The light-cone distribution amplitude (LCDA) is a fundamental non-perturbative quantity for understanding hadron structure and exclusive scattering processes. We report on our calculation of the pion and kaon LCDAs using the heavy-quark operator product expansion (HOPE) framework. This method employs an OPE analysis of hadronic amplitudes through the inclusion of a fictitious valence heavy quark. In these proceedings, we report progress on the determination of the first three nontrivial Mellin moments of the kaon LCDAs from dynamical lattice QCD calculations, and we summarize the recently published continuum-limit result for the pion fourth Mellin moment obtained in the quenched approximation, thereby demonstrating the feasibility of the HOPE method for accessing higher moments.

Given the rapid advances in quantum computing hardware, establishing systematic strategies for verifying the correctness of quantum computations has become increasingly important. Exploiting the fact that the axial anomaly in gauge theories is exact to all orders in perturbation theory, we propose the axial anomaly as a nontrivial benchmark for quantum simulations of lattice gauge theories. We simulate anomalous axial-charge production in ${\mathbb Z}_N$ lattice gauge theories on the trapped-ion quantum computer ``Reimei''. After taking the U(1), infinitesimal time, and infinite volume limits, we successfully reproduce the anomaly coefficient within statistical uncertainties, even without error mitigation. Our results demonstrate that the axial anomaly can be simulated on current quantum computers and serves as a verification test of quantum computations.

The Collins-Soper (CS) kernel may be obtained through the TMD soft function by formulating the Wilson line in terms of 1-dimensional auxiliary fermion fields on the lattice. Our computation takes place in the region of the lattice that corresponds to the "spacelike" region in Minkowski space, i.e., Collins' scheme. We explore two methods for obtaining the CS kernel. The "ratio method"; which would allow us to obtain the soft function as well as the CS kernel. And the "double ratio"; which allows us to achieve a high degree of statistical precision, but only produces the CS kernel. The matching of our result to Minkowski space is achieved through the mapping of the complex auxiliary field directional vector to the Wilson line rapidity. We present a preliminary extraction of the CS kernel using the "double ratio", and discuss the methodology employed.

For twenty years, a persistent discrepancy between experimental measurements and theoretical calculations of the muon anomalous magnetic moment have provided tantalising hints of new physics. In recent years, improvements to the experimental precision have appeared to make the tension stronger and stronger. However, at the same time, our lattice calculation overturned the theoretical consensus, completely eliminating the tension. I will present the latest results from the Budapest-Marseille-Wuppertal (BMW) and DMZ collaborations, with a hybrid determination of the hadronic vacuum polarisation contribution to a precision of 0.45%

In this work, we investigate the time-like pion form factor from lattice QCD in the isosymmetric limit, a quantity that plays an important role in understanding hadron physics with substantial phenomenological applications. This observable can be calculated in the elastic region using the finite-volume approach, up to the first (four-particle) open channel. With the goal of accessing the exclusive two-pion form factor in the inelastic region, starting from a three-point correlator involving the vector current and two (temporally-displaced) pion interpolating operators, we examine the associated underlying spectral density and calculate the form factor using a formalism based on the LSZ reduction. A preliminary analysis on one ensemble generated by the RBC/UKQCD collaboration using domain-wall fermions is presented.

We investigate the impact of including a dynamical charm quark on the properties of light hadrons. Our study uses gauge ensembles generated with the tadpole-improved Symanzik gauge action, comparing 2+1+1 flavor (HISQ fermion) ensembles at four lattice spacings to 2+1 flavor (clover fermion) ensembles at six lattice spacings. For the light and strange flavor observables, we employ the same tadpole-improved clover fermion action. From numerical results for light and strange quark masses, pion and kaon decay constants, and $\Omega$ baryon masses, we find that the values obtained after continuum, chiral, and infinite-volume extrapolations are consistent within uncertainties. Even though the mixed action setup can introduce additional discretization effects, our calculation shows evidences that those effects can cancel with the discretization error in the unitary setup, resulting in better convergence in the continuum extrapolation.

