Wed·Feb 18, 2026Wednesday·February 18, 2026

1. 01*

   Enhanced Cosmic-Ray Antinuclei Fluxes with Dark Matter Annihilation into SUEPs

   Mattia Di Mauro🇮🇹 · Caleb Gemmell🇺🇸 · Austin Batz🇺🇸 · David Curtin🇨🇦 · Fiorenza Donato🇮🇹 · Nicolao Fornengo🇮🇹 · Graham D. Kribs🇺🇸

   Standard-Model (SM) hadronic parton showers initiated by secondary cosmic-ray production or dark matter (DM) annihilations robustly predict very low antinuclei yields and a strong additional suppression for heavier antinuclei. We show that an important exception can arise if DM annihilates into a confining dark sector that produces Soft Unclustered Energy Patterns (SUEPs). The hallmark of SUEPs is the emission of very large multiplicities of soft dark mesons (${\pi }_D$), which can overcome the usual phase-space suppression of antinuclei formation in parton showers, provided that the dark mesons decay promptly into SM quarks, i.e. within a SM hadronization length. We study several benchmark realizations and find that for DM masses $m_{\mathrm{DM}}\sim \mathcal{O}(10\mathrm{TeV})$, dark meson masses $m_{{\pi }_D}\sim 400\mathrm{GeV}$, ${\pi }_D$ dominantly decaying to $t\bar{t}$, and a SUEP temperature $T_{\mathrm{SUEP}}\simeq 0.1m_{\pi D}$, DM annihilation into SUEPs can yield tens of antideuterons and a few antihelium--3 events at AMS-02 at kinetic energies of $\mathcal{O}(\mathrm{GeV}$/n) and a few antideuterons and antihelium-3 events in GAPS at energies below 0.5 GeV/n. A future confirmation of an antinuclei signal by the AMS-02 or GAPS experiments could provide hints for hidden confining dynamics and would significantly constrain the relevant SUEP parameters.

   hep-phastro-ph.HEPRD(2026)·4 citations
2. 02*

   Back-to-back dijet production in DIS at arbitrary Bjorken-x: TMD gluon distributions to twist-3 accuracy

   Swagato Mukherjee🇺🇸 · Vladimir V. Skokov🇺🇸 · Andrey Tarasov🇺🇸 · Shaswat Tiwari🇺🇸 · Fei Yao🇺🇸

   We derive the gluon transverse-momentum-dependent (TMD) operator structure of back-to-back quark-antiquark dijet production in deep inelastic scattering at arbitrary Bjorken-x to twist-3 accuracy. Working at leading order in the strong coupling and in the kinematic regime where the transverse momentum imbalance of the jets is much smaller than their individual transverse momenta, we perform a systematic gradient expansion of the quark propagator in a background gluon field. This expansion organizes multiple interactions with the target in terms of longitudinal Wilson lines and gauge-invariant field-strength insertions, yielding a TMD description valid beyond the strict high-energy eikonal (x -> 0) approximation. We obtain explicit cross sections for longitudinally and transversely polarized virtual photons, identifying all contributing gluon TMD operators up to twist-3, including structures involving F_+-, F_ij, and three-gluon correlators. The full longitudinal phase associated with Bjorken-x is retained throughout. In the small-x limit, our results reproduce the known sub-eikonal expressions obtained in the Color Glass Condensate framework, establishing a direct connection between the general-x TMD expansion and high-energy factorization. We further reduce the operator basis using equations of motion, minimizing the number of independent nonperturbative matrix elements entering the cross section. This work provides a systematic foundation for extending TMD analyses of dijet production beyond leading twist, establishing a unified operator framework valid at arbitrary Bjorken x that smoothly interpolates between moderate- and small-x descriptions of gluon TMDs.

   hep-phhep-thnucl-thPRD(2026)·10 citations
3. 03*

   The Roper Resonance: Still Controversial 60 Years Later

   Anthony W Thomas🇦🇺

   Few baryon resonances have generated as much discussion, even controversy, as the first positive parity excited state with nucleon quantum numbers. We re-examine the issue using insight gained from lattice QCD, complemented by Hamiltonian effective field theory. In doing so, we also examine the distinction between a state that can be naturally described as a quark model state and one that is dynamically generated.

