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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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DOE OSTI2024

Effect of causality constraints on Bayesian analyses of heavy-ion collisions

There have long been questions about the limits to the validity of relativistic fluid dynamics and whether it is being used outside its regime of validity in modern simulations of relativistic heavy-ion collisions. An important new tool for answering this question is a causality analysis in the nonlinear regime—if the solutions of the evolution equations do not respect relativistic causality, then they are not a faithful representation of the underlying relativistic theory (in this case, quantum chromodynamics). Using this nonlinear criterion, it has recently been shown that hydrodynamics is indeed being used outside its regime of validity in simulations, at least sometimes. Here we explore the phenomenological implications, particularly the quantitative effects of demanding limits on acausality in modern Bayesian parameter estimation. We find that, while typically only a small fraction of the system's energy is initially in an acausal regime, placing strict limits on the allowed energy fraction significantly changes the preferred properties of the initial condition, which in turn alters the extracted medium properties such as bulk viscosity, where large values are no longer favored. Furthermore, these findings highlight the importance of developing better theoretical descriptions of the early-time, out-of-equilibrium dynamics of relativistic heavy-ion collisions.

Bayesian methods↗
DOE OSTI2023

Visualization and efficient generation of constrained high-dimensional theoretical parameter spaces

We describe a set of novel methods for efficiently sampling high-dimensional parameter spaces of physical theories defined at high energies, but constrained by experimental measurements made at lower energies. Often, theoretical models such as supersymmetry are defined by many parameters, $\mathcal{O}$(10 – 100), expressed at high energies, while relevant experimental constraints are often defined at much lower energies, preventing them from directly ruling out portions of the space. Instead, the low-energy constraints define a complex, potentially non-contiguous subspace of the theory parameters. Naive scanning of the theory space for points which satisfy the low-energy constraints is hopelessly inefficient due to the high dimensionality, and the inverse problem is considered intractable. As a result, many theoretical spaces remain under-explored. We introduce a class of modified generative autoencoders, which attack this problem by mapping the high-dimensional parameter space to a structured low-dimensional latent space, allowing for easy visualization and efficient generation of theory points which satisfy experimental constraints. An extension without dimensional compression, which focuses on limiting potential information loss, is also introduced.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2023

Determining the gluonic gravitational form factors of the proton

The proton is one of the main building blocks of all visible matter in the Universe. Among its intrinsic properties are its electric charge, mass and spin. These properties emerge from the complex dynamics of its fundamental constituents—quarks and gluons—described by the theory of quantum chromodynamics. The electric charge and spin of protons, which are shared among the quarks, have been investigated previously using electron scattering. An example is the highly precise measurement of the electric charge radius of the proton. By contrast, little is known about the inner mass density of the proton, which is dominated by the energy carried by gluons. Gluons are hard to access using electron scattering because they do not carry an electromagnetic charge. Here we investigated the gravitational density of gluons using a small colour dipole, through the threshold photoproduction of the J/ψ particle. We determined the gluonic gravitational form factors of the proton from our measurement. Here we used a variety of models and determined, in all cases, a mass radius that is notably smaller than the electric charge radius. In some, but not all cases, depending on the model, the determined radius agrees well with first-principle predictions from lattice quantum chromodynamics. This work paves the way for a deeper understanding of the salient role of gluons in providing gravitational mass to visible matter.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2022

Comparison of SUSY spectra generators for natural SUSY and string landscape predictions

Models of natural supersymmetry give rise to a weak scale m weak ~ m W,Z,h ~ 100 GeV without any (implausible) finetuning of independent contributions to the weak scale. These models, which exhibit radiatively driven naturalness (RNS), are expected to arise from statistical analysis of the string landscape wherein large soft terms are favored, but subject to a not-too-large value of the derived weak scale in each pocket universe of the greater multiverse. The string landscape picture then predicts, using the Isajet SUSY spectra generator Isasugra, a statistical peak at m h ~ 125 GeV with sparticles generally beyond current LHC search limits. In this paper, we investigate how well these conclusions hold up using other popular spectra generators: SOFTSUSY, SPHENO and SUSPECT (SSS). We built a computer code DEW4SLHA which operates on SUSY Les Houches Accord files to calculate the associated electroweak naturalness measure Δ EW . The SSS generators tend to yield a Higgs mass peak ~125–127 GeV with a superparticle mass spectra rather similar to that generated by Isasugra. In an Appendix, we include loop corrections to Δ EW in a more standard notation.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2025

