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1. Measurement of the Isolated Nuclear Two-Photon Decay in ${}^{72}\mathrm{Ge}$

   https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.133.022502  

   Freire-Fernández, D; Korten, W; Chen, R J; Litvinov, S; Litvinov, Yu A; Sanjari, M S; Weick, H; Akinci, F C; Albers, H M; Armstrong, M; et al (July 2024, Physical Review Letters)

   The nuclear two-photon or double-gamma ( $2\gamma$) decay is a second-order electromagnetic process whereby a nucleus in an excited state emits two gamma rays simultaneously. To be able to directly measure the $2\gamma$decay rate in the low-energy regime below the electron-positron pair-creation threshold, we combined the isochronous mode of a storage ring with Schottky resonant cavities. The newly developed technique can be applied to isomers with excitation energies down to $\sim 100\mathrm{keV}$and half-lives as short as $\sim 10\mathrm{ms}$. The half-life for the $2\gamma$decay of the first-excited $0^{+}$state in bare ${}^{72}\mathrm{Ge}$ions was determined to be 23.9(6) ms, which strongly deviates from expectations. Published by the American Physical Society2024 

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2. Measurement of the branching fraction and $CP$ -violating asymmetry of the decay $B^0\to {\pi }^0{\pi }^0$ using 387 million $\mathrm{\Upsilon }\left(4S\right)$ decays in Belle II data

   https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.111.L071102  

   Adachi, I; Aggarwal, L; Ahmed, H; Aihara, H; Alhakami, M; Aloisio, A; Althubiti, N; Anh_Ky, N; Asner, D M; Atmacan, H; et al (April 2025, Physical Review D)

   We measure the branching fraction and $CP$-violating flavor-dependent rate asymmetry of $B^0\to {\pi }^0{\pi }^0$decays reconstructed using the Belle II detector in an electron-positron collision sample containing $387\times {10}^6\mathrm{\Upsilon }\left(4S\right)$mesons. Using an optimized event selection, we find $125\pm 20$signal decays in a fit to background-discriminating and flavor-sensitive distributions. The resulting branching fraction is $(1.25\pm 0.23)\times {10}^{-6}$and the $CP$-violating asymmetry is $0.03\pm 0.30$. Published by the American Physical Society2025 

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3. Measurement of the $e^{+}{e}^{-}\to {\pi }^{+}{\pi }^{-}{\pi }^0$ cross section in the energy range 0.62–3.50 GeV at Belle II

   https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.110.112005  

   Adachi, I; Aggarwal, L; Aihara, H; Akopov, N; Aloisio, A; Anh_Ky, N; Asner, D M; Atmacan, H; Aushev, V; Aversano, M; et al (December 2024, Physical Review D)

   We report a measurement of the $e^{+}{e}^{-}\to {\pi }^{+}{\pi }^{-}{\pi }^0$cross section in the energy range from 0.62 to 3.50 GeV using an initial-state radiation technique. We use an $e^{+}{e}^{-}$data sample corresponding to $191{\mathrm{fb}}^{-1}$of integrated luminosity, collected at a center-of-mass energy at or near the $\mathrm{\Upsilon }\left(4S\right)$resonance with the Belle II detector at the SuperKEKB collider. Signal yields are extracted by fitting the two-photon mass distribution in $e^{+}{e}^{-}\to {\pi }^{+}{\pi }^{-}{\pi }^0\gamma$events, which involve a ${\pi }^0\to \gamma \gamma$decay and an energetic photon radiated from the initial state. Signal efficiency corrections with an accuracy of 1.6% are obtained from several control data samples. The uncertainty on the cross section at the $\omega$and $\varphi$resonances is dominated by the systematic uncertainty of 2.2%. The resulting cross sections in the 0.62–1.80 GeV energy range yield $a_{\mu }^{3\pi }=[48.91\pm 0.23(\mathrm{stat})\pm 1.07(\mathrm{syst}\left)\right]\times {10}^{-10}$for the leading-order hadronic vacuum polarization contribution to the muon anomalous magnetic moment. This result differs by 2.5 standard deviations from the most precise current determination. Published by the American Physical Society2024 

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4. First Search for Dark-Trident Processes Using the MicroBooNE Detector

   https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.132.241801  

   Abratenko, P; Alterkait, O; Andrade_Aldana, D; Arellano, L; Asaadi, J; Ashkenazi, A; Balasubramanian, S; Baller, B; Barr, G; Barrow, D; et al (June 2024, Physical Review Letters)

   We present a first search for dark-trident scattering in a neutrino beam using a dataset corresponding to $7.2\times {10}^{20}$protons on target taken with the MicroBooNE detector at Fermilab. Proton interactions in the neutrino target at the main injector produce ${\pi }^0$and $\eta$mesons, which could decay into dark-matter (DM) particles mediated via a dark photon $A^{\prime }$. A convolutional neural network is trained to identify interactions of the DM particles in the liquid-argon time projection chamber (LArTPC) exploiting its imagelike reconstruction capability. In the absence of a DM signal, we provide limits at the 90% confidence level on the squared kinematic mixing parameter ${ϵ}^2$as a function of the dark-photon mass in the range $10\le M_{A^{\prime }}\le 400\mathrm{MeV}$. The limits cover previously unconstrained parameter space for the production of fermion or scalar DM particles $\chi$for two benchmark models with mass ratios $M_{\chi }/M_{A^{\prime }}=0.6$and 2 and for dark fine-structure constants $0.1\le {\alpha }_D\le 1$. Published by the American Physical Society2024 

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5. Search for the baryon number and lepton number violating decays ${\tau }^{-}\to \mathrm{\Lambda }{\pi }^{-}$ and ${\tau }^{-}\to \overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}{\pi }^{-}$ at Belle II

   https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.110.112003  

   Adachi, I; Aggarwal, L; Ahmed, H; Aihara, H; Akopov, N; Aloisio, A; Althubiti, N; Anh_Ky, N; Asner, D M; Atmacan, H; et al (December 2024, Physical Review D)

   We present a search for the baryon number $B$and lepton number $L$violating decays ${\tau }^{-}\to \mathrm{\Lambda }{\pi }^{-}$and ${\tau }^{-}\to \overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}{\pi }^{-}$produced from the $e^{+}{e}^{-}\to {\tau }^{+}{\tau }^{-}$process, using a $364{\mathrm{fb}}^{-1}$data sample collected by the Belle II experiment at the SuperKEKB collider. No evidence of signal is found in either decay mode, which have $\left|\mathrm{\Delta }\right(B-L\left)\right|$equal to 2 and 0, respectively. Upper limits at 90% credibility level on the branching fractions of ${\tau }^{-}\to \mathrm{\Lambda }{\pi }^{-}$and ${\tau }^{-}\to \overline{\mathrm{\Lambda }}{\pi }^{-}$are determined to be $4.7\times {10}^{-8}$and $4.3\times {10}^{-8}$, respectively. Published by the American Physical Society2024 

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