Papers

Recent IceCube observations point to the ultra-high energy neutrino flux exhibiting a very soft spectral nature beyond tens of TeV, which is unexpected from the standard cosmic-ray neutrino connection. As a potential explanation for this behaviour, we investigate neutrino self-interactions in an extra-dimensional $ {U(1)}_{L_{\mu}-L_\tau} $ gauge theory, where symmetry breaking leads to a tower of Kaluza-Klein gauge bosons in compactified four dimensions. These multiple gauge bosons may enhance the attenuation of astrophysical neutrinos as they propagate in the C$\nu$B medium. Unlike single-mediator scenarios, for example, which arise from broken $ {U(1)}_{L_\mu - L_\tau} $ gauge symmetries in four dimensions, the presence of a Kaluza-Klein tower of mediators produces multiple closely spaced resonances whose interference gives rise to a rich energy-dependent behaviour of the scattering cross-section over a vast range of incident neutrino energies. Alongside $s$-channel resonances, off-resonant $t$- and $u$-channel contributions also become important. We explore the possibility that repeated resonant scattering between astrophysical neutrinos and those in the C$\nu$B, mediated by these new multiple gauge bosons may increasingly attenuate the former at higher energies, thereby addressing the possibility of softening its spectral nature within the consideration of a single power law.

We present simulations of the microwave sky at 2.5 arcsecond resolution over 100 square degrees, generated from existing full-sky, lower-resolution simulations, and use them to demonstrate extragalactic foreground removal for a CMB-HD survey. Our cleaning method detects and removes the cosmic infrared background and radio galaxies, yielding source catalogs that are 95% complete down to flux limits of 0.008 and 0.04 mJy at 90 and 148 GHz, respectively. It also identifies and removes galaxy clusters via the thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect, producing a cluster sample that is nearly complete above $M_{500c} = 5 \times 10^{13} M_\odot$. After cleaning, the residual foreground-plus-noise power spectrum of the coadded 90 and 148 GHz temperature map is 50% higher than previous idealized estimates, increasing cosmological parameter uncertainties for an 11-parameter $\Lambda$CDM + $N_\mathrm{eff}$ + $\sum m_\nu$ + $T_\mathrm{AGN}$ + $A_\mathrm{kSZ}$ + $n_\mathrm{kSZ}$ model by less than 7%. The small impact on cosmological parameters reflects the strong constraining power of CMB polarization, the temperature-polarization cross spectra, and CMB lensing spectra reconstructed from polarization-only estimators, all of which are minimally affected by extragalactic foregrounds. In particular, the survey remains a sensitive probe of light thermal relic particles, achieving $\sigma(N_\mathrm{eff}) = 0.0154$, which can exclude any new species ($\Delta N_\mathrm{eff} \ge 0.027$) with at least 90% confidence. Our simulation and foreground-removal codes are publicly available and should aid the development of analysis pipelines for ultradeep, ultrahigh-resolution microwave surveys.

We study baryon $(\mathcal{B})$ formation in the early Universe in a confining $SU(\mathcal{N})$ gauge theory with quarks transforming in the fundamental representation. Casimir scaling of the confining potential implies that, at large $\mathcal{N}$, $\mathcal{B}$ formation is hindered by a bottleneck: for small quark clusters, representing the initial stages of $\mathcal{B}$ assembly, destruction processes greatly outweigh formation processes. In a $\mathcal{B}$-$\bar{\mathcal{B}}$ symmetric plasma, the relic density of cosmologically stable $\mathcal{B}$'s is set, for large $\mathcal{N}$, during confinement rather than by annihilation freeze-out. This affects relic-density estimates for $SU(\mathcal{N})$ dark matter models.

We introduce a model of dark matter charged under a new confining gauge group akin to the Standard Model's quantum chromodynamics (QCD). The fermionic sector contains both heavy and light quark-like fermions charged under the dark QCD. As the Universe cools, the gauge force confines and dark radiation transitions from free particles to low-mass dark pions. This form of dark radiation behaves as an imperfect fluid with nonzero viscosity. If the confinement occurs at the MeV scale, the model can alleviate the tension between early- and late-time measurements of the Hubble parameter, with a Bayesian posterior of $H_0 = 71.60\pm 0.63$ km/s/Mpc and a $3\sigma$ residual tension across Planck, ACT, BBN, Pantheon+, DESI DR2, and SH0ES. In the late Universe, the heavy dark matter can evade existing constraints on dark matter self-interactions while containing a rich phenomenology that may be accessible in future observations.

