Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• Collective dynamics of heavy ion collisions in ATLAS

  Helena Santos

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 10, 034 (2022) · published 11 August 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The latest measurements of collective behaviour in a variety of collision systems with the ATLAS detector at the LHC, including pp collisions at 13 TeV, Xe+Xe collisions at 5.44 TeV, and Pb+Pb collisions at 5.02 TeV, are presented. They include vn-[pT] correlations, which carry important information about the initial-state geometry of the quark-gluon plasma and can shed light on any quadrupole deformation in the Xe nucleus, and measurements of flow decorrelations differential in rapidity, which probe the longitudinal structure of the colliding system. These measurements furthermore provide stringent tests of the theoretical understanding of the initial state in heavy ion collisions.

• Precision $e^-$ beam polarimetry at an $e^+e^-$ B factory using tau-pair events

  Caleb Miller

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 17, 011 (2025) · published 23 July 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  A novel technique for measuring the average beam polarization in $e^+e^-$ collisions, known as Tau Polarimetry, has been developed by the BABAR collaboration. This technique makes use of the relationship between the polarization of the beams, the resulting polarization of the $\tau^+\tau^-$ produced, and the kinematics of the decay products. Using this technique BABAR has measured the average $e^-$ beam polarization of PEP-II to be 0.0034 $± 0.0024_{stat} ± 0.0029_{sys}$. This technique is expected to be used at Belle II after a proposed polarization upgrade as the most precise method with which beam polarization can be determined.

• On the difference between thermalization in open and isolated quantum systems: A case study

  Archak Purkayastha, Giacomo Guarnieri, Janet Anders, Marco Merkli

  SciPost Phys. 19, 136 (2025) · published 25 November 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Thermalization of isolated and open quantum systems has been studied extensively. However, being the subject of investigation by different scientific communities and being analysed using different mathematical tools, the connection between the isolated (IQS) and open (OQS) approaches to thermalization has remained opaque. Here we demonstrate that the fundamental difference between the two paradigms is the order in which the long time and the thermodynamic limits are taken. This difference implies that they describe physics on widely different time and length scales. Our analysis is carried out numerically for the case of a double quantum dot (DQD) coupled to a fermionic lead, also known as the interacting resonant level model in quantum impurity physics. We show how both OQS and IQS thermalization can be explored in this model on equal footing, allowing a fair comparison between the two. We find that while the quadratically coupled (free) DQD experiences no isolated thermalization, it of course does experience open thermalization. For the non-linearly interacting DQD coupled to a fermionic lead, the many-body interaction in the DQD breaks the integrability of the whole system. We find that this system shows strong evidence of both OQS and IQS thermalization in the same dynamics, but at widely different time scales, consistent with reversing the order of the long time and the thermodynamic limits.

• Political or environmental refugees? Re-examining the flight of the Vietnamese boat people, 1975-1995

  Saphia Fleury

  Mig. Pol. 4, 001 (2025) · published 15 May 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  This paper examines ecocide in South Vietnam during the Vietnam War (1954 to 1975) and the extent to which it drove the ‘boat people’ mass migration from Vietnam from 1975 to the mid-1990s. The exodus has become an archetype of a ‘political’ refugee flow, based on a Western Cold War narrative of people fleeing en masse from the persecution of an autocratic Communist regime. This paper challenges this assumption, showing how the interplay of environmental factors with political and military decisions contributed to the post-war exodus. These findings are reached through the analysis of historical primary sources as well as 229 oral history interviews, some 40 per cent of which were conducted with former child refugees. The implications have contemporary relevance because modern migration flows are frequently mixed, and climate change is further complicating the reasons that people leave their homes and their ability to access asylum. The conclusion argues that ecocide can, in some contexts, be considered a form of persecution for the purpose of refugee determination.

• Exclusion process subject to conformational size changes

  Yvan Rousset, Luca Ciandrini, Norbert Kern

  SciPost Phys. 6, 077 (2019) · published 26 June 2019 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We introduce a model for stochastic transport on a one-dimensional substrate with particles assuming different conformations during their stepping cycles. These conformations correspond to different footprints on the substrate: in order to advance, particles are subject to successive contraction and expansion steps with different characteristic rates. We thus extend the paradigmatic exclusion process, provide predictions for all regimes of these rates that are in excellent agreement with simulations, and show that the current-density relation may be affected considerably. Symmetries are discussed, and exploited. We discuss our results in the context of molecular motors, confronting a hand-over-hand and an inchworm stepping mechanism, as well as for ribosomes.

