Papers

It has long been believed that newborn quark stars are inefficient emitters because the quark plasma frequency is so high that it suppresses electromagnetic radiation across the entire spectrum up to energies of several tens of MeV. Here, we show that significant electromagnetic emission can instead originate from the electrosphere of a quark star, where the plasma frequency is much lower, approximately 40 keV. As a result, the cooling of a newborn quark star is expected to proceed through two distinct observational epochs. During the first epoch, blackbody radiation is emitted from the photosphere of an optically thick relativistic wind generated near the electrosphere. Over the course of a few days following the star's formation, the photospheric temperature decreases from several MeV to about 22 keV. During the second epoch, the blackbody spectrum evolves into a narrow feature centered around 40 keV, and the emission gradually fades. This spectral evolution provides a characteristic signature of the electrosphere surrounding compact astrophysical objects and may be detectable with current or future X-ray observatories.

A fundamental open question in hadron spectroscopy is whether the radial excitation ladder of heavy mesons terminates at a finite level once confinement is screened by light-quark pair creation. We address this question for the mixed-flavor mesons $D_s$, $B_s$, and $B_c$ by solving a screened Godfrey–Isgur Hamiltonian with the Gaussian expansion method. The screening length is fixed by threshold-dependent string breaking analysis, and is matched to the charmonium and bottomonium anchors. The calculated spectra saturate at $3.36$, $6.78$, and $8.19~{\rm GeV}$ in $D_s$, $B_s$, and $B_c$ families, while the RMS radii grow by several fm and mass gaps fall below $10~{\rm MeV}$. Mass-radius decoupling places the end of the safe radial ladder at $n_{\mathrm{safe}}\approx 4$–$6$ for $D_s$, $5$–$7$ for $B_s$, and $9$–$11$ for $B_c$, so the ladder terminates first in $D_s$, then in $B_s$, and last in $B_c$. Above the limiting-mass windows, at $3.49$, $6.86$, and $8.24~{\rm GeV}$, states of the radial ladder cannot be discovered. This termination is directly testable with forthcoming high-statistics data from BESIII, Belle II, and LHCb.

We develop an effective hadronic theory for heavy-meson decays into energetic pions, organized by the approximate heavy-quark and chiral symmetries. The dynamical degrees of freedom of the theory consist of quasi-static heavy-meson fields coupled to soft and collinear pions, relevant for exclusive $B \to \pi$ transitions at large recoil energy ${E_\pi \simeq M_B/2}$. Our approach exploits the factorization of soft and collinear quarks in Soft-Collinear Effective Theory (SCET), leading to an emergent duplication of chiral symmetry in the two kinematic sectors. Promoting the soft and collinear chiral transformations to local symmetries enables us to systematically match non-local four-quark operators in SCET – governing the soft-overlap contribution to heavy-to-light form factors – onto effective operators constructed from hadronic fields below the scale of chiral symmetry breaking. As a first application, we compute the logarithmically enhanced pion-mass dependence of the $B \to \pi$ form factors at large recoil by calculating the one-loop matrix elements of the leading hadronic operators. We find that the non-local transition currents in our effective theory lead to a pattern of chiral-logarithmic corrections that is not compatible with the existing formulation provided by Hard-Pion Chiral Perturbation Theory.

The non-perturbative regime of Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) poses significant challenges for analytical treatment. Light-Front Holographic QCD (LFHQCD) offers an effective semiclassical framework for exploring hadronic structure through a holographic dual description of confinement. While the standard soft-wall model, along with the Brodsky-de Téramond (BdT) longitudinal prescription, provides satisfactory results for meson ground states, it shows deviations of around 17 to $18\%$ for radial excitations of the pion family. In this work, we extend the transverse confining potential by adding Coulombic and logarithmic contributions beyond the standard soft-wall framework. We solve the resulting light-front Schrödinger equation numerically, and we combine the transverse mass spectrum with the BdT longitudinal prescription to obtain the complete meson mass spectrum. We compute the radial excitation spectra of the $\pi$, $\rho$, and $K^{*}$ meson families and analyze their Regge trajectories. The modified framework reduces the overall average deviation from experimental data from about $7.6\%$ to $5.2\%$ compared to the standard soft-wall model, representing a $\sim 32\%$ improvement for the fitted nine-state dataset in describing radially excited states. The results show that short-range Coulombic and intermediate-range logarithmic contributions are important for refining the radial meson spectrum within the light-front holographic approach.

