Papers

The discovery of the strongly-coupled quark-gluon plasma (sQGP) in high-energy heavy-ion collisions has revealed remarkable properties of matter at high temperature, with transport coefficients close to conjectured bounds from quantum field theory at strong coupling. The high sQGP collision rates imply very large energy uncertainties and the melting of quasiparticle structures. Deploying quantum many-body theory based on the self-consistent $T$-matrix approach for the sQGP at high temperature, we investigate its manifestation at high baryon density and low temperature, as present in neutron stars and their mergers. We constrain the chemical-potential dependence of the quark interaction kernel using first-principles information from Quantum Chromodynamics on baryon-number susceptibilities. Very large collisional widths persist at large density and are found to relegate superconducting phases to rather small temperatures. Instead, a strongly coupled diquark liquid prevails in the thermodynamics under the conditions relevant to neutron-star mergers. At lower densities, the diquarks take over from the single-quark contributions, suggesting a pathway toward hadronization. Our results are consistent with observational constraints on the equation of state of neutron stars, corroborating the presence of strongly coupled quark matter in the interior of these objects.

Bayesian analyses of heavy-ion collisions rely on functional inputs, such as temperature-dependent transport coefficients and the equation of state, whose prior specification remains a significant source of uncertainty. Standard approaches employ low-dimensional parametrizations that can impose artificial correlations and leave the resulting inference sensitive to the assumed functional form. We develop a nonparametric framework for constructing priors over such functions using Gaussian processes, tailored to emulator-based inference in heavy-ion phenomenology. Truncated Karhunen–Loève expansions yield optimized finite-dimensional representations suitable for use as emulator inputs. We investigate how physical constraints can be incorporated into these priors, demonstrating that rejection-based methods produce non-Gaussian measures and induce nontrivial correlations in the expansion coefficients. By contrast, pushforward constructions enforce the constraints while preserving a tractable Gaussian measure in a latent space. These results provide a systematic framework for incorporating physical constraints into functional priors and clarify their effects on the statistical structure of the finite-dimensional representations used in Bayesian inference.

The measured hadron yields in heavy-ion collisions are well described by thermal particle production at temperatures close to the QCD pseudo-critical transition. However, if particles are produced in thermal equilibrium, then the in-medium effects, e.g., broadening of their spectral functions, must be taken into account. In this work, we study for the first time the effect of the thermal broadening of the light vector-meson spectral functions on light hadron production in heavy-ion collisions. We generalize the efficient resonance decay framework FastReso to resonances with finite-width spectral functions. We then compute the pion, kaon and proton spectra from the decays of hadron resonances for in-medium and vacuum spectral functions. We perform a simultaneous blast-wave fit with decay feed-down to measured particle spectra in central Pb-Pb and Xe-Xe collisions at the LHC. We find an increase in pion spectra at low momenta, from including thermally broadened $\rho$ and $\omega$ mesons. Additional pion yield from finite-resonance widths reduces the commonly observed discrepancy between models and data, but does not completely resolve the soft pion puzzle in heavy-ion collisions.

High-momentum components (HMCs) of nuclear wave functions, governed by short-range nucleon-nucleon correlations, provide essential insights into nuclear structure beyond the mean-field picture. High-energy (p, d) reactions offer access to these HMCs, but their theoretical treatment requires relativistic corrections when incident proton energies reach several hundred MeV. Although effects of relativistic kinematic corrections (RKCs) have been studied in several types of direct nuclear reactions, it has not been systematically studied in nucleon transfer reactions. Here, RKCs are incorporated into the adiabatic distorted wave approximation (ADWA) for (p, d) reactions by redefining particle masses in the zero-momentum frame. The approach is validated against proton elastic scattering data on 16O from 135 to 800 MeV using Dirac global optical model potentials, and then applied to (p,d) reactions on 12C, 16O, and 40Ca at incident energies from approximately 50 to 800 MeV. The RKCs yield neutron spectroscopic factors that are significantly more consistent across the entire energy range than those obtained from non-relativistic calculations, which systematically overestimate spectroscopic factors obtained at high incident energies. The present analysis demonstrates that relativistic kinematic corrections are of fundamental importance for the reliable extraction of spectroscopic factors and the accurate description of high-momentum nucleon-transfer reaction data.

