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.

Russia

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/

Off-shell characteristics of pion generalized parton distributions (GPDs) and transverse momentum dependent parton distributions (TMDs) are examined within the framework of the Nambu–Jona-Lasinio model. In our previous studies, we separately investigated the properties of on-shell pion GPDs and light-front wave functions. Comparing the differences between on-shell and off-shell pion GPDs is particularly intriguing becuase it enables us to explore the effects associated with off-shellness. The absence of crossing symmetry causes the moments of GPDs to incorporate odd powers of the skewness parameter, resulting in new off-shell form factors. Through our calculations, we derived correction functions that account for modifications in pion GPDs attributed to off-shell effects. Unlike their on-shell counterparts, certain properties break down in the off-shell scenario; for example, symmetry properties and polynomiality conditions may no longer hold. In addition, we evaluate off-shell TMDs and compare them with their on-shell equivalents while also investigating their dependence on $ {\boldsymbol{k}}_{\perp} $ .

China

Jin-Li Zhang

Off-shell modifications of pion generalized parton distributions and transverse momentum dependent parton distributions * Supported by the Scientific Research Foundation of Nanjing Institute of Technology (YKJ202352) and the General Program of the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions (25KJD140001)

Inspired by the observation of the ${\eta}_{t}$ meson at the LHC and the promising prospect of the ${\eta}_{t}$ meson available at the approaching HL-LHC, branching ratios for the ${\eta}_{t}$ ${\to}$ $f\bar{f}$ , $gg$ , ${\gamma}{\gamma}$ , $W^{+}W^{-}$ , $Z^{0}Z^{0}$ , $Z^{0}{\gamma}$ , and $Z^{0}H$ decays are roughly estimated. It is found that tens of opposite-charge dilepton events from the ${\eta}_{t}$ ${\to}$ $W^{+}W^{-}$ decay and hundreds of events from the ${\eta}_{t}$ ${\to}$ $Z^{0}H$ ${\to}$ ${\ell}^{+}{\ell}^{-}H$ decay using the single $Z^{0}$ boson tagging method are expected to be accessible. This estimation provides a reference for future experimental study on the ${\eta}_{t}$ meson.

Yueling Yang

Bingbing Yang

Jiazhi Li

Zhaojie Lü

Junfeng Sun

Searching for the toponium ${{\boldsymbol\eta}_{\boldsymbol t}}$ with the ${{\boldsymbol\eta}_{\boldsymbol t}}$ ${\boldsymbol\to}$ ${{\boldsymbol W}^{\bf +}{\boldsymbol W}^{\bf -}}$ decay * Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (12275068, 12275067), the National Key R&D Program of China (2023YFA1606000), the Natural Science Foundation of Henan Province (252300421491, 242300420250), and the Science and Technology R&D Program Joint Fund Project of Henan Province (225200810030), as well as the Science and Technology Innovation Leading Talent Support Program of Henan Province (254200510039)

The Circular Electron Positron Collider (CEPC) is designed to operate at key center-of-mass energies: 91.2 GeV as a $\textit{Z}$ factory for precision $\textit{Z}$ boson studies, ≈ 160 GeV at the threshold for $\textit{W}$ boson pair production, and 240 GeV as a Higgs factory for copious Higgs boson production. It can be upgraded to 360 GeV (CEPC-360 GeV) for enabling top quark-antiquark ( $ t\bar{t}$ ) pair production. Beyond enabling high-precision measurements of the Standard Model (SM), CEPC-360 GeV is uniquely positioned to perform searches for new physics beyond the SM (BSM), serving as a valuable complement to hadron colliders. This paper presents a sensitivity study on the direct pair production of staus and smuons at the CEPC with $ \sqrt{s}$ = 360 GeV, conducted via full Monte Carlo simulation. Under the assumptions of 1.0 ab$^{−1}$ integrated luminosity and a flat 5% systematic uncertainty, CEPC-360 GeV could potentially discover the combined production of left-handed and right-handed staus up to a mass of 170 GeV (if they exist) or up to 169 for pure left-handed staus and 162 GeV for pure right-handed staus. For direct smuon production, the discovery potential reaches up to 178 GeV under the same conditions.

