⚛️ Category

hep-th

2991 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.

Thermodynamics and optical aspects of ModMax black holes in higher order curvature gravity with quintessence dark energy

This paper derives an exact electrically charged black hole solution in higher-order curvature gravity coupled with ModMax electrodynamics and quintessence dark energy, demonstrating that while thermodynamic geometry confirms phase transition consistency, quintessence and curvature corrections significantly enlarge the black hole shadow radius, whereas electric charge reduces it.

Ahmad Al-Badawi, Usman Zafar, Abdul Jawad, Kazuharu Bamba2026-05-15⚛️ gr-qc

The Amplitude-Growth Degeneracy and Implied AsA_s Diagnostic for Background-Inert Modified Gravity

This paper demonstrates that background-inert perturbative couplings in coincident f(Q)f(Q) gravity create a degeneracy between the primordial amplitude AsA_s and the growth factor, leading to unphysically high σ8\sigma_8 values that can be resolved by imposing Planck AsA_s priors, a constraint that ultimately penalizes the extended models with information criteria despite a weak statistical preference for the Λ\LambdaCDM+λ0\lambda_0+ln⁡(As)\ln(A_s) variant.

Ameya Kolhatkar, P. K. Sahoo2026-05-15🔭 astro-ph

Non-Invertible Symmetries and Boundaries for Two-Dimensional Fermions

This paper investigates the relationship between boundary conditions and categorical symmetries in two-dimensional fermionic conformal field theories by identifying a family of anomaly-free Zk\mathbb{Z}_k global symmetries derived from Pythagorean triples, demonstrating that gauging these symmetries generates non-invertible topological defects that can dress trivial boundaries to produce all U(1)2U(1)^2-preserving conformal boundary conditions, and providing two microscopic realizations of these defects.

Guillermo Arias-Tamargo, Philip Boyle Smith, Rishi Mouland, Maxwell L. Velásquez Cotini Hutt2026-05-15⚛️ hep-th

A Tale of Two Hartle-Hawking Wave Functions: Fully Gravitational vs Partially Frozen

This paper distinguishes between fully gravitational and partially frozen Hartle-Hawking wave functions in AdS and dS spacetimes, demonstrating that the former acquires a nontrivial one-loop phase due to boundary fluctuations while the latter remains real and positive, thereby establishing that the phase problem is controlled by the dynamical nature of the gravitational path integral.

Galit Anikeeva, Raphaël Dulac, Zixia Wei, Mengyang Zhang2026-05-15⚛️ hep-th