Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• Quantum wavefront shaping with a 48-element programmable phase plate for electrons

  Chu-Ping Yu, Francisco Vega Ibañez, Armand Béché, Johan Verbeeck

  SciPost Phys. 15, 223 (2023) · published 4 December 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We present a 48-element programmable phase plate for coherent electron waves produced by a combination of photolithography and focused ion beam. This brings the highly successful concept of wavefront shaping from light optics into the realm of electron optics and provides an important new degree of freedom to prepare electron quantum states. The phase plate chip is mounted on an aperture rod placed in the C2 plane of a transmission electron microscope operating in the 100-300 kV range. The phase plate's behavior is characterized by a Gerchberg-Saxton algorithm, showing a phase sensitivity of 0.075 rad/mV at 300 kV, with a phase resolution of approximately 3$\cdot$10$^{-3} \pi$. In addition, we provide a brief overview of possible use cases and support it with both simulated and experimental results.

  1 citation

• Crystalline Weyl semimetal phase in Quantum Spin Hall systems under magnetic fields

  Fernando Dominguez, Benedikt Scharf, Ewelina M. Hankiewicz

  SciPost Phys. Core 5, 024 (2022) · published 28 April 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We investigate an unconventional topological phase transition that occurs in quantum spin Hall (QSH) systems when applying an external in-plane magnetic field. We show that this transition between QSH and trivial insulator phases is separated by a stable topological gapless phase, which is protected by the combination of particle-hole and reflection symmetries, and thus, we dub it as crystalline Weyl semimetal. We explore the stability of this new phase when particle-hole symmetry breaking terms are present. Especially, we predict a robust unconventional topological phase transition to be visible for materials described by Kane and Mele model even if particle-hole symmetry is significantly broken.

  1 citation

• Implementing Transverse Momentum Dependent splitting functions in Parton Branching evolution equations

  Lissa Keersmaekers

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 8, 127 (2022) · published 13 July 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The Parton Branching (PB) approach describes the evolution of transverse momentum dependent (TMD) parton densities. We propose to extend the PB method by including TMD splitting functions, instead of the DGLAP splitting functions which assume strong ordering in transverse momentum. We present the evolution equations and their numerical solution, which is the first Monte Carlo implementation including TMD splitting functions.

  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

• Topological interface states - A possible path towards a Landau-level laser in the THz regime

  Mark Oliver Goerbig

  SciPost Phys. 15, 246 (2023) · published 19 December 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Volkov-Pankratov surface bands arise in smooth topological interfaces, i.e. interfaces between a topological and a trivial insulator, in addition to the chiral surface state imposed by the bulk-surface correspondence of topological materials. These two-dimensional bands become Landau-quantized if a magnetic field is applied perpendicular to the interface. I show that the energy scales, which are typically in the 10-100 meV range, can be controlled both by the perpendicular magnetic field and the interface width. The latter can still be varied with the help of a magnetic-field component in the interface. The Landau levels of the different Volkov-Pankratov bands are optically coupled, and their arrangement may allow one to obtain population inversion by optical pumping. This could serve as the elementary brick of a multi-level laser based on Landau levels. Moreover, the photons are absorbed and emitted either parallel or perpendicular to the magnetic field, respectively in the Voigt and Faraday geometry, depending on the Volkov-Pankratov bands and Landau levels involved in the optical transitions.

  1 citation

• Codebase release 0.4 for pyBumpHunter

  Louis Vaslin, Samuel Calvet, Vincent Barra, Julien Donini

  SciPost Phys. Codebases 15-r0.4 (2023) · published 14 July 2023 | Toggle abstract · src

  The BumpHunter algorithm is widely used in the search for new particles in High Energy Physics analysis. This algorithm offers the advantage of evaluating the local and global p-values of a localized deviation in the observed data without making any hypothesis on the supposed signal. The increasing popularity of the Python programming language motivated the development of a new public implementation of this algorithm in Python, called pyBumpHunter, together with several improvements and additional features. It is the first public implementation of the BumpHunter algorithm to be added to Scikit-HEP. This paper presents in detail the BumpHunter algorithm as well as all the features proposed in this implementation. All these features have been tested in order to demonstrate their behaviour and performance.

