⚛️ Category

hep-th

4271 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.

⚛️ phenomenology

Gauge-Invariant Bubble Nucleation and Gravitational Waves from First-Order Electroweak Phase Transitions

This paper resolves the long-standing issue of spurious gauge dependence in electroweak phase transition studies by rigorously establishing the gauge invariance of bubble nucleation rates up to two-loop order within a three-dimensional thermal effective field theory framework, thereby providing a robust theoretical foundation for precise predictions of gravitational waves, electroweak baryogenesis, and primordial magnetogenesis.

Jie Liu, Renhui Qin, Ligong Bian2026-08-14
⚛️ general relativity

Quasitopological gravity and double-copy formalism

This paper proposes a modified classical double-copy formalism that derives all vacuum solutions of DD-dimensional quasitopological gravity from an auxiliary non-linear electrodynamics in flat (D+1)(D+1)-dimensional spacetime, thereby providing a unified framework to interpret higher-curvature gravitational interactions as non-linear gauge dynamics and generating regular black hole solutions.

Valeri P. Frolov2026-08-14
⚛️ phenomenology

Towards Accurate Gravitational Wave Predictions: Gauge-Invariant Nucleation in the Electroweak Phase Transition

This paper demonstrates that by applying the Nielsen identity and specific power-counting schemes within the three-dimensional Standard Model effective field theory, vacuum decay rates and phase transition parameters during the electroweak phase transition can be rendered gauge-invariant, thereby enabling more accurate predictions of gravitational wave signatures.

Jie Liu, Renhui Qin, Ligong Bian2026-08-14
⚛️ general relativity

Holonomies and Boundary Symmetries in Discrete BF Formulation of Jackiw-Teitelboim Gravity

This paper presents a fully discrete, non-perturbative formulation of Jackiw-Teitelboim gravity as an sl(2,R)\mathrm{sl}(2,\mathbb{R}) BF theory, demonstrating that all physical information resides at the boundary through the derivation of asymptotic symmetries, the establishment of a continuum OPE dictionary, and the reproduction of Bekenstein-Hawking entropy via gauge-invariant holonomy data without invoking an explicit Schwarzian action.

H. T. Özer, Aytül Filiz2026-08-14
🔬 condensed matter

Boundary phases and thermodynamics of the Kondo spin-ss chain: from overscreened Kondo to boundary-bound states

This paper investigates a spin-1/2 impurity coupled to the boundary of an integrable spin-s Takhtajan-Babujian chain, revealing a rich phase diagram of boundary quantum phase transitions and bound states that reorganize the excitation spectrum, and provides a unified thermodynamic and dynamical description of these phenomena through a combination of boundary conformal field theory, exact Bethe Ansatz, generalized thermodynamic Bethe Ansatz, and tensor-network simulations.

Abay Zhakenov, Pradip Kattel, Andreas Gleis, Natan Andrei2026-08-14
🔬 condensed matter

Fermionic Anomalies of Finite Symmetries on Lattices

This paper develops a lattice characterization of fermionic 't Hooft anomalies for finite internal symmetries in (1+1)D and (2+1)D by identifying cohomological obstructions to symmetric short-range-entangled states, revealing a systematic mismatch between lattice and continuum anomaly classifications where certain continuum anomalies lack exact microscopic realizations while others exhibit distinct lattice-specific obstructions.

Ameya Chavda, Ryohei Kobayashi2026-08-14