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DOE OSTI2026

Residual symmetries and scalar multiplet vacuum alignment in non-Abelian flavour models

We demonstrate that, upon minimizing a renormalizable, single-scalar potential invariant under a non-Abelian symmetry, special orientations in the associated vacuum alignment of the scalar multiplet correspond to the preservation of a discrete residual flavour symmetry in the broken phase of the theory. Conversely, we show that these special scalar alignments are perturbed when additional Lagrangian operators (e.g. renormalizable, multi-flavon operators and/or effective, higher-dimensional operators) are present that break said residual symmetry, leading to a vacuum reorientation and phenomenological consequences. We therefore construct a one-to-one correspondence principle between broken residual symmetries and vacuum alignment corrections, providing a mechanism to identify (and correct) a subtle but persistent form of phenomenologically relevant fine-tuning embedded in — but often ignored by — most successful non-Abelian flavour models. We first establish this correspondence in a set of toy models based on the S4 permutation symmetry, and then apply the lessons learned to the more realistic A4 Altarelli-Feruglio and ∆(27) Universal Texture Zero models.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

DOE OSTI2025

Energy-enhanced dimension eight SMEFT effects in VBF Higgs production

We study Higgs boson production via vector boson fusion at the LHC, focusing on the process pp → H + jj and capturing the leading energy-enhanced contributions within the Standard Model Effective Field Theory (SMEFT) up to order 1/Λ$^{4}$. Employing energy-scaling arguments, we predict the magnitude of each higher-dimensional operator’s contribution. Utilizing the geometric formulation of SMEFT, our analysis incorporates dimension-eight operators not previously considered. We find that the kinematics of vector boson fusion — characterized by two highly forward jets — tend to suppress contributions from higher-dimensional operators, requiring a lower scale Λ for SMEFT effects to become observable. This suggests that the SMEFT remains valid for lower Λ than expected. Combined with the fact that LEP constrains the dimension-six operators with the most considerable impact on vector boson fusion, a regime exists where dimension-eight operators can have significant effects. In many cases, these dimension-eight operators also influence associated production processes like pp → HV(jj), though differences in analysis cuts and kinematics mean this is not always the case. Our findings provide insights that could refine the search for SMEFT signals in collider experiments.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

DOE OSTI2026

Enhanced active-sterile neutrino polarizability at the intensity frontier

Electromagnetic probes of neutrinos can provide insights into physics beyond the Standard Model. Among the possible electromagnetic interactions of neutrinos is neutrino polarizability, a dimension-7 effective operator that couples two neutrinos to two photons. In this manuscript, we study a realization of the neutrino polarizability operator in which one of the active neutrinos is replaced by a sterile neutrino. We derive new constraints on this active-sterile neutrino polarizability from its contribution to neutrino-nucleus scattering with a single photon in the final state at neutrino experiments. We show that a realization of this operator via a light mediator can explain the MiniBooNE low-energy excess while remaining consistent with other experimental constraints. Finally, we comment on additional model realizations of this higher-dimensional operator.

Neutrinos↗

DOE OSTI2025

Wrong signs are alright

It has been shown that some Lorentz-invariant quantum field theories, such as those with higher-dimensional operators with negative coefficients, lead to superluminality on some classical backgrounds. While superluminality by itself is not logically inconsistent, these theories also predict the formation of closed time-like curves at the classical level, starting from initial conditions without such curves. This leads to the formation of a Cauchy Horizon which prevents a complete description of the time evolution of such systems. Inspired by the chronology protection arguments of General Relativity, we show that quantum mechanical effects from low energy quanta strongly backreact on such configurations, exciting unknown short-distance degrees of freedom and invalidating the classical predictions. Thus, there is no obvious low-energy obstruction to the existence of these operators.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

DOE OSTI2025

Testing the Froggatt-Nielsen mechanism with lepton flavor and number violating processes