Motivated by searches for weak coherent drives, we formulate repeated quantum sensing with a fixed shot budget as an asymmetric composite hypothesis test. Taking Rabi sensing as a concrete example, we benchmark detection power, sensitivity, and Type-II error exponents in the resonant case with unknown signal amplitude and phase. We compare non-adaptive population and transverse readouts with a myopic Bayesian policy that selects each projective axis by maximizing the expected information gain in one step. The common decision statistic is a log Bayes factor, with a policy specific threshold calibrated under the null to enforce a common Type-I error. A weak signal expansion shows that population readout is phase independent but quadratic in amplitude, giving $n^{-1/4}$ sensitivity, whereas transverse readout is linear in amplitude and permits $n^{-1/2}$ sensitivity without adaptation, but is phase-dependent. In Monte Carlo pseudoexperiments, the adaptive policy exploits posterior information about the unknown direction to guide subsequent readouts; its sensitivity is consistent with $n^{-1/2}$ over the simulated large $n$ range and, at the largest simulated shot counts, outperforms the fixed transverse schedules. Its phase-averaged effective Type-II exponent also exceeds the non-adaptive references over the simulated range. These results demonstrate the finite budget value of exploiting nuisance parameter information under calibrated false positive control.

We develop a new framework in which eclectic groups are realised as flavour symmetries without flavons. Focusing on the group $\Omega(1)$, we show that it can be realised as a finite image of the integral Jacobi group, i.e. the semidirect product of $H({\mathbb Z})$ with $SL(2,{\mathbb Z})$, acting on two moduli $(\tau,z)$. The Heisenberg subgroup $H({\mathbb Z})$ leaves the modulus $\tau$ unchanged, and its finite image $\Delta(27)$ plays the role of the traditional flavour symmetry. We provide the ingredients needed to construct supersymmetric Jacobi-invariant theories, both in globally supersymmetric theories and in supergravity. We develop a realistic model of fermion masses within this framework and formulate a consistent CP symmetry, which can be imposed at the Lagrangian level and broken spontaneously by the moduli. We discuss how the conventional eclectic-flavour description is recovered in an appropriate limit. We also extend this geometric interpretation to the $T^2/\mathbb Z_4$ and $T^2/\mathbb Z_2$ eclectic building blocks, and clarify why the $T^2/\mathbb Z_6$ case is structurally different.

Recent progress in collider physics has reformulated phenomenological questions in terms of detector correlation functions and advanced their theoretical understanding. These advances have primarily focused on correlators of the average null energy operator, $\mathcal{E}(\vec{n})$, known as energy correlators. However, colliders have access to a much broader class of detector operators, $\mathcal{E}^n_R(\vec{n})$, which measure powers of the energy on a subset of hadrons $R$, such as charged hadrons. These generalized detectors are generically not infrared and collinear safe, and their description requires nonperturbative matching between the hadronic detectors measured in the infrared and the partonic detectors used in ultraviolet calculations. We develop a framework for computing their multi-point correlation functions. We introduce universal nonperturbative matching coefficients, termed "detector functions", that implement this infrared-ultraviolet matching. For the $\mathcal{E}_R^n$ operators studied here, these coefficients are represented by energy-weighted moments of single- and multi-hadron fragmentation functions. We present their renormalization group structure, derive QCD factorization theorems for the projected correlators, and compute jet functions through next-to-leading order. In the fixed-coupling pure Yang-Mills limit, we derive the light-ray OPE of hadronic detectors and connect it to the QCD factorization framework. We also identify universal nonperturbative power corrections generated by soft radiation, which are enhanced in the collinear limit and can substantially modify the perturbative angular scaling. A parton shower study finds qualitative agreement with the predicted perturbative and nonperturbative scaling behaviors. Our work significantly broadens the space of detector operators under theoretical control, with potential phenomenological applications.

