The $U(1)_A$ symmetry of the massless QCD Lagrangian is explicitly broken in the quantised theory by the anomaly. It may be effectively restored at some finite temperature, which would have important consequences for the order of the chiral transition and the QCD phase diagram. It has been argued in the literature that one way to probe the effective restoration of $U(1)_A$ is to check for the degeneracy of pseudoscalar and flavour non-singlet scalar correlators. In this work, we consider a new method of examining this degeneracy based upon hadron correlation functions on the anisotropic FASTSUM ensembles. The anisotropic nature and our newest Generation 3 ensembles aid in a determination of the effective restoration of the $U(1)_A$ symmetry which we find to be $T_{U(1)_A} \sim 320$ MeV, well above the chiral transition temperature, which is $T_{\rm pc} \sim 180$ MeV for our choice of Wilson-Clover fermions.

We analyze the impact of the Medium Separation Scheme (MSS) on two-flavor color superconducting (2SC) dense quark matter under the influence of a constant external magnetic field. The effects of the proper treatment of the model divergences are examined through a comparison of different approaches, including the combined implementation of the Magnetic Field Independent Regularization (MFIR) and the MSS, as well as the standard use of smooth form factors. Our findings for the Nambu--Jona-Lasinio model emphasize the critical role of properly separating medium effects from vacuum contributions in the model. The combined MFIR-MSS scheme suppresses spurious unphysical oscillations, often misinterpreted in the literature as de Haas--van Alphen oscillations, and ensures the correct high-density behavior of the diquark condensate. Furthermore, within the MSS framework, the magnetization remains positive across the explored parameter space, in sharp contrast with the behavior obtained in the traditional approach.

This article provides a pedagogical introduction to the Silver Blaze problem. This problem refers to the difficulty of reconciling to perspectives on QCD with a chemical potential. The first is the phenomenological fact that at $T=0$ QCD remains in its ground state -- the vacuum -- with all physical observables unchanged whenever the magnitude of a chemical potential is less than some critical value. The second is the fact that in functional integral treatments, the inclusion of any nonzero chemical potential changes all eigenvalues of the Dirac operator for every gauge configuration, leading to a natural expectation that the functional determinants also changes, which leads to the expectation that physical observables should be altered. The problem amounts to explaining why nothing happens below the critical chemical potential. By focusing on the eigenvalues of $\gamma_0$ times the Dirac operator rather than the Dirac operator itself, it is possible to show that for QCD with two flavors and identical quark masses, an isospin chemical potential with a magnitude less than $m_\pi$ (and no baryon chemical potential), or a baryon chemical potential of less than $\frac{3}{2} m_\pi$ (and no isospin chemical potential), the functional integerals at $T=0$ themselves remain unchanged in all configurations that contribute to the functional integral with non-vanishing weight. However, for $\mu_{\rm crit}\mu_B > \frac{3}{2} m_\pi$, the Silver Blaze phenomenon arises due to functional determinants having nontrivial phases that lead to cancellations between different gauge configurations. The mechanism leading to such cancellations remains unknown.

The nucleon axial-vector form factor, $G_A$, is critical to determine the electroweak interactions of leptons with nucleons. Important examples of processes influenced by $G_A$ are elastic (anti)neutrino-nucleon scattering and muon capture by the proton. Sparse experimental data results in a large uncertainty on the momentum dependence of $G_A$ and has motivated the consideration of new experimental probes and first-principles lattice quantum chromodynamics (QCD) evaluations. The comparison of new and precise theoretical predictions for $G_A$ with future experimental data necessitates the application of radiative corrections to experimentally-observable processes. We apply these corrections in the extraction of $G_A$ and the associated axial-vector radius from the recent MINERvA antineutrino-hydrogen data, compare the effects from radiative corrections to other uncertainties in neutrino scattering experiments, and discuss the comparison of lattice QCD evaluations to experimental measurements.

Temperature and baryon, charge, and strangeness chemical potentials characterize QCD matter under extreme conditions. Differences between these chemical potentials and their ratios probe conserved-charge correlations and the system's response in the multidimensional QCD phase diagram. We extract these quantities from STAR Ru+Ru and Zr+Zr isobar collisions using a Bayesian thermal analysis of hadron yields, which substantially reduces systematic uncertainties, and compare them with Taylor-expanded lattice-QCD and Chiral Mean Field model predictions. Isobar collisions thus emerge as a precision probe of four-dimensional QCD thermodynamics.

In a pure Gaussian tripartition, a range of entanglement between two parties ($AB$) can be purified through classical communication of Gaussian measurements performed within the third ($C$). To begin, this work introduces a direct method to calculate a hierarchic series of projective $C$ measurements for the removal of any $AB$ Gaussian noise, circumventing divergences in prior protocols. Next, a multimode conic framework is developed for pursuing the maximum (Gaussian entanglement of assistance, GEOA) or minimum (Gaussian entanglement of formation, GEOF) pure entanglement that may be revealed or required between $AB$. Within this framework, a geometric necessary and sufficient entanglement condition emerges as a doubly-enclosed conic volume, defining a novel distance metric for conic optimization. Extremizing this distance for spacelike vacuum entanglement in the massless and massive free scalar fields yields (1) the highest known lower bound to GEOA, the first that decays slower than the two-point correlation functions and (2) the lowest known upper bound to GEOF, the first that decays exponentially mirroring the mixed $AB$ negativity. Furthermore, combination of the above with a generalization of previous partially-transposed noise filtering techniques allows calculation of a single $C$ measurement that maximizes the purified $AB$ entanglement. Beyond expectation that these behaviors of spacelike GEOA and GEOF persist in interacting theories, the present measurement and optimization techniques are applicable to physical many-body Gaussian states beyond quantum fields.