We discuss the feasibility of quantum spin-state teleportation in a three-proton system at an energy of 151 MeV, where, similarly to the low-energy case, a single Bell-state term dominates the proton-proton scattering matrix. We find that, in contrast to the low-energy regime, where unpolarized proton-proton scattering produces strongly entangled outgoing proton pairs, at higher energies a pair of protons, each with an energy of $151$~MeV, must be produced in an unpolarized, exclusive proton-deuteron breakup reaction under complete final-state-interaction kinematics. The subsequent interaction of one of the entangled protons with a polarized hydrogen target triggers, as in the low-energy case, the teleportation process, whereby the polarization of the target proton is transferred to the second member of the entangled pair within the very narrow angular region of strong entanglement centered around a laboratory scattering angle of $45^\circ$. We also find that scattering one member of a strongly correlated proton pair forming a Bell state from an unpolarized hydrogen target leads to Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen-like correlations between the polarization of the scattered proton and that of the unscattered second entangled proton. The polarization of the scattered proton varies with its scattering angle. An identical polarization, following the angular dependence of thepolarization of the first proton, is induced in the second member of the pair, whose initial polarization was zero and whose momentum remains unchanged. The sign of the polarization of the second proton is determined by the sign of the spin correlation in the Bell state.

Net-proton cumulants in the Beam Energy Scan region of heavy-ion collisions are widely used to probe critical fluctuations associated with the conjectured critical endpoint of Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD). Most existing studies, however, concentrate on the initial-state or phase-transition contributions, while the impact of hadronic rescattering on these observables has not been fully quantified. To address this gap, we construct event-by-event proton and antiproton distributions from functional renormalization group (fRG) cumulants using the maximum entropy principle, and propagate the resulting particles through the hadronic transport model SMASH in a simplified spherical evolution setup. We systematically investigate how the hadronic cascade modifies net-proton cumulants at collision energies $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=3.0$, 3.9, 4.9, 7.2, and 7.7~GeV. In the canonical-ensemble framework, which enforces exact net-baryon number conservation, the higher-order cumulant signal—in particular the ratio $C_4/C_2$ at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=4.9$~GeV—is strongly reduced during the early stage of the cascade; the suppression of $C_4/C_2$ reaches approximately $20\%$. The non-monotonic energy dependence inherited from the fRG input survives the hadronic evolution, but its magnitude is substantially modified. These results demonstrate that hadronic rescattering provides a non-negligible background effect that must be accounted for when extracting QCD critical-point signals from experimental data.

We systematically explore the $S$-wave tetraquark systems $Qs\bar{n}\bar{n}$, $QQ\bar{n}\bar{n}$, $QQ\bar{Q}\bar{Q}$, and $ss\bar{s}\bar{s}$ ($Q=c,b$; $n=u,d$) within the constituent quark potential model. We incorporate all K-type Jacobi coordinates in addition to the conventional H-type configurations, optimize the basis expansion via a stochastic parameter generation strategy, and apply the complex scaling method to identify bound and resonant states. Our calculations demonstrate that while conventional H-type configurations suffice for low-lying states such as the $T_{cc}(3875)^+$ molecular candidate, the inclusion of K-type configurations becomes important for extracting highly excited resonances, allowing higher-energy resonances absent in H-only calculations to be identified. Furthermore, we identify resonance candidates for the $T_{cs0}(2900)$, $X(6900)$, and $X(7200)$, whereas the absence of fully-strange compact poles below 2.6 GeV challenges the interpretation of $\phi(2170)$ and $X(2370)$ as $S$-wave compact $s s \bar{s} \bar{s}$ tetraquarks.