Motivated by recent LHC observations of a threshold enhancement in the $t\bar t$ system consistent with toponium-like dynamics, we compute the next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) QCD correction to the hard short-distance coefficient for $\eta_t\to HZ$, where $\eta_t$ denotes the pseudoscalar color-singlet configuration $t\bar t({}^1S_0^{[1]})$. Within the NRQCD factorization framework, we retain the full dependence on the Higgs- and $Z$-boson masses and include both the two-loop virtual corrections and the real double-gluon-emission channel. At next-to-leading order (NLO), the finite-mass result remains close to its large-mass limit. The NNLO coefficient develops logarithms of both the renormalization scale $\mu_R$ and the NRQCD factorization scale $\mu_\Lambda$. For $\mu_R=\mu_\Lambda=m_t$, the NLO and NNLO terms suppress the leading-order width by about $29\%$ and $19\%$, respectively; the two-loop contribution is about two thirds of the one-loop effect and of the same sign, so the perturbative series converges slowly and the NNLO prediction amounts to about $52\%$ of the leading-order width. The resulting coefficient provides a necessary ingredient for future threshold studies of $\eta_t\to HZ$ and for assessing the sensitivity of this channel to the top-Higgs interaction. The accuracy of the result is further supported by three checks: reproduction of the known large-mass limit at one loop, independence of the extracted coefficient on the $\gamma_5$ prescription, and consistency of its scale logarithms with the renormalization-group structure.

Relic neutrinos retain a record of electromagnetic entropy production after neutrino decoupling, probing primordial modes erased from the primary CMB. We derive the cubic photon number source from acoustic damping and its leading folded sensitive bispectrum window, with neutrino decoupling, thermalization, and acoustic coherence combined in a single response kernel. For excited initial states, this kernel filters the physical folded profile and yields a sharpness dependent transmission condition, directly connecting small scale primordial non-Gaussianity to relic neutrino capture rates.

We study freeze-in production and experimental probes of inelastic dark matter (iDM) coupled to the Standard Model through dimension-6 transition anapole and charge-radius operators. These interactions arise upon integrating out the heavy dark photon of a broken $U(1)_D$ vector portal. We focus on mass splittings below the dielectron threshold, where the excited-state decay is cosmologically long-lived and decays predominantly through $\chi_1\to\chi_0+3\gamma$, producing a distinctive keV–MeV photon spectrum. We calculate the decay rate and photon spectrum analytically in the Euler–Heisenberg limit and evaluate finite-electron-mass corrections using the full one-loop amplitude. We then combine X-ray limits with freeze-in relic density targets and complementary direct detection (DD) and accelerator constraints. The surviving $\chi_1$ population also leads to exothermic downscattering signatures at DD experiments, including the possibility of explaining the LZ signal, while the three-photon decay is constrained by X-ray data. At $\Delta=900\,\mathrm{keV}$, INTEGRAL/SPI probes the Boltzmann-suppressed high-mass branches of the freeze-in targets, whereas the NuSTAR limits at $\Delta=100\,\mathrm{keV}$ are substantially weaker because of the steep splitting dependence of the decay width. Our results demonstrate the potential of X-ray observations as a probe of freeze-in through a decoupled vector portal and of the reheating temperature governing the iDM production.

Muru et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 161005 (2025)] conclude from the HESTIA constrained simulations that the $\gamma$-ray morphologies of the Galactic Center Excess predicted by dark matter annihilation and by an old stellar population are essentially indistinguishable. Their "quadratic dark matter" maps, however, show the square of the mass projected along the line of sight, $\bigl[\int\rho\,s^{2}\,ds\bigr]^{2}$, rather than the annihilation integral $\int\rho^{2}\,ds$. Squaring a nonnegative map preserves its isophote shapes at corresponding intensity levels, as confirmed by the reported contour axis ratios. The corrected calculation on the same simulations does not support their conclusion.