With the advent of quantum simulators, exploring exotic collective phenomena in lattice models with local symmetries and unconventional geometries is at reach of near-term experiments. Motivated by recent progress in this direction, we study a $\mathbb{Z}_2$ lattice gauge theory defined on a multi-graph with links that can be visualized as great circles of a spherical shell hosting the $\mathbb{Z}_2$ gauge fields. Elementary Wilson loops along pairs of these bonds allow to identify a dynamical gauge-invariant flux, responsible for Aharonov-Bohm-like interference effects in the tunneling dynamics of charged matter residing on the vertices. Focusing on an odd number of links, we show that this leads to state-dependent tunneling amplitudes underlying a phenomenon analogous to the Peierls instability. We find inhomogeneous phases in which an ordered pattern of the gauge fluxes spontaneously breaks translational invariance, and intertwines with a bond order wave for the gauge-invariant kinetic matter operators. Long-range order is shown to coexist with symmetry protected topological order, which survives the quantum fluctuations of the gauge flux induced by an external electric field. Doping the system above half filling leads to the formation of topological soliton/anti-soliton pairs interpolating between different inhomogeneous orderings of the gauge fluxes. By performining a detailed analysis based on matrix product states, we prove that charge deconfinement emerges as a consequence of charge-fractionalization. Quasiparticles carrying fractional charge and bound at the soliton centers can be arbitrarily separated without feeling a confining force, in spite of the long-range attractive interactions set by the small electric field on the individual integer charges.

Functionally graded materials (FGMs) are composites whose composition or microstructure varies continuously in space, producing position-dependent mechanical and functional properties. In recent years, FGMs have gained significant attention due to advances in additive manufacturing, which enable precise spatial control of composition and orientation. However, their graded, aperiodic structure breaks the assumptions of Bloch's theorem, making first-principles electronic and electromagnetic calculations challenging. Here we develop an ab initio quantum theoretical framework for the electromagnetic properties of FGMs. Using a non-interacting electron model, we formulate a theory of modulated Bloch states, derive effective field equations, and solve them by proposing a generalized WKB (GWKB) method, an effective mass approximation, the Boltzmann equation, and numerical approaches. Our GWKB solution is not semiclassical but remains valid in the fully quantum regime. We show that effective observables such as conductivity, magnetic permeability, and electric permittivity generally do not admit a tensorial description in graded media, and that engineered orientational gradients enable precise control of Landau quantization. As a device example, we further develop a theory of graded p-n junctions with enhanced electronic tunability. This framework lays the quantum foundation for predictive design of graded composite materials, enabling AI-accelerated discovery of next-generation functional architectures.

Computing the vacuum and energy spectrum in non-Abelian, interacting lattice gauge theories remains an open challenge, in part because approximating the continuum limit requires large lattices and huge Hilbert spaces. To address this difficulty with near-term quantum computing devices, we adapt the variational quantum eigensolver to non-Abelian gauge theories. We outline scaling advantages when using a spin-network basis to simulate the gauge-invariant Hilbert space and develop a systematic state preparation ansatz that creates gauge-invariant excitations while alleviating the barren plateau problem. We illustrate our method in the context of SU(2) Yang-Mills theory by testing it on a minimal toy model consisting of a single vertex in 3+1 dimensions. In this toy model, simulations allow us to investigate the impact of noise expected in current quantum devices.

