Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• SINDRUM II

  A. van der Schaaf

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 5, 008 (2021) · published 6 September 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  In 1987 a collaboration including ETHZ - UZH - PSI - RWTH Aachen - Univ. Tbilisi proposed a new search for μe conversion in muonic atoms. The SINDRUM II spectrometer came into operation in the PSI μE1 area in 1989, but a dedicated beam line was delayed until 1998 by technical setbacks.

  2 citations

• Python-JAX-based fast Stokesian dynamics

  Kim William Torre, Raoul D. Schram, Joost de Graaf

  SciPost Phys. Codebases 56 (2025) · published 30 June 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Stokesian Dynamics (SD) is a powerful computational framework for simulating the motion of particles in a viscous Newtonian fluid under Stokes-flow conditions. Traditional SD implementations can be computationally expensive as they rely on the inversion of large mobility matrices to determine hydrodynamic interactions. Recently, however, the simulation of thermalized systems with large numbers of particles has become feasible [Fiore and Swan, J. Fluid Mech. 878, 544 (2019)]. Their "fast Stokesian dynamics" (FSD) method leverages a saddle-point formulation to ensure overall scaling of the algorithm that is linear in the number of particles $\mathcal{O}(N)$; performance relies on dedicated graphics-processing-unit computing. Here, we present a different route toward implementing FSD, which instead leverages the Just-in-Time (JIT) compilation capabilities of Google JAX. We refer to this implementation as JFSD and perform benchmarks on it to verify that it has the right scaling and is sufficiently fast by the standards of modern computational physics. In addition, we provide a series of physical test cases that help ensure accuracy and robustness, as the code undergoes further development. Thus, JFSD is ready to facilitate the study of hydrodynamic effects in particle suspensions across the domains of soft, active, and granular matter.

  2 citations

• Short range nucleon correlations studied with electron and photon probes

  I.J. Douglas MacGregor

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 3, 010 (2020) · published 24 February 2020 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  This paper reviews experimental research into two- and three-body nucleon-nucleon interactions, carried out by the University of Glasgow Nuclear Physics research group. A key aim of these studies has been to elucidate the role of short-range nucleon-nucleon correlations (SRC). Studies of photon-induced two- and three-nucleon emission reactions from a range of light nuclei, carried out at the 840 MeV Mainz electron microtron MAMI-B, have provided detailed information on the contributing mechanisms. More recent electron scattering studies at the 6.0 GeV Jefferson Laboratory have probed SRC at high values of Q2 and xB and suggested a connection between SRC and the EMC effect.

  2 citations

• Light Nuclei Production in Au+Au Collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}$ = 3 GeV from the STAR experiment

  Hui Liu

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 10, 040 (2022) · published 11 August 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Light nuclei production is expected to be sensitive to baryon density fluctuations and can be used to probe the signatures of QCD critical point and/or a first-order phase transition in heavy-ion collisions. In this proceedings, we present the spectra and yields of protons ($p$) and light nuclei ($d$, $t$, $^{3}\mathrm{He}$, $^{4}\mathrm{He}$) in Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}$ = 3 GeV by the STAR experiment. Finally, it is found that the kinetic freeze-out dynamics (temperature $T_{kin}$ $vs.$ average radial flow velocity $\langle\beta_{T}\rangle$) at 3 GeV extracted with the blast-wave model deviate from the trends at high energies ($\sqrt{s_{\mathrm{NN}}}$ = 7.7 - 200 GeV), indicating a different medium equation of state.

  2 citations

• Beyond braid statistics: Constructing a lattice model for anyons with exchange statistics intrinsic to one dimension

  Sebastian Nagies, Botao Wang, Adam C. Knapp, André Eckardt, Nathan L. Harshman

  SciPost Phys. 16, 086 (2024) · published 26 March 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Anyons obeying fractional exchange statistics arise naturally in two dimensions: Hard-core two-body constraints make the configuration space of particles not simply-connected. The braid group describes how topologically-inequivalent exchange paths can be associated to non-trivial geometric phases for abelian anyons. Braid-anyon exchange statistics can also be found in one dimension (1D), but this requires broken Galilean invariance to distinguish different ways for two anyons to exchange. However, recently it was shown that an alternative form of exchange statistics can occur in 1D because hard-core three-body constraints also make the configuration space not simply-connected. Instead of the braid group, the topology of exchange paths and their associated non-trivial geometric phases are described by the traid group. In this article we propose a first concrete model realizing this alternative form of anyonic exchange statistics. Starting from a bosonic lattice model that implements the desired geometric phases with number-dependent Peierls phases, we then define anyonic operators so that the kinetic energy term in the Hamiltonian becomes local and quadratic with respect to them. The ground-state of this traid-anyon-Hubbard model exhibits several indications of exchange statistics intermediate between bosons and fermions, as well as signs of emergent approximate Haldane exclusion statistics. The continuum limit results in a Galilean invariant Hamiltonian with eigenstates that correspond to previously constructed continuum wave functions for traid anyons. This provides not only an a-posteriori justification of our lattice model, but also shows that our construction serves as an intuitive approach to traid anyons, i.e. anyons intrinsic to 1D.