The Juno mission as a probe of long-range new physics

Orbits of celestial objects, especially the geocentric and heliocentric ones, have been well explored to constrain new long-range forces beyond the Standard Model (SM), often referred to as fifth forces. In this paper, for the first time, we apply the motion of a spacecraft around Jupiter to probe fifth forces that don’t violate the equivalence principle. The spacecraft is the Juno orbiter, and ten of its early orbits already allow a precise determination of the Jovian gravitational field. We use the shift in the precession angle as a proxy to test non-gravitational interactions between Juno and Jupiter. Requiring that the contribution from the fifth force does not exceed the uncertainty of the precession shift inferred from data, we find that a new parameter space with the mass of the fifth-force mediator around 10 −14 eV is excluded at 95% C.L.

new light particles↗
DOE OSTI2025

Shear viscosity from perturbative quantum chromodynamics to the hadron resonance gas at finite baryon, strangeness, and electric charge densities

Through model-to-data comparisons from heavy-ion collisions, it has been shown that the quark gluon plasma has an extremely small shear viscosity at vanishing densities. At large baryon densities, significantly less is known about the nature of the shear viscosity from quantum chromodynamics (QCD). Within heavy-ion collisions, there are three conserved charges: baryon number (B), strangeness (S), and electric charge (Q). Here we calculate the shear viscosity in two limits using perturbative QCD (pQCD) and an excluded-volume hadron resonance gas at finite BSQ densities. We then develop a framework that interpolates between these two limits such that shear viscosity is possible to calculate across a wide range of finite BSQ densities. We find that the pQCD and hadron resonance gas calculations have different BSQ density dependencies such that a rather nontrivial shear viscosity appears at finite densities.

Phenomenology↗
DOE OSTI2024

Fluctuations and correlations of baryonic chiral partners

The exploration of critical phenomena in phase transitions of strongly interacting matter governed by quantum chromodynamics (QCD) is one of the goals of present ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collision experiments at BNL and CERN. The key research direction is to locate the putative critical point on the phase diagram of QCD linked to the chiral symmetry restoration at finite temperature and/or density. One of the main theoretical tools used for this purpose is the fluctuations of conserved charges, such as the net-baryon number. However, due to experimental limitations, analyses of heavy-ion collision data suffer from a very doubtful basing of the net-proton number being a proxy for the total net-baryon number fluctuations. In this work, we use the parity doublet model to investigate the fluctuations of the net-baryon number density in hot and dense hadronic matter. The model accounts for chiral criticality within the mean-field approximation. We focus on the qualitative properties and systematics of the first- and second-order susceptibility of the net-baryon number density, and their ratios for nucleons of positive and negative parity, as well as their correlator. We show that the fluctuations of the positive-parity nucleon do not necessarily reflect the fluctuations of the total net-baryon number density at the phase boundary of the chiral phase transition. We also investigate the nontrivial structure of the correlator. Furthermore, we discuss and quantify the differences between the fluctuations of the net-baryon number density in the vicinity of the chiral and liquid-gas phase transition in nuclear matter. We indicate a possible relevance of our results with the interpretation of the experimental data on net-proton number fluctuations in heavy-ion collisions. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2024

Cosmological implications of Kalb-Ramond-like particles

The Kalb-Ramond field is an antisymmetric, rank-two tensor field which most notably appears in the context of string theory, but has largely been unexplored in the context of cosmology. In this work, motivated by the Kalb-Ramond field in string theory, and antisymmetric tensor fields that emerge in effective field theories ranging from particle physics to condensed matter, we study the primordial production of interacting massive Kalb-Ramond-like-particles (KRLPs). KRLPs contain features of both dark photon and axion models, which can be appreciated via their duality properties. While the massless non-interacting KRLP is dual to a pseudoscalar, and the massive non-interacting KRLP is dual to a pseudovector, the interacting massive KRLP can be distinguished from its scalar and vector counterparts. We study early-universe production of KRLPs via the freeze-in mechanism, considering a ‘dark photon-like’ interaction, an ‘axion-like’ interaction, and a ‘Higgs portal’ interaction, as well as production via cosmological gravitational particle production. We find that as a dark matter candidate, KRLPs can be produced by all of the above mechanisms and account for the relic density of dark matter today for a wide range of masses. Finally, we comment on the potential to obtain both warm and cold dark matter subcomponents, and speculate on observational and experimental prospects.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2021

