Hadron-hadron interactions, being nonperturbative in nature, play a significant role in addressing phenomenological questions in particle physics. Femtoscopy is a powerful tool in heavy-ion collision experiments, enabling the extraction of hadron-hadron interactions via momentum-correlation functions (CFs). These CFs are typically expressed as a convolution of source functions and hadron-hadron wave functions, with the latter encoding information about the interactions. However, source functions remain poorly constrained and are commonly approximated by a Gaussian form. Reconstructing source functions from experimental correlation data constitutes an 'inverse problem.' To address this, we propose a toy model based on Tikhonov regularization. Using a square-well potential with four distinct strengths, we calculate the CFs for inputs of single Gaussian source functions and mixed Gaussian source functions. The resulting CFs are then used to reconstruct the source functions via Tikhonov regularization. Our results show that the Gaussian source function can be successfully reconstructed, highlighting the potential of this approach for extracting realistic source functions from hadron pairs of interest.

China

Ao-Sheng Xiong

Qi-Wei Yuan

Ming-Zhu Liu

Fu-Sheng Yu

Zhi-Wei Liu

Li-Sheng Geng

Solving the inverse source problem in femtoscopy with a toy model * Supported in part by the Fundamental and Interdisciplinary Disciplines Breakthrough Plan of the Ministry of Education of China (JYB2025XDXM204) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (W2543006, 12435007). Ming-Zhu Liu acknowledges support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (12575086). Zhi-Wei Liu acknowledges support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (12405133) and from the Shenzhen Science and Technology Program (ZDSYS20230626091501002). Fu-Sheng Yu and Ao-Sheng Xiong acknowledge support from the Scientific Research Innovation Capability Support Project for Young Faculty (ZYGXQNJSKYCXNLZCXM-P2) and from the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (lzujbky-2023-stlt01, lzujbky-2024-oy02, lzujbky-2025-eyt01)

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)

In this paper we bootstrap de Sitter wavefunction coefficients (WFCs) involving fermionic operators. Starting with a fixed total-energy pole order, we systematically impose the conformal Ward identities (CWI) together with cutting-rule constraints. We derive the relevant cutting rules for fermionic exchange for the first time, enabling a complete determination of fermionic three- and four-point WFCs. We show that CWI fixes the leading total-energy-pole residue to the flat-space amplitude and subleading residues to curvature induced corrections to bulk vertices. The structure of the Ward-Takahashi identities are similarly fully determined. As an application, we derive four massless spin-1/2 WFC due to graviton exchange. We also revisit the tension between conserved spin-3/2 operators and de Sitter geometry. We demonstrate that the reality conditions appropriate to dS and Euclidean AdS (EAdS) lead to distinct three-point WFCs for two spin-3/2 operators and the stress tensor. Consequently, the residue of the leading total-energy pole for the four-point WFC receives graviton- and photon-exchange contributions with opposite signs in dS, whereas they appear with the same sign in EAdS. This result is reminiscent of the classic analysis by Pilch, van Nieuwenhuizen, and Sohnius, though formulated in an on-shell framework.

Taiwan

Wei-Ming Chen

Yu-tin Huang

Zi-Xun Huang

Yohan Liu

Fermionic boundary correlators in (EA)dS space

In four dimensions, it has long been established that gravity coupled to matter exhibits ultraviolet divergences at one loop, irrespective of supersymmetry. Notably, the four-matter one-loop amplitudes of half-maximal supergravity coupled to Maxwell multiplets were shown in the 1970s to be divergent. Surprisingly, we demonstrate in this Letter that half-maximal theories can nevertheless become one-loop finite when uplifted to higher dimensions, contrary to naive expectations. Specifically, we study the ultraviolet properties of the four-matter and two-matter two-graviton amplitudes in six-dimensional <math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mrow><mi mathvariant="script">N</mi><mo>=</mo><mo stretchy="false">(</mo><mn>2</mn><mo>,</mo><mn>0</mn><mo stretchy="false">)</mo></mrow></math> and <math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mrow><mi mathvariant="script">N</mi><mo>=</mo><mo stretchy="false">(</mo><mn>1</mn><mo>,</mo><mn>1</mn><mo stretchy="false">)</mo></mrow></math> supergravities, coupled to <math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><msub><mi>n</mi><mi>T</mi></msub></math> tensor and <math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><msub><mi>n</mi><mi>V</mi></msub></math> vector multiplets, respectively. We find that the one-loop amplitudes are finite for <math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><msub><mi>n</mi><mi>T</mi></msub><mo>=</mo><mn>21</mn></math> and <math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><msub><mi>n</mi><mi>V</mi></msub><mo>=</mo><mn>20</mn></math>. This finiteness is unexpected, as symmetry-preserving counterterms do exist. Interestingly, both values exactly correspond to low-energy limits of type II string theories compactified on K3, which hints at possible origins to the surprising cancellations.

