Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• A decoherence explanation of the gallium neutrino anomaly

  Yasaman Farzan, Thomas Schwetz

  SciPost Phys. 15, 172 (2023) · published 19 October 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Gallium radioactive source experiments have reported a neutrino-induced event rate about 20% lower than expected with a high statistical significance. We present an explanation of this observation assuming quantum decoherence of the neutrinos in the gallium detectors at a scale of 2 m. This explanation is consistent with global data on neutrino oscillations, including solar neutrinos, if decoherence effects decrease quickly with energy, for instance with a power law $E_\nu^{-r}$ with r$\simeq$ 12. Our proposal does not require the presence of sterile neutrinos but implies a modification of the standard quantum mechanical evolution equations for active neutrinos.

  2 citations

• Correlation between antiferromagnetic and charge-density-wave order in UPt$_{2}$Si$_{2}$ studied by resonant X-Ray scattering

  Fusako Kon, Chihiro Tabata, Kodai Miura, Ruo Hibino, Hiroyuki Hidaka, Tatsuya Yanagisawa, Hironori Nakao, Hiroshi Amitsuka

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 11, 011 (2023) · published 5 June 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Relationship between antiferromagnetic order with Néel temperature of 35 K and charge-density-wave (CDW) order below 320 K of UPt$_2$Si$_2$ has been investigated by resonant X-ray scattering measurements. We have found that a resonant scattering signal develops below the Néel temperature at the ${ M}_{ 4}$ absorption edge of uranium with a propagation vector of the CDW order ${ q}_{ CDW} \sim$ (0.42, 0, 0). The experimental results reveal that the magnetic structure of UPt$_2$Si$_2$ is modulated by the CDW ordering.

  2 citations

• Competition between frustration and spin dimensionality in the classical antiferromagnetic $n$-vector model with arbitrary $n$

  Nikolaos P. Konstantinidis

  SciPost Phys. Core 6, 042 (2023) · published 8 June 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  A new method to characterize the strength of magnetic frustration is proposed by calculating the minimum dimensionality of the absolute ground states of the classical nearest-neighbor antiferromagnetic $n$-vector model with arbitrary $n$. Platonic solids in three and four dimensions and Archimedean solids have lowest-energy configurations in a number of spin dimensions equal to their real-space dimensionality. Fullerene molecules and geodesic icosahedra can produce ground states in as many as five spin dimensions. Frustration is also characterized by the maximum value of the round-state energy when the exchange interactions are allowed to vary.

  2 citations

• Massive superfluid vortices and vortex necklaces on a planar annulus

  Matteo Caldara, Andrea Richaud, Massimo Capone, Pietro Massignan

  SciPost Phys. 15, 057 (2023) · published 9 August 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We study a superfluid in a planar annulus hosting vortices with massive cores. An analytical point-vortex model shows that the massive vortices may perform radial oscillations on top of the usual uniform precession of their massless counterpart. Beyond a critical vortex mass, this oscillatory motion becomes unstable and the vortices are driven towards one of the edges. The analogy with the motion of a charged particle in a static electromagnetic field leads to the development of a plasma orbit theory that provides a description of the trajectories which remains accurate even beyond the regime of small radial oscillations. These results are confirmed by the numerical solution of coupled two-component Gross-Pitaevskii equations. The analysis is then extended to a necklace of vortices symmetrically arranged within the annulus.

  2 citations

• Statistical patterns of theory uncertainties

  Aishik Ghosh, Benjamin Nachman, Tilman Plehn, Lily Shire, Tim M. P. Tait, Daniel Whiteson

  SciPost Phys. Core 6, 045 (2023) · published 20 June 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  A comprehensive uncertainty estimation is vital for the precision program of the LHC. While experimental uncertainties are often described by stochastic processes and well-defined nuisance parameters, theoretical uncertainties lack such a description. We study uncertainty estimates for cross-section predictions based on scale variations across a large set of processes. We find patterns similar to a stochastic origin, with accurate uncertainties for processes mediated by the strong force, but a systematic underestimate for electroweak processes. We propose an improved scheme, based on the scale variation of reference processes, which reduces outliers in the mapping from leading order to next-to-leading-order in perturbation theory.

