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SciPost Physics Lecture Notes

Introduction to the usage of open data from the Large Hadron Collider for computer scientists in the context of machine learning

Timo Saala, Matthias Schott

SciPost Phys. Lect. Notes 96 (2025) · published 23 June 2025 | · pdf

Deep learning techniques have evolved rapidly in recent years, significantly impacting various scientific fields, including experimental particle physics. To effectively leverage the latest developments in computer science for particle physics, a strengthened collaboration between computer scientists and physicists is essential. As all machine learning techniques depend on the availability and comprehensibility of extensive data, clear data descriptions and commonly used data formats are prerequisites for successful collaboration. In this study, we converted open data from the Large Hadron Collider, recorded in the ROOT data format commonly used in high-energy physics, to pandas DataFrames, a well-known format in computer science. Additionally, we provide a brief introduction to the data's content and interpretation. This paper aims to serve as a starting point for future interdisciplinary collaborations between computer scientists and physicists, fostering closer ties and facilitating efficient knowledge exchange.
Simulation of the 1d XY model on a quantum computer

Marc Farreras, Alba Cervera-Lierta

SciPost Phys. Lect. Notes 95 (2025) · published 11 June 2025 | · pdf

The field of quantum computing has grown fast in recent years, both in theoretical advancements and the practical construction of quantum computers. These computers were initially proposed, among other reasons, to efficiently simulate and comprehend the complexities of quantum physics. In this paper, we present a comprehensive scheme for the exact simulation of the 1-D XY model on a quantum computer. We successfully diagonalize the proposed Hamiltonian, enabling access to the complete energy spectrum. Furthermore, we propose a novel approach to design a quantum circuit to perform exact time evolution. Among all the possibilities this opens, we compute the ground and excited state energies for the symmetric XY model with spin chains of $n=4$ and $n=8$ spins. Further, we calculate the expected value of transverse magnetization for the ground state in the transverse Ising model. Both studies allow the observation of a quantum phase transition from an antiferromagnetic to a paramagnetic state. Additionally, we have simulated the time evolution of the state all spins up in the transverse Ising model. The scalability and high performance of our algorithm make it an ideal candidate for benchmarking purposes, while also laying the foundation for simulating other integrable models on quantum computers.
Many-body quantum dynamics with MCTDH-X

Paolo Molignini, Sunayana Dutta, Elke Fasshauer

SciPost Phys. Lect. Notes 94 (2025) · published 26 March 2025 | · pdf

The lecture notes on "Many-body Quantum Dynamics with MCTDH-X", adapted from the 2023 Heidelberg MCTDH Summer School, provide an in-depth exploration of the Multiconfigurational Time-Dependent Hartree approach for indistinguishable particles. They serve as a comprehensive guide for understanding and utilizing the MCTDH-X software for both bosonic and fermionic systems. The tutorial begins with an introduction to the MCTDH-X software, highlighting its capability to handle various quantum systems, including those with internal degrees of freedom and long-range interactions. The theoretical foundation is then laid out on how to solve the time-dependent and time-independent Schrödinger equations for many-body systems. The workflow section provides practical instructions on setting up and executing simulations using MCTDH-X. Detailed benchmarks against exact solutions are presented, showcasing the accuracy and reliability of the software in ground-state and dynamic simulations. The notes then delve into the dynamics of quantum systems, covering relaxation processes, time evolution, and the analysis of propagation for both bosonic and fermionic particles. The discussion includes the interpretation of various physical quantities such as energy, density distributions, and orbital occupations. Advanced features of MCTDH-X are also explored in the last section, including the calculation of correlation functions and the creation of visualizations through video tutorials. The notes conclude with a Linux/UNIX command cheat sheet, facilitating ease of use for users operating the software on different systems. Overall, these lecture notes provide a valuable resource for researchers and students in the field of quantum dynamics, offering both theoretical insights and practical guidance on the use of MCTDH-X for studying complex many-body systems.
Galilei particles revisited

José Miguel Figueroa-O'Farrill, Simon Pekar, Alfredo Pérez, Stefan Prohazka

SciPost Phys. Lect. Notes 93 (2025) · published 13 March 2025 | · pdf

We revisit the classifications of classical and quantum galilean particles: that is, we fully classify homogeneous symplectic manifolds and unitary irreducible projective representations of the Galilei group. Equivalently, these are coadjoint orbits and unitary irreducible representations of the Bargmann group, the universal central extension of the Galilei group. We provide an action principle in each case, discuss the nonrelativistic limit, as well as exhibit, whenever possible, the unitary irreducible representations in terms of fields on Galilei spacetime. Motivated by a forthcoming study of planons we pay close attention to the mobility of the less familiar massless Galilei particles.
Scattering from an external field in quantum chromodynamics at high energies: From foundations to interdisciplinary connections

