Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• The MSHT20 Parton Distribution Functions

  R.S. Thorne, S. Bailey, T. Cridge, L. Harland-Lang, A.D. Martin

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 8, 018 (2022) · published 11 July 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We present the new MSHT20 set of parton distribution functions (PDFs) of the proton, determined from a global analysis of the available hard scattering data and superseding the MMHT14 sets. The parameterisation is now adapted and extended and we include a large number of new data sets: the final HERA and Tevatron data, and a significant number of LHC data sets on vector boson production, inclusive jets and top quark distributions. We include up to NNLO QCD corrections for all data sets that play a major role in the fit. There are some changes to central PDF values and a significant reduction in the uncertainties, but the PDFs and the predictions using them are generally within one standard deviation of the MMHT14 results. We discuss the phenomenological impact of our results.

  5 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.

  5 citations

• M$_k$ models: the field theory connection

  T. Fokkema, K. Schoutens

  SciPost Phys. 3, 004 (2017) · published 13 July 2017 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The M$_k$ models for 1D lattice fermions are characterised by ${\cal N}=2$ supersymmetry and by an order-$k$ clustering property. This paper highlights connections with quantum field theories (QFTs) in various regimes. At criticality the QFTs are minimal models of ${\cal N}=2$ supersymmetric conformal field theory (CFT) - we analyse finite size spectra on open chains with a variety of supersymmetry preserving boundary conditions. Specific staggering perturbations lead to a gapped regime corresponding to massive ${\cal N}=2$ supersymmetric QFT with Chebyshev superpotentials. At `extreme staggering' we uncover a simple physical picture with degenerate supersymmetric vacua and mobile kinks. We connect this kink-picture to the Chebyshev QFTs and use it to derive novel CFT character formulas. For clarity the focus in this paper is on the simplest models, M$_1$, M$_2$ and M$_3$.

  5 citations

• QArray: A GPU-accelerated constant capacitance model simulator for large quantum dot arrays

  Barnaby van Straaten, Joseph Hickie, Lucas Schorling, Jonas Schuff, Federico Fedele, Natalia Ares

  SciPost Phys. Codebases 35 (2024) · published 21 October 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Semiconductor quantum dot arrays are a leading architecture for the development of quantum technologies. Over the years, the constant capacitance model has served as a fundamental framework for simulating, understanding, and navigating the charge stability diagrams of small quantum dot arrays. However, while the size of the arrays keeps growing, solving the constant capacitance model becomes computationally prohibitive. This paper presents an open-source software package able to compute a $100 × 100$ pixels charge stability diagram of a 16-dot array in less than a second. Smaller arrays can be simulated in milliseconds - faster than they could be measured experimentally, enabling the creation of diverse datasets for training machine learning models and the creation of digital twins that can interface with quantum dot devices in real-time. Our software package implements its core functionalities in the systems programming language Rust and the high-performance numerical computing library JAX. The Rust implementation benefits from advanced optimisations and parallelisation, enabling the users to take full advantage of multi-core processors. The JAX implementation allows for GPU acceleration.

  5 citations

• Giant spatial anisotropy of magnon Landau damping in altermagnets

  António T. Costa, João C. G. Henriques, Joaquín Fernández-Rossier

  SciPost Phys. 18, 125 (2025) · published 11 April 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Altermagnets are a new class of magnetic materials with zero net magnetization (like antiferromagnets) but spin-split electronic bands (like ferromagnets) over a fraction of reciprocal space. As in antiferromagnets, magnons in altermagnets come in two flavours, that either add one or remove one unit of spin to the $S=0$ ground state. However, in altermagnets these two magnon modes are non-degenerate along some directions in reciprocal space. Here we show that the lifetime of altermagnetic magnons, due to Landau damping caused by coupling to Stoner modes, has a very strong dependence on both flavour and direction. Strikingly, coupling to Stoner modes leads to a complete suppression of magnon propagation along selected spatial directions. This giant anisotropy will impact electronic, spin, and energy transport properties and may be exploited in spintronic applications.

  5 citations

• On quantum melting of superfluid vortex crystals: From Lifshitz scalar to dual gravity

  Dung Xuan Nguyen, Sergej Moroz

  SciPost Phys. 17, 164 (2024) · published 11 December 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Despite a long history of studies of vortex crystals in rotating superfluids, their melting due to quantum fluctuations is poorly understood. Here we develop a fracton-elasticity duality to investigate a two-dimensional vortex lattice within the fast rotation regime, where the Lifshitz model of the collective Tkachenko mode serves as the leading-order low-energy effective theory. We incorporate topological defects and discuss several quantum melting scenarios triggered by their proliferation. Furthermore, we lay the groundwork for a dual non-linear emergent gravity description of the superfluid vortex crystals.

