Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• Prospects of future MeV telescopes in probingweak-scale dark matter

  Marco Cirelli, Arpan Kar

  SciPost Phys. 19, 080 (2025) · published 29 September 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Galactic weak-scale Dark Matter (DM) particles annihilating into lepton-rich channels not only produce gamma-rays via prompt radiation but also generate abundant energetic electrons and positrons, which subsequently emit through bremsstrahlung or inverse Compton scattering (collectively called "secondary-radiation photons"). While the prompt gamma-rays concentrate at high-energy, the secondary emission falls in the MeV range, which a number of upcoming experiments (AMEGO, E-ASTROGAM, MAST...) will probe. We investigate the sensitivity of these future telescopes for weak-scale DM, focusing for definiteness on observations of the galactic center. We find that they have the potential of probing a wide region of the DM parameter space which is currently unconstrained. Namely, in rather optimistic configurations, future MeV telescopes could probe thermally-produced DM with a mass up to the TeV range, or GeV DM with an annihilation cross section 2 to 3 orders of magnitude smaller than the current bounds, precisely thanks to the significant leverage provided by their sensitivity to secondary emissions. We comment on astrophysical and methodological uncertainties, and compare with the reach of high-energy gamma ray experiments.

  1 citation

• Codebase release 1.1 for LinReTraCe

  Matthias Pickem, Emanuele Maggio, Jan M. Tomczak

  SciPost Phys. Codebases 16-r1.1 (2023) · published 17 July 2023 | Toggle abstract · src

  We describe the "Linear Response Transport Centre" (LinReTraCe), a package for the simulation of transport properties of solids. LinReTraCe captures quantum (in)coherence effects beyond semi-classical Boltzmann techniques, while incurring similar numerical costs. The enabling algorithmic innovation is a semi-analytical evaluation of Kubo formulae for resistivities and the coefficients of Hall, Seebeck and Nernst. We detail the program's architecture, its interface and usage with electronic-structure packages such as WIEN2k, VASP, and Wannier90, as well as versatile tight-binding settings.

  1 citation

• National Borders among Families: Removal and ‘Bare Life’ in India

  Salah Punathil

  Mig. Pol. 3, 005 (2024) · published 30 October 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  This paper is about the state-driven process of ‘migrant ‘illegality’ (Genova 2002) and its impact on the life of Bengali speaking residents in the Assam state of India. While the movement of people across borders between India and present-day Bangladesh has been historical and complex, this ethnographic work explores how the state-driven process of migrant illegality and the production of ‘bare life’ have disrupted intimate relations and family life among this population in Assam. While the recent NRC (National Register of Citizens) update in Assam identified 1.9 million people as illegal migrants, there has been bureaucratic enactment of ‘migrant illegality’ by Assam Border Police for the last several years. The institutional procedures, court documents and narratives of the select cases of ‘detected’ as well as ‘detained’ migrants from ethnographic fieldwork reveal how the absence of formal papers and errors in the family records, kinship relations and property inheritance among the poor migrant families transforms actual citizens to ‘illegal migrants’ in the bureaucratic manoeuvring and reduces them to their ‘bare life’. The paper also shows how prejudice, arbitrariness, and contradictions feed into the bureaucratic process and lead to intense crises among family units, as several families have both Indians and alleged ‘Bangladeshis’ in their homes today. The paper argues that the major consequence of this state-driven ‘migrant illegality’ in the last two decades has been the creation of national borders among families, unsettling intimate relations and shared spaces.

  1 citation

• The resistance of quantum entanglement to temperature in the Kugel-Khomskii model

  Valerii E. Valiulin, Andrey V. Mikheyenkov, Nikolay M. Chtchelkatchev, Kliment I. Kugel

  SciPost Phys. Core 6, 025 (2023) · published 4 April 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The Kugel-Khomskii model with entangled spin and orbital degrees of freedom is a good testing ground for many important features in quantum information processing, such as robust gaps in the entanglement spectra. Here, we demonstrate that the entanglement can be also robust under effect of temperature within a wide range of parameters. It is shown, in particular, that the temperature dependence of entanglement often exhibits a nonmonotonic behavior. Namely, there turn out to be ranges of the model parameters, where entanglement is absent at zero temperature, but then, with an increase in temperature, it appears, passes through a maximum, and again vanishes.

  1 citation

• Entropic analysis of optomechanical entanglement for a nanomechanical resonator coupled to an optical cavity field

  Jeong Ryeol Choi

  SciPost Phys. Core 4, 024 (2021) · published 20 September 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We investigate entanglement dynamics for a nanomechanical resonator coupled to an optical cavity field through the analysis of the associated entanglement entropies. The effects of time variation of several parameters, such as the optical frequency and the coupling strength, on the evolution of entanglement entropies are analyzed. We consider three kinds of entanglement entropies as the measures of the entanglement of subsystems, which are the linear entropy, the von Neumann entropy, and the Renyi entropy. The analytic formulae of these entropies are derived in a rigorous way using wave functions of the system. In particular, we focus on time behaviors of entanglement entropies in the case where the optical frequency is modulated by a small oscillating factor. We show that the entanglement entropies emerge and increase as the coupling strength grows from zero. The entanglement entropies fluctuate depending on the adiabatic variation of the parameters and such fluctuations are significant especially in the strong coupling regime. Our research may deepen the understanding of the optomechanical entanglement, which is crucial in realizing hybrid quantum-information protocols in quantum computation, quantum networks, and other domains in quantum science.

