This paper presents the first dedicated study of the boosted <math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mi>H</mi><mi>H</mi><mo stretchy="false">→</mo><mi>b</mi><mover accent="true"><mi>b</mi><mo stretchy="false">¯</mo></mover><mi>γ</mi><mi>γ</mi></math> topology as a key probe of physics beyond the Standard Model (SM) in the high-energy double-Higgs boson regime. The analysis presented in this paper focuses on two classes of new-physics scenarios: nonresonant deviations of the quartic gauge-Higgs interaction, parametrized by the coupling modifier <math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><msub><mi>κ</mi><mrow><mn>2</mn><mi>V</mi></mrow></msub></math>, and resonant enhancement arising from the decay of a heavy scalar state, modeled within a two-Higgs-doublet framework. We demonstrate that the boosted reconstruction category enhances sensitivity to beyond SM effects that populate the high-<math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><msub><mi>m</mi><mrow><mi>H</mi><mi>H</mi></mrow></msub></math> tail, yielding improved constraints on <math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><msub><mi>κ</mi><mrow><mn>2</mn><mi>V</mi></mrow></msub></math> and extending the discovery reach for heavy resonances.

United Arab Emirates

Mohamed Belfkir

Probing new physics in the boosted <math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mi>H</mi><mi>H</mi><mo stretchy="false">→</mo><mi>b</mi><mover accent="true"><mi>b</mi><mo stretchy="false">¯</mo></mover><mi>γ</mi><mi>γ</mi></math> channel at the LHC

In this paper, we present a new algorithm, , that implements physics-inspired adversarial attacks for testing neural network-based classification tasks in particle and astroparticle physics. While we initially developed the algorithm for the search for astrophysical tau neutrinos with the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, we apply it to further data from other science domains, thus demonstrating its general applicability. Here, we apply the algorithm to the well-known MNIST data set and furthermore, to public data from the CMS Experiment at the Large Hadron Collider. The algorithm is based on minimizing a cost function that combines a $$\chi ^2$$ based test-statistic with the deviation from the desired target score. The test statistic quantifies the probability of the perturbations applied to the data based on the experimental uncertainties. For our studied use cases, we find that the likelihood of a flipped classification differs for both the initially correctly and incorrectly classified events. When testing changes of the classifications as a function of an attack parameter that scales the experimental uncertainties, the robustness of the network decision can be assessed. Furthermore, this allows testing the robustness of the classification of unlabeled experimental data.

Germany

Lucie Flek

Oliver Janik

Philipp Jung

Akbar Karimi

Timo Saala

Alexander Schmidt

Matthias Schott

Philipp Soldin

United States

Matthias Thiesmeyer

Christopher Wiebusch

Ulrich Willemsen

MiniFool: Physics-Constraint-Aware Minimizer-Based Adversarial Attacks in Deep Neural Networks

We compute the Euclidean hadronic tensor from charge density operators and extract elastic and resonance structures by employing exponential fits to the four-point function correlator, as well as a Bayesian reconstruction inverse algorithm to obtain the corresponding spectral density for qualitative comparison. We present the determination of the nucleon’s Sachs electric form factor using the hadronic tensor formalism and verify that it is consistent with that from the conventional three-point function calculation. Beyond the elastic peak, we observe a structure located approximately 0.5–0.7 GeV above the nucleon mass in the Bayesian reconstruction. This structure is interpreted as a mixture of the Roper resonance [<math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mi>N</mi><mo stretchy="false">(</mo><mn>1440</mn><mo stretchy="false">)</mo></math>], and states with both positive and negative parities in this mass region, as well as multihadron states. Assuming the observed structure is dominated by <math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><msup><mi>J</mi><mi>P</mi></msup><mo>=</mo><mn>1</mn><mo>/</mo><msup><mn>2</mn><mo>±</mo></msup></math> states, we extract the transition electric form factor <math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><msubsup><mi>G</mi><mi>E</mi><mo>*</mo></msubsup><mo stretchy="false">(</mo><msup><mi>Q</mi><mn>2</mn></msup><mo stretchy="false">)</mo></math> and the corresponding longitudinal helicity amplitude <math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><msub><mi>S</mi><mrow><mn>1</mn><mo>/</mo><mn>2</mn></mrow></msub><mo stretchy="false">(</mo><msup><mi>Q</mi><mn>2</mn></msup><mo stretchy="false">)</mo></math>, and compare them with those determined from the CLAS experimental data of nucleon-to-Roper transition. Although fitting to the four-point correlation function or using the inverse algorithm does not resolve individual resonances, it nevertheless enables the determination of total inclusive lepton–nucleon scattering cross sections in appropriate energy bins. This lattice QCD calculation presents the first major step toward studying the inclusive <math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mi>N</mi><mo stretchy="false">→</mo><mi>X</mi></math> contributions within the hadronic tensor formalism.