• Chiral adiabatic transmission protected by Fermi surface topology

  Isidora Araya Day, Kostas Vilkelis, Antonio L. R. Manesco, Ahmet Mert Bozkurt, Valla Fatemi, Anton R. Akhmerov

  SciPost Phys. 18, 098 (2025) · published 18 March 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We demonstrate that Andreev modes that propagate along a transparent Josephson junction have a perfect transmission at the point where three junctions meet. The chirality and the number of quantized transmission channels is determined by the topology of the Fermi surface and the vorticity of the superconducting phase differences at the trijunction. We explain this chiral adiabatic transmission (CAT) as a consequence of the adiabatic evolution of the scattering modes both in momentum and real space. The dispersion relation of the junction then separates the scattering trajectories by introducing inaccesible regions of phase space. We expect that CAT is observable in nonlocal conductance and thermal transport measurements. Furthermore, because it does not rely on particle-hole symmetry, CAT is also possible to observe directly in metamaterials.

• Tighter lower bounds on quantum annealing times

  Luis Pedro García-Pintos, Mrunmay Sahasrabudhe, Christian Arenz

  SciPost Phys. 18, 159 (2025) · published 16 May 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We derive lower bounds on the time needed for a quantum annealer to prepare the ground state of a target Hamiltonian. These bounds do not depend on the annealing schedule and can take the local structure of the Hamiltonian into account. Consequently, the bounds are computable without knowledge of the annealer's dynamics and, in certain cases, scale with the size of the system. We discuss spin systems where the bounds are polynomially tighter than existing bounds, qualitatively capturing the scaling of the exact annealing times as a function of the number of spins.

• On correlation functions in models related to the Temperley-Lieb algebra

  Kohei Fukai, Raphael Kleinemühl, Balázs Pozsgay, Eric Vernier

  SciPost Phys. 16, 003 (2024) · published 5 January 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We deal with quantum spin chains whose Hamiltonian arises from a representation of the Temperley-Lieb algebra, and we consider the mean values of those local operators which are generated by the Temperley-Lieb algebra. We present two key conjectures which relate these mean values to existing literature about factorized correlation functions in the XXZ spin chain. The first conjecture states that the finite volume mean values of the current and generalized current operators are given by the same simple formulas as in the case of the XXZ chain. The second conjecture states that the mean values of products of Temperley-Lieb generators can be factorized: they can expressed as sums of products of current mean values, such that the coefficients in the factorization depend neither on the eigenstate in question, nor on the selected representation of the algebra. The coefficients can be extracted from existing work on factorized correlation functions in the XXZ model. The conjectures should hold for all eigenstates that are non-degenerate with respect to the local charges of the models. We consider concrete representations, where we check the conjectures: the so-called golden chain, the $Q$-state Potts model, and the trace representation. We also explain how to derive the generalized current operators from concrete expressions for the local charges.

• When does a Fermi puddle become a Fermi sea? Emergence of pairing in two-dimensional trapped mesoscopic Fermi gases

  Emma K. Laird, Brendan C. Mulkerin, Jia Wang, Matthew J. Davis

  SciPost Phys. 17, 163 (2024) · published 11 December 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Pairing lies at the heart of superfluidity in fermionic systems. Motivated by recent experiments in mesoscopic Fermi gases, we study up to six fermionic atoms with equal masses and equal populations in two different spin states, confined in a quasi-two-dimensional harmonic trap. We couple a stochastic variational approach with the use of an explicitly correlated Gaussian basis set, which enables us to obtain highly accurate energies and structural properties. Utilising two-dimensional two-body scattering theory with a finite-range Gaussian interaction potential, we tune the effective range to model realistic quasi-two-dimensional scattering. We calculate the excitation spectrum, pair correlation function, and number of pairs as a function of increasing attractive interaction strength. For up to six fermions in the ground state, we find that opposite spin and momentum pairing is maximised well below the Fermi surface in momentum space. By contrast, corresponding experiments on twelve fermions have found that pairing is maximal at the Fermi surface and strongly suppressed beneath [M. Holten et al., Nature 606, 287-291 (2022)]. This suggests that the Fermi sea — which acts to suppress pairing at low momenta via Pauli blocking — emerges in the transition from six to twelve particles.

• Dynamical correlation functions in the Ising field theory

  István Csépányi, Márton Kormos

  SciPost Phys. 17, 162 (2024) · published 10 December 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We study finite temperature dynamical correlation functions of the magnetization operator in the one-dimensional Ising quantum field theory. Our approach is based on a finite temperature form factor series and on a Fredholm determinant representation of the correlators. While for space-like separations the Fredholm determinant can be efficiently evaluated numerically, for the time-like region it has convergence issues inherited from the form factor series. We develop a method to compute the correlation functions at time-like separations based on the analytic continuation of the space-time coordinates to complex values. Using this numerical technique, we explore all space-time and temperature regimes in both the ordered and disordered phases including short, large, and near-light-cone separations at low and high temperatures. We confirm the existing analytic predictions for the asymptotic behavior of the correlations except in the case of space-like correlations in the paramagnetic phase. For this case we derive a new closed form expression for the correlation length that has some unusual properties: it is a non-analytic function of both the space-time direction and the temperature, and its temperature dependence is non-monotonic.