Bottomonium suppression and elliptic flow using Heavy Quarkonium Quantum Dynamics

We introduce a framework called Heavy Quarkonium Quantum Dynamics (HQQD) which can be used to compute the dynamical suppression of heavy quarkonia propagating in the quark-gluon plasma using real-time in-medium quantum evolution. Using HQQD we compute large sets of real-time solutions to the Schrödinger equation using a realistic in-medium complex-valued potential. We sample 2 million quarkonia wave packet trajectories and evolve them through the QGP using HQQD to obtain their survival probabilities. The computation is performed using three different HQQD model parameter sets in order to estimate our systematic uncertainty. After taking into account final state feed down we compare our results to existing experimental data for the suppression and elliptic flow of bottomonium states and find that HQQD predictions are good agreement with available data for R AA as a function of N part and p T collected at \( \sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}} \) = 5 . 02 TeV. In the case of v 2 for the various states, we find that the path-length dependence of ϒ(1 s ) suppression results in quite small v 2 for ϒ(1 s ). Our prediction for the integrated elliptic flow for ϒ(1 s ) in the 10 – 90% centrality class, which now includes an estimate of the systematic error, is v 2 [ϒ(1 s )] = 0 . 003 ± 0 . 0007 ± \( {}_{0.0013}^{0.0006} \) . We also find that, due to their increased suppression, excited bottomonium states have a larger elliptic flow. Based on this observation we make predictions for v 2 [ϒ(2 s )] and v 2 [ϒ(3 s )] as a function of centrality and transverse momentum.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2025

Towards universal unfolding of detector effects in high-energy physics using denoising diffusion probabilistic models

Correcting for detector effects in experimental data, particularly through unfolding, is critical for enabling precision measurements in high-energy physics. However, traditional unfolding methods face challenges in scalability, flexibility, and dependence on simulations. We introduce a novel approach to multidimensional object-wise unfolding using conditional Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models (cDDPM). Our method utilizes the cDDPM for a non-iterative, flexible posterior sampling approach, incorporating distribution moments as conditioning information, which exhibits a strong inductive bias that allows it to generalize to unseen physics processes without explicitly assuming the underlying distribution. Our results highlight the potential of this method as a step towards a "universal" unfolding tool that reduces dependence on truth-level assumptions, while enabling the unfolding of a wide range of measured distributions with improved adaptability and accuracy.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2020

Constraint on the matter–antimatter symmetry-violating phase in neutrino oscillations

The charge-conjugation and parity-reversal (CP) symmetry of fundamental particles is a symmetry between matter and antimatter. Violation of this CP symmetry was first observed in 1964, and CP violation in the weak interactions of quarks was soon established. Sakharov proposed that CP violation is necessary to explain the observed imbalance of matter and antimatter abundance in the Universe. Yet, CP violation in quarks is too small to support this explanation. So far, CP violation has not been observed in non-quark elementary particle systems. It has been shown that CP violation in leptons could generate the matter–antimatter disparity through a process called leptogenesis. Leptonic mixing, which appears in the standard model’s charged current interactions, provides a potential source of CP violation through a complex phase δ CP , which is required by some theoretical models of leptogenesis. This CP violation can be measured in muon neutrino to electron neutrino oscillations and the corresponding antineutrino oscillations, which are experimentally accessible using accelerator-produced beams as established by the Tokai-to-Kamioka (T2K) and NOvA experiments. Until now, the value of δ CP has not been substantially constrained by neutrino oscillation experiments. Here we report a measurement using long-baseline neutrino and antineutrino oscillations observed by the T2K experiment that shows a large increase in the neutrino oscillation probability, excluding values of δ CP that result in a large increase in the observed antineutrino oscillation probability at three standard deviations (3σ). The 3σ confidence interval for δ CP , which is cyclic and repeats every 2π, is [-3.41, -0.03] for the so-called normal mass ordering and [-2.54, -0.32] for the inverted mass ordering. Our findings indicate CP violation in leptons and our method enables sensitive searches for matter–antimatter asymmetry in neutrino oscillations using accelerator-produced neutrino beams. Future measurements with larger datasets will test whether leptonic CP violation is larger than the CP violation in quarks.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2023

SHAPER: can you hear the shape of a jet?

