We present benchmark planes (or lines) with cross sections via gluon fusion for the processes H → h+HBSM , resonant Higgs pair and triple Higgs production, and A → Z+h, A → Z + HBSM within the Next-to-Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model. Moreover ̄ we propose new searches for H → h+(HBSM → tt), A → Z +(HBSM → h+h) ̄ and A → Z + (HBSM → tt) for which possible cross sections are given. These allow the experimental collaborations to verify in the future which search channels cover yet unexplored regions of the parameter space. Expressions for the dominant contributions to trilinear Higgs couplings and Higgs–Z couplings are discussed which allow to identify the dominant processes contributing to a given final state.

We investigate constraints on early dark energy (EDE) using ACT, SPT-3G 2018, {\it Planck} polarization, and restricted {\it Planck} temperature data (at $\ell<650$), finding a $3.3\sigma$ preference ($\Delta\chi^2=-16.2$ for three additional degrees of freedom) for EDE over $\Lambda$CDM. The EDE contributes a maximum fractional energy density of $f_{\rm EDE}(z_c) = 0.163^{+0.047}_{-0.04}$ at a redshift $z_c = 3357\pm 200$ and leads to a CMB inferred value of the Hubble constant $H_0 = 74.2^{+1.9}_{-2.1}$ km/s/Mpc. We find that {\it Planck} and ACT data provide the majority of the improvement in $\chi^2$, and that the inclusion of SPT-3G pulls the posterior of $f_{\rm EDE}(z_c)$ away from $\Lambda$CDM. This is the first time that a moderate preference for EDE has been reported for these three combined CMB data sets. We find that including measurements of supernovae luminosity distances and the baryon acoustic oscillation standard ruler only minimally affects the preference ($3.0\sigma$), while measurements that probe the clustering of matter at late times -- the lensing potential power spectrum from {\it Planck} and $f \sigma_8$ from BOSS -- decrease the significance of the preference to 2.6$\sigma$. Conversely, adding a prior on the $H_0$ value as reported by the \SHOES{} collaboration increases the preference to the $4-5\sigma$ level. In the absence of this prior, the inclusion of \textit{Planck} TT data at $\ell>1300$ reduces the preference from $3.0\sigma$ to $2.3\sigma$ and the constraint on $f_{\rm EDE}(z_c)$ becomes compatible with \LCDM{} at $1\sigma$. We explore whether systematic errors in the \textit{Planck} polarization data may affect our conclusions and find that changing the TE polarization efficiencies significantly reduces the \textit{Planck} preference for EDE. More work will be necessary to establish whether these hints for EDE within CMB data alone are the sole results of systematic errors or an opening to new physics.

The discovery of black-hole-binary mergers through their gravitational wave (GW) emission has reopened the exciting possibility that dark matter is made, at least partly, of primordial black holes (PBHs). However, this scenario is challenged by many observational probes that set bounds on the relative PBH abundance across a broad range of viable PBH masses. Among these bounds, the ones coming from microlensing surveys are particularly severe in the mass range from $\sim 10^{-10}$ to a few M$_{\odot}$. The upper part of this range precisely corresponds to the mass window inside which the formation of PBHs should be boosted due to the QCD phase transition in the early Universe, which makes the microlensing probes particularly important. However, it has been argued that taking into account the inevitable clustering of PBH on small scales can significantly relax or entirely remove these bounds. While the impact of PBH clustering on the GW event rate has been studied in detail, its impact on the microlensing event rate has not yet been fully assessed. In this Letter, we address this issue, and show that clusters arising from PBH formed from Gaussian initial curvature perturbations do not alter the current microlensing constraints, as they are not sufficiently dense nor massive.

The cold dark matter (CDM) scenario predicts that galactic halos should host a huge amount of subhalos possibly as light as or lighter than planets, depending on the nature of dark matter. Predicting their abundance and distribution on such small scales has important implications for dark matter searches and searches for subhalos themselves, which could provide a decisive test of the CDM paradigm. A major difficulty in subhalo population model building is to account for the gravitational stripping induced by baryons, which strongly impact on the overall dynamics within the scale radii of galaxies. In this paper, we focus on these ``baryonic'' tides from analytical perspectives, summarizing previous work on galactic disk shocking, and thoroughly revisiting the impact of individual encounters with stars. For the latter, we go beyond the reference calculation of Gerhard and Fall (1983) to deal with penetrative encounters, and provide new analytical results. Based upon a full statistical analysis of subhalo energy change during multiple stellar encounters possibly occurring during disk crossing, we show how subhalos lighter than $\sim 1$~\msun\ are very efficiently pruned by stellar encounters, and how that modifies their mass function in a stellar environment. If reasonably resilient, surviving subhalos have lost all their mass but the inner cusp, with a tidal mass function strongly departing from the cosmological one; otherwise, their number density can drop by an order of magnitude at the solar position in the Milky Way with respect to disk-shocking effects only. For illustration, we integrate these results into our analytical subhalo population model. They can easily be incorporated to any other analytical or numerical approach. This study complements those using cosmological simulations, which cannot resolve dark matter subhalos on such small scales.

Signal predictions for galactic dark matter (DM) searches often rely on assumptions regarding the DM phase-space distribution function (DF) in halos. This applies to both particle (e.g. p-wave suppressed or Sommerfeld-enhanced annihilation, scattering off atoms, etc.) and macroscopic DM candidates (e.g. microlensing of primordial black holes). As experiments and observations improve in precision, better assessing theoretical uncertainties becomes pressing in the prospect of deriving reliable constraints on DM candidates or trustworthy hints for detection. Most reliable predictions of DFs in halos are based on solving the steady-state collisionless Boltzmann equation (e.g. Eddington-like inversions, action-angle methods, etc.) consistently with observational constraints. One can do so starting from maximal symmetries and a minimal set of degrees of freedom, and then increasing complexity. Key issues are then whether adding complexity, which is computationally costy, improves predictions, and if so where to stop. Clues can be obtained by making predictions for zoomed-in hydrodynamical cosmological simulations in which one can access the true (coarse-grained) phase-space information. Here, we test an axisymmetric extension of the Eddington inversion to predict the full DM DF from its density profile and the total gravitational potential of the system. This permits to go beyond spherical symmetry, and is a priori well suited for spiral galaxies. We show that axisymmetry does not necessarily improve over spherical symmetry because the (observationally unconstrained) angular momentum of the DM halo is not generically aligned with the baryonic one. Theoretical errors are similar to those of the Eddington inversion though, at the 10-20% level for velocity-dependent predictions related to particle DM searches in spiral galaxies. We extensively describe the approach and comment on the results.