Papers

We propose an analyticity bootstrap method to determine the reduction of Feynman integrals (FIs). The key observation is that, at any kinematic point, a dimensionally regularized FI possesses a Taylor expansion region (analytic region), and the finiteness of the Taylor region strongly constrains the integral reduction coefficients, which are rational functions of the kinematic variables. By writing the most general ansatz compatible with the singularity structure and then fixing the remaining parameters with only a few integration-by-parts (IBP) samples or asymptotic expansions, one can obtain the full reduction. We develop the method systematically in both single-variable and multi-variable cases, with many explicit examples. Interestingly, the differential equations (DEs) of the master integrals determine all these analyticity constraints and, conversely, the constraints facilitate the construction of the DEs. In particular, we show that the DEs in the auxiliary mass flow method can be constructed at significantly reduced cost and can even be fully determined without using IBP.

In neutron-star and dense quantum chromodynamics (QCD) physics, it is important to understand how baryonic matter evolves into quark matter at high density. A continuous hadron–quark crossover is one of the most attractive candidates because it can reconcile the comparatively soft equation of state around nuclear density with the rapid stiffening required to support massive neutron stars. Recent neutron-star observations motivate equations of state that stiffen rapidly across the intermediate-density regime, while quarkyonic-matter descriptions feature a shell-like baryon momentum distribution there. In this paper, we review our recent work on the microscopic description and interpretation of these phenomena by drawing an analogy with the Bose–Einstein condensate (BEC) to Bardeen–Cooper–Schrieffer (BCS) crossover in ultracold Fermi gases and two-color QCD. As pairing fluctuations play a crucial role in the BEC–BCS crossover, we discuss the role of its three-body counterpart, that is, tripling fluctuations associated with baryon formation in the hadron–quark crossover. In terms of a phase-shift representation of tripling fluctuations, the interplay between a three-body bound-state pole and the scattering continuum suppresses low-momentum baryonic occupation, generates a baryonic momentum shell, and reduces the density susceptibility, thereby producing a peak in the speed of sound. We review the demonstration of this mechanism in a one-dimensional three-component Fermi gas, its relativistic extension, and its connection to phenomenological quarkyonic equations of state.

In this study, we construct a bayesian holographic QCD model by integrating the Einstein-Maxwell-Dilaton (EMD) framework with lattice quantum chromodynamics (QCD) data at zero chemical potential, specifically entropy, the square of the speed of sound, and baryon number susceptibilities, while systematically incorporating error estimates from the lattice QCD (LQCD) results. Leveraging a bayesian inference framework, we first achieve a precise calibration of the model parameters, then perform a comprehensive investigation into the thermodynamic properties of \((2+1)\)-flavor QCD at both zero and finite chemical potentials, and finally provide a prediction for the location of the critical end point (CEP) in the QCD phase diagram. Our results indicate that, under the maximum a posteriori (MAP) estimation, the CEP is located at $(T, \mu)_{\mathrm{MAP}} = (0.119, 0.615)\mathrm{GeV}$. Furthermore, we provide the predicted regions for the CEP at $68\%$ and $95\%$ confidence levels (CL), yielding $(T, \mu)_{68\% \mathrm{CL}} = (0.1176\text{--}0.1204,0.59\text{--}0.63)\mathrm{GeV}$ and $(T, \mu)_{95\% \mathrm{CL}} = (0.1172\text{--}0.1206,0.58\text{--}0.63)\mathrm{GeV}$, respectively. A thorough comparison with predictions from other theoretical models validates the robustness and predictive power of our approach. This work not only establishes a novel analytical framework for holographic modeling but also provides valuable theoretical insights into the phase transitions of strongly interacting matter under extreme conditions.

