Papers

Two bound neutrons can annihilate into a single invisible scalar carrying baryon number two, producing a monochromatic nuclear recoil. Pair removal connects the $0^+$ ground states of even-even nuclei and, for several detector isotopes, leaves a stable daughter where single-neutron removal would leave a radioactive one. Below the first daughter excitation, the leading transition produces neither nuclear de-excitation nor subsequent daughter decay. We identify the corresponding mass windows in argon and xenon, including argon recoils up to $108\,\mathrm{keV}$, and obtain an approximate partial-lifetime bound of $8.5 \times 10^{26}\,\mathrm{yr}$ from DEAP-3600 data. We also discuss this mechanism as a possible origin of the $248\,\mathrm{keV}$ recoil candidate reported by LZ. A ground-state interpretation points to a scalar mass near $1.85\,\mathrm{GeV}$, where daughter excitations are also accessible, and motivates searches for correlated higher-energy recoil lines in argon. Recoil lines in different isotopes reconstruct a common invisible-particle mass. The emitted scalar can itself be dark matter, making these searches a probe of ordinary matter converting into a dark sector.

Primordial black holes (PBHs) in the asteroid-mass window remain a viable dark matter candidate. In the lower part of this mass range, Hawking evaporation produces electrons and positrons that generate diffuse hard X-ray emission through inverse Compton (IC) scattering on Galactic radiation fields. We present the first search for this signal using a combined spectral and morphological analysis of the 20-year INTEGRAL/IBIS observations. We construct a physically motivated model of the Galactic hard X-ray background, including IC emission from cosmic-ray electrons and unresolved accreting white dwarfs, and consistently incorporate the IC contribution from PBH evaporation. By exploiting both spatial and spectral information, we improve the separation between a possible PBH signal and astrophysical backgrounds compared to analyses based only on spectral data. We derive constraints on the PBH dark matter fraction over a broad mass range, including extended PBH mass functions and rotating PBHs. We assess the impact of uncertainties in cosmic-ray propagation and the Galactic dark matter density profile, finding that the propagation of low-energy electrons and positrons represents the main source of uncertainty in the predicted signal. Despite these limitations, our results provide competitive constraints over a wide range of PBH masses, highlighting the potential of hard X-ray observations as a complementary probe of evaporating PBHs.

Optimal transport gives structured data a geometry, but exact evaluation is costly in large pairwise analyses that exploit relationships among distances. Learned surrogates are faster, but need not preserve this metric structure. We develop a Deep Sets surrogate for OT between variable-size weighted point clouds that enforces non-negativity, exchange symmetry, and zero self-distance, leaving the triangle inequality unconstrained. Applied to the Energy Mover's Distance between collider events in a particle physics application, the Metric-Aware Particle Flow Network achieves percent-level mean absolute percentage error while significantly improving inference throughput over other exact and approximate methods surveyed. The architectural constraints are found to improve properties that are not explicitly enforced: across $10^6$ held-out event triplets, triangle-inequality violations fall from 199 for a matched unconstrained network to 2, and the maximum from 149.5 to 5.8 GeV. These results demonstrate that targeted inductive biases can yield fast neural surrogates with substantially improved geometric fidelity.

Future multi-TeV muon colliders offer an ideal environment to probe physics beyond the Standard Model (SM) through high-precision measurements. In this work, we investigate the sensitivity to anomalous $hZ\gamma$ couplings within the dimension-six Standard Model Effective Field Theory (SMEFT) framework at $\sqrt{s} = 3\text{ TeV}$ and $10\text{ TeV}$ muon colliders. Focusing on single Higgs boson production—particularly through vector boson fusion—followed by the rare $h \to Z\gamma$ decay channel, we perform a comprehensive simulation using MadGraph5\_aMC@NLO, Pythia, and Delphes for fast detector response. To maximize signal sensitivity, we contrast a traditional cut-and-count methodology with a multi-bin Boosted Decision Tree (BDT) shape analysis, evaluated within a multi-bin $\chi^2$ statistical framework. Our most stringent projections are achieved using the multivariate BDT analysis at $10\text{ TeV}$. Assuming an integrated luminosity of $10\text{ ab}^{-1}$ and a $5\%$ systematic uncertainty, we derive expected $95\%$ confidence level intervals of $c_{HW} \in [-0.005, +0.003]$ and $c_{HB} \in [-0.003, +0.005]$. Notably, the bound on the $c_{\gamma}$ coefficient is slightly tighter due to its larger cross-section enhancement, reaching $c_{\gamma} \in [-0.002, 0.001]$. These results underscore the unique capability of high-energy muon colliders to constrain anomalous Higgs-gauge couplings.