We investigate the spectral stability of quasinormal modes in nonconformal holographic QCD models using pseudospectral analysis. We first consider the soft-wall model, focusing on scalar and vector fields, and then extend the analysis to the analytic Improved Holographic QCD (IHQCD) model, where we study tensor glueball fluctuations. In both cases, the equations of motion are formulated as linear eigenvalue problems, allowing the instability of the quasinormal spectrum to small perturbations to be quantified through the pseudospectrum. We find that the spectral stability of the quasinormal modes exhibits a nontrivial dependence on temperature, reflecting the presence of intrinsic dimensionful scales in holographic QCD models. As the temperature increases, the magnitude of the imaginary part of the quasinormal frequencies grows, signaling an increasing decay rate and the progressive loss of coherence of the corresponding hadronic excitations. At sufficiently high temperatures, the quasinormal frequencies approach an approximately linear dependence on temperature, although this regime is reached only after the associated hadronic states have melted. We further compare the pseudospectral instability with the behavior of the corresponding spectral functions. Our results indicate that the growth of pseudospectral instability provides a complementary characterization of the loss of spectral stability and can serve as a useful diagnostic of hadronic dissociation and melting in holographic QCD.

We investigate $\mathbb{Z}_2$ symmetry restoration in a real $\lambda\phi^4$ theory confined to a finite cylindrical region undergoing rigid rotation. The finite transverse extent is imposed through Dirichlet boundary conditions, resulting in a discrete Fourier-Bessel spectrum and an explicit radial dependence of the fluctuation propagator. Using the background-field method, we derive the one-loop effective potential while retaining the spatial structure induced by the finite geometry. At finite temperature, rotation modifies the thermal mode energies through angular-momentum-dependent shifts, and the coincident-point propagator generates a position-dependent thermal self-energy that is incorporated through ring resummation. We use the resulting spatially resolved effective potential to determine the symmetry-restoration temperature $T_c(\Omega,R)$ and examine its dependence on the angular velocity and transverse size. The results show that the finite transverse size of the system modifies the symmetry-restoration temperature, leading to a nontrivial dependence of $T_c(\Omega,R)$ on $R$. An additional scaling behavior emerges when the normalized critical temperature is expressed in terms of the boundary velocity $\Omega R$: systems with different transverse sizes exhibit the same relative modification of $T_c$ when their boundary velocities are equal. This scaling persists after the inclusion of the position-dependent thermal self-energy through ring resummation, indicating that the $\Omega R$ dependence of the rotational response is maintained in the interacting finite system.

Endothermic upscattering of heavy dark matter offers a compelling interpretation of the high-energy nuclear-recoil candidate recently reported by LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ), with a characteristic recoil energy $E_R \propto \delta$, where $\delta$ is the mass splitting between the dark matter states. Cosmological and experimental constraints motivate the depletion of the primordial heavier state, which can be regenerated in the Galactic halo. We show that, if the heavier state decays radiatively, the same mass splitting sets the energy of a gamma-ray line, $E_\gamma \simeq \delta$. For our benchmark, this leads to a sub-MeV line within the projected reach of the Compton Spectrometer and Imager (COSI), scheduled for launch in 2027. The confirmation of the LZ candidate event as a dark matter signal would therefore motivate dedicated searches for sub-MeV gamma-ray lines, with COSI providing a timely opportunity to test this interpretation.

Within the Hatta-Yang holographic graviton-dilaton amplitude for near-threshold $J/\psi$ photoproduction, we identify exact dilaton-null spin-projection channels in the Gottfried–Jackson basis. The $m=0$ and $m=-\lambda_\gamma$ amplitudes receive no dilaton contribution; for photon polarization normal to the reaction plane the $m=0$ channel further isolates $A_g(t)+B_g(t)$ and requires nucleon spin transfer. Standard beam-polarization spin-density-matrix elements then furnish a TT-sensitive combination and a second bilinear containing linear dilaton-TT interference. Comparison with modern GlueX and CLAS12 cross sections shows substantial sensitivity to the shape of the original holographic parameterization. The polarization observables therefore provide direct probes of the tensor structure of the production amplitude.

