We compute the weak gravitational deflection of light by a neutron star that carries a self-consistent dark matter component, in the regime in which the dark matter forms an extended halo reaching beyond the baryonic surface. Two observations motivate this configuration. First, a dark matter core confined within the baryonic radius leaves no distinctive lensing signature, since by Birkhoff’s theorem the exterior is Schwarzschild with the total mass, so a ray passing outside the star feels only that mass and the compactness it implies. Second, the signature we seek resides in the complementary case, in which the ray genuinely traverses the halo, so that the surrounding density enters the optical geometry directly. We model the star by integrating the coupled two-fluid Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkoff equations, with the baryonic and dark components interacting solely through gravity, and we obtain the deflection angle from the resulting external profile through the Gibbons-Werner construction of the Gauss-Bonnet theorem. The defining feature of the approach is that the deflection is tied to a self-consistent two-fluid profile rather than to a medium inserted by hand. We show that, for impact parameters smaller than the halo radius, the deflection departs measurably from the point-mass prediction, the deficit being governed by the dark matter fraction and the halo extent, and we argue that the shape of this deficit furnishes a geometric, lensing-based handle on the degeneracy between dark matter and the nuclear equation of state. The framework thereby unites the structural modeling of compact stars with their gravitational lensing phenomenology.

Glitches frequently contaminate data in gravitational wave detectors, complicating the observation and analysis of astrophysical signals. This work introduces VIGILant, an automatic pipeline for classification and visualization of glitches in the Virgo detector. Using a curated dataset of Virgo O3b glitches, two machine learning approaches are evaluated: tree-based models (decision tree, random forest, and extreme gradient boosting) using structured Omicron parameters, and convolutional neural networks (ResNet) trained on spectrogram images. While tree-based models offer higher interpretability and fast training, the ResNet34 model achieved superior performance, reaching a F1 score of 0.9772 and accuracy of 0.9833 in the testing set, with inference times of tens of milliseconds per glitch. The pipeline has been deployed for daily operation at the Virgo site since observing run O4c, providing the Virgo collaboration with an interactive dashboard to monitor glitch populations and detector behavior. This allows to identify low-confidence predictions, highlighting glitches requiring further attention.

Large numbers of $J/\psi$ mesons can be resonantly produced at BESIII and STCF at the center-of-mass energy $\sqrt{s}=3.097\mathrm{GeV}$. Such $J/\psi$ mesons may undergo rare decays into an axionlike particle (ALP) $a$ and a dark photon ${\gamma }^{\prime }$ through the dark axion portal. We investigate the exclusion reach of the existing BESIII dataset and the projected sensitivity of STCF, focusing on the monophoton signature. We perform Monte Carlo simulations of the signal and estimate both the irreducible $J/\psi \to \gamma \nu \overline{\nu }$ background and the continuum and resonant three-photon reducible backgrounds. Detector-induced migration of three-photon events into the mono-photon signal region is parametrized by the event-level leakage probability ${\epsilon }_{3\gamma }^{\mathrm{leak}}=0,{10}^{-6},{10}^{-4},{10}^{-3}$. In the zero- and sufficiently small-leakage benchmarks, the existing BESIII dataset could probe previously unexplored parameter space, while STCF can further improve the coupling reach. Increasing leakage probabilities progressively weaken these projections, highlighting the importance of detector-level three-photon rejection in realizing the projected reach.

We propose a general framework in which a phase transition is triggered during cosmic inflation by the slow-roll dynamics of a spectator field. The topological defects formed at the transition are inflated outside the horizon, reenter it after inflation, and can subsequently generate characteristic gravitational wave (GW) signals. Quantum fluctuations of the spectator field modulate the timing of the transition, imprinting large-scale anisotropies in the resulting GW background. As an explicit realization, the spectator field may be identified with the Higgs field in a supersymmetric Standard Model. More generally, our framework applies to a wide class of spectator-modulated phenomena, providing a generic mechanism for producing anisotropic GW signals.