  5 citations

• ML-based top taggers: Performance, uncertainty and impact of tower & tracker data integration

  Rameswar Sahu, Kirtiman Ghosh

  SciPost Phys. 17, 166 (2024) · published 12 December 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Machine learning algorithms have the capacity to discern intricate features directly from raw data. We demonstrated the performance of top taggers built upon three machine learning architectures: a BDT that uses jet-level variables (high-level features, HLF) as input, a CNN (a miniature version of ResNet) trained on the jet image, and a GNN (LorentzNet) trained on the particle cloud representation of a jet utilizing the 4-momentum (low-level features, LLF) of the jet constituents as input. We found significant performance enhancement for all three classes of classifiers when trained on combined data from calorimeter towers and tracker detectors. The high resolution of the tracking data not only improved the classifier performance in the high transverse momentum region, but the information about the distribution and composition of charged and neutral constituents of the fat jets and subjets helped identify the quark/gluon origin of sub-jets and hence enhances top tagging efficiency. The LLF-based classifiers, such as CNN and GNN, exhibit significantly better performance when compared to HLF-based classifiers like BDT, especially in the high transverse momentum region. Nevertheless, the LLF-based classifiers trained on constituents' 4-momentum data exhibit substantial dependency on the jet modeling within Monte Carlo generators. The composite classifiers, formed by stacking a BDT on top of a GNN/CNN, not only enhance the performance of LLF-based classifiers but also mitigate the uncertainties stemming from the showering and hadronization model of the event generator. We have conducted a comprehensive study on the influence of the fat jet's reconstruction and labeling procedure on the efficiency of the classifiers.

  5 citations

• Dirac fermions and topological phases in magnetic topological insulator films

  Kai-Zhi Bai, Bo Fu, Shun-Qing Shen

  SciPost Phys. 17, 146 (2024) · published 27 November 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We develop a Dirac fermion theory for topological phases in magnetic topological insulator films. The theory is based on exact solutions of the energies and the wave functions for an effective model of the three-dimensional topological insulator (TI) film. It is found that the TI film consists of a pair of massless or massive Dirac fermions for the surface states, and a series of massive Dirac fermions for the bulk states. The massive Dirac fermion always carries zero or integer quantum Hall conductance when the valence band is fully occupied while the massless Dirac fermion carries a one-half quantum Hall conductance when the chemical potential is located around the Dirac point for a finite range. The magnetic exchange interaction in the magnetic layers in the film can be used to manipulate either the masses or chirality of the Dirac fermions and gives rise to distinct topological phases, which cover the known topological insulating phases, such as the quantum anomalous Hall effect, quantum spin Hall effect and axion effect, and also the novel topological metallic phases, such as the half-quantized Hall effect, half quantum mirror Hall effect, and metallic quantum anomalous Hall effect.

  5 citations

• Nonlinear Luttinger liquid: Exact result for the Green function in terms of the fourth Painlevé transcendent

  Tom Price, Dmitry L. Kovrizhin, Austen Lamacraft

  SciPost Phys. 2, 005 (2017) · published 21 February 2017 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We show that exact time dependent single particle Green function in the Imambekov-Glazman theory of nonlinear Luttinger liquids can be written, for any value of the Luttinger parameter, in terms of a particular solution of the Painlev\'e IV equation. Our expression for the Green function has a form analogous to the celebrated Tracy-Widom result connecting the Airy kernel with Painlev\'e II. The asymptotic power law of the exact solution as a function of a single scaling variable $x/\sqrt{t}$ agrees with the mobile impurity results. The full shape of the Green function in the thermodynamic limit is recovered with arbitrary precision via a simple numerical integration of a nonlinear ODE.

  5 citations

• Coherent forward scattering as a robust probe of multifractality in critical disordered media

  Maxime Martinez, Gabriel Lemarié, Bertrand Georgeot, Christian Miniatura, Olivier Giraud

  SciPost Phys. 14, 057 (2023) · published 31 March 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We study coherent forward scattering (CFS) in critical disordered systems, whose eigenstates are multifractals. We give general and simple arguments that make it possible to fully characterize the dynamics of the shape and height of the CFS peak. We show that the dynamics is governed by multifractal dimensions $D_1$ and $D_2$, which suggests that CFS could be used as an experimental probe for quantum multifractality. Our predictions are universal and numerically verified in three paradigmatic models of quantum multifractality: Power-law Random Banded Matrices (PRBM), the Ruijsenaars-Schneider ensembles (RS), and the three-dimensional kicked-rotor (3DKR). In the strong multifractal regime, we show analytically that these universal predictions exactly coincide with results from standard perturbation theory applied to the PRBM and RS models.

  5 citations