Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• Petro-politics, Gender Violence and Human Trafficking in Nigeria’s Niger Delta Region

  Abosede Omowumi Babatunde

  Mig. Pol. 4, 003 (2025) · published 27 May 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  In Nigeria’s Niger Delta, oil politics by global oil corporation, national government and local leaders perpetuate gender inequalities in the distribution of oil benefits to women in oil communities. Women also bear the greater cost of oil-induced environmental harms which adversely affect their traditional livelihood of farming and fishing. Scholarship on human trafficking in Nigeria focused scant attention on the structural conditions that influenced women experience of human trafficking in extractive contexts. This article examines how oil politics perpetuate gender violence and expose women to human trafficking for sexual exploitation and forced labour in the Niger Delta region. Based on feminist political ecology perspectives and field studies in selected oil communities, the study seeks to explain how oil politics perpetuate women’s socio-economic deprivation, in ways that expose them to human trafficking as victims and accomplice. Women exposure to human trafficking amplify their experience of gender violence and violate their rights and aspiration for emancipation and justice in Nigeria’s oil extractive region. International organizations and policy makers need to consider the global and local dynamics that magnified women’s experience of human trafficking in extractive communities and the wider implications for the global and local efforts to combat human trafficking.

• Production mechanisms of open heavy flavor mesons in high-multiplicity events

  Marat Siddikov, Ivan Schmidt

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 8, 096 (2022) · published 13 July 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  In this proceeding we discuss different mechanisms of open-heavy flavor meson production which contribute to inclusive and single diffractive cross-sections. For the case of inclusive production we demonstrate that the three-Pomeron fusion is significant for the $D$-meson production in the kinematics of small transverse momenta $p_{T}$, as well as in large-multiplicity events. Its inclusion allows to improve significantly the description of experimental data. We also analyzed the diffractive production and found that due to gap survival factors it constitutes 0.5\textendash 2 per cent of the inclusive production. The expected dependence on event multiplicity in this channel is significantly milder than for inclusive case.

• Chiral gauge theories on $R^3 \times S^1$ and SUSY breaking

  Jun Seok Lee, John Terning

  SciPost Phys. 14, 081 (2023) · published 24 April 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We study $SU(5)$ chiral gauge theories on $R^3\times S^1$. With an unequal number of fundamental and antifundmental matter representations we calculate nontrivial pre-ADS superpotentials generated by composite multi-monopoles. We also point out that the structure of the composite multi-monopoles can be determined simply from the affine Dynkin diagrams of the gauge group and its unbroken subgroup. For the case of one flavor, we find that the superpotential is independent of the composite meson. We show that dynamical 4D SUSY breaking in the simplest chiral $SU(5)$ gauge theory can be demonstrated directly via semi-classical effects on the circle.

• Probing proton PDFs at high x with LHCb

  Thomas Boettcher

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 8, 093 (2022) · published 13 July 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  LHCb is a forward spectrometer at the LHC covering the pseudorapidity region 2<$\eta$<5. Because of this forward coverage, LHCb can probe the proton parton distribution functions (PDFs) in previously unexplored kinematic regimes, in particular at very high and low Bjorken-x. This contribution presents LHCb measurements that can be used to constrain the proton PDFs, with a focus on the high-x and high-$Q^2$ regime.

• Few-body reactions investigated with the Trojan Horse Method

  Roberta Spartà, Giuseppe G. Rapisarda, Claudio Spitaleri, M. La Cognata, Rosario G. Pizzone, S. Romano, Aurora Tumino

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 3, 033 (2020) · published 26 February 2020 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The Trojan Horse Method is an indirect method to measure reaction cross sections at energies of interest for nuclear astrophysics, exploiting the nuclei clustering properties. Here it is presented with its general features and detailed for the case of the 2H(d,p)3H and 2H(d,n)3He measurements, where interesting results for astrophysics and energy fusion power plants have been obtained.

• Extending the planar theory of anyons to quantum wire networks

  Tomasz Maciazek, Mia Conlon, Gert Vercleyen, J. K. Slingerland

  SciPost Phys. 18, 074 (2025) · published 28 February 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The braiding of the worldlines of particles restricted to move on a network (graph) is governed by the graph braid group, which can be strikingly different from the standard braid group known from two-dimensional physics. It has been recently shown that imposing the compatibility of graph braiding with anyon fusion for anyons exchanging at a single wire junction leads to new types of anyon models with the braiding exchange operators stemming from solutions of certain generalised hexagon equations. In this work, we establish these graph-braided anyon fusion models for general wire networks. We show that the character of braiding strongly depends on the graph-theoretic connectivity of the given network. In particular, we prove that triconnected networks yield the same braiding exchange operators as the planar anyon models. In contrast, modular biconnected networks support independent braiding exchange operators in different modules. Consequently, such modular networks may lead to more efficient topological quantum computer circuits. Finally, we conjecture that the graph-braided anyon fusion models will possess the (generalised) coherence property where certain polygon equations determine the braiding exchange operators for an arbitrary number of anyons. We also extensively study solutions to these polygon equations for chosen low-rank multiplicity-free fusion rings, including the Ising theory, quantum double of $\mathbb{Z}_{2}$, and Tambara-Yamagami models. We find numerous solutions that do not appear in the planar theory of anyons.