China

Jian Liang

Raza Sabbir Sufian

Bigeng Wang

Terrence Draper

Bangladesh

Tanjib Khan

Keh-Fei Liu

Yi-Bo Yang

Christian Zimmermann

Elastic and resonance structures of the nucleon from the hadronic tensor in lattice QCD: Implications for neutrino-nucleon scattering and hadron physics

Quantum systems of physical interest are often local, but there are at least three competing perspectives on how “locality” should be formalized: an algebraic framework, a path-integral framework, and a lattice framework. One puzzle in this competition is that systems with higher-form symmetries, which are perfectly local from the path-integral and lattice perspectives, can violate the algebraic principle of “additivity”. In this paper, we propose a resolution to this puzzle by introducing a weaker locality principle, $\textit{disjoint}$ additivity, which together with Haag duality should always be satisfied in local quantum systems. As evidence, we give examples in which disjoint additivity is preserved when ordinary additivity is violated; we show that Haag duality and disjoint additivity are satisfied in rather general lattice systems with local symmetry constraints; we give examples of nonlocal theories in which either disjoint additivity or Haag duality is violated; and finally we give examples of systems with nonlocal symmetry constraints in which disjoint additivity is violated, but can be restored by passing to a local “SymTFT” system in one higher dimension.

Daniel Harlow

Shu-Heng Shao

Jonathan Sorce

Manu Srivastava

Disjoint additivity and local quantum physics

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

This study investigates the ultraviolet realization of semileptonic four-fermion operator $ O_{ledq}^{\alpha \beta 11} $ that incorporates Majorana dark matter (DM) in both lepton-flavor-conserving (LFC) and lepton-flavor-violating (LFV) scenarios at the one-loop level via box diagram, thereby effectively alleviating the lower bounds on the new physics scale. In addition, we investigate the interplay between model-independent constraints on the Wilson coefficients and DM direct detection, relic density, and collider searches in the context of fermion portal DM model with two mediators. We found that both the projected future constraint on the LFC Wilson coefficient $ C_{ledq}^{2211}/\Lambda^2 \lt $ $ (12.3\; \text{TeV})^{-2} $ from the measurements of neutrino non-standard interaction in the next-generation neutrino oscillation experiments, and the LFV constraint $ C_{ledq}^{1211}/\Lambda^2 \lt \left(2.2\times 10^3\; \text{TeV} \right)^{-2} $ from ongoing charged-lepton-flavor-violation searches, provide a complementary exploration of the parameter space encompassing the DM and scalar masses. With a colored mediator mass of approximately $ 2\; \text{TeV} $ , the sensitivity of the indirect constraints on the four-fermion operator can surpass those of collider searches and DM direct detection, in scenarios where the masses of the DM and scalar are close. By ensuring the correct DM relic density, however, we find that the collider searches and DM direct detection are more sensitive to the electroweak-scale DM and scalar than indirect constraints.

Yuxuan He

Gang Li

Jia Liu

Xiao-Ping Wang

Xiang Zhao

Lepton flavor of four-fermion operator and fermion portal dark matter * Gang Li and Xiang Zhao are supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (12347105, 12505127), the Guangdong Basic and Applied Basic Research Foundation (2024A1515012668). The work of Jia Liu is supported by the National Science Foundation of China (12235001, 12475103) and State Key Laboratory of Nuclear Physics and Technology (NPT2025ZX11). The work of Xiao-Ping Wang is supported by National Science Foundation of China (12375095) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities

The Coherent Neutrino-Nucleus Interaction Experiment (CONNIE) aims to detect the coherent scattering (<math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mrow><mi>CE</mi><mi>ν</mi><mi>NS</mi></mrow></math>) of reactor antineutrinos off silicon nuclei using thick fully depleted high-resistivity silicon CCDs. Two Skipper-CCD sensors with subelectron readout noise capability were installed at the experiment next to the Angra-2 reactor in 2021, making CONNIE the first experiment to employ Skipper-CCDs for reactor neutrino detection. We report on the performance of the Skipper-CCDs, the new data processing, data quality, and event selection for <math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mrow><mi>CE</mi><mi>ν</mi><mi>NS</mi></mrow></math> interactions, which enable CONNIE to reach a record low detection threshold of 15 eV. The data were collected over 300 days in 2021–2022 and correspond to exposures of 14.9 g-days with the reactor-on and 3.5 g-days with the reactor-off. The difference between the reactor-on and off event rates shows no excess and yields upper limits for the neutrino interaction rates, comparable with previous CONNIE limits from standard CCDs and higher exposures. Searches for new neutrino interactions beyond the Standard Model improve the previous CONNIE limit on a simplified model with light vector mediators. A first dark matter (DM) search by diurnal modulation by CONNIE obtains the best limits on the DM-electron scattering cross section by a surface-level experiment. These promising results, obtained using a very small-mass sensor, illustrate the potential of Skipper-CCDs to probe rare neutrino interactions and motivate the plans to increase the detector mass in the near future.

