Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• Higgs decays to two leptons and a photon beyond leading order in the SMEFT

  Tyler Corbett, Thor Rasmussen

  SciPost Phys. 13, 112 (2022) · published 21 November 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We present the three-body decay of the Higgs boson into two leptons and a photon to dimension-eight in the Standard Model Effective Field Theory (SMEFT). In order to obtain this result we interfere the full one-loop Standard Model result with the tree-level result in the SMEFT. This is the first calculation of the partial width of the Higgs boson into two leptons and a photon in the SMEFT to incorporate the full one-loop dependence for the Standard Model as well as the full tree level dimension-eight dependence in the SMEFT. We find that this channel can aid in distinguishing strongly interacting and weakly interacting UV completions of the SMEFT under standard assumptions. We also find that this channel presents the opportunity to distinguish different operator Classes within the SMEFT, potentially including contact $H\bar\ell\ell\gamma$ operators which are first generated only at dimension-eight in the SMEFT.

  3 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

• From combinatorial maps to correlation functions in loop models

  Linnea Grans-Samuelsson, Jesper Lykke Jacobsen, Rongvoram Nivesvivat, Sylvain Ribault, Hubert Saleur

  SciPost Phys. 15, 147 (2023) · published 9 October 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  In two-dimensional statistical physics, correlation functions of the $O(N)$ and Potts models may be written as sums over configurations of non-intersecting loops. We define sums associated to a large class of combinatorial maps (also known as ribbon graphs). We allow disconnected maps, but not maps that include monogons. Given a map with $n$ vertices, we obtain a function of the moduli of the corresponding punctured Riemann surface. Due to the map's combinatorial (rather than topological) nature, that function is single-valued, and we call it an $n$-point correlation function. We conjecture that in the critical limit, such functions form a basis of solutions of certain conformal bootstrap equations. They include all correlation functions of the $O(N)$ and Potts models, and correlation functions that do not belong to any known model. We test the conjecture by counting solutions of crossing symmetry for four-point functions on the sphere.

  3 citations

• Jet modifications from colour rope formation in dense systems of non-parallel strings

  Christian Bierlich, Smita Chakraborty, Gösta Gustafson, Leif Lönnblad

  SciPost Phys. 13, 023 (2022) · published 17 August 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We revisit our rope model for string fragmentation that has been shown to give a reasonable description of strangeness and baryon enhancement in high-multiplicity pp events at the LHC. A key feature of the model is that the enhancement is driven by the increased string tension due to strings overlapping in dense systems. By introducing an improved space-time picture for the overlap between fragmenting strings, where also non-parallel strings are properly taken into account, we are now able to investigate the enhancement both in jets and in the underlying event in a consistent way.

  3 citations

• The spectral form factor in the 't Hooft limit – Intermediacy versus universality

  Ward L. Vleeshouwers, Vladimir Gritsev

  SciPost Phys. Core 5, 051 (2022) · published 1 December 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The Spectral Form Factor (SFF) is a convenient tool for the characterization of eigenvalue statistics of systems with discrete spectra, and thus serves as a proxy for quantum chaoticity. This work presents an analytical calculation of the SFF of the Chern-Simons Matrix Model (CSMM), which was first introduced to describe the intermediate level statistics of disordered electrons at the mobility edge. The CSMM is characterized by a parameter $ 0 \leq q\leq 1$, where the Circular Unitary Ensemble (CUE) is recovered for $q\to 0$. The CSMM was later found as a matrix model description of $U(N)$ Chern-Simons theory on $S^3$, which is dual to a topological string theory characterized by string coupling $g_s=-\log q$. The spectral form factor is proportional to a colored HOMFLY invariant of a $(2n,2)$-torus link with its two components carrying the fundamental and antifundamental representations, respectively. We check that taking $N \to \infty$ whilst keeping $q<1$ reduces the connected SFF to an exact linear ramp of unit slope, confirming the main result from arXiv:2012.11703 for the specific case of the CSMM. We then consider the `t Hooft limit, where $N \to \infty$ and $q \to 1^-$ such that $y = q^N $ remains finite. As we take $q\to 1^-$, this constitutes the opposite extreme of the CUE limit. In the `t Hooft limit, the connected SFF turns into a remarkable sequence of polynomials which, as far as the authors are aware, have not appeared in the literature thus far. A gap opens in the spectrum and, after unfolding by a constant rescaling, the connected SFF approximates a linear ramp of unit slope for all $y$ except $y \approx 1$, where the connected SFF goes to zero. We thus find that, although the CSMM was introduced to describe intermediate statistics and the `t Hooft limit is the opposite limit of the CUE, we still recover Wigner-Dyson universality for all $y$ except $y\approx 1$.

