The Higgs boson discovery at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN confirmed the existence of the last missing particle of the Standard Model (SM). The existence of new fundamental constituents of matter beyond the SM is of great importance for our understanding of Nature. In this context, indirect (non-resonant) indications for new scalar bosons were found in the data from the first run of the LHC, taken between 2010 and 2012 at CERN: an excess in the invariant mass of muon-electron pairs, consistent with a new Higgs boson ($S$) with a mass of $150\pm5$ GeV. Other processes with multiple leptons in the final state, moderate missing energy, and possibly (bottom quark) jets exhibit deviations from the SM predictions. These anomalies can be explained within a simplified model in which a new heavy Higgs boson $H$ decays into two lighter Higgses $S$. This lighter Higgs $S$ subsequently decays to $W$ bosons, bottom quarks and has also an invisible decay mode. Here, we demonstrate that using this model we can identify narrow excesses in di-photon and $Z$-photon spectra around 152 GeV. By incorporating the latest measurements of di-photons in association with leptons, we obtain a combined global significance of $5.4\sigma$. This represents the highest significance ever reported for an excess consistent with a narrow resonance beyond the SM (BSM) in high-energy proton-proton collision data at the LHC. Such findings have the potential to usher in a new era in particle physics - the BSM epoch - offering crucial insights into unresolved puzzles of nature.

The discovery of the Higgs boson with its mass around 125 GeV by the ATLAS and CMS Collaborations marked the beginning of a new era in high energy physics. The Higgs boson will be the subject of extensive studies of the ongoing LHC program. At the same time, lepton collider based Higgs factories have been proposed as a possible next step beyond the LHC, with its main goal to precisely measure the properties of the Higgs boson and probe potential new physics associated with the Higgs boson. The Circular Electron Positron Collider~(CEPC) is one of such proposed Higgs factories. The CEPC is an $e^+e^-$ circular collider proposed by and to be hosted in China. Located in a tunnel of approximately 100~km in circumference, it will operate at a center-of-mass energy of 240~GeV as the Higgs factory. In this paper, we present the first estimates on the precision of the Higgs boson property measurements achievable at the CEPC and discuss implications of these measurements.

The purpose of this paper is to prove that one can read off the gonality sequence of a smooth projective curve from syzygies of secant varieties of the curve embedded by a line bundle of sufficiently large degree. More precisely, together with Ein-Niu-Park's theorem, our main result shows that the gonality sequence of a smooth projective curve completely determines the shape of the minimal free resolutions of secant varieties of the curve of sufficiently large degree. This is a natural generalization of the gonality conjecture on syzygies of smooth projective curves established by Ein-Lazarsfeld and Rathmann to the secant varieties.

The $\mathrm{^{16}O}(\alpha, \alpha^{\prime})$ reaction was studied at $\theta_{lab} = 0^\circ$ at an incident energy of $\textrm{E}_{lab}$ = 200 MeV using the K600 magnetic spectrometer at iThemba LABS. Proton and $\alpha$-decay from the natural parity states were observed in a large-acceptance silicon-strip detector array at backward angles. The coincident charged particle measurements were used to characterize the decay channels of the $0_{6}^{+}$ state in $\mathrm{^{16}O}$ located at $E_{x} = 15.097(5)$ MeV. This state is identified by several theoretical cluster calculations to be a good candidate for the 4-$\alpha$ cluster state. The results of this work suggest the presence of a previously unidentified resonance at $E_{x}\approx15$ MeV that does not exhibit a $0^{+}$ character. This unresolved resonance may have contaminated previous observations of the $0_{6}^{+}$ state.

The Large Electron Positron collider observed an indication for a new Higgs boson with a mass around $95$\,GeV-$100$\,GeV in the process $e^+e^-\to Z^*\to ZS$ with $S\to b\bar b$. The interest in this excess re-emerged with the di-photon signature at $\approx$\,95\,GeV at the Large Hadron Collider. In fact, a combined global significance of $3.4\sigma$ is obtained once $WW$ and $\tau\tau$ signals are included in addition. In this article, we perform a feasibility study for discovering such a new scalar $S$ at future electron-positron colliders using the recoil-mass method applied to $e^{+} e^{-} \to ZS$ with $Z \rightarrow \mu^{+} \mu^{-}$ and $S \to b \bar{b}$. For this, we employ a Deep Neural Network to enhance the separation between the Standard Model background and the signal, reducing the required integrated luminosity necessary for discovery by a factor of two to three. As a result, an $SU(2)_L$ singlet Higgs with a mass of $\approx$\,95\,GeV can be observed with more than 5$\sigma$ significance at a 250\,GeV centre-of-mass energy collider with $5~ {\rm ab}^{-1}$ integrated luminosity if it has a mixing angle of at least $0.1$ with the Standard Model Higgs, which means that a discovery can be achieved within the whole 95\% confidence-level region preferred by Large Electron Positron excess. Furthermore, including more decay channels such as $S\to \tau\tau$ and $Z\to e^+e^-$ further enhances the discovery potential of future $e^+e^-$ accelerators, like CEPC, CLIC, FCC-ee and ILC.

