Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• Josephson junctions of topological nodal superconductors

  Ranjani Seshadri, Maxim Khodas, Dganit Meidan

  SciPost Phys. 12, 197 (2022) · published 23 June 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) offer a unique platform to study unconventional superconductivity, owing to the presence of strong spin-orbit coupling and a remarkable stability to an in-plane magnetic field. A recent study found that when an in-plane field applied to a superconducting monolayer TMD is increased beyond the Pauli critical limit, a quantum phase transition occurs into a topological nodal superconducting phase which hosts Majorana flat bands. We study the current-phase relation of this nodal superconductor in a Josephson junction geometry. We find that the nodal superconductivity is associated with an energy-phase relation that depends on the momentum transverse to the current direction, with a $4\pi$ periodicity in between pairs of nodal points. We interpret this response as a result of a series of quantum phase transitions, driven by the transverse momentum, which separate a topological trivial phase and two distinct topologically non-trivial phases characterized by different winding invariants. This analysis sheds light on the stability of the Majorana flat bands to symmetry-breaking perturbations.

  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

• Crystalline Weyl semimetal phase in Quantum Spin Hall systems under magnetic fields

  Fernando Dominguez, Benedikt Scharf, Ewelina M. Hankiewicz

  SciPost Phys. Core 5, 024 (2022) · published 28 April 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We investigate an unconventional topological phase transition that occurs in quantum spin Hall (QSH) systems when applying an external in-plane magnetic field. We show that this transition between QSH and trivial insulator phases is separated by a stable topological gapless phase, which is protected by the combination of particle-hole and reflection symmetries, and thus, we dub it as crystalline Weyl semimetal. We explore the stability of this new phase when particle-hole symmetry breaking terms are present. Especially, we predict a robust unconventional topological phase transition to be visible for materials described by Kane and Mele model even if particle-hole symmetry is significantly broken.

  3 citations

• Universal Entanglement Dynamics following a Local Quench

  Romain Vasseur, Hubert Saleur

  SciPost Phys. 3, 001 (2017) · published 6 July 2017 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We study the time dependence of the entanglement between two quantum wires after suddenly connecting them via tunneling through an impurity. The result at large times is given by the well known formula $S(t) \approx {1\over 3}\ln {t}$. We show that the intermediate time regime can be described by a universal cross-over formula $S=F(tT_K)$, where $T_K$ is the crossover (Kondo) temperature: the function $F$ describes the dynamical "healing" of the system at large times. We discuss how to obtain analytic information about $F$ in the case of an integrable quantum impurity problem using the massless Form-Factors formalism for twist and boundary condition changing operators. Our results are confirmed by density matrix renormalization group calculations and exact free fermion numerics.

  3 citations

• QED in the clothed-particle representation: a fresh look at positronium properties treatment

  Yan A. Kostylenko, Adam M. Arslanaliev, Aleksandr V. Shebeko

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 3, 045 (2020) · published 27 February 2020 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We have extended our previous applications of the method of unitary clothing transformations (UCTs) in mesodynamics [1, 2] to quantum electrodynamics (QED) [3, 4]. An analytical expression for the QED Hamiltonian in the clothed-particle representation (CPR) has been derived. Its distinctive feature is the appearance of a new family of the Hermitian and energy independent interaction operators built up in the e^2-order for the clothed electrons and positrons instead the primary canonical interaction between electromagnetic and electron-positron fields. The problem of describing the bound states in QED in case of the positronium system has been considered. The first correction to the energy of the ground state of the para-positronium and its decay rate to two photons has been calculated by using the new interaction operators.

  3 citations

• Generalized symmetries and anomalies of 3d $\mathcal{N}=4$ SCFTs

  Lakshya Bhardwaj, Mathew Bullimore, Andrea E. V. Ferrari, Sakura Schäfer-Nameki

  SciPost Phys. 16, 080 (2024) · published 20 March 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We study generalized global symmetries and their 't Hooft anomalies in 3d $\mathcal{N}=4$ superconformal field theories (SCFTs). Following some general considerations, we focus on good quiver gauge theories, comprised of balanced unitary nodes and unbalanced unitary and special unitary nodes. While the global form of the Higgs branch symmetry group may be determined from the UV Lagrangian, the global form of Coulomb branch symmetry groups and associated mixed 't Hooft anomalies are more subtle due to potential symmetry enhancement in the IR. We describe how Coulomb branch symmetry groups and their mixed 't Hooft anomalies can be deduced from the UV Lagrangian by studying center charges of various types of monopole operators, providing a concrete and unambiguous way to implement 't Hooft anomaly matching. The final expression for the symmetry group and 't Hooft anomalies has a concise form that can be easily read off from the quiver data, specifically from the positions of the unbalanced and flavor nodes with respect to the positions of the balanced nodes. We provide consistency checks by applying our method to compute symmetry groups of 3d $\mathcal{N}=4$ theories corresponding to magnetic quivers of 4d Class S theories and 5d SCFTs. We are able to match these results against the flavor symmetry groups of the 4d and 5d theories computed using independent methods. Another strong consistency check is provided by comparing symmetry groups and anomalies of two theories related by 3d mirror symmetry.