  3 citations

• Annealed averages in spin and matrix models

  Laura Foini, Jorge Kurchan

  SciPost Phys. 12, 080 (2022) · published 3 March 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  A disordered system is denominated 'annealed' when the interactions themselves may evolve and adjust their values to lower the free energy. The opposite ('quenched') situation when disorder is fixed, is the one relevant for physical spin-glasses, and has received vastly more attention. Other problems however are more natural in the annealed situation: in this work we discuss examples where annealed averages are interesting, in the context of matrix models. We first discuss how in practice, when system and disorder adapt together, annealed systems develop `planted' solutions spontaneously, as the ones found in the study of inference problems. In the second part, we study the probability distribution of elements of a matrix derived from a rotationally invariant (not necessarily Gaussian) ensemble, a problem that maps into the annealed average of a spin glass model.

  3 citations

• The MSHT20 Parton Distribution Functions

  R.S. Thorne, S. Bailey, T. Cridge, L. Harland-Lang, A.D. Martin

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 8, 018 (2022) · published 11 July 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We present the new MSHT20 set of parton distribution functions (PDFs) of the proton, determined from a global analysis of the available hard scattering data and superseding the MMHT14 sets. The parameterisation is now adapted and extended and we include a large number of new data sets: the final HERA and Tevatron data, and a significant number of LHC data sets on vector boson production, inclusive jets and top quark distributions. We include up to NNLO QCD corrections for all data sets that play a major role in the fit. There are some changes to central PDF values and a significant reduction in the uncertainties, but the PDFs and the predictions using them are generally within one standard deviation of the MMHT14 results. We discuss the phenomenological impact of our results.

  3 citations

• Clustering in $^{18}$O - absolute determination of branching ratios via high-resolution particle spectroscopy

  S. Pirrie, C. Wheldon, Tz. Kokalova, J. Bishop, R. Hertenberger, H.-F. Wirth, S.~Bailey, N. Curtis, D. Dell'Aquila, Th. Faestermann, D. Mengoni, R. Smith, D.Torresi, A. Turner

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 3, 009 (2020) · published 24 February 2020 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The determination of absolute branching ratios for high-energy states in light nuclei is an important and useful tool for probing the underlying nuclear structure of individual resonances: for example, in establishing the tendency of an excited state towards $\alpha$-cluster structure. Difficulty arises in measuring these branching ratios due to similarities in available decay channels, such as ($^{18}$O,$n$) and ($^{18}$O,$2n$), as well as differences in geometric efficiencies due to population of bound excited levels in daughter nuclei. Methods are presented using Monte Carlo techniques to overcome these issues.

  3 citations

• Parity and spin CFT with boundaries and defects

  Ingo Runkel, Lóránt Szegedy, Gérard M. T. Watts

  SciPost Phys. 15, 207 (2023) · published 27 November 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  This paper is a follow-up to [J. High Energy Phys. 06, 025 (2020)] in which two-dimensional conformal field theories in the presence of spin structures are studied. In the present paper we define four types of CFTs, distinguished by whether they need a spin structure or not in order to be well-defined, and whether their fields have parity or not. The cases of spin dependence without parity, and of parity without the need of a spin structure, have not, to our knowledge, been investigated in detail so far. We analyse these theories by extending the description of CFT correlators via three-dimensional topological field theory developed in [Nucl. Phys. B 646, 353 (2002)] to include parity and spin. In each of the four cases, the defining data are a special Frobenius algebra $F$ in a suitable ribbon fusion category, such that the Nakayama automorphism of $F$ is the identity (oriented case) or squares to the identity (spin case). We use the TFT to define correlators in terms of $F$ and we show that these satisfy the relevant factorisation and single-valuedness conditions. We allow for world sheets with boundaries and topological line defects, and we specify the categories of boundary labels and the fusion categories of line defect labels for each of the four types. The construction can be understood in terms of topological line defects as gauging a possibly non-invertible symmetry. We analyse the case of a $\mathbb{Z}_2$-symmetry in some detail and provide examples of all four types of CFT, with Bershadsky-Polyakov models illustrating the two new types.

  3 citations

• LinReTraCe: The linear response transport centre

  Matthias Pickem, Emanuele Maggio, Jan M. Tomczak

  SciPost Phys. Codebases 16 (2023) · published 17 July 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We describe the "Linear Response Transport Centre" (LinReTraCe), a package for the simulation of transport properties of solids. LinReTraCe captures quantum (in)coherence effects beyond semi-classical Boltzmann techniques, while incurring similar numerical costs. The enabling algorithmic innovation is a semi-analytical evaluation of Kubo formulae for resistivities and the coefficients of Hall, Seebeck and Nernst. We detail the program's architecture, its interface and usage with electronic-structure packages such as WIEN2k, VASP, and Wannier90, as well as versatile tight-binding settings.

  3 citations