Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• Planckian dissipation, minimal viscosity and the transport in cuprate strange metals

  Jan Zaanen

  SciPost Phys. 6, 061 (2019) · published 20 May 2019 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Could it be that the matter from the electrons in high Tc superconductors is of a radically new kind that may be called "many body entangled compressible quantum matter"? Much of this text is intended as an easy to read tutorial, explaining recent theoretical advances that have been unfolding at the cross roads of condensed matter- and string theory, black hole physics as well as quantum information theory. These developments suggest that the physics of such matter may be governed by surprisingly simple principles. My real objective is to present an experimental strategy to test critically whether these principles are actually at work, revolving around the famous linear resistivity characterizing the strange metal phase. The theory suggests a very simple explanation of this "unreasonably simple" behavior that is actually directly linked to remarkable results from the study of the quark gluon plasma formed at the heavy ion colliders: the "fast hydrodynamization" and the "minimal viscosity". This leads to high quality predictions for experiment: the momentum relaxation rate governing the resistivity relates directly to the electronic entropy, while at low temperatures the electron fluid should become unviscous to a degree that turbulent flows can develop even on the nanometre scale.

  132 citations

• The Machine Learning landscape of top taggers

  Gregor Kasieczka, Tilman Plehn, Anja Butter, Kyle Cranmer, Dipsikha Debnath, Barry M. Dillon, Malcolm Fairbairn, Darius A. Faroughy, Wojtek Fedorko, Christophe Gay, Loukas Gouskos, Jernej F. Kamenik, Patrick T. Komiske, Simon Leiss, Alison Lister, Sebastian Macaluso, Eric M. Metodiev, Liam Moore, Ben Nachman, Karl Nordström, Jannicke Pearkes, Huilin Qu, Yannik Rath, Marcel Rieger, David Shih, Jennifer M. Thompson, Sreedevi Varma

  SciPost Phys. 7, 014 (2019) · published 30 July 2019 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Based on the established task of identifying boosted, hadronically decaying top quarks, we compare a wide range of modern machine learning approaches. Unlike most established methods they rely on low-level input, for instance calorimeter output. While their network architectures are vastly different, their performance is comparatively similar. In general, we find that these new approaches are extremely powerful and great fun.

  132 citations

• Drude Weight for the Lieb-Liniger Bose Gas

  Benjamin Doyon, Herbert Spohn

  SciPost Phys. 3, 039 (2017) · published 15 December 2017 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Based on the method of hydrodynamic projections we derive a concise formula for the Drude weight of the repulsive Lieb-Liniger $\delta$-Bose gas. Our formula contains only quantities which are obtainable from the thermodynamic Bethe ansatz. The Drude weight is an infinite-dimensional matrix, or bilinear functional: it is bilinear in the currents, and each current may refer to a general linear combination of the conserved charges of the model. As a by-product we obtain the dynamical two-point correlation functions involving charge and current densities at small wavelengths and long times, and in addition the scaled covariance matrix of charge transfer. We expect that our formulas extend to other integrable quantum models.

  131 citations

• Comments on one-form global symmetries and their gauging in 3d and 4d

  Po-Shen Hsin, Ho Tat Lam, Nathan Seiberg

  SciPost Phys. 6, 039 (2019) · published 29 March 2019 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We study 3d and 4d systems with a one-form global symmetry, explore their consequences, and analyze their gauging. For simplicity, we focus on $\mathbb{Z}_N$ one-form symmetries. A 3d topological quantum field theory (TQFT) $\mathcal{T}$ with such a symmetry has $N$ special lines that generate it. The braiding of these lines and their spins are characterized by a single integer $p$ modulo $2N$. Surprisingly, if $\gcd(N,p)=1$ the TQFT factorizes $\mathcal{T}=\mathcal{T}'\otimes \mathcal{A}^{N,p}$. Here $\mathcal{T}'$ is a decoupled TQFT, whose lines are neutral under the global symmetry and $\mathcal{A}^{N,p}$ is a minimal TQFT with the $\mathbb{Z}_N$ one-form symmetry of label $p$. The parameter $p$ labels the obstruction to gauging the $\mathbb{Z}_N$ one-form symmetry; i.e.\ it characterizes the 't Hooft anomaly of the global symmetry. When $p=0$ mod $2N$, the symmetry can be gauged. Otherwise, it cannot be gauged unless we couple the system to a 4d bulk with gauge fields extended to the bulk. This understanding allows us to consider $SU(N)$ and $PSU(N)$ 4d gauge theories. Their dynamics is gapped and it is associated with confinement and oblique confinement -- probe quarks are confined. In the $PSU(N)$ theory the low-energy theory can include a discrete gauge theory. We will study the behavior of the theory with a space-dependent $\theta$-parameter, which leads to interfaces. Typically, the theory on the interface is not confining. Furthermore, the liberated probe quarks are anyons on the interface. The $PSU(N)$ theory is obtained by gauging the $\mathbb{Z}_N$ one-form symmetry of the $SU(N)$ theory. Our understanding of the symmetries in 3d TQFTs allows us to describe the interface in the $PSU(N)$ theory.