  3 citations

• Holographic Weyl anomaly in string theory

  Lorenz Eberhardt, Sridip Pal

  SciPost Phys. 16, 027 (2024) · published 24 January 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We compute the worldsheet sphere partition function of string theory on global AdS$_3$ with pure NS-NS flux. Because of an unfixed Möbius symmetry on the worldsheet, there is a cancellation of infinities and only a part of the answer is unambiguous. We show that it precisely reproduces the holographic Weyl anomaly and the ambiguous terms correspond to the possible counterterms of the boundary CFT.

  3 citations

• Tails of Instability and Decay: a Hydrodynamic Perspective

  Olalla A. Castro-Alvaredo, Cecilia De Fazio, Benjamin Doyon, Aleksandra A. Ziółkowska

  SciPost Phys. 12, 115 (2022) · published 31 March 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  In the context of quantum field theory (QFT), unstable particles are associated with complex-valued poles of two-body scattering matrices in the unphysical sheet of rapidity space. The Breit-Wigner formula relates this pole to the mass and life-time of the particle, observed in scattering events. In this paper, we uncover new, dynamical signatures of unstable excitations and show that they have a strong effect on the non-equilibrium properties of QFT. Focusing on a 1+1D integrable model, and using the theory of Generalized Hydrodynamics, we study the formation and decay of unstable particles by analysing the release of hot matter into a low-temperature environment. We observe the formation of tails and the decay of the emitted nonlinear waves, in sharp contrast to the situation without unstable excitations. We also uncover a new phenomenon by which a wave of a stable population of unstable particles may persist without decay for long times. We expect these signatures of the presence of unstable particles to have a large degree of universality. Our study shows that the out-of-equilibrium dynamics of many-body systems can be strongly affected not only by the spectrum, but also by excitations with finite life-times.

  3 citations

• Mechanisms for the emergence of Gaussian correlations

  Marek Gluza, Thomas Schweigler, Mohammadamin Tajik, João Sabino, Federica Cataldini, Frederik S. Møller, Si-Cong Ji, Bernhard Rauer, Jörg Schmiedmayer, Jens Eisert, Spyros Sotiriadis

  SciPost Phys. 12, 113 (2022) · published 30 March 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We comprehensively investigate two distinct mechanisms leading to memory loss of non-Gaussian correlations after switching off the interactions in an isolated quantum system undergoing out-of-equilibrium dynamics. The first mechanism is based on spatial scrambling and results in the emergence of locally Gaussian steady states in large systems evolving over long times. The second mechanism, characterized as `canonical transmutation', is based on the mixing of a pair of canonically conjugate fields, one of which initially exhibits non-Gaussian fluctuations while the other is Gaussian and dominates the dynamics, resulting in the emergence of relative Gaussianity even at finite system sizes and times. We evaluate signatures of the occurrence of the two candidate mechanisms in a recent experiment that has observed Gaussification in an atom-chip controlled ultracold gas and elucidate evidence that it is canonical transmutation rather than spatial scrambling that is responsible for Gaussification in the experiment. Both mechanisms are shown to share the common feature that the Gaussian correlations revealed dynamically by the quench are already present though practically inaccessible at the initial time. On the way, we present novel observations based on the experimental data, demonstrating clustering of equilibrium correlations, analyzing the dynamics of full counting statistics, and utilizing tomographic reconstructions of quantum field states. Our work aims at providing an accessible presentation of the potential of atom-chip experiments to explore fundamental aspects of quantum field theories in quantum simulations.

  3 citations

• Strategic non-regulation as migration governance

  Katharina Natter, Kelsey Norman, Nora Stel

  Mig. Pol. 2, 004 (2023) · published 9 November 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Over the last decade, critical migration scholarship has been increasingly concerned with how state actors in both the Global South and Global North deploy forms of inaction and ambivalent action to govern migrants. Scholars have mobilized and developed concepts to capture such strategic non-regulation, ranging from notions of standoffishness, ignorance, indifference, ambiguity, adhocracy, and informality in political science, IR and sociology, to necropolitics, ignorance, opacity, obfuscation, non-recording and liminality in anthropology, socio-legal studies and political geography. Scholars thus seem to agree that the strategic use of non-regulation by state actors is a significant aspect of migration governance. Yet, conceptual and methodological advances remain fragmented and scattered across geographical regions and disciplines. This paper argues that much can be gained by putting the different conceptual and methodological innovations on strategic non-regulation into dialogue. First, consolidating insights from different bodies of scholarly work moves analyses of strategic non-regulation from the fringes of migration scholarship to its center and demonstrates that strategic non-regulation is a core feature of migration governance. Second, bringing these different works together enables us to synthesize the variety of analytical strategies that scholars have devised to empirically locate the elusive phenomenon of strategic non-regulation. Overcoming disciplinary and geographical divides in the study of strategic non-regulation will also be key to advance broader social science debates on the political functionality of policy failure and on the interplay between state capacity and political will - in migration governance but also beyond.

  3 citations