We present an extension of the Standard Model based upon the gauged $U(1)_{L_\mu - L_\tau}$ symmetry, featuring an ultra-light vector boson that couples to the difference of muon and tau lepton numbers. This anomaly-free construction, historically motivated by the muon's anomalous magnetic moment, is employed here as an independent phenomenological framework for solar neutrino physics. Through kinetic mixing with the photon, the $Z^\prime$ boson generates an effective matter potential within the solar interior, thereby modifying neutrino flavour oscillations via the Mikheyev–Smirnov–Wolfenstein mechanism. Utilising recent solar neutrino measurements from Borexino, SNO, and Super-Kamiokande, together with an up-to-date standard solar model, we constrain the boson mass to be below $5.7\times 10^{-17}\,{\rm eV}$, a potential ultra-light dark matter candidate. The optimal model, with coupling parameter $\eta_o \approx -2$, yields $\chi_\nu^2 = 2.7$, compared with $\chi_\nu^2 = 3.1$ for the standard three-flavour scenario. This best fit corresponds to an effective four-fermion coupling $g_{Z^\prime}^2 \varepsilon / m_{Z^\prime}^2 \approx 6.6 \times 10^{-23}\,{\rm eV}^{-2}$, approximately $5.7$ times the Fermi constant, equivalent for $\varepsilon \approx 1$ and a reference mediator mass of $1\,{\rm eV}$ to a gauge coupling $g_{Z^\prime} \approx 8\times 10^{-12}$. We also present projections for forthcoming experiments: the Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO), operating since August 2025 with world-leading precision on oscillation parameters, together with the XLZD consortium, should substantially refine these constraints. Such ultra-light particles may address long-standing discrepancies in galaxy simulations within the cold dark matter paradigm, whilst terrestrial long-baseline neutrino experiments provide complementary probes of this parameter space.

We show that a heavy higgsino $\tilde h$ with mass $m_{\tilde h}\sim0.1~{\rm PeV}$, which can be made consistent with the recent LUX-ZEPLIN event avoiding constraints from direct and indirect detection, can account for the present cold dark matter abundance of the universe, if the reheating temperature is bounded as $T_{\rm rh}\lesssim 595~{\rm GeV}$. These values can be achieved by a possible out-of-equilibrium decay of a modulus $\phi$ with mass $m_{\phi}\gg m_{\tilde h}$ and a non-vanishing branching ratio into $\tilde h$'s which plays a decisive role in reducing $T_{\rm rh}$ below its upper limit via the non-thermal $\tilde h$ production. The modulus $\phi$ can be identified with the scalar component of the goldstino superfield which is involved in the generation of the $\mu$ parameter of MSSM (with $\mu\simeq m_{\tilde h}$) via the Giudice-Masiero mechanism.

High-energy QCD evolution at NLO suffers from large collinear logarithms that make the perturbative expansion of the Balitsky-Kovchegov (BK) equation unstable. We develop a systematic scheme-transformation framework using the Doi-Peliti formalism to relate projectile ($k^+$) and target ($k^-$) factorization schemes. The transformation of high-energy operators and the evolution kernel generates NLO terms that cancel the problematic double collinear logarithm. The resulting NLO BK equation is free of this instability, with only single collinear and double anti-collinear enhancements remaining. Numerical solutions show stable evolution up to $Y=10$ for both Golec-Biernat-Wusthoff and McLerran-Venugopalan initial conditions, providing a consistent path toward combining stable NLO evolution with rotated NLO impact factors.

