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Superradiance, the process by which waves are amplified through energy and angular momentum transfer, can also occur in horizonless objects like boson stars, due to both the real space and internal field space rotations. In this work, we study superradiance in the frequency and time domains for static and spinning boson stars, constructed within general relativity and with a self-interacting complex scalar field as a matter source. Using linear perturbation theory and three dimensional nonlinear simulations, we calculate amplification factors and analyze energy and angular momentum transfer in scattering processes, with results showing consistency between approaches. Wave scattering inside a cavity containing a boson star is also examined, demonstrating the effects of confinement on amplification., Comment: 26 pages, 19 figures

Solitons in relativistic field theories are not necessarily topologically charged. In particular, non-topological solitons -- known as Q-balls -- arise naturally in nonlinear field theories endowed with attractive interactions and internal symmetries. Even without stabilizing internal symmetries, quasi-solitons known as oscillons, which are long-lived, can also exist. Both Q-balls and oscillons have significant applications in cosmology and particle physics. This review is an updated account of the intriguing properties and dynamics of these non-topological solitons and quasi-solitons, as well as their important roles in early-universe scenarios and particle physics models., Comment: 53 pages, invited review for Reports on Progress in Physics; comments welcome

Positivity bounds in effective field theories (EFTs) can be extracted through the moment problem approach, utilizing well-established results from the mathematical literature. We generalize this formalism using the matrix moment approach to derive positivity bounds for theories with multiple field components. The sufficient conditions for obtaining optimal bounds are identified and applied to several example field theories, yielding results that match precisely the numerical bounds computed using other methods. The upper unitarity bounds can also be easily harnessed in the matrix case. Furthermore, the moment problem formulation also provides a means to reverse engineer the UV spectrum from the EFT coefficients, often uniquely, as explicitly demonstrated in examples such as string amplitudes and the $stu$ kink theory., Comment: 59 pages, 15 figures

We construct static axisymmetric multisolitons in the Einstein-Friedberg-Lee-Sirlin model. This theory features a complex scalar field which gains mass through its interaction with a real scalar field that has a non-zero vacuum expectation value. By performing three-dimensional numerical relativity simulations, we identify stable dipolar boson stars in specific regions of the parameter space. Based on the dipole results, non-rotating odd parity chains with and without gravity can also be constructed when the mass of the real scalar field is sufficiently small. However, chains beyond the dipole case are found to be unstable., Comment: 38 pages, 16 figures

We investigate time delays of gravitational wave and scalar wave scatterings around black hole backgrounds in scalar-Gauss-Bonnet effective field theories of gravity. By requiring infrared causality, we impose a lower bound on the cutoff scale of the theories. With this bound, we further discuss the detectability of scalar-Gauss-Bonnet gravity in gravitational waves from binary black hole mergers. Comparing with the gravitational effective field theories that only contain the two tensor modes, adding a scalar degree of freedom opens up a detectable window in the planned observations., Comment: 13 pages, 4 figures, typos corrected, citations added, figures updated

Using dispersion relations of the scattering amplitudes and semi-definite programming, we calculate causality bounds on the Wilson coefficients in scalar-tensor effective field theories that include parity-violating operators. Particular attention has been paid to the dynamical-Chern-Simons (dCS) and scalar-Gauss-Bonnet (sGB) couplings, along with higher order coefficients, and the interplay between them. For the leading terms, the bounds on the parity-conserving and -violating coefficients are simply projections of the complex coefficients. Some parity-violating coefficients are found to be upper bounded by the the parity-conserving counterparts, or the higher order parity-conserving coefficients. While the observational constraints on parity-violating coefficients are weaker than the parity-conserving counterparts, the causality bounds are of comparable strength and thus may play a more prominent role in constraining strong gravity effects in upcoming observations., Comment: 49 pages, 19 figures, 1 table

We explore the post-Newtonian dynamics of spinning black hole (BH) binaries in Einstein-ScalarGauss-Bonnet (ESGB) gravity, a theory that modifies general relativity by introducing a massless scalar field coupled nonminimally to gravity via the Gauss-Bonnet term. By employing an effective field theory (EFT) approach, we extend the Routhian formalism to incorporate spin effects in scalar interactions. In this formalism, we derive for the first time the effective two-body potential for spinning BHs up to the third post-Newtonian (3PN) order in generic ESGB gravity theories. This potential is expressed in terms of the sensitivities of the BHs, which are then obtained through a matching procedure using analytic BH solutions derived here within a slow-rotation approximation, accurate to seventh order in the Gauss-Bonnet coupling and fifth order in the BH spin. We also examine the thermodynamic properties of these rotating solutions, which, as shown in previous work, yield important insights into the inspiral phase evolution in ESGB gravity., Comment: 25 pages, 8 figures. Contains ancillary file