Feng Lyu

Jiarong Yuan

Huajie Cheng

Jianxiong Wang

Rabia Hameed

Da Xu

Xuai Zhuang

Search potential for direct slepton pair production at the CEPC with ${ \sqrt{\boldsymbol s}}$ = 360 GeV * Supported by the State Key Program of National Natural Science of China (2018YFA0404000, 12135013)

Heavy Majorana neutrinos ($\textit{N}$) are predicted in many models of physics beyond the Standard Model. In this work, we explore the production and detection prospects of TeV-scale heavy neutrinos ( $ m_N \gtrsim 1 $ TeV) at a future 3 TeV Compact Linear Collider (CLIC). We focus on two distinct decay topologies: (i) $ N \to \ell^\pm W^\mp $ with hadronic $\textit{W}$ boson decay, leading to a final state with one charged lepton and a hadronic fat jet $ J_W $ ; and (ii) $ N \to \nu h $ with subsequent Higgs decay $ h \to b\bar{b} $ , yielding a Higgs-tagged fat jet $ J_h $ and $\not {E}_T$ . Based on comprehensive detector-level simulations and background analysis, we present both $ 2\sigma $ exclusion limits and $ 5\sigma $ discovery reaches in the $ m_N $ – $ |V_{\ell N}|^2 $ plane. We further extract 95% confidence level upper limits on the mixing parameter $ |V_{\ell N}|^2 $ and perform a detailed comparison with existing constraints from direct searches at future colliders and indirect global fits. Our findings demonstrate that a 3 TeV CLIC can improve the sensitivity to $ |V_{\ell N}|^2 $ by about two orders of magnitude compared with the projected reaches of future hadron colliders while remaining competitive with other CLIC search channels.

Yao-Bei Liu

Jing-Wei Lian

Searches for heavy neutrinos at a 3 TeV CLIC in fat jet final states * Yao-Bei Liu is supported by the Natural Science Foundation of Henan Province, China (252300421988), Jing-Wei Lian is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (12447140) and the Natural Science Foundation of Henan Province, China (252300421771)

Quantum chromodynamics (QCD) is a fundamental theory describing quark interactions. Thus far, various quark models based on QCD have been widely used to study the properties of hadrons, including their structures and mass spectra. However, unlike quantum electrodynamics and Bohr's model of the hydrogen atom, a direct classical analogy is lacking for hadronic structures. This paper presents a classical interpretation of the nonrelativistic quark potential model, providing a more intuitive and visualizable description of strong interactions through the quantitative formulation of color charge and color flux. In addition, we establish the relationship between meson mass and its structural radius in the nonrelativistic framework and estimate key parameters of our model using available data from $ \eta_b(1S) $ and $ \Upsilon(1S) $ . Subsequently, we extend this relationship to a broader range of excited meson states and obtain their structural radii, which show good agreement with the root mean square radius or charge radius predicted by QCD calculations.

Zhiguang Tan

Youneng Guo

Shengjie Wang

Hua Zheng

Classical interpretation of nonrelativistic quark potential model: Color charge definition and meson mass-radius relationship * Supported in part by the Department of Education (21A0541) and Natural Science Foundation (2025JJ50382) of Hunan province, China

Higgs self-coupling is crucial to understand the structure of the scalar potential and the mechanism of electroweak symmetry breaking. In this study, we utilize a deep neural network based on a particle Transformer model that relies on an attention mechanism to comprehensively analyze the measured trilinear Higgs self-coupling through Higgs pair production with subsequent decay into four $\textit{b}$-quarks ( $ HH\to b\bar{b}b\bar{b} $ ) at the LHC. The model processes the full event-level information as input and bypasses explicit jet pairing. It also serves as an event classifier. At HL-LHC, our approach constrains $ \kappa_\lambda $ to $ (-0.25,\,5.41) $ at 68% CL, and thus achieved an improvement of ~44% in precision over conventional cut-based analyses. The results of a comparison against alternative machine learning architectures demonstrate the outstanding performance of the Transformer-based model owing to its ability to capture correlations in high-dimensional collision data with the help of the attention mechanism. These findings highlight the potential of attention-based networks and end-to-end event classifiers in collider phenomenology.