   hep-phActa Phys.Polon.B(2026)·0 citations
4. 04*

   Higher-twist effect in inclusive electron-positron annihilation

   Jing Zhao🇨🇳 · Yongjie Deng🇨🇳 · Tianbo Liu🇨🇳 · Weihua Yang🇨🇳

   We establish a comprehensive theoretical framework for the electron-positron single-inclusive annihilation (SIA) process that incorporates higher-twist contributions up to twist-4 and demonstrate that these effects should be considered in low-energy reactions. Through a systematic collinear expansion of the hadronic tensor, we derive the complete set of structure functions in terms of collinear fragmentation functions (FFs), explicitly including multi-parton correlators up to the four-parton level. To evaluate the impact of these power corrections, we estimate the twist-4 unpolarized FF using a spectator model and compute the normalized differential cross section for ${\pi }^0$ production. Our numerical analysis reveals that the interplay between kinematic hadron mass corrections and dynamical twist-4 effects improves the theoretical description of recent BESIII data at relatively low-$z$ region. Furthermore, the $Q$-dependence confirms that higher-twist corrections are dominant at intermediate energy scales. These findings indicate that standard leading-twist global analyses must be extended to include these power corrections for precise studies of hadronization dynamics.

   hep-ph0 citations
5. 05*

   Potassium influence on Earth's mantle convection and Borexino data

   Ivan Karpikov🇷🇺

   High flux of geoantineutrinos ${}^{40}$K and geoneutrinos ${}^{40}$K (${}^{40}$K-geo-($\bar{\nu }+\nu$)) can be obtained from reanalysis of the Borexino Phase III data. Large amounts of ${}^{40}$K should produce a significant heat flow that should affect Earth's internal processes. We present the results of the modeling of mantle convection taking into account the excess heat from ${}^{40}$K.

   hep-ph0 citations
6. 06*

   pion-rho Mixing as a mechanism for non-monotonic charged pion behavior in magnetic fields

   Ziyue Wang🇨🇳

   We investigate whether magnetic field induced $\pi -\rho$ mixing can explain the non-monotonic behavior of the charged pion reported in lattice QCD. Using a near-pole effective action derived from the SU(2)${}_f$ Nambu--Jona-Lasinio model, we show that the lowest Landau level charged pion mixes with the longitudinally polarized charged rho meson, which shares the same quantum numbers in a magnetic background. The resulting level repulsion is strongly amplified by the suppression of the rho wave-function renormalization near the pole. As a consequence, the lowest mixed mode develops a turnover as the magnetic field increases, reproducing the qualitative trend seen on the lattice. Comparison with the direct determinant solution of the Landau-projected kernel shows that the mechanism is robust, although the quantitative location of the maximum remains scheme dependent. These results support $\pi -\rho$ mixing as an important candidate mechanism for charged meson spectra in strong magnetic fields.

   hep-phnucl-th8 citations
7. 07*

   Primordial black hole evaporation in a thermal bath and gravitational waves

   Arnab Chaudhuri🇮🇳 · Kousik Loho🇮🇳

   Primordial black holes (PBHs) formed in the early Universe evaporate via Hawking radiation and constitute a generic source of stochastic gravitational waves. Existing studies of gravitational wave production from evaporating PBHs typically assume vacuum evaporation, neglecting the fact that PBHs in the early Universe are embedded in a hot thermal plasma. In this work, we investigate gravitational wave production from primordial black holes whose evaporation is thermally influenced by their surrounding environment. We adopt a thermal evaporation framework in which interactions with the ambient plasma modify the effective decay rate of the black hole, leading to enhanced mass loss at early times and a redistribution of the evaporation history compared to the standard non-thermal vacuum case. Since graviton emission is intrinsically tied to the evaporation history of PBHs, these thermal effects play a crucial role in determining the timing and spectral properties of the resulting stochastic gravitational wave background. Our results provide a consistent framework for incorporating thermal effects into gravitational wave production from evaporating primordial black holes and set the stage for a detailed analysis of their observational signatures.

   hep-phastro-ph.COgr-qc2 citations
8. 08*

   Four fermion soft emission in QCD hard scattering

   Leandro Cieri🇪🇸 · Dimitri Colferai🇮🇹

   We consider the radiation of two distinguishable soft quark-antiquark pairs ($\mathrm{q}\bar{\mathrm{q}}\mathrm{Q}\bar{\mathrm{Q}}$) in a generic process for multiparton hard scattering in QCD. We evaluate the corresponding soft current at tree level in terms of an independent-emission contribution and an irreducible correlation component, which includes strictly non-abelian terms and also terms with an abelian character. The squared current for soft $\mathrm{q}\bar{\mathrm{q}}\mathrm{Q}\bar{\mathrm{Q}}$ emission produces colour dipole and colour tripole interactions between the hard-scattering partons, with structures similar to soft gluon-quark-antiquark emission. The colour tripole interactions are odd under charge conjugation and lead to charge asymmetry effects. We extend our analysis by including QED interactions, the emission of two distinguishable soft lepton-antilepton pairs, and mixed quark-antiquark-lepton-antilepton soft emission.