Tidal disruption events (TDEs) can launch sub-relativistic outflows that drive shocks into the surrounding circumnuclear material (CNM), providing a natural site for cosmic ray (CR) acceleration and high-energy neutrino production through hadronuclear ($pp$) interactions. We model this emission for optically bright and infrared (IR)-only TDEs, the latter motivated by a recently identified population of luminous IR transients with weak or absent optical counterparts, consistent with TDEs embedded in dusty, obscured nuclear environments. We semi-analytically compute the shock dynamics, CR acceleration and transport, and neutrino production, including the radiative cooling and compression in dense environments. While optical TDEs remain inefficient $pp$ neutrino sources with comparatively small neutrino yields, radiative compression in dense IR-only TDEs enhances the target density and allows the pp efficiency to approach the calorimetric regime, yielding up to $\sim 10\%$ of the observed diffuse neutrino flux at $100$ TeV, given the rate uncertainties. The long-lasting neutrino emission and low individual source yield motivate joint electromagnetically informed stacking searches. We forecast such searches for IceCube, IceCube-Gen2, KM3NeT, and HUNT, and conclude that a future $\sim 30\ {\rm km^3}$ neutrino observatory can reach $3\sigma$ sensitivity for nearby ($z \lesssim 0.4$) IR-only TDEs with multi-year search windows. Growing optical and IR TDE samples can therefore enable population-resolved searches that can test whether dense, obscured nuclear environments are efficient high-energy neutrino sources.

The high-energy and astroparticle physics literature has grown into an enormous body of knowledge. Gaining a comprehensive understanding of this literature is an important step in research, but is a challenging task. Before making meaningful advances, it is important to establish what has already been done and identify open questions. However, this process is becoming increasingly difficult given the sheer volume of publications. Conducting a focused literature survey on a narrow topic is particularly challenging. We develop an open-source Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) pipeline to produce concise, targeted summary reports with citations, grounded in the database of arXiv papers, enabling researchers, editors, and referees to rapidly orient themselves within any corner of the field. Specifically, we embed approximately 230K hep-ph and astro-ph.HE papers to enable a hybrid retrieval that captures both keyword matches and semantic similarity. The fused candidate set is then refined using a cross-encoder reranker. Following retrieval, the papers are passed to a Large Language Model (LLM), for which we use Google DeepMind's open-source Gemma-4-E4B model. The LLM first acts as a judge to evaluate the relevance and then synthesizes a coherent and grounded report with references. This modern AI-driven approach allows us to go beyond the capabilities of classical keyword search on arXiv or Inspire-HEP.

We study spontaneous scalarization of static, spherically symmetric black holes in scalar–Gauss–Bonnet gravity with a Ricci coupling $F=1 \beta\phi^{2}/4+\gamma\beta^{2}\phi^{4}+O(\phi^{6})$ that nonlinearly completes the quadratic one. For arbitrary couplings and potential, we derive the near-horizon regularity condition and horizon curvature invariants in closed form; scalarized branches terminate where this condition degenerates, at finite horizon curvature. A weakly nonlinear expansion fixes the bifurcation direction exactly: for a massless scalar, its governing coefficient is quadratic in $\beta$, changes sign at $\beta=1.1156$, and depends linearly on a quartic self-interaction. At equal horizon values of the scalar, completions differ in mass, to leading order, in proportion to $\gamma$. A radial-perturbation master equation for arbitrary couplings confirms the exchange of stability at the bifurcation and turning points. Consequently, the domain of radially stable black holes shrinks as $\gamma$ increases over the range studied; it is smaller for the exponential completion than for the quadratic truncation.

The study of continuous spin particles, as general low-energy implications of relativity and quantum mechanics, has intensified in recent years with potential experimental signatures. In this note we show that these particles are absent in perturbative super-string theories, generalising a result in arXiv:1302.4771 to the supersymmetric case. This stands out as a general low-energy prediction of all perturbative superstring constructions.

A TeV-scale muon collider enables the production of a highly collimated high-energy neutrino flux by muon decay in the straight sections of the collider ring. Recent studies have demonstrated that these neutrinos can be used for high-precision measurements in neutrino physics with a dedicated far-forward neutrino detector. In this study, we investigate the potentiality of the muon collider to discover the rare neutrino trident process, which is characterized by the fusion between a weak boson from the neutrino and a photon from the Coulomb field of the nucleus target. Our results indicate large neutrino trident rates per year [$\mathcal{O}(10^3)$] in a baseline 10 kg neutrino detector for a configuration of different flavour pairs of charged leptons in the final state, which will allow high-precision tests of the Standard Model and searches for New Physics. As a first example, we investigate the impact of the a new gauge boson $Z'$, as predicted by the $L_\mu - L_\tau$ model, and derive the projected sensitivity to this new gauge boson. Our findings show that a neutrino detector at a muon collider will significantly extend the current excluded regions of the parameter space.