Athanasia-Konstantina Angelopoulou, Anh Dung Le, Stéphane Munier

SciPost Phys. Lect. Notes 92 (2025) · published 12 March 2025 | · pdf

We review the factorization of the $S$-matrix elements in the context of particle scattering off an external field, which can serve as a model for the field of a large nucleus. The factorization takes the form of a convolution of light cone wave functions describing the physical incoming and outgoing states in terms of bare partons, and products of Wilson lines. The latter represent the interaction between the bare partons and the external field. Specializing to elastic scattering amplitudes of onia at very high energies, we introduce the color dipole model, which formulates the calculation of the modulus-squared of the wave functions in quantum chromodynamics with the help of a branching random walk, and the scattering amplitudes as observables on this classical stochastic process. Methods developed for general branching processes produce analytical formulas for the asymptotics of such observables, and thus enable one to derive exact large-rapidity expressions for onium-nucleus cross sections, from which electron-nucleus cross sections may be inferred.

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Physics: Condensed Matter Physics - Computational • Quantum Physics

Hands-on Introduction to Randomized Benchmarking

by Ana Silva, Eliska Greplova

Version 1 (latest version)
Submitted May 2, 2025, 2:18 p.m. to SciPost Physics Lecture Notes · latest activity: July 7, 2025, 10:43 a.m.
Physics: Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics - Experiment • Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics - Theory • Condensed Matter Physics - Theory • Condensed Matter Physics - Computational • Quantum Physics

Many-Body Open Quantum Systems

by Rosario Fazio, Jonathan Keeling, Leonardo Mazza, Marco Schirò

Version 1 (latest version)
Submitted March 19, 2025, 9:42 p.m. to SciPost Physics Lecture Notes · latest activity: May 12, 2025, 9:52 a.m.
Physics: Condensed Matter Physics - Theory • High-Energy Physics - Theory • Mathematical Physics

Engineering of Anyons on M5-Probes via Flux Quantization

by Hisham Sati, Urs Schreiber

Version 1 (latest version)
Submitted Feb. 28, 2025, 11:14 a.m. to SciPost Physics Lecture Notes · latest activity: June 25, 2025, 1:53 p.m.
Physics: Mathematical Physics

Les Houches lectures on non-perturbative topological strings

by Marcos Mariño

Version 1 (latest version)
Submitted Feb. 26, 2025, 7:36 p.m. to SciPost Physics Lecture Notes · latest activity: June 26, 2025, 2:36 p.m.
Physics: Gravitation, Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics • High-Energy Physics - Theory • High-Energy Physics - Phenomenology • Quantum Physics

Lectures in Quantum Gravity

by Ivano Basile, Luca Buoninfante, Francesco Di Filippo, Benjamin Knorr, Alessia Platania, Anna Tokareva

Version 1 (latest version)
Submitted Feb. 25, 2025, 6:06 p.m. to SciPost Physics Lecture Notes · latest activity: May 15, 2025, noon

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Efficient numerical simulations with Tensor Networks: Tensor Network Python (TeNPy)

Johannes Hauschild, Frank Pollmann

SciPost Phys. Lect. Notes 5 (2018) · published 8 October 2018 | · pdf

Tensor product state (TPS) based methods are powerful tools to efficiently simulate quantum many-body systems in and out of equilibrium. In particular, the one-dimensional matrix-product (MPS) formalism is by now an established tool in condensed matter theory and quantum chemistry. In these lecture notes, we combine a compact review of basic TPS concepts with the introduction of a versatile tensor library for Python (TeNPy) [https://github.com/tenpy/tenpy]. As concrete examples, we consider the MPS based time-evolving block decimation and the density matrix renormalization group algorithm. Moreover, we provide a practical guide on how to implement abelian symmetries (e.g., a particle number conservation) to accelerate tensor operations.

