We assess the impact of measuring deeply virtual Compton scattering (DVCS) off protons using the planned detector at the Electron-Ion Collider in China (EicC), which is proposed as an upgrade to the High Intensity Heavy-Ion Accelerator Facility (HIAF). We develop a neural-network architecture to flexibly parameterize Compton form factors (CFFs), reliably extrapolate into unmeasured kinematic regions, and provide robust uncertainty estimates using the replica method. The framework is fitted to available worldwide DVCS data using the $ {\mathrm{Gepard}}$ software. We find a significant reduction in the uncertainties of all CFFs after incorporating pseudo-data from single and double polarization asymmetries at the EicC, with particularly strong improvements in the sea-quark region.

China

Yuan-Yuan Huang

Xu Cao

Taifu Feng

Croatia

Krešimir Kumerički

Yu Lu

Assessing the impact of the Electron-Ion Collider in China on deeply virtual Compton scattering * Supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (2023YFA1606703), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (12547111, 12235008, 12405105) and (PK.1.1.10.0004) co-financed by the European Union and through the European Regional Development Fund - Competitiveness and Cohesion Programme 2021-2027. TF also thanks the Hebei Natural Science Foundation (A2022201017, A2023201041) and Natural Science Foundation of Guangxi Autonomous Region (2022GXNSFDA035068)

We present a comprehensive bottom-up analysis of lepton mass and mixing based on the non-holomorphic $A_{4}$ modular symmetry. Neutrinos are assumed to be Majorana particles, and the light neutrino masses are generated through the Weinberg operator. In this framework, we construct all phenomenologically viable models with minimal number of free parameters, with the Yukawa couplings expressed in terms of polyharmonic Maaß forms of weights $\pm4$ , $\pm2$ , and 0 at level $N=3$ . Without imposing generalized CP (gCP) symmetry, we identify 147 (six) viable models with eight real free parameters that successfully reproduce the current experimental data of the lepton sector for the normal (inverted) mass ordering. When gCP symmetry consistent with $A_{4}$ modular symmetry is included, the number of free parameters is reduced by one, yielding 47 (five) phenomenologically viable models in the normal (inverted) mass ordering. Finally, we present detailed numerical analyses of a representative model for both mass orderings to illustrate these results.

Xiang-Yan Gao

Cai-Chang Li

Minimal lepton models with non-holomorphic modular $\textit{A}$ $_{4}$ symmetry * Supported by Natural Science Basic Research Program of Shaanxi (2024JC-YBQN-0004) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (12547106, 12247103)

The quark-mass dependence of the $ N^*(920) $ pole is analyzed using the $\textit{K}$-matrix method, with the $ \pi N $ scattering amplitude calculated up to the $ O(p^3) $ order in the chiral perturbation theory. As the quark mass increases, the $ N^*(920) $ pole gradually approaches the real axis in the complex $\textit{w}$-plane (where $ w=\sqrt{s} $ ). Eventually, in the $ O(p^2) $ case, it crosses the $\textit{u}$-cut on the real axis and enters the adjacent Riemann sheet when the pion mass reaches $ 526\; {\rm{MeV}} $ . At order $ O(p^3) $ , the rate at which it approaches the real axis decreases; however, it remains uncertain whether it will ultimately cross the $\textit{u}$-cut and enter the adjacent Riemann sheet. In addition, the trajectory of the $N^*(920)$ pole is in qualitative agreement with the results from the linear $\textit{σ}$ model calculation.

Xu Wang

Kai-Ge Kang

Qu-Zhi Li

Zhiguang Xiao

Han-Qing Zheng

Studies on quark-mass dependence of the $\textit{N}$ $^{*}$(920) pole from unitarized $\textit{πN}$ $\textit{χ}$PT amplitudes * Supported by China National Natural Science Foundation (12335002, 12375078) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities

Within the framework of Dyson-Schwinger equations (DSEs) and by means of the Multiple Reflection Expansion approximation, we study the finite volume effects on the constituent quark mass in a strong external magnetic field. Since the magnetic field influences the coupling constant, which controls the strength of strong interactions in QCD, we adopt the magnetic-field-dependent running coupling constant in our simulations. The results show that, in addition to the magnetic field, the masses of constituent quarks also have a significant dependence on the volume and the running coupling constant. The model behaves closely to the infinite volume limit for large sizes, but the effect of the finite volume is significant when the system size $\textit{R}$ is about $ 2-6 $ fm. The finite volume effects and the magnetic-field-dependent running coupling constant have considerable influence on the phase transition.