Yongcheng Wu

Liang Xiao

Yan Zhang

Deep learning to improve the sensitivity of Higgs pair searches in the 4$\textit{b}$ channel at the LHC * Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NNSFC) (12305112)

Neutrino oscillation experiments have confirmed that neutrinos are massive particles and that lepton flavors are mixed. To explain the observed lepton mass spectra and flavor mixing patterns, flavor symmetry plays a crucial and unique role. In this paper, we propose a useful symmetry-breaking scheme by applying $S_{3L} \times S_{3R} \rightarrow $ $ S_{2L} \times S_{2R} \rightarrow \emptyset$ within both charged-lepton and neutrino sectors at the mass-matrix level. For the three distinct residual subgroups $S_{2L}^{(23)} \times S_{2R}^{(23)}$ , $S_{2L}^{(13)} \times S_{2R}^{(13)}$ , and $S_{2L}^{(12)} \times S_{2R}^{(12)}$ that are under consideration, we systematically analyze the various parameterizations of the lepton mass matrices. It is shown that all three scenarios are in good agreement with current neutrino oscillation data. Notably, within the latest best-fit values of neutrino oscillation parameters, the predicted values of the Dirac CP-violating phase $\textit{δ}$ are $294.6^\circ$ , $302.3^\circ$ , and $287.0^\circ$ , respectively. To further assess the viability of the model, a comprehensive numerical analysis is performed by utilizing neutrino oscillation parameters at the $3\sigma$ level. It is found that the allowed ranges of $\textit{δ}$ are $281.2^\circ \rightarrow 338.7^\circ$ , $287.0^\circ \rightarrow 342.2^\circ$ , and $282.7^\circ \rightarrow 297.0^\circ$ , which all fall within its $3\sigma$ range. These results indicate that the proposed symmetry-breaking scheme $S_{3L} \times S_{3R} \rightarrow S_{2L} \times S_{2R} \rightarrow \emptyset$ can naturally explain the realistic lepton mass hierarchy and mixing pattern, thereby providing valuable theoretical perspectives for future research.

Chang-Qi Hu

Chun-Yuan Li

Xiao Liang

Xing-Hua Yang

Dai-Xing Zhang

Further study on lepton mass spectra and flavor mixing with $\textit{S}$ 3$\textit{L}$ × $\textit{S}$ 3$\textit{R}$ flavor symmetry * Supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (12105162, 12305106), the Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province (ZR2021QA058, ZR2021QA040) and the Youth Innovation Technology Project of Higher School in Shandong Province (2023KJ146)

<p>The first observation of the decay <math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mrow><msup><mrow><mi>B</mi></mrow><mrow><mo>+</mo></mrow></msup><mo stretchy="false">→</mo><mi>p</mi><mover accent="true"><mrow><mi mathvariant="normal">Λ</mi></mrow><mrow><mo stretchy="false">¯</mo></mrow></mover></mrow></math> is presented using proton-proton collision data collected by the LHCb experiment between 2016 and 2018 at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of <math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mrow><mn>5.4</mn><mtext> </mtext><mtext> </mtext><msup><mrow><mi>fb</mi></mrow><mrow><mo>−</mo><mn>1</mn></mrow></msup></mrow></math>. The signal significance exceeds seven standard deviations. Using the <math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><msup><mi>B</mi><mo>+</mo></msup><mo stretchy="false">→</mo><msubsup><mi>K</mi><mi mathvariant="normal">S</mi><mn>0</mn></msubsup><msup><mi>π</mi><mo>+</mo></msup></math> decay as a normalization channel, the branching fraction is measured and combined with previous LHCb results based on data collected at 7 and 8 TeV in 2011 and 2012, yielding <math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mrow><mi mathvariant="script">B</mi><mo stretchy="false">(</mo><msup><mrow><mi>B</mi></mrow><mrow><mo>+</mo></mrow></msup><mo stretchy="false">→</mo><mi>p</mi><mover accent="true"><mrow><mi mathvariant="normal">Λ</mi></mrow><mrow><mo stretchy="false">¯</mo></mrow></mover><mo stretchy="false">)</mo><mo>=</mo><mo stretchy="false">(</mo><mn>1.24</mn><mo>±</mo><mn>0.17</mn><mo>±</mo><mn>0.05</mn><mo>±</mo><mn>0.03</mn><mo stretchy="false">)</mo><mo>×</mo><msup><mrow><mn>10</mn></mrow><mrow><mo>−</mo><mn>7</mn></mrow></msup><mo>,</mo></mrow></math> where the first uncertainty is statistical, the second is systematic, and the third comes from the uncertainty on the branching fraction of the normalization channel. The <math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mrow><msup><mrow><mi>B</mi></mrow><mrow><mo>+</mo></mrow></msup><mo stretchy="false">→</mo><mi>p</mi><mover accent="true"><mrow><mi mathvariant="normal">Λ</mi></mrow><mrow><mo stretchy="false">¯</mo></mrow></mover></mrow></math> weak decay parameter is measured to be <math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mrow><msub><mrow><mi>α</mi></mrow><mrow><mi>B</mi></mrow></msub><mo>=</mo><mn>0.8</mn><msubsup><mrow><mn>7</mn></mrow><mrow><mo>−</mo><mn>0.29</mn></mrow><mrow><mo>+</mo><mn>0.26</mn></mrow></msubsup><mo>±</mo><mn>0.09</mn></mrow></math>, indicating the presence of comparable S-wave and P-wave decay amplitudes.</p>