To clearly identify the mechanism behind the suppression of heavy quarkonium in relativistic heavy-ion collisions, we study $\Upsilon$ production at RHIC energies by solving its transport equation driven solely by the suppression rates. By calculating the nuclear modification factor and comparing it with experimental data, we find that the sudden suppression governed by the color-screening temperature cannot simultaneously describe both the ground and excited states of the $\Upsilon$, whereas the continuous suppression induced by thermal decay successfully reproduces all the $\Upsilon$ measurements. This provides strong evidence that inelastic scatterings with thermal partons, rather than color screening, dominate quarkonium suppression in heavy-ion collisions.

Lifetimes of 16 excited states in the neutron-rich odd-$A$ nuclei $^{93-99}$Y were measured using fast-timing $\gamma$-$\gamma$ coincidence spectroscopy with fast scintillation detectors at the LOHENGRIN recoil separator. Particular attention is given to the region around $N \approx 59$, where rapid changes in nuclear deformation and shape coexistence occur. The lifetimes, determined using the generalized centroid difference method, are compared with interacting boson-fermion model calculations with configuration mixing, in which the odd-$A$ yttrium isotopes are described as a proton coupled to a bosonic core containing normal and intruder configurations. The results provide new constraints on theoretical descriptions of shape coexistence and structural evolution in neutron-rich nuclei near $A \approx 100$, particularly for odd-$A$ systems where experimental information remains limited.

The pronounced maximum ("horn") in the $K^+/\pi^+$ excitation function observed in central Pb+Pb collisions is well established feature of collision-energy dependence, but its dependence on system size remains poorly understood. We confront hadronic (SMASH) and partonic (PHSD) transport, Glauber core-corona, canonical-ensemble suppression, and the two-phase statistical model of the early stage (SMES) with $K^+/\pi^+$ data spanning the complete NA61/SHINE system-size ladder (p+p, Be+Be, Ar+Sc, Xe+La) together with NA49 Pb+Pb and STAR Au+Au, quantifying every comparison by $\chi^2$. No single framework describes the full range: core-corona is preferred for intermediate systems, SMES with canonical strangeness conservation for heavy systems, and none reproduces the small-system data. Neither transport model generates the horn, with or without partonic degrees of freedom. The data exhibit a step-like enhancement of $K^+/\pi^+$ between Be+Be and Ar+Sc, quantified within the core-corona framework by a step from $\fcore \approx 0.22$ (Be+Be) to $\fcore \approx 0.58$ (Ar+Sc). The strangeness saturation factor $\gs$ rises in two distinct steps, separating geometric core formation from thermodynamic equilibration. The $(K^+/\pi^+)/(K^-/\pi^-)$ double ratio, which at fixed $\sqrts$ cancels the system-independent $\mu_B$ contribution, shows a step between light and heavy systems at a global significance of $3.7\sigma$, providing evidence for genuine strangeness enhancement beyond the pair-production baseline. Preliminary Xe+La data favor core-corona ($\chindf = 5.8$) over SMASH ($\chindf = 23.3$); finalized spectra will sharpen the CC/SMES discrimination at the $27\%$ level.

Applications of the concept of a hydrodynamic attractor have been mostly constrained to the context of hydrodynamization in heavy ion collisions. Deepening the understanding of the general phenomenon requires generalizing it to other contexts in order to see which facettes are truly universal and not a peculiarity of equilibrating conformal Bjorken flow. As part of this endeavor, this work aims to study the behaviour in a system that does not hydrodynamize, but nevertheless loses memory through expansion. We find that the system goes through three stages. At early times, expansion drives the ratio $P_L/\epsilon$ to converge to $-1$ as $\tau^{-2}$. This memory loss is partially restored at intermediate times, when interaction dominated degrees of freedom through expansion dominated evolution grow quadraticallly in time. At late times, interactions shuffle of information in state space without significant memory loss or restoration.

