We formulate QCD discretized on the four-dimensional 16-cell honeycomb. The advantage is a higher degree of rotational symmetry as compared to a traditional cubic lattice leading to much smaller cutoff effects. We demonstrate in quenched QCD, through both gluonic and fermionic observables, that the scaling properties are indeed superior to the cubic lattice and much larger lattice spacings are sufficient for controlled continuum extrapolations. Chiral and topological properties also show remarkable improvement.

Hungary

Sandor D. Katz

Daniel Nogradi

QCD on the 16-cell honeycomb

The presence of $$\alpha $$ clustered structures in light nuclei can enhance the initial spatial anisotropies in relativistic nuclear collisions relative to those arising from nuclei with uniform density distributions. Thus, observables that are strongly sensitive to the initial geometry can be a more efficient probe of the clustered structures than observables dominated by final state dynamics. We investigate the collisions of $$\alpha $$ clustered oxygen nuclei at $$\sqrt{s_{NN}}=7$$ A TeV at the LHC using the GLISSANDO initial state model along with the MUSIC event-by-event hydrodynamical framework. The tetrahedral $$\alpha $$ clustered structure of $$^{16}$$ O leads to significantly larger initial triangular eccentricity $$\epsilon _3$$ than collisions with uniform density distributions especially in the most central events. The spatial eccentricity $$\epsilon _2$$ is found to be relatively less sensitive to the initial state clustered structure. The production of thermal photons is estimated to be only marginally influenced by clustering for both central as well as peripheral collisions. In contrast, the photon triangular flow coefficient $$v_3(p_T)$$ is strongly affected by initial state clustering resulting in substantially larger values in both central and peripheral collisions. An experimental determination of photon anisotropic flow together with the ratios of flow coefficients in $$^{16}$$ O+ $$^{16}$$ O collisions therefore expected to provide valuable insight into the possible clustered structure in light nuclei and also to constrain parameters in theoretical modeling.

India

Sanchari Thakur

Spain

Pingal Dasgupta

Rupa Chatterjee

Sinjini Chandra

Sidharth Prasad

Probing initial state clustering through photon anisotropic flow in 7A TeV $$^{16}$$ O+ $$^{16}$$ O collisions at the LHC

<list id='lst0001'><list-item id='lstitem0001'><label>&#8226;</label><para id='p0001'>This study successfully utilized <math altimg='si3.svg'><mrow><msup><mrow /><mn>16</mn></msup><mi>O</mi><mo linebreak='goodbreak'>=</mo><mrow><mo>(</mo><msup><mrow /><mn>12</mn></msup><mi>C</mi><mo>&#8853;</mo><mi>&#945;</mi><mo>)</mo></mrow></mrow></math> as the Trojan nucleus, capitalizing on its low binding energy (<italic>e<inf>a</inf></italic> = 7.16 MeV).</para></list-item><list-item id='lstitem0002'><label>&#8226;</label><para id='p0002'>Beam-stopper foil enabled first measurement of spectator particles near 0&#176;, where quasi-free mechanism predicts peak yield.</para></list-item><list-item id='lstitem0003'><label>&#8226;</label><para id='p0003'>Indirect measurement revealed resonance features near 1.5 MeV, supporting conclusions of earlier indirect work (THM2018).</para></list-item><list-item id='lstitem0004'><label>&#8226;</label><para id='p0004'>Overall trends agree with THM-Tumino2018 and TTIK2025 data, but differ significantly from Modified-THM-Muk2019 results.</para></list-item><list-item id='lstitem0005'><label>&#8226;</label><para id='p0005'>We observe no evidence for hindrance in the energy range.</para></list-item></list>

China

Chengbo Li

Huiming Jia

Qungang Wen

Chengjian Lin

Lei Yang

Feng Yang

Nanru Ma

Peiwei Wen

Tianpeng Luo

Chang Chang

Xuepeng Sun

Xuejian Wang

S*(E) measurement of the 12 <italic>C</italic>( 12 <italic>C, &#945;</italic>) 20 <italic>Ne</italic> reaction at astrophysical energies via the Trojan horse method with 16 <italic>O</italic> quasi-free breakup

Recently, a semi-microscopic structure model has been presented to study the structure of a weakly-bound, two-body nucleus with a deformed core, including Pauli-blocking effects. The model has been successfully applied within the adiabatic distorted wave approximation (ADWA) reaction framework to study the reactions 16C(d, p) 17C, restricting the analysis to bound states of the residual 17C nucleus. In these calculations, the structure of 17C is described using the recently presented semimicroscopic Nilsson+AMD model (NAMD), considering different Pauli-blocking methods. In the present work, the analysis is extended to unbound states of this nucleus with the aim of constraining the location of the 1 <italic>d</italic> <inf>3/2</inf> single-particle strength and infer the <math altimg='si3.svg'><mrow><mi>N</mi><mo linebreak='goodbreak'>=</mo><mn>16</mn></mrow></math> shell-gap. Comparing the measured energy differential cross section for this reaction with calculations in which the position of the 1 <italic>d</italic> <inf>3/2</inf> orbital is arbitrarily varied, we conclude that a large shell-gap (&#8239;&gt;&#8239;5 MeV) is required, in agreement with recently reported value from [J. Lois-Fuentes et al., Phys. Lett. B 867, 139600 (2025)].

