Abstract: We investigate the possibility of probing the hot and dense nuclear matter-created in relativistic heavyion collisions (HICs)-with strange vector mesons (K*, (K) over bar*). Our analysis is based on the nonequilibrium parton-hadron-string dynamics (PHSD) transport approach which incorporates partonic and hadronic degrees of freedom and describes the full dynamics of HIC on a microscopic level-starting from the primary nucleon-nucleon collisions to the formation of the strongly interacting quark gluon plasma (QGP), followed by dynamical hadronization of (anti)quarks as well as final hadronic elastic and inelastic interactions. This allows us to study the K* and (K) over bar* meson formation from the QGP as well as the in-medium effects related to the modification of their spectral properties during the propagation through the dense and hot hadronic environment in the expansion phase. We employ relativistic Breit-Wigner spectral functions for the K*, (K) over bar* mesons with self-energies obtained from a self-consistent coupled-channel G-matrix approach to study the role of in-medium effects on the K* and (K) over bar* meson dynamics in heavy-ion collisions from FAIR/NICA to LHC energies. According to our analysis most of the final K* /(K) over bar*'s, that can be observed experimentally by reconstruction of the invariant mass of pi + K((K) over bar) pairs, are produced during the late hadronic phase and originate dominantly from the K((K) over bar) + pi -> K*( (K) over bar*) formation channel. The amount of K*/ (K) over bar*'s, originating from the QGP channel is comparatively small even at LHC energies and those K* /(K) over bar*'s can hardly be reconstructed experimentally due to the rescattering of final pions and (anti)kaons. This mirrors the results from our previous study on the strange vector-meson production in heavy-ion collisions at RHIC energies. We demonstrate that K* /(K) over bar* in-medium effects should be visible at FAIR/NICA and BES RHIC energies, where the production of K* /(K) over bar*'s occurs at larger net-baryon densities. Finally, we present the experimental procedures to extract the information on the resonance masses and widths by fitting the final mass spectra at LHC energies.

Abstract: We investigate in detail the interaction between the spin-(1/2) field endowed with mass dimension one and the graviton. We obtain an interaction vertex that combines the characteristics of scalar-graviton and Dirac's fermion-graviton vertices, due to the scalar-dynamic attribute and the fermionic structure of the mass-dimension-one field. It is shown that this vertex obeys the Ward-Takahashi identity, ensuring the gauge invariance for the interaction. In the contribution of the mass-dimension-one fermion to the graviton propagator at one-loop level, we found the conditions for the cancellation of the tadpole term by a cosmological counterterm. We calculate the scattering process for arbitrary momentum. For low energies, the result reveals that only the scalar sector present in the vertex contributes to the gravitational potential. Finally, we evaluate the non-relativistic limit of the gravitational interaction and obtain an attractive Newtonian potential, as required for a dark-matter candidate.

Abstract: We have studied the meson-baryon S-wave interaction in the isoscalar hidden-charm strange sector with the coupled-channels, eta(c)Lambda, J/psi Lambda, (D) over bar Xi(c), (D) over bar (s)Lambda(c), (D) over bar Xi(c)', (D) over bar*Lambda(c), (D) over bar*Xi(c)', (D) over bar*Xi*(c) in J(p) = 1/2(-), J/psi Lambda, (D) over bar*Xi(c), (D) over bar (s)*Lambda(c), (D) over bar*Xi(c)', (D) over bar Xi(c)*, (D) over bar*Xi(c)* in 3/2(-) and (D) over bar*Xi(c)* in 5/2(-). We impose constraints of heavy quark spin symmetry in the interaction and obtain the non vanishing matrix elements from an extension of the local hidden gauge approach to the charm sector. The ultraviolet divergences are renormalized using the same meson-baryon-loops regulator previously employed in the non-strange hidden charm sector, where a good reproduction of the properties of the newly discovered pentaquark states is obtained. We obtain five states of 1/2(-), four of 3/2(-) and one of 5/2(-), which could be compared in the near future with forthcoming LHCb experiments. The 5/2(-), three of the 3/2(-) and another three of the 1/2(-) resonances are originated from isoscalar (D) over bar (()*())Xi(c)' and (D) over bar (()*()) Xi(c)* interactions. They should be located just few MeV below the corresponding thresholds (4446, 4513, 4588 and 4655 MeV), and would be SU(3)-siblings of the isospin 1/2 (D) over bar (()*())Sigma(()(c)*()) quasi-bound states previously found, and that provided a robust theoretical description of the P-c(4440), P-c(4457) and P-c(4312) LHCb exotic states. The another two 1/2(-) and 3/2(-) states obtained in this work are result of the (D) over bar (()*())Xi(c)- D-s(()*()) Lambda(c) coupled-channels isoscalar interaction, are significantly broader than the others, with widths of the order of 15 MeV, being (D) over bar (()(s)*())Lambda(c) the dominant decay channel.