We investigate the mass and strong decay properties of the $\Omega(2012)$ resonance using QCD sum rules, assuming it to be an S-wave $\Xi(1530)K$ molecular pentaquark state with $IJ^{P} = 0\frac{3}{2}^{-}$. A unified interpolating current is constructed, and the two-point and three-point correlation functions are calculated up to dimension-10 condensates in the OPE series. The negative-parity contribution is isolated by employing parity-projected sum rules. The two-body strong decays to $\Xi^0 K^-$ and $\Xi^- K^0$ are studied via their three-point correlation functions. Our analysis yields a mass of $2.00 \pm 0.15~\mathrm{GeV}$ and a total two-body decay width of $\Gamma = 3.97^{+8.31}_{-1.92}~\mathrm{MeV}$ for the $\Xi(1530)K$ molecular state. The ratios of branching fractions are obtained as $\mathcal{R}^{\Xi^- K^0}_{\Xi^0 K^-} = 0.85$ and $\mathcal{R}^{\Xi \pi K}_{\Xi K} = 0.61$. These results are compatible well with the experimental data for the $\Omega(2012)$ and support its interpretation as a $\Xi(1530)K$ molecular pentaquark state.

Within the framework of SU(2) chiral perturbation theory, we derive the general solution of the QCD $\theta$-vacuum for an arbitrary vacuum phase, explicitly incorporating isospin-breaking effects from the light quark mass difference, and compute the temperature dependence of the topological susceptibility, higher-order cumulants, and the domain wall tension up to next-to-leading order. We find that the topological susceptibility agrees with lattice data at low temperatures but deviates at higher temperatures as expected from the breakdown of the chiral expansion; moreover, we demonstrate that the normalized fourth-order cumulant and the domain wall tension decrease monotonically with increasing temperature, while the normalized sixth-order cumulant exhibits the opposite behavior. These results extend earlier analyses by showing how isospin breaking reshapes the full hierarchy of topological charge cumulants and the dynamics of $\theta$-vacuum domain walls, thereby offering new theoretical input on the $\theta$-vacuum properties, which are relevant for axion-related effective theories in hot QCD matter.

Quantum simulations on current NISQ hardware are limited by its noisy nature, making efficient quantum error mitigation methods highly demanded. In this paper we introduce a novel mitigation scheme, applicable to arbitrary quantum simulations of time-dependent Hamiltonian dynamics on NISQ devices. The scheme uses a polynomial subset of extended qubit Bogoliubov-Born-Green-Kirkwood-Yvon (BBGKY) hierarchy equations as a sampling criterion of possible mitigated candidates for the quantum observables. We show that for favorable Hamiltonians the polynomial subset of BBGKY hierarchy equations leads to a polynomial overhead in both classical and quantum resources. We employ the method to mitigate simulations of the chiral magnetic effect (CME), a chiral feature of the Schwinger model. We empirically show the effectiveness of our scheme at recovering the real-time dynamics of the CME from noisy quantum simulations of the Schwinger model, for a range of different parameter values of the model. We numerically demonstrate a systematic reduction of quantum noise, together with an increasing noise reduction capability as the amount of BBGKY constraints grows.

We study some interesting aspects of the spectral properties of SU(3) gauge theory, both with and without dynamical quarks (QCD) at thermal equilibrium using lattice gauge theory techniques. By calculating the eigenstates of a massless overlap Dirac operator on the gauge configurations, we implement a gauge-invariant method to study spectral properties of non-Abelian gauge theories. We have unambiguously categorized Dirac eigenvalues into different regimes based on a quantity defined in terms of the ratios of nearest neighbor spacings. While majority of these eigenstates below the magnetic scale are similar to those of random matrices belonging to the Gaussian Unitary ensemble at temperatures much higher than the chiral crossover transition in QCD, a few among them start to become prominent only near the crossover. These form fractal-like clusters with the median value for their fractal dimensions hinting at the universality class of the chiral transition in QCD. We further demonstrate that momentum modes below the magnetic scale in a particular non-equilibrium state of QCD are classically chaotic and estimate an upper bound on the thermalization time $\sim 1.44$ fm/c by matching this magnetic scale with that of a thermal state at $\sim 600$ MeV.

