Hep-Ex explores the fascinating intersection where particle physics meets experimental reality. This field investigates how scientists build massive detectors and accelerate particles to test the fundamental laws of nature, turning abstract theories into measurable data. It is the rigorous process of searching for new particles or forces that could reshape our understanding of the universe, often requiring years of collaboration and engineering.

At Gist.Science, we ensure these discoveries become accessible to everyone. We process every new preprint in this category directly from arXiv, generating both plain-language explanations for curious readers and detailed technical summaries for specialists. Our goal is to bridge the gap between complex experimental results and public understanding without losing scientific nuance.

Below are the latest papers in Hep-Ex, freshly summarized and ready for you to explore.

⚛️ high-energy experiments

Light Dark Matter Search with 7.8 Tonne-Year of Ionization-Only Data in XENONnT

The XENONnT collaboration reports a blinded search for light dark matter using 7.8 tonne-year of ionization-only data, finding no significant excess over background and setting improved 90% confidence level upper limits on various dark matter interaction cross-sections that push sensitivity closer to the irreducible neutrino background.

E. Aprile, J. Aalbers, K. Abe, M. Adrover, S. Ahmed Maouloud, L. Althueser, B. Andrieu, E. Angelino, D. Antón Martin, S. (…)2026-08-03
⚛️ high-energy experiments

Enabling Low-Latency Machine learning on Radiation-Hard FPGAs with hls4ml

This paper demonstrates an end-to-end solution for deploying ultra-low-latency, radiation-hard machine learning on FPGAs by developing a lightweight autoencoder for the PicoCal calorimeter, implementing a hardware-aware quantization strategy, and extending the hls4ml library with a new backend for Microchip PolarFire devices to achieve 25 ns latency.

Katya Govorkova, Julian Garcia Pardinas, Vladimir Loncar, Victoria Nguyen, Sebastian Schmitt, Marco Pizzichemi, Loris Ma (…)2026-08-03
⚛️ high-energy experiments

The VORTEX cavity for the RADES axion haloscope

This paper reports on the implementation and performance of the VORTEX cavity, a loss-less, vertically-cut resonant tunable axion haloscope centered at 8.5 GHz with an 800 MHz tuning range, which has been experimentally validated at millikelvin temperatures and is prepared for use in the upcoming RADES data-taking campaign.

Jose María García-Barceló, Cristian Cogollos, Babette Döbrich, David Kittlinger, Diego Nicolas Lobato-De La Cruz, Walter (…)2026-08-03
⚛️ high-energy experiments

Learning transferable event representations for charmed baryon physics at BESIII

This paper presents a Particle Transformer-based framework that leverages large-scale pre-training on Monte Carlo simulations to learn transferable event representations for charmed baryon physics at BESIII, demonstrating significant improvements in event classification and momentum-direction regression across various decay channels, particularly in low-statistics regimes.

Kaixuan Huang, Yangu Li, Junpeng Zhao, Peilian Li, Peirong Li, Xiaorui Lyu, Yunxuan Song, Shengsen Sun, Yangheng Zheng2026-08-03
⚛️ high-energy experiments

Observation of a Charged Charmoniumlike Structure in e+eD0Dπ++c.c.e^+e^-\rightarrow D^0D^-\pi^++c.c.

Using a data sample collected by the BESIII detector at a center-of-mass energy of 4682 MeV, this study reports the observation of a charged charmoniumlike structure, tentatively identified as the X(3790)X(3790)^- with JP=1J^P=1^- near the D0DD^0D^- threshold, and simultaneously provides updated measurements for the masses and widths of the D2(2460)D_{2}^{*}(2460), D1(2600)D_{1}^{*}(2600), and D1(2760)D_{1}^{*}(2760) charmed mesons.

BESIII Collaboration2026-08-03
⚛️ phenomenology

Dark Photon Dark Matter from Quantum Fluctuations during Starobinsky Inflation

This paper investigates the production of dark-photon dark matter from quantum fluctuations during Starobinsky inflation, demonstrating that the Weyl transformation-dependent variation of the longitudinal mode's kinetic function significantly impacts the relic abundance and constrains the dark-photon mass to the range of 5.6–7.4 μeV to match observed dark matter density.

Taiyo Kasamaki, Takeo Moroi2026-08-03
⚛️ high-energy experiments

Rare processes in ultrahigh-energy tau-lepton transport

This paper investigates rare energy loss processes for ultrahigh-energy tau leptons, specifically muon pair and Primakoff pion production, finding that while their overall energy loss contributions are negligible compared to electron pair production, the short interaction length of dimuon emission makes it a potentially valuable signature for identifying tau neutrinos in Cherenkov telescopes.

Guo-yuan Huang2026-08-03
⚛️ high-energy experiments

Halbach Magnetic Weber Bars

This paper proposes enhancing the sensitivity of magnetic Weber bars for detecting high-frequency gravitational waves by utilizing Halbach array configurations and analyzing ring-down signals, demonstrating the potential to achieve strain sensitivities of 1021/Hz10^{-21}/\sqrt{\text{Hz}} with current technology and up to 1023/Hz10^{-23}/\sqrt{\text{Hz}} with plausible upgrades across a broad frequency range.

Valerie Domcke, Itay M. Bloch2026-08-03