The recent LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) data shows a nuclear-recoil event around $248\,\mathrm{keV}$, motivating scenarios in which dark matter (DM) preferentially scatters at large recoil energies. We investigate an inelastic scattering interpretation in terms of a simple extension with a fermionic DM field interacting with the Standard Model through a single dimension-6 operator. A tiny soft symmetry breaking term facilitates an endothermic transition while naturally suppressing elastic scatterings. Without any fine tuning, a simultaneous explanation of the LZ data and the observed relic density can be effected for a DM mass in the $\sim (0.2,1)$ TeV range.

Full detector simulation and reconstruction of collider events are projected to become major bottlenecks at the High-Luminosity Large Hadron Collider, motivating the development of fast, ML-based surrogates. At the same time, LLMs have driven fast progress in generative discrete modeling: autoregressive transformers trained on tokenized data now represent the state of the art across a range of generative tasks. We extend the discrete modeling paradigm by introducing a particle-level generative model trained on residual-quantized full-event data. We demonstrate the ability of this model family to perform conditional generation from detector-stable particles; we study its scaling behavior across a range of dataset and model sizes, characterize the effects of repeated data exposure and demonstrate that token-level loss systematically predicts downstream physical fidelity. These results provide an empirical framework for scalable collider full-event generation based on residual-quantized representations.

We explore the possibility of reviving scalar singlet dark matter (DM) with a minimal extension by a charged singlet scalar which also leads to hypercharge non-restoration in the early Universe. The minimal scalar singlet DM annihilating via the Higgs portal is tightly constrained by direct-detection experiments, leaving a desert between two narrow regions of the DM mass near the Higgs resonance and around a TeV. The addition of a charged scalar portal revives this desert region while keeping the one-loop direct-detection rate within reach of current and future experiments. A non-zero vacuum expectation value of the charged scalar at high temperature can also drive $U(1)_Y$ hypercharge symmetry non-restoration in the early Universe. In a subset of the parameter space, the charge-breaking minimum gets restored to the standard Higgs minimum via a strong first-order phase transition, making it a viable scenario for the generation of baryon asymmetry of the Universe via leptogenesis. A large part of the parameter space consistent with DM relic, direct-detection, symmetry non-restoration and other experimental bounds can be probed at upcoming GW detectors such as LISA, BBO and DECIGO.

We present a unified description of longitudinal momentum evolution and transverse-momentum broadening in cold nuclear matter using soft collinear effective theory with Glauber gluon interactions (SCET$_{\rm G}$). In a finite nucleus, Landau–Pomeranchuk–Migdal interference couples medium-induced energy loss to the transverse scale resolved by the observable. Our framework combines RG evolution of impact-parameter-dependent energy loss with BFKL-type rapidity evolution of the collision kernel, improved by kinematical constraints and running coupling. With a common set of cold-nuclear-matter parameters, it accounts for the main nuclear modification patterns in semi-inclusive DIS and Drell–Yan production and provides predictions for TMD hadron multiplicities at the EIC. We also discuss the one-point energy correlator in DIS, whose energy weighting suppresses the leading final-state energy-loss contribution. In the EIC kinematics studied, the residual dynamical corrections are small, leaving the nuclear modification dominated by the initial-state nuclear parton distributions.

We investigate the differential decay distributions of $\bar{B}\to D^*\ell^-{\bar N}_R $, where $N_R$ is a heavy right-handed neutrino (RHN) and $\ell = e, \mu$. We employ a newly developed Monte Carlo event generator based on the EvtGen framework that can simulate beyond-the-Standard-Model processes. We validate the implementation of the model by comparing the Monte-Carlo results with analytical results for several kinematic variables such as $q^2$ and missing mass, as well as signatures in the angular distributions such as $A_{FB}$, $S_{3}$, $S_{5}$, etc. This MC Generator will enable new experimental searches for RHNs. We discuss the sensitivity of various observables to the presence of an RHN and the feasibility of an experimental analysis at Belle II.