Gravitational-wave (GW) observations offer a powerful probe of new fundamental fields. One well-motivated source is black hole (BH)–boson cloud systems, in which an ultralight scalar field forms a cloud around a rotating BH via superradiance and emits long-lived nearly monochromatic GWs. In this work, we compute the stochastic GW background (SGWB) from such systems, extending previous work by including scalar self-interactions, and discuss its detectability with next-generation ground-based GW detectors. We find that self-interactions can suppress the SGWB and thereby relax existing LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA constraints inferred from null searches. Namely, the LIGO detectors at design sensitivity are insensitive to a SGWB produced by scalar fields with a decay constant $f_\mathrm{s} \lesssim 3\times 10^{17}$ GeV, independently of the scalar field mass. Looking ahead, we show that a moderately self-interacting cloud can still produce a detectable SGWB with next-generation detectors. Under conservative assumptions, for a decay constant $f_\mathrm{s} = 10^{17}$ GeV, the Einstein Telescope (ET) will be sensitive to scalar masses in the range $\sim[10^{-13.0},10^{-11.8}]$ eV, while Cosmic Explorer (CE) will be sensitive to scalar masses in the range $\sim[10^{-13.2},10^{-11.7}]$ eV. We also find that the minimum decay constants that still yield a detectable SGWB for ET and CE are $f_\mathrm{s}\sim 6\times10^{16}\,$GeV and $\sim 3\times10^{16}\,$GeV, respectively.

We investigate mono-$Z$ signature at the future electron-positron collider within the dark matter effective field theory (DMEFT) framework, considering operators up to dimension six for scalar, fermionic, and vector dark matter (DM) candidates. The operators are classified according to their underlying production mechanisms. We identify the phenomenologically viable parameter space by imposing the observed DM relic abundance together with direct and indirect detection constraints, Higgs invisible decay limits, and LHC mono-$Z$ bounds obtained through a recasting analysis. We study the discovery prospects of the surviving DM operators at the future $e^-e^+$ collider including initial and final state radiation, detector simulation, and the reconstruction of both leptonic and hadronic $Z$-boson decay modes. We exploit missing energy, missing transverse momentum, recoil mass, $Z$-boson pseudorapidity, together with beam polarization, which play a significant role to distinguish the signal from the Standard Model background. We find that fermionic dipole, scalar leptophilic, vector Higgs-portal, and gauge-portal DM operators offer robust mono-$Z$ discovery potential, probing multi-TeV effective scales.

We compute the Higgs thermal mass and the electroweak and colour Debye mass parameters to full $\mathcal{O}(g^6)$ in dimensional reduction, where $g$ represents a gauge coupling or the top Yukawa. We employ new methods to evaluate previously unknown mixed-signature sum-integrals.

Screened scalar fields provide a possible connection between dark energy and laboratory-scale new physics while remaining compatible with existing fifth-force constraints. Solar production offers a direct probe of these models, and ionization-only measurements extend the sensitivity of liquid-xenon detectors into the sub-keV regime. We present the first search for solar chameleons using low-energy S2-only data, based on the 7.83 tonne-year XENONnT ionization-only data set. The predicted electronic-recoil spectrum is folded through the run-dependent detector response and tested directly in corrected-S2 (cS2) space. A joint binned likelihood combines the seven cS2 bins of science runs SR0, SR1, and SR2. We sample the five-dimensional parameter space $\{\beta_e,\beta_\gamma,M_e,\Lambda,n\}$ and derive posterior constraints on the conformal and disformal electron couplings. The data extend the recoil-energy reach to approximately $0.04~{\rm keV}_{ee}$, where the few-electron detector response and instrumental backgrounds must be modeled explicitly. In the disformal-dominated regime, the result is expressed in terms of $\beta_{\rm eff}\equiv\beta_\gamma({\rm eV}/M_e)^4$. We obtain the upper limit $\log_{10}\beta_{\rm eff}<-3.64$. Although the present analysis reaches a lower energy threshold than our previous XENONnT electronic-recoil analysis, the resulting constraint is weaker, primarily because the disformal absorption rate decreases rapidly toward low recoil energies, where the background rate also becomes larger. This analysis establishes low-energy ionization data as a new experimental channel for testing solar chameleons and screened dark-energy models.

