Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• Snowmass white paper: The cosmological bootstrap

  Daniel Baumann, Daniel Green, Austin Joyce, Enrico Pajer, Guilherme L. Pimentel, Charlotte Sleight, Massimo Taronna

  SciPost Phys. Comm. Rep. 1 (2024) · published 23 July 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  This white paper summarizes recent progress in the cosmological bootstrap, an approach to the study of the statistics of primordial fluctuations from consistency with unitarity, locality and symmetry assumptions. We review the key ideas of the bootstrap method, with an eye towards future directions and ambitions of the program. Focusing on recent progress involving de Sitter and quasi-de Sitter backgrounds, we highlight the role of singularities and unitarity in constraining the form of the correlators. We also discuss nonperturbative formulations of the bootstrap, connections to anti-de Sitter space, and potential implications for holography.

  34 citations

• Scars from protected zero modes and beyond in $U(1)$ quantum link and quantum dimer models

  Saptarshi Biswas, Debasish Banerjee, Arnab Sen

  SciPost Phys. 12, 148 (2022) · published 6 May 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We demonstrate the presence of anomalous high-energy eigenstates, or many-body scars, in $U(1)$ quantum link and quantum dimer models on square and rectangular lattices. In particular, we consider the paradigmatic Rokhsar-Kivelson Hamiltonian $H=\mathcal{O}_{\mathrm{kin}} + \lambda \mathcal{O}_{\mathrm{pot}}$ where $\mathcal{O}_{\mathrm{pot}}$ ($\mathcal{O}_{\mathrm{kin}}$) is defined as a sum of terms on elementary plaquettes that are diagonal (off-diagonal) in the computational basis. Both these interacting models possess an exponentially large number of mid-spectrum zero modes in system size at $\lambda=0$ that are protected by an index theorem preventing any mixing with the nonzero modes at this coupling. We classify different types of scars for $|\lambda| \lesssim \mathcal{O}(1)$ both at zero and finite winding number sectors complementing and significantly generalizing our previous work [Banerjee and Sen, Phys. Rev. Lett. 126, 220601 (2021)]. The scars at finite $\lambda$ show a rich variety with those that are composed solely from the zero modes of $\mathcal{O}_{\mathrm{kin}}$, those that contain an admixture of both the zero and the nonzero modes of $\mathcal{O}_{\mathrm{kin}}$, and finally those composed solely from the nonzero modes of $\mathcal{O}_{\mathrm{kin}}$. We give analytic expressions for certain "lego scars" for the quantum dimer model on rectangular lattices where one of the linear dimensions can be made arbitrarily large, with the building blocks (legos) being composed of emergent singlets and other more complicated entangled structures.

  34 citations

• Bulk entanglement entropy in perturbative excited states

  Alexandre Belin, Nabil Iqbal, Sagar F. Lokhande

  SciPost Phys. 5, 024 (2018) · published 20 September 2018 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We compute the bulk entanglement entropy across the Ryu-Takayanagi surface for a one-particle state in a scalar field theory in AdS$_3$. We work directly within the bulk Hilbert space and include the spatial spread of the scalar wavefunction. We give closed form expressions in the limit of small interval sizes and compare the result to a CFT computation of entanglement entropy in an excited primary state at large $c$. Including the contribution from the backreacted minimal area, we find agreement between the CFT result and the FLM and JLMS formulas for quantum corrections to holographic entanglement entropy. This provides a non-trivial check in a state where the answer is not dictated by symmetry. Along the way, we provide closed-form expressions for the scalar field Bogoliubov coefficients that relate the global and Rindler slicings of AdS$_3$.

  34 citations

• Higher categorical symmetries and gauging in two-dimensional spin systems

  Clement Delcamp, Apoorv Tiwari

  SciPost Phys. 16, 110 (2024) · published 23 April 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We present a framework to systematically investigate higher categorical symmetries in two-dimensional spin systems. Though exotic, such generalised symmetries have been shown to naturally arise as dual symmetries upon gauging invertible symmetries. Our framework relies on an approach to dualities whereby dual quantum lattice models only differ in a choice of module 2-category over some input fusion 2-category. Given an arbitrary two-dimensional spin system with an ordinary symmetry, we explain how to perform the (twisted) gauging of any of its sub-symmetries. We then demonstrate that the resulting model has a symmetry structure encoded into the Morita dual of the input fusion 2-category with respect to the corresponding module 2-category. We exemplify this approach by specialising to certain finite group generalisations of the transverse-field Ising model, for which we explicitly define lattice symmetry operators organised into fusion 2-categories of higher representations of higher groups.

