In this work, we investigate three representative new-physics resonances that couple to Standard Model (SM) quarks through flavor-changing interactions involving the top quark. We identify the possible SMEFT operators at the electroweak scale and analyze their phenomenology.

China

Min Huang

Yandong Liu

Hao Zhang

Exploring new resonances with direct top flavor changing interactions * Min Huang and Hao Zhang is supported in part by the National Science Foundation of China (12575114, 12235001, 12075257)

We study the equation of state (EoS) of QCD matter in a bottom-up holographic setup that combines an Einstein-Maxwell-dilaton (EMD) sector with an improved Karch-Katz-Son-Stephanov (KKSS) flavor action. In the probe approximation, we perform an inverse reconstruction of the model functions by parameterizing them with neural networks and solving the EMD equations via a differentiable ODE solver (a neural ODE framework), calibrating the model to a reference thermodynamic table for $(2+1)$ -flavor QCD at finite temperature and finite baryon chemical potential. The reconstructed model functions are then parameterized and kept fixed across thermodynamic states. Next, viewing the EMD sector as an effective description of pure Yang-Mills theory, we fix its parameters by fitting the $\mu_B=0$ lattice pure-glue EoS using a hybrid optimization strategy. Finally, we go beyond the probe limit and solve the coupled EMD+KKSS equations with back-reaction, using the pure-glue-calibrated EMD sector as a fixed input and varying the KKSS couplings to compare with the $\mu_B=0$ two-flavor lattice EoS. We find a visible mismatch and a high-temperature behavior in which the back-reacted dimensionless ratios approach a nearly $\beta_1$ -insensitive plateau close to the pure-glue baseline, providing a simple structural diagnostic for the present flavor-sector truncation.

Yutian Deng

Mei Huang

Lin Zhang

Holographic QCD equation of state constrained by lattice QCD: neural-ODE for probe-limit and a back-reaction test * Start-up funding from Sun Yat-sen University (SYSU) (Y. Deng and L. Zhang); National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) (12235016) (L. Zhang and M. Huang) and 12221005 (M. Huang)

We investigate the discovery potential of the $T_{bc}$ state with $J^P = 0^+$ in proton-proton ( $pp$ ) collisions at LHCb at a center-of-mass energy of $\sqrt{s} = 13~{\rm{TeV}}$ . The study focuses on the decay channel $T_{bc} \to B^- D^+$ . A phenomenological approach is employed to construct the background model based on the associated production of $\textit{B}$ and $\textit{D}$ mesons, incorporating previously published LHCb results. Background processes are simulated using ${\mathtt{MadGraph5\_aMC@NLO}}$ and ${\mathtt{Pythia8.3}}$ . We explore the parameter space of the $T_{bc}$ mass, width, production cross section, and the effective double-parton scattering cross section ( $\sigma_{{\rm{eff}}}$ ) relevant for the $B D$ meson background. The integrated luminosity required for a $5\sigma$ discovery at LHCb is evaluated under various assumptions. In particular, we consider three representative $T_{bc}$ production cross section scenarios: an optimistic estimate of $103~{\rm{nb}}$ , an intermediate value of $18~{\rm{nb}}$ obtained by scaling from the $T_{cc}^+$ production cross section, and a conservative lower bound of $0.3~{\rm{nb}}$ . We find that a $5\sigma$ observation is achievable for a production cross section of $103~{\rm{nb}}$ , which is expected to be within reach during Run4. In contrast, the more realistic cross section estimate of $18~{\rm{nb}}$ requires the full Run5 dataset ( $300~{\rm{fb}}^{-1}$ ) under the most favorable parameter choices. For the conservative scenario, no significant signal would be observable even with $300~{\rm{fb}}^{-1}$ . In addition, we estimate the minimum observable $\sigma(T_{bc}) \times {\cal{B}}(T_{bc} \to $ $ B^- D^+)$ for a $5\sigma$ discovery under different luminosity scenarios, providing guidance for future experimental searches at LHCb.

Mingjie Feng

Yiming Li

France

Hua-Sheng Shao

Prospects for discovering strongly decaying doubly heavy T$_{bc}$ tetraquark states at LHCb * Mingjie Feng and Yiming Li is Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) (2175245, 12188102, W2443008). Hua-Sheng Shao is Supported by the European Research Council (101041109, 'BOSON') and the French National Research Agency (grant ANR-20-CE31-0015, 'PrecisOnium')

We investigate the superradiant instability of Ayón-Beato–García–de Sitter (ABG-dS) black holes under charged scalar field perturbations, employing both time-domain evolutions and frequency-domain computations. We demonstrate that the instability manifests exclusively for the spherically symmetric mode with $$\ell =0$$ for both massless and massive scalar field perturbations. In contrast, asymptotically flat ABG black holes remain stable in the massless limit, a finding that highlights the crucial role of the cosmological horizon in providing a confining boundary. We further analyze the dependence of the instability growth rate on the cosmological constant $$\Lambda $$ , the black hole charge $\textit{Q}$, the scalar field charge $\textit{q}$, and the scalar field mass $$\mu $$ . We find that the growth rate peaks at intermediate values of $$\Lambda $$ and $\textit{q}$, and increases monotonically with $\textit{Q}$. Conversely, an increase in the scalar field mass $$\mu $$ suppresses the instability, eventually quenching it when $$\mu $$ is sufficiently large. Compared with Reissner–Nordström–de Sitter black holes, ABG-dS black holes exhibit distinct instability characteristics, which arise from the modified electrostatic potential induced by nonlinear electrodynamics.