We construct and explore the complex structures of boson stars, drawing inspiration from similar configurations of non-topological solitons in Minkowski space. These "molecular states" of boson stars have a multipolar structure and both positive and negative Noether charges within one star, and the opposite charges swap with time. Thanks to the gravitational attraction, they exist even in the case of a free scalar field. We also explore the effects of scalar self-interactions on these complex structures. We propose to use galactic-scale charge-swapping boson stars as a potential solution to the problem of the observed anisotropic distribution of satellite galaxies., Comment: 27 pages, 23 figures. Matches published version

The Wilson coefficients of the Standard Model Effective Field Theory are subject to a series of positivity bounds. It has been shown that, while the positivity part of the UV partial wave unitarity leads to the Wilson coefficients living in a convex cone, further including the non-positivity part caps the cone from above. For the Higgs scattering, a capped positivity cone have been obtained using a simplified, linear unitarity conditions and without utilizing the full internal symmetries of the Higgs scattering. Here we further implement the stronger nonlinear unitarity conditions from the UV, which generically gives rise to better bounds. We show that, for the Higgs case in particular, while the nonlinear unitarity conditions per se do not enhance the bounds, the fuller use of the internal symmetries do shrink the capped positivity cone significantly., Comment: 20 pages, 4 figures, invited contribution to JUSTC

Recently, it has been found that a $Q$-ball can amplify waves incident upon it, due to rotation in the internal space and the interaction of the two modes in the complex scalar field. While the spherically symmetric 3D case has been investigated previously, here we explore the 3D axi-symmetric case, which is numerically much more challenging. The difficulty comes because a partial wave expansion is needed, and the different partial waves can not be separated, for either the background spinning Q-ball solution or the perturbative scattering on top of it. A relaxation method and a high dimensional shooting method are applied to compute the Q-ball solutions and the amplification factors respectively. We also classify the behavior of the amplification factors and we discuss their bounds and the superradiance criteria., Comment: 20 pages, 14 figures

In this paper, we investigate, in the framework of the topological approach to black hole thermodynamics, using the generalized off-shell Helmholtz free energy, the topological numbers of the static multi-charge AdS black holes in four- and five-dimensional gauged supergravities. We find that the topological number of the static-charged AdS black holes in four-dimensional Kaluza-Klein (K-K) gauged supergravity theory is $W = 0$, while that of the static-charged AdS black holes in four-dimensional gauged $-iX^0X^1$-supergravity and STU gauged supergravity theories, and five-dimensional Einstein-Maxwell-dilaton-axion (EMDA) gauged supergravity and STU gauged supergravity, and five-dimensional static-charged AdS Horowitz-Sen black hole are both $W = 1$. Furthermore, we observe a novel temperature-dependent thermodynamic topological phase transition that can happen in the four-dimensional static-charged AdS black hole in EMDA gauged supergravity theory, the four-dimensional static-charged AdS Horowitz-Sen black hole, and the five-dimensional static-charged AdS black hole in K-K gauged supergravity theory. We believe that the novel temperature-dependent thermodynamic topological phase transition could help us better understand black hole thermodynamics and, further, shed new light on the fundamental nature of gauged supergravity theories., Comment: 35 pages, 29 figures, 2 tables, JHEP3.cls, match with the published version in JHEP

The physics of individual Q-balls and interactions between multiple Q-balls are well-studied in classical numerical simulations. Interesting properties and phenomena have been discovered, involving stability, forces, collisions and swapping of charge between different components of multi-Q-ball systems. We investigate these phenomena in quantum field theory, including quantum corrections to leading order in a 2PI coupling expansion, the inhomogeneous Hartree approximation. The presence of quantum modes and new decay channels allows the mean-field Q-ball to exchange charge with the quantum modes, and also alters the charge swapping frequencies of the composite Q-balls. It is also observed that the periodic exchanges between the mean-field and quantum modes tend to be quenched by collisions between Q-balls. We illustrate how the classical limit arises through a scaling of the Q-ball potential, making quantum corrections negligible for large-amplitude Q-balls., Comment: 29 pages, 18 figures