Gauge fixing is an essential step in lattice QCD calculations, particularly for studying gauge-dependent observables. Traditional iterative algorithms are computationally expensive and often suffer from critical slowing down and scaling bottlenecks on large lattices. We present a novel machine learning framework for lattice gauge fixing, where Wilson lines are utilized to construct gauge transformation matrices within a convolutional neural network. The model parameters are optimized via backpropagation, and we introduce a hybrid strategy that combines a neural-network-based transformation with subsequent iterative methods. Preliminary tests on SU(3) gauge theory ensembles for Coulomb gauge demonstrate the potential of this approach to improve the efficiency of lattice gauge fixing. Furthermore, we show that the model exhibits lattice size transferability, where parameters optimized on smaller lattices remain effective for larger volumes without additional training. This framework provides a scalable path toward mitigating critical slowing down in high-precision gauge fixing.

The simulation of quantum field theories, both classical and quantum, requires regularization of infinitely many degrees of freedom. However, in the context of field digitization (FD) -- a truncation of the local fields to $N$ discrete values -- a comprehensive framework to obtain continuum results is currently missing. Here, we propose to analyze FD by interpreting the parameter $N$ as a coupling in the renormalization group (RG) sense. As a first example, we investigate the two-dimensional classical $N$-state clock model as a $\mathbb{Z}_N$ FD of the $U(1)$-symmetric $XY$-model. Using effective field theory, we employ the RG to derive generalized scaling hypotheses involving the FD parameter $N$, which allows us to relate data obtained for different $N$-regularized models in a procedure that we term $\textit{field digitization scaling}$ (FDS). Using numerical tensor-network calculations at finite bond dimension $\chi$, we further uncover an unconventional universal crossover around a low-temperature phase transition induced by finite $N$, demonstrating that FDS can be extended to describe the interplay of $\chi$ and $N$. Finally, we analytically prove that our calculations for the 2D classical-statistical $\mathbb{Z}_N$ clock model are directly related to the quantum physics in the ground state of a (2+1)D $\mathbb{Z}_N$ lattice gauge theory which serves as a FD of compact quantum electrodynamics. Our study thus paves the way for applications of FDS to quantum simulations of more complex models in higher spatial dimensions, where it could serve as a tool to analyze the continuum limit of digitized quantum field theories.

The nucleation of bubbles in first-order phase transitions is traditionally characterised by the critical bubble: defined as the saddle-point solution of the Euclidean action that separates collapsing from expanding field configurations. While this picture is exact in the noiseless, zero-temperature limit, thermal fluctuations introduces stochasticity which can influence the behaviour of the field configuration. In this work, we develop a purely statistical criterion for identifying the critical bubble by leveraging the concept of the ``committor'' probability: the likelihood that a given local field configuration evolves to the true vacuum before returning to the false vacuum. Using ensembles of lattice simulations with controlled thermal noise, we extract the committor probability during the evolution of a bubble from sub- to super-criticality. We find this approach to be robust, accounts for finite-temperature effects, and allows independent verification of bounce-based predictions. To demonstrate this, we compare the average profile obtained via the committor probability method to standard theory for a given model and find strong agreement, particularly at the core of the bubble. Importantly, we also observe that the behaviour of the committor probability with time is smooth and well defined. This method establishes a robust, simulation-driven framework for studying nucleation dynamics in thermal field theories and may be especially applicable in cases where analytical control might be limited.

We present the first next-to-leading-logarithmic QCD analysis of the electromagnetic corrections to the semileptonic weak Hamiltonian, including the mixed $\mathcal{O}(\alpha\,\alpha_s^2)$ corrections to the vector coupling $g_V$. The analysis combines the evaluation of three-loop anomalous dimensions and two-loop matching corrections with a consistent factorization of short-distance QCD effects. The latter is implemented through a scheme change based on a $d$-dimensional operator product expansion performed inside the loop integrals. The resulting renormalization-group--improved expression for the radiative correction $\Delta^V_R = 2.436(16)\%$ can be systematically refined using input from lattice QCD and perturbation theory and improves the consistency of first-row CKM unitarity tests.