  2 citations

• Exact entanglement in the driven quantum symmetric simple exclusion process

  Denis Bernard, Ludwig Hruza

  SciPost Phys. 15, 175 (2023) · published 20 October 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Entanglement properties of driven quantum systems can potentially differ from the equilibrium situation due to long range coherences. We confirm this observation by studying a suitable toy model for mesoscopic transport: the open quantum symmetric simple exclusion process (QSSEP). We derive exact formulae for its mutual information between different subsystems in the steady state and show that it satisfies a volume law. Surprisingly, the QSSEP entanglement properties only depend on data related to its transport properties and we suspect that such a relation might hold for more general mesoscopic systems. Exploiting the free probability structure of QSSEP, we obtain these results by developing a new method to determine the eigenvalue spectrum of sub-blocks of random matrices from their so-called local free cumulants - a mathematical result on its own with potential applications in the theory of random matrices. As an illustration of this method, we show how to compute expectation values of observables in systems satisfying the Eigenstate Thermalization Hypothesis (ETH) from the local free cumulants.

  2 citations

• Quantum tricriticality of incommensurate phase induced by quantum strings in frustrated Ising magnetism

  Zheng Zhou (周正), Changle Liu (刘长乐), Dong-Xu Liu (刘东旭), Zheng Yan (严正), Yan Chen (陈焱), Xue-Feng Zhang (张学锋)

  SciPost Phys. 14, 037 (2023) · published 16 March 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Incommensurability plays a critical role in many strongly correlated systems. In some cases, the origin of such exotic order can be theoretically understood in the framework of 1d line-like topological excitations known as "quantum strings". Here we study an extended transverse field Ising model on a triangular lattice. Using large-scale quantum Monte Carlo simulations, we find that the spatial anisotropy can stabilize an incommensurate phase out of the commensurate clock order. Our results for the structure factor and the string density exhibit a linear relationship between incommensurate ordering wave vector and the density of quantum strings, which is reminiscent of hole density in under-doped cuprate superconductors. When introducing the next-nearest-neighbor interaction, we observe a quantum tricritical point out of the incommensurate phase. After carefully analyzing the ground state energies within different string topological sectors, we conclude that this tricriticality is non-trivially caused by effective long-range inter-string interactions with two competing terms following different decaying behaviors.

  2 citations

• Technical comment on the paper of Dessert et al. "The dark matter interpretation of the 3.5 keV line is inconsistent with blank-sky observations"

  Alexey Boyarsky, Denys Malyshev, Oleg Ruchayskiy, Denys Savchenko

  SciPost Astro. Core 1, 001 (2021) · published 4 May 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  An unidentified line at energy around 3.5 keV was detected in the spectra of dark matter-dominated objects. Recent work of Dessert et al. [1812.06976] used 30 Msec of XMM-Newton blank-sky observations to constrain the admissible line flux, challenging its dark matter decay origin. We demonstrate that these bounds are overestimated by more than an order of magnitude due to improper background modeling. Therefore the dark matter interpretation of the 3.5 keV signal remains viable.

  2 citations

• Resolving phase transitions with discontinuous Galerkin methods

  Eduardo Grossi, Nicolas Wink

  SciPost Phys. Core 6, 071 (2023) · published 25 October 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We demonstrate the applicability and advantages of Discontinuous Galerkin (DG) schemes in the context of the Functional Renormalization Group (fRG). We investigate the $O(N)$-model in the large $N$ limit. It is shown that the flow equation for the effective potential can be cast into a conservative form. We discuss results for the Riemann problem, as well as initial conditions leading to a first and second order phase transition. In particular, we unravel the mechanism underlying first order phase transitions, based on the formation of a shock in the derivative of the effective potential.

  2 citations

• Unveiling the anatomy of mode-coupling theory

  Ilian Pihlajamaa, Vincent E. Debets, Corentin C. L. Laudicina, Liesbeth M. C. Janssen

  SciPost Phys. 15, 217 (2023) · published 29 November 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The mode-coupling theory of the glass transition (MCT) has been at the forefront of fundamental glass research for decades, yet the theory's underlying approximations remain obscure. Here we quantify and critically assess the effect of each MCT approximation separately. Using Brownian dynamics simulations, we compute the memory kernel predicted by MCT after each approximation in its derivation, and compare it with the exact one. We find that some often-criticized approximations are in fact very accurate, while the opposite is true for others, providing new guiding cues for further theory development.

  2 citations