Based on $ (10087\pm44)\times10^{6} $ $ J/\psi $ events collected with the BESIII detector, the $ J/\psi\rightarrow \gamma K^{0}_{S}K^{0}_{S}\pi^{0} $ and $ J/\psi\rightarrow \gamma \pi^{0}\pi^{0}\eta $ processes are studied. The $ X(2370) $ is observed in both the $ K^{0}_{S}K^{0}_{S}\pi^{0} $ and $ \pi^{0}\pi^{0}\eta $ invariant mass spectra, with statistical significances greater than $ 14\sigma $ and $ 20\sigma $ , respectively. By combining measurements from these processes with those from the previously reported $ J/\psi\rightarrow \gamma K^{0}_{S}K^{0}_{S}\eta^{\prime} $ process, the mass and width of the $ X(2370) $ are determined to be $ 2359^{+13}_{-14}\; \text{MeV}/c^{2} $ and $ 170^{+44}_{-29}\; \text{MeV} $ , respectively. In addition, the decay $ X(2370)\to a_{0}(980)^{0}\pi^{0} $ with $ a_{0}(980)^{0}\to \pi^{0}\eta $ is observed with a statistical significance exceeding $ 9\sigma $ . The properties of the $ X(2370) $ —decay pattern similarities to that of $ \eta_{c} $ , are consistent with those of a pseudoscalar glueball.

China

M. Ablikim

Russia

M.N. Achasov

Sweden

P. Adlarson

X.C. Ai

Italy

C.S. Akondi

Germany

R. Aliberti

A. Amoroso

Q. An

Y.H. An

M.S. Anderson

Y. Bai

O. Bakina

H.R. Bao

X.L. Bao

M. Barbagiovanni

Poland

V. Batozskaya

Mongolia

K. Begzsuren

N. Berger

M. Berlowski

M.B. Bertani

D. Bettoni

F. Bianchi

E. Bianco

A. Bortone

I. Boyko

United States

R. Briere

A. Brueggemann

D. Cabiati

H. Cai

M.H. Cai

X. Cai

A. Calcaterra

G.F. Cao

N. Cao

Türkiye

S.A. Cetin

X.Y. Chai

J.F. Chang

T.T. Chang

G.R. Che

Y.Z. Che

C.H. Chen

C. Chen

G. Chen

H.S. Chen

H.Y. Chen

M.L. Chen

S.J. Chen

S.M. Chen

T. Chen

W. Chen

X.R. Chen

X.T. Chen

X.Y. Chen

Y.B. Chen

Y.Q. Chen

Z.K. Chen

J. Cheng

L.N. Cheng

S.K. Choi

X. Chu

G. Cibinetto

F. Cossio

United Kingdom

J. Cottee-Meldrum

H.L. Dai

J.P. Dai

X.C. Dai

A. Dbeyssi

R.E. de Boer

D. Dedovich

C.Q. Deng

Z.Y. Deng

A. Denig

I. Denisenko

M. Destefanis

F. De Mori

E. Di Fiore

X.X. Ding

Y. Ding

Y.X. Ding

J. Dong

L.Y. Dong

M.Y. Dong

X. Dong

Z.J. Dong

M.C. Du

S.X. Du

X.L. Du

Y.Q. Du

Y.Y. Duan

Z.H. Duan

P. Egorov

G.F. Fan

J.J. Fan

Y.H. Fan

J. Fang

S.S. Fang

W.X. Fang

Y.Q. Fang

Observation of the ${\boldsymbol X(2370)}$ in ${{\boldsymbol J}/\boldsymbol\psi\rightarrow\gamma K^{0}_{S}K^{0}_{S}\pi^{0}}$ and ${J/\psi\rightarrow\gamma \pi^{0}\pi^{0}\eta}$ * This work is supported in part by the National Key R&D Program of China under Contracts Nos. 2025YFA1613900, 2023YFA1606000, 2023YFA1606704; National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) under Contracts Nos. 11635010, 11935015, 11935016, 11935018, 12025502, 12035009, 12035013, 12061131003, 12192260, 12192261, 12192262, 12192263, 12192264, 12192265, 12221005, 12225509, 12235017, 12342502, 12361141819, 12535005; the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) Large-Scale Scientific Facility Program; the Strategic Priority Research Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences under Contract No. XDA0480600; CAS under Contract No. YSBR-101; 100 Talents Program of CAS; China Postdoctoral Science Foundation under Contracts Nos. GZC20252256, 2025M773423; The Institute of Nuclear and Particle Physics (INPAC) and Shanghai Key Laboratory for Particle Physics and Cosmology; Agencia Nacional de Investigación y Desarrollo de Chile (ANID), Chile under Contract No. ANID CCTVal CIA250027; ERC under Contract No. 758462; German Research Foundation DFG under Contract No. FOR5327; Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Italy; Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation under Contracts Nos. 2021.0174, 2021.0299, 2023.0315; Ministry of Development of Turkey under Contract No. DPT2006K-120470; National Research Foundation of Korea under Contract No. NRF-2022R1A2C1092335; National Science and Technology fund of Mongolia; Polish National Science Centre under Contract No. 2024/53/B/ST2/00975; STFC (United Kingdom); Swedish Research Council under Contract No. 2019.04595; U. S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-FG02-05ER41374