P. Punta

J.A. Lay

A.M. Moro

J. Lois-Fuentes

B. Fernández-Domínguez

Constraining the N=16 shell gap in 17C via transfer to the continuum in the 16C( <italic>d, p</italic>) 17C reaction

<list id='lst0001'><list-item id='lstitem0001'><label>&#8226;</label><para id='p0001'>Tensor interactions are a key component of the nucleon&#8211;nucleon interactions.</para></list-item><list-item id='lstitem0002'><label>&#8226;</label><para id='p0002'>They create strong proton&#8211;neutron correlations and high-momentum components.</para></list-item><list-item id='lstitem0003'><label>&#8226;</label><para id='p0003'>Tensor interactions affect shell evolution and magic numbers far from stability.</para></list-item><list-item id='lstitem0004'><label>&#8226;</label><para id='p0004'>Knockout reactions probe high-momentum nucleons but are difficult for rare isotopes.</para></list-item><list-item id='lstitem0005'><label>&#8226;</label><para id='p0005'>Zero-degree neutron pickup sensitively probes tensor-driven high momentum nucleons.</para></list-item></list>

Japan

X. Wang

H.J. Ong

S. Terashima

I. Tanihata

Y.K. Tanaka

Germany

H. Geissel

N. Aoi

Y. Ayyad

J. Benlliure

F. Farinon

H. Fujioka

Netherlands

J. Gellanki

C.L. Guo

E. Haettner

W.L. Hai

M.N. Harakeh

C. Hornung

K. Itahashi

Slovakia

R. Janik

N. Kalantar-Nayestanaki

R. Knöbel

N. Kurz

K. Miki

I. Mukha

T. Myo

T. Nishi

D.Y. Pang

S. Pietri

A. Prochazka

C. Rappold

M.P. Reiter

J.L. Rodríguez-Sánchez

C. Scheidenberger

H. Simon

B. Sitar

P. Strmen

B.H. Sun

Austria

K. Suzuki

H. Toki

H. Weick

E. Widmann

J.S. Winfield

X.D. Xu

J.W. Zhao

Observation of tensor-driven high-momentum neutrons in 16O via ( <italic>p, d</italic>) reactions and zero-degree deuteron momentum spectroscopy

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

Kai Adamowicz

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

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

The reduced cross section of the semiexclusive <math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mo stretchy="false">(</mo><mi>l</mi><mo>,</mo><msup><mi>l</mi><mo>′</mo></msup><mi>p</mi><mo stretchy="false">)</mo></math> lepton scattering process irrespective of the type of interaction is determined mainly by the bound nucleon momentum distribution in the target and nucleon final state interaction with the residual nucleus. These cross sections can be identified with distorted nuclear spectral functions and therefore, they are similar up to Coulomb corrections for neutrino and electron scattering on nuclei. In this article, we exploit this similarity and use data with precise kinematics and large statistics for semiexclusive electron scattering on an oxygen target to test models employed in the genie neutrino event generator. We find that these models cannot reproduce well the measured reduced cross sections in all allowed kinematic regions and the genie event generator needs to describe better both the nuclear ground states and nucleon final state interaction. The approach presented in this paper provides a great opportunity to better test the accuracy of nuclear models of quasielastic neutrino-nucleus scattering, employed in neutrino event generators.

A.V. Butkevich

S.V. Luchuk

Test of the <math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mrow><mi mathsize="small">G</mi><mi mathsize="small">E</mi><mi mathsize="small">N</mi><mi mathsize="small">I</mi><mi mathsize="small">E</mi></mrow></math> neutrino event generator against reduced cross sections extracted from <math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mrow><mrow><mmultiscripts><mrow><mi mathvariant="normal">O</mi></mrow><mprescripts></mprescripts><none></none><mrow><mn>16</mn></mrow></mmultiscripts></mrow><mo stretchy="false">(</mo><mi>e</mi><mo>,</mo><msup><mrow><mi>e</mi></mrow><mrow><mo>′</mo></mrow></msup><mi>p</mi><mo stretchy="false">)</mo></mrow></math> data