone’s theorem, we apply the massless Goldstone boson (${\pi }^{+}$ meson) to determine the onset of the pion superfluid phase. The inverse magnetic catalysis effect is introduced by the magnetic field dependent coupling $G(eB)$, which is a decreasing function of magnetic field. At fixed temperature and baryon chemical potential, the critical isospin chemical potential for the pion superfluid phase transition, including the IMC effect, increases as the magnetic field grows, which is similar to the case without the IMC effect. This demonstrates that magnetic field disfavors the pion superfluid phase when considering or ignoring the IMC effect. The critical isospin chemical potential at fixed magnetic field, temperature, and baryon chemical potential is shifted to a higher value by the IMC effect. Because it is more difficult to form a pion superfluid with weaker coupling.

This paper serves as an update of the previous work entitled “Heavy-flavor-conserving hadronic weak decays of charmed and bottom baryons”. We make an improvement on the bag wave functions by removing the center-of-mass motion of the bag. All the baryon matrix elements are now calculated under the same framework without introducing new parameters. The matrix elements of 4-quark operators are found to be nearly twice larger than the previous ones. The calculated branching fractions of ${\mathrm{\Xi }}_c^0\to {\mathrm{\Lambda }}_c^{+}{\pi }^{-}$ and ${\mathrm{\Xi }}_b^{-}\to {\mathrm{\Lambda }}_b^0{\pi }^{-}$ are both in agreement with current experimental results. For the yet-to-be-measured heavy-flavor-conserving decays, we find $\mathcal{B}({\mathrm{\Xi }}_c^{+}\to {\mathrm{\Lambda }}_c^{+}{\pi }^0)=(13.8\pm 1.4)\times {10}^{-3}$, $\mathcal{B}({\mathrm{\Xi }}_b^0\to {\mathrm{\Lambda }}_b^0{\pi }^0)=(2.6\pm 0.3)\times {10}^{-3}$, $\mathcal{B}({\mathrm{\Omega }}_c^0\to {\mathrm{\Xi }}_c^{+}{\pi }^{-})=(2.0\pm 0.2)\times {10}^{-3}$ and $\mathcal{B}({\mathrm{\Omega }}_c^0\to {\mathrm{\Xi }}_c^0{\pi }^0)=(1.1\pm 0.1)\times {10}^{-3}$. They are all accessible to LHCb, Belle and Belle II and can be tested in the near future.

Multiple Coulomb scattering (MCS) is a well-known phenomenon occurring when charged particles traverse materials. Measurements of muons traversing low $Z$ materials made in the MuScat experiment showed that theoretical models and simulation codes, such as geant4 (v7.0), over-estimated the scattering. The Muon Ionization Cooling Experiment (MICE) measured the cooling of a muon beam traversing a liquid hydrogen or lithium hydride (LiH) energy absorber as part of a programme to develop muon accelerator facilities, such as a neutrino factory or a muon collider. The energy loss and MCS that occur in the absorber material are competing effects that alter the performance of the cooling channel. Therefore measurements of MCS are required in order to validate the simulations used to predict the cooling performance in future accelerator facilities. We report measurements made in the MICE apparatus of MCS using a LiH absorber and muons within the momentum range 160 to $245\mathrm{MeV}/c$. The measured RMS scattering width is about 9% smaller than that predicted by the approximate formula proposed by the Particle Data Group, but within the latter’s stated uncertainty. Data at 172, 200 and $240\mathrm{MeV}/c$ are compared to the geant4 (v9.6) default scattering model. These measurements show agreement with this more recent geant4 (v9.6) version over the range of incident muon momenta.

We demonstrate strong evidence of entropy matching that rotating dyonic black holes in Einstein-Maxwell-Dilaton-Axion theory is holographically dual to a 2D conformal field theory (CFT). We first investigate the duality on a dyonic Kerr-Sen black hole with nonvanishing dilaton and axion charges. The near-horizon geometry of extremal dyonic Kerr-Sen spacetime possesses the $SL(2,R)\times U(1)$ isometry where the asymptotic symmetry group method can be used to find the corresponding central charge. We find two different branches of masses which correspond to CFT with two different central charges, $c_L=12a{m}_{+}$ and $c_L=12a{m}_{-}$. The exact agreement between the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy and entropy from CFT is then found also in two different branches of extremal entropy. Furthermore, we demonstrate that this duality is robust insofar for nonzero anti–de Sitter (AdS) length. The duality holds for both dyonic Kerr-Sen–AdS black hole and its ultraspinning counterpart. In both cases, we obtain the expected entropy from CFT which matches exactly with the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy. Since dyonic and axion charges are proportional to $1/m$, we note that there are possibly more than two branches of the central charge for nonzero AdS length in terms of mass. When we turn off dyonic charge, the axion charge vanishes, giving the results of Kerr-Sen–AdS black hole. Moreover, when we assume the equal electromagnetic charges, it recovers the results when the dilaton charge vanishes. Lastly, we compare the results of a dyonic Kerr-Sen–AdS black hole and its ultraspinning counterpart to those of the dyonic Kerr-Newman–AdS black hole and the ultraspinning counterpart. Depending on the dyonic charge parameters, it is found that an extremal ultraspinning dyonic Kerr-Sen–AdS black hole is not always superentropic.