We present an investigation of the $ K^*(1680) $ state in its strong decays into two-body final states within the flux-tube model and quark pair creation model. Since charge conjugation parity is not conserved in the strange sector, the conventional $ q\bar{q} $ states with $ J^{P(C)}=1^{-(-)} $ can mix with the lowest hybrid states with $ J^{P(C)}=1^{-(+)} $ . Our analysis of the $ K^*(1680) $ two-body strong decays indicates that the decay pattern of $ K^*(1680) $ cannot be explained by the conventional $ q\bar{q} $ scenario. Moreover, there is strong evidence for the $ q\bar{q} $ -hybrid mixing mechanism in the strange sector. The phenomenological consequences of such mixing are also discussed. Our study can provide guidance for future searches for hybrid multiplets in experiments at BESIII, LHCb, and Belle II.

Samee Ullah

Ye Cao

Ming-Xiao Duan

Hai-Bing Fu

Qiang Zhao

Nature of ${K^*(1680)}$ and ${q\bar{q}}$ -hybrid mixing as the $\textit{SU}$(3) partner of ${\eta_{1}(1855)}$ in the strange sector * Supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (12235018, 12265010, 12505098), and the Project of Guizhou Provincial Department of Science and Technology (MS[2025]219, CXTD[2025]030, ZD[2026]168, QN[2025]178), and the project of Guizhou Normal University (GZNUD[2025]05)

The rare exclusive decay of the Higgs boson, $ H \to J/\psi + \gamma $ , is a crucial channel for assessing the Yukawa coupling of the charm quark. In this article, we examine this process up to the next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) in QCD utilizing the Principle of Maximum Conformality (PMC). The PMC offers a systematic approach to eliminate renormalization scale uncertainties by resumming non-conformal $\textit{β}$ contributions into the QCD running coupling through the renormalization group equation (RGE). A PMC scale of $ Q_\star = 3.29\ {\rm{GeV}} $ is obtained, which reflects the low virtuality of the underlying QCD dynamics in the $ H \to J/\psi + \gamma $ process. Notably, this is an order of magnitude smaller than the scale estimated using the conventional method, $\textit{i.e.}$, $ \mu_r = m_H/2 $ . By removing the non-conformal $ \{\beta_i\} $ -terms from the perturbative QCD (pQCD) series, we observe that the PMC NLO QCD correction term is significantly enhanced, while the PMC NNLO QCD correction is suppressed. This indicates improved convergence of the pQCD series up to NNLO. Finally, we calculate the decay width $ \Gamma(H \to J/\psi + \gamma) = $ $ 14.183^{+0.249}_{-0.347} \pm 0.022 $ eV, where the first uncertainty arises from the factorization scale $ \mu_\Lambda \in [1, 2]\ {\rm{GeV}} $ , and the second is due to the estimation of unknown higher-order terms using the Pad $ \acute{e} $ approximant approach. The corresponding branching fraction is $ {\cal{B}}(H \to J/\psi + \gamma) = 3.485_{-0.161}^{+0.152} \times 10^{-6} $ .

Wen-Yuan Li

Ting Sun

Sheng-Quan Wang

Jian-Ming Shen

Hua Zhou

Xing-Gang Wu

Leonardo Di Giustino

Analysis of $\textit{H}$ → $\textit{J}$/$\textit{ψ}$ + $\textit{γ}$ up to Next-to-Next-to-Leading order QCD corrections * Supported in part by the Natural Science Foundation of China (12265011, 12175025, 12347101); the Project of Guizhou Provincial Department of Science and Technology (YQK[2023]016, ZK[2023]141, CXTD[2025]030); the Hunan Provincial Natural Science Foundation (2024JJ3004); the YueLuShan Center for Industrial Innovation (2024YCII0118), and the Natural Science Foundation of Sichuan Province (2024NSFSC1367)

We show that hadron colliders have an excellent reach for positivity tests on a class of diphoton operators. Due to the helicity selection rules, the relevant dimension-6 operators either do not contribute or are highly constrained by other experimental observables. We demonstrate, for the first time, that the LHC can probe the positivity of the dimension-8 operators involving colored particles. The kinematic differential distributions of the diphoton final states are utilized to perform the $ \chi^2$ analysis. Through a global fit, the effective scale for these operators can be inclusively probed up to around 2 TeV at HL-LHC and over 5 TeV at future 100 TeV FCC-hh at 95% C.L., providing a powerful test of the positivity bounds up to the multi-TeV scale.

