Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• Neural quantum state study of fracton models

  Marc Machaczek, Lode Pollet, Ke Liu

  SciPost Phys. 18, 112 (2025) · published 28 March 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Fracton models host unconventional topological orders in three and higher dimensions and provide promising candidates for quantum memory platforms. Understanding their robustness against quantum fluctuations is an important task but also poses great challenges due to the lack of efficient numerical tools. In this work, we establish neural quantum states (NQS) as new tools to study phase transitions in these models. Exact and efficient parametrizations are derived for three prototypical fracton codes — the checkerboard and X-cube model, as well as Haah's code — both in terms of a restricted Boltzmann machine (RBM) and a correlation-enhanced RBM. We then adapt the correlation-enhanced RBM architecture to a perturbed checkerboard model and reveal its strong first-order phase transition between the fracton phase and a trivial field-polarizing phase. To this end, we simulate this highly entangled system on lattices of up to 512 qubits with high accuracy, representing a cutting-edge application of variational neural-network methods. In addition, we reproduce the phase transition of the X-cube model previously obtained with quantum Monte Carlo and high-order series expansion methods. Our work demonstrates the remarkable potential of NQS in studying complicated three-dimensional problems and highlights physics-oriented constructions of NQS architectures.

• Hierarchy of degenerate stationary states in a boundary-driven dipole-conserving spin chain

  Apoorv Srivastava, Shovan Dutta

  SciPost Phys. 18, 111 (2025) · published 27 March 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Kinetically constrained spin chains serve as a prototype for structured ergodicity breaking in isolated quantum systems. We show that such a system exhibits a hierarchy of degenerate steady states when driven by incoherent pump and loss at the boundary. By tuning the relative pump and loss and how local the constraints are, one can stabilize mixed steady states, noiseless subsystems, and various decoherence-free subspaces, all of which preserve large amounts of information. We also find that a dipole-conserving bulk suppresses current in steady state. These exact results based on the flow in Hilbert space hold regardless of the specific Hamiltonian or drive mechanism. Our findings show that a competition of kinetic constraints and local drives can induce different forms of ergodicity breaking in open systems, which should be accessible in quantum simulators.

• Unveiling UV/IR mixing via symmetry defects: A view from topological entanglement entropy

  Jintae Kim, Yun-Tak Oh, Daniel Bulmash, Jung Hoon Han

  SciPost Phys. 18, 110 (2025) · published 25 March 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Some topological lattice models in two spatial dimensions exhibit intricate lattice size dependence in their ground state degeneracy (GSD). This and other features such as the position-dependent anyonic excitations are manifestations of UV/IR mixing. In the first part of this paper, we perform an exact calculation of the topological entanglement entropy (TEE) for a specific model, the rank-2 toric code. This analysis includes both contractible and non-contractible boundaries, with the minimum entropy states identified specifically for non-contractible boundaries. Our results show that TEE for a contractible boundary remains independent of lattice size, whereas TEE for non-contractible boundaries, similarly to the GSD, shows intricate lattice-size dependence. In the latter part of the paper we focus on the fact that the rank-2 toric code is an example of a translation symmetry-enriched topological phase, and show that viewing distinct lattice size as a consequence of different translation symmetry defects can explain both our TEE results and the GSD of the rank-2 toric code. Our work establishes the translation symmetry defect framework as a robust description of the UV/IR mixing in topological lattice models.

• The crystallographic spin point groups and their representations

  Hana Schiff, Alberto Corticelli, Afonso Guerreiro, Judit Romhányi, Paul McClarty

  SciPost Phys. 18, 109 (2025) · published 24 March 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The spin point groups are finite groups whose elements act on both real space and spin space. Among these groups are the magnetic point groups in the case where the real and spin space operations are locked to one another. The magnetic point groups are central to magnetic crystallography for strong spin-orbit coupled systems and the spin point groups generalize these to the intermediate and weak spin-orbit coupled cases. The spin point groups were introduced in the 1960's in the context of condensed matter physics and enumerated shortly thereafter. In this paper, we complete the theory ofcrystallographic spin point groups by presenting an account of these groups and their representation theory. Our main findings are that the so-called nontrivial spin point groups (numbering $598$ groups) have co-irreps corresponding exactly to the (co-)-irreps of regular or black and white groups and we tabulate this correspondence for each nontrivial group. However a total spin group, comprising the product of a nontrivial group and a spin-only group, has new co-irreps in cases where there is continuous rotational freedom. We provide explicit co-irrep tables for all these instances. We also discuss new forms of spin-only group extending the Litvin-Opechowski classes. To exhibit the usefulness of these groups to physically relevant problems we discuss a number of examples from electronic band structures of altermagnets to magnons.

  2 citations

• Staying on top of SMEFT-likelihood analyses

  Nina Elmer, Maeve Madigan, Tilman Plehn, Nikita Schmal

  SciPost Phys. 18, 108 (2025) · published 21 March 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We present a new global SMEFT analysis of LHC data in the top sector. After updating our set of measurements, we show how public ATLAS likelihoods can be incorporated into an external global analysis and how our analysis benefits from the additional information. We find that, unlike for the Higgs and electroweak sector, the SMEFT analysis of the top sector is mostly limited by the theory uncertainties. Finally, we present the first global SFitter analysis combining the top and electroweak-Higgs sectors.