  1 citation

• Reconstructing partonic kinematics at colliders with machine learning

  David F. Rentería Estrada, Roger J. Hernández-Pinto, German F. R. Sborlini, Pia Zurita

  SciPost Phys. Core 5, 049 (2022) · published 31 October 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  In the context of high-energy physics, a reliable description of the parton-level kinematics plays a crucial role for understanding the internal structure of hadrons and improving the precision of the calculations. In proton-proton collisions, this represents a challenging task since extracting such information from experimental data is not straightforward. With this in mind, we propose to tackle this problem by studying the production of one hadron and a direct photon in proton-proton collisions, including up to Next-to-Leading Order Quantum Chromodynamics and Leading-Order Quantum Electrodynamics corrections. Using Monte-Carlo integration, we simulate the collisions and analyze the events to determine the correlations among measurable and partonic quantities. Then, we use these results to feed three different Machine Learning algorithms that allow us to find the momentum fractions of the partons involved in the process, in terms of suitable combinations of the final state momenta. Our results are compatible with previous findings and suggest a powerful application of Machine-Learning to model high-energy collisions at the partonic-level with high-precision.

  1 citation

• Certifying quantum separability with adaptive polytopes

  Ties-A. Ohst, Xiao-Dong Yu, Otfried Gühne, H. Chau Nguyen

  SciPost Phys. 16, 063 (2024) · published 1 March 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The concept of entanglement and separability of quantum states is relevant for several fields in physics. Still, there is a lack of effective operational methods to characterise these features. We propose a method to certify quantum separability of two- and multiparticle quantum systems based on an adaptive polytope approximation. This leads to an algorithm which, for practical purposes, conclusively recognises two-particle separability for small and medium-size dimensions. For multiparticle systems, the approach allows to characterise full separability for up to five qubits or three qutrits; in addition, different classes of entanglement can be distinguished. Finally, our methods allow to identify systematically quantum states with interesting entanglement properties, such as maximally robust states which are separable for all bipartitions, but not fully separable.

  1 citation

• Logarithmic correlation functions for critical dense polymers on the cylinder

  Alexi Morin-Duchesne, Jesper Lykke Jacobsen

  SciPost Phys. 7, 040 (2019) · published 30 September 2019 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We compute lattice correlation functions for the model of critical dense polymers on a semi-infinite cylinder of perimeter $n$. In the lattice loop model, contractible loops have a vanishing fugacity whereas non-contractible loops have a fugacity $\alpha \in (0,\infty)$. These correlators are defined as ratios $Z(x)/Z_0$ of partition functions, where $Z_0$ is a reference partition function wherein only simple half-arcs are attached to the boundary of the cylinder. For $Z(x)$, the boundary of the cylinder is also decorated with simple half-arcs, but it also has two special positions $1$ and $x$ where the boundary condition is different. We investigate two such kinds of boundary conditions: (i) there is a single node at each of these points where a long arc is attached, and (ii) there are pairs of adjacent nodes at these points where two long arcs are attached. We find explicit expressions for these correlators for finite $n$ using the representation of the enlarged periodic Temperley-Lieb algebra in the XX spin chain. The resulting asymptotics as $n\to \infty$ are expressed as simple integrals that depend on the scaling parameter $\tau = \frac {x-1} n \in (0,1)$. For small $\tau$, the leading behaviours are proportional to $\tau^{1/4}$, $\tau^{1/4}\log \tau$, $\log \tau$ and $\log^2 \tau$. We interpret the lattice results in terms of ratios of conformal correlation functions. We assume that the corresponding boundary changing fields are highest weight states in irreducible, Kac or staggered Virasoro modules, with central charge $c=-2$ and conformal dimensions $\Delta = -\frac18$ or $\Delta = 0$. With these assumptions, we obtain differential equations of order two and three satisfied by the conformal correlation functions, solve these equations in terms of hypergeometric functions, and find a perfect agreement with the lattice results. We use the lattice results to compute structure constants and ratios thereof which appear in the operator product expansions of the boundary condition changing fields. The fusion of these fields is found to be non-abelian.

  1 citation

• Using coherent dipion photoproduction to image gold nuclei

  Spencer R. Klein

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 8, 128 (2022) · published 13 July 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Vector meson photoproduction offers the opportunity to image target nuclei. The two-dimensional Fourier transform $d\sigma_{\rm coherent}/dt$ of coherent vector meson photoproduction gives the two-dimensional distribution of interaction sites in the target. Since vector meson photoproduction occurs, at lowest order, via two-gluon exchange, this is sensitive to gluon shadowing. We present an analysis of $\pi^+\pi^-$ photoproduction using data from the STAR detector and a study of $d\sigma_{\rm coherent}/dt$, with an emphasis on probing the nuclear shape and its systematic uncertainties.

  1 citation