Zhen Liu

Kun-Feng Lyu

Tong Arthur Wu

LHC shines on positivity * Zhen Liu and Kun-Feng Lyu are supported in part by U.S. Department of Energy (DESC0011842); Zhen Liu is also supported in part by a Sloan Research Fellowship from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation at the University of Minnesota

In this study, we develop a framework for producing exotic muonic kaon atoms ( $ K\mu $ ) in semileptonic $ D^{0} $ decays using an effective weak Hamiltonian, a helicity-based treatment of leptonic current, and a nonrelativistic bound-state projection. The resulting branching ratio $ BR(D^{0} \to(K\mu )\nu_{\mu})=2.29\times10^{-10} $ is implemented in a ROOT-based code to estimate yields at a relativistic heavy-ion collider (RHIC), large hadron collider (LHC), and super tau-charm facility (STCF). We demonstrate quantitatively that $ K\mu $ atoms, which are also produced through coalescence in the quark–gluon plasma (QGP), offer a sensitive probe of low-momentum primordial muons and early-time electromagnetic radiation, acting as complementary constraints in an otherwise unexplored phase space for thermal dilepton and photon emission. Newly estimated dissociation cross-sections in detector material indicate that secondary-vertex reconstruction should be experimentally feasible, enabling the clean experimental identification of atoms. Projected yields from QGP coalescence in LHC and RHIC heavy-ion collisions and from $ D^{0} $ decays in LHC high-luminosity $ p+p $ collisions indicate that the first observation of $ K\mu $ atoms is within reach.

Xiaofeng Wang

Zebo Tang

Zhangbu Xu

Chi Yang

Wangmei Zha

Yifei Zhang

Production of muonic kaon atoms at high-energy colliders * This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (12361141827, 12422510), and by the Office of Nuclear Physics within the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science (DE-FG02-89ER40531). The National Key Research and Development Program of China (2022YFA1604900). W. Zha acknowledges support from the Anhui Provincial Natural Science Foundation (2508085JX002), the Youth Innovation Promotion Association of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (YSBR088)

We present a systematic analysis of the Higgs signal strengths at 125 GeV and 95 GeV in a non-supersymmetric $ U(1)_X $ model with vector-like fermions ( $ U(1)_X $ VLFM). This framework extends the Standard Model (SM) by introducing an additional $ U(1)_X $ gauge symmetry, three right-handed neutrinos, two singlet Higgs fields ($\textit{ϕ}$ and $\textit{S}$), and one generation of vector-like quarks and leptons. The scalar fields mix in the neutral CP-even sector, yielding two Higgs-like states around 95 GeV and 125 GeV. We perform a $ \chi^2 $ analysis that combines the Higgs signal strength measurements at 125 GeV from ATLAS and CMS, including the $ \gamma\gamma $ , $ WW^* $ , $ ZZ^* $ , $ b\bar{b} $ , and $ \tau\bar{\tau} $ channels, together with the 95 GeV excesses observed in the diphoton and $ b\bar{b} $ final states reported by CMS and LEP. Our results indicate that the $ U(1)_X $ VLFM successfully reproduces the observed signal strengths of the 125 GeV Higgs while simultaneously explaining the 95 GeV excess. The parameters $ g_X $ , $ g_{YX} $ , $ v_S $ , $ v_P $ , and the new Yukawa couplings play a crucial role in achieving this consistency.

Rong-Zhi Sun

Shu-Min Zhao

Meng-Zi Cao

Song Gao

Portugal

Xing-Xing Dong

Higgs Bosons at 95 and 125 GeV in the $\textit{U}$(1) $\textit{X}$ VLFM * Supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (NNSFC) (2075074), Natural Science Foundation of Hebei Province (A2023201040, A2022201022, A2022201017, A2023201041), Natural Science Foundation of Hebei Education Department (QN2022173), the Project of the China Scholarship Council (CSC) (202408130113). This work is also supported by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT, Portugal) through the project UID/00777/2025 (https://doi.org/ 10.54499/UID/00777/2025)