The Froggatt-Nielsen (FN) mechanism offers an elegant explanation for the observed masses and mixings of Standard Model fermions. In this work, we systematically study FN models in the lepton sector, identifying a broad range of charge assignments (“textures”) that naturally yield viable masses and mixings for various neutrino mass generation mechanisms. Using these textures, we consider higher-dimensional operators consistent with a FN origin and find that natural realizations predict distinct patterns in lepton flavor- and number-violating observables. For Dirac and Majorana neutrinos, FN-related correlations can lead to detectable rates of charged lepton flavor violation at next-generation low-energy experiments. Majorana and type-I seesaw models predict measurable rates of neutrinoless double beta decay. Determination of inverted neutrino mass ordering would exclude the Dirac neutrino FN scenario. Only a small minority of purely leptonic FN models predict detectable flavor violation at future muon colliders, though it is possible that a combined analysis with the quark sector will reveal motivated signals. These findings highlight the power of the FN mechanism to link neutrino mass generation to testable leptonic observables, offering new pathways for the experimental exploration of lepton number and underscoring the importance of next-generation low-energy probes.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

DOE OSTI2025

Monophotons at neutrino experiments from neutrino polarizability

Nontrivial electromagnetic properties of neutrinos are an avenue to physics beyond the Standard Model (SM). To this end, we investigate the power of monophoton signals at neutrino experiments to probe a higher-dimensional operator connecting neutrinos to SM photons dubbed, neutrino polarizability. A simplified scenario giving rise to this operator involves a new pseudoscalar that couples to both neutrinos and photons, with clear implications for axionlike particle (ALP) and Majoron physics. By analyzing the photon energy spectrum and angular distributions, we find that NOMAD and MiniBooNE currently set the most stringent limits, while short baseline near detector and the DUNE near detector will soon provide significantly improved constraints.

Particle detection signatures↗

DOE OSTI2025

Revisiting the connection of baryon number, lepton number, and operator dimension

The effects of heavy new particles beyond the Standard Model can be conveniently captured through higher-dimensional effective operators. As noted long ago by Weinberg, the amount of baryon and lepton number an operator can carry is intricately connected to its mass dimension. We derive an improved inequality for this connection and compare it to explicit operator constructions up to mass dimension 25. For the effective field theory of Standard Model plus right-handed neutrinos, our relationship is even an equality up to high mass dimension.

Baryon number violation↗

DOE OSTI2025

Fully Homomorphic Encryption

This code implements a Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) system, enabling secure computation on encrypted data without requiring decryption. It supports encryption, decryption, and homomorphic operations like matrix multiplication and addition. This code is adaptable for integrating FHE into linear-time invariant (LTI) systems, including digital control and filtering. With proper configuration from subject matter expertise, encrypted system parameters and signals can be manipulated to perform tasks like state updates, output calculations, and convolution in the encrypted domain. By preserving the structure of LTI systems while ensuring privacy, the framework facilitates secure applications in areas such as autonomous systems, signal processing, and industrial automation. The code initializes the encryption system using parameters provided in the env dictionary. These parameters include the ciphertext modulus, key dimension, plaintext fixed-point scaling factor, and noise bound. During initialization, a secret key is generated, which is essential for encrypting and decrypting data securely. The modular design allows users to tailor these parameters to specific use cases or security requirements. The code implements multiple cryptographic schemes. The learning with errors (LWE) encryption method encodes cleartext message to their plaintext fixed-point representation then encrypted into ciphertext space with additive noise. This noise ensures the security of the scheme, relying on the computational hardness of the LWE problem. The code also includes the Gentry-Sahai-Waters (GSW) scheme based off the LWE problem. Homomorphic matrix multiplication is performed between the LWE and GSW to encrypted data. This is achieved using a decomposition function on the LWE ciphertext during the multiplication operation. For higher-dimensional data, the code includes a method to encrypt entire matrices (GSWMat) using GSW encryption. These encrypted matrices can then be used for homomorphic matrix multiplications (MatMult). The decryption function uses the secret key to recover the original plaintext, removing the added noise and scaling that was originally applied during encryption.