We study gaugino condensates in $\mathcal{N}=1$ $SU(N)$ super-Yang–Mills theory on Eguchi–Hanson space using instanton methods. Fractional topological charge and the spectral asymmetry of the asymptotic $\mathbb{RP}^3$ boundary modify the instanton calculus. A charge-$\frac12$ instanton carries only two adjoint gaugino zero modes and can therefore contribute directly to the bilinear. Because the Eguchi–Hanson path integral prepares a boundary state on $\mathbb{RP}^3$, the observables are boundary-sector-projected amplitudes. Moreover, supersymmetric Ward identities ensure that chiral correlators are independent of insertion points and the Eguchi–Hanson resolution parameter. For $SU(2)$ instanton, with central holonomy, the full collective-coordinate integral gives $\langle\operatorname{tr}(\lambda\lambda)\rangle=16\pi^2\Lambda^3$ for a specified boundary projection, reproducing the flat-space value. For a single $SU(2)$-block embedding in $SU(N>2)$, the noncentral holonomy requires a continuum determinant for renormalization-group invariance, so zero modes alone do not determine the bilinear. We also study a charge-$1$ $SU(4)$ two-block saddle with central holonomy, $16$ bosonic moduli, and $8$ adjoint zero modes. Its collective-coordinate integral gives $\langle\prod_{i=1}^4\operatorname{tr}(\lambda\lambda)(x_i)\rangle=\frac16(16\pi^2\Lambda^3)^4$. Under the assumptions required for position independence and clustering, this result determines the fourth power of the bilinear condensate in the corresponding boundary sector. Since no independent bilinear calculation is available in the same sector, the factor $1/6$ does not by itself constitute a clustering puzzle.

Using fractional anomalous determinants, we construct a model of the trace and axial anomalies of a $SU(3)$ gauge theory at nonzero $\theta$ angle through the couplings to scalar and pseudoscalar glueballs. In the pure gauge theory, we reproduce the $\theta$ dependence of the vacuum energy and the scalar-glueball mass from the lattice, and estimate the jump in the topological charge density for the first-order transition at $\theta = \pi$. In QCD, the coupling of a pseudoscalar glueball to fractional anomalous determinants describes all of the four three-pseudoscalar decay channels of the $0^{-+}$ glueball candidate $X(2370)$ measured by the BESIII collaboration. Measuring the decay rates for $\eta \eta \eta$ and $\eta \eta \eta'$ can provide a stringent test of the model.

At high temperature instantons form a dilute gas, so in QCD-like theories the breaking of the anomalous $U(1)_A$ symmetry is given by integral powers of the anomalous determinant, $\sim (\det \Phi)^{Q}$, where $\Phi\sim \overline{q}_L q_R$ is bilinear in the quark fields, and with untwisted boundary conditions, the topological charge, $Q$, is an integer. A syncretic model is constructed, which is manifestly "beyond Landau". In the chiral limit, at temperatures above the chiral phase transition, $T > T_\chi$, only integral powers of the anomalous determinant appear. Below $T_\chi$, following 't Hooft et al. I assume that the topological charge $Q$ is fractional, as an integer times $1/N_c$, where $N_c$ is the number of colors. I suggest that consequently, fractional powers of the anomalous determinant appear in the chiral effective Lagrangian. For $N_f$ degenerate flavors, this generalizes the Witten-Veneziano term, valid for small $N_f/N_c$, to arbitrary $N_f/N_c$. In this model the chiral phase transition is generically of second order. The two exceptions are for one flavor, where it is probably crossover, and three flavors, where it could well be weakly first order. This can be tested in lattice QCD with $2+1$ flavors by comparing the (known) temperature dependence of the difference of the $\pi^a$ and $a_0^a$ propagators, to the chiral condensate of the strange quark, between $T_\chi$ and $\sim 2 \, T_\chi$. Analogous measurements are possible for one to four degenerate flavors about $T_\chi$. Lastly, I propose an operator for baryon number in the symmetric phase.

As a work selected for the Frontiers of Science Award, we present in the Proceedings of the ICBS an overview of how the techniques from the field of Quantum Information (QI) can be implemented in High-Energy Physics (HEP), including also some novel insights. We focus on the paradigmatic case of the top quark, a drosophila of a relativistic qubit. We study the presence of entanglement, perhaps the most genuine feature of Quantum Mechanics, in top-antitop quark production in high-energy colliders such as the LHC. We also analyze our experimental proposal of a quantum tomography protocol for the top-antitop quark pair, eventually leading to the entanglement observations by the ATLAS and CMS collaborations, which constituted the highest-energy observations of entanglement ever. We discuss how the concepts and techniques developed in our work have effectively spawned an already vast and rich field of QI in HEP.

