Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• Proliferation of non-linear excitations in the piecewise-linear perceptron

  Antonio Sclocchi, Pierfrancesco Urbani

  SciPost Phys. 10, 013 (2021) · published 21 January 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We investigate the properties of local minima of the energy landscape of a continuous non-convex optimization problem, the spherical perceptron with piecewise linear cost function and show that they are critical, marginally stable and displaying a set of pseudogaps, singularities and non-linear excitations whose properties appear to be in the same universality class of jammed packings of hard spheres. The piecewise linear perceptron problem appears as an evolution of the purely linear perceptron optimization problem that has been recently investigated in [1]. Its cost function contains two non-analytic points where the derivative has a jump. Correspondingly, in the non-convex/glassy phase, these two points give rise to four pseudogaps in the force distribution and this induces four power laws in the gap distribution as well. In addition one can define an extended notion of isostaticity and show that local minima appear again to be isostatic in this phase. We believe that our results generalize naturally to more complex cases with a proliferation of non-linear excitations as the number of non-analytic points in the cost function is increased.

  4 citations

• Ephemeral Learning - Augmenting Triggers with Online-Trained Normalizing Flows

  Anja Butter, Sascha Diefenbacher, Gregor Kasieczka, Benjamin Nachman, Tilman Plehn, David Shih, Ramon Winterhalder

  SciPost Phys. 13, 087 (2022) · published 7 October 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The large data rates at the LHC require an online trigger system to select relevant collisions. Rather than compressing individual events, we propose to compress an entire data set at once. We use a normalizing flow as a deep generative model to learn the probability density of the data online. The events are then represented by the generative neural network and can be inspected offline for anomalies or used for other analysis purposes. We demonstrate our new approach for a toy model and a correlation-enhanced bump hunt.

  4 citations

• Radiation, entanglement and islands from a boundary local quench

  Lorenzo Bianchi, Stefano De Angelis, Marco Meineri

  SciPost Phys. 14, 148 (2023) · published 8 June 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We study the entanglement and the energy density of the radiation emitted after a local quench in a boundary conformal field theory. We use the operator product expansion (OPE) to predict the early- and late-time behavior of the entanglement entropy and we find, under mild assumptions, a universal form for the leading term, which we test on some treatable two-dimensional examples. We also derive a general upper bound on the entanglement, valid along the full time evolution. In two dimensions, the bound is computed analytically, while in higher dimensions it is evaluated at early and late time via the OPE. These CFT predictions are then compared with a doubly-holographic setup where the CFT is interpreted as a reservoir for the radiation produced on an end-of-the-world brane. After finding the gravitational dual of a boundary local quench, we compute the time evolution of the holographic entanglement entropy, whose late-time behavior is in perfect agreement with the CFT predictions. In the brane+bath picture, unitarity of the time evolution is preserved thanks to the formation of an island. The holographic results can be recovered explicitly from the island formula, in the limit where the tension of the brane is close to the maximal value.

  4 citations

• Gaining insights on anyon condensation and 1-form symmetry breaking across a topological phase transition in a deformed toric code model

  Joe Huxford, Dung Xuan Nguyen, Yong Baek Kim

  SciPost Phys. 15, 253 (2023) · published 22 December 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We examine the condensation and confinement mechanisms exhibited by a deformed toric code model proposed in [Castelnovo and Chamon, Phys. Rev. B 77, 054433 (2008)]. The model describes both sides of a phase transition from a topological phase to a trivial phase. Our findings reveal an unconventional confinement mechanism that governs the behavior of the toric code excitations within the trivial phase. Specifically, the confined magnetic charge can still be displaced without any energy cost, albeit only via the application of non-unitary operators that reduce the norm of the state. This peculiar phenomenon can be attributed to a previously known feature of the model: It maintains the non-trivial ground state degeneracy of the toric code throughout the transition. We describe how this degeneracy arises in both phases in terms of spontaneous symmetry breaking of a generalized (1-form) symmetry and explain why such symmetry breaking is compatible with the trivial phase. The present study implies the existence of subtle considerations that must be addressed in the context of recently posited connections between topological phases and broken higher-form symmetries.

  4 citations

• Colour unwound - disentangling colours for azimuthal asymmetries in Drell-Yan scattering

  Daniël Boer, Tom van Daal, Jonathan R. Gaunt, Tomas Kasemets, Piet J. Mulders

  SciPost Phys. 3, 040 (2017) · published 19 December 2017 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  It has been suggested that a colour-entanglement effect exists in the Drell-Yan cross section for the 'double T-odd' contributions at low transverse momentum $Q_T$, rendering the colour structure different from that predicted by the usual factorisation formula [1]. These T-odd contributions can come from the Boer-Mulders or Sivers transverse momentum dependent distribution functions. The different colour structure should be visible already at the lowest possible order that gives a contribution to the double Boer-Mulders (dBM) or double Sivers (dS) effect, that is at the level of two gluon exchanges. To discriminate between the different predictions, we compute the leading-power contribution to the low-$Q_T$ dBM cross section at the two-gluon exchange order in the context of a spectator model. The computation is performed using a method of regions analysis with Collins subtraction terms implemented. The results conform with the predictions of the factorisation formula. In the cancellation of the colour entanglement, diagrams containing the three-gluon vertex are essential. Furthermore, the Glauber region turns out to play an important role - in fact, it is possible to assign the full contribution to the dBM cross section at the given order to the region in which the two gluons have Glauber scaling. A similar disentanglement of colour is found for the dS effect.

