Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• Mechanically-driven stem cell separation in tissues caused by proliferating daughter cells

  Johannes C. Krämer, Edouard Hannezo, Gerhard Gompper, Jens Elgeti

  SciPost Phys. 16, 097 (2024) · published 8 April 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The homeostasis of epithelial tissue relies on a balance between the self-renewal of stem cell populations, cellular differentiation, and loss. Although this balance needs to be tightly regulated to avoid pathologies, such as tumor growth, the regulatory mechanisms, both cell-intrinsic and collective, which ensure tissue steady-state are still poorly understood. Here, we develop a computational model that incorporates basic assumptions of stem cell renewal into distinct populations and mechanical interactions between cells. We find that the model generates unexpected dynamic features: stem cells repel each other in the bulk tissue and are thus found rather isolated, as in a number of in vivo contexts. By mapping the system onto a gas of passive Brownian particles with effective repulsive interactions, that arise from the generated flows of differentiated cells, we show that we can quantitatively describe such stem cell distribution in tissues. The interaction potential between a pair of stem cells decays exponentially with a characteristic length that spans several cell sizes, corresponding to the volume of cells generated per stem cell division. Our findings may help understanding the dynamics of normal and cancerous epithelial tissues.

  1 citation

• NISQ algorithm for the matrix elements of a generic observable

  Rebecca Erbanni, Kishor Bharti, Leong-Chuan Kwek, Dario Poletti

  SciPost Phys. 15, 180 (2023) · published 30 October 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The calculation of off-diagonal matrix elements has various applications in fields such as nuclear physics and quantum chemistry. In this paper, we present a noisy intermediate scale quantum algorithm for estimating the diagonal and off-diagonal matrix elements of a generic observable in the energy eigenbasis of a given Hamiltonian without explicitly preparing its eigenstates. By means of numerical simulations we show that this approach finds many of the matrix elements for the one and two qubits cases. Specifically, while in the first case, one can initialize the ansatz parameters over a broad interval, in the latter the optimization landscape can significantly slow down the speed of convergence and one should therefore be careful to restrict the initialization to a smaller range of parameters.

  1 citation

• Invariants of winding-numbers and steric obstruction in dynamics of flux lines

  Olivier Cépas, Peter M. Akhmetiev

  SciPost Phys. 7, 032 (2019) · published 12 September 2019 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We classify the sectors of configurations that result from the dynamics of 2d crossing flux lines, which are the simplest degrees of freedom of the 3-coloring lattice model. We show that the dynamical obstruction is the consequence of two effects: (i) conservation laws described by a set of invariants that are polynomials of the winding numbers of the loop configuration, (ii) steric obstruction that prevents paths between configurations, for lack of free space. We argue that the invariants fully classify the configurations in five, chiral and achiral, sectors and no further obstruction in the limit of low-winding numbers.

  1 citation

• On the relation between fractional charge and statistics

  Thors Hans Hansson, Rodrigo Arouca, Thomas Klein Kvorning

  SciPost Phys. 18, 197 (2025) · published 19 June 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We revisit an argument, originally given by Kivelson and Roček, for why the existence of fractional charge necessarily implies fractional statistics. In doing so, we resolve a contradiction in the original argument, and in the case of a $\nu = 1/m$ Laughlin holes, we also show that the standard relation between fractional charge and statistics is necessary by an argument based on a t'Hooft anomaly in a one-form global $\mathcal{Z}_m$ symmetry.

  1 citation

• The pion-photon transition form factor at two loops in QCD

  Jing Gao, Tobias Huber, Yao Ji, Yu-Ming Wang

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 7, 022 (2022) · published 21 June 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We report on the fully analytic calculation of the leading-power contribution to the photon-pion transition form factor $\gamma \, \gamma^{\ast} \to \pi^0$ at two loops in QCD. The applied techniques are based on hard-collinear factorization, together with modern multi-loop methods. We focus both, on the technical details such as the treatment of evanescent operators, and the phenomenological implications. Our results indicate that the two-loop correction is numerically comparable to the one-loop effect in the same kinematic domain. We also demonstrate that our results will play a key role in disentangling various models for the twist-two pion distribution amplitude thanks to the envisaged precision at Belle II.

  1 citation

• Proton penetration efficiency over a high altitude observatory in Mexico

  S. Miyake, T. Koi, Y. Muraki, Y. Matsubara, S. Masuda, P. Miranda, T. Naito, E. Ortiz, A. Oshima, T. Sakai, T. Sako, S. Shibata, H. Takamaru, M. Tokumaru, J. F. Valdés-Galicia

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 13, 001 (2023) · published 28 September 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  In association with a large solar flare on November 7, 2004, the solar neutron detectors located at Mt. Chacaltaya (5,250 m) in Bolivia and Mt. Sierra Negra (4,600 m) in Mexico recorded very interesting events. In order to explain these events, we have performed a calculation solving the equation of motion of anti-protons inside the magnetosphere. Based on these results, the Mt. Chacaltaya event may be explained by the detection of solar neutrons, while the Mt. Sierra Negra event may be explained by the first detection of very high energy solar neutron decay protons (SNDPs) around 6 GeV.

