In this paper, we systematically explore the mass spectrum of fully strange tetraquark candidates within the framework of QCD sum rules, focusing on states with quantum numbers $ J^{PC}=0^{++} $ , $ 0^{-+} $ , $ 0^{--} $ , $ 1^{--} $ , $ 1^{+-} $ , and $ 1^{++} $ . The analysis reveals the existence of fully strange tetraquark states with masses ranging from approximately $ 2.07 $ to $ 3.12 $ GeV. These predictions are compared with existing experimental observations of potential fully strange tetraquark resonances, notably the $ X(2300) $ recently reported by the BESIII Collaboration, which may be interpreted as a fully strange tetraquark state. Furthermore, the possible decay modes of these fully strange tetraquark states are analyzed, providing guidance for their identification in current and future high-energy experiments, such as BESIII, Belle II, and LHCb.

China

Bing-Dong Wan

Ji-Chong Yang

Fully strange tetraquark states via QCD sum rules * Supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (12575106, 12147214) and Specific Fund of Fundamental Scientific Research Operating Expenses for Undergraduate Universities in Liaoning Province (LJ212410165019)

In this study, we investigate the possibility of enhancing the di-jet resonance searches by tagging the final state radiation (FSR) jet using an event-level deep neural network. It is found that solely relying on the 4-momenta of the leading three jets allows the algorithm to achieve good discriminating power that can identify the hardest FSR jet in the signal while rejecting other soft jets. Once the invariant mass is corrected with the tagged FSR jet, the mass resolution of the signal is greatly enhanced, and the sensitivity of the search is also improved by more than 10%. By crafting the input variables carefully, the algorithm introduces minimal mass sculpting for the background, and its applicability extends to a broad mass range. This work proves that FSR jet tagging can potentially enhance di-jet resonance searches, suiting various stages of the physics programmes at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and High-Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC).

Bingxuan Liu

Yuxuan Shen

Yuanshunzi Sui

Enhancing di-jet resonance searches via a final-state radiation jet tagging algorithm * Bingxuan Liu is supported by Shenzhen Campus of the Sun Yat-sen University under project 74140-12255011, and by the Young Scientists Fund (C Class) of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (12405122). Both Yuxuan Shen and Yuanshunzi Sui are supported by College Students’ Innovative Entrepreneurial Training Plan Program

Jet quenching is studied in a background magnetic field and finite baryon chemical potential. The production of energetic partons is calculated using the next-to-leading order (NLO) perturbative Quantum Chromodynamics (pQCD) parton model, whereas the parton energy loss formula is obtained from the AdS/CFT correspondence incorporating the magnetic field and baryon chemical potential effects. Using Bayesian inference, we systemically compare theoretical calculations with experimental data for the nuclear modification factor $ R_{AA}$ of large transverse momentum hadrons in different centralities of nucleus-nucleus collisions at 0.2, 2.76, and 5.02 TeV, respectively. The holographic calculation leads to a strong negative correlation between the magnetic field and chemical potential for a fixed amount of energy loss. This degeneracy can be observed after model calibration. Finally, we discussed the sensitivity of jet quenching phenomena to the external magnetic field and background baryon chemical potential.

Liqiang Zhu

Zhan Gao

Weiyao Ke

Hanzhong Zhang

Bayesian inference of the magnetic field and chemical potential on holographic jet quenching in heavy-ion collisions * Supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (12535010, 11935007)

Small neutrino masses can be generated through the well-known seesaw mechanisms, among which the type-II scenario predicts a triplet scalar with doubly charged components. Except for the Drell-Yan production at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the doubly charged scalars $\Delta^{\pm\pm}$ can also be produced through photon fusion along with the ultraperipheral collision of protons, from which the outgoing protons can be detected by forward detectors at the LHC, providing a promising means to explore related new physics. We study the pair production through such processes at the 14 TeV LHC, focusing on the final states of $\mu^{+}\mu^{+}\mu^{-}\mu^{-}$ and $e^{+}e^{+}e^{-}e^{-}$ under the normal hierarchy (NH) and inverted hierarchy (IH) of the neutrino mass spectra, respectively. Promising sensitivity can be reached via our proposed search strategy. At a luminosity of 36.1 fb$^{-1}$(100 fb $^{-1}$ ), $m_{\Delta}\sim430(520)$ GeV can be excluded at 95% C.L. under the NH via $\mu^{+}\mu^{+}\mu^{-}\mu^{-}$ state searching, while the mass bound can be extended to 730(880) GeV under the IH via $e^{+}e^{+}e^{-}e^{-}$ states. The exclusion limits on $m_{\Delta}$ can be improved up to 1 TeV and even higher with integrated luminosity accumulated to 3 ab $^{-1}$ .

