The Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) started physics data taking on 26 August 2025. JUNO consists of a 20-kton liquid scintillator central detector, surrounded by a 35 kton water pool serving as a Cherenkov veto, and almost 1000 m$^{2}$ of plastic scintillator veto on top. The detector is located in a shallow underground laboratory with an overburden of 1800 m.w.e. This paper presents the performance results of the detector, extensively studied during the commissioning of the water phase, the subsequent liquid scintillator filling phase, and the first physics runs. The liquid scintillator achieved an attenuation length of 20.6 m at 430 nm, while the high coverage PMT system and scintillator together yielded about 1785 photoelectrons per MeV of energy deposit at the detector centre, measured using the 2.223 MeV $\textit{γ}$ from neutron captures on hydrogen with an Am-C calibration source. The reconstructed energy resolution is 3.4% for two 0.511 MeV $\textit{γ}$ at the detector centre and 2.9% for the 0.93 MeV quenched $^{214}$Po alpha decays from natural radioactive sources. The energy non-linearity is calibrated to better than 1%. Intrinsic contaminations of $^{238}$U and $^{232}$Th in the liquid scintillator are below 10$^{-16}$ g/g, assuming secular equilibrium. The water Cherenkov detector achieves a muon detection efficiency better than 99.9% for muons traversing the liquid scintillator volume. During the initial science runs, the data acquisition duty cycle exceeded 97.8%, demonstrating the excellent stability and readiness of JUNO for high-precision neutrino physics.