The sign of the D-term is negative for a variety of hadrons, including the proton and pion. Speculation that this is the result of a mechanical stability condition has persisted despite counterexamples, including the positive D-term of the hydrogen atom. In this work, I explore how the sign of the D-term is influenced by the stress carried by static abelian force fields, finding the contributions from spin-even fields to be negative and the contributions from spin-odd fields (such as the electromagnetic field) to be positive. These contributions correlate with the signs of the D-terms of the fields' respective quanta. Since fields with different spin can produce identical potentials—thus resulting in equally-stable composite systems with identical wave functions—the sign of the D-term has nothing to do with stability. Since hadrons are bound by spin-one gluons, their negative D-terms appear atypical and require explanation. I briefly speculate on how color flux confinement could produce a negative hadronic D-term.

Primordial black holes (PBHs) can generate the Baryon Asymmetry of the Universe (BAU) through asymmetric capture of baryon-charge-carrying particles, but previous realizations of this mechanism typically yield an asymmetry well below the observed value because the relevant CP-violating scattering asymmetry is loop suppressed. We show that this limitation can be overcome through resonant CP violation in a mixed system of two nearly degenerate unstable fermions, $Y_{1,2}$, whose mass splitting is comparable to their decay widths. Rare production of the coherent $Y_1$–$Y_2$ state, followed by CP-asymmetric return and loss decays, generates an $\mathcal{O}(0.1)$ difference in integrated decay probabilities while preserving the global baryon charge at the Lagrangian level. Embedding this resonant source in the PBH-capture transport system yields the observed baryon asymmetry. We first reproduce the mechanism in a zero-temperature, sudden-evaporation treatment, which gives $\eta_B^{T=0}\simeq2.37\times10^{-10}\simeq2.72 \eta_B^{\rm obs}$. We find that after including thermal corrections and continuous PBH evaporation and entropy production, the resulting BAU becomes $\eta_B = 8.72\times 10^{-11}$ in agreement with the observed value. An interesting finding of the model is that even if PBH absorption remains active, we would still have BAU $\eta_{B}^{\text{no evap}} \sim 9.1 \times 10^{-12} \sim 0.105 \eta_B^{\rm obs}$. We further investigate gravitational-wave signatures associated with the primordial fluctuations responsible for PBH formation. The corresponding scalar-induced gravitational-wave spectra peak at $f \sim 0.16\text{--}0.17~\mathrm{MHz}$, with $h^2\Omega_{\rm GW}^{\rm peak} \sim (3\text{--}7)\times 10^{-8}$. Under idealized sensitivity assumptions, U-DECIGO can achieve signal-to-noise ratios above 10 for the benchmark spectra.

We investigate the Fulling-Davies-Unruh effect in a local Lorentz-violating effective field theory, focusing on the quantum-field response of accelerated detectors. We canonically quantize a real scalar field exactly in the coefficients for Lorentz violation. The dispersion relation, Hamiltonian, and massless and massive Wightman functions are obtained. We determine the conditions under which the scalar dynamics preserves boost symmetry and distinguish these from the weaker conditions required for stationarity along a single accelerated worldline. The Wightman functions are used to construct the finite-time Unruh-DeWitt response for a uniformly accelerated detector. For generic coefficients the response is nonstationary and depends on both the duration and temporal location of the measurement. The spectrum, which is the resulting excitation rate as a function of the energy level difference in the detector, is obtained numerically. It shows discernable differences with the usual massive thermal spectrum for dimensionless coefficients on the order of $10^{-7}$. Experimental implications of the result are discussed. As an alternative viewpoint, we place Lorentz violation in the point-particle sector, derive the exact trajectory generated by a constant electric field, and study the proper-time Fourier response of a conventional scalar wave along the modified trajectory.

