Hana Schiff, Alberto Corticelli, Afonso Guerreiro, Judit Romhányi, Paul McClarty

SciPost Phys. 18, 109 (2025) · published 24 March 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

The spin point groups are finite groups whose elements act on both real space and spin space. Among these groups are the magnetic point groups in the case where the real and spin space operations are locked to one another. The magnetic point groups are central to magnetic crystallography for strong spin-orbit coupled systems and the spin point groups generalize these to the intermediate and weak spin-orbit coupled cases. The spin point groups were introduced in the 1960's in the context of condensed matter physics and enumerated shortly thereafter. In this paper, we complete the theory ofcrystallographic spin point groups by presenting an account of these groups and their representation theory. Our main findings are that the so-called nontrivial spin point groups (numbering $598$ groups) have co-irreps corresponding exactly to the (co-)-irreps of regular or black and white groups and we tabulate this correspondence for each nontrivial group. However a total spin group, comprising the product of a nontrivial group and a spin-only group, has new co-irreps in cases where there is continuous rotational freedom. We provide explicit co-irrep tables for all these instances. We also discuss new forms of spin-only group extending the Litvin-Opechowski classes. To exhibit the usefulness of these groups to physically relevant problems we discuss a number of examples from electronic band structures of altermagnets to magnons.

Nina Elmer, Maeve Madigan, Tilman Plehn, Nikita Schmal

SciPost Phys. 18, 108 (2025) · published 21 March 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

We present a new global SMEFT analysis of LHC data in the top sector. After updating our set of measurements, we show how public ATLAS likelihoods can be incorporated into an external global analysis and how our analysis benefits from the additional information. We find that, unlike for the Higgs and electroweak sector, the SMEFT analysis of the top sector is mostly limited by the theory uncertainties. Finally, we present the first global SFitter analysis combining the top and electroweak-Higgs sectors.

Harshank Shrotriya, Wen Wei Ho

SciPost Phys. 18, 107 (2025) · published 21 March 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

We study the role of global system topology in governing deep thermalization, the relaxation of a local subsystem towards a maximally-entropic, uniform distribution of post-measurement states, upon observing the complementary subsystem in a local basis. Concretely, we focus on a class of (1+1)d systems exhibiting 'maximally-chaotic' dynamics, and consider how the rate of the formation of such a universal wavefunction distribution depends on boundary conditions of the system. We find that deep thermalization is achieved exponentially quickly in the presence of either periodic or open boundary conditions; however, the rate at which this occurs is twice as fast for the former than for the latter. These results are attained analytically using the calculus of integration over unitary groups, and supported by extensive numerical simulations. Our findings highlight the nonlocal nature of deep thermalization, and clearly illustrates that the physics underlying this phenomenon goes beyond that of standard quantum thermalization, which only depends on the net build-up of entanglement between a subsystem and its complement.

Jing-Yu Zhao, Xie Chen

SciPost Phys. 18, 106 (2025) · published 20 March 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

On top of a $D$-dimensional gapped bulk state, Low Entanglement Excitations (LEE) on $d(<D)$-dimensional sub-manifolds can have extensive energy but preserves the entanglement area law of the ground state. Due to their multi-dimensional nature, the LEEs embody a higher-category structure in quantum systems. They are the ground state of a modified Hamiltonian and hence capture the notions of 'defects' of generalized symmetries. In previous works, we studied the low-entanglement excitations in a trivial phase as well as those in invertible phases. We find that LEEs in these phases have the same structure as lower-dimensional gapped phases and their defects within. In this paper, we study the LEEs inside non-invertible topological phases. We focus on the simple example of $\mathbb{Z}_2$ toric code and discuss how the fusion result of 1d LEEs with 0d morphisms can depend on both the choice of fusion circuit and the ordering of the fused defects.

Paolo Benincasa, Gabriele Dian

SciPost Phys. 18, 105 (2025) · published 20 March 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

We provide a first principle definition of cosmological correlation functions for a large class of scalar toy models in arbitrary FRW cosmologies, in terms of novel geometries we name weighted cosmological polytopes. Each of these geometries encodes a universal rational integrand associated to a given Feynman graph. In this picture, all the possible ways of organising, and computing, cosmological correlators correspond to triangulations and subdivisions of the geometry, containing the in-in representation, the one in terms of wavefunction coefficients and many others. We also provide two novel contour integral representations, one connecting higher and lower loop correlators and the other one expressing any of them in terms of a building block. We study the boundary structure of these geometries allowing us to prove factorisation properties and Steinmann-like relations when single and sequential discontinuities are approached. We also show that correlators must satisfy novel vanishing conditions. As the weighted cosmological polytopes can be obtained as an orientation-changing operation onto a certain subdivision of the cosmological polytopes encoding the wavefunction of the Universe, this picture allows us to sharpen how the properties of cosmological correlators are inherited from the ones of the wavefunction. From a mathematical perspective, we also provide an in-depth characterisation of their adjoint surface.