The ab initio description of heavy and superheavy nuclei constitutes one of the holy grails of nuclear theory, bearing on the synthesis of the heaviest elements and the limits of nuclear stability. Over the last fifteen years, many-body expansion methods, whose numerical cost scales polynomially with system size, have extended first-principles calculations to medium-mass nuclei and a few spherical closed-shell heavy systems. The largest portion of the nuclear chart is however composed of heavy deformed doubly open-shell nuclei and has remained completely out of reach. This is due to two major obstacles: (i) the huge computational cost of beyond mean-field calculations in very large single-particle bases, and (ii) a dubious collapse of the mean-field energy at large prolate deformation. While a highly efficient numerical implementation of the novel deformed self-consistent Green's function formalism removes the first difficulty, the second is cured by the inclusion of many-body correlations beyond the deformed mean field. Presenting the first ab initio calculation of the iconic $^{238}$U nucleus, this work brings the upper-end of the nuclear chart within reach of theoretical predictions based on first principles.

Background: Contemporary stopping powers for fp-shell nuclei slowing in tantalum can differ by a factor of two from the 1963 Lindhard, Scharff and Schiøtt (LSS) theory [Mat. Fys. Medd. Dan. Vid. Selsk. 33 no. 14, (1963)] used in Doppler-shift attenuation method (DSAM) lifetime measurements dating back to the 1970s. In recent work [Phys. Rev. C 113, 044306 (2026)], it was found that anomalously high collectivity in the $4^+_1 \rightarrow 2^+_1$ transition of 58Fe given in the literature [Nucl. Data Sheets 111, 897 (2010)] could be traced back as due to the use of these historical stopping powers in the Doppler-shift lifetime measurements. Satisfactory agreement with shell-model calculations was obtained from a re-analysis of the measurement of Bolotin et al. [Nucl. Phys. A 311, 75 (1978)] once the stopping powers were replaced by up-to-date values. Purpose: The DSAM measurement on 54Cr by the same group [Nucl. Phys. A 337, 1 (1980)], which used the same experimental methods and procedures, is re-examined. Method: The computer code used in the original DSAM analysis has been rebuilt and upgraded with the capacity to use contemporary stopping powers. E2 transition strengths derived from the revised lifetimes are compared with shell-model calculations. Results: The lifetimes increase by 16% to 27%, with the larger increase generally corresponding to shorter lifetimes where electronic stopping dominates. Conclusions: Revised lifetimes, based on current stopping powers, imply E2 transition rates between states up to the 6$^+_1$ state in 54Cr that compare well with shell-model calculations. The lifetime data together with branching ratios and the shell-model calculations strongly suggest revision of the spins assigned to the levels at 3.786 (currently (4)$^+$) and 4.043 MeV (currently 5$^+$). These levels are suggested to be the 5$^+_1$ and 6$^+_2$ states, respectively.

Using the Gogny finite-range interaction, we investigate a series of semiclassical approximations to the Fock term entering the calculation of the nuclear surface energy. By comparing these approximations with the exact results obtained from the full Hartree-Fock solution in semi-infinite nuclear matter, we derive a simple pocket formula that can be incorporated into fitting protocols to estimate the surface energy coefficient with excellent accuracy.

The paper revisits the role of hyperon bulk viscosity during neutron-star inspiral. We find that hyperon bulk viscosity exerts only a minor influence on the gravitational-wave phase, causing a phase shift of $\sim 10^{-3}\,\rm rad$. This shift is too small to be detected by existing gravitational-wave observatories, and it seems unlikely that next-generation detectors will be able to isolate this effect from other factors. However, our analysis indicates that hyperon bulk viscosity can significantly heat the hyperon core of a neutron star, raising its temperature to approximately $5 \times 10^8\,\rm K$.

