Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• SIMP Dark Matter

  Yonit Hochberg

  SciPost Phys. Lect. Notes 59 (2022) · published 29 July 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  These notes summarize the zoom-course on Strongly Interacting Massive Particle (SIMP) dark matter given at the Les Houches Summer School in the summer of 2021. An alternative title for this course would be `SIMPS, Cannibals and ELDERs', where our focus is on high-point interactions amongst dark matter particles. The spirit of the course is to give students a taste of these exciting developments in dark matter, while primarily teaching tricks and methods that are tough to captivate when reading textbooks or papers. These notes are written in similar spirit: I will put emphasis on how quantities scale and how to perform back of the envelope estimates, which should serve to help you when you develop the next great dark matter idea.

  3 citations

• Analytic neutrino oscillation probabilities

  Chee Sheng Fong

  SciPost Phys. 15, 013 (2023) · published 18 July 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  In the work, we derive exact analytic expressions for $(3+N)$-flavor neutrino oscillation probabilities in an arbitrary matter potential in term of matrix elements and eigenvalues of the Hamiltonian. With the analytic expressions, we demonstrate that nonunitary and nonstandard neutrino interaction scenarios are physically distinct: they satisfy different identities and can in principle be distinguished experimentally. The analytic expressions are implemented in a public code NuProbe, a tool for probing new physics through neutrino oscillations.

  3 citations

• Finiteness and the emergence of dualities

  Matilda Delgado, Damian van de Heisteeg, Sanjay Raman, Ethan Torres, Cumrun Vafa, Kai Xu

  SciPost Phys. 19, 047 (2025) · published 19 August 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We argue that the finiteness of quantum gravity amplitudes in fully compactified theories (at least in supersymmetric cases) leads to a bottom-up prediction for the existence of non-trivial dualities. In particular, finiteness requires the moduli space of massless fields to be compactifiable, meaning that its volume must be finite or at least grow no faster than that of Euclidean space. Moreover, we relate the compactifiability of moduli spaces to the condition that the lattice of charged objects transform in a semisimple representation under the action of the duality group. These ideas are supported by a wide variety of string theory examples.

  3 citations

• Model-independent determination of the cosmic growth factor

  Sophia Haude, Shabnam Salehi, Sofía Vidal, Matteo Maturi, Matthias Bartelmann

  SciPost Astro. 2, 001 (2022) · published 17 January 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Since the discovery of the accelerated cosmic expansion, one of the most important tasks in observational cosmology is to determine the nature of the dark energy. We should build our understanding on a minimum of assumptions in order to avoid biases from assumed cosmological models. The two most important functions describing the evolution of the universe and its structures are the expansion function E(a) and the linear growth factor D_+(a). The expansion function has been determined in previous papers in a model-independent way using distance moduli to type-Ia supernovae and assuming only a metric theory of gravity, spatial isotropy and homogeneity. Here, we extend this analysis in three ways: (1) We extend the data sample by combining the Pantheon measurements of type-Ia supernovae with measurements of baryonic acoustic oscillations; (2) we substantially simplify and generalise our method for reconstructing the expansion function; and (3) we use the reconstructed expansion function to determine the linear growth factor of cosmic structures, equally independent of specific assumptions on an underlying cosmological model other than the usual spatial symmetries. We show that the result is quite insensitive to the initial conditions for solving the growth equation, leaving the present-day matter-density parameter {\Omega}_m0 as the only relevant parameter for an otherwise purely empirical and accurate determination of the growth factor.

  3 citations

• The representation theory of seam algebras

  Alexis Langlois-Rémillard, Yvan Saint-Aubin

  SciPost Phys. 8, 019 (2020) · published 5 February 2020 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The boundary seam algebras $\mathsf{b}_{n,k}(\beta=q+q^{-1})$ were introduced by Morin-Duchesne, Ridout and Rasmussen to formulate algebraically a large class of boundary conditions for two-dimensional statistical loop models. The representation theory of these algebras $\mathsf{b}_{n,k}(\beta=q+q^{-1})$ is given: their irreducible, standard (cellular) and principal modules are constructed and their structure explicited in terms of their composition factors and of non-split short exact sequences. The dimensions of the irreducible modules and of the radicals of standard ones are also given. The methods proposed here might be applicable to a large family of algebras, for example to those introduced recently by Flores and Peltola, and Cramp\'e and Poulain d'Andecy.

  3 citations

• Generalized toric polygons, T-branes, and 5d SCFTs

  Antoine Bourget, Andrés Collinucci, Sakura Schäfer-Nameki

  SciPost Phys. 18, 079 (2025) · published 4 March 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  5d Superconformal Field Theories (SCFTs) are intrinsically strongly-coupled UV fixed points, whose realization hinges on string theoretic methods: they can be constructed by compactifying M-theory on local Calabi-Yau threefold singularities or alternatively from the world-volume of 5-brane-webs in type IIB string theory. There is a correspondence between 5-brane-webs and toric Calabi-Yau threefolds, however this breaks down when multiple 5-branes are allowed to end on a single 7-brane. In this paper, we extend this connection and provide a geometric realization of brane configurations including 7-branes. A web with 7-branes defines a so-called generalized toric polygon (GTP), which corresponds to combinatorial data that is obtained by removing vertices along external edges of a toric polygon. We identify the geometries associated to GTPs as non-toric deformations of toric Calabi-Yau threefolds and provide a precise, algebraic description of the geometry, when 7-branes are introduced along a single edge. The key ingredients in our analysis are T-branes in a type IIA frame, which includes D6-branes. We show that performing Hanany-Witten moves for the 7-branes on the type IIB side corresponds to switching on semisimple vacuum expectation values on the worldvolume of D6-branes, which in turn uplifts to complex structure deformations of the Calabi-Yau geometries. We test the proposal by computing the crepant resolutions of the deformed geometries, thereby checking consistency with the expected properties of the SCFTs.