Li-Juan Zhou

De-Xian Wei

Zhong-Yi Liu

Hong-Wei Zhong

Dynamical quark mass and finite volume effects in the Dyson-Schwinger equations * Li-Juan Zhou has been supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (11865005), the Natural Science Foundation of Guangxi (China) (2025GXNSFAA069552). De-Xian Wei has been supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (12105057), the Natural Science Foundation of Guangxi (China) (2023GXNSFAA026020)

The interference between amplitudes corresponding to different intermediate resonances plays an important role in generating large CP asymmetries in the phase space in multi-body decays of bottom and charmed mesons. In this study, we examine the CP violation in the decay channel $ {\overline{B}}^{0}\rightarrow K^{-}\pi^{+}\pi^{0} $ in the phase-space region where the intermediate resonances $ \overline{K}^{*}(892)^{0} $ and $ {\overline{K}^{*}_{0}(700)} $ dominate. In particular, the forward-backward asymmetry (FBA) and the CP asymmetry induced by FBA (FB-CPA), which are closely related to the interference effects between the two aforementioned resonances, are investigated. The nontrivial correlation between FBA and FB-CPA is analyzed. The analysis indicates that FB-CPAs around the resonance $ \overline{K}^{*}(892)^{0} $ can be as large as approximately 35%, which can be potentially accessible by Belle and Belle-II collaborations in the near future.

Jian-Yu Yang

Yu-Jie Zhao

Jing-Juan Qi

Zhen-Hua Zhang

The forward-backward asymmetry induced CP asymmetry in ${{\overline{B}}^{0}\rightarrow K^{-}\pi^{+}\pi^{0}}$ in phase space around the resonances ${{\overline{K}}^{*}(892)^{0}}$ and ${{\overline{K}}^{*}_{0}(700)}$ * Supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (12475096, 12405115, 12192261) and Scientific Research Fund of Hunan Provincial Education Department (22A0319)

Motivated by the observation of the doubly charmed tetraquark $ T_{cc}(3875)^+ $ , we present a systematic study of doubly heavy tetraquarks ( $ T_{QQ'\bar{q}\bar{q}'} $ ) using heavy antiquark-diquark symmetry (HADS) within a constituent quark model. By calibrating model parameters to known hadron spectra and incorporating the effective mass formula, we predict the masses for 38 ground-state tetraquarks with $ cc $ , $ bb $ , and $ bc $ heavy quark pairs, including the non-strange, single-strange, and double-strange configurations with quantum numbers $ J^P = 0^+, 1^+ $ and $ 2^+ $ . Notably, we identify several stable states below the relevant meson-meson thresholds, particularly in the $ bb\bar{q}\bar{q}' $ sector. The explicit connection between the doubly heavy tetraquark and the heavy baryon spectra through HADS reduces model dependence and reveals the fundamental systematics in the heavy-quark hadron landscape.

Liu-Yu Zhang

Tian-Wei Wu

Yong-Liang Ma

Bridging doubly heavy tetraquark mass spectrum with heavy baryons utilizing heavy antiquark-diquark symmetry * The work of Tian-Wei Wu is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (12405108). Yong-Liang Ma is supported in part by the National Science Foundation of China (NSFC) (12347103) and Gusu Talent Innovation Program (ZXL2024363)