Hang Zhou

Ning Liu

Search for doubly charged scalars in type-II seesaw mechanism through photon fusion at the LHC * Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (12405118) and the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (BK20230623)

We investigate the collider signatures of a maximally flavor-violating $ U(1)_{L_\mu-L_\tau} $ model, where a new gauge boson $ Z^\prime $ and scalar triplets induce lepton flavor-changing interactions in the $\textit{μ}$-$\textit{τ}$ sector. Focusing on four-lepton final states at multi-TeV lepton colliders, we conduct a detailed analysis of cross sections, asymmetries, and polarization effects. We show that the signal cross section is highly sensitive to $ m_{Z^\prime} $ and the effective parameters $ \tilde{g}/m_{Z^\prime} $ , whereas it remains largely insensitive to the triplet Yukawa couplings within the phenomenologically allowed region. The forward-backward asymmetry exhibits a characteristic monotonic dependence on $ m_{Z^\prime} $ , and beam polarization can significantly suppress the Standard Model backgrounds while enhancing new physics contributions. We find that, in the phenomenologically allowed parameter space, the predicted observables remain highly sensitive to the underlying model parameters. These results show that multi-lepton final states are powerful probes of the $ U(1)_{L\mu - L_\tau} $ framework and can offer valuable guidance for future searches at muon and electron-positron colliders.

Jianing Qin

Fei Huang

Honglei Li

Zhi-Long Han

Jin Sun

Collider probes of four-lepton final states in maximally flavor-violating ${U(1)_{L_\mu-L_\tau}} $ model * Supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (12505112, 11805081), Shandong Province Natural Science Foundation (ZR2024QA138, ZR2022MA056) and State Key Laboratory of Dark Matter Physics, University of Jinan Disciplinary Cross-Convergence Construction Project 2024 (XKJC- 202404) and Jin Sun is supported by IBS under the project code, (IBS-R018-D1)

We investigate thermal photon production in the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) under strong magnetic fields using a magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) framework. We employ relativistic ideal fluid dynamics under the non-resistive approximation by adopting the Bjorken flow model with power-law decaying magnetic fields $ \mathbf{B}(\tau) = \mathbf{B}_0 (\tau_0/\tau)^a $ , span> $\textit{a}$ controls the decay rate, $ B_0 = \sqrt{\sigma} T_0^2 $ , and $\textit{σ}$ characterizes the initial field strength. The resulting QGP temperature evolution exhibits distinct $\textit{a}$- and $\textit{σ}$-dependent behaviors. Thermal photon production rates are calculated for three dominant processes: Compton scattering with $ q\bar{q} $ annihilation (C+A), bremsstrahlung (Brems), and $ q\bar{q} $ annihilation with additional scattering (A+S). These rates are integrated over the space-time volume to obtain the photon transverse momentum $ (p_T) $ spectrum. Our results demonstrate that increasing $\textit{a}$ enhances photon yields across all $ p_T $ , with $ a \to \infty $ (super-fast decay) providing an upper bound. For $ a = 2/3 $ , a larger $\textit{σ}$ suppresses yields through accelerated cooling, whereas for $ a \to \infty $ , a larger $\textit{σ}$ enhances yields via prolonged thermal emission. Low- $ p_T $ photons receive significant contributions from all QGP evolution stages, while high- $ p_T $ photons originate predominantly from early times. The central rapidity region $ (y=0) $ dominates the total yield. This work extends the photon yield studies to the MHD regime under strong magnetic fields, clarifying the magnetic field effects on QGP electromagnetic signatures and establishing foundations for future investigations of magnetization and dissipative phenomena.