We study the $\bar{K}^0d$ system using a new formulation of the fixed-center approximation that preserves elastic unitarity. The resulting scattering amplitude predicts a bound state below threshold, which can be interpreted as a $\Lambda(1380)N$ configuration complementary to the $K^-pp$ state associated with the higher $\Lambda(1405)$ pole. The interaction is attractive, with scattering parameters of the same order as recent $K^-d$ determinations. We further calculate the $\bar{K}^0d$ correlation function, which exhibits a characteristic structure associated with the bound state and provides a Coulomb-free observable that can be tested in future ALICE measurements. Results obtained with two different $\bar{K}N$ models are very similar, indicating the robustness of the predictions against the choice of the underlying interaction.

The first sentence of this abstract–and the introduction to these proceedings–was authored by a human, but the bulk of this document was generated by an agentic AI system. In this talk, I take stock of machine learning (ML) for the LHC physics program over the twelve months from May 2025 to May 2026. The corpus is the HEPML Living Review, split at May 2025 into 1,756 earlier papers and 569 later ones. An AI pipeline surveyed the 569 abstracts, ranked them by citations, recency, theme, and collaboration involvement, and read 103 papers in full (95 from after the split, plus 8 earlier baseline papers), producing a structured note for each. The notes were then synthesized into six claims about the state of the field, checked by independent reviewer agents, and re-verified against the source papers. The headline claim is that (1) ML for high-energy physics (HEPML) stopped being a research area that builds tools and became infrastructure that the LHC physics program depends on: ATLAS and CMS now publish physics results that depend on neural networks, and the archived ALEPH data have re-entered production. The other five claims are: (2) simulation-based inference and foundation models are two revolutions starting to merge; (3) AI agents are the genuinely new front, with 47 papers in twelve months and no adopted measurement yet; (4) "do we trust it?" is the fastest-growing agenda, with one recent paper in five about uncertainty, calibration, or interpretability; (5) what is slowing down is informative, since equivariance was absorbed into a tool and model-specific phenomenology ceded ground to model-agnostic searches; and (6) theory ML crossed a capability threshold in multiple research areas. I close with what is settled, what is incoming, and what is open, and briefly discuss the concerns raised by this way of working with AI.

We consider the nuclear recoil spectrum following allowed $\beta$ decay as a laboratory for Beyond Standard Model searches, and perform an exhaustive treatment of the Standard Model prediction. We consider final state interactions, nuclear structure corrections, kinematic corrections and radiative corrections, derive new results and show that the nuclear recoil spectrum is theoretically exceptionally clean. We construct a clean statistical framework and analyze the Fisher information for extracting exotic current constraints and testing Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa top-row unitarity, and consider a number of sterile neutrino scenarios. In addition, we find that for select isotopes separate measurement of the $\beta$-asymmetry and recoil spectrum can achieve an increase in the statistical power of up to a factor 40.

We initiate the study of quantum state tomography—the experimental reconstruction of the complete spin density matrix—of massless and massive quark-antiquark pairs produced at the future Electron-Ion Collider (EIC). We show that all components of the spin density matrix can be accessed through azimuthal angular correlations between hadron and dihadron pairs generated by the Collins and dihadron fragmentation functions. This enables the experimental investigation of a variety of quantum information properties at the EIC, such as entanglement and Bell-nonlocality. We predict that the recently discovered maximal entanglement in the heavy-quark sector is signaled by a strong modification of the usual Collins angular dependence $\cos(\phi+\phi')$

We present a systematic study of the ground states of pentaquark systems using the neural network variational Monte Carlo method within the constituent quark potential model. We investigate all manifestly exotic pentaquark systems with negative parity, which cannot mix with the conventional baryons through the creation and annihilation of light or strange quark pair. We exhaust 387 color, spin, and isospin configurations and identify 21 pentaquark bound state candidates with binding energies ranging from $2$ to $15$ MeV. A striking observation is that all of the bound states are shallowly bound molecular states, and a deeply bound pentaquark state does not exist. The $QQqq\bar{Q}$, $ssqq\bar{Q}$, $Qsqq\bar{Q}$ and $Qqqq\bar{Q}$ bound states are composed of a heavy vector meson and a baryon, while the $QQqq\bar{s}$ and $Qqqq\bar{s}$ bound states are composed of a $K$ meson and a heavy baryon. As a cross-validation, the ground-state energies of the unbound systems converge to the baryon–meson thresholds from above, which are consistent with the S-wave scattering states and provide a reliable baseline for the bound-state criterion. Especially, we reproduce the lowest scattering states $\eta_c N$ and $\eta_c \Lambda$ in the $qqqc\bar{c}$ and $qqsc\bar{c}$ channels respectively, where the hidden-charm pentaquark resonances were observed experimentally. We also find that all fully heavy pentaquark states are unbound. Our results provide valuable guidance for future pentaquark searches at LHCb, Belle II, and other experiments.