   hep-phEPJC(2026)·0 citations
9. 09*

   Charm and strange meson fragmentation functions

   Roberto C. da Silveira🇧🇷 · Ian C. Cloët🇺🇸 · Bruno El-Bennich🇧🇷 · Fernando E. Serna🇨🇴

   Quark fragmentation functions describe the hadronization process of a quark where any of the final-state hadrons carries a fraction of its initial momentum. We compute these fragmentation functions for a cascade that includes pions, kaons, and the charmed $D$ and $D_s$ mesons, starting from the elementary quark-to-meson fragmentation process. The latter is obtained from the relevant cut diagram, and employs Poincaré covariant Bethe-Salpeter wave functions and quark propagators. We derive a set of twenty-five coupled jet equations that describe the cascade of emitted mesons in the fragmentation process. Their solutions yield full fragmentation functions that offer a consistent picture of the quark fragmentations across the light and heavy sectors.

   hep-phhep-exnucl-th0 citations
10. 10*

    More uses for Thermal Models

    Natasha Sharma🇮🇳 · Lokesh Kumar🇮🇳 · Sourendu Gupta🇮🇳

    We explore combinations of particle and anti-particle yields which can be used to test thermal models in a parameter free way. We also explore combinations which can be used to extract ${\mu }_B/T$, ${\mu }_S/T$ and ${\mu }_Q/T$. We use experimentally measured particle-antiparticle specific ratios for proton $p$, Lambda $\Lambda$, and cascade $\Xi$, for $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=$ 7.7-39 GeV from RHIC BES phase-1 to extract the ${\mu }_{B,S,Q}/T$. These compared well with published STAR freeze-out parameters. These combinations are verified to predict a similar combination of $\Omega$ yields. We also extend this idea to predict (anti-)nuclei yields at energies where they are not measured. We also update parametrizations for the $\sqrt{s_{NN}}$ dependence of freeze-out parameters $T$ and ${\mu }_B$, and present for the first time a similar parametrization of ${\mu }_S$.

    hep-phnucl-exnucl-thEPJC(2026)·1 citation
11. 11*

    Hubble-Scale Tachyonic Shocks from Low-Scale Inflation -- A New Gravitational-Wave Window on Inflation

    Haruto Masubuchi🇯🇵 · Yuma Narita🇯🇵 · Wen Yin🇯🇵

    Current bounds on the tensor-to-scalar ratio imply that the energy scale of inflation may lie below the grand-unified scale. In this paper, we show that in a broad class of single-field inflation models with sufficiently small energy scales, an extremely efficient tachyonic instability develops at the end of inflation. This instability rapidly drives the system into a nonlinear regime before coherent oscillations can be established, leading to a first-order phase-transition--like phenomenon without tunneling or barrier crossing. The resulting ultra-relativistic shock fronts surrounding the bubble interiors expand to near the Hubble scale, corresponding to the most strongly enhanced tachyonic modes, and collide with one another, producing energetic inflaton particles and gravitational waves. As a result, the post-inflationary dynamics can differ significantly from the conventional high-scale inflationary scenario. Interestingly, inflation at MeV--EeV energy scales can be probed via gravitational-wave observations, including pulsar timing arrays, ground-based detectors, and future space-based experiments. Recent limits from the LIGO--KAGRA--Virgo collaboration already constrain EeV-scale inflation, while pulsar timing array results may be interpreted as evidence for gravitational waves generated by GeV-scale inflation. We also briefly discuss further implications of the resulting tachyonic shocks.

    hep-phastro-ph.COgr-qcJCAP(2026)·4 citations
12. 12*

    A compendium of cold-nuclear matter baseline predictions in light-ion collisions

    Florian Jonas🇺🇸 · Constantin Loizides🇺🇸 · Aleksas Mazeliauskas🇩🇪 · Petja Paakkinen🇨🇭 · Nicolas Strangmann🇩🇪