Chile

Angel Abusleme

France

Thomas Adam

Germany

Kai Adamowicz

China

David Adey

Pakistan

Shakeel Ahmad

Rizwan Ahmed

Finland

Timo Ahola

Italy

Sebastiano Aiello

Fengpeng An

Guangpeng An

United Kingdom

Costas Andreopoulos

Giuseppe Andronico

João Pedro Athayde Marcondes de André

Russia

Nikolay Anfimov

Vito Antonelli

Tatiana Antoshkina

Thailand

Burin Asavapibhop

Didier Auguste

Margherita Buizza Avanzini

Slovakia

Andrej Babic

Jingzhi Bai

Weidong Bai

Nikita Balashov

Roberto Barbera

Andrea Barresi

Davide Basilico

Eric Baussan

Beatrice Bellantonio

Marco Bellato

JeanLuc Beney

Marco Beretta

Antonio Bergnoli

Enrico Bernieri

Nikita Bessonov

David Biaré

Daniel Bick

Lukas Bieger

Svetlana Biktemerova

Thilo Birkenfeld

David Blum

Simon Blyth

Sara Boarin

Manuel Boehles

Anastasia Bolshakova

Mathieu Bongrand

Aurélie Bonhomme

Clément Bordereau

Matteo Borghesi

Augusto Brigatti

Timothee Brugiere

Riccardo Brugnera

Riccardo Bruno

Jonas Buchholz

Antonio Budano

Max Buesken

Mario Buscemi

Severino Bussino

Jose Busto

Ilya Butorov

Marcel Büchner

Anatael Cabrera

Barbara Caccianiga

Boshuai Cai

Hao Cai

Xiao Cai

Yanke Cai

Yi-zhou Cai

Zhiyan Cai

Stéphane Callier

Steven Calvez

Antonio Cammi

Agustin Campeny

Dechang Cai

Chuanya Cao

Dewen Cao

Guofu Cao

Jun Cao

Yaoqi Cao

Rossella Caruso

Aurelio Caslini

Cédric Cerna

Vanessa Cerrone

Daniele Cesini

Chi Chan

Jinfan Chang

Yun Chang

Milo Charavet

Tim Charissé

Auttakit Chatrabhuti

Chao Chen

Guoming Chen

Haitao Chen

Haotian Chen

Jiahui Chen

Jian Chen

Jing Chen

Junyou Chen

Lihao Chen

Mali Chen

Mingming Chen

Initial performance results of the JUNO detector * We acknowledge financial and institutional supportfrom the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the National KeyR&D Program of China, the People's Government of Guangdong Province, and the Tsung–Dao Lee Institute of Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China.We appreciate the contributions from the Institut Na-tional de Physique Nucléaire et de Physique des Partic-ules (IN2P3) in France, the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN) in Italy, the Fonds de la Recherche Sci-entifique (F.R.S.–FNRS) and the Institut Interuni-versitaire des Sciences Nucléaires (IISN) in Belgium, and the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico eTecnológico (CNPq) in Brazil.We also acknowledge the support of the AgenciaNacional de Investigación y Desarrollo (ANID) and the ANID–Millennium Science Initiative Program (ICN2019044) in Chile; the European Structural and In-vestment Funds, the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports, and the Charles University Research Center inthe Czech Republic; the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinsch-aft (DFG), the Helmholtz Association, and the Cluster ofExcellence PRISMA+ in Germany; and the Joint Insti-tute for Nuclear Research (JINR) and Lomonosov Mo-scow State University in Russia.We further thank the Slovak Research and Develop-ment Agency in the Slovak Republic, the National Science and Technology Council (NSCT) and MOE, China, the Program Management Unit for Hu-man Resources & Institutional Development, Research and Innovation (PMU–B), Chulalongkorn University, and Suranaree University of Technology in Thailand, the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) in the United Kingdom, and the University of California atIrvine and the National Science Foundation (NSF) in the United States

A model for the nuclear medium modification of parton densities is presented. The approach is based on a global analysis of available deep inelastic scattering data for different nuclear targets within the rescaling model, combined with the effects of Fermi motion. The scale dependence is implemented through the DGLAP-evolved quark and gluon densities in a proton derived analytically at the leading order of QCD coupling. By fitting the rescaling parameters to experimental data on the ratio $F_2^A(x,Q^2)/F_2^{A^\prime}(x,Q^2) $ for several nuclear targets $\textit{A}$ and $\textit{A}$', we obtain predictions for nuclear parton distributions, even for unmeasured nuclei. The effects of nuclear modifications are investigated with respect to the mass number $\textit{A}$. We highlight distinct shadowing and antishadowing behaviors for gluons and quarks.

A.V. Kotikov

A.V. Lipatov

A simple model for nuclear modification of parton distribution functions * This research has been carried out at the expense of the Russian Science Foundation grant 25-22-00066, https://rscf.ru/en/project/25-22-00066/

We investigate the properties of the radially excited charged pion, with a specific focus on its electromagnetic form factor (EFF) and its box contribution to the hadronic light-by-light (HLbL) component of the muon's anomalous magnetic moment, $ a_{\mu} $ . Utilizing a coupled non-perturbative framework combining Schwinger-Dyson and Bethe-Salpeter equations, we first compute the mass and weak decay constant of the pion's first radial excitation. Initial results are provided for the Rainbow-Ladder (RL) approximation, followed by an extended beyond RL (BRL) analysis that incorporates meson cloud effects. Building on our previous work, this analysis demonstrates that an accurate description of the first radial excitation can be achieved without the need for a reparametrization of the interaction kernels. Having demonstrated the effectiveness of the truncation scheme, we proceed to calculate the corresponding EFF, from which we derive the contribution of the pion's first radial excitation to the HLbL component of the muon's anomalous magnetic moment, producing $ a_{\mu}^{\pi_1-\text{box}}(\text{RL}) = -(2.03 \pm 0.12) \times 10 ^{-13} $ , $ a_{\mu}^{\pi_1-\text{box}}(\text{BRL}) = $ $ -(2.02 \pm 0.10) \times 10 ^{-13} $ . Our computation also sets the groundwork for calculating related pole contributions of excited pseudoscalar mesons to $ a_{\mu} $ .

Spain

Mexico

Angel S. Miramontes

K. Raya

A. Bashir

P. Roig

G. Paredes-Torres

Radially excited pion: electromagnetic form factor and the box contribution to the muon's $\textit{g}$-2 * A. S. Miramontes acknowledges $\textit{Consejo Nacional de Ciencia, Humanidades y Tecnología}$ (CONAHCyT), Mexico, for the financial support received through the program '$\textit{Postdoctorados Nacionales por México}$', additionally, has been partially funded by the 'PROMETEO' programme of the 'Generalitat Valenciana' grant CIPROM/2022/66, and by the Spanish 'Agencia Estatal de Investigación', MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033, through the grants PID2020-113334GB-I00 and PID2023-151418NB-I00. A. Bashir thanks $\textit{Coordinación de la Investigación Científica}$ of the $\textit{Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo}$ Grant No. 4.10., CONAHCyT grant CBF2023-2024-3544 and $\textit{Ayudas Beatriz Galindo}$, Spain. P. Roig acknowledges Conahcyt (México) funding through project CBF2023-2024-3226 as well as Spanish support during his sabbatical year through projects MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033, grant PID2020-114473GB-I00, and Generalitat Valenciana grant PROMETEO/2021/071. G. Paredes-Torres acknowledges CONAHCyT, Mexico, for the financial support provided to him through the program '$\textit{Beca de Posgrado en México}$'. The work of A. Bashir and K. Raya is supported by Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (MICINN grant no. PID2022-140440NB-C22) and Junta de Andalucía (grant P18-FR-5057)