It is almost 80 years since Hans Bethe described the level density as a non-interacting gas of protons and neutrons. In all these years, experimental data were interpreted within this picture of a fermionic gas. However, the renewed interest of measuring level density using various techniques calls for a revision of this description. In particular, the wealth of nuclear level densities measured with the Oslo method favors the constant-temperature level density over the Fermi-gas picture. From the basis of experimental data, we demonstrate that nuclei exhibit a constant-temperature level density behavior for all mass regions and at least up to the neutron threshold.

In this paper we develop an extremal eigenvalue approach to the problem of construction of free boundary minimal surfaces in the product of Euclidean balls of chosen radii. The extremal problem involves a linear combination of normalized mixed Steklov-Neumann eigenvalues. The problem is motivated by the Schwarz P-surface which is a free boundary minimal surface in a cube. We show that the problem does not have an absolute maximum in the product case. By imposing a finite group of symmetries on both the surface and on the eigenfunctions we construct at least one free boundary minimal surface in a rectangular prism with arbitrary side lengths. We also show that for a genus zero surface with six boundary components and suitable reflection symmetries there is a maximizing metric which can be realized by a free boundary minimal immersion into a product of Euclidean balls.

Establishing a deep underground physics laboratory to study, amongst others, double beta decay, geoneutrinos, reactor neutrinos and dark matter has been discussed for more than a decade within the austral African physicists' community. PAUL, the Paarl Africa Underground Laboratory, is an initiative foreseeing an open international laboratory devoted to the development of competitive science in the austral region. It has the advantage that the location, the Huguenot tunnel, exists already and the geology and the environment of the site is appropriate for an experimental facility. The paper describes the PAUL initiative, presents the physics prospects and discusses the capacity for building the future experimental facility.

A model-independent technique was used to determine the $\gamma$-ray Strength Function ($\gamma$SF) of $^{56}$Fe down to $\gamma$-ray energies less than 1 MeV for the first time with GRETINA using the $(p,p')$ reaction at 16 MeV. No difference was observed in the energy dependence of the $\gamma$SF built on $2^{+}$ and $4^{+}$ final states, supporting the Brink hypothesis. In addition, angular distribution and polarization measurements were performed. The angular distributions are consistent with dipole radiation. The polarization results show a small bias towards magnetic character in the region of the enhancement.

We study the freeness problem for subgroups of $\operatorname{SL}_2(\mathbb{C})$ generated by two parabolic matrices. For $q = r/p \in \mathbb{Q} \cap (0,4)$, where $p$ is prime and $\gcd(r,p)=1$, we initiate the study of the algebraic structure of the group $\Delta_q$ generated by the two matrices $$A = \begin{pmatrix} 1 & 0 \\ 1 & 1 \end{pmatrix}, \text{ and } Q_q = \begin{pmatrix} 1 & q \\ 0 & 1 \end{pmatrix}.$$ We introduce the conjecture that $\Delta_{r/p} = \overline{\Gamma}_1^{(p)}(r)$, the congruence subgroup of $\operatorname{SL}_2(\mathbb{Z}[\frac{1}{p}])$ consisting of all matrices with upper right entry congruent to $0$ mod $r$ and diagonal entries congruent to $1$ mod $r$. We prove this conjecture when $r \leq 4$ and for some cases when $r = 5$. Furthermore, conditional on a strong form of Artin's conjecture on primitive roots, we also prove the conjecture when $r \in \{ p-1, p+1, (p+1)/2 \}$. In all these cases, this gives information about the algebraic structure of $\Delta_{r/p}$: it is isomorphic to the fundamental group of a finite graph of virtually free groups, and has finite index $J_2(r)$ in $\operatorname{SL}_2(\mathbb{Z}[\frac{1}{p}])$, where $J_2(r)$ denotes the Jordan totient function.