We consider a model where the interaction between dark matter and the Standard Model particles are mediated by a ghost-free bi-gravity portal. The bi-gravity model invokes a massive spin-2 particle coupled to the usual massless graviton as well as generic bi-metric matter couplings. The cross-sections for dark matter direct detection are computed and confronted with the experimental bounds. The presence of the massive spin-2 mediator resolves the core-cusp problem, which in turn significantly constrains the dark matter coupling in such a bi-gravity theory. Yet, there remains a window of the parameter space where the model can be tested in the upcoming direct detection experiments such as XENONnT and PandaX-30T. The model also predicts a reheating temperature of the order of $10^6$ GeV., Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures

SMEFT Wilson coefficients are subject to various positivity bounds in order to be consistent with the fundamental principles of S-matrix. Previous bounds on dimension-8 SMEFT operators have been obtained using the positivity part of UV partial wave unitarity and form a (projective) convex cone. We derive a set of linear UV unitarity conditions that go beyond positivity and are easy to implement in an optimization scheme with dispersion relations in a multi-field EFT. Using Higgs scattering as an example, we demonstrate how to obtain closed bounds in the space of the three relevant dimension-8 coefficients, making use of the UV unitarity conditions as well as so-called null constraints that arise from full crossing symmetry. Specifically, we show that they are bounded by inequalities schematically going like $C

Scalars are widely used in cosmology to model novel phenomena such as the late-time cosmic acceleration. These are effective field theories with highly nonlinear interactions, including Horndeski theory/generalized galileon and beyond. We use the latest fully crossing symmetric positivity bounds to constrain these cosmological EFTs. These positivity bounds, based on fundamental principles of quantum field theory such as causality and unitarity, are able to constrain the EFT coefficients both from above and below. We first map the mass dependence of the fully crossing symmetric bounds, and find that a nonzero mass generically enlarges the positivity regions. We show that fine-tunings in the EFT construction can significantly reduce the viable regions and sometimes can be precarious. Then, we apply the positivity bounds to several models in the Horndeski class and beyond, explicitly listing the ready-to-use bounds with the model parameters, and discuss the implications for these models. The new positivity bounds are found to severely constrain some of these models, in which positivity requires the mass to be parametrically close to the cutoff of the EFT, effectively ruling them out. The examples include massive galileon, the original beyond Horndeski model, and DHOST theory with unity speed of gravity and nearly constant Newton's coupling., Comment: 45 pages, 16 figures, 1 table. To appear in JCAP

Recently, it has been realized that in some systems internal space rotation can induce energy amplification for scattering waves, similar to rotation in real space. Particularly, it has been shown that energy extraction is possible for a Q-ball, a stationary non-topological soliton that is coherently rotating in its field space. In this paper, we generalize the analysis to the case of boson stars, and show that the same energy extraction mechanism still works for boson stars., Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures; v2: refs added and clarified

We compute the causality/positivity bounds on the Wilson coefficients of scalar-tensor effective field theories. Two-sided bounds are obtained by extracting IR information from UV physics via dispersion relations of scattering amplitudes, making use of the full crossing symmetry. The graviton $t$-channel pole is carefully treated in the numerical optimization, taking into account the constraints with fixed impact parameters. It is shown that the typical sizes of the Wilson coefficients can be estimated by simply inspecting the dispersion relations. We carve out sharp bounds on the leading coefficients, particularly, the scalar-Gauss-Bonnet couplings, and discuss how some bounds vary with the leading $(\partial\phi)^4$ coefficient and as well as phenomenological implications of the causality bounds., Comment: 76 pages, 15 figures; to appear in JHEP

Q-balls are non-topological solitons that coherently rotate in field space. We show that these coherent rotations can induce superradiance for scattering waves, thanks to the fact that the scattering involves two coupled modes. Despite the conservation of the particle number in the scattering, the mismatch between the frequencies of the two modes allows for the enhancement of the energy and angular momentum of incident waves. When the Q-ball spins in real space, additional rotational superradiance is also possible, which can further boost the enhancements. We identify the criteria for the energy and angular momentum superradiance to occur., Comment: 9 pages, 12 figures. Published version in PRL

