Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• Gravitational higher-form symmetries and the origin of hidden symmetries in Kaluza-Klein compactifications

  Carmen Gómez-Fayrén, Tomás Ortín, Matteo Zatti

  SciPost Phys. Core 8, 010 (2025) · published 29 January 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We show that, in presence of isometries and non-trivial topology, the Einstein–Hilbert action is invariant under certain transformations of the metric which are not diffeomorphisms. These transformations are similar to the higher-form symmetries of field theories with $p$-form fields. In the context of toroidal Kaluza–Klein compactifications, we show that these symmetries give rise to some of the "hidden symmetries" (dualities) of the dimensionally-reduced theories.

  4 citations

• Schrödinger approach to Mean Field Games with negative coordination

  Thibault Bonnemain, Thierry Gobron, Denis Ullmo

  SciPost Phys. 9, 059 (2020) · published 23 October 2020 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Mean Field Games provide a powerful framework to analyze the dynamics of a large number of controlled agents in interaction. Here we consider such systems when the interactions between agents result in a negative coordination and analyze the behavior of the associated system of coupled PDEs using the now well established correspondence with the non linear Schr\"odinger equation. We focus on the long optimization time limit and on configurations such that the game we consider goes through different regimes in which the relative importance of disorder, interactions between agents and external potential varies, which makes possible to get insights on the role of the forward-backward structure of the Mean Field Game equations in relation with the way these various regimes are connected.

  4 citations

• Soliton gas of the integrable Boussinesq equation and its generalised hydrodynamics

  Thibault Bonnemain, Benjamin Doyon

  SciPost Phys. 18, 075 (2025) · published 28 February 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Generalised hydrodynamics (GHD) is a recent and powerful framework to study many-body integrable systems, quantum or classical, out of equilibrium. It has been applied to several models, from the delta Bose gas to the XXZ spin chain, the KdV soliton gas and many more. Yet it has only been applied to (1+1)-dimensional systems and generalisation to higher dimensions of space is non-trivial. We study the Boussinesq equation which, while generally considered to be less physically relevant than the KdV equation, is interesting as a stationary reduction of the (boosted) Kadomtsev-Petviashvili (KP) equation, a prototypical and universal example of a nonlinear integrable PDE in (2+1) dimensions. We follow a heuristic approach inspired by the Thermodynamic Bethe Ansatz in order to construct the GHD of the Boussinesq soliton gas. Such approach allows for a statistical mechanics interpretation of the Boussinesq soliton gas that comes naturally with the GHD picture. This is to be seen as a first step in the construction of the KP soliton gas, yielding insight on some classes of solutions from which we may be able to build an intuition on how to devise a more general theory. This also offers another perspective on the construction of anisotropic bidirectional soliton gases previously introduced phenomenologically by Congy et al (2021).

  4 citations

• Conformal line defects at finite temperature

  Julien Barrat, Bartomeu Fiol, Enrico Marchetto, Alessio Miscioscia, Elli Pomoni

  SciPost Phys. 18, 018 (2025) · published 15 January 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We study conformal field theories at finite temperature in the presence of a temporal conformal line defect, wrapping the thermal circle, akin to a Polyakov loop in gauge theories. Although several symmetries of the conformal group are broken, the model can still be highly constrained from its features at zero temperature. In this work we show that the defect and bulk one and two-point correlators can be written as functions of zero-temperature data and thermal one-point functions (defect and bulk). The defect one-point functions are new data and they are induced by thermal effects of the bulk. For this new set of data we derive novel sum rules and establish a bootstrap problem for the thermal defect one-point functions from the KMS condition. We also comment on the behaviour of operators with large scaling dimensions. Additionally, we relate the free energy and entropy density to the OPE data through the one-point function of the stress-energy tensor. Our formalism is validated through analytical computations in generalized free scalar field theory, and we present new predictions for the $O(N)$ model with a magnetic impurity in the $\varepsilon$-expansion and the large $N$ limit.

  4 citations

• Monopole harmonics on $\mathbb{CP}^{n-1}$

  Dmitri Bykov, Andrei Smilga

  SciPost Phys. 15, 195 (2023) · published 14 November 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We find the spectra and eigenfunctions of both ordinary and supersymmetric quantum-mechanical models describing the motion of a charged particle over the $\mathbb{CP}^{n-1}$ manifold in the presence of a background monopole-like gauge field. The states form degenerate $SU(n)$ multiplets and their wave functions acquire a very simple form being expressed via homogeneous coordinates. Their relationship to multidimensional orthogonal polynomials of a special kind is discussed. By the well-known isomorphism between the twisted Dolbeault and Dirac complexes, our construction also gives the eigenfunctions and eigenvalues of the Dirac operator on complex projective spaces in a monopole background.

  4 citations

• The non-rational limit of D-series minimal models

  Sylvain Ribault

  SciPost Phys. Core 3, 002 (2020) · published 31 July 2020 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We study the limit of D-series minimal models when the central charge tends to a generic irrational value $c\in (-\infty, 1)$. We find that the limit theory's diagonal three-point structure constant differs from that of Liouville theory by a distribution factor, which is given by a divergent Verlinde formula. Nevertheless, correlation functions that involve both non-diagonal and diagonal fields are smooth functions of the diagonal fields' conformal dimensions. The limit theory is a non-trivial example of a non-diagonal, non-rational, solved two-dimensional conformal field theory.