We explore a fermionic dark matter (DM) extension of the Standard Model Effective Field Theory (SMEFT) and establish a complete renormalisation-group framework for its phenomenological investigation. We derive the anomalous-dimension matrix of all relevant dimension-five and dimension-six operators involving Standard Model (SM) and DM fields, enabling the consistent evolution of the associated Wilson coefficients (WCs) across energy scales. By combining renormalisation-group running with matching at the relevant thresholds, we construct a robust bridge between high-scale new physics and experimental observables. We then perform a comprehensive phenomenological analysis, evaluating the contributions of these operators to observables spanning a wide range of energies and deriving constraints on the WCs from current data. We obtain stringent and complementary bounds on the DM effective field theory (DMEFT) WCs from electroweak precision observables, flavour processes, lepton-flavour-violating decays, top-quark flavour-changing neutral-current decays, and invisible meson decays. Interpreted in terms of the effective scale of new physics, the resulting limits demonstrate that current precision measurements probe energy scales ranging from the TeV regime to several tens or even hundreds of TeV, highlighting the remarkable sensitivity of indirect searches to dark-sector interactions.

We formulate the theoretical aspects of direct waves (DWs) in the case of extreme-mass merger. A DW is a source-driven waveform characterized by a complex frequency $\omega_{\rm G}$, which reflects the orbital motion of the particle in the vicinity of the black hole, including a part of the orbit inside the ergoregion: its real part is governed by frame dragging and its imaginary part by the redshift of the source. Using the Green's function technique, we derive the source-driven frequency $\omega_{\rm G}$, describe its screening by the potential barrier, and discuss its relation to dynamically excited quasinormal modes (QNMs). We then introduce a pole-splitting method that divides the full waveform into a QNM-pole sector and a non-QNM sector. Unlike QNM filtering, which multiplies the waveform spectrum by a filter function and thereby deforms it through a frequency-dependent time shift (i.e., group delay), our pole-splitting method merely divides the transfer function into pole and non-pole parts, separating the full waveform. Simulating a quasi-circular plunge into a Kerr black hole with medium and rapid spins, we find that the frequency and decay rate of the non-pole sector in the dominant mode, $\ell = m = 2$, evolve consistently with $\omega_{\rm G}$-or with its screened counterpart $\omega_{\rm screen}$-establishing the DW as a probe of the ergoregion and of the redshift effect around a black hole.

What if dark energy is recurrent throughout cosmic history? In this picture, episodes of scalar-field dark energy become less surprising and more natural features of cosmic evolution. We construct a homogeneous multi-axion cosmology with a transient contribution during Big Bang nucleosynthesis, two early dark energy components before recombination, and a thawing field that supplies the present dark-energy density. As Hubble friction weakens, the fields begin to roll at successive epochs set by their potential-curvature scales. Their initial displacements affect the rolling delays and peak energy fractions. The transient fields have third-power cosine potentials, whose sextic minima allow faster-than-radiation dilution during rapid, small-amplitude oscillations. All four fields are evolved in a common Friedmann background, with their first roll and subsequent dynamics resolved numerically. With reference matter and radiation densities taken from Planck 2018, the benchmark has a nucleosynthesis-era peak fraction of approximately $0.99\%$ near $z=10^9$. The two early dark energy fields peak near $z=7.9\times10^3$ and $2.4\times10^3$, with individual fractions of $8.6\%$ and $7.8\%$; their combined fraction reaches $9.7\%$. The late-time field is normalized to supply a present fraction of approximately $0.685$, while the three transients leave a combined fraction of approximately $6.0\times10^{-7}$. An aligned two-axion example illustrates the enhanced field range available for an inflationary extension. We also outline how searches for transient contributions to the expansion rate at other epochs could constrain additional axion scales.

