Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• Axion Mie theory of electron energy loss spectroscopy in topological insulators

  Johannes Schultz, Flavio S. Nogueira, Bernd Büchner, Jeroen van den Brink, Axel Lubk

  SciPost Phys. Core 4, 023 (2021) · published 14 September 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Electronic topological states of matter exhibit novel types of responses to electromagnetic fields. The response of strong topological insulators, for instance, is characterized by a so-called axion term in the electromagnetic Lagrangian which is ultimately due to the presence of topological surface states. Here we develop the axion Mie theory for the electromagnetic response of spherical particles including arbitrary sources of fields, i.e., charge and current distributions. We derive an axion induced mixing of transverse magnetic and transverse electric modes which are experimentally detectable through small induced rotations of the field vectors. Our results extend upon previous analyses of the problem. Our main focus is on the experimentally relevant problem of electron energy loss spectroscopy in topological insulators, a technique that has so far not yet been used to detect the axion electromagnetic response in these materials.

  5 citations

• CDMFT+HFD: An extension of dynamical mean field theory for nonlocal interactions applied to the single band extended Hubbard model

  Sarbajaya Kundu, David Sénéchal

  SciPost Phys. Core 7, 033 (2024) · published 3 June 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We examine the phase diagram of the extended Hubbard model on a square lattice, for both attractive and repulsive nearest-neighbor interactions, using CDMFT+HFD, a combination of Cluster Dynamical Mean Field theory (CDMFT) and a Hartree-Fock mean-field decoupling of the inter-cluster extended interaction. For attractive non-local interactions, this model exhibits a region of phase separation near half-filling, in the vicinity of which we find islands of d-wave superconductivity, decaying rapidly as a function of doping, with disconnected regions of extended s-wave order at smaller (higher) electron densities. On the other hand, when the extended interaction is repulsive, a Mott insulating state at half-filling is destabilized by hole doping, in the strong-coupling limit, in favor of d-wave superconductivity. At the particle-hole invariant chemical potential, we find a first-order phase transition from antiferromagnetism (AF) to d-wave superconductivity as a function of the attractive nearest-neighbor interaction, along with a deviation of the density from the half-filled limit. A repulsive extended interaction instead favors charge-density wave (CDW) order at half-filling.

  5 citations

• Boundary conditions for extremal black holes from 2d gravity

  Stephane Detournay, Thomas Smoes, Raphaela Wutte

  SciPost Phys. 16, 141 (2024) · published 30 May 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We devise new boundary conditions for the near-horizon geometries of extremal BTZ and Kerr black holes, as well as for the ultra-cold limit of the Kerr-de Sitter black hole. These boundary conditions are obtained as the higher-dimensional uplift of recently proposed boundary conditions in two-dimensional gravity. Their asymptotic symmetries consist in the semi-direct product of a Virasoro and a current algebra, of which we determine the central extensions.

  5 citations

• New directions in the search for dark matter

  Surjeet Rajendran

  SciPost Phys. Lect. Notes 56 (2022) · published 23 May 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The identification of the nature of dark matter is one of the most important problems confronting particle physics. Current observational constraints permit the mass of the dark matter to range from $\sim 10^{-22}$ eV - $10^{48}$ GeV. Given the weak nature of these bounds and the ease with which dark matter models can be constructed, it is clear that the problem can only be solved experimentally. In these lectures, I discuss methods to experimentally probe a wide range of dark matter candidates.

  5 citations

• Detecting nematic order in STM/STS data with artificial intelligence

  Jeremy B. Goetz, Yi Zhang, Michael J. Lawler

  SciPost Phys. 8, 087 (2020) · published 15 June 2020 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Detecting the subtle yet phase defining features in Scanning Tunneling Microscopy and Spectroscopy data remains an important challenge in quantum materials. We meet the challenge of detecting nematic order from local density of states data with supervised machine learning and artificial neural networks for the difficult scenario without sharp features such as visible lattice Bragg peaks or Friedel oscillation signatures in the Fourier transform spectrum. We train the artificial neural networks to classify simulated data of isotropic and anisotropic two-dimensional metals in the presence of disorder. The supervised machine learning succeeds only with at least one hidden layer in the ANN architecture, demonstrating it is a higher level of complexity than nematic order detected from Bragg peaks which requires just two neurons. We apply the finalized ANN to experimental STM data on CaFe2As2, and it predicts nematic symmetry breaking with 99% confidence (probability 0.99), in agreement with previous analysis. Our results suggest ANNs could be a useful tool for the detection of nematic order in STM data and a variety of other forms of symmetry breaking.