The dynamically correlated quark-diquark system $q+(qq)$ is describing the nucleon as relativistic bound state. This approach has a close analogy with nonrelativistic few-body physics. In particular, a similar ansatz, $\alpha +(2\alpha )$, was previously applied to the study of the $0_2^{+}$ three-$\alpha$ state of the ${}^{12}\mathrm{C}$ nucleus within the cluster reduction method (CRM) based on the configuration space Faddeev equation. Motivated by this analogy, we propose a nonrelativistic quark model for the nucleon based on the same method. The interaction between quarks is modeled by a Cornell-type potential, which has been extensively employed in the description of quark confinement and the spectroscopy of hadrons. We perform full CRM calculations and identify the leading term of the CRM expansion with the $q+(qq)$ configuration. Our results demonstrate that a quantitative description of the nucleon within the quark-diquark picture requires a suitable adjustment of the model parameters, effectively simulating the contribution of the second term in the CRM expansion. This correction is expected to improve the $q+(qq)$ approximation and to bring the corresponding results into good agreement with the full $qqq$ calculation.

We implement a finite-energy constraint in the dipole picture of deep inelastic scattering, by restricting the invariant mass of the produced partonic system by the virtual photon-target center of mass energy. We show that, for $Q^2=1{\mathrm{GeV}}^2$, the effect of this constraint can reach up to $\sim 35\%$ for charm quarks and $\sim 7\%$ for light quarks at $x=0.01$ but then rapidly decreases at smaller $x$ or larger $Q^2$.

We introduce a novel approach to high-energy QCD factorization of cross sections for processes involving a dilute projectile and a dense target. Our method preserves the factorization between “fast” and “slow” modes in the longitudinal momentum $k^{+}$ for a projectile moving along the positive light cone direction, making it compatible with higher-order loop computations done within the standard formulation of the color glass condensate (CGC) effective field theory. Moreover, it eliminates the anomalous double collinear logarithms that typically hinder the convergence of perturbation theory at small-$x$. Our scheme amounts to a change of basis in the space of CGC operators, introducing an arbitrary transverse scale dependence while leaving physical cross sections invariant. Implementing this scheme requires a modification of the high-energy renormalization group equation for the CGC operators, which we explicitly derive at next-to-leading order and in the nonlinear regime for the case of the dipole operator and the deep inelastic scattering impact factor. This general framework provides a consistent and systematic prescription for computing observables in the small-$x$ regime of QCD, free from double logarithmic collinear instabilities.

We study the sensitivity of the Compact Linear Collider at $\sqrt{s}=3\mathrm{TeV}$ to the single electroweak production of a vectorlike bottom quark in a type II two-Higgs-doublet model extended by vectorlike quarks. We consider the process $e^{+}{e}^{-}\to B\overline{b}+\overline{B}b$, followed by $B\to \varphi b$ with $\varphi =H$, $A$ and $\varphi \to t\overline{t}$. We focus on the semileptonic final state with one charged lepton, missing transverse momentum, four $b$-tagged jets, and two light jets. This channel directly probes the interplay between the extended quark and Higgs sectors. After applying theoretical constraints, electroweak precision constraints, Higgs-sector bounds, and current collider limits, we perform detector-level cut-based and multivariate analyses. The cut-based analysis remains below discovery sensitivity at $5{\mathrm{ab}}^{-1}$, while a multilayer perceptron and an xgboost classifier provide substantially improved signal-background separation. For viable scenarios with $m_B\simeq 1.3–1.5\mathrm{TeV}$, the expected significance remains above $5\sigma$ even for a 15% uncertainty on the background normalization.

The branching fraction of the electromagnetic Dalitz decay $D_s^{*+}\to e^{+}{e}^{-}{D}_s^{+}$ is measured with an $e^{+}{e}^{-}$ collision data sample collected by the BESIII experiment at center-of-mass energies between 4.128 and 4.226 GeV, corresponding to a total integrated luminosity of $7.33{\mathrm{fb}}^{-1}$. The measurement yields the branching fraction $\mathcal{B}(D_s^{*+}\to e^{+}{e}^{-}{D}_s^{+})=(7.28\pm {0.61}_{\mathrm{stat}}\pm {0.31}_{\mathrm{syst}})\times {10}^{-3}$. The result is consistent with the previous one, with a 2.5-fold improvement in precision. This provides an important input for constraining the parameters of theoretical models and for determining the absolute branching fractions of $D_s^{*+}\to {\pi }^0{D}_s^{+}$ and $D_s^{*+}\to \gamma D_s^{+}$, measured with a relative method that assumes $D_s^{*+}$ decays only via channels $D_s^{*+}\to e^{+}{e}^{-}{D}_s^{+}$, $D_s^{*+}\to {\pi }^0{D}_s^{+}$ and $D_s^{*+}\to \gamma D_s^{+}$.