  3 citations

• Anomaly of $(2+1)$-dimensional symmetry-enriched topological order from $(3+1)$-dimensional topological quantum field theory

  Weicheng Ye, Liujun Zou

  SciPost Phys. 15, 004 (2023) · published 10 July 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Symmetry acting on a (2+1)$D$ topological order can be anomalous in the sense that they possess an obstruction to being realized as a purely (2+1)$D$ on-site symmetry. In this paper, we develop a (3+1)$D$ topological quantum field theory to calculate the anomaly indicators of a (2+1)$D$ topological order with a general symmetry group $G$, which may be discrete or continuous, Abelian or non-Abelian, contain anti-unitary elements or not, and permute anyons or not. These anomaly indicators are partition functions of the (3+1)$D$ topological quantum field theory on a specific manifold equipped with some $G$-bundle, and they are expressed using the data characterizing the topological order and the symmetry actions. Our framework is applied to derive the anomaly indicators for various symmetry groups, including $\mathbb{Z}_2\times\mathbb{Z}_2$, $\mathbb{Z}_2^T\times\mathbb{Z}_2^T$, $SO(N)$, $O(N)^T$, $SO(N)\times \mathbb{Z}_2^T$, etc, where $\mathbb{Z}_2$ and $\mathbb{Z}_2^T$ denote a unitary and anti-unitary order-2 group, respectively, and $O(N)^T$ denotes a symmetry group $O(N)$ such that elements in $O(N)$ with determinant $-1$ are anti-unitary. In particular, we demonstrate that some anomaly of $O(N)^T$ and $SO(N)\times \mathbb{Z}_2^T$ exhibit symmetry-enforced gaplessness, i.e., they cannot be realized by any symmetry-enriched topological order. As a byproduct, for $SO(N)$ symmetric topological orders, we derive their $SO(N)$ Hall conductance.

  3 citations

• Aspects of 4d supersymmetric dynamics and geometry

  Shlomo S. Razamat, Evyatar Sabag, Orr Sela, Gabi Zafrir

  SciPost Phys. Lect. Notes 78 (2024) · published 12 February 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  In this set of five Lectures we present a basic toolbox to discuss the dynamics of four dimensional supersymmetric quantum field theories. In particular we overview the program of geometrically engineering the four dimensional supersymmetric models as compactifications of six dimensional SCFTs. We discuss how strong coupling phenomena in four dimensions, such as duality and emergence of symmetry, can be naturally imbedded in the geometric constructions. The Lectures mostly review results which previously appeared in the literature but also contain some unpublished derivations.

  3 citations

• A new class of higher quantum Airy structures as modules of $\mathcal{W}(\mathfrak{gl}_r)$-algebras

  Vincent Bouchard, Kieran Mastel

  SciPost Phys. 14, 169 (2023) · published 26 June 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Quantum $r$-Airy structures can be constructed as modules of $\mathcal{W}(\mathfrak{gl}_r)$-algebras via restriction of twisted modules for the underlying Heisenberg algebra. In this paper we classify all such higher quantum Airy structures that arise from modules twisted by automorphisms of the Cartan subalgebra consisting of products of disjoint cycles of the same length. An interesting feature of these higher quantum Airy structures is that the dilaton shifts must be chosen carefully to satisfy a matrix invertibility condition, with a natural choice being roots of unity. We explore how these higher quantum Airy structures may provide a definition of the Chekhov, Eynard, and Orantin topological recursion for reducible algebraic spectral curves. We also study under which conditions quantum $r$-Airy structures that come from modules twisted by arbitrary automorphisms can be extended to new quantum $(r+1)$-Airy structures by appending a trivial one-cycle to the twist without changing the dilaton shifts.

  3 citations

• Gapful electrons in a vortex core in granular superconductors

  Dmitry E. Kiselov, Mikhail A. Skvortsov, Mikhail V. Feigel'man

  SciPost Phys. 15, 008 (2023) · published 12 July 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We calculate the quasiparticle density of states (DoS) inside the vortex core in a granular superconductor, generalizing the classical solution applicable for dirty superconductors. A discrete version of the Usadel equation for a vortex is derived and solved numerically for a broad range of parameters. Electron DoS is found to be gapful when the coherence length $\xi$ becomes comparable to the distance between neighboring grains $l$. Minigap magnitude $E_g$ grows from zero at $\xi \approx 1.4 l$ to third of superconducting gap $\Delta_0 $ at $\xi \approx 0.5 l$. The absence of low-energy excitations is the main ingredient needed to understand strong suppression of microwave dissipation recently observed in a mixed state of granular Al.

  3 citations