Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• Learning Summary Statistics for Bayesian Inference with Autoencoders

  Carlo Albert, Simone Ulzega, Firat Ozdemir, Fernando Perez-Cruz, Antonietta Mira

  SciPost Phys. Core 5, 043 (2022) · published 1 September 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  For stochastic models with intractable likelihood functions, approximate Bayesian computation offers a way of approximating the true posterior through repeated comparisons of observations with simulated model outputs in terms of a small set of summary statistics. These statistics need to retain the information that is relevant for constraining the parameters but cancel out the noise. They can thus be seen as thermodynamic state variables, for general stochastic models. For many scientific applications, we need strictly more summary statistics than model parameters to reach a satisfactory approximation of the posterior. Therefore, we propose to use the inner dimension of deep neural network based Autoencoders as summary statistics. To create an incentive for the encoder to encode all the parameter-related information but not the noise, we give the decoder access to explicit or implicit information on the noise that has been used to generate the training data. We validate the approach empirically on two types of stochastic models.

  8 citations

• Ground state topology of a four-terminal superconducting double quantum dot

  Lev Teshler, Hannes Weisbrich, Jonathan Sturm, Raffael L. Klees, Gianluca Rastelli, Wolfgang Belzig

  SciPost Phys. 15, 214 (2023) · published 29 November 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  In recent years, various classes of systems were proposed to realize topological states of matter. One of them are multiterminal Josephson junctions where topological Andreev bound states are constructed in the synthetic space of superconducting phases. Crucially, the topology in these systems results in a quantized transconductance between two of its terminals comparable to the quantum Hall effect. In this work, we study a double quantum dot with four superconducting terminals and show that it has an experimentally accessible topological regime in which the non-trivial topology can be measured. We also include Coulomb repulsion between electrons which is usually present in experiments and show how the topological region can be maximized in parameter space.

  8 citations

• Lifshitz symmetry: Lie algebras, spacetimes and particles

  José Figueroa-O'Farrill, Ross Grassie, Stefan Prohazka

  SciPost Phys. 14, 035 (2023) · published 15 March 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We study and classify Lie algebras, homogeneous spacetimes and coadjoint orbits (``particles'') of Lie groups generated by spatial rotations, temporal and spatial translations and an additional scalar generator. As a first step we classify Lie algebras of this type in arbitrary dimension. Among them is the prototypical Lifshitz algebra, which motivates this work and the name "Lifshitz Lie algebras". We classify homogeneous spacetimes of Lifshitz Lie groups. Depending on the interpretation of the additional scalar generator, these spacetimes fall into three classes: 1. ($d+2$)-dimensional Lifshitz spacetimes which have one additional holographic direction; 2. ($d+1$)-dimensional Lifshitz—Weyl spacetimes which can be seen as the boundary geometry of the spacetimes in (1) and where the scalar generator is interpreted as an anisotropic dilation; 3. and $(d+1)$-dimensional aristotelian spacetimes with one scalar charge, including exotic fracton-like symmetries that generalise multipole algebras. We also classify the possible central extensions of Lifshitz Lie algebras and we discuss the homogeneous symplectic manifolds of Lifshitz Lie groups in terms of coadjoint orbits.

  8 citations

• Marginal deformations from type IIA supergravity

  Nikolay Bobev, Pieter Bomans, Fridrik Freyr Gautason, Vincent S. Min

  SciPost Phys. 10, 140 (2021) · published 10 June 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We study marginal deformations of a class of three-dimensional $\mathcal{N}=2$ SCFTs that admit a holographic dual description in massive type IIA supergravity. We compute the dimension of the conformal manifold in these SCFTs and identify a special submanifold with enhanced flavor symmetry. We show how to apply the TsT transformation of Lunin-Maldacena to construct explicit supersymmetric AdS$_4$ solutions of massive type IIA supergravity with non-trivial internal fluxes that are the holographic dual of these marginal deformations. Finally, we also briefly comment on a class of RG flows between some of these SCFTs that also admit a holographic realization.

  7 citations

• HEJ 2.2: W boson pairs and Higgs boson plus jet production at high energies

  Jeppe R. Andersen, Bertrand Ducloué, Conor Elrick, Hitham Hassan, Andreas Maier, Graeme Nail, Jérémy Paltrinieri, Andreas Papaefstathiou, Jennifer M. Smillie

  SciPost Phys. Codebases 21 (2023) · published 6 December 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We present version 2.2 of the High Energy Jets (HEJ) Monte Carlo event generator for hadronic scattering processes at high energies. The new version adds support for two further processes of central phenomenological interest, namely the production of a W boson pair with equal charge together with two or more jets and the production of a Higgs boson with at least one jet. Furthermore, a new prediction for charged lepton pair production with high jet multiplicities is provided in the high-energy limit. The accuracy of HEJ 2.2 can be increased further through an enhanced interface to standard predictions based on conventional perturbation theory. We describe all improvements and provide extensive usage examples. HEJ 2.2 can be obtained from https://hej.hepforge.org.