We investigate dualities between ${\mathbf{Z}}_2$ quotients of recently proposed compactifications of M-theory on ‘quantum geometries’ of the form ${\mathbf{S}}^1\vee {\mathbf{S}}^1$ and 10D orientifolds of type 0A and 0B string theories. In particular, we relate the Hořava-Witten theory on ${\mathbf{S}}^1\vee {\mathbf{S}}^1$ to a 0B orientifold with gauge group $SO(16{)}^4$. The resulting dictionary provides a geometric explanation for characteristic features of the 0B orientifold, such as the doubling of the gauge group, while the perturbative spectrum of the 0B orientifold indicates the emergence of novel M-theoretic degrees of freedom associated with the junction point. The 0B orientifold further reveals the existence of two variants of the theory on ${\mathbf{S}}^1\vee {\mathbf{S}}^1$, corresponding to equal vs opposite (i.e., standard vs Fabinger-Hořava) orientations of the $E_8$ walls. We also analyze additional 0A and 0B orientifolds whose open string sectors do not arise from higher-dimensional gauge fields in M-theory and whose microscopic interpretation remains an open problem.

We develop an operator-algebraic framework for modular self-duality, symmetrized relative entropy, and Bogoliubov-Kubo-Mori (BKM) susceptibility of local states in quantum field theory. In finite dimensions, modular self-duality singles out fixed points at which a state coincides with its modularly reflected partner. At such points, the natural comparison functional is the symmetrized Umegaki relative entropy. It vanishes at coincidence, and its Hessian is governed by the BKM quantum Fisher information along the reflected tangent direction. We then extend this fixed-point construction to the local type III von Neumann algebras that arise in quantum field theory. Here, a local state is compared with the modular pullback of its commutant restriction, and the intrinsic comparison functional is the symmetrized Araki relative entropy. For sufficiently regular state deformations, the fixed-localization Hessian at the self-dual point defines a type III BKM susceptibility. This coefficient is obtained by evaluating the BKM bilinear form on the tangent selected by the modular pairing. Exact coherent-state realizations are obtained for the free scalar field on wedge algebras and for the chiral $U(1)$ current on half-line algebras. In both examples, the comparison functional is exactly quadratic in the deformation parameter, and the susceptibility coefficients admit explicit boost-energy, stress-tensor, or half-line integral representations. We also apply the construction to a ball-shaped boundary region in the vacuum state of a conformal field theory with a semiclassical anti–de Sitter (AdS) gravitational dual. For linear bulk coherent excitations in an exact complementary-recovery model of this sector, bulk-boundary modular intertwining identifies the modular partner with the AdS-Rindler-reflected coherent state, and the symmetrized relative entropy is exactly quadratic. Its Hessian is twice the bulk canonical energy of the reflected-difference perturbation.

We propose a scheme to regularize divergent integrals in quantum field theory based on a new asymptotic subtraction method. The framework builds on the structural decomposition of the integrand asymptotic expansion, which distinguishes between contributions that drive ultraviolet singularities and those that remain finite. This asymptotic subtraction method isolates the genuinely singular sector and enables a consistent subtraction of divergences while maintaining covariance and gauge symmetry. In single-scale theories, we show that the renormalized quantities exhibit a logarithmic dependence on the physical scale uniquely determined by the ultraviolet asymptotics, offering a derivation of logarithmic terms that is independent of standard renormalization-group flows. Because it relies only on the asymptotic structure rather than on a standard relativistic power counting, the method is naturally applicable to theories with modified dispersion relations and nonstandard ultraviolet scaling. Although formulated here for ultraviolet divergences, the underlying strategy extends straightforwardly to infrared singularities.