  1 citation

• Cosmic ray measurements with IceCube and IceTop

  Dennis Soldin (for the IceCube Collaboration)

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 13, 002 (2023) · published 28 September 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  IceCube is a cubic-kilometer Cherenkov detector in the deep ice at the geographic South Pole. The dominant event yield in the deep ice detector consists of penetrating atmospheric muons with energies above approximately 300 GeV, produced in cosmic ray air showers. In addition, the surface array, IceTop, measures the electromagnetic component and GeV muons of air showers. Hence, IceCube and IceTop yield unique opportunities to study cosmic rays with unprecedented statistics in great detail. We will present recent results of comic ray measurements from IceCube and IceTop. In this overview, we will highlight measurements of the energy spectrum of cosmic rays from 250 TeV up to the EeV range and their mass composition above 3 PeV. We will also report recent results from measurements of the muon content in air showers and discuss their consistency with predictions from current hadronic interaction models.

  1 citation

• The future of the correlated electron problem

  A. Alexandradinata, N. P. Armitage, Andrey Baydin, Wenli Bi, Yue Cao, Hitesh J. Changlani, Eli Chertkov, Eduardo H. da Silva Neto, Luca Delacretaz, Ismail El Baggari, G. M. Ferguson, William J. Gannon, Sayed Ali Akbar Ghorashi, Berit H. Goodge, Olga Goulko, G. Grissonnanche, Alannah Hallas, Ian M. Hayes, Yu He, Edwin W. Huang, Anshul Kogar, Divine Kumah, Jong Yeon Lee, A. Legros, Fahad Mahmood, Yulia Maximenko, Nick Pellatz, Hryhoriy Polshyn, Tarapada Sarkar, Allen Scheie, Kyle L. Seyler, Zhenzhong Shi, Brian Skinner, Lucia Steinke, K. Thirunavukkuarasu, Thaís Victa Trevisan, Michael Vogl, Pavel A. Volkov, Yao Wang, Yishu Wang, Di Wei, Kaya Wei, Shuolong Yang, Xian Zhang, Ya-Hui Zhang, Liuyan Zhao, Alfred Zong

  SciPost Phys. Comm. Rep. 8 (2025) · published 25 June 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  A central problem in modern condensed matter physics is the understanding of materials with strong electron correlations. Despite extensive work, the essential physics of many of these systems is not understood and there is very little ability to make predictions in this class of materials. In this manuscript we share our personal views on the major open problems in the field of correlated electron systems. We discuss some possible routes to make progress in this rich and fascinating field. This manuscript is the result of the vigorous discussions and deliberations that took place at Johns Hopkins University during a three-day workshop January 27, 28, and 29, 2020 that brought together six senior scientists and 46 more junior scientists. Our hope, is that the topics we have presented will provide inspiration for others working in this field and motivation for the idea that significant progress can be made on very hard problems if we focus our collective energies.

  1 citation

• Three-dimensional quantum Hall effect in topological amorphous metals

  Jiong-Hao Wang, Yong Xu

  SciPost Phys. 18, 146 (2025) · published 2 May 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Weyl semimetals have been theoretically predicted to become topological metals with anomalous Hall conductivity in amorphous systems. However, measuring the anomalous Hall conductivity in realistic materials, particularly those with multiple pairs of Weyl points, is a significant challenge. If a system respects time-reversal symmetry, then the anomalous Hall conductivity even vanishes. As such, it remains an open question how to probe the Weyl band like topology in amorphous materials. Here, we theoretically demonstrate that, under magnetic fields, a topological metal slab in amorphous systems exhibits three-dimensional quantum Hall effect, even in time-reversal invariant systems, thereby providing a feasible approach to exploring Weyl band like topology in amorphous materials. We unveil the topological origin of the quantized Hall conductance by calculating the Bott index. The index is carried by broadened Landau levels with bulk states spatially localized except at critical transition energies. The topological property also results in edge states localized at distinct hinges on two opposite surfaces.

  1 citation

• Interaction-induced strong zero modes in short quantum dot chains with time-reversal symmetry

  A. Mert Bozkurt, Sebastian Miles, Sebastiaan L. D. ten Haaf, Chun-Xiao Liu, Fabian Hassler, Michael Wimmer

  SciPost Phys. 18, 206 (2025) · published 25 June 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We theoretically explore the emergence of strong zero modes in a two-site chain consisting of two quantum dots coupled due to a central dot that mediates electron hopping and singlet superconducting pairing. In the presence of time-reversal symmetry, the on-site Coulomb interaction leads to a three-fold ground-state degeneracy when tuning the system to a sweet spot as a function of the inter-dot couplings. This degeneracy is protected against changes of the dot energies in the same way as "poor man's" Majorana bound states in short Kitaev chains. In the limit of strong interactions, this protection is maximal and the entire spectrum becomes triply degenerate, indicating the emergence of a "poor man's" version of a strong zero mode. We explain the degeneracy and protection by constructing corresponding Majorana Kramers-pair operators and $\mathbb{Z}_3$-parafermion operators. The strong zero modes share many properties of Majorana bound states in short Kitaev chains, including the stability of zero-bias peaks in the conductance and the behavior upon coupling to an additional quantum dot. However, they can be distinguished through finite-bias spectroscopy and the exhibit a different behavior when scaling to longer chains.

  1 citation