We show that the inference problem of constraining the parton distribution functions of the proton from deeply inelastic scattering data can be formulated as a linear tensor reconstruction inverse problem. This means that instead of fitting model parameters to the world data, a reconstructive approach to solve a system of coupled linear functional integral equations can be formulated. We leverage the mathematical structures of the integral equations defined by perturbative QCD and global analysis to pose the problem of global analysis as a coupled system of linear integral equations, and construct a proof-of-principle methodology to solve it. To formulate this approach concretely, we review all next-to-leading order accuracy results for inclusive virtual photon, neutral current, charged current, heavy flavor production, and neutrino deep-inelastic lepton–proton scattering. This mathematical methodology of inference opens a path towards a model-bias-free extraction of the proton PDFs from the world data of deeply inelastic scattering in the spirit of indirect measurement employed in mathematical inverse problems, including robust estimation of uncertainties with reduced bias from model parametrization, while closely adhering to the established paradigm of perturbative QCD and global analysis.

We investigate non-invertible selection rules originating from the discrete $H$-gauging of theories with an underlying discrete global symmetry group $G$. To systematically describe these theories, we formulate a general framework for $H$-gauged models that incorporates generalized field transformations. Our approach naturally accommodates non-Abelian groups, for which multidimensional irreducible representations play an essential role. In such models with non-Abelian groups, the transformations induced by $H$ non-trivially mix the internal components of $G$-multiplets, potentially projecting out specific degrees of freedom. Consequently, conventional selection rules based on standard tensor product decompositions or conjugacy classes become insufficient. By analyzing the full semidirect product $G \rtimes H$, we introduce projected characters to derive necessary and sufficient conditions for non-vanishing $n$-point bare couplings. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the remaining field components obey an associative fusion-like algebra governed by their Clebsch-Gordan coefficients. Phenomenologically, these selection rules restrict allowed interactions and impose specific relations among coupling constants. We illustrate our results through concrete examples, including $\Delta(54) \cong \Delta(27)\rtimes \mathbb{Z}_2$ and $S_4 \cong A_4 \rtimes \mathbb{Z}_2$.

Primordial Black Holes (PBHs) with masses below $\mathcal{O}(10^9)$g occupy an interesting region of parameter space that is largely inaccessible to conventional observations. Despite evaporating before Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN), these PBHs can naturally generate a period of early matter domination in the early Universe. A primordial gravitational-wave background (GWB) provides a window onto this otherwise inaccessible regime, since the modified expansion history leaves a characteristic spectral feature associated with the onset and end of PBH domination. The locations of these characteristic frequencies can be used to reconstruct the underlying PBH parameters, in particular the PBH mass. For a freely propagating GWB, the location of these frequencies additionally allow the initial PBH abundance to be determined. We derive simple numerical relations that map these characteristic frequencies directly onto the PBH mass and initial abundance. Future GW experiments span a vast frequency range, providing sensitivity to PBH masses from the BBN bound of $\mathcal{O}(10^9)\,\mathrm{g}$ down to the lower bound of $\mathcal{O}(10)\,\mathrm{g}$. We find that the nanohertz signal reported by NANOGrav, if primordial in origin, is already probing PBH masses in the range $4$–$90\,\mathrm{Mg}$. GW observations therefore offer access to a vast region of PBH parameter space that is otherwise beyond the reach of current experiments.

