Juan Maldacena

We discuss aspects of magnetically charged black holes in the Standard Model. For a range of charges, we argue that the electroweak symmetry is restored in the near horizon region. The extent of this phase can be macroscopic. If $Q$ is the integer magnetic charge, the fermions lead to order $Q$ massless two dimensional fermions moving along the magnetic field lines. These greatly enhance Hawking radiation effects.

Coenraad B. Marinissen, Rudi Rahn, Wouter J. Waalewijn

We present an efficient algorithm for determining the Hilbert series of an effective theory and provide a companion code called ECO (Efficient Counting of Operators) in FORM. For example, the Hilbert series for the dimension 15 operators in the Standard Model Effective Theory (SMEFT) can be obtained in a minute on a single CPU core. While our implementation focusses on SMEFT, we allow for a flexible user input of the light degrees of freedom. Furthermore, gravity, as well as additional U(1) global or gauge symmetries can be included.

James Bonifacio, Kurt Hinterbichler, Laura A. Johnson

It has recently been argued that there may be a nontrivial four-dimensional limit of the higher-dimensional Gauss-Bonnet and Lovelock interactions and that this might provide a loophole allowing for new four-dimensional gravitational theories, possibly without a standard Lagrangian. We investigate this claim by studying tree-level graviton scattering amplitudes, allowing us to draw conclusions independently of the Lagrangian. By taking four-dimensional limits of higher-dimensional scattering amplitudes of the Gauss-Bonnet theory, we find four-dimensional amplitudes that are different from general relativity, however these amplitudes are not new since they all come from certain scalar-tensor theories. The nontrivial limit that does not lead to infinite strong coupling around flat space leads to $(\partial\phi)^4$ theory. We argue that there cannot be any six-derivative purely gravitational four-point amplitudes in any dimension other than those coming from Lovelock theory by directly constructing the on-shell amplitudes. In particular, there can be no new such amplitudes in four dimensions beyond those of general relativity. We also present some new results on the spin-averaged cross section for graviton-graviton scattering in general relativity and Gauss-Bonnet theory in arbitrary dimensions.

W.L. Kimmy Wu, Pavel Motloch, Wayne Hu, Marco Raveri

We apply a tension metric $Q_\textrm{UDM}$, the update difference in mean parameters, to understand the source of the difference in the measured Hubble constant $H_0$ inferred with cosmic microwave background lensing measurements from the Planck satellite ($H_0=67.9^{+1.1}_{-1.3}\, \mathrm{km/s/Mpc}$) and from the South Pole Telescope ($H_0=72.0^{+2.1}_{-2.5}\, \mathrm{km/s/Mpc}$) when both are combined with baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) measurements with priors on the baryon density (BBN). $Q_\textrm{UDM}$ isolates the relevant parameter directions for tension or concordance where the two data sets are both informative, and aids in the identification of subsets of data that source the observed tension. With $Q_\textrm{UDM}$, we uncover that the difference in $H_0$ is driven by the tension between Planck lensing and BAO+BBN, at probability-to-exceed of 6.6%. Most of this mild tension comes from the galaxy BAO measurements parallel to the line of sight. The redshift dependence of the parallel BAOs pulls both the matter density $\Omega_m$ and $H_0$ high in $\Lambda$CDM, but these parameter anomalies are usually hidden when the BAO measurements are combined with other cosmological data sets with much stronger $\Omega_m$ constraints.