Two types of excited oscillons are investigated. We first focus on spherical symmetry and find that there are a tower of spherical oscillons with higher energies. Despite having multiple approximate "nodes" in their energy density profiles, these oscillons are long-lived. We find that during the lifetime of a highly excited oscillon it will cascade down all the lower energy levels before its disintegration. We also point out the existence of excited oscillons with higher approximate multipoles, which generally have shorter lifespans than the spherical ones. Apart from performing nonlinear simulations with absorbing boundary conditions, we also apply a perturbative method to analyze some features of these excited oscillons., Comment: 27 pages, 17 figures

We summarize recent progress in the development, application, and understanding of effective field theories and highlight promising directions for future research. This Report is prepared as the TF02 "Effective Field Theory" topical group summary for the Theory Frontier as part of the Snowmass 2021 process., Comment: 12 pages

The precise measurement of physics observables and the test of their consistency within the standard model (SM) are an invaluable approach, complemented by direct searches for new particles, to determine the existence of physics beyond the standard model (BSM). Studies of massive electroweak gauge bosons (W and Z bosons) are a promising target for indirect BSM searches, since the interactions of photons and gluons are strongly constrained by the unbroken gauge symmetries. They can be divided into two categories: (a) Fermion scattering processes mediated by s- or t-channel W/Z bosons, also known as electroweak precision measurements; and (b) multi-boson processes, which include production of two or more vector bosons in fermion-antifermion annihilation, as well as vector boson scattering (VBS) processes. The latter categories can test modifications of gauge-boson self-interactions, and the sensitivity is typically improved with increased collision energy. This report evaluates the achievable precision of a range of future experiments, which depend on the statistics of the collected data sample, the experimental and theoretical systematic uncertainties, and their correlations. In addition it presents a combined interpretation of these results, together with similar studies in the Higgs and top sector, in the Standard Model effective field theory (SMEFT) framework. This framework provides a model-independent prescription to put generic constraints on new physics and to study and combine large sets of experimental observables, assuming that the new physics scales are significantly higher than the EW scale., Comment: 55 pages; Report of the EF04 topical group for Snowmass 2021; v2: few typos corrected and references added

Moments of the leptonic angular distribution in the Drell-Yan process have recently been shown to be sensitive probes of a specific class of dimension-8, four-fermion operators in the Standard Model Effective Field Theory, involving a pair of quarks and leptons. The same operators are also subject to positivity bounds, when requiring the associated (unknown) UV completion to obey basic principles of quantum field theory. We perform a phenomenological study to quantify the sensitivity of the high-luminosity LHC to this set of operators and, by extension, the positivity bounds. We further extend the angular basis of moments and consider double differential information to improve the ability to disentangle the different operators, leading to a sensitivity to new physics scales up to 3 TeV. We use this information to explore the violation of positivity at the LHC as a way to test the underlying principles of quantum field theory. Finally, we present a case study which combines our results with information from other (current and prospective) experiments, as well as the positivity cone to infer the properties of possible tree-level UV completions. The data lead to robust, model-independent lower bounds on the $M/\sqrt{g}$ combination of the particle mass and coupling, for states that couple to right-handed leptons and/or up quarks., Comment: 54 pages, 8 figures, 9 tables, version to appear in JHEP

Fundamental principles of local quantum field theory or of quantum gravity can enforce consistency requirements on the space of consistent low-energy effective field theories. We survey the various techniques that have been used to put UV constraints on IR physics, including those from causality considerations in the form of S-matrix positivity and bootstrap bounds, scattering time delays, conformal field theory and holographic methods, together with those that arise from landscape/swampland criteria such as the weak gravity conjecture. We review recent applications of these constraints to corrections to Standard Model physics, corrections to Einstein gravity, and cosmological theories and highlight promising future directions., Comment: Contribution to Snowmass 2021; 19 pages + references

We study charge-swapping Q-balls, a kind of composite Q-ball where positive and negative charges co-exist and swap with time, in models with a logarithmic potential that arises naturally in supersymmetric extensions of the Standard Model. We show that charge-swapping Q-balls can be copiously generated in the Affleck-Dine fragmentation process in the early universe. We find that the charge-swapping Q-balls with the logarithmic potential are extremely stable. By performing long time, parallelized lattice simulations with absorbing boundary conditions, we find that the lifetimes of such objects with low multipoles are at least $4.6 \times 10^5/m$ in 3+1D and $2.5 \times 10^7/m$ in 2+1D, where $m$ is the mass scale of the scalar field. We also chart the attractor basin of the initial conditions to form these charge-swapping Q-balls., Comment: 23 pages, 15 figures