We investigate the effects of a massive invisible fermion in $\Lambda_b^0 \to \Lambda_c^+ \ell^- \bar{X}_{\rm inv}$ decays using a model-independent weak effective theory. Through a comprehensive angular analysis, we show that a nonzero invisible-particle mass leaves characteristic imprints on angular observables that can distinguish massless and massive invisible states. We further demonstrate that these observables provide strong discrimination among vector/axial-vector, scalar/pseudoscalar, and tensor interactions, as well as between left- and right-handed quark and lepton current operators.

The LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) Collaboration recently reported the detection of a single nuclear recoil candidate event with a very high recoil energy. The lack of any corresponding low-energy events motivates models in which dark matter scattering with nuclei has a nontrivial momentum dependence or proceeds inelastically, suppressing the rate of low-energy recoils. In this study, we consider the constraints on inelastic dark matter, including scenarios favored by the LZ event, from the absence of an excess of high-energy neutrinos from the Sun in IceCube observations. We confirm the results of Pospelov & Ramani and show, more generally, that the lack of an excess of high-energy neutrinos from the Sun strongly constrains the parameter space in this class of models.

In bottom-up holographic QCD (HQCD), two primary approaches are commonly employed: the potential reconstruction method, where the background geometry is fixed a priori and the dilaton potential is derived, and the direct method, where the potential is specified explicitly. While the reconstruction method is highly effective for capturing the phenomenological properties of QCD under extreme conditions, a subtlety arises in that the reconstructed potential depends on the chosen holographic boundary conditions. To address this issue, we propose constructing a dilaton potential designed to reproduce the typical features of HQCD phase transitions obtained by the reconstruction method, rather than one derived solely from HQCD vacuum solution. Using a light-quark model as an example, we construct a potential that captures the principal features of the phase structure of this model. Its parameters are determined at zero chemical potential by minimizing the deviation between the temperature dependence on the horizon position in the direct and reconstructed models and by fitting to the same position of a critical endpoint (CEP). The resulting minimal-potential model satisfactorily recovers the physics of the light-quark model even at relatively small chemical potential. Specifically, it yields a first-order phase transition (FOPT) line close to those obtained from the reconstruction method. Additionally, the minimal-potential model reproduces a rising Cornell-like quark-antiquark potential up to the hadronic distance $\ell=1.5$ fm, which we use as a phenomenological finite-distance criterion for confinement. The location of the confinement/deconfinement crossover in this minimal-potential model is also close to its counterpart in the original light-quark model.

We develop a systematic correspondence between massless contact amplitudes in an unbroken theory and massive contact amplitudes after spontaneous symmetry breaking. Our construction employs the spin-transversality (ST) massive amplitude basis, with the systematic high energy expansion through minimal-helicity-chirality (MHC) amplitudes. The resulting $U(2)=SU(2)\times U(1)_t$ description of a massive particle makes the semi-standard Young-tableau construction of massless Lorentz structures directly applicable to massive amplitudes. When the leading-order MHC component has a massless contact limit, it is one-to-one matched directly to its UV amplitude. Otherwise, five exceptional classes of ST amplitudes are identified, their first non-zero descendant components are matched through conserved current couplings to the massless contact amplitude. We apply the framework to the one-flavor electroweak sector of the Standard Model Effective Field Theory (SMEFT) through dimension eight, obtaining explicit relations between unbroken-phase Wilson coefficients and broken-phase ST amplitude coefficients for amplitudes with three to eight external particles.