We use the spectral lag catalog of 46 short GRBs aggregated by Xiao et al. (Astrophys J Lett 924:L29, 2022), to carry out an independent search for Lorentz invariance violation (LIV). For this purpose, we use a power-law model as a function of energy for the intrinsic astrophysical induced spectral lags. The expansion history of the universe needed for constraining LIV was obtained in a non-parametric method using cosmic chronometers. We use Bayesian model comparison to determine if the aforementioned spectral lags show evidence for LIV as compared to only astrophysically induced lags. We do not find any evidence for LIV, and obtain 95% CL lower limits on the corresponding energy scale to be  $$4 \times 10^{15}$$  <math> <mrow> <mn>4</mn> <mo>×</mo> <msup> <mn>10</mn> <mn>15</mn> </msup> </mrow> </math>   GeV and  $$6.8 \times 10^{9}$$  <math> <mrow> <mn>6.8</mn> <mo>×</mo> <msup> <mn>10</mn> <mn>9</mn> </msup> </mrow> </math>   GeV for the linear and quadratic LIV models respectively. Our results obtained by using the flat  $$\Lambda $$  <math> <mi>Λ</mi> </math>  CDM model for characterizing the cosmic expansion history are consistent with those obtained using chronometers.

India

Shantanu Desai

Rajdeep Agrawal

Haveesh Singirikonda

Search for Lorentz invariance violation using Bayesian model comparison applied to Xiao et al. GRB spectral lag catalog

We suggest a minimal model for GeV-scale Majorana Dark Matter (DM) coupled to the standard model lepton sector via a charged scalar singlet. We show that there is an anti-correlation between the spin-independent DM-Nucleus scattering cross section (σ SI) and the DM relic density for parameters values allowed by various theoretical and experimental constraints. Moreover, we find that even when DM couplings are of order unity, σ SI is below the current experimental bound but above the neutrino floor. Furthermore, we show that the considered model can be probed at high energy lepton colliders using e.g. the mono-Higgs production and same-sign charged Higgs pair production.

South Korea

Adil Jueid

United Arab Emirates

Salah Nasri

Rachik Soualah

Searching for GeV-scale Majorana Dark Matter: inter spem et metum

Biswas et al. [1] found that the thermal relic density of a dark matter particle freezing out while the universe's energy density is dominated by a non-standard extra component ϕ, whose energy density redshifts faster than radiation, can be greatly suppressed. Here we show that this result, which contradicts extensive previous literature, is incorrect: the mistake lies with the assumption that the (decoupled) extra component ϕ contributes to the entropic degrees of freedom relevant for dark matter freeze out. If this were the case, a completely different approach would be needed to calculate the dark matter relic abundance, with dramatically different results.

United States

Nicolas Fernandez

Stefano Profumo

Comment on “keV neutrino dark matter in a fast expanding universe” by Biswas et al.

In 2016, we published “A test of general relativity using the LARES and LAGEOS satellites and a GRACE Earth’s gravity model. Measurement of Earth’s dragging of inertial frames [1]”, a measurement of frame-dragging, a fundamental prediction of Einstein’s theory of General Relativity, using the laser-ranged satellites LARES, LAGEOS and LAGEOS 2. The formal error, or precision, of our test was about 0.2% of frame-dragging, whereas the systematic error was estimated to be about 5%. In the 2017 paper “A comment on “A test of general relativity using the LARES and LAGEOS satellites and a GRACE Earth’s gravity model by I. Ciufolini et al.”” by L. Iorio [2] (called I2017 in the following), it was incorrectly claimed that, when comparing different Earth’s gravity field models, the systematic error in our test due to the Earth’s even zonal harmonics of degree 6, 8, 10 could be as large as 15%, 6% and 36%, respectively. Furthermore, I2017 contains other, also incorrect, claims about the number of necessary significant decimal digits of the coefficients used in our test (claimed to be nine), in order to eliminate the largest uncertainties in the even zonals of degree 2 and 4, and about the non-repeatability of our test. Here we analyze and rebut those claims in I2017.