Jie Xiong

Xiang Fan

Jing Jing

Weishan Yang

Duan She

Ze-Fang Jiang

Thermal photon emission from quark-gluon plasma: 1+1D magnetohydrodynamics results * Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) (12305138). Duan She's research is funded by the Startup Research Fund of Henan Academy of Sciences (231820058) and the 2024 Henan Province International Science and Technology Cooperation Projects (242102521068)

We investigated the effect of an isospin chemical potential ( $ \mu_{I} $ ) within the quark-meson model, which approximates quantum chromodynamics (QCD) by modeling low-energy phenomena such as chiral symmetry breaking and phase structure under varying conditions of temperature and chemical potential. Using the functional renormalization group (FRG) flow equations, we calculated the phase diagram in the chiral limit within the two-flavor quark-meson model in a finite $ \mu_{I} $ with $\textit{ρ}$ vector meson interactions. Fluctuation effects significantly decrease the critical chemical potential from the mean-field (MF) value $\mu_{I,{\rm MF}} \gt m_\rho$ to a lower value at which the $\textit{ρ}$ vector meson condensates alongside the chiral condensate once the isospin chemical potential exceeds the critical value $ \mu_{I}^{{\rm{crit}}} $ . This $\textit{ρ}$ condensation was investigated numerically for different meson coupling strengths. The $\textit{ρ}$ meson dominated region is delineated from other phases by a second-order phase transition at lower $ \mu_{I} $ and a first-order transition at slightly higher $ \mu_{I} $ .

Mohammed Osman

Defu Hou

Wentao Wang

United States

Hui Zhang

Functional renormalization group study of $\textit{ρ}$ meson condensate at a finite isospin chemical potential in the quark meson model * Supported in part by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2022YFA1604900). This work is also partly supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) (12435009, 12275104). Hui Zhang acknowledges the financial support from the Guangdong Major Project of Basic and Applied Basic Research (2020B0301030008) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (12047523, 12105107)

A model-agnostic search for Beyond the Standard Model physics is presented, targeting final states with at least four light leptons (electrons or muons). The search regions are separated by event topology and unsupervised machine learning is used to identify anomalous events in the full 140 fb $$^{-1}$$ of proton–proton collision data collected with the ATLAS detector during Run 2. No significant excess above the Standard Model background expectation is observed. Model-agnostic limits are presented in each topology, along with limits on several benchmark models including vector-like leptons, wino-like charginos and neutralinos, or smuons. Limits are set on the flavourful vector-like lepton model for the first time.

