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

Light and Heavy Z′Z' from Flavored Chiral U(1)XU(1)_X Gauge Symmetries: Purely Axial and Mixed Vector-Axial Couplings

This paper proposes a new class of flavor-specific chiral U(1)XU(1)_X gauge symmetries that, through minimal anomaly-free charge assignments involving three right-handed neutrinos, enable the generation of purely axial and mixed vector-axial Z′Z' couplings alongside flavor-changing neutral currents in both heavy and light Z′Z' regimes.

Hemant Kumar Prajapati, Rahul Srivastava2026-03-31
⚛️ phenomenology

Chiral Phase Transition in Rotating Quark Matter with Chiral Imbalance: A Medium Separation Scheme Regularized NJL Model Study

Using the Medium Separation Scheme regularized Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model, this study reveals that chiral imbalance and rotation exert opposing effects on chiral symmetry breaking, where the former enhances the phase transition while the latter suppresses it, with the imbalance notably buffering the rotation-induced softening and the regularization scheme resolving previous discrepancies with lattice QCD results.

Huang-Jing Zheng, Peng Nan, Sheng-Qin Feng2026-03-31
⚛️ phenomenology

UV-Complete Models for a Light Axial Gauge Boson

This paper introduces three anomaly-free, left-right symmetric universal seesaw models featuring a light axial gauge boson (U(1)aU(1)_a) that accommodates small neutrino masses, offers a dark matter candidate via a new Dirac fermion, and exhibits distinct phenomenological constraints on the gauge coupling and boson mass depending on the specific model variant.

Bhaskar Dutta, Aparajitha Karthikeyan, Rabindra N. Mohapatra2026-03-31
⚛️ phenomenology

Probe charmonium-nucleon interactions in high energy proton-proton collisions

This paper utilizes the EPOS4+CATS framework to dynamically generate non-Gaussian emission sources for charmonium-proton pairs in high-energy pp collisions, enabling the first femtoscopic extraction of charmonium-nucleon interactions while revealing that feed-down from excited states introduces significant uncertainties in prompt J/ψJ/\psi-proton correlation measurements.

Jiaxing Zhao, Taesoo Song, Joerg Aichelin, Elena Bratkovskaya, Pol Bernard Gossiaux, Klaus Werner2026-03-31
⚛️ nuclear experiments

Isolation of photon-nuclear interaction backgrounds in the search for the chiral magnetic effect in relativistic heavy-ion collisions

This study quantitatively assesses the contribution of coherent photon-nuclear interactions, driven by strong electromagnetic fields in relativistic heavy-ion collisions, as a distinct background source that mimics chiral magnetic effect signals to improve the precision of separating genuine CME signals from background noise.

Jing Gu, Jinhui Chen, Jie Zhao2026-03-31
⚛️ lattice

PRBench: End-to-end Paper Reproduction in Physics Research

The paper introduces PRBench, a rigorous benchmark comprising 30 expert-curated physics tasks for evaluating the end-to-end reproduction capabilities of AI agents, revealing that current models struggle significantly with code correctness, data accuracy, and achieving successful reproduction despite their advanced reasoning abilities.

Shi Qiu, Junyi Deng, Yiwei Deng, Haoran Dong, Jieyu Fu, Mao Li, Zeyu Li, Zhaolong Zhang, Huiwen Zheng, Leidong Bao, Anqi (…)2026-03-31
⚛️ nuclear experiments

Magnetic moments of open bottom--charm molecular pentaquark octets

This paper presents a comprehensive theoretical calculation of the magnetic moments for open heavy-flavor (bcˉb\bar{c} and cbˉc\bar{b}) molecular pentaquark octets within a constituent quark model, revealing distinct electromagnetic signatures that differentiate between symmetric and antisymmetric light-diquark configurations and provide crucial benchmarks for identifying these states in future experiments.

Halil Mutuk, Xian-Wei Kang2026-03-31