We address the axion quality/cosmology tension that often plagues QCD axion models in post-inflationary Peccei-Quinn (PQ) breaking scenarios. In the proposed framework, the PQ symmetry emerges accidentally from an ${\rm SU}(\mathcal{N})_L\times{\rm SU}(\mathcal{N})_R$ gauge symmetry spontaneously broken to ${\rm SU}(\mathcal{N})_{L+R}$, and its quality is protected because PQ breaking first appears at operator dimension $\mathcal{N}$. Moreover, the construction avoids the domain-wall problem, ensures that no stable fractionally charged relic survives ${\rm SU} (\mathcal{N})_{L+R}$ confinement, and remains free of Landau poles below the scale of PQ-breaking operators. The exotic quarks required to generate the PQ anomaly hadronize into unstable mesons and cosmologically stable neutral baryons. However, plausible arguments indicating a strong suppression of baryon formation in ${\rm SU}(\mathcal{N})$ gauge theories at large $\mathcal{N}$, suggest that their contribution to the dark matter energy density remains subdominant. Combining cosmological constraints with PQ quality and perturbativity requirements yields a viable parameter space in which the axion makes up most of the dark matter and its mass remains predictable.

Experimental searches for GeV-scale feebly interacting particles commonly target the simplest decay signatures with two charged particles, including hadrons. Hadronic modes often dominate the inclusive decay rate, and their simulation relies extensively on Pythia. Its fragmentation model, calibrated mainly on LEP data, is unreliable in this mass range: it populates symmetry-forbidden states and misidentifies the dominant allowed channels. We construct a simple hadronization model tuned to electromagnetic scattering data and constrained by conservation laws and available exclusive decay calculations, while retaining a common prescription applicable to different particle models. Considering the SHiP experiment as an example, we show that our model shifts the dominant search signature after event selection from two-particle to multiparticle decays, including mixed charged-neutral states. We provide the model in a form that can be readily integrated into Pythia-based experimental simulation frameworks.

LUX-ZEPLIN has recently revealed a single nuclear recoil event compatible with a recoil energy of $E_R\simeq248\,\mathrm{keV}$, in a region with a small expected background. Interpreting this as a signature of dark matter, we compute the posterior probability distribution of the parameters of the dark matter scattering off xenon nuclei. We retain the exact two-body kinematics for an arbitrary mass splitting between the incoming and outgoing dark-sector states, thus encompassing both elastic and inelastic scatterings. The data select non-trivial, disconnected regions of this distribution, which correspond to physically distinct endothermic and exothermic regimes, in which the observed recoil is generated either close to a kinematic threshold or through the release of dark-sector mass energy. We determine the recoil spectra preferred by the observed data and show how the absence of accompanying events at lower recoil energies sharply constrains the viable parameter space. We find a kinematically tuned region of endothermic WIMP-like models at high mass for generic couplings, as well as exothermic models ranging from sub-GeV to heavy dark matter with sizable mass splittings. Elastic dark matter scatterings require instead momentum-suppressed and/or nuclear-spin-dependent non-relativistic interactions.

We investigate how neutrino-mass constraints from cosmology depend on the assumed thermal history of the universe. Photon injection after neutrino decoupling would decrease the neutrino abundance inferred from the temperature of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), potentially loosening the upper limit on their masses. We first evaluate how the cosmological neutrino-mass bound is altered by the decay of massive particles into photons and dark radiation after Big Bang nucleosynthesis. To test the robustness of this constraint more generally, we also assess the impact of varying the temperature of the cosmic neutrino background without assuming a specific physical mechanism. We perform MCMC analyses of both frameworks with primary CMB observations from Planck, CMB lensing measurements from Planck and ACT, and baryon acoustic oscillation data from DESI. For the degenerate mass ordering, the $95\%$ credible limit tightens from $\sum m_\nu<0.0691$ eV in a standard thermal history to $\sum m_\nu<0.0652$ eV if the massive particles decay only into photons, while the injection of dark radiation in addition to photons slightly relaxes this limit to $\sum m_\nu<0.0710$ eV. The same pattern holds for the normal and inverted orderings, and the decay scenario shifts the bound on the sum of the neutrino masses by at most $0.004$ eV for fixed mass splittings. Allowing model-agnostic changes in the neutrino-to-photon ratio yields a $95\%$ credible limit of $\sum m_\nu<0.0724$ eV for the degenerate ordering, indicating that the stringency of our neutrino-mass bounds is not driven by constraints on the decay scenario. We find that the neutrino temperature and the sum of the neutrino masses are positively correlated, which implies that reducing the pre-recombination radiation density will only worsen the emerging tension between cosmological bounds on the neutrino masses and the measured mass splittings.