We derive the effective action governing the dynamics of a compact binary system when gravitational radiation is emitted by any mass or current multipole, scattered by the quasistatic field associated with the binary’s angular momentum, and then reabsorbed. Among such angular momentum failed-tail processes, the ones involving multipole moments up to mass and current octupoles, which mix also with quadrupoles of opposite parity, contribute to the system dynamics at sixth post-Newtonian order; we display these terms explicitly as a particular case of our general derivation. Additionally, we derive the radiative multipole moments associated to arbitrary angular momentum failed tails in emission processes.

We compute $⟨{\widehat{\mathrm{\Phi }}}^2{⟩}_{\mathrm{ren}}$ as well as the energy fluxes $⟨{\widehat{T}}_{uu}{⟩}_{\mathrm{ren}}$ and $⟨{\widehat{T}}_{vv}{⟩}_{\mathrm{ren}}$ (where $u$ and $v$ are the standard Eddington-Finkelstein coordinates) associated with a quantum massless real scalar field $\widehat{\mathrm{\Phi }}$, with a general curvature coupling constant $\xi$, near the inner horizon (IH) of a Kerr black hole, along the axis of rotation. The quantum field is in the Unruh state, corresponding to an evaporating black hole. We renormalize these quantities by the state-subtraction method. We drop the assumption of minimal coupling to the curvature, thereby generalizing the results of [1] for the fluxes at the IH. This requires understanding the asymptotic behavior of $⟨{\widehat{\mathrm{\Phi }}}^2{⟩}_{\mathrm{ren}}$ near the IH. State subtraction allows us to push the computation of $⟨{\widehat{\mathrm{\Phi }}}^2{⟩}_{\mathrm{ren}}$ along the axis of rotation in the Kerr interior in [2] deeper into the near-IH region, exposing their final asymptotic behavior on approaching the IH. For $⟨{\widehat{\mathrm{\Phi }}}^2{⟩}_{\mathrm{ren}}$ (a $\xi$-independent quantity in the Kerr case), we find that the approach to its finite asymptotic IH value is given, per $\ell$-mode, by a ringdown phase (namely exponentially damped oscillations), followed by an inverse-power tail, both in the tortoise coordinate $r_{*}$ (which diverges at the IH). Interestingly, in the regime where the ringing dominates, the ringing’s complex frequencies are (numerically) found to match twice the well-known classical quasinormal-mode frequencies in Kerr, and the inverse-power tails are found to be $r_{*}^{-2\ell -3}$ (resembling Price’s law in the classical black hole exterior, upon replacement $t\to r_{*}$). In particular, the sum over $\ell$ behaves as $r_{*}^{-3}$ (with a prefactor obtained here analytically for the first time), resembling the known behavior of classical (axially symmetric) scalar perturbations on approaching the IH [3]. These results allow computing the flux components $⟨{\widehat{T}}_{uu}{⟩}_{\mathrm{ren}}$ and $⟨{\widehat{T}}_{vv}{⟩}_{\mathrm{ren}}$ for general $\xi$ at the IH vicinity. We find that the limiting IH values of $⟨{\widehat{T}}_{uu}{⟩}_{\mathrm{ren}}$ and $⟨{\widehat{T}}_{vv}{⟩}_{\mathrm{ren}}$ are independent of the coupling constant $\xi$. When translated to the Kruskal coordinate $V$ (regular and vanishing at the Cauchy horizon), it implies that the prefactor $C$ characterizing the divergence of the renormalized quantum stress-energy tensor appearing in $⟨{\widehat{T}}_{VV}{⟩}_{\mathrm{ren}}\simeq C{V}^{-2}$, is independent of the coupling to curvature in the case of polar Kerr.

The local physics of light scalar fields in de Sitter space is well described by classical random walks, as expressed through the framework of stochastic inflation. Recent work has clarified how this formalism arises from quantum field theory and the renormalization group (RG), allowing for corrections to this formalism to be determined order by order. Yet, this description is incomplete. For example, the quantum dynamics of these fields are expected to become important when determining the tail of the probability distribution for the fluctuations. In this paper, we develop the understanding of fields in de Sitter as a quantum walk in order to bridge the gap between the classical and quantum description. We use the framework of exact RG to calculate the evolution equation for the reduced density matrix of the long wavelength fields. This master equation provides the direct map from light fields to models of quantum walks. We show how to reduce the master equation to stochastic inflation, and provide a new understanding of how the higher-order corrections arise. In the process, we demonstrate that divergences and secular growth in de Sitter, for both light and heavy fields, can be absorbed by (dynamical) renormalization.

