Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• The Cosmological Bootstrap: Spinning correlators from symmetries and factorization

  Daniel Baumann, Carlos Duaso Pueyo, Austin Joyce, Hayden Lee, Guilherme L. Pimentel

  SciPost Phys. 11, 071 (2021) · published 28 September 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We extend the cosmological bootstrap to correlators involving massless particles with spin. In de Sitter space, these correlators are constrained both by symmetries and by locality. In particular, the de Sitter isometries become conformal symmetries on the future boundary of the spacetime, which are reflected in a set of Ward identities that the boundary correlators must satisfy. We solve these Ward identities by acting with weight-shifting operators on scalar seed solutions. Using this weight-shifting approach, we derive three- and four-point correlators of massless spin-1 and spin-2 fields with conformally coupled scalars. Four-point functions arising from tree-level exchange are singular in particular kinematic configurations, and the coefficients of these singularities satisfy certain factorization properties. We show that in many cases these factorization limits fix the structure of the correlators uniquely, without having to solve the conformal Ward identities. The additional constraint of locality for massless spinning particles manifests itself as current conservation on the boundary. We find that the four-point functions only satisfy current conservation if the s, t, and u-channels are related to each other, leading to nontrivial constraints on the couplings between the conserved currents and other operators in the theory. For spin-1 currents this implies charge conservation, while for spin-2 currents we recover the equivalence principle from a purely boundary perspective. For multiple spin-1 fields, we recover the structure of Yang-Mills theory. Finally, we apply our methods to slow-roll inflation and derive a few phenomenologically relevant scalar-tensor three-point functions.

  80 citations

• Dark matter, fine-tuning and $(g-2)_{\mu}$ in the pMSSM

  Melissa van Beekveld, Wim Beenakker, Marrit Schutten, Jeremy De Wit

  SciPost Phys. 11, 049 (2021) · published 7 September 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  In this paper we perform for the first time an in-depth analysis of the spectra in the phenomenological supersymmetric Standard Model that simultaneously offer an explanation for the $(g-2)_{\mu}$ discrepancy $\Delta a_{\mu}$, result in the right dark-matter relic density $\Omega_{\rm DM} h^2$ and are minimally fine-tuned. The resulting spectra may be obtained from [1]. To discuss the experimental exclusion potential for our models, we analyse the resulting LHC phenomenology as well as the sensitivity of dark-matter direct detection experiments to these spectra. We find that the latter type of experiments with sensitivity to the spin-dependent dark-matter\,--\,nucleon scattering cross section $\sigma_{\rm SD,p}$ will probe all of our found solutions.

  33 citations

• Towards the renormalisation of the Standard Model effective field theory to dimension eight: Bosonic interactions I

  Mikael Chala, Guilherme Guedes, Maria Ramos, Jose Santiago

  SciPost Phys. 11, 065 (2021) · published 21 September 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We compute the one-loop renormalisation group running of the bosonic Standard Model effective operators to order $v^4/\Lambda^4$, with $v\sim 246$ GeV being the electroweak scale and $\Lambda$ the unknown new physics threshold. We concentrate on the effects triggered by pairs of the leading dimension-six interactions, namely those that can arise at tree level in weakly-coupled ultraviolet completions of the Standard Model. We highlight some interesting consequences, including the interplay between positivity bounds and the form of the anomalous dimensions; the non renormalisation of the $S$ and $U$ parameters; or the importance of radiative corrections to the Higgs potential for the electroweak phase transition. As a byproduct of this work, we provide a complete Green basis of operators involving only the Higgs and derivatives at dimension-eight, comprising 13 redundant interactions.

  33 citations

• Better latent spaces for better autoencoders

  Barry M. Dillon, Tilman Plehn, Christof Sauer, Peter Sorrenson

  SciPost Phys. 11, 061 (2021) · published 17 September 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Autoencoders as tools behind anomaly searches at the LHC have the structural problem that they only work in one direction, extracting jets with higher complexity but not the other way around. To address this, we derive classifiers from the latent space of (variational) autoencoders, specifically in Gaussian mixture and Dirichlet latent spaces. In particular, the Dirichlet setup solves the problem and improves both the performance and the interpretability of the networks.

  31 citations

• Navigator function for the conformal bootstrap

  Marten Reehorst, Slava Rychkov, David Simmons-Duffin, Benoit Sirois, Ning Su, Balt van Rees

  SciPost Phys. 11, 072 (2021) · published 28 September 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Current numerical conformal bootstrap techniques carve out islands in theory space by repeatedly checking whether points are allowed or excluded. We propose a new method for searching theory space that replaces the binary information “allowed”/“excluded” with a continuous “navigator” function that is negative in the allowed region and positive in the excluded region. Such a navigator function allows one to efficiently explore high-dimensional parameter spaces and smoothly sail towards any islands they may contain. The specific functions we introduce have several attractive features: they are well-defined in large regions of parameter space, can be computed with standard methods, and evaluation of their gradient is immediate due to an SDP gradient formula that we provide. The latter property allows for the use of efficient quasi-Newton optimization methods, which we illustrate by navigating towards the 3d Ising island.