We systematically investigate the magnetic moments (MMs) and radiative decay widths of S-wave doubly heavy tetraquark states based on chromomagnetic interaction (CMI). They provide a complementary probe to distinguish compact from molecule structures in addition to the mass spectrum and strong decay properties. Using the CMI eigenvectors, we compute the MMs and M1 transition rates for the tetraquarks in the compact configuration. We predict the MM of the observed $T_{cc}(3875)^+$ with $I(J^P)=0(1^+)$ to be 0.45 $\mu_N$ when treating it as a compact tetraquark state, whereas the MM of the $0(1^+)$ $DD^*$ molecule is about $-0.07\,\mu_N$. Five radiative transition channels related to the $T_{cc}(3875)^+$ are identified with widths ranging from $6.07$ keV to $306.37$ keV. Our results show that the MMs of the $J^P=1^+$ $bc\bar{q}\bar{q}^\prime$ ($q/q^\prime=u,d,s$) and $J^P=1^+$ $QQ\bar{n}\bar{s}$ ($Q=b,c; n=u,d$) states are influenced by the diquark-spin mixing. Through the analyses of radiative transitions between different tetraquark states, we find that such processes in the $QQ\bar{n}\bar{n}^\prime$, $QQ\bar{s}\bar{s}$, and $bc\bar{n}\bar{s}$ cases may serve to reveal the tetraquark structures of the initial or final states. We also define the magnetic coupling matrices characterizing the MMs of the tetraquark system with $J^P=1^+$, with which the range of MM can be constrained. The present study provides a valuable reference point for the search of exotic states in future particle physics experiments.

We present the first quantitative microscopic realization of topologically quantized alignment in a finite nuclear system. The realization is obtained by exact diagonalization of a cranking seniority model, with the first Chern number evaluated over the sphere of cranking-axis orientations and analyzed together with the orientation-averaged alignment and cranking-frame configuration probabilities. The Chern number changes in integer steps as the system evolves from initially paired configurations to increasingly aligned configurations. A new intermediate phase is found in which the Chern number is already nonzero while the alignment continues to evolve toward its quantized value. We show that this deviation originates from the competition among pairing, axial quadrupole splitting, and Coriolis mixing. Thus, our microscopic approach reveals a more nuanced emergence of topologically quantized alignment in realistic nuclei, providing a quantitative stepping stone toward experimental investigations.

Finite-volume extrapolation (FVE) is essential for extracting physical observables in the lattice calculation. While rigorous FVE formulations are well established for short-range potentials in both two- and three-body systems, long-range interactions with force ranges comparable to the lattice size $L$ remain challenging. Extending a previous data-driven scheme for two-body systems, we apply symbolic regression (PySR) to uncover universal three-body FVE formulae. For short-range potentials, we reproduce the two limiting cases, i.e. $\kappa_3\gg\kappa_2$ and $\kappa_3\sim\kappa_2$. For pure long-range potentials, we obtain a dedicated analytic expression, and after incorporating short-range contributions, we uncover a unified formula consistent with the original PySR solution, which performs excellently in the intermediate force range around 1 fm. This work demonstrates that combining machine learning with physical constraints can yield novel analytical results inaccessible to conventional theoretical tools, advancing data-driven methodologies in hadron physics.

The framework of nuclear lattice effective field theory (NLEFT) is applied to $^{24}\mathrm{Mg}$, with the perspective of obtaining a model-independent density map of the geometry of a sample of excited states of the nucleus. The Hamiltonian incorporates Wigner SU(4)-symmetric nuclear forces as well as the Coulomb interaction. The coupling constants of the spin-isospin symmetric nucleon-nucleon potentials have been adjusted in order to reproduce the experimental ground-state (g.s.) energy of $^{24}\mathrm{Mg}$ as well as the experimental Tjon ratio between the binding energies of $^3\mathrm{H}$ and $^4\mathrm{He}$. The ensuing parameter set turns out to be capable of capturing the experimental trend of the binding energy per nucleon, reproducing simultaneously within 1% deviation the measured values for $^{18}\mathrm{F}$, $^{22}\mathrm{Na}$, $^{26}\mathrm{Al}$, $^{28}\mathrm{Si}$, $^{30}\mathrm{P}$ and $^{32}\mathrm{S}$. Considerations based on the convergence rate of Euclidean-time extrapolations for the two lowest energy eigenvalues highlight the dual nature of the $0_1^+$ and $2_1^+$ states, of hybrid mean-field and $\alpha$-cluster type. For the latter, triaxial $\alpha$-cluster configurations seem to be favoured over the axially-symmetric ones, whereas oblate superdeformation might characterize a rotational band at $20$ MeV excitation energy.