In this paper we present the first systematic analysis of the impact of the populated vs. intrinsic spin distribution on the nuclear level density and $\gamma$-ray strength function retrieved through the Oslo Method. We illustrate the effect of the spin distribution on the recently performed $^{239}\mathrm{Pu}$(d,p$\gamma$)$^{240}\mathrm{Pu}$ experiment using a 12 MeV deuteron beam performed at the Oslo Cyclotron Lab. In the analysis we couple state-of-the-art calculations for the populated spin-distributions with the Monte-Carlo nuclear decay code RAINIER to compare Oslo Method results to the known input. We find that good knowledge of the populated spin distribution is crucial and show that the populated distribution has a significant impact on the extracted nuclear level density and $\gamma$-ray strength function for the $^{239}\mathrm{Pu}$(d,p$\gamma$)$^{240}\mathrm{Pu}$ case.

The purpose of this note is twofold. First, we give a quick proof of Ballico-Chiantini's theorem stating that a Fano or Calabi-Yau variety of dimension at least 4 in codimension two is a complete intersection. Second, we improve Barth-Van de Ven's result asserting that if the degree of a smooth projective variety of dimension $n$ is less than approximately $0.63 \cdot n^{1/2}$, then it is a complete intersection. We show that the degree bound can be improved to approximately $0.79 \cdot n^{2/3}$.

Exotic-deformation effects in 46Ti nucleus were investigated by analysing the high-energy gamma-ray and the alpha-particle energy spectra. One of the experiments was performed using the charged-particle multi-detector array ICARE together with a large volume (4"x4") BGO detector. The study focused on simultaneous measurement of light charged particles and gamma-rays in coincidence with the evaporation residues. The experimental data show a signature of very large deformations of the compound nucleus in the Jacobi transition region at the highest spins. These results are compared to data from previous experiments performed with the HECTOR array coupled to the EUROBALL array, where it was found that the GDR strength function is highly fragmented, strongly indicating a presence of nuclei with very large deformation.

The multi-lepton anomalies and searches for the associated production of a narrow resonance indicate the existence of a $\approx$151 GeV Higgs with a significance of $>5\sigma$ and $>3.9\sigma$, respectively. On the one hand, these anomalies require a sizable branching fraction of the new scalar to $WW$, while on the other hand, no $ZZ$ signal at this mass has been observed. This suggests that the new boson is the neutral component of an $SU(2)_L$ triplet with zero hypercharge. This field leads to a positive definite shift in the $W$ mass, as preferred by the current global fit, and is produced via the Drell-Yan process $pp\to W^*\to \Delta^0\Delta^\pm$. We use the side-bands of the ATLAS analysis \cite{ATLAS:2023omk} of the associated production of the Standard Model Higgs in the di-photon channel to search for this production mode of the triplet. Since the dominant decays of $\Delta^\pm$ depend only on its mass, the effect in the 22 signal categories considered by ATLAS is completely correlated. We find that the ones most sensitive to the Drell-Yan production of the triplet Higgs show consistent excesses at a mass of $\approx$151.5 GeV. Combining these channels in a likelihood ratio test, a non-zero Br$[\Delta^0\to\gamma\gamma] = 0.66\%$ is preferred by $\approx$3$\sigma$, supporting our conjecture.

Photon strength functions describing the average response of the nucleus to an electromagnetic probe are key input information in the theoretical modelling of nuclear reactions. Consequently they are important for a wide range of fields such as nuclear structure, nuclear astrophysics, medical isotope production, fission and fusion reactor technologies. They are also sources of information for widely used reaction libraries such as the IAEA Reference Input Parameter Library and evaluated data files such as EGAF. In the past two decades, the amount of reaction gamma-ray data measured to determine photon strength functions has grown rapidly. Different experimental techniques have led to discrepant results and users are faced with the dilemma which (if any) of the divergent data to adopt. We report on a coordinated effort to compile and assess the existing experimental data on photon strength functions from the giant dipole resonance region to energies below the neutron separation energy. The assessment of the discrepant data at energies around or below the neutron separation energy has been possible only in a few cases where adequate information on the model-dependent analysis and estimation of uncertainties was available. In the giant dipole resonance region, we adopt the recommendations of the new IAEA photonuclear data library. We also present global empirical and semi-microscopic models that describe the photon strength functions in the entire energy region and reproduce reasonably well most of the experimental data. The compiled experimental photon strengths and recommended model calculations are available from the PSF database hosted at the IAEA (URL:this http URL).