We present a cosmic microwave background (CMB) lensing power spectrum analysis using daytime data (11am–11pm UTC) gathered by the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) over the period 2017–2022 (ACT Data Release 6). This dataset is challenging to analyze because the Sun heats and deforms the telescope mirror, complicating the characterization of the telescope. We perform more than one hundred null and consistency checks to ensure the robustness of our measurement and its compatibility with nighttime observations. We detect the CMB lensing power spectrum at $18\sigma$ significance, with an amplitude $A_{\mathrm{lens}}=1.071\pm 0.060$ with respect to the prediction from the best-fit Planck-ACT CMB power spectrum $\mathrm{\Lambda }\mathrm{CDM}$ cosmology. In combination with the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) Baryon Acoustic Oscillation (BAO) data, this corresponds to a constraint on the amplitude of matter fluctuations ${\sigma }_8=0.842\pm 0.026$. The analysis presented here is especially relevant for ground-based millimeter-wave CMB experiments at the Atacama site, paving the way for future analyses making use of both nighttime and daytime data to place tight constraints on cosmological parameters.

We show that perturbative techniques inspired by effective field theory (EFT) can be used to “paint on” the large-scale 21 cm field during reionization using only the underlying linear density field. It is, therefore, possible to enlarge or “supersize” hydrodynamical simulations at low resolution, on scales that are larger than the nonlinear scale of the 21 cm field. In particular, the EFT provides a mapping between the linear density field and the 21 cm field. We show that this mapping can be reliably extracted from relatively small simulation volumes using the thesan suite of simulations, which have a comoving volume of $(95.5\mathrm{Mpc}{)}^3$. Specifically, we show that, if we fit the EFT coefficients in a small $\sim 5\%$ subvolume of the simulation, we can predict the 21 cm field to within $\mathcal{O}(10\%)$ accuracy in the rest of the simulation given only the linear density field. We show that our technique is robust to different models of dark matter and differences in the subgrid reionization modeling.

We investigate the prospects for observing a specific spectral distortion of the cosmic microwave background, which occurs due to the anisotropy of the radiation when it is scattered by hot plasma of galaxy clusters. Detection of this anisotropic Sunyaev-Zel’dovich effect would enable an independent measurement of the CMB anisotropy multipoles with $\ell =1$, 2, 3, allow the Sachs-Wolfe and integrated Sachs-Wolfe (Rees-Sciama) effects to be separated, and partially solve the cosmic variance problem for low multipoles. We applied the Least Response Method for component separation in the data processing and estimated the required sensitivity of the experiment for such observations. We test our approach on a simulated signal that is contaminated by various foregrounds with poorly defined spectral shapes, along with distortions of the relic blackbody spectrum caused by the Sunyaev-Zel’dovich effect and its relativistic corrections.

We develop a self-consistent dark matter admix neutron star framework based on a contact vector current-current interaction that couples the chemical potentials of both sectors through mutual mean-field shifts, with the dark matter (DM) fraction $F_D=N_D/N_B$ fixed as a global input parameter. This formulation provides a physically motivated alternative to fixed-density prescriptions, allowing the local DM density to follow the baryonic matter (BM) density throughout the stellar interior. As an application, we consider a mirror-DM scenario with exact symmetry between the dark and visible sectors and investigate neutron star (NS) matter using the $\mathrm{NL}3\omega \rho$, FSU2R, NL3, and DDME2 equations of state. We find that the amount of DM introduced through $F_D$ weakens the binding of dense matter, reduces its incompressibility, and softens the equation of state, while the DM-BM interaction governs the microscopic behavior of the DM in the dense BM medium. Consequently, DM increases the central density and compactness of NSs, lowers their maximum masses, and shifts the onset of the direct Urca process to higher stellar densities. As a consequence, the onset of rapid cooling is shifted to more massive stars for models with a stiff symmetry energy and to less massive stars for models with a soft symmetry energy, depending on the extra compactness that results from the DM admixture. These results demonstrate that mirror-DM admixtures modify both the microscopic composition and macroscopic structure of NSs, with potential implications for their thermal evolution and multimessenger observational signatures.