Naive estimates based on Einstein gravity with Lagrangian $\frac{1}{2}M_{pl}^{2}(R-2\Lambda)$ suggest that, if the radiation era extended back to the Big Bang (i.e., as far back as the classical spacetime background makes sense), this would result in an over-production of dark matter and a relic cosmic background of thermal gravitons. Here we revisit these conclusions in quadratic gravity, the minimal renormalizable completion of Einstein gravity, whose Lagrangian also includes the terms $\frac{1}{6}f_0^{-2}R^2-\frac{1}{2}f_{2}^{-2}C^{2}$. Assuming the radiation era does extend back to the bang, we find a novel relation between the coefficient $f_{2}$ and the dark matter mass $m_{dm}$, needed to obtain the correct dark matter abundance. This yields a new gravitational production mechanism for dark matter (e.g., stable right-handed neutrinos). Moreover, the presence or absence of the relic graviton background (detectable by forthcoming CMB experiments via its small imprint on $N_{{\rm eff}}$) will place new constraints on $f_{0}, f_{2}$.

The bubble wall velocity is a key quantity in cosmological first-order phase transitions, with important implications for electroweak baryogenesis, gravitational wave signals, the dark matter relic density and primordial black holes formed during the phase transition, and so on. However, it is often treated as a free input in phenomenological studies, while a self-consistent determination remains challenging. In this work, taking the complex singlet extension of the Standard Model as an example, we investigate the bubble wall dynamics and velocity in a specific electroweak phase transition pattern where both the Higgs field and the coupled singlet scalar experience friction. The microscopic friction arising from particle interactions with the plasma is evaluated using Boltzmann transport equations, while the macroscopic plasma response is described through hydrodynamic analysis. By applying the steady state force balance condition, we numerically determine the bubble wall velocity for different model parameters. We show that the wall velocity is governed by the competition between the driving force from the effective potential and plasma friction, and that its variation can significantly affect the baryon asymmetry. Our study provides a quantitative investigation of bubble wall dynamics in this overlooked phase transition pattern and its implications for early Universe phenomenology.

Quantum field theory on curved and non-inertial backgrounds contains background- and foliation-dependent quantities in the canonical Lagrangian, the hypersurface inner product and bilinear form, as well as in the equal-time anti-commutation relations. In this work, we determine a local fermion-field redefinition that brings these canonical structures into their standard-Minkowski forms, i. e., the forms they assume in Cartesian inertial coordinates on Minkowski spacetime, where the zeroth world coordinate is identified as the coordinate of time. Starting from the generally covariant Dirac action minimally coupled to a spin-1 gauge field, we derive the corresponding Lagrangian, fermionic inner product, and quantization rule in an Arnowitt-Deser-Misner decomposition, formulated in arbitrary world coordinates. We identify the generalized temporal gamma matrix as the common geometric factor governing the canonical temporal structure of all three quantities. Using a field redefinition, we transform this generalized temporal gamma matrix to its standard-Minkowski form, thereby mapping the fermionic inner product and the equal-time anti-commutation relation to their standard-Minkowski expressions, while transferring the explicit background and foliation dependence to the transformed Lagrangian and fermion-field operators. We show that such a field redefinition necessarily consists of a local rescaling and a fixing of the local Lorentz frame. This procedure restores the conventional canonical normalization from standard-Minkowski spacetime used for fermionic mode quantization and occupation-number operators. The transformed Lagrangian consequently assumes a generalized first-order Schrödinger form, leading to the familiar rest-energy term and spacetime-magnetic couplings, as well as to the leading non-relativistic limit, in which temporal derivatives are separated from spatial ones.

We summarize the next-to-leading order (NLO) corrections to next-to-eikonal (NEik) quark background contributions to DIS structure functions. At NEik accuracy, in addition to corrections arising from the gluon background field of the target, DIS structure functions receive contributions from the $t$-channel quark exchanges, represented by insertions of the quark background field of the target. The latter provide the lowest order contributions in $\alpha_s$ at NEik accuracy. We show that the NLO corrections to the longitudinal NEik structure functions are finite, whereas those to the transverse NEik structure functions exhibit rapidity and ultraviolet (UV) divergences. We analyze these divergences and extract the finite contributions.