France

G. Aad

Norway

E. Aakvaag

B. Abbott

United Arab Emirates

S. Abdelhameed

Germany

K. Abeling

N. Abicht

S. Abidi

M. Aboelela

Morocco

A. Aboulhorma

Israel

H. Abramowicz

Y. Abulaiti

Italy

United Kingdom

B. Acharya

A. Ackermann

C. Adam Bourdarios

Poland

L. Adamczyk

S. Addepalli

M. Addison

J. Adelman

Türkiye

A. Adiguzel

T. Adye

A. Affolder

Y. Afik

Spain

M. Agaras

A. Aggarwal

Romania

C. Agheorghiesei

Azerbaijan

F. Ahmadov

S. Ahuja

X. Ai

G. Aielli

A. Aikot

M. Ait Tamlihat

B. Aitbenchikh

M. Akbiyik

Sweden

T. Åkesson

A. Akimov

Japan

D. Akiyama

N. Akolkar

S. Aktas

G. Alberghi

Canada

J. Albert

Switzerland

U. Alberti

P. Albicocco

G. Albouy

S. Alderweireldt

Z. Alegria

M. Aleksa

I. Aleksandrov

C. Alexa

Greece

T. Alexopoulos

F. Alfonsi

M. Algren

M. Alhroob

Czechia

B. Ali

Saudi Arabia

H. Ali

S. Ali

S. Alibocus

South Africa

M. Aliev

G. Alimonti

W. Alkakhi

C. Allaire

B. Allbrooke

D. Allen

J. Allen

P. Allport

A. Aloisio

Argentina

F. Alonso

C. Alpigiani

Z. Alsolami

A. Alvarez Fernandez

M. Alves Cardoso

M. Alviggi

M. Aly

Brazil

Y. Amaral Coutinho

A. Ambler

C. Amelung

M. Amerl

C. Ames

T. Amezza

D. Amidei

B. Amini

K. Amirie

A. Amirkhanov

Portugal

S. Amor Dos Santos

K. Amos

D. Amperiadou

S. An

C. Anastopoulos

T. Andeen

J. Anders

A. Anderson

A. Andreazza

S. Angelidakis

A. Angerami

A. Anisenkov

A. Annovi

C. Antel

E. Antipov

M. Antonelli

Search for Beyond the Standard Model physics with anomaly detection in multilepton final states in $\textit{pp}$ collisions at $$\sqrt{s}=13~\textrm{TeV}$$ with the ATLAS detector

The Run 3 of the LHC brings unprecedented luminosity and a surge in data volume to the LHCb detector, necessitating a critical reduction in the size of each reconstructed event without compromising the physics reach of the heavy-flavour programme. While signal decays typically involve just a few charged particles, a single proton–proton collision produces hundreds of tracks, with charged particle information dominating the event size. To address this imbalance, a suite of inclusive isolation tools have been developed, including both classical methods and a novel Inclusive Multivariate Isolation ( ) algorithm. The unifies the key strengths of classical isolation techniques and is designed to robustly handle diverse decay topologies and kinematics, enabling efficient reconstruction of decay chains with varying final-state multiplicities. It consistently outperforms traditional methods, with superior background rejection and high signal efficiency across diverse channels and event multiplicities. By retaining only the most relevant particles in each event, the method achieves a 45% reduction in data-size while preserving full physics performance, selecting signal particles with 99% efficiency. We also validate IMI on Run 3 data, confirming its robustness under real data-taking conditions. In the long term, could provide a fast, lightweight front-end to support more compute-intensive selection strategies in the high-multiplicity environment of the High-Luminosity LHC.

Marta Calvi

Tommaso Fulghesu

George Hallett

Luca Hartman

Basem Khanji

Veronica Kirsebom

Thomas Latham

Marion Lehuraux

Ching-Hua Li

Abhijit Mathad

Australia

Matthew Monk

Andy Morris

Matthew Rudolph

Francesca Swystun

Dorothea Bruch

Minimising event size, maximising physics: inclusive particle isolation for LHCb’s Run 3

We provide a detailed geometric and physical interpretation of infinite distance limits in the complex structure moduli space of Type IIB compactifications on Calabi-Yau threefolds, motivated by the Emergent String Conjecture. In the framework of semi-stable degenerations, such limits are characterised by a simple fibration structure of the fastest vanishing three-cycles. The previously studied Hodge theoretic classification of infinite distance limits of type II, III, and IV is reflected in the number of one-cycles of the shrinking fibres. Complementing our recent work on limits of type II, we focus here on type III and type IV degenerations. Based on effective field theory considerations, these are expected to be decompactification limits to 6d and 5d, respectively. However, establishing the existence of the associated Kaluza-Klein $\textit{tower(s)}$ of states with both the appropriate mass scaling and the correct $\textit{degeneracy}$ requires explicit geometric input. We show that the aforementioned vanishing three-cycles are special Lagrangian three-tori, thus giving rise to towers of asymptotically massless BPS particles from multi-wrapped D3-branes with the degeneracy of a Kaluza-Klein tower. We furthermore relate the BPS index of these three-cycles to the Euler characteristic of the threefold. Finally, we systematically analyse infinite distance trajectories in multi-parameter limits described by so-called enhancement chains. We find that the primary singularity type encodes the gravitational duality frame of the limit whereas the secondary singularity type is related to the rank of the gauge group coupled to gravity. The specifics of the asymptotic physics depend crucially on whether or not the trajectory is induced by the backreaction of an EFT string.

Jeroen Monnee

Timo Weigand

Max Wiesner

Physics and geometry of complex structure limits in type IIB Calabi-Yau compactifications