As long-lived quasi-solitons from the fragmentation of a scalar condensate, oscillons may dominate the preheating era after inflation. During this period, stochastic gravitational waves can also be generated. We quantify the gravitational wave production in this period with simulations accounting for full general relativity to capture all possible non-perturbative effects. We compute the gravitational wave spectra across a range of choices of the oscillon preheating models and compare our results to a conventional perturbative approach on an FLRW background. We clarify the gauge ambiguities in computing induced gravitational waves from scenarios where dense non-perturbative objects such as oscillons are being formed. In particular, we find that the synchronous gauge tends to contain large artificial enhancements in the gravitational wave spectrum due to gauge modes if gravity plays an important role in the formation of the oscillons, while other gauge choices, such as the radiation gauge or a suitably chosen "1+log" gauge, can efficiently reduce the contributions of gauge modes. The full general relativistic simulations indicate that gravitational wave spectra obtained from the perturbative approach on the FLRW background are fairly accurate, except when oscillon formation induces strong gravitational effects, for which case there can be an order unity enhancement.

Gravitational collapse into a black hole has been extensively studied with classical sources. We develop a new formalism to simulate quantum fields forming a black hole. By choosing a convenient coherent state, this formalism taps into well-established techniques used for classical collapse and adds on the evolution of the mode functions of the quantum field operator. Divergences are regularized with the cosmological constant and Pauli-Villars fields. Using a massless spherically symmetric scalar field as an example, we demonstrate the effectiveness of the formalism by reproducing some classical results in gravitational collapse, and identifying the difference due to the quantum effects. We also find that Choptuik scaling in critical collapse survives in the semiclassical simulation, and furthermore the quantum deviation from the classical Choptuik scaling decreases when the system approaches the critical point., Comment: 26 pages, 8 figures

We develop a formalism to extract triple crossing symmetric positivity bounds for effective field theories with multiple degrees of freedom, by making use of $su$ symmetric dispersion relations supplemented with positivity of the partial waves, $st$ null constraints and the generalized optical theorem. This generalizes the convex cone approach to constrain the $s^2$ coefficient space to higher orders. Optimal positive bounds can be extracted by semi-definite programs with a continuous decision variable, compared with linear programs for the case of a single field. As an example, we explicitly compute the positivity constraints on bi-scalar theories, and find all the Wilson coefficients can be constrained in a finite region, including the coefficients with odd powers of $s$, which are absent in the single scalar case., Comment: 28 pages, 4 figures, 1 table; corrected error about upper bounds on s^2 coefficients, conclusions remain unchanged

For scalar theories accommodating spherically symmetric Q-balls, there are also towers of quasi-stable composite Q-balls, called charge swapping Q-balls (CSQs). We investigate the properties, particularly the lifetimes, of these long-lived CSQs in 2+1D and 3+1D using numerical simulations with efficient second order absorbing boundary conditions. We find that the evolution of a CSQ typically consists of 4 distinct stages: initial relaxation, first plateau (CSQ stage), fast decay and second plateau (oscillon stage). We chart the lifetimes of CSQs for different parameters of the initial conditions and of the potential, and show the attractor behavior and other properties of the CSQs., Comment: 33 pages, 32 figures

We discuss the general method for obtaining full positivity bounds on multi-field effective field theories (EFTs). While the leading order forward positivity bounds are commonly derived from the elastic scattering of two (superposed) external states, we show that for a generic EFT containing 3 or more low-energy modes, this approach only gives incomplete bounds. We then identify the allowed parameter space as the dual to a spectrahedron, constructed from crossing symmetries of the amplitude, and show that finding the optimal bounds for a given number of modes is equivalent to a geometric problem: finding the extremal rays of a spectrahedron. We show how this is done analytically for simple cases, and numerically formulated as semidefinite programming (SDP) problems for more complicated cases. We demonstrate this approach with a number of well-motivated examples in particle physics and cosmology, including EFTs of scalars, vectors, fermions and gravitons. In all these cases, we find that the SDP approach leads to results that either improve the previous ones or are completely new. We also find that the SDP approach is numerically much more efficient., Comment: 5 pages + refs + supplementary material, 5 figures; to appear in PRL