  2 citations

• Alibis of Exclusion: The role of ethnic economies in the differentiated inclusion of refugees in Berlin

  Jagat Sohail

  Mig. Pol. 2, 002 (2023) · published 11 July 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Neoliberal transformations in the field of asylum in Germany have, since 2016, placed an emphasis on labour market participation as the primary way through which refugees can establish long-term residence claims. Yet, while new arrivals are increasingly expected to rapidly integrate into this market, they are often armed with differential and precarious legal statuses which overwhelmingly determine the spheres of economic activity refugees can enter. This is especially true for the ever increasing number of rejected asylum seekers who are temporarily “tolerated”, for whom the only path to residence requires that they display their value as economic subjects to the German state. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Berlin between 2017 and 2020, I argue that, armed with little other than their cultural identities and networks, many refugees heavily relied on co-ethnic relationships to facilitate their participation in the labour market. The result is a displacement of the management of new diversity to ethnic economies, a move that disavows the marginalising consequences of the neoliberal transformations refugees are subject to. By masking a relationship between recently arrived migrants and the German economy and society as a relationship between migrants themselves, I argue that these practices work as alibis of exclusion.

  2 citations

• The chiral SYK model in three-dimensional holography

  Alexander Altland, Dmitry Bagrets, Nele Callebaut, Konstantin Weisenberger

  SciPost Phys. 18, 205 (2025) · published 24 June 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  A celebrated realization of the holographic principle posits an approximate duality between the $(0+1)$-dimensional quantum mechanical SYK model and two-dimensional Jackiw-Teitelboim gravity, mediated by the Schwarzian action as an effective low energy theory common to both systems. We here propose a generalization of this correspondence to one dimension higher. Starting from different microscopic realizations of effectively chiral $(1+1)$-dimensional generalizations of the SYK model, we derive a reduction to the Alekseev-Shatashvilli (AS)-action, a minimal extension of the Schwarzian action which has been proposed as the effective boundary action of three-dimensional gravity. In the bulk, we show how the same action describes fluctuations around the Euclidean BTZ black hole configuration, the dominant stationary solution of three-dimensional gravity. These two constructions allow us to match bulk and boundary coupling constants, and to compute observables. Specifically, we apply semiclassical techniques inspired by condensed matter physics to the computation of out-of-time-order correlation functions (OTOCs), demonstrating maximal chaos in the chiral SYK chain and its gravity dual.

  2 citations

• Fisher zeroes and the fluctuations of the spectral form factor of chaotic systems

  Guy Bunin, Laura Foini, Jorge Kurchan

  SciPost Phys. 17, 114 (2024) · published 15 October 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The spectral form factor of quantum chaotic systems has the familiar 'ramp $+$ plateau' form. Techniques to determine its form in the semiclassical or the thermodynamic limit have been devised, in both cases based on the average over an energy range or an ensemble of systems. For a single instance, fluctuations are large, do not go away in the limit, and depend on the element of the ensemble itself, thus seeming to question the whole procedure. Considered as the modulus of a partition function in complex inverse temperature $\beta_R+i\beta_I$ ($\beta_I \equiv \tau$ the time), the spectral form factor has regions of Fisher zeroes, the analogue of Yang-Lee zeroes for the complex temperature plane. The large spikes in the spectral form factor are in fact a consequence of near-misses of the line parametrized by $\beta_I$ to these zeroes. The largest spikes are indeed extensive and extremely sensitive to details, but we show that they are both exponentially rare and exponentially thin. Motivated by this, and inspired by the work of Derrida on the Random Energy Model, we study here a modified model of random energy levels in which we introduce level repulsion. We also check that the mechanism giving rise to spikes is the same in the SYK model.

  2 citations

• Nonequilibrium probability currents in optically-driven colloidal suspensions

  Samudrajit Thapa, Daniel Zaretzky, Ron Vatash, Grzegorz Gradziuk, Chase Broedersz, Yair Shokef, Yael Roichman

  SciPost Phys. 17, 096 (2024) · published 1 October 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  In the absence of directional motion it is often hard to recognize athermal fluctuations. Probability currents provide such a measure in terms of the rate at which they enclose area in the reduced phase space. We measure this area enclosing rate for trapped colloidal particles, where only one particle is driven. By combining experiment, theory, and simulation, we single out the effect of the different time scales in the system on the measured probability currents. In this controlled experimental setup, particles interact hydrodynamically. These interactions lead to a strong spatial dependence of the probability currents and to a local influence of athermal agitation. In a multiple-particle system, we show that even when the driving acts only on one particle, probability currents occur between other, non-driven particles. This may have significant implications for the interpretation of fluctuations in biological systems containing elastic networks in addition to a suspending fluid.

  2 citations

• Superconvergence of topological entropy in the symbolic dynamics of substitution sequences

  Leon Zaporski, Felix Flicker

  SciPost Phys. 7, 018 (2019) · published 7 August 2019 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We consider infinite sequences of superstable orbits (cascades) generated by systematic substitutions of letters in the symbolic dynamics of one-dimensional nonlinear systems in the logistic map universality class. We identify the conditions under which the topological entropy of successive words converges as a double exponential onto the accumulation point, and find the convergence rates analytically for selected cascades. Numerical tests of the convergence of the control parameter reveal a tendency to quantitatively universal double-exponential convergence. Taking a specific physical example, we consider cascades of stable orbits described by symbolic sequences with the symmetries of quasilattices. We show that all quasilattices can be realised as stable trajectories in nonlinear dynamical systems, extending previous results in which two were identified.

  2 citations