• Measurement of the presence of $a_1(1420)$ and $\omega(782)$ in $\tau^{-}\to \pi^{-}\pi^{+}\pi^{-}\nu_{\tau}$ at Belle

  Andrei Rabusov, Daniel Greenwald, Stephan Paul

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 17, 008 (2025) · published 23 July 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We present preliminary results of a partial-wave analysis of $\tau^-\to\pi^-\pi^-\pi^+\nu_\tau$ using data from the Belle experiment at the KEKB $\mathrm{e}^+\mathrm{e}^-$ collider. We validate our model with a model-independent analysis. We see the $\mathrm{a}_1(1420)$ and a G-parity-violating $1^-[\omega(782)\pi]_\mathrm{P}$ wave in tauon decays. Our results will improve models used in simulation studies necessary for measuring the electric and magnetic dipole moments and Michel parameters of the $\tau$.

• Knowledge-dependent optimal Gaussian strategies for phase estimation

  Ricard Ravell Rodríguez, Simon Morelli

  SciPost Phys. 18, 167 (2025) · published 27 May 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  When estimating an unknown phase rotation of a continuous-variable system with homodyne detection, the optimal probe state strongly depends on the value of the estimated parameter. In this article, we identify the optimal pure single-mode Gaussian probe states depending on the knowledge of the estimated phase parameter before the measurement. We find that for a large prior uncertainty, the optimal probe states are close to coherent states, a result in line with findings from noisy parameter estimation. However, with increasingly precise estimates of the parameter, it becomes beneficial to put more of the available energy into the squeezing of the probe state. Surprisingly, there is a clear jump, where the optimal probe state changes abruptly to a squeezed vacuum state, which maximizes the Fisher information for this estimation task. We use our results to study repeated measurements and compare different methods to adapt the probe state based on the changing knowledge of the parameter according to the previous findings.

• Engineering of anyons on M5-probes via flux quantization

  Hisham Sati, Urs Schreiber

  SciPost Phys. Lect. Notes 107 (2025) · published 4 November 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  These extended lecture notes survey a novel derivation of anyonic topological order (as seen in fractional quantum Hall systems) on single magnetized M5-branes probing Seifert orbi-singularities ("geometric engineering" of anyons), which we motivate from fundamental open problems in the field of quantum computing. The rigorous construction is non-Lagrangian and non-perturbative, based on previously neglected global completion of the M5-brane's tensor field by flux-quantization consistent with its non-linear self-duality and its twisting by the bulk C-field. This exists only in little-studied non-abelian generalized cohomology theories, notably in a twisted equivariant (and "twistorial") form of unstable Cohomotopy ("Hypothesis H"). As a result, topological quantum observables form Pontrjagin homology algebras of mapping spaces from the orbi-fixed worldvolume into a classifying 2-sphere. Remarkably, results from algebraic topology imply from this the quantum observables and modular functor of abelian Chern-Simons theory, as well as braid group actions on defect anyons of the kind envisioned as hardware for topologically protected quantum gates.

• Bayesian illumination: Inference and quality-diversity accelerate generative molecular models

  Jonas Verhellen

  SciPost Chem. 4, 001 (2025) · published 28 May 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  In recent years, there have been considerable academic and industrial research efforts to develop novel generative models for high-performing, small molecules. Traditional, rules-based algorithms such as genetic algorithms have, however, been shown to rival deep learning approaches in terms of both efficiency and potency [Jensen, Chem. Sci., 2019, 12, 3567-3572]. In previous work, we showed that the addition of a quality-diversity archive to a genetic algorithm resolves stagnation issues and substantially increases search efficiency [Verhellen, Chem. Sci., 2020, 42, 11485-11491]. In this work, we expand on these insights and leverage the availability of bespoke kernels for small molecules [Griffiths, Adv. Neural. Inf. Process. Syst., 2024, 36] to integrate Bayesian optimisation into the quality-diversity process. This novel generative model, which we call Bayesian Illumination, produces a larger diversity of high-performing molecules than standard quality-diversity optimisation methods. In addition, we show that Bayesian Illumination further improves search efficiency compared to previous generative models for small molecules, including deep learning approaches, genetic algorithms, and standard quality-diversity methods.