Partons traversing the strongly interacting medium produced in heavy-ion collisions are expected to lose energy depending on their color charge and mass. We measure the nuclear modification factors for charm- and bottom-decay electrons, defined as the ratio of yields, scaled by the number of binary nucleon-nucleon collisions, in $\sqrt{s_{\rm NN}}$ = 200 GeV Au+Au collisions to $p$+$p$ collisions ($R_{\rm AA}$), or in central to peripheral Au+Au collisions ($R_{\rm CP}$). We find the bottom-decay electron $R_{\rm AA}$ and $R_{\rm CP}$ to be significantly higher than that of charm-decay electrons. Model calculations including mass-dependent parton energy loss in a strongly coupled medium are consistent with the measured data. These observations provide clear evidence of mass ordering of charm and bottom quark energy loss when traversing through the strongly coupled medium created in heavy-ion collisions.

We first interpret Pell's equation satisfied by Chebyshev polynomials for each degree t, as a certain Positivstellensatz, which then yields for each integer t, what we call a generalized Pell's equation, satisfied by reciprocals of Christoffel functions of ''degree'' 2t, associated with the equilibrium measure $\mu$ of the interval [--1, 1] and the measure (1 -- x 2)d$\mu$. We next extend this point of view to arbitrary compact basic semi-algebraic set S $\subset$ R n and obtain a generalized Pell's equation (by analogy with the interval [--1, 1]). Under some conditions, for each t the equation is satisfied by reciprocals of Christoffel functions of ''degree'' 2t associated with (i) the equilibrium measure $\mu$ of S and (ii), measures gd$\mu$ for an appropriate set of generators g of S. These equations depend on the particular choice of generators that define the set S. In addition to the interval [--1, 1], we show that for t = 1, 2, 3, the equations are indeed also satisfied for the equilibrium measures of the 2D-simplex, the 2D-Euclidean unit ball and unit box. Interestingly, this view point connects orthogonal polynomials, Christoffel functions and equilibrium measures on one side, with sum-of-squares, convex optimization and certificates of positivity in real algebraic geometry on another side.

Proton-$\gamma$ coincidences from $(\mathrm{d},\mathrm{p})$ reactions between a $^{66}\mathrm{Ni}$ beam and a deuterated polyethylene target have been analyzed with the inverse-Oslo method to find the nuclear level density (NLD) and $\gamma$-ray strength function ($\gamma$SF) of $^{67}\mathrm{Ni}$. The $^{66}\mathrm{Ni}(n,\gamma)$ capture cross section has been calculated using the Hauser-Feshbach model in TALYS using the measured NLD and $\gamma$SF as constraints. The results confirm that the $^{66}\mathrm{Ni}(n,\gamma)$ reaction acts as a bottleneck when relying on one-zone nucleosynthesis calculations. However, the impact of this reaction is strongly dampened in multi-zone models of low-metallicity AGB stars experiencing i-process nucleosynthesis.

Statistically significant tensions between the Standard Model (SM) predictions and the measured lepton distributions in differential top cross-sections emerged in LHC Run~1 data and became even more pronounced in Run~2 analyses. Due to the level of sophistication of the SM predictions and the performance of the ATLAS and CMS detectors, this is very remarkable. Therefore, one should seriously consider the possibility that these measurements are contaminated by beyond-the-SM contributions. In this article, we use differential lepton distributions from the latest ATLAS $t\bar t$ analysis to study a new physics benchmark model motivated by existing indications for new Higgses: a new scalar $H$ is produced via gluon fusion and decays to $S^\prime$ ($95\,$GeV) and $S$ ($152\,$GeV), which subsequently decay to $b\bar b$ and $WW$, respectively. In this setup, the total $\chi^2$ is reduced, compared to the SM, resulting in $\Delta\chi^2=34$ to $\Delta\chi^2=158$, depending on the SM simulation used. Notably, allowing $m_S$ to vary, the combination of the distributions points towards $m_S\!\approx\!150\,$GeV which is consistent with the existing $\gamma \gamma$ and $WW$ signals, rendering a mismodelling of the SM unlikely. Averaging the results of the different SM predictions, a non-vanishing cross-section for $pp\to H\to SS^\prime\to b\bar b WW$ of $\approx\!13$pb is preferred. If $S^\prime$ is SM-like, this cross-section, at the same time explains the $95\,$GeV $\gamma\gamma$ excess, while the dominance of $S\to WW$ suggests that $S$ is the neutral component of the $SU(2)_L$ triplet with hypercharge~0.

In this paper, we employ the gauge/gravity duality to study some features of the quark gluon plasma. For this purpose, we implement a holographic QCD model constructed from an Einstein-Maxwell-Dilaton gravity at finite temperature and finite chemical potential. The model captures both the confinement and deconfinement phases of QCD and we use it to study the effect of temperature and chemical potential on a heavy quark moving through the plasma. We calculate the drag force, Langevin diffusion coefficients and also the jet quenching parameter, and our results align with other holographic QCD models and the experimental data.