Netherlands

R. Aaij

United Kingdom

A.S.W. Abdelmotteleb

Switzerland

C. Abellan Beteta

F. Abudinén

T. Ackernley

United States

A.A. Adefisoye

Spain

B. Adeva

M. Adinolfi

P. Adlarson

France

C. Agapopoulou

C.A. Aidala

Z. Ajaltouni

S. Akar

K. Akiba

Italy

P. Albicocco

Germany

J. Albrecht

R. Aleksiejunas

CERN

F. Alessio

P. Alvarez Cartelle

R. Amalric

Brazil

S. Amato

J.L. Amey

Y. Amhis

L. An

L. Anderlini

M. Andersson

P. Andreola

M. Andreotti

S. Andres Estrada

A. Anelli

D. Ao

C. Arata

F. Archilli

Z. Areg

M. Argenton

Costa Rica

S. Arguedas Cuendis

L. Arnone

A. Artamonov

M. Artuso

E. Aslanides

R. Ataíde Da Silva

M. Atzeni

B. Audurier

J.A. Authier

D. Bacher

I. Bachiller Perea

S. Bachmann

M. Bachmayer

J.J. Back

P. Baladron Rodriguez

V. Balagura

A. Balboni

W. Baldini

Z. Baldwin

L. Balzani

H. Bao

J. Baptista de Souza Leite

C. Barbero Pretel

M. Barbetti

I.R. Barbosa

R.J. Barlow

M. Barnyakov

S. Barsuk

W. Barter

J. Bartz

Poland

S. Bashir

B. Batsukh

P.B. Battista

A. Bay

A. Beck

M. Becker

F. Bedeschi

I.B. Bediaga

N.A. Behling

S. Belin

A. Bellavista

K. Belous

I. Belov

I. Belyaev

G. Benane

G. Bencivenni

E. Ben-Haim

A. Berezhnoy

R. Bernet

S. Bernet Andres

A. Bertolin

F. Betti

J. Bex

O. Bezshyyko

S. Bhattacharya

J. Bhom

M.S. Bieker

N.V. Biesuz

A. Biolchini

M. Birch

F.C.R. Bishop

A. Bitadze

A. Bizzeti

T. Blake

F. Blanc

Observation of the Rare Baryonic Decay <math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mrow><msup><mrow><mi>B</mi></mrow><mrow><mo>+</mo></mrow></msup><mo stretchy="false">→</mo><mi>p</mi><mover accent="true"><mrow><mi mathvariant="normal">Λ</mi></mrow><mrow><mo stretchy="false">¯</mo></mrow></mover></mrow></math> and Measurement of its Weak Decay Parameter

<p>Lattice simulations of two-color, two-flavor quantum chromodynamics (QCD) at finite quark chemical potential have revealed a distinctive peak structure in the sound velocity. Although chiral perturbation theory (ChPT) and the Nambu-Jona-Lasinio (NJL) model have been employed to explain this phenomenon, neither approach has fully captured the observed behavior. To address this discrepancy, we have extended the NJL framework by incorporating the medium separation scheme (MSS). This approach isolates medium contributions from divergent integrals, allowing for a more accurate treatment of finite-density effects. Our results indicate a clear increase in the diquark gap (<math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mi mathvariant="normal">Δ</mi></math>) with increasing chemical potential, consistent with what is also seen in perturbative QCD predictions at high densities. Furthermore, the MSS-modified NJL model successfully reproduces the observed peak in the sound velocity.</p>

Arthur E.B. Pasqualotto

Dyana C. Duarte

Ricardo L.S. Farias

Rudnei O. Ramos

Speed of sound peak in two-color dense QCD: Confronting effective models with lattice data