  34 citations

• Generalized hydrodynamics regime from the thermodynamic bootstrap program

  Axel Cortés Cubero, Miłosz Panfil

  SciPost Phys. 8, 004 (2020) · published 13 January 2020 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Within the generalized hydrodynamics (GHD) formalism for quantum integrable models, it is possible to compute simple expressions for a number of correlation functions at the Eulerian scale. Specializing to integrable relativistic field theories, we show the same correlators can be computed as a sum over form factors, the GHD regime corresponding to the leading contribution with one particle-hole pair on a finite energy-density background. The thermodynamic bootstrap program (TBP) formalism was recently introduced as an axiomatic approach to computing such finite-energy-density form factors for integrable field theories. We derive a new axiom within the TBP formalism from which we easily recover the predicted GHD Eulerian correlators. We also compute higher form factor contributions, with more particle-hole pairs, within the TBP, allowing for the computation of correlation functions in the diffusive, and beyond, GHD regimes. The two particle-hole form factors agree with expressions recently conjectured within the~GHD.

  33 citations

• Thermal conformal blocks

  Yan Gobeil, Alexander Maloney, Gim Seng Ng, Jie-qiang Wu

  SciPost Phys. 7, 015 (2019) · published 1 August 2019 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We study conformal blocks for thermal one-point-functions on the sphere in conformal field theories of general dimension. These thermal conformal blocks satisfy second order Casimir differential equations and have integral representations related to AdS Witten diagrams. We give an analytic formula for the scalar conformal block in terms of generalized hypergeometric functions. As an application, we deduce an asymptotic formula for the three-point coeffcients of primary operators in the limit where two of the operators are heavy.

  33 citations

• Unruh effect for interacting particles with ultracold atoms

  Arkadiusz Kosior, Maciej Lewenstein, Alessio Celi

  SciPost Phys. 5, 061 (2018) · published 11 December 2018 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The Unruh effect is a quantum relativistic effect where the accelerated observer perceives the vacuum as a thermal state. Here we propose the experimental realization of the Unruh effect for interacting ultracold fermions in optical lattices by a sudden quench resulting in vacuum acceleration with varying interactions strengths in the real temperature background. We observe the inversion of statistics for the low lying excitations in the Wightman function as a result of competition between the spacetime and BCS Bogoliubov transformations. This paper opens up new perspectives for simulators of quantum gravity.

  32 citations

• Sigma models on flags

  Kantaro Ohmori, Nathan Seiberg, Shu-Heng Shao

  SciPost Phys. 6, 017 (2019) · published 4 February 2019 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We study (1+1)-dimensional non-linear sigma models whose target space is the flag manifold $U(N)\over U(N_1)\times U(N_2)\cdots U(N_m)$, with a specific focus on the special case $U(N)/U(1)^{N}$. These generalize the well-known $\mathbb{CP}^{N-1}$ model. The general flag model exhibits several new elements that are not present in the special case of the $\mathbb{CP}^{N-1}$ model. It depends on more parameters, its global symmetry can be larger, and its 't Hooft anomalies can be more subtle. Our discussion based on symmetry and anomaly suggests that for certain choices of the integers $N_I$ and for specific values of the parameters the model is gapless in the IR and is described by an $SU(N)_1$ WZW model. Some of the techniques we present can also be applied to other cases.

  32 citations

• Comments on foliated gauge theories and dualities in 3+1d

  Po-Shen Hsin, Kevin Slagle

  SciPost Phys. 11, 032 (2021) · published 17 August 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We investigate the properties of foliated gauge fields and construct several foliated field theories in 3+1d that describe foliated fracton orders both with and without matter, including the recent hybrid fracton models. These field theories describe Abelian or non-Abelian gauge theories coupled to foliated gauge fields, and they fall into two classes of models that we call the electric models and the magnetic models. We show that these two classes of foliated field theories enjoy a duality. We also construct a model (using foliated gauge fields and an exactly solvable lattice Hamiltonian model) for a subsystem-symmetry protected topological (SSPT) phase, which is analogous to a one-form symmetry protected topological phase, with the subsystem symmetry acting on codimension-two subregions. We construct the corresponding gauged SSPT phase as a foliated two-form gauge theory. Some instances of the gauged SSPT phase are a variant of the X-cube model with the same ground state degeneracy and the same fusion, but different particle statistics.

  32 citations

• 3D gravity in a box

  Per Kraus, Ruben Monten, Richard M. Myers

  SciPost Phys. 11, 070 (2021) · published 27 September 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The quantization of pure 3D gravity with Dirichlet boundary conditions on a finite boundary is of interest both as a model of quantum gravity in which one can compute quantities which are "more local" than S-matrices or asymptotic boundary correlators, and for its proposed holographic duality to $T \overline{T}$-deformed CFTs. In this work we apply covariant phase space methods to deduce the Poisson bracket algebra of boundary observables. The result is a one-parameter nonlinear deformation of the usual Virasoro algebra of asymptotically AdS$_3$ gravity. This algebra should be obeyed by the stress tensor in any $T\overline{T}$-deformed holographic CFT. We next initiate quantization of this system within the general framework of coadjoint orbits, obtaining - in perturbation theory - a deformed version of the Alekseev-Shatashvili symplectic form and its associated geometric action. The resulting energy spectrum is consistent with the expected spectrum of $T\overline{T}$-deformed theories, although we only carry out the explicit comparison to $\mathcal{O}(1/\sqrt{c})$ in the $1/c$ expansion.

  31 citations