The internal structure of the light scalar state $ a_0(1450) $ has not been definitively determined; it may comprise multiple possible configurations. Among these, it may be regarded as a $ q\bar{q} $ state. Based on this possibility, we use QCD light-cone sum rules to study the semileptonic decay process $ D \to a_0(1450)\ell \nu_\ell $ with $ \ell=(e, \mu) $ and to test this hypothesis. First, we construct two twist-2 light-cone distribution-amplitude schemes based on the light-cone harmonic-oscillator model, and present their moments $ \langle\xi^{n}\rangle |_{\mu} $ and Gegenbauer moments $ a_{n}(\mu) $ at $ \mu_0=1\; {\rm{GeV}} $ and $ \mu_k= 1.4\; {\rm{GeV}} $ for $ n=(1,3,5) $ . In the large-recoil region, we obtain the transition form factors (TFFs): $ f_+^{({\rm{S}}1)}(0) = $ $ 0.836_{-0.119}^{+0.116} $ , $ f_+^{({\rm{S}}2)}(0)=0.767_{-0.105}^{+0.106} $ , and $ f_-(0)=0.630_{-0.077}^{+0.078} $ . A simplified series expansion $ z(q^2, t) $ is used to extrapolate the TFFs to the entire physical $ q^2 $ region. For $ q^2=10^{-5} \; {\rm{GeV}}^2 $ , we compute the angular distribution of the differential decay width ${{\rm d}\Gamma}/{{\rm d}\cos\theta_\ell }$ over the range $ \cos\theta_\ell \in [-1,1] $ . Subsequently, we obtain the differential decay widths and branching fractions for $ D^0 \to a_0(1450)^- \ell^+ \nu_\ell $ and $ D^- \to a_0(1450)^0 \ell^- \bar{\nu}_\ell $ , with branching fractions of order $ 10^{-6} $ . Finally, we analyze three angular observables for the semileptonic decay process $ D^- \to a_0(1450)^0 \ell^- \bar{\nu}_\ell $ : the forward–backward asymmetry $ {\cal{A}}_{\rm{FB}} $ , the lepton polarization asymmetry $ {\cal{A}}_{\lambda_\ell} $ , and the $ q^2 $ -differential flat term $ {\cal{F}}_{\rm{H}} $ .

Ya-Lin Song

Yin-Long Yang

Xue Zheng

Searching the possibility of $\textit{a}$ $_{0}$(1450) scalar state being a q q state structure via charmed meson semileptonic decays * Supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (12265010), and the Guizhou Provincial Department of Science and Technology (MS[2025]219, CXTD[2025]030)

We evaluate discovery prospects for photophobic axion-like particles (ALPs) in the $\textit{WWjj}$ final state at the High-Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC; $\sqrt{s}=14\ {\rm{TeV}}$ , ${\cal{L}}=3\ {\rm{ab}}^{-1}$ ). In the photophobic limit ( $g_{a\gamma\gamma}=0$ ), ALPs couple to electroweak gauge bosons and are produced in association with two jets ( $ pp\to jj\ a $ ) via both $\textit{s}$-channel electroweak exchange and vector boson fusion (VBF)–like topologies, followed by $a\to W^+W^-$ decay. We target the different-flavour dilepton mode $W^+W^- \to e^\pm\mu^\mp\nu \bar{\nu}$ with two jets and moderate missing transverse momentum. The analysis employs a two-step strategy: initial preselection that defines the signal-like final state, followed by a multivariate analysis (MVA) trained on dijet and dileptonic-$\textit{WW}$ kinematics from both the $\textit{s}$-channel and VBF-like production mechanisms to separate signal from background; the MVA threshold is optimized independently at each $m_a$ . We present 2$\textit{σ}$ and 5$\textit{σ}$ discovery sensitivities for the ALP–$\textit{W}$ coupling $g_{aWW}$ across the 170–4000 GeV mass range. For $260\ {\rm{GeV}}\le m_a\le1500\ {\rm{GeV}}$ , the 2$\textit{σ}$ (5$\textit{σ}$) sensitivity is approximately flat around $ 0.61(0.76)\ {\rm{TeV}}^{-1}$ . At large masses/couplings, the mapping between an experimental rate and a single EFT parameter $g_{aWW}$ can become UV sensitive, and we treat the extreme high-mass/high-coupling corner as an extrapolation; therefore, we also report model-independent discovery thresholds for the fiducial quantity $ \sigma(pp\to jj\ a)\times\rm{Br}(a\to W^+W^-) $ over the same mass range to enable reinterpretation for other models. These results indicate that the $WWjj$ topology offers competitive and complementary sensitivity to heavy photophobic ALPs at the HL-LHC.

Jiaojiao Feng

Ying-nan Mao

Kechen Wang

Discovery prospects for photophobic axion-like particles in the $\textit{WWjj}$ final state at the High-Luminosity LHC * Jiaojiao Feng and Kechen Wang are supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (11905162), the Excellent Young Talents Program of the Wuhan University of Technology (40122102, 40122103) and the research program of the Wuhan University of Technology (2020IB024, 104972025KFYjc0101). Ying-nan Mao is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (12205227). The simulation and analysis work of this article was completed with the computational cluster provided by the Theoretical Physics Group at the Department of Physics, School of Physics and Mechanics, Wuhan University of Technology

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)

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

Sebastiano Aiello

Fengpeng An

Guangpeng An

Costas Andreopoulos

Giuseppe Andronico

João Pedro Athayde Marcondes de André

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

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