  5 citations

• Ground-state energy of a Richardson-Gaudin integrable BCS model

  Yibing Shen, Phillip S. Isaac, Jon Links

  SciPost Phys. Core 2, 001 (2020) · published 4 February 2020 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We investigate the ground-state energy of a Richardson-Gaudin integrable BCS model, generalizing the closed and open p+ip models. The Hamiltonian supports a family of mutually commuting conserved operators satisfying quadratic relations. From the eigenvalues of the conserved operators we derive, in the continuum limit, an integral equation for which a solution corresponding to the ground state is established. The energy expression from this solution agrees with the BCS mean-field result.

  5 citations

• Investigating finite-size effects in random matrices by counting resonances

  Anton Kutlin, Carlo Vanoni

  SciPost Phys. 18, 090 (2025) · published 12 March 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Resonance counting is an intuitive and widely used tool in Random Matrix Theory and Anderson Localization. Its undoubted advantage is its simplicity: in principle, it is easily applicable to any random matrix ensemble. On the downside, the notion of resonance is ill-defined, and the "number of resonances" does not have a direct mapping to any commonly used physical observable like the participation entropy, the fractal dimensions, or the gap ratios (r-parameter), restricting the method's predictive power to the thermodynamic limit only where it can be used for locating the Anderson localization transition. In this work, we reevaluate the notion of resonances and relate it to measurable quantities, building a foundation for the future application of the method to finite-size systems. To access the HTML version of the paper & discuss it with the authors, visit https://enabla.com/pub/558.

  5 citations

• Asymptotic structure of higher dimensional Yang-Mills theory

  Temple He, Prahar Mitra

  SciPost Phys. 16, 142 (2024) · published 30 May 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Using the covariant phase space formalism, we construct the phase space for non-Abelian gauge theories in (d+2)-dimensional Minkowski spacetime for any d ≥ 2, including the edge modes that symplectically pair to the low energy degrees of freedom of the gauge field. Despite the fact that the symplectic form in odd and even-dimensional spacetimes appear ostensibly different, we demonstrate that both cases can be treated in a unified manner by utilizing the shadow transform. Upon quantization, we recover the algebra of the vacuum sector of the Hilbert space and derive a Ward identity that implies the leading soft gluon theorem in (d+2)-dimensional spacetime.

  5 citations

• Markovian to non-Markovian phase transition in the operator dynamics of a mobile impurity

  Dominic Gribben, Jamir Marino, Shane P. Kelly

  SciPost Phys. Core 7, 060 (2024) · published 9 September 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We study a random unitary circuit model of an impurity moving through a chaotic medium. The exchange of information between the medium and impurity is controlled by varying the velocity of the impurity, $v_d$, relative to the speed of information propagation within the medium, $v_B$. Above supersonic velocities, $v_d> v_B$, information cannot flow back to the impurity after it has moved into the medium, and the resulting dynamics are Markovian. Below supersonic velocities, $v_d< v_B$, the dynamics of the impurity and medium are non-Markovian, and information is able to flow back onto the impurity. We show the two regimes are separated by a continuous phase transition with exponents directly related to the diffusive spreading of operators in the medium. This is demonstrated by monitoring an out-of-time-order correlator (OTOC) in a scenario where the impurity is substituted at an intermediate time. During the Markovian phase, information from the medium cannot transfer onto the replaced impurity, manifesting in no significant operator development. Conversely, in the non-Markovian phase, we observe that operators acquire support on the newly introduced impurity. We also characterize the dynamics using the coherent information and provide two decoders which can efficiently probe the transition between Markovian and non-Markovian information flow. Our work demonstrates that Markovian and non-Markovian dynamics can be separated by a phase transition, and we propose an efficient protocol for observing this transition.

  5 citations

• Boundary time crystals as AC sensors: Enhancements and constraints

  Dominic Gribben, Anna Sanpera, Rosario Fazio, Jamir Marino, Fernando Iemini

  SciPost Phys. 18, 100 (2025) · published 18 March 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We investigate the use of a boundary time crystals (BTCs) as quantum sensors of AC fields. Boundary time crystals are non-equilibrium phases of matter in contact to an environment, for which a macroscopic fraction of the many-body system breaks the time translation symmetry. We find an enhanced sensitivity of the BTC when its spins are resonant with the applied AC field, as quantified by the quantum Fisher information (QFI). The QFI dynamics in this regime is shown to be captured by a relatively simple Ansatz consisting of an initial power-law growth and late-time exponential decay. We study the scaling of the Ansatz parameters with resources (encoding time and number of spins) and identify a moderate quantum enhancement in the sensor performance through comparison with classical QFI bounds. Investigating the precise source of this performance, we find that despite of its long coherence time and multipartite correlations (advantageous properties for quantum metrology), the entropic cost of the BTC (which grows indefinitely in the thermodynamic limit) hinders an optimal decoding of the AC field information. This result has implications for future candidates of quantum sensors in open system and we hope it will encourage future study into the role of entropy in quantum metrology.

  5 citations