We use generalized elastic positivity bounds to constrain the parameter space of multi-field spin-2 effective field theories. These generalized bounds involve inelastic scattering amplitudes between particles with different masses, which contain kinematic singularities even in the $t=0$ limit. We apply these bounds to the pseudo-linear spin-2 theory, the cycle spin-2 theory and the line spin-2 theory respectively. For the pseudo-linear theory, we exclude the remaining operators that are unconstrained by the usual elastic positivity bounds, thus excluding all the leading (or highest cutoff) interacting operators in the theory. For the cycle and line theory, our approach also provides new bounds on the Wilson coefficients previously unconstrained, bounding the parameter space in both theories to be a finite region ({\it i.e.}, every Wilson coefficient being constrained from both sides). To help visualize these finite regions, we sample various cross sections of them and estimate the total volumes., Comment: 29 pages, 14 figures

Positivity bounds are powerful tools to constrain effective field theories. Utilizing the partial wave expansion in the dispersion relation and the full crossing symmetry of the scattering amplitude, we derive several sets of generically nonlinear positivity bounds for a generic scalar effective field theory: We refer to these as the $PQ$, $D^{\rm su}$, $D^{\rm stu}$ and $\bar{D}^{\rm stu}$ bounds. While the $PQ$ bounds and $D^{\rm su}$ bounds only make use of the $s\leftrightarrow u$ dispersion relation, the $D^{\rm stu}$ and $\bar{D}^{\rm stu}$ bounds are obtained by further imposing the $s\leftrightarrow t$ crossing symmetry. In contradistinction to the linear positivity for scalars, these inequalities can be applied to put upper and lower bounds on Wilson coefficients, and are much more constraining as shown in the lowest orders. In particular we are able to exclude theories with soft amplitude behaviour such as weakly broken Galileon theories from admitting a standard UV completion. We also apply these bounds to chiral perturbation theory and we find these bounds are stronger than the previous bounds in constraining its Wilson coefficients., Comment: 39 pages, 8 figures; v2: published in JHEP, various small edits, in particular minor improvement due to use of vanishing odd partial waves

Gravitational collapse into a black hole has been extensively studied with classical sources. We develop a new formalism to simulate quantum fields forming a black hole. This formalism utilizes well-established techniques used for classical collapse by choosing a convenient coherent state, and simulates the matter fields quantum mechanically. Divergences are regularized with the cosmological constant and Pauli-Villars fields. Using a massless spherically symmetric scalar field as an example, we demonstrate the effectiveness of the formalism by reproducing some classical results in gravitational collapse, and identifying the difference due to quantum effects., Comment: Updated version with new figures, accepted for publication to PRD, 6 pages, 4 figures

The positivity bounds, derived from the axiomatic principles of quantum field theory (QFT), constrain the signs of Wilson coefficients and their linear combinations in the Standard Model Effective Field Theory (SMEFT). The precise determination of these bounds, however, can become increasingly difficult as more and more SM modes and operators are taken into account. We study two approaches that aim at obtaining the full set of bounds for a given set of SM fields: 1) the traditional elastic positivity approach, which exploits the elastic scattering amplitudes of states with arbitrarily superposed helicities as well as other quantum numbers, and 2) the newly proposed extremal positivity approach, which constructs the allowed coefficient space directly by using the extremal representation of convex cones. Considering the electroweak gauge-bosons as an example, we demonstrate how the best analytical and numerical positivity bounds can be obtained in several ways. We further compare the constraining power and the efficiency of various approaches, as well as their applicability to more complex problems. While the new extremal approach is more constraining by construction, we also find that it is analytically easier to use, numerically much faster than the elastic approach, and much more applicable when more SM particle states and operators are taken into account. As a byproduct, we provide the best positivity bounds on the transversal quartic-gauge-boson couplings, required by the axiomatic principles of QFT, and show that they exclude $\approx 99.3\%$ of the parameter space currently being searched at the LHC., Comment: 62 pages, 5 figures; correction on discussion regarding previous literature; typo in bounds with dim-6 coefficient corrected

We consider the positivity bounds on dimension-8 four-electron operators and study two related phenomenological aspects at future lepton colliders. First, if positivity is violated, probing such violations will revolutionize our understanding of the fundamental pillars of quantum field theory and the $S$-matrix theory. We observe that positivity violation at scales of 1--10 TeV can potentially be probed at future lepton colliders even if one assumes that dimension-6 operators are also present. Second, the positive nature of the dimension-8 parameter space often allows us to either directly infer the existence of UV-scale particles together with their quantum numbers or exclude them up to certain scales in a model-independent way. In particular, dimension-8 positivity plays an important role in the test of the Standard Model. If no deviations from the Standard Model are observed, it allows for simultaneous exclusion limits on all kinds of potential UV-complete models. Unlike the dimension-6 case, these limits apply regardless of the UV model setup and cannot be removed by possible cancellations among various UV contributions. This thus consists of a novel and universal test to confirm the Standard Model. We demonstrate with realistic examples how all the previously mentioned possibilities, including the test of positivity violation, can be achieved. Hence, we provide an important motivation for studying dimension-8 operators more comprehensively., Comment: 24 pages, 6 figures; typos corrected

