Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• Statistical mechanics of coupled supercooled liquids in finite dimensions

  Benjamin Guiselin, Ludovic Berthier, Gilles Tarjus

  SciPost Phys. 12, 091 (2022) · published 14 March 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We study the statistical mechanics of supercooled liquids when the system evolves at a temperature $T$ with a field $\epsilon$ linearly coupled to its overlap with a reference configuration of the same liquid sampled at a temperature $T_0$. We use mean-field theory to fully characterize the influence of the reference temperature $T_0$, and we mainly study the case of a fixed, low-$T_0$ value in computer simulations. We numerically investigate the extended phase diagram in the $(\epsilon,T)$ plane of model glass-forming liquids in spatial dimensions $d=2$ and $d=3$, relying on umbrella sampling and reweighting techniques. For both $2d$ and $3d$ cases, a similar phenomenology with nontrivial thermodynamic fluctuations of the overlap is observed at low temperatures, but a detailed finite-size analysis reveals qualitatively distinct behaviors. We establish the existence of a first-order transition line for nonzero $\epsilon$ ending in a critical point in the universality class of the random-field Ising model (RFIM) in $d=3$. In $d=2$ instead, no phase transition is found in large enough systems at least down to temperatures below the extrapolated calorimetric glass transition temperature $T_g$. Our results confirm that glass-forming liquid samples of limited size display the thermodynamic fluctuations expected for finite systems undergoing a random first-order transition. They also support the relevance of the physics of the RFIM for supercooled liquids, which may then explain the qualitative difference between $2d$ and $3d$ glass-formers.

  13 citations

• Random quench predicts universal properties of amorphous solids

  Masanari Shimada, Eric De Giuli

  SciPost Phys. 12, 090 (2022) · published 11 March 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Amorphous solids display numerous universal features in their mechanics, structure, and response. Current models assume heterogeneity in mesoscale elastic properties, but require fine-tuning in order to quantitatively explain vibrational properties. A complete model should derive the magnitude and character of elastic heterogeneity from an initially structureless medium, through a model of the quenching process during which the temperature is rapidly lowered and the solid is formed. Here we propose a field-theoretic model of a quench, and compute structural, mechanical, and vibrational observables in arbitrary dimension $d$. This allows us to relate the properties of the amorphous solid to those of the initial medium, and to those of the quench. We show that previous mean-field results are subsumed by our analysis and unify spatial fluctuations of elastic moduli, long-range correlations of inherent state stress, universal vibrational anomalies, and localized modes into one picture.

  7 citations

• Relative entropic uncertainty relation for scalar quantum fields

  Stefan Floerchinger, Tobias Haas, Markus Schröfl

  SciPost Phys. 12, 089 (2022) · published 10 March 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Entropic uncertainty is a well-known concept to formulate uncertainty relations for continuous variable quantum systems with finitely many degrees of freedom. Typically, the bounds of such relations scale with the number of oscillator modes, preventing a straight-forward generalization to quantum field theories. In this work, we overcome this difficulty by introducing the notion of a functional relative entropy and show that it has a meaningful field theory limit. We present the first entropic uncertainty relation for a scalar quantum field theory and exemplify its behavior by considering few particle excitations and the thermal state. Also, we show that the relation implies the multidimensional Heisenberg uncertainty relation.

  2 citations

• Branch Point Twist Field Form Factors in the sine-Gordon Model II: Composite Twist Fields and Symmetry Resolved Entanglement

  David X. Horvath, Pasquale Calabrese, Olalla A. Castro-Alvaredo

  SciPost Phys. 12, 088 (2022) · published 10 March 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  In this paper we continue the programme initiated in Part I, that is the study of entanglement measures in the sine-Gordon model. In both parts, we have focussed on one specific technique, that is the well-known connection between branch point twist field correlators and measures of entanglement in 1+1D integrable quantum field theory. Our papers apply this technique for the first time to a non-diagonal theory with an involved particle spectrum, the sine-Gordon model. In this Part II we focus on a different entanglement measure, the symmetry resolved entanglement, and develop its associated twist field description, exploiting the underlying U(1) symmetry of the theory. In this context, conventional branch point twist fields are no longer the fields required, but instead we must work with one of their composite generalisations, which can be understood as the field resulting from the fusion of a standard branch point twist field and the sine-Gordon exponential field associated with U(1) symmetry. The resulting composite twist field has correlators which as usual admit a form factor expansion. In this paper we write the associated form factor equations and solve them for various examples in the breather sector by using the method of angular quantisation. We show that, in the attractive regime, this is the sector which provides the leading contribution to the symmetry resolved entropies, both Renyi and von Neumann. We compute the latter in the limit of a large region size and show that they satisfy the property of equipartition, that is the leading contribution to the symmetry resolved entanglement is independent of the symmetry sector.