Relativistic heavy-ion collisions are the only known means of creating the quark-gluon plasma, a deconfined state of QCD matter. Hydrodynamic modeling has established that this medium behaves as a strongly coupled, low-viscosity fluid, but typically assumes that its quark and gluon composition reaches chemical equilibrium by the onset of the hydrodynamic phase. This assumption remains uncertain: gluon-dominated initial states suggest that quark production continues well into the hydrodynamic stage, with potentially different rates for light and strange quarks. This dissertation develops a dynamical framework for light and strange quark chemical equilibration. Incomplete equilibration of each flavor is described through time-dependent quark fugacities that modify both the equation of state and the particlization of the medium. Implemented within a multistage framework of fluctuating initial conditions, viscous hydrodynamics, particlization, and hadronic transport, the model is used to study the effects of equilibration on the hydrodynamic evolution and on hadronic and electromagnetic observables. The framework is embedded within a Bayesian analysis in which Gaussian process emulators trained on the model calculations infer the initial light and strange quark fugacities, their equilibration timescales, and selected transport coefficients from Au+Au collision data at RHIC. The strange sector is found to begin substantially undersaturated, more suppressed than the light sector; the data further favor a slower approach to equilibrium for strangeness, though the timescales themselves remain weakly constrained. These results favor a quark-gluon plasma whose flavor composition is still approaching chemical equilibrium during the hydrodynamic phase rather than fixed at its outset, and motivate extensions to collision systems of differing size and energy.

Nambu–Jona-Lasinio (NJL) models of color-superconducting quark matter suffer from cutoff artifacts once temperature or quark chemical potential become comparable to the model cutoff. These artifacts can be removed employing a renormalization-group (RG) consistent regularization scheme. In this article we perform a systematic study of neutral beta-equilibrated quark matter within the three-flavor NJL model with RG consistent regularization. Varying the coupling constant in the scalar diquark channel, we map out the phase diagram in the plane of chemical potential and temperature, and identify the gapless domains. We particularly focus on the melting pattern of the color-flavor locked (CFL) phase. At larger couplings the CFL phase melts through a so-called $d$SC phase, as expected from leading-order Ginzburg–Landau analyses. Lowering the coupling, the phase structure becomes markedly richer: While at large densities the CFL phase still melts through a $dSC$ phase, we find a $uSC$ phase at lower chemical potential. These phases, $uSC$ and $dSC$ meet at a doubly critical point whose existence had been anticipated long ago but was never demonstrated explicitly in a model.

We compute high frequency gravitational wave radiation in shockwave collisions of a light mass compact object with energy $\mu_L$ off a heavy compact object (black hole) with energy $\mu_H \gg \mu_L$. A formal solution is obtained in terms of shockwave propagators that provide snapshots of $O(\mu_L\mu_H^n)$ tidal response functions sensitive to classical and potentially semi-classical dynamics of black hole formation. In a perturbative expansion, the first nontrivial contribution of $O(\mu_L\mu_H)$ is the emission of a graviton from the Lipatov vertex generated by the fusion of two reggeized gravitons. For graviton frequencies $\omega\rightarrow 0$, the Lipatov amplitude reduces to the ultrarelativistic limit of the single-graviton exchange Weinberg amplitude. At $O(\mu_L\mu_H^2)$, the Lipatov amplitude includes a piece accounting for the rescattering of the graviton off a reggeized graviton and another, corresponding to graviton emission from a vertex fusing three reggeized gravitons. These nontrivial contributions again simplify to the Weinberg radiative amplitude for two-graviton exchange in the soft limit. We highlight throughout double copy structures to gluon radiation in dilute-dense collisions of Yang-Mills shockwaves. We relate our shockwave results to the eikonal multiple scattering framework of Veneziano et al.