The Schwinger effect, a non-perturbative mechanism for particle production in strong fields, plays a crucial role in understanding quantum vacuum decay and high-energy phenomena, including heavy-ion collisions (HIC). Although holographic quantum chromodynamics (QCD) models have been widely used to study this effect, most treatments assume isotropy or consider only a single type of anisotropy, neglecting the interplay between spatial and magnetic anisotropies that arise in realistic HIC scenarios. A unified framework accounting for both anisotropies is needed to accurately model particle production. We investigate the Schwinger effect in a twice anisotropic holographic QCD model incorporating both spatial and magnetic anisotropies. Using the anti-de Sitter/conformal field theory correspondence, we compute the total potential of a particle-antiparticle pair to quantify how these anisotropies influence pair production. Our results show that the magnetic field (parameterized by $c_B$ and $q_3$ ) enhances the Schwinger effect by lowering and narrowing the potential barrier, while increasing spatial anisotropy (controlled by $\nu$ ) suppresses the process by raising and widening the barrier. These findings demonstrate that magnetic and spatial anisotropies exert competing effects on particle production, emphasizing the necessity of treating both concurrently in holographic models. This work advances the theoretical description of the Schwinger effect in anisotropic environments, with implications for understanding non-equilibrium dynamics in HIC and other strongly coupled systems.

Wen-Bin Chang

Defu Hou

Schwinger effect in a twice anisotropic holographic model * Defu Hou's research is supported in part by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2022YFA1604900). Additionally, Defu Hou receives partial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) (12435009, 12275104). Wen-Bin Chang is supported by the Ph.D. Research Startup Project at Hubei Minzu University (RZ2500000857)

With the forthcoming deployment of the IceCube Upgrade, unprecedented statistics of atmospheric neutrinos in the energy range (1–100) GeV will become available, providing a valuable opportunity to probe physics beyond the Standard Model in the neutrino sector. In this study, we calculate the sensitivity of the IceCube Upgrade to sterile neutrinos with mass-squared splittings <math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mo>≲</mo><mn>1</mn><mtext> </mtext><mtext> </mtext><msup><mi>eV</mi><mn>2</mn></msup></math>. We demonstrate that, particularly due to the (1–10) GeV energy window, <math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><msub><mi>ν</mi><mi>μ</mi></msub><mo>−</mo><msub><mi>ν</mi><mi>s</mi></msub></math> mixing angles as small as <math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mo>∼</mo><mn>5</mn><mi>°</mi></math> can be probed by the IceCube Upgrade for all mass-squared splittings below <math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mn>1</mn><mtext> </mtext><mtext> </mtext><msup><mi>eV</mi><mn>2</mn></msup></math>. Furthermore, we investigate the potential impact of a sterile neutrino state on the precision determination of standard atmospheric neutrino mixing parameters in the IceCube Upgrade.

Emilse Cabrera

Miaochen Jin

Carlos A. Argüelles

Arman Esmaili

Searching for sub-eV sterile neutrinos in neutrino telescopes

The IceCube Upgrade is an extension of the existing IceCube Neutrino Observatory and will be deployed in the 2025–2026 austral summer. It will significantly improve the sensitivity of the detector to atmospheric neutrino oscillations. The existing 86-string IceCube array contains a dense in-fill known as DeepCore which is optimized to measure neutrinos with energies down to a few GeV. The IceCube Upgrade will consist of seven new densely instrumented strings placed within the DeepCore volume to further enhance the performance in the GeV energy range. The additional strings will feature new optical modules, each containing multiple photomultiplier tubes (PMTs), in contrast to the existing modules that each contain a single PMT. This will more than triple the number of PMT channels with respect to the current IceCube configuration, allowing for improved detection efficiency and reconstruction performance at GeV energies. We describe necessary updates to simulation, event selection, and reconstruction to accommodate the higher data rates observed by the upgraded detector and the addition of multi-PMT modules. We determine the expected sensitivity of the IceCube Upgrade to the atmospheric neutrino oscillation parameters <math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mrow><msup><mrow><mi>sin</mi></mrow><mrow><mn>2</mn></mrow></msup><msub><mrow><mi>θ</mi></mrow><mrow><mn>23</mn></mrow></msub></mrow></math> and <math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mi mathvariant="normal">Δ</mi><msubsup><mi>m</mi><mn>32</mn><mn>2</mn></msubsup></math>, the appearance of tau neutrinos and the neutrino mass ordering. The IceCube Upgrade will provide neutrino oscillation measurements that are of similar precision to those from accelerator experiments, while providing complementarity by probing higher energies and longer baselines, and with different sources of systematic uncertainties.