Semi-Visible Jets (SVJs) constitute a distinctive collider signature of strongly interacting dark sectors, embedding Dark Matter candidates, wherein jets contain both visible Standard Model objects and invisible dark hadrons, giving rise to correlated jet activity and missing transverse momentum. In this work, we investigate SVJs produced through a heavy Z' mediator and perform an study over a representative set of benchmark scenarios spanning different mediator masses and dark sector parameters in the context of so-called Hidden Valley Models. To characterise the signal, we combine global event kinematics with jet substructure observables, including the primary Lund Jet Plane (LJP), the two-point energy correlation, angularity, and charged hadron multiplicity. These representations are used to train five Deep Learning classifiers for SVJ vs standard jet discrimination: a Vision Transformer operating on LJP images, a JetLOV network based on a hierarchical clustering tree, a Multi-Layer Perceptron using high level observables, and two multimodal networks that combine the image-based or hierarchical representations of the radiation pattern with the high jet-level observables. This enables a direct combination of global kinematics, radiation patterns, and jet clustering structure. We find that global kinematic observables outperform the LJP and hierarchical jet representations, with the latter providing stronger discrimination than LJP images. Combining these complementary representations with global kinematics yields the best overall performance. More broadly, this study shows that unlocking the full discovery potential of SVJs would benefit from going beyond global kinematics to exploit the rich information encoded in their internal structure, providing a benchmark for future searches at the Large Hadron Collider.

We present a Sherpa implementation of NLO corrections in dimension-six Standard Model Effective Field Theory (SMEFT) to the benchmark process $h\to b\bar b$. The calculation includes NLO QCD corrections matched to a parton shower using an MCatNLO-type framework for decays. Virtual weak effects are included as two-body matrix-element corrections in different electroweak input schemes, with the corresponding decay events also evolved with the QCD parton shower. We present numerical results for the inclusive decay rate and for differential distributions in the Higgs-boson rest frame, and illustrate how the decay implementation can be combined with an independently generated production sample by embedding it in associated $Zh$ production at the LHC. This proof-of-principle implementation demonstrates how NLO SMEFT corrections can be incorporated into the widely used Sherpa event generator, providing a basis for extensions to other processes and for SMEFT studies with realistic final states and fiducial cuts within that framework.

Top-quark spin correlations provide a direct probe of the quantum numbers of a resonance decaying to $t\bar t$. We compare a CP-odd type-II two-Higgs-doublet-model pseudoscalar $A$ with a spin-1 leptophobic topcolor $Z'$ in the dilepton channel. The two hypotheses differ in the parton-level helicity correlation by $\Delta c_{\rm hel}\simeq0.43$, nearly independently of mass, and neutrino-weighted reconstruction preserves this separation with an effective dilution factor of about 0.66. At 400 and 800 GeV, the pseudoscalar normalization is anchored to CMS HIG-22-013 coupling limits, while the $Z'$ rate is matched to the pseudoscalar so that the comparison primarily tests spin structure. The leading-order $t\bar t$-only projection gives expected separations of 2.27 and 2.74 standard deviations at $3000\,{\rm fb}^{-1}$. Equalizing the selected signal yields gives pure spin-shape separations of 1.86 and 2.70 standard deviations. Profiling a Gaussian-constrained Standard Model $c_{\rm hel}$-shape nuisance gives 2.07 and 2.63 standard deviations for an optimistic sideband benchmark, or 1.67 and 2.26 for a weaker constraint. A local fixed-template extrapolation corresponds to five-standard-deviation discrimination at couplings about 22% and 16% above the reference values. A 1500 GeV $g=1$ point is shown separately. The reach is limited by the sub-percent signal fraction and control of the mass-dependent Standard Model spin shape, rather than by the intrinsic resonance-spin separation.