The global form of the Standard Model (SM) gauge group, $[SU(3)_c\times SU(2)_L\times U(1)_Y]/\Gamma$, with $\Gamma\subseteq\mathbb{Z}_6$, remains undetermined. For $\Gamma=\mathbb{Z}_p$, the SM possesses a residual global electric one-form symmetry $\mathbb{Z}_{6/p}$. Compactification on the thermal circle yields an ordinary discrete zero-form symmetry whose spontaneous breaking can produce cosmological domain walls. We calculate the temperature-dependent tension and width of the $\mathbb{Z}_{6/p}$ domain walls below the electroweak scale, which exist for every quotient except $\Gamma=\mathbb{Z}_6$, finding that their thickness can reach the kilometer scale around reionization in our benchmarks. These macroscopic thermal interfaces, if produced, would constitute the "Great Walls" of the Standard Model. We develop a phenomenological thermal velocity-dependent one-scale model to follow their network evolution, incorporating temperature-dependent surface tension, inertia, and plasma drag. For sufficiently early formation, our benchmarks give an estimated wall energy fraction of order $10^{-14}$ near the onset of Big Bang nucleosynthesis, with further suppression at later times. Uncertainties arise from relating surface free energy to physical wall energy and from late-time plasma evolution and structure formation. Despite their small energy fraction, these walls could probe the global structure of the SM gauge group, motivating dedicated searches for their cosmological signatures.

Belle II has reported a $2.7\sigma$ excess in $B^+\to K^+\nu\bar\nu$ over its Standard Model prediction, recently interpreted as arising from an axion-like particle mediating a thermal dark matter candidate. We reassess this interpretation using a new mass-differential measurement of the same data set and adding two visible-decay searches that earlier analyses omitted. The resulting bounds leave the predictions from a standard cosmological history only marginally compatible with the excess, viable in a narrow window of parameter space. Thus, we consider a situation where dark matter freezes out during a low-temperature reheating era, featuring entropy injection diluting the relic abundance. This requires smaller couplings compared to those in standard cosmology in order to match the observed dark matter density, opening a region of parameter space where the compatibility of the model with the Belle II excess is significantly improved.

We study the production of QCD axion dark matter (DM) via vacuum and kinetic misalignment mechanisms during an extended reheating period after the end of slow-roll inflation. With pre-inflationary Peccei-Quinn breaking and considering a monomial inflaton potential during reheating, we classify our study into three different perturbative reheating scenarios in which the inflaton decays into (i) a pair of Standard Model (SM)-like bosons, (ii) a pair of SM-like fermions, or (iii) exclusively into a pair of heavy right-handed neutrinos, which eventually decays into the SM final states after dominating the energy density of the Universe for an intermediate epoch. For each of these reheating scenarios, we study the details of QCD axion relic separately via vacuum and kinetic misalignment mechanisms. For different combinations of reheating, monomial inflaton potential and misalignment mechanisms, we identify the parameter space consistent with the observed DM relic density while satisfying other cosmological and laboratory constraints. We also check the scope of probing the currently allowed parameter space at axion-detection and gravitational wave (GW) experiments.

We demonstrate that an axion field can develop perturbations peaked at an intermediate wavenumber through its inflationary dynamics. We compute the resultant spectrum of gravitational waves (GWs) and primordial black holes (PBHs) generated through the curvaton mechanism. The GW spectrum exhibits a triangular shape, with UV and IR slopes determined by the axion's inflationary evolution and treatable as free parameters. In computing the PBH abundance, we properly account for the nonlinear relation between curvature and density perturbations and the primordial non-Gaussianity generated by the curvaton. The PBHs can account for all of dark matter, accompanied by blue-tilted isocurvature perturbations at small scales. The IR slope of the GW spectrum is anti-correlated with the magnitude of the dark matter isocurvature perturbations, offering a multi-messenger test of the model.

Macrorealism is a fundamental concept in quantum foundations, capturing basic features of our everyday experience. Among the main tools introduced to test violations of macrorealism are the Leggett-Garg inequalities. These inequalities provide necessary and sufficient conditions for a certain data set including the correlators measured in a number of different experimental runs (weak version of macrorealism). Leggett-Garg inequalities have proved useful for detecting violations of macrorealism in neutrino oscillation experiments. However, it is interesting to investigate a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for strong macrorealism - no-signaling-in-time and arrow-of-time conditions - in order to obtain a more complete characterization of macrorealism in the context of neutrino oscillations. In particular, here we extend previous study of the no-signaling-in-time condition to the case of three-flavor neutrino oscillations, including the CP-violating phase of the Pontecorvo-Maki-Nakagawa-Sakata matrix.