In Einstein's general relativity, gravity is mediated by a massless metric field. The extension of general relativity to consistently include a mass for the graviton has profound implications for gravitation and cosmology. Salient features of various massive gravity theories can be captured by Galileon models, the simplest of which is the cubic Galileon. The presence of the Galileon field leads to additional gravitational radiation in binary pulsars where the Vainshtein mechanism is less suppressed than its fifth-force counterpart, which deserves a detailed confrontation with observations. We prudently choose fourteen well-timed binary pulsars, and from their intrinsic orbital decay rates we put a new bound on the graviton mass, $m_g \lesssim 2 \times 10^{-28}\,{\rm eV}/c^2$ at the 95% confidence level, assuming a flat prior on $\ln m_g$. It is equivalent to a bound on the graviton Compton wavelength $\lambda_g \gtrsim 7 \times 10^{21}\,{\rm m}$. Furthermore, we extensively simulate times of arrival for pulsars in orbit around stellar-mass black holes and the supermassive black hole at the Galactic center, and investigate their prospects in probing the cubic Galileon theory in the near future., Comment: 14 pages, 10 figures; accepted by PRD

We present a convex geometry perspective to the Effective Field Theory (EFT) parameter space. We show that the second $s$ derivatives of the forward EFT amplitudes form a convex cone, whose extremal rays are closely connected with states in the UV theory. For tree-level UV-completions, these rays are simply theories with all UV particles living in at most one irreducible representation of the symmetries of the theory. In addition, all the extremal rays are determined by the symmetries and can be systematically identified via group theoretical considerations. The implications are twofold. First, geometric information encoded in the EFT space can help reconstruct the UV-completion. In particular, we will show that the dim-8 operators are important in reverse-engineering the UV physics from the Standard Model EFT, and thus deserve more theoretical and experimental investigations. Second, theoretical bounds on the Wilson coefficients can be obtained by identifying the boundaries of the cone and are in general stronger than the current positivity bounds. We show explicit examples of these new bounds, and demonstrate that they originate from the scattering amplitudes corresponding to entangled states., Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures; version accepted by prl

Recently, a new set of positivity bounds with $t$ derivatives have been discovered. We explore the generic features of these generalized positivity bounds with loop amplitudes and apply these bounds to constrain the parameters in chiral perturbation theory up to the next-to-next-to-leading order. We show that the generalized positivity bounds give rise to stronger constraints on the $\bar l_i$ constants, compared to the existing axiomatic bounds. The parameter space of the $b_i$ constants is constrained by the generalized positivity bounds to be a convex region that is enclosed for many sections of the total space. We also show that the improved version of these positivity bounds can further enhance the constraints on the parameters. The often used Pad\'e unitarization method however does not improve the analyticity of the amplitudes in the chiral perturbation theory at low energies., Comment: 31 pages, 15 figures; JHEP version

Oscillons are dense objects that may be copiously produced in the preheating period after inflation, during which what role general relativity might play is largely unknown. We investigate the oscillon preheating scenario in full general relativity, and compare the general-relativistic simulations with the traditional ones done in an FLRW background. We find that in certain parameter regions the general-relativistic corrections are significant, producing more and denser oscillons, and can be strong enough to collapse the oscillons to black holes., Comment: 16 pages, 9 figures; to appear in CQG

Mass-varying massive gravity allows the graviton mass to vary according to different environments. We investigate neutron star and white dwarf solutions in this theory and find that the graviton mass can become very large near the compact stars and settle down quickly to small cosmological values away the stars, similar to that of black holes in the theory. It is found that there exists a tower of compact star solutions where the graviton mass decreases radially to zero non-trivially. We compute the massive graviton effects on the mass-radius relations of the compact stars, and also compare the relative strengths between neutron stars and white dwarfs in constraining the parameter space of mass-varying massive gravity., Comment: 9 pages, 9 figures; published in PRD