Heavy-quarkonium hadroproduction at the LHC can access kinematic configurations in which the partonic center-of-mass energy is much larger than the quarkonium mass and transverse momentum. Fixed-order predictions may become unstable in this regime because large logarithms of the collision energy are not resummed. Extending high-energy factorization beyond leading logarithms requires process-dependent impact factors at next-to-leading order (NLO). We report the first complete NLO BFKL impact factors, with exact heavy-quark-mass dependence, for the production of the NRQCD states ${}^1S_0^{[1]}$, ${}^1S_0^{[8]}$, and ${}^3S_1^{[8]}$. The real-emission calculation is combined with the previously known virtual corrections through a local subtraction procedure. Soft singularities cancel, initial-state collinear poles are absorbed into the parton distributions, and rapidity divergences are removed by BFKL factorization. These results provide the ingredients needed for full-NLL studies of forward quarkonium and of quarkonium-associated production with a large rapidity separation.

We investigate dark-matter-induced neutron disappearance as an interpretation of the high-energy nuclear recoil event reported by LUX-ZEPLIN. An incoming dark matter (DM) particle annihilates a bound neutron into an invisible scalar, leaving a recoiling daughter nucleus. For each accessible daughter state, two-body kinematics fixes the recoil energy in the zero-velocity limit, producing a line spectrum broadened by halo velocities. We identify parameter regions for benchmark DM masses of 5 and 50 GeV that can account for the event near 248 keV without producing events at lower energy. We examine collider constraints in an illustrative ultraviolet completion and recast Borexino data to constrain accompanying nuclear de-excitation signals. More generally, the DM-induced neutron disappearance provides a framework for interpreting localized nuclear recoil excesses in future direct-detection experiments.

The neutron skin, defined by the difference between neutron and proton root-mean-square radii, is a characteristic manifestation of isospin asymmetry and an important probe of the isovector nuclear interaction. This focused review examines how neutron skins influence particle emission and collective dynamics in heavy-ion collisions, from the Fermi-energy regime to ultra-relativistic energies. By modifying the initial neutron and proton density profiles, the neutron skin affects the isospin composition and geometry of the participant region, pre-equilibrium emission, particle production, fragment formation, and collective flow. We review neutron-to-proton and $\rm{t}/^3\rm{He}$ yield ratios, light clusters, pion ratios, bremsstrahlung photons, isoscaling and fragment momentum distributions, and neutron-proton differential flow and momentum observables, emphasizing their interplay with the symmetry energy and transport dynamics. At high energies, neutron skins also modify the initial geometry, eccentricities, multiplicities, and anisotropic flows in isobar and heavy-nucleus collisions. We discuss the challenge of disentangling these effects from deformation, surface diffuseness, shell structure, clustering, and model dependence. Broader connections to parity-violating electron scattering, dipole responses, coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering, SRC-induced proton skins in momentum space, and neutron-star observables are also explored. Finally, we highlight opportunities from radioactive beams, improved collision experiments, microscopic many-body and transport calculations, and Bayesian inference. Combining multiple reaction systems and observables with complementary nuclear-structure and astrophysical information will be essential for quantitatively constraining neutron skins and the density dependence of the symmetry energy.

The observed fluid behavior of the matter produced in heavy ion and $pp$ collisions implies that the strings stretched between the constituents of the projectile and target should have a hard core giving rise to a repulsion between them. It is shown that in these collisions there are two critical string densities, one corresponding to the well studied percolation of strings and another to the percolation of the hard core of the strings. These two critical densities are related to two critical temperatures, one T $\sim $ 160 MeV would correspond to the restoration of chiral symmetry and partial deconfinement and a second transition T $\sim $ 220 MeV form the fluid behavior of QCD matter strongly interacting to a quasi free gas of quarks and gluons. This argument is supported by the recently published results on the sudden increase in the degrees of freedom above the deconfinement temperature in pp and A-A collisions.

