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.

⚛️ general relativity

Scale-Dependent Loop Corrections to the Inflationary Power Spectrum

This paper establishes a consistent renormalization framework within the Effective Field Theory of inflation that successfully cancels ultraviolet divergences and tadpoles for scale-dependent backgrounds with strong de Sitter symmetry breaking, demonstrating that the renormalized one-loop power spectrum vanishes at both large and small scales for resonant and sharp features while preserving perturbativity.

Matteo Braglia, Sebastián Céspedes, Lucas Pinol2026-03-13
⚛️ high-energy theory

Electromagnetic duality and central charge from first order formulation

This paper proposes that dual magnetic charges in pp-form theories arise as non-trivial charges associated with the zero-modes of reducible translational gauge symmetries in a first-order BF theory formulation, thereby providing a new criterion for their existence and explaining the origin of their centrally-extended current algebra.

Marc Geiller, Puttarak Jai-akson, Abdulmajid Osumanu, Daniele Pranzetti2026-03-12
⚛️ high-energy theory

Cosmological Dressing Rules

This paper introduces "cosmological dressing rules" that transform flat space Feynman diagrams into in-in correlators for conformally coupled and massless scalar theories in four-dimensional de Sitter space, thereby revealing a hidden simplicity linked to flat space scattering amplitudes while correctly reproducing infrared divergences predicted by the Schwinger-Keldysh formalism.

Chandramouli Chowdhury, Arthur Lipstein, Joe Marshall, Jiajie Mei, Ivo Sachs2026-03-12
⚛️ general relativity

Non-minimally coupled scalar field dark sector of the universe: in-depth (Einstein frame) case study

Motivated by recent DESI DR2 results suggesting evolving dark energy, this study analyzes spatially flat FLRW cosmological models with non-minimally coupled scalar fields in the Einstein frame, employing dynamical system methods to examine the evolution and stability of five specific scalar field models under various coupling parameters to understand energy transfer between the scalar sector and matter.

Marcin Postolak2026-03-12
⚛️ high-energy theory

On β\beta-function of N=2\mathcal{N}=2 supersymmetric integrable sigma models II

This paper extends the study of regularization scheme dependence in N=2\mathcal{N}=2 supersymmetric sigma models to the five-loop order, identifying a specific renormalization scheme where the fifth-loop contribution vanishes and the fourth-loop term becomes a coordinate-independent invariant for models such as complete TT-duals of η\eta-deformed SU(n)/U(n−1)SU(n)/U(n-1) and η\eta- or λ\lambda-deformed SU(2)/U(1)SU(2)/U(1) and SU(3)/U(2)SU(3)/U(2) models.

Mikhail Alfimov, Andrey Kurakin2026-03-12