Lois, Roberts [Idaho National Laboratory (INL), Id↗

DOE OSTI2025

Metric isometries, holography, and continuous symmetry operators

In the AdS/CFT correspondence, a topological symmetry operator of the boundary conformal field theory (CFT) is dual to a dynamical brane in the gravitational bulk. Said differently, this predicts a dynamical brane for every global symmetry of the boundary CFT. We analyze this correspondence for continuous symmetries which arise from a consistent truncation of isometries on the “internal” factor 𝑋 of AdS × 𝑋. In the extra-dimensional geometry, these branes are associated with various metric singularities and do not arise from wrapped D-branes. Boosts relate configurations interpreted as topological symmetry operators and heavy defects in the CFT. From the perspective of the AdS factor, with gravity and bulk gauge fields, these are codimension-2 Gukov-Witten-like vortex configurations which are the gravity duals of 0-form symmetry operators. These effective branes come with an asymptotic tension and size which is also fully fixed by bulk dynamics. We use this higher-dimensional perspective to determine properties of the worldvolume theory for these branes. We also discuss how these considerations generalize to more general quantum field theories engineered via string theory which need not possess a semiclassical gravity dual.

anomalies↗

DOE OSTI2025

Benchmarking the performance of a high-Q cavity qudit using random unitaries

High-coherence cavity resonators are excellent resources for encoding quantum information in higher-dimensional Hilbert spaces, moving beyond traditional qubit-based platforms. A natural strategy is to use the Fock basis to encode information in qudits. One can perform quantum operations on the cavity mode qudit by coupling the system to a non-linear ancillary transmon qubit. However, the performance of the cavity-transmon device is limited by the noisy transmons. It is, therefore, important to develop practical benchmarking tools for these qudit systems in an algorithm-agnostic manner. We gauge the performance of these qudit platforms using sampling tests such as the heavy output generation test as well as the linear cross-entropy benchmark, by way of simulations of such a system subject to realistic dominant noise channels. We use selective number-dependent arbitrary phase and unconditional displacement gates as our universal gateset. Our results show that contemporary transmons comfortably enable controlling a few tens of Fock levels of a cavity mode. This framework allows benchmarking even higher dimensional qudits as those become accessible with improved transmons.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗

DOE OSTI2025

Looking at extremal black holes from very far away

Near-extremal black holes are subject to large quantum effects, which modify their low-temperature thermodynamic behavior. Hitherto, these quantum effects were analyzed by separating the geometry into the near-horizon region and its exterior. It is desirable to understand and reproduce such corrections from the full higher-dimensional asymptotically flat or AdS geometry’s perspective. We address this question in this article and fill this gap. Specifically, we find off-shell eigenmodes of the quadratic fluctuation operator of the Euclidean gravitational dynamics, with eigenvalues that vanish linearly with temperature. We illustrate this for BTZ and neutral black holes with hyperbolic horizons in AdS in Einstein-Hilbert theory, and for the charged black holes in Einstein-Maxwell theory. The linear scaling with Matsubara frequency, which is a distinctive feature of the modes, together with the fact that their wavefunctions localize close to the horizon as we approach extremality, identifies them as responsible for the aforementioned quantum effects. We provide a contour prescription to deal with the sign indefiniteness of the Euclidean Einstein-Maxwell action, which we derive to aid our analysis. We also resolve a technical puzzle regarding modes associated with rotational isometries in stationary black hole spacetimes.