We investigate the internal structure of the newly observed charm-strange meson $D_{s1}(2933)^{+}$, which was reported by the LHCb Collaboration in $B^{0}\to D^{+}D^{-}K^{+}\pi^{-}$, in the quark model by treating it as the $2P_{1}$ state of the $c\bar{s}$ system. The coupled-channel corrections to the ${}^{1}P_1$–${}^{3}P_1$ mass matrix are evaluated through the two-point self-energy loops involving the $DK^{*}$, $D^{*}K$, $D^{*}K^{*}$, $D_{s}\phi$, $D_{s}^{*}\phi$ and $D_{s}^{*}\eta$ intermediate channels. Requiring the corrected eigenvalue to reproduce the measured mass yields a cutoff scale of about $0.82~\mathrm{GeV}$, a $2P_{1}^{\prime}$ partner state at $3012~\mathrm{MeV}$, and a mixing angle of $-12.9^{\circ}$ that deviates significantly from the heavy-quark ideal-mixing angle. Moreover, the predicted three-body branching ratio fraction $R_{\text{th}}=1.98$ for $D_{s1}(2933)\to D^{+}K^{+}\pi^{-}$ via the $DK^{*}$ and $D_{2}^{*}K$ intermediate states is consistent with the experimental value $R_{\text{exp}}=1.27^{+1.29}_{-0.95}$ within uncertainties. These results support the assignment of $D_{s1}(2933)$ as the $2P_{1}$ excited state of the $c\bar{s}$ system with final state interactions.

A spectator spin-2 field can mix linearly with the metric tensor perturbations. We study the coupled tensor system in an inflationary background, including a parity violating effect parametrised by $\theta$. Without expanding in the linear mixing between the two fields, we solve the system exactly for arbitrary mass while treating the mixing strength nonperturbatively. The mode functions of both helicities are constructed by acting with an operator-valued Gauss hypergeometric function ${}_2F_1$ on Whittaker modes, and the late-time power spectrum of each graviton helicity is expressed in closed form in terms of the generalised hypergeometric function ${}_3F_2$. We find that one helicity is exponentially enhanced, showing that strong mixing with a spectator spin-2 field can generate a large and highly chiral primordial gravitational wave spectrum. The degree of circular polarisation is bounded by $\tanh(\pi\theta)$, independently of the spin-2 mass and the mixing strength. The same solution also gives the late-time power spectrum of the spectator field and its cross spectrum with the graviton. In the weak mixing limit, our exact result reproduces the perturbative Schwinger-Keldysh result. These solutions provide a nonperturbative framework for studying primordial gravitational waves sourced by additional tensor modes.

We study the effects of the moat regime on meson and quark correlation functions and the quark-antiquark potential in low-energy QCD, building on the two-flavor quark meson model in a random-phase approximation. We investigate the relation between the moat regime and Friedel oscillations in the quark-antiquark potential at large density and zero temperature. As it turns out, oscillations from the moat regime are a distinct phenomenon, arising from poles on unphysical Riemann sheets in this region. Furthermore, we find that in addition to pions and the sigma meson, also other mesons, including vector mesons and the eta, are sensitive to the moat regime. This leads in particular to an enhancement of the meson spectral function in the spacelike region. The quarks, on the other hand, appear to be essentially insensitive. This can have far-reaching consequences for the phase diagram, as for example the chiral phase boundary, including the location of the critical endpoint, can be affected in the moat regime even in absence of inhomogeneous instabilities.