Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• Modelling the underlying event in photon-initiated processes

  Jonathan Butterworth, Ilkka Helenius, Juan Jose Juan Castella, Bradley Pattengale, Shahzad Sanjrani, Matthew Wing

  SciPost Phys. 17, 158 (2024) · published 9 December 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Modelling the underlying event in high-energy hadronic collisions is important for physics at colliders. This includes lepton colliders, where low-virtuality photons accompanying the lepton beam(s) may develop hadronic structure. Similarly, photon-induced collisions also occur in proton or heavy-ion beam experiments. While the underlying event in proton-proton collisions has been the subject of much study at the LHC, studies of hadronic-photon-induced underlying event are now of increasing interest in light of planned future lepton and lepton-hadron colliders, as well as the photon-induced processes in ultra-peripheral collisions at the LHC. Here we present an investigation of the underlying event in photon-initiated processes, starting from the Pythia models used to describe LHC and Tevatron data, and revisiting HERA and LEP2 data. While no single tune describes all the data with different beam configurations, we find that a good agreement can still be found within the same model by adjusting the relevant parameters separately for $\gamma\gamma$, $\gamma p$ and $pp$. This suggests that the basic model of multiparton interaction implemented in Pythia can be applied for different beam configurations. Furthermore, we find that a reasonable agreement for $\gamma\gamma$ and $\gamma p$ data, and for $pp$ data at an LHC reference energy, can be found within a single parametrization, but $pp$ collisions would prefer a stronger energy dependence, leading to too many multiparton interactions in lower energy photon-induced collisions. On this basis, we make some recommendations for simulations of photon-induced processes, such as $\gamma \gamma$ events at the LHC or FCC and $ep$ or $eA$ collisions at the EIC, and suggest possibilities for improvements in the modelling.

  1 citation

• Universal Chern number statistics in random matrix fields

  Or Swartzberg, Michael Wilkinson, Omri Gat

  SciPost Phys. 15, 015 (2023) · published 19 July 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We investigate the probability distribution of Chern numbers (quantum Hall conductance integers) for a parametric version of the GUE random matrix ensemble, which is a model for a chaotic or disordered system. The numerically-calculated single-band Chern number statistics agree well with predictions based on an earlier study [O. Gat and M. Wilkinson, SciPost Phys., 10, 149, (2021)] of the statistics of the quantum adiabatic curvature, when the parametric correlation length is small. However, contrary to an earlier conjecture, we find that the gap Chern numbers are correlated, and that the correlation is weak but slowly-decaying. Also, the statistics of weighted sums of Chern numbers differs markedly from predictions based upon the hypothesis that gap Chern numbers are uncorrelated. All our results are consistent with the universality hypothesis described in the earlier paper, including in the previously unstudied regime of large correlation length, where the Chern statistics is highly non-Gaussian.

  1 citation

• Entanglement, partial set of measurements, and diagonality of the density matrix in the parton model

  Haowu Duan

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 8, 160 (2022) · published 14 July 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  To study quantum properties of the hadron wavefunction at small x, we derived the reduced density matrix for soft gluons in the CGC framework. We explicitly showed that the reduced density matrix is not diagonal in the particle number basis. The off-diagonal components are usually ignored in the conventional parton model. We thus defined the density matrix of ignorance by keeping only the part of the reduced density matrix which can be probed in a limited set of experimental measurements. We calculated Von Neumann entropy for both the reduced and ignorance density matrices. The entropy of ignorance is always greater than the entanglement entropy (computed drom the reduced density matrix) of gluons. Finally, we showed that the CGC reduced density matrix for soft gluons can be diagonalized in a thermal basis with Boltzmann weights suggesting thermalization of new quasi-particle states which we dubbed entangolons.

  1 citation

• Accessing quark GPDs in diffractive events at an electron-ion collider

  W. Cosyn, B. Pire, L. Szymanowski

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 8, 159 (2022) · published 14 July 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We discuss two collider processes which combine a diffractively produced $\rho$ meson separated by a large rapidity gap from a hard exclusive scattering of a Pomeron on a nucleon, giving rise to a lepton pair or to a second meson. These two processes probe the nucleon quark content described by generalized parton distributions in a very specific way.

  1 citation

• A new Wilson line-based classical action for gluodynamics

  Hiren Kakkad, Piotr Kotko, Anna Stasto

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 7, 011 (2022) · published 20 June 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We develop a new classical action that in addition to $\mathrm{MHV}$ vertices contains also $\mathrm{N^kMHV}$ vertices, where $1\leq k \leq n-4$ with $n$ the number of external legs. The lowest order vertex is the four-point MHV vertex -- there is no three point vertex and thus the amplitude calculation involves fewer vertices than in the CSW method. The action is obtained by a canonical transformation of the Yang-Mills action in the light-cone gauge, where the field transformations are based on Wilson line functionals.