Argon decides what the LZ 248 keV recoil is. Read as an excited pseudo-Dirac state dropping to its ground state, the event predicts a nuclear-recoil line in argon at |\delta|\,m_\chi/(m_\chi+m_Ar), 336 keV at 200 GeV, at ten times the xenon rate, and the two line positions fix the mass. Read as a ground-state Higgsino lifted by the fastest halo particles, it predicts no argon events, since the argon threshold exceeds the halo maximum. The ratio depends only on kinematics and form factors, and the DEAP-3600 data already recorded hold tens of expected events.

Many well-motivated dark matter (DM) scenarios, including dark photon DM, axion-like particles, sterile neutrinos, and primordial black holes, can deposit energy into ordinary matter and significantly raise the thermal energy of astrophysical gas. We present a simple, model-independent implementation of DM-induced heating in the RAMSES hydrodynamic simulation code, parameterized by an effective local heat-transfer rate $\Gamma_{\rm heat}$. Using simulations of an isolated gas-rich dwarf galaxy with properties similar to WLM, we find that DM heating substantially alters the thermal structure of the circumgalactic medium (CGM) while leaving the star formation rate and the dense ISM nearly unchanged. For $\Gamma_{\rm heat} = 10^{-27}$ to $10^{-25}\ {\rm s}^{-1}$, the neutral hydrogen column at 10 kpc is suppressed by 0.6 to 3.9 dex relative to the control simulation. Similarly, the C II and Si II column densities decrease by 4.1 and 5.5 dex, and by 2.2 and 3.0 dex for C IV and Si IV. These signatures are accessible to quasar absorption-line spectroscopy, so CGM observations of nearby field dwarf galaxies provide a promising avenue for constraining dark matter models that inject heat into ordinary matter.

We study an inelastic sneutrino dark matter origin of the LZ high-energy event in the inverse-seesaw next-to-minimal supersymmetric standard model. Approximate lepton-number conservation protects the small mass splitting, while singlet interactions separate freeze-out from solar-neutrino production. The LZ recoil and solar constraints overlap even for a fully cooled population in equilibrium. Three thermal mechanisms reproduce the relic abundance and satisfy all relevant constraints. Photon-dominated annihilation produces gamma-ray boxes, offering a complementary test of this interpretation.

The recent observation of a single event at nuclear recoil energy $248\pm23\pm23$ keV by the LZ collaboration has prompted dark matter (DM) model builders to explore new physics explanations. While most of the existing literature invokes an endothermic scattering by a TeV-scale DM to explain the event, the favored DM interaction strength is in tension with the indirect detection constraints for most of the models. To evade this, this work explores exothermic DM scattering in a hadrophilic $q_1-q_2$ gauge extension setup with a new $Z'$ boson as a mediator to the dark sector. This can naturally escape the indirect searches in the absence of tree-level coupling of the mediator to neutrinos, $W,\tau$, and $b$ quark. We consider freeze-in production at a low reheating temperature to populate DM in the early universe, with a comparatively smaller coupling than the thermal freeze-out scenario. We identify the $Z'$ parameter space that can explain the observed relic density and LZ event simultaneously. We also discuss the relevant constraints coming from flavor mixing and FCNC.

In this paper we investigate accelerated gluodynamics for a broad intervals of temperature and acceleration. Our study is carried out within lattice simulation in the co-moving reference frame parameterized by the Rindler coordinates. We developed the renormalization prescription that allowed us to calculate renormalized Polyakov loop as a function of coordinate in the Rindler spacetime. Using the data for the renormalized local Polyakov loop, we calculated spatial dependence of the static quark free energy and effective mass of static quark. Besides the Rindler coordinates, it is believed that accelerated gluodynamics can be approximated utilizing non-accelerated gluodynamics with a properly adjusted temperature gradient in accordance with the Tolman-Ehrenfest law. We compared these approaches for the observables under study. It was found that they agree quite well close to the critical temperature and demonstrate disagreement at higher temperatures. We believe that this disagreement might be attributed to the Tolman-Ehrenfest law corrections which appear in the Rindler gluodynamics.