• Nonlocality of deep thermalization

  Harshank Shrotriya, Wen Wei Ho

  SciPost Phys. 18, 107 (2025) · published 21 March 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We study the role of global system topology in governing deep thermalization, the relaxation of a local subsystem towards a maximally-entropic, uniform distribution of post-measurement states, upon observing the complementary subsystem in a local basis. Concretely, we focus on a class of (1+1)d systems exhibiting 'maximally-chaotic' dynamics, and consider how the rate of the formation of such a universal wavefunction distribution depends on boundary conditions of the system. We find that deep thermalization is achieved exponentially quickly in the presence of either periodic or open boundary conditions; however, the rate at which this occurs is twice as fast for the former than for the latter. These results are attained analytically using the calculus of integration over unitary groups, and supported by extensive numerical simulations. Our findings highlight the nonlocal nature of deep thermalization, and clearly illustrates that the physics underlying this phenomenon goes beyond that of standard quantum thermalization, which only depends on the net build-up of entanglement between a subsystem and its complement.

• Fusion of low-entanglement excitations in 2D toric code

  Jing-Yu Zhao, Xie Chen

  SciPost Phys. 18, 106 (2025) · published 20 March 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  On top of a $D$-dimensional gapped bulk state, Low Entanglement Excitations (LEE) on $d(<D)$-dimensional sub-manifolds can have extensive energy but preserves the entanglement area law of the ground state. Due to their multi-dimensional nature, the LEEs embody a higher-category structure in quantum systems. They are the ground state of a modified Hamiltonian and hence capture the notions of 'defects' of generalized symmetries. In previous works, we studied the low-entanglement excitations in a trivial phase as well as those in invertible phases. We find that LEEs in these phases have the same structure as lower-dimensional gapped phases and their defects within. In this paper, we study the LEEs inside non-invertible topological phases. We focus on the simple example of $\mathbb{Z}_2$ toric code and discuss how the fusion result of 1d LEEs with 0d morphisms can depend on both the choice of fusion circuit and the ordering of the fused defects.

• The geometry of cosmological correlators

  Paolo Benincasa, Gabriele Dian

  SciPost Phys. 18, 105 (2025) · published 20 March 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We provide a first principle definition of cosmological correlation functions for a large class of scalar toy models in arbitrary FRW cosmologies, in terms of novel geometries we name weighted cosmological polytopes. Each of these geometries encodes a universal rational integrand associated to a given Feynman graph. In this picture, all the possible ways of organising, and computing, cosmological correlators correspond to triangulations and subdivisions of the geometry, containing the in-in representation, the one in terms of wavefunction coefficients and many others. We also provide two novel contour integral representations, one connecting higher and lower loop correlators and the other one expressing any of them in terms of a building block. We study the boundary structure of these geometries allowing us to prove factorisation properties and Steinmann-like relations when single and sequential discontinuities are approached. We also show that correlators must satisfy novel vanishing conditions. As the weighted cosmological polytopes can be obtained as an orientation-changing operation onto a certain subdivision of the cosmological polytopes encoding the wavefunction of the Universe, this picture allows us to sharpen how the properties of cosmological correlators are inherited from the ones of the wavefunction. From a mathematical perspective, we also provide an in-depth characterisation of their adjoint surface.

  1 citation

• Learning tensor networks with tensor cross interpolation: New algorithms and libraries

  Yuriel Núñez Fernández, Marc K. Ritter, Matthieu Jeannin, Jheng-Wei Li, Thomas Kloss, Thibaud Louvet, Satoshi Terasaki, Olivier Parcollet, Jan von Delft, Hiroshi Shinaoka, Xavier Waintal

  SciPost Phys. 18, 104 (2025) · published 20 March 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The tensor cross interpolation (TCI) algorithm is a rank-revealing algorithm for decomposing low-rank, high-dimensional tensors into tensor trains/matrix product states (MPS). TCI learns a compact MPS representation of the entire object from a tiny training data set. Once obtained, the large existing MPS toolbox provides exponentially fast algorithms for performing a large set of operations. We discuss several improvements and variants of TCI. In particular, we show that replacing the cross interpolation by the partially rank-revealing LU decomposition yields a more stable and more flexible algorithm than the original algorithm. We also present two open source libraries, xfac in Python/C++ and TensorCrossInterpolation.jl in Julia, that implement these improved algorithms, and illustrate them on several applications. These include sign-problem-free integration in large dimension, the "superhigh-resolution" quantics representation of functions, the solution of partial differential equations, the superfast Fourier transform, the computation of partition functions, and the construction of matrix product operators.

  3 citations

• Statistical mechanics of exponentially many low lying states

  Swapnamay Mondal

  SciPost Phys. 18, 103 (2025) · published 19 March 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  It has recently been argued that for near-extremal black holes, the entropy and the energy above extremality respectively receive a $log T$ and a $T$-linear correction, where $T$ is the temperature. We show that both these features can be derived in a "low but not too low" temperature regime, by assuming the existence of exponentially many low lying states cleanly separated from rest of the spectrum, without using any specific theory. Argument of the logarithm in the expression of entropy is seen to be the ratio of temperature and the bandwidth of the low lying states. We argue that such spectrum might arise in non-supersymmetric extremal brane systems. Our findings strengthen Page's suggestion that there is no true degeneracy for non-supersymmetric extremal black holes.