Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• Codebase release 2.0 for ALF (Algorithms for Lattice Fermions)

  F. F. Assaad, M. Bercx, F. Goth, A. Götz, J. S. Hofmann, E. Huffman, Z. Liu, F. Parisen Toldin, J. S. E. Portela, J. Schwab

  SciPost Phys. Codebases 1-r2.0 (2022) · published 22 August 2022 | Toggle abstract · src

  The Algorithms for Lattice Fermions package provides a general code for the finite-temperature and projective auxiliary-field quantum Monte Carlo algorithm. The code is engineered to be able to simulate any model that can be written in terms of sums of single-body operators, of squares of single-body operators and single-body operators coupled to a bosonic field with given dynamics. The package includes five pre-defined model classes: SU(N) Kondo, SU(N) Hubbard, SU(N) t-V and SU(N) models with long range Coulomb repulsion on honeycomb, square and N-leg lattices, as well as $Z_2$ unconstrained lattice gauge theories coupled to fermionic and $Z_2$ matter. An implementation of the stochastic Maximum Entropy method is also provided. One can download the code from our Git instance at https://git.physik.uni-wuerzburg.de/ALF/ALF/-/tree/ALF-2.0 and sign in to file issues.

  5 citations

• Fragmentation of two repelling Lund strings

  Cody B. Duncan, Peter Skands

  SciPost Phys. 8, 080 (2020) · published 19 May 2020 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Motivated by recent discoveries of flow-like effects in pp collisions, and noting that multiple string systems can form and hadronize simultaneously in such collisions, we develop a simple model for the repulsive interaction between two Lund strings with a positive (colour-oriented) overlap in rapidity. The model is formulated in momentum space and is based on a postulate of a constant net transverse momentum being acquired per unit of overlap along a common rapidity direction. To conserve energy, the strings shrink in the longitudinal direction, essentially converting a portion of the string invariant mass $m^2$ into $p_\perp^2$ for constant $m_\perp^2 = m^2 + p_\perp^2$ for each string. The reduction in string invariant mass implies a reduced overall multiplicity of produced hadrons; the increase in $p_\perp^2$ is local and only affects hadrons in the overlapping region. Starting from the simplest case of two symmetric and parallel strings with massless endpoints, we generalize to progressively more complicated configurations. We present an implementation of this model in the Pythia event generator and use it to illustrate the effects on hadron $p_\perp$ distributions and dihadron azimuthal correlations, contrasting it with the current version of the "shoving" model implemented in the same generator.

  5 citations

• SModelS v2.3: Enabling global likelihood analyses

  Mohammad Mahdi Altakach, Sabine Kraml, Andre Lessa, Sahana Narasimha, Timothée Pascal, Wolfgang Waltenberger

  SciPost Phys. 15, 185 (2023) · published 6 November 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We present version 2.3 of SModelS, a public tool for the fast reinterpretation of LHC searches for new physics on the basis of simplified-model results. The main new features are a database update with the latest available experimental results for full Run 2 luminosity, comprising in particular a large variety of electroweak-ino searches, and the ability to combine likelihoods from different analyses. This enables statistically more rigorous constraints and opens the way for global likelihood analyses for LHC searches. The physics impact is demonstrated for the electroweak-ino sector of the minimal supersymmetric standard model.

  5 citations

• Coloring mixed QCD/QED evolution

  Leif Gellersen, Stefan Prestel, Michael Spannowsky

  SciPost Phys. 13, 034 (2022) · published 26 August 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Parton showers are crucial components of high-energy physics calculations. Improving their modelling of QCD is an active research area since shower approximations are stumbling blocks for precision event generators. Naively, the interference between sub-dominant Standard-Model interactions and QCD can be of similar size to subleading QCD corrections. This article assesses the impact of QCD/QED interference effects in parton showers, by developing a sophisticated shower including QED, QCD at fixed color, and employing complete tree-level matrix element corrections for individual $N_C=3$ color configurations to embed interference. The resulting simulation indicates that QCD/QED interference effects are small for a simple test case and dwarfed by electro-weak resonance effects.

  5 citations

• Polariton condensation into vortex states in the synthetic magnetic field of a strained honeycomb lattice

  Cristóbal Lledó, Iacopo Carusotto, Marzena H. Szymańska

  SciPost Phys. 12, 068 (2022) · published 18 February 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Photonic materials are a rapidly growing platform for studying condensed matter physics with light, where the exquisite control capability is allowing us to learn about the relation between microscopic dynamics and macroscopic properties. One of the most interesting aspects of condensed matter is the interplay between interactions and the effect of an external magnetic field or rotation, responsible for a plethora of rich phenomena---Hall physics and quantized vortex arrays. At first sight, however, these effects for photons seem vetoed: they do not interact with each other and they are immune to magnetic fields and rotations. Yet in specially devised structures these effects can be engineered. Here, we propose the use of a synthetic magnetic field induced by strain in a honeycomb lattice of resonators to create a non-equilibrium Bose-Einstein condensate of light-matter particles (polaritons) in a rotating state, without the actual need for external rotation nor reciprocity-breaking elements. We show that thanks to the competition between interactions, dissipation and a suitably designed incoherent pump, the condensate spontaneously becomes chiral by selecting a single Dirac valley of the honeycomb lattice, occupying the lowest Landau level and forming a vortex array. Our results offer a new platform where to study the exciting physics of arrays of quantized vortices with light and pave the way to explore the transition from a vortex-dominated phase to the photonic analogue of the fractional quantum Hall regime.