    The recent light-ion collision programme at RHIC and the LHC provides a unique opportunity to investigate the onset of quark-gluon plasma formation and parton energy loss in small systems. A quantitative interpretation of emerging jet quenching measurements requires precise control over cold nuclear matter (CNM) effects, which modify hard-process cross sections independently of any hot-medium dynamics. In this work, we present a comprehensive set of perturbative QCD baseline calculations for nuclear modification factors ($R_{AA}$) in proton-oxygen (pO), oxygen-oxygen (OO) and neon-neon (NeNe) collisions at LHC energies. The study includes charged hadron, neutral pion, prompt photon, and electroweak-boson production computed at next-to-leading order using a broad set of recent nuclear parton distribution functions (nPDFs). We demonstrate that CNM effects alone can induce sizeable suppressions in light-ion systems, with large associated nPDF uncertainties that currently limit the quantitative extraction of parton energy loss. To address this limitation, we explore a range of multi-cross-section ratios in which CNM effects and their uncertainties largely cancel. In particular, ratios of neutral pion $R_{OO}$ to prompt photon $R_{OO}$ or charged hadron $R_{OO}$ to $R_{pO}^2$ provide theoretically robust observables with substantially reduced nPDF uncertainties, thereby enhancing sensitivity to possible energy-loss signatures.

    hep-phnucl-exnucl-thEPJC(2026)·9 citations
13. 13*

    Probing baryon number with missing energy

    Gudrun Hiller🇩🇪 · Antonio Rodríguez-Sánchez🇪🇸 · Daniel Wendler🇩🇪

    Quark portal interactions $qqqN$ with a light singlet fermion $N$ make baryon number testable through missing transverse energy (MET). We find that present LHC data constrain scales up to 10 TeV (MET plus jet), 8 TeV (MET plus top) and 11 TeV (MET plus bjet). With increasing mass, or larger portal couplings, $N$ becomes less long-lived, and gives clean displaced vertex signatures, which encourage dedicated searches. We also narrow down viable mesogenesis models with color triplet scalars to a mass range $\sim y\cdot 3\text{TeV}$ (with charm) and $\sim y\cdot 5\text{TeV}$ (charmless) couplings $y$ to $b$ and lighter quarks, a window that can be scrutinized by HL-LHC. Interactions also induce rare decays of type baryon (meson) to meson (baryon) plus invisible, which complement high-$p_T$ searches and can prove baryon number violation. We explore charm decays ${\Lambda }_c\to (\pi ,K)+\mathrm{invisible}$. Their branching ratios are subject to sizable hadronic uncertainties and require high luminosity flavor facilities such as a Tera-Z facility (FCC-ee, CEPC). Branching ratios of top quarks into one or two $b$-jets plus $N$ can reach few$\times 10^{-6}$.

    hep-ph7 citations
14. 14*

    On the quantum mechanics of finite-mass observers

    Juanca Carrasco-Martinez🇺🇸

    The principle of relativity is extended to accommodate finite-mass observers with quantum properties by introducing two operational requirements: (i) equivalence of observers at the level of transition amplitudes, and (ii) the impossibility for an observer to access its own quantum state of motion. This results in a fully relative formulation of quantum mechanics with observer-dependent Hilbert spaces, relative quantization rules, and novel uncertainty relations, while also elucidating some interpretational issues present in the current formulation of quantum mechanics and giving experimentally testable signatures.

    ↳ quant-phgr-qchep-ph0 citations
15. 15*

    Learning the S-matrix from data: Rediscovering gravity from gauge theory via symbolic regression

    Nathan Moynihan🇬🇧

    We demonstrate that modern machine-learning methods can autonomously reconstruct several flagship analytic structures in scattering amplitudes directly from numerical on-shell data. In particular, we show that the Kawai--Lewellen--Tye (KLT) relations can be rediscovered using symbolic regression applied to colour-ordered Yang--Mills amplitudes with Mandelstam invariants as input features. Using standard feature-selection techniques, specifically column-pivoted QR factorisation, we simultaneously recover the Kleiss--Kuijf and Bern--Carrasco--Johansson (BCJ) relations, identifying a minimal basis of partial amplitudes without any group-theoretic input. We obtain the tree-level KLT relations with high numerical accuracy up to five external legs, using only minimal theoretical priors, and we comment on the obstacles to generalising the method to higher multiplicity. Our results establish symbolic regression as a practical tool for exploring the analytic structure of the scattering-amplitude landscape, and suggests a general data-driven strategy for uncovering hidden relations in general theories. For comparison, we benchmark this general approach with a recently introduced neural-network based method.