It has been known that in sufficiently strong uniform magnetic fields, the ground state of quantum chromodynamics (QCD) supports a spatially modulated condensate of neutral pions, dubbed chiral soliton lattice (CSL). In this paper, we investigate whether a similar ordered ground state might exist when the external magnetic field is nonuniform, as appropriate for potential phenomenological applications, including heavy-ion collisions and neutron stars. To that end, we use the low-energy effective field theory of QCD, restricted to the neutral pions as the sole low-energy degrees of freedom in strong magnetic fields. In the limit of vanishing pion mass, we achieve a complete characterization of magnetic fields supporting a CSL-like ground state. Moreover, for a simple but infinite family of magnetic fields, we find the corresponding CSL state analytically. Going away from the massless limit requires full numerical minimization of the energy functional. Here we provide some sample numerical results, focusing on the qualitative differences as compared to the situations with a uniform magnetic field or a vanishing pion mass. The main conclusion remains unchanged: while bending the magnetic field typically reduces the energy gain due to the neutral pion condensation, a CSL-type ground state is still possible. As a byproduct of our work, we map the location of the CSL phase in the phase diagram of QCD in a uniform magnetic field and finite volume.

Motivated by a considerable release of data on first two excited states of the doubly strange baryon, $\Xi(1620)$ and $\Xi(1690)$, from different experimental collaborations in recent years, we investigate meson-baryon interactions in a coupled-channel approach. The systems are composed of pseudoscalar and vector mesons and the calculations are done for the total spin 1/2 and isospin 1/2 configuration. The tree-level interactions are deduced from Lagrangians based on chiral and hidden local symmetries. Specifically, we make an attempt to describe (1) data on the $K^-\Lambda$ femtoscopic correlation function coming from $p\,p$ and $Pb\,Pb$ collisions, and (2) the available data on invariant mass distributions for different systems: $\pi\Xi$, $\bar K \Sigma$ and $\bar K \Lambda$. We find that the amplitude which yields the correlation function close to the data results in mass distributions of different meson-baryon systems that are in discordance with the experimental data and vice-versa.

We present discussions on the possibility of emerging hidden scale symmetry, as a pseudo-conformal phase in super dense baryonic matter, using the velocity of sound as a criterion for a scale symmetry window in hadronic dense matter. In the density dependent mean field approach à la Brown-Rho scaling, it has been observed that the interplay between vector mesons and $ \chi$, one of the strongly correlated effects between hadrons, is nontrivial such that the trace of the energy momentum tensor becomes density-independent in the super dense regime and the sound velocity approaches the conformal sound velocity for the pseudo-conformal phase. It is suggested that in the pseudo conformal phase the rearrangement terms induced by density dependent couplings do not spoil the hidden scale symmetry in the compact star matter. We elaborate further on the astrophysically observable quantities of the compact stars and the implications for the parity doubling and the quark-hadron transitions.

We review and extend recent progress on QCD-like phases at nonzero temperature and chemical potentials within the gauge-gravity duality. We focus on the Witten-Sakai-Sugimoto model, a top-down approach based on string theory which allows for a unified treatment of mesons, baryons and quarks. Phases such as pion condensation, baryonic and quarkyonic matter are located in the phase diagram, and we discuss predictions as well as weaknesses and limitations of this holographic approach. One of the novelties included in this review is the first holographic construction of a pionic phase between BEC and BCS regimes, which however is found to be metastable. We also discuss future directions in holographic QCD, within the model used here and in a wider context.

We present an optimized artificial neural network approach for predicting electric dipole strength functions in nuclei with $A < 50$. Building upon a previous global study [Phys.Rev.C $\textbf{111}$ (2025) 5, L051308], we focus here on the region of light nuclei where dipole responses are more structured. The new network incorporates a two-stage training process, a learned embedding of the proton number, explicit low-energy dipole onsets, uncertainty-weighted training, and high-energy regularization. Ensemble predictions show improved stability and substantially reduced variability across independently initialized networks compared with the earlier global neural network. Tests on selected isotopes withheld from training show that, for elements represented in the training set, the optimized network captures the main isotope dependent dipole strength systematics. As a further test, we compute electric dipole polarizabilities for selected light nuclei and compare them with literature values revealing a pronounced sensitivity to the covered energy interval. The resulting set of continuous electric dipole strength functions for nuclei with $A < 50$ provides a practical complement to existing tabulated photonuclear databases and is particularly suited for applications requiring smooth response functions over broad energy intervals. As an application, we provide an update on the electric dipole polarizability of $^9$Be.

