We constructed a four-Higgs-doublet model (4HDM) invariant under $\textit{D}$ $_{5}$ symmetry and investigated its complete neutral vacuum structure in detail. Assuming explicit CP conservation in the scalar potential, we examined whether CP symmetry can be spontaneously broken. We provided a complete list of all possible real and complex vacua, along with the constraints on the potential parameters required for each vacuum solution to exist. We also discussed the positive-definiteness conditions that the Hessian must satisfy for each vacuum to be a local minimum of the potential. The results show that, after spontaneous symmetry breaking, some complex vacua lead to spontaneous CP violation in the potential, whereas the remaining complex vacua still preserve CP conservation. Among these CP-violating complex vacua, one can be regarded as the most general form. Furthermore, we discussed the relationship between real and complex vacua.

China

Dong-Ping Fu

Michihisa Takeuchi

Spontaneous CP violation in the $\textit{D}$ $_{5}$-symmetric four-Higgs-doublet models * Supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, the One Hundred Talent Program of Sun Yat-sen University, China, and the Guangdong Natural Science Foundation (2026A1515012641)

In the present work, the strong decays of the discovered $ P_c(4380) $ , $ P_c(4440) $ , $ P_c(4457) $ and their possible isospin cousins are systematically studied via the assignment that they are meson-baryon molecular states. In detail, the strong decay constants and partial decay widths of their decay channels are calculated under the framework of QCD sum rules. The decay widths of the discovered $ P_c(4380) $ , $ P_c(4440) $ , and $ P_c(4457) $ are in good agreement with the experiments. The predictions of the decays of these three related possible isospin cousins are presented, which would shed light on their findings in experiments. In return, this may testify to the assignments of the discovered $ P_c $ states.

Xiu-Wu Wang

Xin Li

Zhi-Gang Wang

Systematic study of the strong decays of the $\textit{P}$ $\textit{c}$ states and their possible isospin cousins via the QCD sum rules * Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (12575083) and the Natural Science Foundation of Hebei Province (A2024502002)

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.

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 present a comprehensive study of warm hybrid inflation within the framework of $\textit{α}$-attractor models, where an axionic inflaton is coupled to a waterfall field in the presence of thermal dissipation. The model is analyzed for both linear ( $ \Upsilon \propto T $ ) and cubic ( $ \Upsilon \propto T^{3} $ ) dissipation regimes. Confronting the theoretical predictions with the latest observational data from Planck+BICEP/Keck, P-ACT-LB-BK18, and SPT, we find that in the weak dissipative regime ( $ Q_{*} \lesssim 10^{-5} $ ), the scalar spectral index $ n_{s} \simeq 0.965 $ lies at the boundary of the combined P-ACT-LB-BK18 constraints, while the tensor-to-scalar ratio $\textit{r}$ remains within observable ranges. For stronger dissipation ( $ Q_{*} \gtrsim 10^{-2} $ ), the model predicts values of $ n_{s} $ well within the $ 1-2\sigma $ confidence region of all datasets, with tensor modes remaining fully observable in both dissipation scenarios. These results indicate that forthcoming CMB polarization experiments may be capable of detecting primordial gravitational waves, thereby providing a robust observational test of warm hybrid inflation across different dissipative regimes.

Waqas Ahmed

Pakistan

Waqar Ahmad

Ahsan Illahi

M. Junaid

Warm hybrid axion inflation in $\textit{α}$-attractor models constrained by ACT and future plan experiments

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.

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)

The Belle Collaboration has recently reported a measurement of the branching fraction for the semileptonic decay $ B^{-}\to\pi^{+}\pi^{-}\ell^{-}\bar\nu_\ell $ , with $ \ell=e $ or $\textit{μ}$. Using the newly available data across the full $ \pi\pi $ invariant-mass spectrum, we determine the non-resonant $ B\to\pi\pi $ transition form factors. We obtain a non-resonant branching fraction $ {\cal B}_N(B^{-}\to\pi^{+}\pi^{-}\ell^{-}\bar\nu_\ell)=(3.5\pm 1.4^{+4.3}_{-2.4})\times 10^{-5} $ . This result indicates that the non-resonant contribution can be comparable in magnitude to the resonant components and should not be treated as a negligible background in precision measurements. Our findings highlight the importance of dedicated experimental efforts at Belle II and LHCb to further probe the non-resonant contribution.