    ↳ hep-thcs.LGhep-ph4 citations
16. 16*

    Update to the U.S. National Input to the European Strategy Update for Particle Physics

    André de Gouvêa (1)🇺🇸 · Hitoshi Murayama (2)🇺🇸 · Mark Palmer (3)🇺🇸 · Heidi Schellman (4) (for the Executive Committees of Division of Particles and Fields and Division of Physics of Beams of the American Physical Society, (1) Northwestern University, (2) Tokyo U., IPMU and UC, Berkeley and LBL, Berkeley, (3) Brookhaven National Laboratory, (4) Oregon State University)🇺🇸

    In this document we update the status of U.S. community inputs for the European Strategy for Particle Physics Update (ESPPU) since April 1, 2025, and offer responses to the revised questions. Major new inputs include a long-term strategy report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and the formal formation of a U.S. Muon Collider Collaboration.

    ↳ hep-exhep-ph1 citation
17. 17*

    A fresh look at boundary terms in Einstein-Hilbert gravity via an initial value variational principle

    Songmin Ha🇰🇷 · Alexander Rothkopf🇰🇷

    A key tenet of general relativity is the dynamical nature of space-time, ideally represented as an initial value problem. Here we explore the variational formulation of classical Einstein-Hilbert gravity as initial value problem by constructing its Schwinger-Keldysh-Galley (SKG) action, including a careful treatment of boundary terms. The construction is based on a doubling of degrees of freedom and independent of a foliation. The action naturally decomposes into a bulk term furnishing Einstein's equations and a boundary term, which is related to conserved quantities, such as the Komar mass. We find that since only trivial connecting conditions must be specified on boundaries, the variational action principle for gravity as an initial value problem is rendered well-posed without the need to add additional boundary terms. The SKG approach to gravity offers a novel and complementary avenue to solve for the metric of spacetime directly from the action, bypassing the governing equations.

    ↳ gr-qchep-phhep-thPRD(2026)·1 citation
18. 18*

    Cosmic topology. Part IIc. Detectability with non-standard primordial power spectrum

    Joline Noltmann🇪🇸 · Andrius Tamosiunas🇺🇸 · Deyan P. Mihaylov🇺🇸 · Yashar Akrami🇪🇸 · Javier Carrón Duque🇪🇸 · Thiago S. Pereira🇧🇷 · Glenn D. Starkman🇺🇸 · George Alestas🇪🇸 · Stefano Anselmi🇮🇹 · Craig J. Copi🇺🇸 · Fernando Cornet-Gomez🇪🇸 · Andrew H. Jaffe🇬🇧 and 4 other authors

    Non-trivial spatial topology of the Universe can imprint potentially observable signatures on the cosmic microwave background (CMB). In this study, we investigate how deviations from the standard nearly-scale-free primordial power spectrum impact observables for the fully compact, orientable Euclidean topologies ($E_1$--$E_6$). We examine how such deviations modify the detectability of the underlying topology, depending on whether they are an intrinsic consequence of non-trivial topology or independent of it. We compute CMB temperature correlation matrices across a range of topologies, fundamental domain sizes, and observer locations for both standard and modified primordial power spectra. The impact of these modifications on the detectability of topology is quantified using the Kullback-Leibler divergence, providing an estimate of the distinguishability of non-trivial and simply-connected topologies based solely on CMB temperature observations. In addition, we employ the CatBoost machine learning algorithm to classify harmonic-space realizations of CMB temperature maps and thereby assess the observational prospects for topology detection. Signatures of non-trivial topology are encoded in the off-diagonal structure of the CMB temperature correlation matrices and are most prominent on the largest angular scales. Deviations from the simple power-law primordial spectrum at these scales can substantially alter the detectability of topology, either enhancing its characteristic CMB imprints or suppressing them below observational sensitivity. Our results demonstrate that uncertainties in the primordial power spectrum must be carefully accounted for in robust searches for cosmic topology using the CMB.