We discuss a new family of publicly available collinear fragmentation functions (FFs) for pseudoscalar quarkonia, the NRFF1.0 set. It builds upon the Heavy-Flavor Non-Relativistic evolution (HF-NRevo) scheme, designed to describe heavy-hadron formation through leading-power fragmentation at moderate and large transverse momentum. Heavy-quarkonium production naturally involves both perturbative and non-perturbative QCD dynamics, from the production of the heavy $Q\bar{Q}$ pair to its formation into a physical bound state. Within NRFF1.0, Non-Relativistic Quantum Chromodynamics (NRQCD) provides the theoretical framework for calculating the FF inputs at the initial scale, which are subsequently evolved through the HF-NRevo scheme. This setup provides a precision baseline for investigating the underlying partonic hierarchy and jet structure across the moderate- to high-transverse-momentum regime. The explicit treatment of partonic channels and heavy-flavor thresholds makes this framework particularly suitable for exploring quarkonium-in-jet fragmentation, jet-quenching sensitivity, energy-loss mechanisms, and the emergence of medium-modified fragmentation patterns in the quark-gluon plasma.

The LZ experiment has recently reported an observation of a single event with characteristics of a nuclear recoil at a high recoil energy of 248 keV, where no background events are expected. We show that such nuclear recoil event could be caused by high velocity dark matter particles originating from interactions with energetic cosmic rays. We analyze the expected recoil spectrum due to cosmic ray boosted dark matter within the non-relativistic effective theory formalism, and show that momentum-dependent operators, such as $\mathcal{O}_6$ and $\mathcal{O}_{10}$, can produce a spectrum that peaks at the observed energy.

The recent observation of a 220 PeV neutrino event (KM3-230213A) by the KM3NeT observatory presents a formidable challenge to standard astrophysical source models. We investigate the hypothesis that this ultra-high-energy signature originates from the terminal evaporation burst of a Primordial Black Hole (PBH). Since PBH evolution spans cosmic history, static vacuum approximations fail to capture early-universe dynamics. Embedding the PBH in a cosmological background via the McVittie spacetime, we demonstrate that early-universe cosmological accretion and expansion-suppressed Hawking emission shift the required initial mass window for a terminal burst occurring today. We show that although the early universe environment dictates the black hole's overall lifespan, its final explosion today ($z \approx 0$) is governed by standard Schwarzschild thermodynamics. This mechanism naturally produces the intense 220 PeV local flux while suppressing early emissions, thereby satisfying diffuse isotropic background limits. Consequently, this dynamical framework alters the mapping between current ultra-high-energy neutrino observables and the primordial curvature perturbations that seeded them.

Net-proton multiplicity distributions obtained by the STAR collaboration are analyzed in the grand canonical approach. A method of finding the baryon chemical potential $\mu_B$ immediately from such distributions is applied for the first time. The obtained values of $\mu_B$ are consistent both with those determined earlier using the statistical thermal model and with the results of the fit based on the Hadron Resonance Gas (HRG) model. We propose a criterion of thermalization of fireballs produced in heavy-nuclei collisions.

We consider Yang-Mills theory with two infinite parallel plates, separated by a distance \(L\), that are perfect magnetic conductors (PMC) or perfect electric conductors (PEC). Recently, it was shown that the Gribov copy problem persists in such a setting. We then study the Gribov-Zwanziger (GZ) action in the presence of those boundaries using functional integral methods. Lagrange multiplier fields allow one to lift the boundary conditions into the action, after which the boundary modifications to the gluon propagator can straightforwardly be determined. In the PEC case, we provide evidence that, even when translation invariance is (partially) broken, the usual horizon term in the GZ action still restricts the functional integral to the Gribov region. We compute the Casimir energy for GZ with PMC or PEC plates, both directly from the functional integral and from the energy-momentum tensor, obtaining consistent results. We compare our analytical results with recent lattice data, in both 4D and 3D. A priori, one might expect that the boundary-modified gluon propagator introduces new \(L\)-dependencies into the GZ gap equation. This would make the Gribov mass \(\gamma\) dynamically dependent on \(L\), implying an interesting interplay with the Casimir energy. However, we show that no such dynamical \(L\)-dependence occurs within the current approximation.