  7 citations

• Shot noise distinguishes Majorana fermions from vortices injected in the edge mode of a chiral p-wave superconductor

  C. W. J. Beenakker, D. O. Oriekhov

  SciPost Phys. 9, 080 (2020) · published 23 November 2020 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The chiral edge modes of a topological superconductor support two types of excitations: fermionic quasiparticles known as Majorana fermions and $\pi$-phase domain walls known as edge vortices. Edge vortices are injected pairwise into counter-propagating edge modes by a flux bias or voltage bias applied to a Josephson junction. An unpaired edge mode carries zero electrical current on average, but there are time-dependent current fluctuations. We calculate the shot noise power produced by a sequence of edge vortices and find that it increases logarithmically with their spacing - even if the spacing is much larger than the core size so the vortices do not overlap. This nonlocality produces an anomalous V log V increase of the shot noise in a voltage-biased geometry, which serves as a distinguishing feature in comparison with the linear-in-V Majorana fermion shot noise.

  7 citations

• Why space could be quantised on a different scale to matter

  Matthew J. Lake

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 4, 014 (2021) · published 13 August 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The scale of quantum mechanical effects in matter is set by Planck's constant, $\hbar$. This represents the quantisation scale for material objects. In this article, we present a simple argument why the quantisation scale for space, and hence for gravity, may not be equal to $\hbar$. Indeed, assuming a single quantisation scale for both matter and geometry leads to the `worst prediction in physics', namely, the huge difference between the observed and predicted vacuum energies. Conversely, assuming a different quantum of action for geometry, $\beta \ll \hbar$, allows us to recover the observed density of the Universe. Thus, by measuring its present-day expansion, we may in principle determine, empirically, the scale at which the geometric degrees of freedom should be quantised.

  7 citations

• Positivity, low twist dominance and CSDR for CFTs

  Agnese Bissi, Aninda Sinha

  SciPost Phys. 14, 083 (2023) · published 25 April 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We consider a crossing symmetric dispersion relation (CSDR) for CFT four point correlation with identical scalar operators, which is manifestly symmetric under the cross-ratios $u,v$ interchange. This representation has several features in common with the CSDR for quantum field theories. It enables a study of the expansion of the correlation function around $u=v=1/4$, which is used in the numerical conformal bootstrap program. We elucidate several remarkable features of the dispersive representation using the four point correlation function of $\Phi_{1,2}$ operators in 2d minimal models as a test-bed. When the dimension of the external scalar operator ($\Delta_\sigma$) is less than $\frac{1}{2}$, the CSDR gets contribution from only a single tower of global primary operators with the second tower being projected out. We find that there is a notion of low twist dominance (LTD) which, as a function of $\Delta_\sigma$, is maximized near the 2d Ising model as well as the non-unitary Yang-Lee model. The CSDR and LTD further explain positivity of the Taylor expansion coefficients of the correlation function around the crossing symmetric point and lead to universal predictions for specific ratios of these coefficients. These results carry over to the epsilon expansion in $4-\epsilon$ dimensions. We also conduct a preliminary investigation of geometric function theory ideas, namely the Bieberbach-Rogosinski bounds.

  7 citations

• Spin polarization induced by decoherence in a tunneling one-dimensional Rashba model

  Solmar Varela, Mayra Peralta, Vladimiro Mujica, Bertrand Berche, Ernesto Medina

  SciPost Phys. Core 6, 044 (2023) · published 19 June 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Basic questions on the nature of spin polarization in two terminal systems and the way in which decoherence breaks Time-Reversal Symmetry (TRS) are analyzed. We exactly solve several one-dimensional models of tunneling electrons and show the interplay of spin precession and decay of the wavefunction in either a $U(1)$ magnetic field or an effective Spin-Orbit (SO) magnetic field. Spin polarization is clearly identified as the emergence of a spin component parallel to either magnetic field. We show that Onsager's reciprocity is fulfilled when time reversal symmetry is present and no spin polarization arises, no matter the barrier parameters or the SO strength. Introducing a Büttiker's decoherence probe, that preserves unitarity of time evolution, we show that breaking of TRS results in a strong spin polarization for realistic SO, and barrier strengths. We discuss the significance of these results as a very general scenario for the onset of the Chiral-Induced Spin Selectivity effect (CISS).

  7 citations

• KPZ fluctuations in finite volume

  Sylvain Prolhac

  SciPost Phys. Lect. Notes 81 (2024) · published 12 June 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  These lecture notes, adapted from the habilitation thesis of the author, survey in a first part various exact results obtained in the past few decades about KPZ fluctuations in one dimension, with a special focus on finite volume effects describing the relaxation to its stationary state of a finite system starting from a given initial condition. The second part is more specifically devoted to an approach allowing to express in a simple way the statistics of the current in the totally asymmetric simple exclusion process in terms of a contour integral on a compact Riemann surface, whose infinite genus limit leads to KPZ fluctuations in finite volume.

  7 citations