  126 citations

• Deep-learned Top Tagging with a Lorentz Layer

  Anja Butter, Gregor Kasieczka, Tilman Plehn, Michael Russell

  SciPost Phys. 5, 028 (2018) · published 26 September 2018 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We introduce a new and highly efficient tagger for hadronically decaying top quarks, based on a deep neural network working with Lorentz vectors and the Minkowski metric. With its novel machine learning setup and architecture it allows us to identify boosted top quarks not only from calorimeter towers, but also including tracking information. We show how the performance of our tagger compares with QCD-inspired and image-recognition approaches and find that it significantly increases the performance for strongly boosted top quarks.

  122 citations

• Anomalies in the space of coupling constants and their dynamical applications I

  Clay Córdova, Daniel S. Freed, Ho Tat Lam, Nathan Seiberg

  SciPost Phys. 8, 001 (2020) · published 6 January 2020 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  It is customary to couple a quantum system to external classical fields. One application is to couple the global symmetries of the system (including the Poincar\'{e} symmetry) to background gauge fields (and a metric for the Poincar\'{e} symmetry). Failure of gauge invariance of the partition function under gauge transformations of these fields reflects 't Hooft anomalies. It is also common to view the ordinary (scalar) coupling constants as background fields, i.e. to study the theory when they are spacetime dependent. We will show that the notion of 't Hooft anomalies can be extended naturally to include these scalar background fields. Just as ordinary 't Hooft anomalies allow us to deduce dynamical consequences about the phases of the theory and its defects, the same is true for these generalized 't Hooft anomalies. Specifically, since the coupling constants vary, we can learn that certain phase transitions must be present. We will demonstrate these anomalies and their applications in simple pedagogical examples in one dimension (quantum mechanics) and in some two, three, and four-dimensional quantum field theories. An anomaly is an example of an invertible field theory, which can be described as an object in (generalized) differential cohomology. We give an introduction to this perspective. Also, we use Quillen's superconnections to derive the anomaly for a free spinor field with variable mass. In a companion paper we will study four-dimensional gauge theories showing how our view unifies and extends many recently obtained results.

  113 citations

• Exotic $U(1)$ symmetries, duality, and fractons in 3+1-dimensional quantum field theory

  Nathan Seiberg, Shu-Heng Shao

  SciPost Phys. 9, 046 (2020) · published 5 October 2020 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We extend our exploration of nonstandard continuum quantum field theories in 2+1 dimensions to 3+1 dimensions. These theories exhibit exotic global symmetries, a peculiar spectrum of charged states, unusual gauge symmetries, and surprising dualities. Many of the systems we study have a known lattice construction. In particular, one of them is a known gapless fracton model. The novelty here is in their continuum field theory description. In this paper, we focus on models with a global $U(1)$ symmetry and in a followup paper we will study models with a global $\mathbb{Z}_N$ symmetry.

  111 citations

• An integrable Lorentz-breaking deformation of two-dimensional CFTs

  Monica Guica

  SciPost Phys. 5, 048 (2018) · published 12 November 2018 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  It has been recently shown that the deformation of an arbitrary two-dimensional conformal field theory by the composite irrelevant operator $T \bar T$, built from the components of the stress tensor, is solvable; in particular, the finite-size spectrum of the deformed theory can be obtained from that of the original CFT through a universal formula. We study a similarly universal, Lorentz-breaking deformation of two-dimensional CFTs that posess a conserved $U(1)$ current, $J$. The deformation takes the schematic form $J \bar T$ and is interesting because it preserves an $SL(2,\mathbb{R}) \times U(1)$ subgroup of the original global conformal symmetries. For the case of a purely (anti)chiral current, we find the finite-size spectrum of the deformed theory and study its thermodynamic properties. We test our predictions in a simple example involving deformed free fermions.

  111 citations

• How to GAN LHC events

  Anja Butter, Tilman Plehn, Ramon Winterhalder

  SciPost Phys. 7, 075 (2019) · published 4 December 2019 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Event generation for the LHC can be supplemented by generative adversarial networks, which generate physical events and avoid highly inefficient event unweighting. For top pair production we show how such a network describes intermediate on-shell particles, phase space boundaries, and tails of distributions. In particular, we introduce the maximum mean discrepancy to resolve sharp local features. It can be extended in a straightforward manner to include for instance off-shell contributions, higher orders, or approximate detector effects.

  108 citations

• Exotic symmetries, duality, and fractons in 2+1-dimensional quantum field theory

  Nathan Seiberg, Shu-Heng Shao

  SciPost Phys. 10, 027 (2021) · published 4 February 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We discuss nonstandard continuum quantum field theories in 2+1 dimensions. They exhibit exotic global symmetries, a subtle spectrum of charged excitations, and dualities similar to dualities of systems in 1+1 dimensions. These continuum models represent the low-energy limits of certain known lattice systems. One key aspect of these continuum field theories is the universal and important role played by discontinuous field configurations. In two companion papers, we will present 3+1-dimensional versions of these systems. In particular, we will discuss continuum quantum field theories of some models of fractons.

  107 citations