We explore different limits of exactly solvable vector and matrix fermionic quantum mechanical models with quartic interactions at finite temperature. The models preserve a $U(1)\times SU(N)\times SU(L)$ symmetry at the classical level and we analyze them through bosonization techniques introducing scalar (singlet) and matrix (nonsinglet) bosonic fields. The bosonic path integral representations in the vector limits $(N,1)$ and $(1,L)$ are matched to fermionic Fock space Hamiltonians expressed in terms of quadratic Casimirs and some additional terms involving the Cartan subalgebra, which makes explicit the symmetries preserved by scalar and matrix bosonizations at the quantum level. For the case of nonsinglet bosonization we find an equivalence between the vector model and the Polychronakos-Frahm spin model. Using this relation, we compute the free energy. Finally, we compute the eigenvalue distribution in the large $N$, $L$ limit with $\alpha =\frac{L}{N}$ fixed. The model displays a third order phase transition as we vary the temperature which, in the $\alpha \gg 1$ limit, can be characterized analytically. We conclude finding the critical curve in the parameter space were the eigenvalue distribution transitions from single to double cut.

We demonstrate a tensor renormalization group (TRG) calculation for a two-dimensional Lorentzian model of quantum Regge calculus (QRC). This model is expressed in terms of a tensor network by discretizing the continuous edge lengths of simplicial manifolds and identifying them as tensor indices. The expectation value of the space-time area, which is obtained through the higher-order TRG method, nicely reproduces the exact value. The Lorentzian model does not have the spike configuration that was an obstacle in the Euclidean QRC, but it still has a length-divergent configuration called a pinched geometry. We find a possibility that the pinched geometry is suppressed by checking the average edge length squared in the limit where the number of simplices is large. This implies that the Lorentzian model may describe smooth geometries, although the investigation of the higher moments is required to make the statement more conclusive. Our results also indicate that TRG is a promising approach to the numerical study of simplicial quantum gravity.

Orbifold singularities of M-theory constitute the building blocks of a broad class of supersymmetric quantum field theories (SQFTs). In this paper we show how the local data of these geometries determine global data on the resulting higher symmetries of these systems. In particular, via a process of cutting and gluing, we show how local orbifold singularities encode the 0-form, 1-form, and 2-group symmetries of the resulting SQFTs. Geometrically, this is obtained from the possible singularities that extend to the boundary of the noncompact geometry. The resulting category of boundary conditions then captures these symmetries and is equivalently specified by the orbifold homology of the boundary geometry. We illustrate these general points in the context of a number of examples, including five-dimensional (5D) superconformal field theories engineered via orbifold singularities, 5D gauge theories engineered via singular elliptically fibered Calabi-Yau threefolds, as well as four-dimensional supersymmetric quantum chromodynamics-like theories engineered via M-theory on noncompact $G_2$ spaces.

We show how calculable IR loop effects impact positivity bounds in effective field theories with causal and unitary UV completions. We identify infrared singularities that appear in dispersion relations at $|t|\lesssim m^2$. In the massless limit, they weaken two-sided bounds based on crossing symmetry, such as the lower bound on the amplitude for Galileon scattering. For amplitudes that are analytic in $s$ even for large negative $t$, i.e., $|t|\gg m^2$, we propose a new simple analytic approach to dispersive bounds, which are instead insensitive to the singularities, and explicitly compute the finite contributions from loops. Finally, we show that the singularity do not affect the bounds based on smearing in the impact parameter.

We show that in renormalization group (RG) flow the low-energy states form a code subspace that is approximately protected against the local short-distance errors. To demonstrate how general this connection is, we consider three examples: the classical Ising model in one dimension, free relativistic scalar quantum field theory (QFT) in two spacetime dimensions, and holographic field theories as examples of strongly coupled systems. As a concrete example of real-space RG in QFT, we consider the continuous multiscale renormalization ansatz for massive free fields and show that the low-energy coherent states are approximately protected from the quantum errors caused by the high-energy localized coherent operators. In holographic RG flows, we study the phase transition in the entanglement wedge of a single region and argue that one needs to define the price and the distance of the code with respect to the reconstructable wedge.

We study the quantum particle creation in a toy model of spherically symmetric gravitational collapse whose final product is not a black hole but a gravastar. Precedent studies revealed that even in the case of the gravitational collapse to form a horizonless ultracompact object, thermal radiation named transient Hawking radiation is generated at the late stage of the gravitational collapse, and a sudden stop of collapsing motion to form a horizonless ultracompact object causes one or two bursts of quantum particle creation. The very different behavior of the model studied in this paper from the precedent ones is quantum radiation with a thermal spectrum from the gravastar between two bursts. The temperature of the radiation is not the same as the Hawking one determined by the gravitational mass of the system but the Gibbons-Hawking one of the de Sitter core inside the gravastar.