AdS-CFT Correspondence↗

DOE OSTI2026

A practical guide to unbinned unfolding

Unfolding, in the context of high-energy particle physics, refers to the process of removing detector distortions in experimental data. The resulting unfolded measurements are straightforward to use for direct comparisons between experiments and a wide variety of theoretical predictions. For decades, popular unfolding strategies were designed to operate on data formatted as one or more binned histograms. In recent years, new strategies have emerged that use machine learning to unfold datasets in an unbinned manner, allowing for higher-dimensional analyses and more flexibility for current and future users of the unfolded data. This guide comprises recommendations and practical considerations from researchers across a number of major particle physics experiments who have recently put these techniques into practice on real data.

Canelli, Florencia [Univ. of Zurich (Switzerland)]↗

DOE OSTI2025

Love symmetry in higher-dimensional rotating black hole spacetimes

We develop a method for constructing a 1-parameter family of globally-defined Love symmetry generators in rotating black hole spacetimes of general dimension. The key ingredient is to focus on the vicinity of the (physical) outer horizon, matching only the radial derivative and the outer horizon pole pieces of the Klein-Gordon operator in the black hole spacetime to the SL(2, ℝ) Casimir operator. After revisiting the 4D Kerr and 5D Myers-Perry cases, the procedure is illustrated on generalized Lense-Thirring spacetimes which describe a wide variety of slowly rotating black hole metrics in any number of dimensions. Such spacetimes are known to admit an extended tower of Killing tensor and Killing vector symmetries and, as demonstrated in this paper, allow for separability of the massive scalar wave equation in Myers-Perry-like coordinates. Interestingly, separability also occurs in the horizon-penetrating Painlevé–Gullstrand coordinates associated with the freely infalling observer who registers flat space around her all the way to singularity.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

DOE OSTI2026

Variational Optical Phase Learning on a Continuous-Variable Quantum Compiler

Quantum process learning is a fundamental primitive that draws inspiration from machine learning with the goal of better studying the dynamics of quantum systems. One approach to quantum process learning is quantum compilation, whereby an analog quantum operation is digitized by compiling it into a series of basic gates. While there has been significant focus on quantum compiling for discrete-variable systems, the continuous-variable (CV) framework has received comparatively less attention. We present an experimental implementation of a CV quantum compiler that uses two-mode squeezed light to learn a Gaussian unitary operation. We demonstrate the compiler by learning a parameterized linear phase unitary through the use of target and control phase unitaries to demonstrate a factor of 5.4 increase in the precision of the phase estimation and a 3.6-fold acceleration in the time-to-solution metric when leveraging quantum resources. We further show how our approach can be extended to higher-dimensional compilation tasks. Our results are enabled by the tunable control of our cost landscape via variable squeezing, thus providing a critical framework to simultaneously increase precision and reduce time-to-solution.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

NASA NTRS2009

Hybrid NN/SVM Computational System for Optimizing Designs

A computational method and system based on a hybrid of an artificial neural network (NN) and a support vector machine (SVM) (see figure) has been conceived as a means of maximizing or minimizing an objective function, optionally subject to one or more constraints. Such maximization or minimization could be performed, for example, to optimize solve a data-regression or data-classification problem or to optimize a design associated with a response function. A response function can be considered as a subset of a response surface, which is a surface in a vector space of design and performance parameters. A typical example of a design problem that the method and system can be used to solve is that of an airfoil, for which a response function could be the spatial distribution of pressure over the airfoil. In this example, the response surface would describe the pressure distribution as a function of the operating conditions and the geometric parameters of the airfoil. The use of NNs to analyze physical objects in order to optimize their responses under specified physical conditions is well known. NN analysis is suitable for multidimensional interpolation of data that lack structure and enables the representation and optimization of a succession of numerical solutions of increasing complexity or increasing fidelity to the real world. NN analysis is especially useful in helping to satisfy multiple design objectives. Feedforward NNs can be used to make estimates based on nonlinear mathematical models. One difficulty associated with use of a feedforward NN arises from the need for nonlinear optimization to determine connection weights among input, intermediate, and output variables. It can be very expensive to train an NN in cases in which it is necessary to model large amounts of information. Less widely known (in comparison with NNs) are support vector machines (SVMs), which were originally applied in statistical learning theory. In terms that are necessarily oversimplified to fit the scope of this article, an SVM can be characterized as an algorithm that (1) effects a nonlinear mapping of input vectors into a higher-dimensional feature space and (2) involves a dual formulation of governing equations and constraints. One advantageous feature of the SVM approach is that an objective function (which one seeks to minimize to obtain coefficients that define an SVM mathematical model) is convex, so that unlike in the cases of many NN models, any local minimum of an SVM model is also a global minimum.