We have implemented the recent extension of the string+${}^3P_0$ model of spin-dependent hadronization that includes the production of spin-$1/2$ baryons in the Pythia event generator for the simulation of deep inelastic scattering (DIS). The implementation in Pythia is performed by extending the StringSpinner package, which is then used to study the spontaneous polarization of $\Lambda$ and $\bar{\Lambda}$ hyperons produced in the current and target fragmentation regions in DIS with an unpolarized proton target. We find a large spontaneous polarization for $\Lambda$s in the target fragmentation region, calling for the measurement of such observable that can shed light on the quark spin dependence of hadronization.

Motivated by high-energy xenon recoil searches, we study isotope-dependent endothermic dark-matter scattering near the upper speed boundary of a truncated Galactic halo. Small differences among xenon nuclear masses shift the minimum incident speed and can be strongly amplified when the required velocity approaches the end of the halo distribution. We formulate the isotope-resolved coherent-contact rate and separate this kinematic filtering from high-momentum nuclear suppression. For $m_\chi=1.1~\TeV$, $\delta=365~\keV$, and $E_R=248~\keV$, the kinematic-only benchmark gives $f_{136}^{\rm kin}\simeq0.289$, while after Helm weighting the largest contribution is $f_{132}\simeq0.346$ and the $^{136}$Xe fraction falls to $\simeq0.094$. For idealized pure-isotope targets at fixed detector mass, microscopic coupling, and halo, the integrated $225$–$271~\keV$ responses relative to natural xenon are approximately $0.404$, $1.235$, and $1.693$ for $^{129}$Xe, $^{132}$Xe, and $^{136}$Xe, respectively. A single effective-xenon nucleus also fails to reproduce the full isotope sum accurately near the edge, changing the benchmark window rate by about $8\%$ and producing larger spectral distortions. These quantitative results depend on the high-speed halo and on the assumed nuclear response; the isotope-dependent kinematic support does not. The calculation is a theory-level diagnostic rather than an LZ likelihood fit or event-by-event isotope identification.

We study a hidden $U(1)_H$ extension of the Standard Model (SM) introducing two SM singlet complex scalar fields where one of them can be considered as a viable inelastic Dark Matter (DM) candidate due to its $U(1)_H$ charge being half of the charge of the other one which develops a vacuum expectation value. First we estimate a parameter region satisfying observed DM relic abundance through DM annihilation and further use these parameters to study inelastic DM-nucleus scattering to reproduce the recent high nuclear recoil energy event found by LZ collaboration. These interactions are mediated by a dark photon $(A^\prime)$ which is evolved after the spontaneous breaking of $U(1)_H$ symmetry and having a kinetic mixing with the SM photon. Hence we estimate bounds on the kinetic mixing as a function of $A^\prime$ mass and finally compare it with existing experimental bounds from different beam-dump and collider experiments. These parameters could be probed by lifetime and energy frontier experiments in future.

The report on an extraction of genuine twist-three parton distributions, obtained from a joint fit of the deep-inelastic scattering (DIS) structure function $g_2$, its moment $d_2$, and the Sivers and worm-gear-T asymmetries measured in semi-inclusive DIS (SIDIS). These four observables probe different sections of the same twist-three distributions, and thus their joint analysis makes a precision extraction of this two-variable function possible. Considering a sub-set of observables does not constrain the twist-three distribution in all its parts. Nonetheless, such consideration places a sufficient amount of restrictions to sufficiently accurately estimate eliminated observables, explicitly demonstrating the universality of twist-three distributions.

Generalized Parton Distributions (GPDs) provide a framework for investigating the correlated momentum and spatial structure of quarks and gluons in hadrons and for accessing fundamental properties such as angular momentum and the QCD energy-momentum tensor. In this review, we discuss the present status of GPD phenomenology, emphasizing the challenges involved in connecting deeply virtual exclusive measurements to the underlying partonic structure. We organize this problem in terms of two successive inverse problems: the extraction of Compton Form Factors (CFFs) from measured observables and the reconstruction of GPDs from the convolution integrals defining the CFFs. We review the theoretical description and phenomenological parametrizations of GPDs, current strategies for CFF and GPD extraction, and the role of lattice QCD, Bayesian inference, uncertainty quantification, and artificial intelligence, including neural networks and interpretable machine-learning approaches. We discuss the limitations of present determinations and the opportunities offered by the Jefferson Lab program, complementary exclusive processes, and the future Electron-Ion Collider. Finally, we consider how increasingly precise and multidimensional information, together with new statistical and AI methodologies, will transform GPD phenomenology in the emerging era of precision hadron imaging.