Sweden

Henrik Johansson

Michele Santagata

United Kingdom

Congkao Wen

Surprising One-Loop Finiteness of 6D Half-Maximal Supergravities

In this paper, we explore the chamber dissection of the loop-geometry of Correlahedron, which encodes the loop integrand of four-point stress-energy correlators in planar $$ \mathcal{N} $$ = 4 super Yang-Mills. We demonstrate that at four loops, continuing the pattern of lower loops, the integrand of the four-point correlation function can be written as a sum over products of chamber-forms and local loop integrands. The chambers and their associated forms are identical to those at three-loops, indicating that the dissection may be complete to all loop orders. Furthermore, this suggests that the leading singularities to all loops are simply linear combinations of these chamber forms. This is especially intriguing at four loops since it contains elliptic functions. Interestingly, each elliptic function appears in a subset of chambers. Our geometric approach motivates us to “diagonalize” the representation, where the local integrals only possess a single leading singularity or elliptic cut. In such a representation, all integrands must evaluate to pure functions, including a single pure elliptic integrand. Inspired by this picture, we also present a simplified form of the three-loop correlator in terms of two independent pure functions (weight-6 single-valued multiple polylogarithms), which are directly computed from local integrands with unit leading singularities, multiplied by the leading singularities from chamber forms.

Song He

Germany

Chia-Kai Kuo

Leading singularities and chambers of Correlahedron

In this work, we analyze the infrared divergence of two-loop amplitudes at arbitrary multiplicity in three-dimensional $$ \mathcal{N}=6 $$ Chern-Simons matter theory. We introduce the Bern-Dixon-Smirnov (BDS) integrand, which captures the full infrared structure while remaining free of unphysical cuts. We show that these local integrands, together with their kinematic prefactors, are naturally organized by the scaffolding triangulations of $\textit{n}$ = 2$\textit{k}$-gon, with distinct triangulations yielding different local representations. Remarkably, this triangulation structure also persists at the level of the integrated functions. This observation provides a graphical proof of both the cancellation of elliptic cuts and the triangulation independence of the integrated result. As a direct consequence, we obtain a simple proof that the integrated BDS integrand coincides with the one-loop maximally-helicity-violating (MHV) amplitude (the BDS ansatz) of $$ \mathcal{N}=4 $$ super Yang-Mills theory for all $\textit{n}$ = 2$\textit{k}$.

Chi Zhang

BDS ansatz in ABJM via scaffolding triangulations

The charmed baryon was first observed experimentally in 1975, one year after the charm quark's confirmation via the discovery of the $ J/\psi $ particle. Studying charmed baryon decays provides a pathway to investigate both strong and weak interactions, leveraging the weak decays of the embedded charm quark. However, for approximately three decades following its discovery, experimental knowledge of charmed baryons remained significantly limited compared to those of the hidden-charm $\textit{ψ}$ mesons and open-charm $ D_{(s)} $ mesons. This situation changed markedly starting in 2014, when dedicated data collection for charmed baryons commenced at BESIII. In this article, we review the experimental progress achieved since 2014 in understanding the weak decays of the charmed baryons.

Pei-Rong Li

Xiao-Rui Lyu

Yangheng Zheng

Experimental overview on the charmed baryon decays * The authors thank Fusheng Yu for useful discussions. The authors are supported in part by National Natural Science Foundation of China (12221005, 12422504); CAS Project for Young Scientists in Basic Research (YSBR-117); Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, Lanzhou University (lzujbky-2025-ytB01, lzujbky-2023-stlt01, lzujbky-2023-it32), University of Chinese Academy of Sciences