  1 citation

• Kolya: An open-source package for inclusive semileptonic B decays

  Matteo Fael, Ilija S. Milutin, K. Keri Vos

  SciPost Phys. Codebases 55 (2025) · published 25 March 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We introduce the code kolya, an open-source tool for phenomenological analyses of inclusive semileptonic $B\to X_c l\bar \nu_l$ decays. It contains a library to compute predictions for the total rate and various kinematic moments within the framework of the heavy quark expansion, utilizing the so-called kinetic scheme. The library currently includes power corrections up to $1/m_b^5$. All available QCD perturbative corrections are implemented via interpolation grids for fast numerical evaluation. We also include effects from new physics parameterized as Wilson coefficients of dimension-six operators in the weak effective theory below the electroweak scale. The library is interfaced to CRunDec for easy evaluation of the quark masses and strong coupling constant at different renormalization scales. The library is developed in Python and does not require compilation. The code is flexible and can be extended to other kinds of inclusive decays such as $B$ meson lifetimes, $B \to X_u l\bar \nu_l$ and $D$ meson decays.

  1 citation

• Muon measurements at the Pierre Auger Observatory

  Dariusz Góra

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 15, 020 (2024) · published 3 April 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The Pierre Auger Observatory is the world's largest detector for observation of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) (above the energy of $10^{17}$ eV). It consists of a Fluorescence Detector (FD) and an array of particle detectors known as the Surface Detector (SD). Observations of extensive air showers by the Observatory can be used to probe hadronic interactions at high energy, in a kinematic and energy region inaccessible to experiments at man-made accelerators and to measure the muon component of the shower. Air showers induced by different primaries have different muon contents. With increasing mass of the primary cosmic ray particle, it is expected that the muon content in the corresponding air showers should also increase. Therefore, the determination of the muon component in the air shower is crucial to infer the mass of the primary particle. This is a key ingredient in the searches conducted to pinpoint the sources of UHECRs. Recent results obtained from the Pierre Auger Observatory and other experiments indicate that all the shower simulations underestimate the number of muons in the showers compared to the data. This is the so-called muon deficit. In this paper we briefly review the muon measurements, and present in more detail recent results on fluctuations in the muon number. These results provide new insights into the origin of the muon deficit in air shower simulations and constrain the models of hadronic interactions at ultrahigh energies. With the current design of the surface detectors it is also difficult to reliably separate the contributions of muons to the SD signal from the contributions of photons, electrons, and positrons. Therefore, we also present a new method to extract the muon component of the signal time traces recorded by each SD station using recurrent neural networks. The combination of such algorithms, with the future data collected by the upgraded Pierre Auger Observatory, will be a major step forward, as we are likely to achieve an unprecedented resolution in mass estimation on an event-by-event basis.

  1 citation

• PineAPPL: NLO EW corrections for PDF processes

  Christopher Schwan

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 8, 079 (2022) · published 12 July 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Modern parton distribution function (PDF) determinations either neglect higher-order corrections in the electroweak (EW) coupling or implement them approximately for a subset of PDF processes. We present a new tool, PineAPPL, which supports perturbative correction in arbitrary powers of the EW and strong coupling constant, and stores theoretical predictions independently of the used PDFs in so-called interpolation grids. These are the foundation of any PDF determination, and will allow us to perform a PDF fit taking into account EW corrections for all processes consistently. Apart from PDF determinations PineAPPL can also be used in precision phenomenology to study the impact of different choices of PDF sets, without rerunning the time-consuming computation. As an application of this tool we show Drell-Yan (DY) lepton-pair production were larger effects of NLO EW corrections can be seen that will potentially influence the PDF fit and comment about which observables are particularly suited and NLO EW PDF fit and which are not.

  1 citation

• Hidden dependencies in model independent tests of DAMA

  Madeleine J. Zurowski

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 12, 027 (2023) · published 4 July 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  For nearly two decades the DAMA Collaboration has been observing a modulating signal compatible with that expected from a dark matter presence in our galaxy. However, interpretations of this with the standard assumptions for dark matter particles are strongly ruled out by a large number of other experiments. This tension can be relaxed somewhat by making more tailored choices for the dark matter model and properties of interest, but expanding the models of interest in such a way makes it impossible to test the DAMA modulation conclusively. In order to understand the exact nature of this signal, we need to use a detector based on the same target (NaI(Tl)), which would be sensitive to exactly the same particle interaction models as DAMA. There are a number of such experiments in the data taking or commissioning stages designed to do just this, two of which (ANAIS and COSINE) recently released their results after 3 years of data taking. Interestingly, the modulation observed by the two experiments deviate from each other by 2$\sigma$, while being within 3$\sigma$ of the DAMA result. This paper addresses potential differences between NaI(Tl) based detectors that could lead to the differing results to date, with a particular focus on the quenching factor

  1 citation

• Quantum analytic Langlands correspondence

  Davide Gaiotto, Jörg Teschner

  SciPost Phys. 18, 144 (2025) · published 30 April 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The analytic Langlands correspondence describes the solution to the spectral problem for the quantised Hitchin Hamiltonians. It is related to the S-duality of $\mathcal{N}=4$ super Yang-Mills theory. We propose a one-parameter deformation of the Analytic Langlands Correspondence, and discuss its relations to quantum field theory. The partition functions of the $H_3^+$ WZNW model are interpreted as the wave-functions of a spherical vector in the quantisation of complex Chern-Simons theory. Verlinde line operators generate a representation of two copies of the quantised skein algebra on generalised partition functions. We conjecture that this action generates a basis for the underlying Hilbert space, and explain in which sense the resulting quantum theory represents a deformation of the Analytic Langlands Correspondence.

  1 citation