The identification of interesting substructures within jets is an important tool for searching for new physics and probing the Standard Model at colliders. Many of these substructure tools have previously been shown to take the form of optimal transport problems, in particular the Energy Mover’s Distance (EMD). In this work, we show that the EMD is in fact the natural structure for comparing collider events, which accounts for its recent success in understanding event and jet substructure. We then present a Shape Hunting Algorithm using Parameterized Energy Reconstruction (SHAPER), which is a general framework for defining and computing shape-based observables. SHAPER generalizes N-jettiness from point clusters to any extended, parametrizable shape. This is accomplished by efficiently minimizing the EMD between events and parameterized manifolds of energy flows representing idealized shapes, implemented using the dual-potential Sinkhorn approximation of the Wasserstein metric. We show how the geometric language of observables as manifolds can be used to define novel observables with built-in infrared-and-collinear safety. We demonstrate the efficacy of the SHAPER framework by performing empirical jet substructure studies using several examples of new shape-based observables.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2025

A Continuous Galactic Line Source of Axions: The Remarkable Case of 23 Na

Here, we argue that $^{23}$Na is a potentially significant source of galactic axions. For temperatures $\gtrsim 7 \times 10^8$K -- characteristic of carbon burning in the massive progenitors of supernovae and ONeMg white dwarfs -- the 440 keV first excited state of $^{23}$Na is thermally populated, with its repeated decays pumping stellar energy into escaping axions. Odd-A nuclear abundances are typically very low in high-temperature stellar environments (or absent entirely due to burn-up). $^{23}$Na is an exception: $\approx 0.1 M_\odot$ of the isotope is synthesized during carbon burning then maintained at $\approx 10^9$K for times ranging up to $6 \times 10^4$y. Using MESA simulations, a galactic model, and sampling over progenitor masses, locations, and evolutionary stages, we find a continuous flux at earth of $\langle ϕ_a \rangle \approx 22$/cm$^2$s for $g^\mathrm{eff}_{aNN} = 10^{-9}$. Some fraction of these axions convert to photons as they propagate through the galactic magnetic field, producing a distinctive 440 keV line $γ$ ray detectable by all-sky detectors like the Compton Spectrometer and Imager (COSI). Assuming a 1$μ$G galactic magnetic field and a sufficiently light axion mass, we find that COSI will be able to probe $| g_{aNN}^\mathrm{eff} g_{a γγ} | \gtrsim1.8 \times 10^{-22}$ GeV$^{-1}$ at $3σ$ after two years of surveying.

Dark matter↗
DOE OSTI2024

Pion gravitational form factors in the QCD instanton vacuum. I

The pion form factors of the QCD energy-momentum tensor (EMT) are studied in the instanton liquid model (ILM) of the QCD vacuum. In this approach, the breaking of conformal symmetry is encoded in the form of stronger-than-Poisson fluctuations in the number of instantons. For the trace of the EMT, it is shown that the gluonic trace anomaly term contributes half the pion mass, with the other half coming from the quark-mass-dependent σ term. The Q 2 dependence of the form factors is governed by glueball and scalar meson exchanges. For the EMT, the spin-0 (trace) and spin-2 (traceless rank-2 tensor) form factors are computed at next-to-leading order in the instanton density using effective quark operators. Relations between the gluon and quark contributions to the EMT form factors are derived. The form factors are also expressed in terms of the pion light-front wave functions in the ILM. The results at the low resolution scale of the inverse instanton size are evolved to higher scales using the renormalization group equation. The ILM results compare well with those of recent lattice QCD calculations. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2025

AI for nuclear physics: the EXCLAIM project

An overview of the recent activity of the newly funded EXCLusives with AI and Machine learning (EXCLAIM) collaboration is presented. The main goal of the collaboration is to develop a framework to implement AI and machine learning techniques in problems emerging from the phenomenology of high energy exclusive scattering processes from nucleons and nuclei, maximizing the information that can be extracted from various sets of experimental data, while implementing theoretical constraints from lattice QCD. A specific perspective embraced by EXCLAIM is to use the methods of theoretical physics to understand the working of ML, beyond its standardized applications to physics analyses which most often rely on industrially provided tools, in an automated way.