We study an extension of the Standard Model with two complex scalar singlets, $S_2$ and $S_3$, charged under $\mathbb{Z}_2$ and $\mathbb{Z}_3$, respectively, and a muon-philic vector-like lepton $\psi$ carrying the same $\mathbb{Z}_3$ charge as $S_3$. The pseudoscalar associated with the $\mathbb{Z}_2$ sector remains stable due to the CP symmetry of the potential and serves as the dark matter (DM) candidate, with its mass generated through the corresponding soft breaking of the global $U(1)$ symmetry. The vector-like muon couples to the $\mathbb{Z}_3$ scalar and renders the second pseudoscalar unstable, thereby realizing an effectively single-component pNGB DM scenario. The pNGB nature strongly suppresses the tree-level spin-independent direct-detection cross section, while viable parameter regions reproduce the observed relic abundance and satisfy LHC monojet constraints. We further compute the one-loop contribution to DM-nucleon scattering and find that the resulting cross section remains below current experimental limits while being potentially accessible to future direct-detection experiments. At a multi-TeV muon collider, scalar mediated $ t$-channel processes can significantly enhance vector-like-muon pair production. We perform a detailed multivariate analysis for a future muon collider at 3 TeV center-of-mass energy. We also identify viable benchmark points exhibiting strong first-order electroweak phase transitions (SFOEWPT) with successful bubble nucleation, which can generate potentially observable stochastic gravitational wave (GW) signals. These results highlight the complementarity of dark matter searches, muon-collider probes, and SFOEWPT, with the resulting GW signals providing an additional probe of the extended scalar sector.

We investigate whether dimensional deconstruction can qualitatively modify long-range forces. We show that the deconstruction of a five-dimensional AdS spacetime effectively generates an inverse-square potential, which naturally gives rise to broad p-wave Sommerfeld resonances without fine-tuning. We then apply this mechanism to dark matter phenomenology.

In the strongly interacting massive particle (SIMP) scenario, dark matter is a pseudo-Nambu–Goldstone boson whose abundance is set by a three-to-two Wess–Zumino–Witten process. We study this scenario in an axion portal and find that the kinetic contact the canonical mechanism assumes is excluded by bounds on sub-GeV axion-like particles (ALPs). The dark sector then freezes out at its own temperature, so the relic abundance no longer fixes the self-interaction cross section but predicts the portal coupling instead. Moreover, the portal operator is Hermitian and even in the ALP field, so no trilinear ALP–pion coupling arises. The contact term then drives $\pi\pi\to aa$ with nothing to cancel against it, and we find the conversion four orders of magnitude faster than a trilinear estimate gives. This disfavours the minimal realisation in which the dark condensate alone generates the ALP mass. The realisation that survives instead makes the ALP slightly heavier than the dark pion. Matching the observed abundance then fixes the flavon vacuum expectation value at $V_\phi\simeq 1.1\times10^{10} \ {\rm GeV}$ and leaves the dark scale open over more than an order of magnitude. The decay $K^+\to\pi^+a$ requires the flavon to charge the leptons alone. The model then predicts a dark matter self-interaction of $0.20\,{\rm cm^2/g}$ at a dark pion mass of $140\ {\rm MeV}$, in a window running from $82$ to $169 \ {\rm MeV}$. The predictive power of the SIMP framework is therefore not lost but relocated, from the self-interaction to the flavon scale.

We realize a nearly pure higgsino dark matter candidate with mass of about 1 TeV in the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model coupled to the Starobinsky supergravity. The recent LUX-ZEPLIN 248 keV nuclear-recoil event has renewed interest in higgsino dark matter. In this framework, the particle spectrum, including the Higgs boson mass, the higgsino mass and its splitting, is connected to cosmic inflation observables via gravitational mediation of supersymmetry breaking and subsequent renormalization group evolution. We show that the Higgs boson mass predicted by the model agrees with the measured value within the quoted uncertainties for a broad range of bino-induced mass splittings. Wino-induced splitting leads to a Higgs mass several GeV higher and is therefore excluded.