Artificial confinement encodes continuum scattering information in discrete, bound-state-like spectra, allowing reaction observables to be extracted with finite-basis or finite-domain methods. We apply this strategy to a two-channel cluster model of $^4$He with open $^3$H+p and $^3$He+n channels. We extract coupled-channel observables from spectra generated by a harmonic-oscillator (HO) trap, a spherical hard wall, and, within a single-partial-wave truncation, a periodic cubic box. The three geometries are formulated in a unified quantization-condition framework and benchmarked against a continuum $R$-matrix calculation. Above the second-channel threshold, several confined levels at a common scattering energy are combined in an overdetermined fit to determine two phase shifts and an inelasticity. Without Coulomb interactions, all three geometries yield consistent results for the $^1S_0$ and $^3P_1$ partial waves. With Coulomb interactions in the charged $^3$H+p channel, the HO and spherical-wall results also agree closely with the continuum reference. A Monte Carlo propagation study shows that spectral uncertainties are amplified near trap-function poles and along poorly conditioned directions associated with the inelasticity and phase-shift difference, whereas the phase-shift sum remains comparatively robust. These results provide a controlled benchmark for confinement-based scattering methods and delineate their strengths and limitations for future few-body and ab initio reaction calculations.

Fermionic domain-wall Skyrmions arise in the chiral soliton lattice of two flavor chiral perturbation theory in a magnetic field as the ground state and are associated with baryons of the underlying theory of quantum chromodynamics. We analyze the electromagnetic screening characteristics of domain-wall Skyrmions that give insight into baryon density on the magnetic field and chemical potential phase diagram. At zero temperature, using the moduli effective theory, it is found Skyrmion density is saturated up to the Fermi momenta on the disk of the chiral soliton lattice orthogonal to the magnetic field. We further study chiral perturbation theory coupled to quantum electrodynamics leading to finite temperature screening, wherein a static fermionic domain-wall Skyrmion screening is predicted through a combined Debye mass/length.

Rodeo filtering applies \(R\) ancilla-assisted energy interrogations. If all measurements are deferred, a static realization requires \(n_s+R\) active qubits for an \(n_s\)-qubit system, whereas mid-circuit measurement and reset allow one ancilla to be recycled and reduce the width to \(n_s+1\) without changing the ideal filter. We demonstrate this compression for a trapped-spectrum input to model neutron–proton scattering. A static \(R=10\) circuit on IonQ Forte-1 uses 12 active qubits, while a dynamic circuit on IBM Aachen uses only three, a 75% reduction. The controlled interleaved IBM scan gives \(\Delta E_c=-0.017\pm0.507\keV\), comparable to the static result \(-0.568\pm0.694\keV\). Mapping these centers through the finite-confinement modified effective range expansion (MERE) gives \(\mathcal K_{3.7}=p\cot\delta_{0,3.7} =0.13419\pm0.00020~\mathrm{fm}^{-1}\) for IonQ and \(0.13435\pm0.00015~\mathrm{fm}^{-1}\) for the interleaved IBM scan, both consistent with the exact value \(0.13436~\mathrm{fm}^{-1}\). Both implementations retain complete four-configuration support and therefore reproduce the exact \(4\times4\) effective-space level by sample-based quantum diagonalization. Three IBM batches nevertheless expose run-dependent center variations beyond finite-shot fluctuations, while the postselection attenuation is more stable. Ancilla recycling therefore makes the rodeo width independent of \(R\), freeing qubits for the nuclear register while preserving a finite-confinement scattering input, but exchanges spatial resources for mid-circuit latency and repeatability requirements.