Rai, Man Mohan↗

DOE OSTI2025

Top quark electroweak dipole moment at a high energy muon collider

We study the sensitivity reach to probe the electroweak dipole operators associated with a top quark at a multi-TeV lepton collider. Studying the electroweak dipole operators is strongly motivated by precision physics. The operators exhibit unique chiral structure and can be enhanced with respect to others in theories beyond the Standard Model. We illustrate this point in a strongly coupled composite Higgs model. We find that a high energy μ + ⁢μ – collider may offer a unique opportunity to probe the electroweak dipole operators beyond the coverage by the LHC and future hadron colliders. The significant sensitivity is achieved by the leading channel μ + ⁢μ – → $t$$\overline{t}$ near the threshold, and substantially improved by the novel channel μ + ⁢μ – → $t$$\overline{t}$⁢ℎ at high energies. We may be able to reach a new physics scale well above the collider energy for moderate couplings of the Wilson coefficients. Our main conclusions are applicable to future e + ⁢e – colliders.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

DOE OSTI2025

Universality of Rényi Entropy in Conformal Field Theory

We use the thermal effective theory to prove that, for the vacuum state in any conformal field theory in 𝑑 dimensions, the 𝑛th Rényi entropy 𝑆$^{(𝑛)}_{𝐴}$ behaves as 𝑆$^{(𝑛)}_{𝐴}$ = [𝑓⁡/(2⁢𝜋⁢𝑛) 𝑑−1 ]⁢[Area⁡(∂𝐴)/(𝑑−2)⁢𝜀 𝑑−2 ]⁢(1+𝑂⁡(𝑛)) in the 𝑛 → 0 limit when the boundary of the entanglement domain 𝐴 is spherical with the UV cutoff 𝜀. The theory dependence is encapsulated in the cosmological constant 𝑓 in the thermal effective action. Using this result, we estimate the density of states for large eigenvalues of the modular Hamiltonian for the domain 𝐴. In two dimensions, we can use the hot spot idea, which describes the effective action in the high-temperature limit when the temperature is position-dependent, to derive more powerful formulas valid for arbitrary positive 𝑛. We discuss the difference between two and higher dimensions and clarify the applicability of the hot spot idea. We also use the thermal effective theory to derive an analog of the Cardy formula for boundary operators in higher dimensions.

Conformal field theory↗

DOE OSTI2025

6D large charge and 2D Virasoro blocks

We compute observables in the interacting rank-one 6D 𝒩 =(2,0) superconformal field theory (SCFT) at large 𝑅-charge. We focus on correlators involving Φ 𝑛 , namely symmetric products of the bottom component of the supermultiplet containing the stress tensor. By using the moduli space effective action and methods from the large-charge expansion, we compute the operator product expansion coefficients ⟨Φ 𝑛 ⁢Φ 𝑚 ⁢Φ 𝑛+𝑚 ⟩ in an expansion in 1/𝑛. The coefficients of the expansion are only partially determined from the 6D perspective, but we manage to fix them order-by-order in 1/𝑛 numerically by utilizing the 6⁢D/2⁢D correspondence. This is made possible by the fact that this 6D observable can be extracted in 2D from a specific double-scaling limit of the vacuum Virasoro block, which can be efficiently computed numerically. We also extend the computation to higher-rank SCFTs, and discuss various applications of our results to 6D as well as 2D.

classical solutions in field theory↗