Yan-Li Wang

Xiao-Yu Hao

Yu-Kuo Hsiao

Semileptonic ${B^{-}\to\pi^{+}\pi^{-}\ell^{-}\bar\nu_\ell}$ decay over the full ${\pi\pi}$ invariant mass spectrum * Supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (12575101, 12175128)

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 work, we present the first computation of the full one-loop electroweak radiative corrections to the process $ \mu^- \mu^+ \to W^\pm W^\mp \to hh $ within the Standard Model (SM). Building upon this, we investigate neutral scalar pair production via vector boson fusion at multi–TeV muon colliders in the framework of the Two-Higgs-Doublet Model (2HDM). In our phenomenological analysis, we introduce an enhancement factor, defined as the ratio of the cross section for SM-like Higgs pair production in the 2HDM to the corresponding SM prediction. This factor is systematically evaluated across the allowed regions of parameter space in both Type-X and Type-Y 2HDMs. Our results indicate that, within the viable Type-X parameter space, this factor can reach a value of 3, whereas it remains between 0.91 and 0.95 across the allowed parameter space of the Type-Y scenario. We observe that the enhancement factor exhibits distinct behaviors in the Type-X and Type-Y 2HDMs. This feature provides a promising opportunity to discriminate between the two scenarios through precision measurements of double Higgs production at future multi–TeV colliders. Furthermore, we perform a detailed scan of the cross sections for both CP-odd and CP-even Higgs pair production over the viable parameter spaces of the Type-X and Type-Y 2HDMs. In the Type-Y scenario, at a center-of-mass (CoM) energy $ \sqrt{s} = 10\; \text{TeV} $ and an integrated luminosity of $ {\cal{L}} = 10000\; \text{fb}^{-1} $ , both CP-odd and CP-even Higgs pair production in the $ t\bar{t}b\bar{b} $ final state, with subsequent top-quark decays into leptons and bottom quarks, can be probed with a statistical significance exceeding the $ 2\sigma $ level at several viable parameter points.

Vietnam

Khiem Hong Phan

Quang Hoang-Minh Pham

Neutral scalar pair production via $\textit{W}$-boson fusion at multi–TeV muon colliders * This work is supported by the Vietnam National Foundation for Science Technology Development (NAFOSTED) (103.01-2023.16)

In this work, we focus on the possible linear relationship between short-range correlations (SRCs) and the EMC effect for partons in nuclei. First, we test a linear relationship pertaining to gluons in bound nuclei; it is manifested as a correlation between the slope of the reduced cross-section ratio in deep inelastic scattering (DIS) and the cross-section of sub-threshold $ J/\psi $ photoproduction. For comparison, results from four different global analysis groups of nuclear parton distribution functions (nPDFs) are utilized. These results show a good linear correlation between the gluons in bound nuclei and the slope of the reduced cross-section ratio, consistent with the possible presence of nuclear effects in the gluon distributions. Second, we investigate the linear relationship of quarks in the proton-induced Drell-Yan process. The corresponding results for quarks show strong sensitivity to the parameterizations forms adopted by the different groups. These findings enhance our understanding of the substructure in bound nuclei and provide a valuable reference for future global fitting of nPDFs.

Shu-Man Hu

Wei Wang

Ji Xu

Xing-Hua Yang

Shuai Zhao

Testing a linear relation: short-range correlations and the EMC effect for gluons and quarks in nuclei * Supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (12125503, 12335003, 12105247, 12305106, 12475098)

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)