  4 citations

• Wilson loops and spherical branes

  Davide Astesiano, Pieter Bomans, Fridrik Freyr Gautason, Valentina Giangreco M. Puletti, Alexia Nix

  SciPost Phys. 18, 050 (2025) · published 12 February 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We study $\frac{1}{2}$-BPS Wilson loop operators in maximally supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory on $d$-dimensional spheres. Their vacuum expectation values can be computed at large $N$ through supersymmetric localisation. The holographic duals are given by back-reacted spherical D-branes. For $d≠ 4$, the resulting theories are non-conformal and correspondingly, the dual geometries do not possess an asymptotic AdS region. The main aim of this work is to compute the holographic Wilson loops by evaluating the partition function of a probe fundamental string and M2-brane in the dual geometry, focusing on the next-to-leading order. Along the way, we highlight a variety of issues related to the presence of a non-constant dilaton. In particular, the structure of the divergences of the one-loop partition functions takes a non-universal form in contrast to examples available in the literature. We devise a general framework to treat the divergences, successfully match the sub-leading scaling with $\lambda$ and $N$, and provide a first step towards obtaining the numerical prefactor.

  4 citations

• Quantum spin spiral ground state of the ferrimagnetic sawtooth chain

  Roman Rausch, Matthias Peschke, Cassian Plorin, Jürgen Schnack, Christoph Karrasch

  SciPost Phys. 14, 052 (2023) · published 28 March 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The ferrimagnetic phase of the sawtooth chain with mixed ferromagnetic nearest-neighbour interactions $J$ and antiferromagnetic next-nearest-neighbour interactions $J'$ (within the isotropic Heisenberg model) was previously characterized as a phase with commensurate order. In this paper, we demonstrate that the system in fact exhibits an incommensurate quantum spin spiral. Even though the ground state is translationally invariant in terms of the local spin expectations $\left<{\vec{S}_i}\right>$, the spiral can be detected via the connected spin-spin correlations $\left<{\vec{S}_i\cdot\vec{S}_j}\right>-\left<{\vec{S}_i}\right>\cdot\left<{\vec{S}_j}\right>$ between the apical spins. It has a long wavelength that grows with $J'$ and that soon exceeds finite-system sizes typically employed in numerical simulations. A faithful treatment thus requires the use of state-of-the-art simulations for large, periodic systems. In this work, we are able to accurately treat up to $L=400$ sites (200 unit cells) with periodic boundary conditions using the density-matrix renormaliztion group (DMRG). Exploiting the SU(2) symmetry allows us to directly compute the lowest-energy state for a given total spin. Our results are corroborated by variational uniform matrix product state (VUMPS) calculations, which work directly in the thermodynamic limit at the cost of a lower accuracy.

  4 citations

• Critical properties of a comb lattice

  Natalia Chepiga, Steven R. White

  SciPost Phys. 9, 013 (2020) · published 27 July 2020 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  In this paper we study the critical properties of the Heisenberg spin-1/2 model on a comb lattice -- a 1D backbone decorated with finite 1D chains -- the teeth. We address the problem numerically by a comb tensor network that duplicates the geometry of a lattice. We observe a fundamental difference between the states on a comb with even and odd number of sites per tooth, which resembles an even-odd effect in spin-1/2 ladders. The comb with odd teeth is always critical, not only along the teeth, but also along the backbone, which leads to a competition between two critical regimes in orthogonal directions. In addition, we show that in a weak-backbone limit the excitation energy scales as $1/(NL)$, and not as $1/N$ or $1/L$ typical for 1D systems. For even teeth in the weak backbone limit the system corresponds to a collection of decoupled critical chains of length $L$, while in the strong backbone limit, one spin from each tooth forms the backbone, so the effective length of a critical tooth is one site shorter, $L-1$. Surprisingly, these two regimes are connected via a state where a critical chain spans over two nearest neighbor teeth, with an effective length $2L$.

  4 citations

• RG flows in de Sitter: C-functions and sum rules

  Manuel Loparco

  SciPost Phys. 17, 079 (2024) · published 12 September 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We study the renormalization group flow of unitary Quantum Field Theories on two-dimensional de Sitter (dS) spacetime. We prove the existence of two functions of the radius of dS that interpolate between the central charges of the UV and IR fixed points of the flow when tuning the radius $R$ while keeping the mass scales fixed. The first is constructed from certain components of the two-point function of the stress tensor evaluated at antipodal separation. The second is the spectral weight of the stress tensor in the $\Delta=2$ discrete series. This last fact implies that the stress tensor of any unitary QFT in dS$_2$ must interpolate between the vacuum and states in the $\Delta=2$ discrete series irrep. We verify that the c-functions are monotonic for intermediate radii in the free massive boson and free massive fermion theories, but we lack a general proof of said monotonicity. We derive a variety of sum rules that relate the central charges and the c-functions to integrals of the two-point function of the trace of the stress tensor and to integrals of its spectral densities. The positivity of these formulas implies $c^{UV}≥ c^{IR}$. In the infinite radius limit the sum rules reduce to the well known formulas in flat space. Throughout the paper, we prove some general properties of the spectral decomposition of the stress tensor in dS$_{d+1}$.

  4 citations