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.

⚛️ phenomenology

Symmetry Preserving Contact Interaction Approaches: An Overview of Meson and Diquark Form Factors

This paper provides an updated overview of the symmetry-preserving Contact Interaction model, demonstrating its effectiveness in describing the mass spectra and elastic form factors of forty mesons and their diquark partners while evaluating its performance against recent literature and lattice QCD, and highlighting its potential for future applications in light of upcoming experimental data from FAIR, Jefferson Lab, and the Electron Ion Collider.

L. X. Gutiérrez-Guerrero, Roger José Hernández-Pinto2026-04-17
⚛️ phenomenology

Echoes of Global Cosmic Strings

This paper assesses the detectability and constraints on global cosmic strings and their resulting Nambu-Goldstone bosons by employing semi-numerical methods to model their energy density and matter power spectrum, then comparing these predictions against observations from the cosmic microwave background, Lyman-α\alpha forest, large-scale structure, and UV luminosity functions to derive limits on the boson mass and symmetry-breaking scale.

Jeff A. Dror, Antonios Kyriazis2026-04-17
⚛️ phenomenology

Tachyonic AdS/QCD, Determining the Strong Running Coupling and \beta-function in both UV and IR Regions of AdS Space

This paper proposes a unified tachyonic AdS/QCD framework, utilizing a color dielectric function driven by a tachyon field, to determine the strong running coupling and its β\beta-function across both ultraviolet and infrared regimes, successfully reproducing perturbative and nonperturbative QCD behaviors respectively.

Adamu Issifu, Elijah A. Abbey, Francisco A. Brito2026-04-16
⚛️ nuclear experiments

Probing Cosmic Ray Composition and Muon-philic Dark Matter via Muon Tomography

This paper presents a 63-day cosmic-ray scattering experiment using Resistive Plate Chambers to simultaneously measure secondary cosmic-ray composition with high precision and establish stringent constraints on muon-philic dark matter scattering cross-sections.

Cheng-en Liu, Rongfeng Zhang, Zijian Wang, Andrew Michael Levin, Leyun Gao, Jinning Li, Minxiao Fan, Youpeng Wu, Zibo Qi (…)2026-04-16
⚛️ phenomenology

Gravitational waves from axion inflation in the gradient expansion formalism. Part I. Pure axion inflation

Using the gradient expansion formalism, this paper presents a detailed parameter scan of gravitational wave production in pure axion inflation and finds that detectable signals require strong backreaction regimes that conflict with current constraints on dark radiation (ΔNeff\Delta N_{\rm eff}), thereby defining a critical target for future lattice studies.

Richard von Eckardstein, Kai Schmitz, Oleksandr Sobol2026-04-16
⚛️ high-energy theory

Unitary and Analytic Renormalisation of Cosmological Correlators

This paper resolves discrepancies in the literature regarding ultraviolet divergences in cosmological correlators by demonstrating that various renormalization schemes yield consistent, unitary results and establishing a practical framework where the imaginary part of one-loop wavefunction coefficients is universally fixed by the logarithmic running of the real part.

Diksha Jain, Enrico Pajer, Xi Tong2026-04-16
⚛️ phenomenology

Gravitational waves from axion inflation in the gradient expansion formalism. Part II. Fermionic axion inflation

This paper extends the gradient expansion formalism to fermionic axion inflation, demonstrating that Schwinger pair creation of charged fermions damps gauge-field production and attenuates the gravitational wave signal, thereby allowing observable signals from LISA and ET to be compatible with ΔNeff\Delta N_{\rm eff} constraints while identifying a new damped oscillatory backreaction regime.

Richard von Eckardstein, Kai Schmitz, Oleksandr Sobol2026-04-16
⚛️ high-energy theory

Every Wrinkle Carries A Memory: An Integro-differential Bootstrap for Features in Cosmological Correlators

This paper extends the cosmological bootstrap program to scale-breaking scenarios by deriving integro-differential boundary equations with memory kernels for heavy fields with time-dependent masses, enabling analytical and numerical solutions that reveal exponentially enhanced primordial features in the squeezed bispectrum.

Sadra Jazayeri, Xi Tong, Yuhang Zhu2026-04-16
⚛️ phenomenology

Investigation of the ratio σrF2(Q2/s,Q2)\frac{σ_{r}}{F_{2}}(Q^2/s,Q^2) in the momentum-space approach

This paper calculates and analyzes the ratio of the reduced cross-section to the proton structure function using the Block-Durand-Ha parameterization and higher twist corrections, demonstrating its consistency with HERA data and color dipole model bounds to establish its applicability for future Large Hadron Collider and Future Circular Collider projects.

G. R. Boroun2026-04-16