  4 citations

• (1,0) gauge theories on the six-sphere

  Usman Naseer

  SciPost Phys. 6, 002 (2019) · published 8 January 2019 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We construct gauge theories with a vector-multiplet and hypermultiplets of $(1,0)$ supersymmetry on the six-sphere. The gauge coupling on the sphere depends on the polar angle. This has a natural explanation in terms of the tensor branch of $(1,0)$ theories on the six-sphere. For the vector-multiplet we give an off-shell formulation for all supersymmetries. For hypermultiplets we give an off-shell formulation for one supersymmetry. We show that the path integral for the vector-multiplet localizes to solutions of the Hermitian-Yang-Mills equation, which is a generalization of the (anti-)self duality condition to higher dimensions. For the hypermultiplet, the path integral localizes to configurations where the field strengths of two complex scalars are related by an almost complex structure.

  4 citations

• HFLAV $τ$ branching fractions fit and measurements of Vus with $τ$ lepton data

  Alberto Lusiani

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 1, 001 (2019) · published 18 February 2019 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We report the status of the Heavy Flavour Averaging Group (HFLAV) averages of the $\tau$ lepton measurements We then update the latest published HFLAV global fit of the $\tau$ lepton branching fractions (Spring 2017) with recent results by BABAR. We use the fit results to update the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa (CKM) matrix element Vus measurements with the $\tau$ branching fractions. We combine the direct $\tau$ branching fraction measurements with indirect predictions using kaon branching fractions measurements to improve the determination of Vus using $\tau$ branching fractions. The Vus determinations based on the inclusive branching fraction of $\tau$ to strange final states are about $3\sigma$ lower than the Vus determination from the CKM matrix unitarity.

  4 citations

• Quantum computation with cat qubits

  Jérémie Guillaud, Joachim Cohen, Mazyar Mirrahimi

  SciPost Phys. Lect. Notes 72 (2023) · published 16 June 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  These are the lecture notes from the 2019 Les Houches Summer School on "Quantum Information Machines". After a brief introduction to quantum error correction and bosonic codes, we focus on the case of cat qubits stabilized by a nonlinear multi-photon driven dissipation process. We argue that such a system can be seen as a self-correcting qubit where bit-flip errors are robustly and exponentially suppressed. Next, we provide some experimental directions to engineer such a multi-photon driven dissipation process with superconducting circuits. Finally, we analyze various logical gates that can be implemented without re-introducing bit-flip errors. This set of bias-preserving gates pave the way towards a hardware-efficient and fault-tolerant quantum processor.

  4 citations

• Chiral anomaly trapped in Weyl metals: Nonequilibrium valley polarization at zero magnetic field

  Pablo M. Perez-Piskunow, Nicandro Bovenzi, Anton R. Akhmerov, Maxim Breitkreiz

  SciPost Phys. 11, 046 (2021) · published 31 August 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  In Weyl semimetals the application of parallel electric and magnetic fields leads to valley polarization -- an occupation disbalance of valleys of opposite chirality -- a direct consequence of the chiral anomaly. In this work, we present numerical tools to explore such nonequilibrium effects in spatially confined three-dimensional systems with a variable disorder potential, giving exact solutions to leading order in the disorder potential and the applied electric field. Application to a Weyl-metal slab shows that valley polarization also occurs without an external magnetic field as an effect of chiral anomaly "trapping": Spatial confinement produces chiral bulk states, which enable the valley polarization in a similar way as the chiral states induced by a magnetic field. Despite its finite-size origin, the valley polarization can persist up to macroscopic length scales if the disorder potential is sufficiently long ranged, so that direct inter-valley scattering is suppressed and the relaxation then goes via the Fermi-arc surface states.

  4 citations

• Two-loop QCD corrections for three-photon production at hadron colliders

  Samuel Abreu, Giuseppe De Laurentis, Harald Ita, Maximillian Klinkert, Ben Page, Vasily Sotnikov

  SciPost Phys. 15, 157 (2023) · published 12 October 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We complete the computation of the two-loop helicity amplitudes for the production of three photons at hadron colliders, including all contributions beyond the leading-color approximation. We reconstruct the analytic form of the amplitudes from numerical finite-field samples obtained with the numerical unitarity method. This method requires as input surface terms for all relevant five-point non-planar integral topologies, which we obtain by solving the associated syzygy problem in embedding space. The numerical samples are used to constrain compact spinor-helicity ansätze, which are optimized by taking advantage of the known one-loop analytic structure. We make our analytic results available in a public C++ library, which is suitable for immediate phenomenological applications. We estimate that the inclusion of the subleading-color contributions will decrease the size of the two-loop corrections by about 30% to 50%, and the NNLO cross sections by a few percent, compared to the results in the leading-color approximation.

  4 citations