338 citations
Lecture notes on Generalised Hydrodynamics

Benjamin Doyon

SciPost Phys. Lect. Notes 18 (2020) · published 28 August 2020 | · pdf

These are lecture notes for a series of lectures given at the Les Houches Summer School on Integrability in Atomic and Condensed Matter Physics, 30 July to 24 August 2018. The same series of lectures has also been given at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, October 2019. I overview in a pedagogical fashion the main aspects of the theory of generalised hydrodynamics, a hydrodynamic theory for quantum and classical many-body integrable systems. Only very basic knowledge of hydrodynamics and integrable systems is assumed.

163 citations
Tangent-space methods for uniform matrix product states

Laurens Vanderstraeten, Jutho Haegeman, Frank Verstraete

SciPost Phys. Lect. Notes 7 (2019) · published 15 January 2019 | · pdf

In these lecture notes we give a technical overview of tangent-space methods for matrix product states in the thermodynamic limit. We introduce the manifold of uniform matrix product states, show how to compute different types of observables, and discuss the concept of a tangent space. We explain how to variationally optimize ground-state approximations, implement real-time evolution and describe elementary excitations for a given model Hamiltonian. Also, we explain how matrix product states approximate fixed points of one-dimensional transfer matrices. We show how all these methods can be translated to the language of continuous matrix product states for one-dimensional field theories. We conclude with some extensions of the tangent-space formalism and with an outlook to new applications.

159 citations
Phase transitions in the early universe

Mark Hindmarsh, Marvin Lüben, Johannes Lumma, Martin Pauly

SciPost Phys. Lect. Notes 24 (2021) · published 15 February 2021 | · pdf

These lecture notes are based on a course given by Mark Hindmarsh at the 24th Saalburg Summer School 2018 and written up by Marvin L\"uben, Johannes Lumma and Martin Pauly. The aim is to provide the necessary basics to understand first-order phase transitions in the early universe, to outline how they leave imprints in gravitational waves, and advertise how those gravitational waves could be detected in the future. A first-order phase transition at the electroweak scale is a prediction of many theories beyond the Standard Model, and is also motivated as an ingredient of some theories attempting to provide an explanation for the matter-antimatter asymmetry in our Universe. Starting from bosonic and fermionic statistics, we derive Boltzmann's equation and generalise to a fluid of particles with field dependent mass. We introduce the thermal effective potential for the field in its lowest order approximation, discuss the transition to the Higgs phase in the Standard Model and beyond, and compute the probability for the field to cross a potential barrier. After these preliminaries, we provide a hydrodynamical description of first-order phase transitions as it is appropriate for describing the early Universe. We thereby discuss the key quantities characterising a phase transition, and how they are imprinted in the gravitational wave power spectrum that might be detectable by the space-based gravitational wave detector LISA in the 2030s.

109 citations
The Tensor Networks Anthology: Simulation techniques for many-body quantum lattice systems

Pietro Silvi, Ferdinand Tschirsich, Matthias Gerster, Johannes Jünemann, Daniel Jaschke, Matteo Rizzi, Simone Montangero

SciPost Phys. Lect. Notes 8 (2019) · published 18 March 2019 | · pdf

We present a compendium of numerical simulation techniques, based on tensor network methods, aiming to address problems of many-body quantum mechanics on a classical computer. The core setting of this anthology are lattice problems in low spatial dimension at finite size, a physical scenario where tensor network methods, both Density Matrix Renormalization Group and beyond, have long proven to be winning strategies. Here we explore in detail the numerical frameworks and methods employed to deal with low-dimension physical setups, from a computational physics perspective. We focus on symmetries and closed-system simulations in arbitrary boundary conditions, while discussing the numerical data structures and linear algebra manipulation routines involved, which form the core libraries of any tensor network code. At a higher level, we put the spotlight on loop-free network geometries, discussing their advantages, and presenting in detail algorithms to simulate low-energy equilibrium states. Accompanied by discussions of data structures, numerical techniques and performance, this anthology serves as a programmer's companion, as well as a self-contained introduction and review of the basic and selected advanced concepts in tensor networks, including examples of their applications.

103 citations

Physics: Condensed Matter Physics - Computational • Quantum Physics

Physics: Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics - Experiment • Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics - Theory • Condensed Matter Physics - Theory • Condensed Matter Physics - Computational • Quantum Physics

Physics: Condensed Matter Physics - Theory • High-Energy Physics - Theory • Mathematical Physics

Physics: Mathematical Physics

Physics: Gravitation, Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics • High-Energy Physics - Theory • High-Energy Physics - Phenomenology • Quantum Physics

Series contained in this Journal

338 citations

163 citations

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103 citations