  1 citation

• Asymptotics of Weil-Petersson volumes and two-dimensional quantum gravities

  Luca Griguolo, Jacopo Papalini, Lorenzo Russo, Domenico Seminara

  SciPost Phys. 17, 156 (2024) · published 6 December 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We propose a refined expression for the large genus asymptotics of the Weil-Petersson volumes of the moduli space of super-Riemann surfaces with an arbitrary number of boundaries. Our formula leverages the connection between JT supergravity and its matrix model definition, utilizing some basic tools of resurgence theory. The final result holds for arbitrary boundary lengths and preserves the polynomial structure of the super-volumes. As a byproduct we also obtain a prediction for the large genus asymptotics of generalized $\Theta$-class intersection numbers. We extend our proposal to the case of the quantum volumes relevant for the Virasoro minimal string/Liouville gravity. Performing the classical limit on the quantum volumes, we recover a formula for the ordinary Weil-Petersson building blocks of JT gravity.

  1 citation

• Molecular sorting on a fluctuating membrane

  Damiano Andreghetti, Luca Dall'Asta, Andrea Gamba, Igor Kolokolov, Vladimir Lebedev

  SciPost Phys. 18, 099 (2025) · published 18 March 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Molecular sorting in biological membranes is essential for proper cellular function. It also plays a crucial role in the budding of enveloped viruses from host cells. We recently proposed that this process is driven by phase separation, where the formation and growth of sorting domains depend primarily on direct intermolecular interactions. In addition to these, Casimir-like forces—arising from entropic effects in fluctuating membranes —may also play a significant role in the molecular distillation process. Here, using a combination of theoretical analysis and numerical simulations, we explore how Casimir-like forces between rigid membrane inclusions contribute to sorting, particularly in the biologically relevant regime where direct intermolecular interactions are weak. Our results show that these forces enhance molecular distillation by reducing the critical radius for the formation of new sorting domains and facilitating the capture of molecules within these domains. We identify the relative rigidity of the membrane and supermolecular domains as a key parameter controlling molecular sorting efficiency, offering new insights into the physical principles underlying molecular sorting in biological systems.

  1 citation

• Variance reduction via simultaneous importance sampling and control variates techniques using vegas

  Prasanth Shyamsundar, Jacob L. Scott, Stephen Mrenna, Konstantin T. Matchev, Kyoungchul Kong

  SciPost Phys. Codebases 28 (2024) · published 4 March 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Monte Carlo (MC) integration is an important calculational technique in the physical sciences. Practical considerations require that the calculations are performed as accurately as possible for a given set of computational resources. To improve the accuracy of MC integration, a number of useful variance reduction algorithms have been developed, including importance sampling and control variates. In this work, we demonstrate how these two methods can be applied simultaneously, thus combining their benefits. We provide a python wrapper, named CoVVVR, which implements our approach in the VEGAS program. The improvements are quantified with several benchmark examples from the literature.

  1 citation

• Exact first-order effect of interactions on the ground-state energy of harmonically-confined fermions

  Pierre Le Doussal, Naftali R. Smith, Nathan Argaman

  SciPost Phys. 17, 038 (2024) · published 7 August 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We consider a system of $N$ spinless fermions, interacting with each other via a power-law interaction $\epsilon/r^n$, and trapped in an external harmonic potential $V(r) = r^2/2$, in $d=1,2,3$ dimensions. For any $0 < n < d+2$, we obtain the ground-state energy $E_N$ of the system perturbatively in $\epsilon$, $E_{N}=E_{N}^{(0)}+\epsilon E_{N}^{(1)}+O(\epsilon^{2})$. We calculate $E_{N}^{(1)}$ exactly, assuming that $N$ is such that the "outer shell" is filled. For the case of $n=1$ (corresponding to a Coulomb interaction for $d=3$), we extract the $N \gg 1$ behavior of $E_{N}^{(1)}$, focusing on the corrections to the exchange term with respect to the leading-order term that is predicted from the local density approximation applied to the Thomas-Fermi approximate density distribution. The leading correction contains a logarithmic divergence, and is of particular importance in the context of density functional theory. We also study the effect of the interactions on the fermions' spatial density. Finally, we find that our result for $E_{N}^{(1)}$ significantly simplifies in the case where $n$ is even.

  1 citation

• CJ15 global PDF analysis with new electroweak data from the STAR and SeaQuest experiments

  Sanghwa Park, Alberto Accardi, Xiaoxian Jing, Joseph F. Owens

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 8, 177 (2023) · published 11 July 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We present updates to a recent CTEQ-Jefferson Lab (CJ) global analysis of parton distribution functions with a new set of electroweak data that provide unique access to quark flavor separation in the proton. In particular, recent $W$ and $Z$ boson measurements from the STAR experiment at RHIC put additional constraints on light quarks and antiquarks near the valence regime. The new measurement of the Drell-Yan lepton pair production ratio in $p+p$ and $p+d$ collisions by the SeaQuest experiment at Fermilab extends the large-$x$ coverage of the previous E866 experiment and sheds new light on the light antiquarks distribution. In this report, the impact of these new data sets on parton distribution functions will be presented with emphasis given to the flavor asymmetry of the light antiquark sea at large values of the parton momentum $x$.

  1 citation