⚛️ Category

hep-th

2913 papers

Hep-Th, or high-energy theoretical physics, explores the fundamental building blocks of our universe and the forces that govern them. Researchers in this field use complex mathematics to understand everything from subatomic particles to the behavior of black holes, often pushing the boundaries of what we know about space and time.

At Gist.Science, we monitor the arXiv repository to ensure you stay ahead of the curve in this rapidly evolving discipline. For every new preprint uploaded to arXiv under this category, our team generates both accessible plain-language overviews and detailed technical summaries, making cutting-edge research understandable regardless of your background.

Below are the latest papers in high-energy theoretical physics, curated to help you navigate the most significant recent discoveries.

Vacuum photon emission and mean electromagnetic field in pair-creating external backgrounds

This paper develops a perturbative real-time framework using the Keldysh-Schwinger-Fradkin technique to derive the mean number density of emitted photons and the mean electromagnetic field in unstable QED vacua subjected to pair-creating external backgrounds, extending calculations up to second order in the fine-structure constant and verifying results through spectral decomposition and Schwinger-Dyson equations.

I. A. Aleksandrov, E. V. Perelygin, D. V. Chubukov2026-06-12⚛️ hep-th

Tachyonic Encore: A universal shift of inflationary observables

This paper proposes a generic mechanism where a light axion spectator induces a post-inflationary "tachyonic encore" that reshapes inflationary observables by enhancing the curvature power spectrum and suppressing the tensor-to-scalar ratio, thereby reconciling otherwise disfavored inflaton potentials with current CMB constraints while predicting observable local non-Gaussianity.

Diogo S. Gorgulho, Margherita Putti, Rodrigo Gonzalez Quaglia, Ema Dimastrogiovanni, Matteo Fasiello, Diederik Roest2026-06-12⚛️ hep-th

The state/defect correspondence

This paper establishes a one-to-one correspondence between states and defects in higher-form gauge theories of arbitrary dimensions by utilizing an extended Kac-Moody algebra generated by conserved charges from mixed electric-magnetic anomalies, which organizes the Hilbert space into highest-weight representations and maps dressed Wilson-'t Hooft defects to squeezed energy eigenstates without relying on conformal invariance.

Adrien Arbalestrier, Elise Paznokas, Stathis Vitouladitis2026-06-12⚛️ hep-th

The μ\mu-extension of iterated integrals and nested sums

This paper constructs μ\mu-extensions for iterated integrals and associated nested sums arising in perturbative quantum field theory calculations, demonstrating that while these extensions generally preserve the underlying Hopf algebra structure and map into the same function space polynomially in μ\mu, they lead to higher transcendental functions specifically in cases involving square-root valued alphabets or central binomials.

J. Blümlein, A. M. Gavrilik, U. Y. Lunga, O. Mykhailiv2026-06-12🔢 math-ph

Analytic structure of the QCD phase diagram in the complex-temperature plane

This paper investigates the analytic structure of the QCD phase diagram by treating temperature as a complex variable, combining universal critical scaling, effective models, and lattice-QCD data to locate the nearest Yang-Lee edge singularities and establish a consistency test for critical-point searches via the relationship between complex-temperature and complex-chemical-potential trajectories.

Gokce Basar, Vladimir V. Skokov2026-06-12⚛️ hep-lat

Quantum Stochastic Inflation

This paper formulates stochastic inflation within an open quantum system framework, demonstrating that the non-unitary evolution of a coarse-grained de Sitter patch yields a GKLS master equation whose Wigner transform reproduces classical stochastic inflation dynamics, while revealing that the validity of a classical stochastic description depends on the field mass, being applicable for light fields but failing for heavy fields that remain in a pure quantum state.

Robson Christie, Jaewoo Joo, Greg Kaplanek, Vincent Vennin, David Wands2026-06-12⚛️ hep-th

Quantum Gravity Induced Entanglement from Propagating Gravitons

This paper demonstrates that propagating quantized gravitons can induce entanglement between two massive particles in a harmonic oscillator potential through their commutation relations, establishing that this entanglement arises from quantum gravitational effects with a causal time delay proportional to the distance between the particles, which can be slightly enhanced using squeezed initial states.

Anom Trenggana, Freddy P. Zen2026-06-12⚛️ hep-th

Chiral Long-Range Order in three Euclidean Lattice Gross-Neveu Models

This paper rigorously proves the existence of long-range order in the chirally charged fermion-mass bilinear for a class of two-dimensional Euclidean lattice Gross-Neveu models with even flavor numbers by utilizing reflection positivity, chessboard estimates, and Peierls-type arguments to establish a non-perturbative connection between the lattice theory and large-NN mean-field predictions across various discretizations.

Simone Fabbri, Leonardo Goller2026-06-12🔢 math-ph