  23 citations

• 3D gravity in a box

  Per Kraus, Ruben Monten, Richard M. Myers

  SciPost Phys. 11, 070 (2021) · published 27 September 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The quantization of pure 3D gravity with Dirichlet boundary conditions on a finite boundary is of interest both as a model of quantum gravity in which one can compute quantities which are "more local" than S-matrices or asymptotic boundary correlators, and for its proposed holographic duality to $T \overline{T}$-deformed CFTs. In this work we apply covariant phase space methods to deduce the Poisson bracket algebra of boundary observables. The result is a one-parameter nonlinear deformation of the usual Virasoro algebra of asymptotically AdS$_3$ gravity. This algebra should be obeyed by the stress tensor in any $T\overline{T}$-deformed holographic CFT. We next initiate quantization of this system within the general framework of coadjoint orbits, obtaining - in perturbation theory - a deformed version of the Alekseev-Shatashvili symplectic form and its associated geometric action. The resulting energy spectrum is consistent with the expected spectrum of $T\overline{T}$-deformed theories, although we only carry out the explicit comparison to $\mathcal{O}(1/\sqrt{c})$ in the $1/c$ expansion.

  20 citations

• Effective field theory for hydrodynamics without boosts

  Jay Armas, Akash Jain

  SciPost Phys. 11, 054 (2021) · published 10 September 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We formulate the Schwinger-Keldysh effective field theory of hydrodynamics without boost symmetry. This includes a spacetime covariant formulation of classical hydrodynamics without boosts with an additional conserved particle/charge current coupled to Aristotelian background sources. We find that, up to first order in derivatives, the theory is characterised by the thermodynamic equation of state and a total of 29 independent transport coefficients, in particular, 3 hydrostatic, 9 non-hydrostatic non-dissipative, and 17 dissipative. Furthermore, we study the spectrum of linearised fluctuations around anisotropic equilibrium states with non-vanishing fluid velocity. This analysis reveals a pair of sound modes that propagate at different speeds along and opposite to the fluid flow, one charge diffusion mode, and two distinct shear modes along and perpendicular to the fluid velocity. We present these results in a new hydrodynamic frame that is linearly stable irrespective of the boost symmetry in place. This provides a unified covariant stable approach for simultaneously treating Lorentzian, Galilean, and Lifshitz fluids within an effective field theory framework and sets the stage for future studies of non-relativistic intertwined patterns of symmetry breaking.

  19 citations

• Yang-Baxter and the Boost: splitting the difference

  Marius de Leeuw, Chiara Paletta, Anton Pribytok, Ana L. Retore, Paul Ryan

  SciPost Phys. 11, 069 (2021) · published 27 September 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  In this paper we continue our classification of regular solutions of the Yang-Baxter equation using the method based on the spin chain boost operator developed in \cite{deLeeuw:2019zsi}. We provide details on how to find all non-difference form solutions and apply our method to spin chains with local Hilbert space of dimensions two, three and four. We classify all 16×16 solutions which exhibit su(2)+su(2) symmetry, which include the one-dimensional Hubbard model and the S-matrix of the AdS5 x S5 superstring sigma model. In all cases we find interesting novel solutions of the Yang-Baxter equation.

  14 citations

• Free fermion entanglement with a semitransparent interface: the effect of graybody factors on entanglement islands

  Jorrit Kruthoff, Raghu Mahajan, Chitraang Murdia

  SciPost Phys. 11, 063 (2021) · published 21 September 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We study the entanglement entropy of free fermions in 2d in the presence of a partially transmitting interface that splits Minkowski space into two half-spaces. We focus on the case of a single interval that straddles the defect, and compute its entanglement entropy in three limits: Perturbing away from the fully transmitting and fully reflecting cases, and perturbing in the amount of asymmetry of the interval about the defect. Using these results within the setup of the Poincaré patch of AdS$_2$ statically coupled to a zero temperature flat space bath, we calculate the effect of a partially transmitting AdS$_2$ boundary on the location of the entanglement island region. The partially transmitting boundary is a toy model for black hole graybody factors. Our results indicate that the entanglement island region behaves in a monotonic fashion as a function of the transmission/reflection coefficient at the interface.

  14 citations

• Elastic photon-initiated production at the LHC: the role of hadron-hadron interactions

  Lucian A. Harland-Lang, Valery A. Khoze, Mikhail G. Ryskin

  SciPost Phys. 11, 064 (2021) · published 21 September 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We analyse in detail the role of additional hadron-hadron interactions in elastic photon-initiated (PI) production at the LHC, both in $pp$ and heavy ion collisions. We first demonstrate that the source of difference between our predictions and other results in the literature for PI muon pair production is dominantly due to an unphysical cut that is imposed in these latter results on the dimuon-hadron impact parameter. We in addition show that this is experimentally disfavoured by the shape of the muon kinematic distributions measured by ATLAS in ultraperipheral PbPb collisions. We then consider the theoretical uncertainty due to the survival probability for no additional hadron-hadron interactions, and in particular the role this may play in the tendency for the predicted cross sections to lie somewhat above ATLAS data on PI muon pair production, in both $pp$ and PbPb collisions. This difference is relatively mild, at the $\sim 10\%$ level, and hence a very good control over the theory is clearly required. We show that this uncertainty is very small, and it is only by taking very extreme and rather unphysical variations in the modelling of the survival factor that this tension can be removed. This underlines the basic, rather model independent, point that a significant fraction of elastic PI scattering occurs for hadron-hadron impact parameters that are simply outside the range of QCD interactions, and hence this sets a lower bound on the survival factor in any physically reasonable approach. Finally, other possible origins for this discrepancy are discussed.

  13 citations