    ↳ astro-ph.COgr-qchep-phhep-th4 citations
19. 19*

    Searching for Axion-like particle Dark Matter with Time-domain Polarization: Constraints from a protoplanetary disk

    Kanako Narita · Tomohiro Fujita🇯🇵 · Ryo Tazaki · Bunyo Hatsukade

    Axion-like particles (ALPs) can induce a birefringence effect that rotates the polarization angle of light, offering a probe of ultralight dark matter. We analyze archival near-infrared polarimetric data of the protoplanetary disk (PPD) around HD 163296. Whereas previous studies considered only single-epoch snapshots, we perform a consistent multi-epoch time-series analysis, extracting the polarization angle and its uncertainty from the polarized images. The resulting six-epoch time series is consistent with a constant polarization angle within the measurement uncertainties, while being sensitive to timescales of $\sim 170-400$ days. The typical polarization angle uncertainties are $1.6$--$6.4$ degrees, partly driven by multiple scattering in the optically thick disk, which broadens the intrinsic polarization angle distribution and introduces additional dispersion in the representative polarization angle. Based on these data, we derive the first upper limits on the ALP-photon coupling from PPD polarization variability, $g_{a\gamma }\lesssim 7.5\times 10^{-12}(m_a/10^{-22}\mathrm{eV}){\mathrm{GeV}}^{-1}$. Furthermore, we forecast that achieving a polarization angle uncertainty of $\sigma \sim 0.1$ degrees would enable world-leading sensitivity to ALP-induced birefringence.

    ↳ astro-ph.COastro-ph.EPhep-ph3 citations
20. 20*

    The COHERENT Experiment: 2026 Update

    M. Adhikari🇺🇸 · M. Ahn🇰🇷 · D. Amaya Matamoros🇺🇸 · P.S. Barbeau🇺🇸 · V. Belov🇷🇺 · I. Bernardi🇺🇸 · C. Bock🇺🇸 · A. Bolozdynya🇷🇺 · R. Bouabid🇺🇸 · J. Browning🇺🇸 · B. Cabrera-Palmer🇺🇸 · N. Cedarblade-Jones🇺🇸 and 98 other authors

    The COHERENT experiment measures neutrino-induced recoils from coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering (CEvNS) with multiple nuclear targets at the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), USA. Several successful CEvNS measurements have been achieved in recent years with tens-of-kg detector masses, with a CsI scintillating crystal, a liquid argon single-phase detector, and high-purity germanium spectrometers. For the next phase, COHERENT aims at high-statistics detection of CEvNS events for precision tests of the standard model of particle physics, and to probe new physics beyond-the-standard model. Percent-level precision can be achieved by lowering thresholds, reducing backgrounds, and by scaling up the detector masses. It goes hand in hand with benchmarking the neutrino flux from the SNS. Further detectors will measure CEvNS in additional nuclei, including lighter target nuclei such as sodium and neon, to continue to test the expected neutron-number-squared dependence of the cross section. COHERENT can furthermore study charged-current and neutral-current inelastic neutrino-nucleus cross sections on various nuclei at neutrino energies below $\sim$50 MeV. Many of these cross sections have never been measured before, but are critical input for the interpretation of core-collapse supernova detection in large-scale neutrino experiments such as DUNE, Super-K, Hyper-K, and HALO.

    ↳ hep-exhep-phnucl-exphysics.ins-det7 citations
21. 21*

    Neural Scaling Laws for Boosted Jet Tagging

    Matthias Vigl🇩🇪 · Nicole Hartman🇩🇪 · Michael Kagan🇺🇸 · Lukas Heinrich🇩🇪

    The success of Large Language Models (LLMs) has established that scaling compute, through joint increases in model capacity and dataset size, is the primary driver of performance in modern machine learning. While machine learning has long been an integral component of High Energy Physics (HEP) data analysis workflows, the compute used to train state-of-the-art HEP models remains orders of magnitude below that of industry foundation models. With scaling laws only beginning to be studied in the field, we investigate neural scaling laws for boosted jet classification using the public JetClass dataset. We derive compute optimal scaling laws and identify an effective performance limit that can be consistently approached through increased compute. We study how data repetition, common in HEP where simulation is expensive, modifies the scaling yielding a quantifiable effective dataset size gain. We then study how the scaling coefficients and asymptotic performance limits vary with the choice of input features and particle multiplicity, demonstrating that increased compute reliably drives performance toward an asymptotic limit, and that more expressive, lower-level features can raise the performance limit and improve results at fixed dataset size.

    ↳ hep-excs.LGhep-phphysics.data-an17 citations

* Reconstructed cohort: no mailing for this day survives in the archive. Papers are grouped by their submission times and arXiv's announcement cut-off, assuming announcement without delay; positions follow identifier order. Validated at ~91% exact-day agreement against the archived era.