Adopting the dimensional-reduction scheme, we diagrammatically compute, at four loops, the beta function of N=2 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory, which is well known to vanish beyond one loop. This provides a formidable testbed for both the treatment of the problematic $\gamma_5$ Dirac matrix in D dimensions and the implementation of the dimensional-reduction scheme. In the use of the reading-point method of $\gamma_5$, being preferable for convenience, specific details of implementation start to matter at four loops. We thus rigorously validate these implementation issues, which have previously been advocated for the calculation of the gauge-coupling beta functions at four loops in the Standard Model.

The LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) experiment has recently reported a nuclear-recoil candidate at $E_R\simeq248$ keV. We study two supersymmetric interpretations based on distinct neutralino couplings to the $Z$ boson. In the elastic case, a bino- or singlino-like neutralino scatters through a diagonal axial $Z$ coupling set by the Higgsino asymmetry $X=|N_{13}|^2-|N_{14}|^2$ rather than by the total Higgsino fraction. Since the spin-dependent blind spot does not coincide with the spin-independent one, Higgs-mediated scattering can be suppressed while retaining $X\sim10^{-2}$. In the MSSM this favors low $\tan\beta$, in tension with the observed Higgs mass for a few-TeV squark spectrum, a tension relieved by the tree-level quartic of the NMSSM. An explicit NMSSM benchmark with $m_\chi\simeq500$ GeV and $X\simeq0.007$, below current LZ limits, obtains its relic abundance from a singlet-like pseudoscalar resonance just above threshold, which also suppresses present-day annihilation. In the inelastic case, a pseudo-Dirac Higgsino scatters endothermically, with a splitting of a few hundred keV generated by gauginos at the PeV scale which can be lowered by opposite-sign bino-wino cancellation, or by weak singlino mixing; the minimal thermal realization is strongly constrained by solar-neutrino searches. The two mechanisms predict distinct recoil spectra away from the candidate.

We calculate the three-loop $\mathcal{O}(\alpha\alpha_s^2)$ mixed QCD-EW corrections to the top quark mass and obtain the relationships between the pole ($M_t$) and $\overline{\rm{MS}}$ ($m_t(\mu)$) masses at this order. In performing our calculation, we express the three-loop self-energies as a function of three-loop master integrals (MIs). These MIs are defined so as to solve a differential equation in $\epsilon$-factorized form, allowing for their solution to be expressed as iterated integrals. We discuss the types of differential forms that we encounter, which include periods of elliptic curves, and their role in the final physical result. Using our results, we calculate the shift in $m_t(M_t)$ arising at this order. For $M_t = 172.3$ GeV, the shift is -216 MeV, which is comparable to the currently quoted experimental uncertainty.

In this work, we present a first-principles analysis of the scale evolution of the two-point energy-energy correlator (EEC) for quark and gluon jets propagating through QCD matter. The EEC is a jet substructure observable that encodes the angular distribution of energy flow within jets and has proven valuable for precision tests of QCD in elementary collisions. Extending this framework to reactions with nuclei, we derive a factorized description of the in-medium EEC using Soft Collinear Effective Theory with Glauber gluon interactions, allowing systematic inclusion of medium-induced interactions. Working in the opacity expansion, we compute the medium-modified quark and gluon jet functions at one loop and perform leading-logarithmic resummation of large-scale logarithms. We find an experimentally accessible kinematic regime where medium effects manifest directly through medium-induced corrections to the anomalous dimensions, providing a transparent probe of in-medium dynamics. We test the theoretical framework by comparing our analytic predictions with EEC measurements in p-Pb collisions and discuss its implications for small collision systems (O-O) and the EIC.