Analysis and statistical methods↗
DOE OSTI2025

Thermodynamics of continuous spin photons

Special relativity allows massless particles to have states of different integer (or half-integer) helicities that mix under boosts, much like the spin states of a massive particle. Such massless particles are known as “continuous spin” particles (CSPs), a term coined by Wigner, and they are notable for their infinite tower of spin polarizations. The mixing under boosts is controlled by a spin scale 𝜌 with units of momentum. Normally, we assume 𝜌 = 0. The interactions of CSPs are known to satisfy certain simple properties, one of which is that the 𝜌 → 0 limit generically recovers familiar interactions of massless scalars, photons, or gravitons, with all other polarizations decoupling in this limit. Thus, one can ask if the photon of the Standard Model is a CSP at small but nonzero 𝜌. One concern about this possibility—originally raised by Wigner—is that the infinite tower of polarizations could pose problems for thermodynamics. To address this question, we study the thermal evolution of a CSP photon gas coupled to isothermal matter, across CSP helicity modes and phase space. We find that the structure of the interactions dictated by Lorentz symmetry implies well-behaved thermodynamics. When the CSP photon’s interactions with charged matter are turned on, the primary ℎ =±1 helicity modes thermalize quickly, while the other modes require increasingly long time scales to thermalize, set by powers of 𝑇/𝜌. In familiar thermal systems, the CSP photon behaves like the QED photon with small 𝜌- and time-dependent corrections to its effective relativistic degrees of freedom. Sizable departures from familiar thermal behavior arise at energy scales comparable to 𝜌 and could have testable experimental consequences.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2025

New physics particles mixing with mesons: Production in the fragmentation chain

A class of extensions to the Standard Model adds hypothetical long-lived particles (LLPs) that have mass- or kinetic-mixing with neutral mesons, such as pions or rho mesons. The mixing can contribute significantly to the production of LLPs at proton accelerator experiments, and no consistent description of these production modes exists in the literature. In this paper, we develop a framework for studying different LLPs—dark photons, vector mediators coupled to the baryon current, and axionlike particles with different coupling patterns. In particular, we implement the production mechanisms in PYTHIA 8, study how the overall flux and kinematic distributions depend on the LLP’s mass, and compare various subprocesses where the mixing contributes—proton bremsstrahlung, meson decay, and production in the fragmentation chain. We find that our new description of LLP production predicts an integrated flux that differs from current approaches by one to two orders of magnitude, and highlight the unavoidable theoretical uncertainties coming from poor knowledge of the properties of heavy mesons.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2022

The cosmological moduli problem and naturalness

Nowadays, the cosmological moduli problem (CMP) comes in three parts: 1. potential violation of Big-Bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) constraints from late decaying moduli fields, 2. the moduli-induced gravitino problem wherein gravitinos are overproduced and their decays violate BBN or dark matter overproduction bounds and 3. the moduli-induced lightest SUSY particle (LSP) overproduction problem. Also, the CMP may be regarded as either a problem or else a solution to scenarios with dark matter over- or under-production. We examine the cosmological moduli problem and its connection to electroweak naturalness. We calculate the various two-body decay widths of a light modulus field into MSSM particles and gravitinos within general supersymmetric models. We include both phase space and mixing effects. We examine cases without and with helicity suppression of modulus decays to gravitinos (cases 1 & 2) and/or gauginos (cases A & B). For case B1, we evaluate regions of gravitino mass m 3/2 vs. modulus mass mΦ parameter space constrained by BBN, by overproduction of gravitinos and by overproduction of neutralino dark matter, along with connections to naturalness. For this case, essentially all of parameter space is excluded unless mΦ ≳ 2.5 × 10 3 TeV with mΦ< 2m 3/2 For a potentially most propitious case B2 with Φ decay to Higgs and matter turned off, then modulus branching fractions to SUSY and to gravitinos become highly suppressed at large m Φ . But since the modulus number density increases faster than the branching fractions decrease, there is still gross overproduction of neutralino dark matter. We also show that in this scenario the thermally produced gravitino problem is fixed by huge entropy dilution, but non-thermal gravitino production from moduli decay remains a huge problem unless it is kinematically suppressed with m Φ < 2m 3/2 . In a pedagogical appendix, we present detailed calculations of modulus field two-body decay widths.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