  34 citations

• A novel background field approach to the confinement-deconfinement transition

  Duifje Maria van Egmond, Urko Reinosa, Julien Serreau, Matthieu Tissier

  SciPost Phys. 12, 087 (2022) · published 9 March 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We propose a novel approach to the confinement-deconfinement transition in Yang-Mills theories in the context of gauge-fixed calculations. The method is based on a background-field generalisation of the Landau gauge (to which it reduces at vanishing temperature) with a given, center-symmetric background. This is to be contrasted with most implementations of background field methods in gauge theories, where one uses a variable, self-consistent background. Our proposal is a bona fide gauge fixing that can easily be implemented on the lattice and in continuum approaches. The resulting gauge-fixed action explicitly exhibits the center symmetry of the nonzero temperature theory that controls the confinement-deconfinement transition. We show that, in that gauge, the electric susceptibility diverges at a second order transition [e.g., in the SU(2) theory], so that the gluon propagator is a clear probe of the transition. We implement our proposal in the perturbative Curci-Ferrari model, known for its successful description of various infrared aspects of Yang-Mills theories, including the confinement-deconfinement transition. Our one-loop calculation confirms our general expectation for the susceptibility while providing transition temperatures in excellent agreement with the SU(2) and SU(3) lattice values. Finally, the Polyakov loops above the transition show a more moderate rise, in contrast to previous implementations of the Curci-Ferrari model using a self-consistent background, and our SU(3) result agrees quite well with lattice results in the range $[0,2T_c]$.

  12 citations

• Towards traversable wormholes from force-free plasmas

  Nabil Iqbal, Simon F. Ross

  SciPost Phys. 12, 086 (2022) · published 9 March 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The near-horizon region of magnetically charged black holes can have very strong magnetic fields. A useful low-energy effective theory for fluctuations of the fields, coupled to electrically charged particles, is force-free electrodynamics. The low energy collective excitations include a large number of Alfven wave modes, which have a massless dispersion relation along the field worldlines. We attempt to construct traversable wormhole solutions using the negative Casimir energy of the Alfven wave modes, analogously to the recent construction using charged massless fermions. The behaviour of massless scalars in the near-horizon region implies that the size of the wormholes is strongly restricted and cannot be made large, even though the force free description is valid in a larger regime.

  3 citations

• Enstrophy from symmetry

  Raja Marjieh, Natalia Pinzani-Fokeeva, Amos Yarom

  SciPost Phys. 12, 085 (2022) · published 9 March 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We study symmetry principles associated with the approximately conserved enstrophy current, responsible for the inverse energy cascade in non relativistic 2+1 dimensional turbulence. We do so by identifying the accidental symmetry associated with enstrophy current conservation in a recently realized effective action principle for hydrodynamics. Our analysis deals with both relativistic and non relativistic effective actions and their associated symmetries.

  3 citations

• Semi-local Bounds on Null Energy in QFT

  Jackson R. Fliss, Ben Freivogel

  SciPost Phys. 12, 084 (2022) · published 7 March 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We investigate whether the null energy, averaged over some region of space- time, is bounded below in QFT. First, we use light-sheet quantization to prove a version of the “Smeared Null Energy Condition” (SNEC) proposed in [1], applicable for free and super-renormalizable QFT’s equipped with a UV cut- off. Through an explicit construction of squeezed states, we show that the SNEC bound cannot be improved by smearing on a light-sheet alone. We propose that smearing the null energy over two null directions defines an op- erator that is bounded below and independent of the UV cutoff, in what we call the “Double-Smeared Null Energy Condition,” or DSNEC. We indicate schematically how this bound behaves with respect to the smearing lengths and argue that the DSNEC displays a transition when the smearing lengths are comparable to the correlation length.

  4 citations

• Hyperbolic compactification of M-theory and de Sitter quantum gravity

  Giuseppe Bruno De Luca, Eva Silverstein, Gonzalo Torroba

  SciPost Phys. 12, 083 (2022) · published 4 March 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We present a mechanism for accelerated expansion of the universe in the generic case of negative-curvature compactifications of M-theory, with minimal ingredients. M-theory on a hyperbolic manifold with small closed geodesics supporting Casimir energy -- along with a single classical source (7-form flux) -- contains an immediate 3-term structure for volume stabilization at positive potential energy. Hyperbolic manifolds are well-studied mathematically, with an important rigidity property at fixed volume. They and their Dehn fillings to more general Einstein spaces exhibit explicit discrete parameters that yield small closed geodesics supporting Casimir energy. The off-shell effective potential derived by M. Douglas incorporates the warped product structure via the constraints of general relativity, screening negative energy. Analyzing the fields sourced by the localized Casimir energy and the available discrete choices of manifolds and fluxes, we find a regime where the net curvature, Casimir energy, and flux compete at large radius and stabilize the volume. Further metric and form field deformations are highly constrained by hyperbolic rigidity and warping effects, leading to calculations giving strong indications of a positive Hessian, and residual tadpoles are small. We test this via explicit back reacted solutions and perturbations in patches including the Dehn filling regions, initiate a neural network study of further aspects of the internal fields, and derive a Maldacena-Nunez style no-go theorem for Anti-de Sitter extrema. A simple generalization incorporating 4-form flux produces axion monodromy inflation. As a relatively simple de Sitter uplift of the large-N M2-brane theory, the construction applies to de Sitter holography as well as to cosmological modeling, and introduces new connections between mathematics and the physics of string/M theory compactifications.

  18 citations

• Circular Rosenzweig-Porter random matrix ensemble

  Wouter Buijsman, Yevgeny Bar Lev

  SciPost Phys. 12, 082 (2022) · published 3 March 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The Rosenzweig-Porter random matrix ensemble serves as a qualitative phenomenological model for the level statistics and fractality of eigenstates across the many-body localization transition in static systems. We propose a unitary (circular) analogue of this ensemble, which similarly captures the phenomenology of many-body localization in periodically driven (Floquet) systems. We define this ensemble as the outcome of a Dyson Brownian motion process. We show numerical evidence that this ensemble shares some key statistical properties with the Rosenzweig-Porter ensemble for both the eigenvalues and the eigenstates.

  14 citations