R. Abbasi

M. Ackermann

J. Adams

S.K. Agarwalla

J.A. Aguilar

M. Ahlers

J.M. Alameddine

S. Ali

N.M. Amin

K. Andeen

C. Argüelles

Y. Ashida

S. Athanasiadou

S.N. Axani

R. Babu

X. Bai

J. Baines-Holmes

A. Balagopal V.

S.W. Barwick

S. Bash

V. Basu

R. Bay

J.J. Beatty

J. Becker Tjus

P. Behrens

J. Beise

C. Bellenghi

B. Benkel

S. BenZvi

D. Berley

E. Bernardini

D.Z. Besson

E. Blaufuss

L. Bloom

S. Blot

I. Bodo

F. Bontempo

J.Y. Book Motzkin

C. Boscolo Meneguolo

S. Böser

O. Botner

J. Böttcher

J. Braun

B. Brinson

Z. Brisson-Tsavoussis

R.T. Burley

D. Butterfield

M.A. Campana

K. Carloni

J. Carpio

S. Chattopadhyay

N. Chau

Z. Chen

D. Chirkin

S. Choi

B.A. Clark

A. Coleman

P. Coleman

G.H. Collin

D.A. Coloma Borja

A. Connolly

J.M. Conrad

R. Corley

D.F. Cowen

C. De Clercq

J.J. DeLaunay

D. Delgado

T. Delmeulle

S. Deng

P. Desiati

K.D. de Vries

G. de Wasseige

T. DeYoung

J.C. Díaz-Vélez

S. DiKerby

M. Dittmer

A. Domi

L. Draper

L. Dueser

D. Durnford

K. Dutta

M.A. DuVernois

T. Ehrhardt

L. Eidenschink

A. Eimer

P. Eller

E. Ellinger

D. Elsässer

R. Engel

H. Erpenbeck

W. Esmail

S. Eulig

J. Evans

P.A. Evenson

K.L. Fan

K. Fang

K. Farrag

A.R. Fazely

A. Fedynitch

N. Feigl

Physics potential of the IceCube Upgrade for atmospheric neutrino oscillations

The Born-Oppenheimer approximation is widely used to investigate the properties of hydrogenlike systems and doubly heavy hadrons. However, the extent to which this approximation captures the features of such systems within potential models remains an open question. In this work, we adopt the results obtained with the Gaussian expansion method as a benchmark to assess the validity of the Born-Oppenheimer approximation within potential models for hadronic systems. We also investigate the dependence of the Born-Oppenheimer approximation results on the choice of trial wave functions. A comprehensive study of the Born-Oppenheimer approximation is carried out by performing calculations using Slater-type functions and Gaussian-type functions as trial wave functions, and by comparing the resulting predictions with those obtained from the Gaussian expansion method. We find that the calculations performed within the Born-Oppenheimer approximation are close to those obtained with the Gaussian expansion method when the heavy-quark mass is relatively small. However, as the heavy-quark mass increases, calculations employing Slater-type functions yield larger values than those from the Gaussian expansion method, whereas those using Gaussian-type functions lead to smaller ones. The use of Slater-type functions generally leads to an enhanced binding energy. The underestimation observed in Born-Oppenheimer approximation calculations with Gaussian-type functions primarily stems from the neglect of nonadiabatic corrections. This comparative study provides deeper insight into the structure of doubly heavy hadrons and helps clarify the applicability and limitations of the Born-Oppenheimer treatment within potential models.

Zi-Long Man

Hao Zhou

Si-Qiang Luo

Xiang Liu

Assessing the validity of the Born-Oppenheimer approximation in potential models for doubly heavy hadrons