The behavior of dimensionless quantities defined as ratios of partition functions is analyzed to investigate phase transitions and critical phenomena. At criticality, the universal values of these ratios can be predicted from conformal field theory (CFT) through the modular-invariant partition functions on a torus. We perform numerical calculations using the bond-weighted tensor renormalization group for three two-dimensional models belonging to different universality classes: the Ising model, the three-state Potts model, and the four-state Potts model. The partition-function ratios obey the same finite-size scaling form as the Binder parameter, and their critical values agree well with the universal values predicted by CFT. In the four-state Potts model, we observe logarithmic corrections in the system-size dependence of these ratios.

Axial-vector hadronic molecules $\mathcal{M}_{\mathrm{AV}}=\Upsilon B_{c}^{-} $ and $\widetilde{\mathcal{M}}_{\mathrm{AV}}=\eta_{b}B_{c}^{\ast -} $ with the quark content $bb \overline{b}\overline{c}$ are studied using QCD sum rule method. The spectroscopic parameters of these molecules are computed in the context of the two-point sum rule method. Predictions for their masses are identical to each other and confirm that they are structures unstable against dissociations to ordinary heavy mesons. We evaluate the width of the state $\mathcal{M}_{\mathrm{AV}}$ and assume that it is equal to that of $\widetilde{\mathcal{M}}_{\mathrm{AV}} $. To this end, we explore its dominant decay channels $\mathcal{M}_{\mathrm{AV}} \to \Upsilon B_{c}^{-} $ and $\mathcal{M}_{\mathrm{AV}} \to \eta_{b}B_{c}^{\ast -}$. There also are subleading modes of $\mathcal{M}_{\mathrm{AV}}$ generated due to annihilation of $\overline{b}b$ quarks. We consider decays of the molecule $\mathcal{M}_{\mathrm{AV}}$ to pairs of the mesons $B^{\ast -} \overline{D}^{0}$, $\overline{B}^{\ast 0} D^{-}$, $B^{-} \overline{D} ^{\ast 0}$, $\overline{B}^{0} D^{\ast -}$, $\overline{B}_{s}^{\ast 0} D_{s}^{-}$, and $\overline{B}_{s}^{0} D_{s}^{\ast -}$. To find strong couplings at the $\mathcal{M}_{\mathrm{AV}}$-meson-meson vertices which determine the partial widths of these processes, we apply QCD three-point sum rule approach. The mass $m=(15800 \pm 90)~\mathrm{MeV}$ and width $ \Gamma [\mathcal{M}_{\mathrm{AV}}]=(114 \pm 17)~ \mathrm{MeV}$ of the molecule $\mathcal{M}_{\mathrm{AV}}$ are useful for experimental studies of fully heavy molecular structures at ongoing and planning experiments.

Hybrid qubit-qumode quantum computing platforms provide a natural setting for simulating interacting bosonic quantum field theories. However, existing continuous-variable gate constructions rely predominantly on polynomial functions of canonical quadratures. In this work, we introduce a complementary universality paradigm based on trigonometric continuous-variable gates, which enable a Fourier-like representation of bosonic operators and are particularly well suited for periodic and non-perturbative interactions. We present a deterministic ancilla-based method for implementing unitary and non-unitary trigonometric gates whose arguments are arbitrary Hermitian functions of qumode quadratures. As a concrete application, we develop a hybrid qubit-qumode quantum simulation of the lattice sine-Gordon model. Using these gates, we prepare ground states via quantum imaginary-time evolution, simulate real-time dynamics, compute time-dependent vertex two-point correlation functions, and extract quantum kink profiles under topological boundary conditions. Our results demonstrate that trigonometric continuous-variable gates provide a physically natural framework for simulating interacting field theories on near-term hybrid quantum hardware, while establishing a parallel route to universality beyond polynomial gate constructions. We expect that the trigonometric gates introduced here to find broader applications, including quantum simulations of condensed matter systems, quantum chemistry, and biological models.