Hep-Ph explores the fundamental forces that govern how particles interact and behave at the smallest scales imaginable. This field bridges the gap between theoretical predictions and experimental reality, helping scientists understand the building blocks of our universe without getting lost in complex mathematics. Whether investigating the Higgs boson or searching for new physics beyond current models, these studies push the boundaries of human knowledge about matter and energy.

At Gist.Science, we process every new preprint in this category as soon as it appears on arXiv. We strip away the dense jargon to offer both accessible plain-language explanations and detailed technical summaries, ensuring that groundbreaking research is understandable to everyone from students to seasoned experts. Below are the latest papers in this dynamic field, ready for you to explore with clarity and depth.

Gravitational Sommerfeld Effects: Formalism, Renormalization, and Perturbation to O(G10)O(G^{10})

This paper develops a systematic worldline effective field theory framework to compute gravitational Sommerfeld factors for binary inspirals with tidal effects, deriving closed-form expressions and analytically solving for the magnitude and phase of the factor up to O(G10)O(G^{10}) while establishing a new renormalization group equation for radiative multipole moments to improve waveform resummation.

Chih-Hao Chang, Chia-Hsien Shen, Zihan Zhou2026-04-16⚛️ hep-th

AI-assisted modeling and Bayesian inference of unpolarized quark transverse momentum distributions from Drell-Yan data

This paper presents a global Bayesian analysis of unpolarized quark transverse-momentum-dependent parton distribution functions using Drell-Yan data at N3LO{\rm N^3LO} and N4LL{\rm N^4LL} accuracy, leveraging AI-driven functional form selection and machine-learning emulators to enable efficient Markov Chain Monte Carlo sampling and quantify uncertainties.

Zhong-Bo Kang, Luke Sellers, Congyue Zhang, Curtis Zhou2026-04-16⚛️ nucl-th

All-order structure of static gravitational interactions and the seventh post-Newtonian potential

This paper derives a closed formula for computing static post-Newtonian corrections to two-body gravitational dynamics at any odd order using a correlation function framework and Z2\mathbb{Z}_2 symmetry, which is applied to successfully calculate the seventh-order potential and confirm its agreement with diagrammatic factorization theorem results.

Giacomo Brunello, Manoj K. Mandal, Pierpaolo Mastrolia, Raj Patil, Matteo Pegorin, Sid Smith, Jan Steinhoff2026-04-16⚛️ hep-th

Analysis of the hadronic molecules $DK$, DKD^*K, DKDK^* and their bottom analogs with QCD sum rules

This study employs QCD sum rules with color-singlet currents and dimension-12 vacuum condensates to predict the masses of charm-strange and bottom-strange hadronic molecules, finding that the predicted masses for $DK$, DKD^*K, and DKDK^* states align well with experimental data for Ds0(2317)D_{s0}(2317), Ds1(2460)D_{s1}(2460), and Ds1(2536)D_{s1}(2536), while the BKBK^* state is predicted to be a bound molecular state below its threshold.

Ze Zhou, Guo-Liang Yu, Zhi-Gang Wang, Jie Lu2026-04-15⚛️ hep-ph

Diffractive vector meson photo-production in oxygen-oxygen and neon-neon ultraperipheral collisions at energies available at the CERN Large Hadron Collider

This paper utilizes the energy-dependent hotspot model with various nuclear shape prescriptions to predict cross sections for coherent and incoherent diffractive vector meson (ρ0\rho^0 and J/ψ\psi) photo-production in oxygen-oxygen and neon-neon ultraperipheral collisions at the LHC, demonstrating that simultaneous measurements of these processes can constrain nuclear models and probe the gluon-saturation regime.

J. Cepila, J. G. Contreras, M. Matas, A. Ridzikova2026-04-15⚛️ nucl-th