Ignazio Ciufolini

Erricos Pavlis

John Ries

Richard Matzner

Rolf Koenig

Antonio Paolozzi

Giampiero Sindoni

Armenia

Vahe Gurzadyan

Roger Penrose

Claudio Paris

Reply to “A comment on “A test of general relativity using the LARES and LAGEOS satellites and a GRACE Earth gravity model, by I. Ciufolini et al.””

We revisit charged lepton flavor violating (CLFV) scattering processes âiNâÏX(âiâe,Î¼) mediated by Higgs. We point out that a new subprocess âigâÏg via the effective interactions of Higgs and gluon gives the dominant contribution to âiNâÏX for an incident beam energy of Eââ²1Â TeV in fixed target experiments. Furthermore, in the light of quark number conservation, we consider quark pair-production processes âigâÏqqÂ¯ ( q denotes quarks) instead of âiqâÏq . This corrects the threshold energy of each subprocess contributing to Ï(âiNâÏX) . Reevaluation of Ï(âiNâÏX) including all of relevant subprocesses shows that the search for âiNâÏX could serve a complementary opportunity with other relevant processes to shed light on the Higgs CLFV.

Japan

Michihisa Takeuchi

Yuichi Uesaka

Masato Yamanaka

Higgs mediated CLFV processes μN ( eN )→ τX via gluon operators

Recently, Ciufolini et al. reported on a test of the general relativistic gravitomagnetic Lense–Thirring effect by analyzing about 3.5 years of laser ranging data to the LAGEOS, LAGEOS II, LARES geodetic satellites orbiting the Earth. By using the GRACE-based GGM05S Earth’s global gravity model and a linear combination of the nodes $$ \Omega $$ <math><mi>Ω</mi></math>  of the three satellites designed to remove the impact of errors in the first two even zonal harmonic coefficients $$J_2, J_4$$ <math><mrow><msub><mi>J</mi><mn>2</mn></msub><mo>,</mo><msub><mi>J</mi><mn>4</mn></msub></mrow></math>  of the multipolar expansion of the Newtonian part of the Earth’s gravitational potential, they claimed an overall accuracy of $${5}\%$$ <math><mrow><mn>5</mn><mo>%</mo></mrow></math>  for the Lense–Thirring caused node motion. We show that the scatter in the nominal values of the uncancelled even zonals of degree $$\ell = 6,~8,~{10}$$ <math><mrow><mi>ℓ</mi><mo>=</mo><mn>6</mn><mo>,</mo><mspace width="3.33333pt"></mspace><mn>8</mn><mo>,</mo><mspace width="3.33333pt"></mspace><mn>10</mn></mrow></math>  from some of the most recent global gravity models does not yet allow to reach unambiguously and univocally the expected $${\approx }1\%$$ <math><mrow><mo>≈</mo><mn>1</mn><mo>%</mo></mrow></math>  level, being large up to $${\lesssim }15\%~(\ell =6),~6\%~(\ell =8),~36\%~(\ell =10)$$ <math><mrow><mo>≲</mo><mn>15</mn><mo>%</mo><mspace width="3.33333pt"></mspace><mo>(</mo><mi>ℓ</mi><mo>=</mo><mn>6</mn><mo>)</mo><mo>,</mo><mspace width="3.33333pt"></mspace><mn>6</mn><mo>%</mo><mspace width="3.33333pt"></mspace><mo>(</mo><mi>ℓ</mi><mo>=</mo><mn>8</mn><mo>)</mo><mo>,</mo><mspace width="3.33333pt"></mspace><mn>36</mn><mo>%</mo><mspace width="3.33333pt"></mspace><mo>(</mo><mi>ℓ</mi><mo>=</mo><mn>10</mn><mo>)</mo></mrow></math>  for some pairs of models.

Lorenzo Iorio

A comment on “A test of general relativity using the LARES and LAGEOS satellites and a GRACE Earth gravity model”, by I. Ciufolini et al.

In a recent paper in EPJC January 2016, Faizal, Khalil and Das have proposed time crystals with duration several orders of magnitude greater than Planck scale. We comment on this paper and shed further light on this aspect.

B.G. Sidharth

Comment on Faizal et al EPJC 76:30