Yizhi Zhan

Hengyu Xu

Haowei Chen

Shao-Jun Zhang

Charged superradiant instability of spherically symmetric regular black holes in de Sitter spacetime: time- and frequency-domain analysis

We propose a novel method for extracting non-singlet (NS) fragmentation functions (FFs) of light charged hadrons from charge asymmetries measured in hadron fragmentation using data from both single-inclusive electron-positron annihilation and semi-inclusive deep-inelastic scattering processes. We determine the NS FFs for pions and kaons at next-to-next-to-leading order in Quantum Chromodynamics through a comprehensive uncertainty analysis. The extracted FFs reveal a scaling index of approximately 0.7 at large momentum fractions and low energy scales, a strangeness suppression factor of approximately 0.5, and universality in fragmentation of light mesons. Our findings establish a valuable benchmark for testing non-perturbative QCD models and Monte Carlo event generators, and serve as crucial inputs for future electron-ion colliders.

Jun Gao

Chong-Yang Liu

Bin Zhou

Determination of fragmentation functions from charge asymmetries in hadron production * The work of Jun Gao is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) (12275173), the Shanghai Municipal Education Commission (2024AIZD007) and open fund of Key Laboratory of Atomic and Subatomic Structure and Quantum Control (Ministry of Education)

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)

We examine the stability of a spherically symmetric regular black hole when subjected to perturbations from a charged scalar field. This particular black hole is constructed by deforming the Minkowski spacetime. It has been observed that the charged superradiant instability arises only within a specific range of the deformation parameter, potentially resulting in an instability growth rate with a maximum magnitude of approximately $$\text {Im} (M \omega ) \sim 10^{-3}$$ . This growth rate significantly exceeds the instability identified in ABG black holes discussed in prior research, suggesting a notable timescale for detecting this phenomenon in astrophysical scenarios. Additionally, we conduct a thorough investigation into how the three parameters of the model influence the onset and intensity of the instability. Our analysis offers further insights into the possible emergence of this instability in spherical regular black holes and its association with the nonlinear effects of the electromagnetic field.

Charged superradiant instability in a spherical regular black hole

We study the phenomenon of spontaneous scalarization in parameterized Schwarzschild-like black holes. Two metrics are considered, the Konoplya–Zhidenko metric and the Johannsen–Psaltis metric. While these metrics can mimic the Schwarzschild black hole well in the weak-field regime, they have deformed geometries in the near-horizon strong-field region. Such deformations notably influence the emergence of tachyonic instability and subsequent spontaneous scalarization, enabling a clear distinction between these parameterized metrics and the standard Schwarzschild metric. These results suggest a possible way to test the parameterized black holes and thus the Kerr hypothesis by observing the phenomenon of spontaneous scalarization.

Tachyonic instability and spontaneous scalarization in parameterized Schwarzschild-like black holes

In the framework of Einstein-Maxwell-scalar theory, we studied scalar field perturbations of Reissner-Nordström-Melvin (RNM) black holes, which describes the RN black holes immersed in a uniform magnetic field. Due to the coupling to the Maxwell term, the scalar field acquires an effective mass square which, in the presence of the magnetic field, will become negative somewhere outside the horizon for either sign of the coupling constant α, thus triggering the tachyonic instability and leading to spontaneous scalarization when α is large enough. The magnetic field has significant influences on the waveforms and the onset of the instability, which differs for different sign of α. Effects of the black hole charge on the instability are also studied.

Tachyonic instability of Reissner-Nordström-Melvin black holes in Einstein-Maxwell-scalar theory

In this work, we present a new type of scalar clouds supported by spherically symmetric horizonless compact objects in the scalar-Gauss–Bonnet theory. Unlike the previous spontaneous scalarization that is triggered by the tachyonic instability, our scalarization arises from a nonlinear instability that is non-spontaneous. We explore two types of boundary conditions for the scalar field at the surface of the compact objects and find an infinite countable set of scalar clouds characterized by the number of nodes for both cases. Our study demonstrates that boundary conditions have a significant impact on the formation of scalar clouds. Specifically, for the Dirichlet boundary condition, scalarization is more likely to occur for compact objects with medium radii and becomes harder for ultra-compact and large ones. Conversely, for the Robin boundary condition, scalarization is easier for more compact objects.