  5 citations

• No superconductivity in Pb$_9$Cu$_1$(PO$_4$)$_6$O found in orbital and spin fluctuation exchange calculations

  Niklas Witt, Liang Si, Jan M. Tomczak, Karsten Held, Tim O. Wehling

  SciPost Phys. 15, 197 (2023) · published 21 November 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Finding a material that turns superconducting under ambient conditions has been the goal of over a century of research, and recently Pb$_{10-x}$Cu$_x$(PO$_4$)$_6$O aka LK-99 has been put forward as a possible contestant. In this work, we study the possibility of electronically driven superconductivity in LK-99 also allowing for electron or hole doping. We use an ab initio derived two-band model of the Cu $e_g$ orbitals for which we determine interaction values from the constrained random phase approximation (cRPA). For this two-band model we perform calculations in the fluctuation exchange (FLEX) approach to assess the strength of orbital and spin fluctuations. We scan over a broad range of parameters and enforce no magnetic or orbital symmetry breaking. Even under optimized conditions for superconductivity, spin and orbital fluctuations turn out to be too weak for superconductivity anywhere near to room-temperature. We contrast this finding to non-self-consistent RPA, where it is possible to induce spin singlet d-wave superconductivity at $T_c$ ≥300K if the system is put close enough to a magnetic instability.

  5 citations

• Interacting edge states of fermionic symmetry-protected topological phases in two dimensions

  Joseph Sullivan, Meng Cheng

  SciPost Phys. 9, 016 (2020) · published 5 August 2020 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Recently, it has been found that there exist symmetry-protected topological phases of fermions, which have no realizations in non-interacting fermionic systems or bosonic models. We study the edge states of such an intrinsically interacting fermionic SPT phase in two spatial dimensions, protected by $\mathbb{Z}_4\times\mathbb{Z}_2^T$ symmetry. We model the edge Hilbert space by replacing the internal $\mathbb{Z}_4$ symmetry with a spatial translation symmetry, and design an exactly solvable Hamiltonian for the edge model. We show that at low-energy the edge can be described by a two-component Luttinger liquid, with nontrivial symmetry transformations that can only be realized in strongly interacting systems. We further demonstrate the symmetry-protected gaplessness under various perturbations, and the bulk-edge correspondence in the theory.

  5 citations

• Topological effects and conformal invariance in long-range correlated random surfaces

  Nina Javerzat, Sebastian Grijalva, Alberto Rosso, Raoul Santachiara

  SciPost Phys. 9, 050 (2020) · published 12 October 2020 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We consider discrete random fractal surfaces with negative Hurst exponent $H<0$. A random colouring of the lattice is provided by activating the sites at which the surface height is greater than a given level $h$. The set of activated sites is usually denoted as the excursion set. The connected components of this set, the level clusters, define a one-parameter ($H$) family of percolation models with long-range correlation in the site occupation. The level clusters percolate at a finite value $h=h_c$ and for $H\leq-\frac{3}{4}$ the phase transition is expected to remain in the same universality class of the pure (i.e. uncorrelated) percolation. For $-\frac{3}{4}<H< 0$ instead, there is a line of critical points with continously varying exponents. The universality class of these points, in particular concerning the conformal invariance of the level clusters, is poorly understood. By combining the Conformal Field Theory and the numerical approach, we provide new insights on these phases. We focus on the connectivity function, defined as the probability that two sites belong to the same level cluster. In our simulations, the surfaces are defined on a lattice torus of size $M\times N$. We show that the topological effects on the connectivity function make manifest the conformal invariance for all the critical line $H<0$. In particular, exploiting the anisotropy of the rectangular torus ($M\neq N$), we directly test the presence of the two components of the traceless stress-energy tensor. Moreover, we probe the spectrum and the structure constants of the underlying Conformal Field Theory. Finally, we observed that the corrections to the scaling clearly point out a breaking of integrability moving from the pure percolation point to the long-range correlated one.

  5 citations

• Majorana bound states in encapsulated bilayer graphene

  Fernando Peñaranda, Ramón Aguado, Elsa Prada, Pablo San-Jose

  SciPost Phys. 14, 075 (2023) · published 18 April 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The search for robust topological superconductivity and Majorana bound states continues, exploring both one-dimensional (1D) systems such as semiconducting nanowires and two-dimensional (2D) platforms. In this work we study a 2D approach based on graphene bilayers encapsulated in transition metal dichalcogenides that, unlike previous proposals involving the Quantum Hall regime in graphene, requires weaker magnetic fields and does not rely on interactions. The encapsulation induces strong spin-orbit coupling on the graphene bilayer, which opens a sizeable gap and stabilizes fragile pairs of helical edge states. We show that, when subject to an in-plane Zeeman field, armchair edges can be transformed into p-wave one-dimensional topological superconductors by contacting them laterally with conventional superconductors. We demonstrate the emergence of Majorana bound states (MBSs) at the sample corners of crystallographically perfect flakes, belonging either to the D or the BDI symmetry classes depending on parameters. We compute the phase diagram, the resilience of MBSs against imperfections, and their manifestation as a 4$\pi$-periodic effect in Josephson junction geometries, all suggesting the existence of a topological phase within experimental reach.

  5 citations

• Massive holographic QFTs in de Sitter

  José Manuel Penín, Kostas Skenderis, Benjamin Withers

  SciPost Phys. 12, 182 (2022) · published 1 June 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We study strongly coupled mass-deformed-CFT on a fixed de Sitter spacetime in three dimensions via holography. We elucidate the global causal structure of the four-dimensional spacetime dual to the de Sitter invariant vacuum state. The conformal boundaries of de Sitter appear as spacelike defects sourced by the mass deformation, which extend into the bulk as curvature singularities in AdS. We compute all one- and two-point functions of the deformed-CFT stress tensor and a scalar operator order-by-order in the mass deformation for a simple holographic model. These correlation functions admit a spectral representation as a sum of simple poles corresponding to normalisable modes in the bulk.

  5 citations