We review progress and plans towards a new global PDF analysis from the NNPDF Collaboration. This new release will be based on state-of-the-art theory calculations, and in particular will be based on exact NNLO interpolation grids, (approximate) N3LO QCD corrections to DGLAP evolution and DIS structure functions, and QED effects to DGLAP evolution. All relevant sources of experimental and theoretical uncertainties, the latter including missing higher orders and higher twists, are taken into account. As compared to NNPDF4.0, this new release includes more than 25 new datasets from HERA jets to Drell-Yan (inclusive and with extra jets), top quark, and jet production at the LHC among others. Our machine learning methodology is statistically validated by extensive closure and future tests and benefits from an improved hyperoptimization algorithm.

We analyze the impact of rotation on the chiral crossover transition of QCD matter within the framework of a hadron resonance gas model. By extending the conventional formulation of the renormalized chiral condensate to a rotating hadronic medium, we find that rotation significantly modifies the chiral condensate and systematically suppresses the pseudocritical temperature as the angular velocity increases. The pseudocritical line in the $T-\omega$ plane is examined, and the rotational dependence of the pseudocritical temperature is quantified through leading- and next-to-leading-order rotational curvature coefficients. We further investigate the combined effects of angular velocity and baryon chemical potential and find that their interplay leads to a stronger suppression of the pseudocritical temperature. Additionally, the spatial dependence of the chiral crossover transition is examined through the radial variation of the pseudocritical temperature. We find that the pseudocritical temperature decreases with increasing radial distance, indicating that the chiral crossover sets in at progressively lower temperatures as one goes away from the rotation axis.

We solve the Schrödinger equation for heavy quarkonia using the full complex potential of a momentum-anisotropic, collisional quark-gluon plasma. The real and imaginary parts of the complex eigenvalue give the in-medium binding energy and thermal width, while the corresponding eigenfunction determines the spatial distribution of the state. The noncentral anisotropic interaction is treated by expanding the potential in Legendre multipoles and solving the resulting coupled radial equations at fixed magnetic quantum number. The collision rate is tied to the running coupling, with the pinch singularity of the imaginary potential used to restrict the allowed parameter domain. Along the resulting pinch-free trajectories, the dissociation temperature of the $1S$ charmonium and bottomonium states increases with anisotropy. The widths obtained from the full complex eigenvalue differ appreciably from first-order estimates based on the imaginary potential, while the corresponding $1S$ eigenfunctions remain dominated by their leading $S$-wave component. We compare the thermal widths with available lattice-QCD results and use them to illustrate a static survival probability.

We calculate next-to-leading power contributions to the gluon TMDs in DIS dijet production in the back-to-back limit at low x within the Color Glass Condensate (CGC) effective field theory at next-to-eikonal accuracy. We put a special emphasis on three-point correlation functions from CGC calculations, including their correspondence to an appropriately chosen definition of three- point TMDs within the aforementioned kinematical conditions. We also discuss importance of time ordering as well as momentum fraction space formulation of the correlators. Finally, we calculate the dijet cross section corresponding to the three-point CGC correlator as a combination of TMD functions.

We investigate gluon saturation effects in semi-inclusive deep inelastic scattering (SIDIS) at small-$x$ within the Color Glass Condensate framework. We compute the SIDIS cross section at leading order in the dipole picture, expressing it in terms of the dipole-target scattering amplitude. We validate our framework by comparing with the charged hadron spectra measured at HERA. Our predictions for the EIC indicate that saturation effects result in significant nuclear suppression in the SIDIS cross section, and can provide complementary constraints on the initial condition for the Balitsky-Kovchegov evolution extracted from inclusive DIS data. These results demonstrate that SIDIS measurements at the EIC are sensitive to nonlinear QCD dynamics in the saturation regime.