We compute one-loop unpolarized quark and gluon quasi- and pseudo-distributions in $\overline{\mathrm{MS}}$ and match them to light-cone PDFs. Decomposing the gluon correlator into six covariant form factors, we derive the $6\times6$ renormalization mixing matrix: its eigenvectors classify multiplicatively renormalizable combinations, and any lattice operator choice projects onto our results without a further loop calculation. Evaluating all Fourier transforms in $d$ dimensions, we resolve the structure of the exterior $|x|>1$ in quasi-distributions. The correlator carries a short-distance logarithm with a branch cut at $\nu=0$. By the Paley-Wiener theorem, the analytic part transforms into $|x|\le1$, so the exterior is generated solely by this branch cut. At leading power, the exterior carries no independent non-perturbative physics: it is fixed by the light-cone PDF through the renormalization group. In LaMET, lattice data therefore cannot determine the exterior independently of the interior, and unconstrained exterior parameters in reconstructions risk absorbing genuine power corrections into the leading-twist PDF. In the gluon channel, the matching kernel of Balitsky, Morris and Radyushkin differs from our $\overline{\mathrm{MS}}$ result by a finite polynomial, identical across index choices. We trace this to contracting an internal loop index over two instead of $d-2$ transverse directions, omitting an evanescent operator on the collinear pole. Using our basis, we show that the independent kernel of Yao, Ji and Zhang agrees with ours, separated from Balitsky et al. by the same polynomial. While the ratio scheme protects the momentum fraction $\langle x\rangle_g$, this kernel difference suppresses the extracted normalized second and third gluon moments by $11\%$ and $13\%$ at $\alpha_s=0.3$, so the true $\overline{\mathrm{MS}}$ gluon is systematically harder than reported.

With the STAR's Beam Energy Scan II, a rich amount of data exists to search for the QCD critical point. However, a central challenge is that the critical point cannot be directly extracted from data but rather is probed dynamically in an expanding, cooling system that may be far-from-equilibrium. In this talk, we show the latest results from equations of state with a movable critical point generated by the MUSES collaboration, run in the 3+1D relativistic viscous hydrodynamics code CCAKE. We discuss numerical improvements to CCAKE that include “glass” initial conditions and adaptive smoothed particle hydrodynamics, allowing us to rapidly and accurately obtain numerical solutions to the hydrodynamic equations of motion. We can quantify the interplay between beam energy, location of the critical point, and rapidity range.

Neutrino telescopes observe neutrinos through the muons produced by charged-current interactions. Most of those muons are born kilometers outside the detector, and how much energy they lose on the way is stochastic. We show that we can compute analytically the distance a muon travels before it falls below the detection threshold, while describing the statistical properties of its losses. Our result reproduces Monte Carlo propagation to within $3\%$, and with two parameters per detector it matches the effective areas published by IceCube, KM3NeT/ARCA, and P-ONE to about $1\%$. We then show how this model can be used in point-source sensitivities, energy reconstruction, and consistency checks between detectors. The calculation disentangles muon-transport physics from a detector's response, so a new detector or loss model can be quickly benchmarked.

Tauonic flavour-changing neutral-current transitions ($b\to s\tau^+\tau^-$) are sensitive probes of New Physics connected to third-generation quarks and leptons. Motivated by the persistent anomalies in $R(D^{(*)})$ and the indications of enhanced $B^+\to K^{+}\nu\bar\nu$ rates, we revisit and update the predictions for $b\to s\tau^+\tau^-$ processes. Building upon a previous work on a data-driven approach to include the dominant $\psi(2S)$ resonances, we provide predictions for $B\to K^{(*)}\tau^+\tau^-$ ($B_s\to\phi\tau^+\tau^-$) over the full kinematic range. To include possible New Physics contributions within the Weak Effective Theory, we provide semi-analytic expressions for the corresponding branching ratios. We then perform a comprehensive dimension-6 SMEFT analysis of New Physics realised at the TeV scale. We identify regions of parameter space preferred by current data where the branching ratios of $b\to s\tau^+\tau^-$ processes can be enhanced by several orders of magnitude. While current experimental sensitivities remain far above the SM rates, the enhancements suggested by present flavour data imply that forthcoming limits from LHCb, CMS, and Belle~II will probe significant regions of the relevant SMEFT parameter space. Furthermore, we highlight that while different scenarios can lead to the same predictions for $B\to K^{(*)}\nu\bar\nu$ branching ratios, they can be disentangled by measuring $B\to K^{(*)}\tau^+\tau^-$, $B_s\to\tau^+\tau^-$ and $B_s\to\phi\tau^+\tau^-$.