In this work, we investigate the resonance structures in the $ \Sigma(1/2^-) $ system from both three-quark and five-quark perspectives within the framework of the chiral quark model. An accurate few-body computational approach, the Gaussian expansion method, is employed to construct the orbital wave functions of multiquark states. To reduce the model dependence on parameters, we fit two sets of parameters to check the stability of the results. The calculations show that our results remain stable despite changes in the parameters. In the three-quark calculations, two $ \Sigma(1/2^-) $ states are obtained with energies around 1.8 GeV, which are good candidates for the experimentally observed $ \Sigma(1750) $ and $ \Sigma(1900) $ . In the five-quark configuration, several stable resonance states are identified, including $ \Sigma \pi $ , $ N \bar{K} $ , and $ N \bar{K}^{*} $ . These resonance states survive the channel-coupling calculations under the complex-scaling framework and manifest as stable structures. Our results support the existence of a two-pole structure for the $ \Sigma(1/2^-) $ system, predominantly composed of $ \Sigma \pi $ and $ N \bar{K} $ configurations, analogous to the well-known $ \Lambda(1380) $ - $ \Lambda(1405) $ ( $ \Sigma \pi $ - $ N \bar{K} $ ) system. On the other hand, although the energy of the $ N \bar{K}^{*} $ configuration is close to that of $ \Sigma(1750) $ and $ \Sigma(1900) $ , the obtained width is not consistent with the experimental values. This suggests that the $ N \bar{K}^{*} $ state needs to mix with three-quark components to better explain the experimental $ \Sigma(1750) $ and $ \Sigma(1900) $ states. According to our decay width calculations, the predicted two resonance states are primarily composed of $ \Sigma \pi $ and $ N \bar{K} $ , with their main decay channel being $ \Lambda \pi $ . Therefore, we encourage experimental groups to search for the predicted two-pole structure of the $ \Sigma(1/2^-) $ system in the invariant mass spectrum of $ \Lambda \pi $ .

Yu Yao

Xuejie Liu

Xiaoyun Chen

Yuheng Wu

Jialun Ping

Yue Tan

Qi Huang

Investigation of resonances in the Σ(1/2$^{–}$) system based on the chiral quark model * Supported partly by the National Science Foundation of China (12205249, 12305087). Yue Tan is supported by the Funding for School-Level Research Projects of Yancheng Institute of Technology (xjr2022039) and the Qinglan Project Fund of Jiangsu Province. Qi Huang is supported by the Start-up Funds of Nanjing Normal University (184080H201B20)

Electroweak (EW) amplitudes in the gauge-Goldstone five-component formalism have a distinctive property: gauge symmetry is imprinted in the amplitudes, manifested as the massive Ward identity (MWI) $ k^M{\cal{M}}_M=0 $ . In this study, we used the HELAS package to numerically study gauge symmetry in EW amplitudes. First, we directly tested gauge symmetry by examining the MWI of amplitudes. Second, we modified the couplings within a vertex and among vertices to check if and how the MWI changes. Third, we tested gauge symmetry by considering the couplings modified by operators from the standard model effective field theory (SMEFT). Similar to the standard model, there are relations between different couplings that are protected by gauge symmetry. We observed that, if we modify the couplings to deviate from the relations, the MWI is violated. In contrast, the MWI is restored when the relations between couplings reduce to those in the SMEFT.

Wang-Fa Li

Junmou Chen

Qian-Jiu Wang

Zhao-Huan Yu

Numerical study on the gauge symmetry of electroweak amplitudes * Junmou Chen is supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (12205118), Wang-Fa Li, Qian-Jiu Wang, and Zhao-Huan Yu are supported by the Guangzhou Science and Technology Planning Project (2024A04J4026)

The high-density region of the QCD phase diagram displays an intricate competition between color superconductivity and the QCD Kondo effect due to color exchange in quark matter containing a single heavy quark impurity. We explore the characteristic impurity-induced superconducting subgap states arising in such systems by generalizing the surrogate model solver, recently considered in the context of condensed matter physics [<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.108.L220506">Phys. Rev. B 108, L220506 (2023)</a>]. The method consists of approximating the full superconducting bulk by only a small number of effective levels whose parameters are chosen so as to best reproduce the Matsubara frequency dependence of the impurity-bulk hybridization function. We numerically solve a surrogate QCD Kondo model describing a quantum impurity color exchange coupled to a two-color two-flavor superconducting bulk. The results directly indicate the presence of multiple phase transitions as the coupling of the impurity to the bulk is increased, due to the interplay between various overscreened states. The methods introduced here are straightforward enough to be extended to more realistic QCD scenarios.