Mexico

Alexis A. Aguilar-Arevalo

Juan Carlos D’Olivo

Y. Sarkis

Argentina

Nicolas Avalos

Xavier Bertou

Brazil

Carla Bonifazi

Gustavo Cancelo

Juan Estrada

Richard Ford

Kevin Kuk

Andrew Lathrop

Javier Tiffenberg

Sho Uemura

Brenda A. Cervantes-Vergara

Paraguay

Claudio Chavez

Fernando Chierchie

Gustavo Coelho Corrêa

João dos Anjos

Herman P. Lima

Guillermo Fernandez Moroni

Aldo R. Fernandes Neto

Switzerland

Ben Kilminster

Patrick Lemos

Katherine Maslova

Irina Nasteva

Ana Carolina Oliveira

Pedro Ventura

Martin Makler

Franciole Marinho

Jorge Molina

Diego Stalder

Laura Paulucci

Dario Rodrigues

Miguel Sofo Haro

Searches for <math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mrow><mi>CE</mi><mi>ν</mi><mi>NS</mi></mrow></math> and physics beyond the standard model using Skipper-CCDs at CONNIE

This contribution reviews recent progress in the low-lying scalar mesons and glueballs. We propose a new classification for the scalar nonet that includes $f_0(980)$ and $a_0(980)$ as the lowest states, while we identify $f_0(1500)$ as a primary glueball candidate. We demonstrate that the production yields of these states in heavy-ion collisions are mutually consistent across statistical, coalescence, and S-matrix frameworks. To investigate their internal structure, we move beyond standard phenomenology by describing glueballs as topological solitons. This approach yields an energy spectrum in excellent agreement with lattice QCD and experimental data, while interpreting $f_0(2470)$ as a tightly bound glueballonium to explain its anomalously long lifetime. This non-perturbative framework provides a predictive basis for the future experimental verification of exotic scalar states. Abstract Published by the Jagiellonian University 2026 authors

Poland

C. Sasaki

Selected Topics in Quark–Hadron Physics: From Scalar Nonets to Topological Glueballs

We introduce a lattice QCD mixed action approach that employs Wilson-type quarks in the sea and valence sectors. The sea sector is based on gauge ensembles with $$N_\mathrm {\scriptstyle f}=2+1$$ flavours of non-perturbatively O($\textit{a}$)-improved Wilson fermions generated by the Coordinated Lattice Simulations (CLS) initiative. The parameter space of the considered ensembles encompasses five values of the lattice spacing, a range of pion masses extending down to the physical point, and large physical volumes. In the valence sector, we employ Wilson twisted-mass fermions at maximal twist, using the same massless Wilson-Dirac operator in both the sea and valence sectors. We describe the strategy applied for the required matching of the sea and valence quark masses along the target renormalised chiral trajectory. A precise universality test is then conducted by comparing the continuum-limit results of the mixed-action approach and of the unitary setup, in which the same Wilson fermion regularisation is employed in the sea and in the valence. As a key application, we conduct a scale setting procedure based on lattice determinations of the masses and decay constants of the pion and kaon, as well as the gradient flow scale $$t_0$$ . The scale setting can consequently be performed in three distinct ways, utilising the unitary setup, the mixed action approach, and their combination. We observe that the latter combination results in enhanced control of the systematic uncertainties, thereby yielding a precise determination of the physical value of $$t_0$$ .

Andrea Bussone

Alessandro Conigli

Julien Frison

Spain

Gregorio Herdoíza

Carlos Pena

Italy

David Preti

José Romero

Alejandro Sáez

Javier Ugarrio

Hadronic physics from a Wilson fermion mixed-action approach: setup and scale setting

In recent years, the complete set of cross sections for Large Hadron Collider (LHC) processes ending with three resolved final states consisting of either photons or jets has been evaluated at next-to-next-to-leading order in QCD and leading order in QED. Results for three photons or three jets have only been obtained using the leading-color approximation of the virtual two-loop amplitudes. In the meantime, the required amplitudes have become available without recourse to the color expansion. In the present publication, we quantify the effects of the subleading-color contributions, and show that they do not exceed 2% for most of the previously published results. The one exception is the ratio of three- to two-jet cross sections, where subleading-color effects can reach up to 5%. Furthermore, we show that these conclusions hold for both popular infrared renormalization schemes, i.e. minimal subtraction and a scheme based on Catani’s magic formula for infrared divergences of two-loop amplitudes. The size of the effects is usually overshadowed by the size of the remaining uncertainty due to the truncation of the perturbation series. This is particularly important in the case of three-jet distributions that have already been used for the extraction of the strong-coupling constant at the very high energies available at the LHC.

Michał Czakon

Rene Poncelet

How much color do we really need? Two-loop subleading-color effects in photon and jet physics