Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• Centre vortex structure of QCD-vacuum fields and confinement

  Derek Leinweber, James Biddle, Waseem Kamleh

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 6, 004 (2022) · published 31 May 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The non-trivial ground-state vacuum fields of QCD form the foundation of matter. Using modern visualisation techniques, this presentation examines the microscopic structure of these fields. Of particular interest are the centre vortices identified within the ground-state fields of lattice QCD. Our current focus is on understanding the manner in which dynamical fermions in the QCD vacuum alter the centre-vortex structure. The impact of dynamical fermions is significant and provides new insights into the role of centre vortices in underpinning both confinement and dynamical chiral symmetry breaking in QCD.

  1 citation

• Fractionally charged particles at the energy frontier: The SM gauge group and one-form global symmetry

  Seth Koren, Adam Martin

  SciPost Phys. 18, 004 (2025) · published 7 January 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The observed Standard Model is consistent with the existence of vector-like species with electric charge a multiple of $e/6$. The discovery of a fractionally charged particle would provide nonperturbative information about Standard Model physics, and furthermore rule out some or all of the minimal theories of unification. We discuss the phenomenology of such particles and focus particularly on current LHC constraints, for which we reinterpret various searches to bound a variety of fractionally charged representations. We emphasize that in some circumstances the collider bounds are surprisingly low or nonexistent, which highlights the discovery potential for these species which have distinctive signatures and important implications. We additionally offer pedagogical discussions of the representation theory of gauge groups with different global structures, and separately of the modern framework of Generalized Global Symmetries, either of which serves to underscore the bottom-up importance of these searches.

  1 citation

• Dark matter effective theory

  Joachim Brod

  SciPost Phys. Lect. Notes 38 (2022) · published 31 January 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Les Houches 2021 lectures on dark matter effective field theory (short course). The aim of these two lectures is to calculate the DM-nucleus cross section for a simple example, and then generalize to the treatment of general effective interactions of spin-1/2 DM. Relativistic local operators, the heavy-DM effective theory, the chiral effective Lagrangian, and nuclear effective operators are briefly discussed.

  1 citation

• Coalescing hardcore-boson condensate states with nonzero momentum

  C. H. Zhang, Z. Song

  SciPost Phys. Core 8, 013 (2025) · published 31 January 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Exceptional points (EPs), as an exclusive feature of a non-Hermitian system, support coalescing states to be alternative stable state beyond the ground state. In this work, we explore the influence of non-Hermitian impurities on the dynamic formation of condensate states in one-, two-, and three-dimensional extended Bose-Hubbard systems with strong on-site interaction. Based on the solution for the hardcore limit, we show exactly that condensate modes with off-diagonal long-range order (ODLRO) can exist when certain system parameters satisfy specific matching conditions. Under open boundary conditions, the condensate states become coalescing states when the non-Hermitian $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetric boundary gives rise to the EPs. The fundamental mechanism behind this phenomenon is uncovered through analyzing the scattering dynamics of many-particle wavepackets at the non-Hermitian boundaries. The EP dynamics facilitate the dynamic generation of condensate states with non-zero momentum. To further substantiate the theoretical findings, numerical simulations are conducted. This study not only unveils the potential condensation of interacting bosons but also offers an approach for the engineering of condensate states.

  1 citation

• Generating long-distance magnetic couplings with flat bands

  Georges Bouzerar, Maxime Thumin

  SciPost Phys. 19, 011 (2025) · published 8 July 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  One of the great challenges for the large-scale development of quantum technologies is to generate and control the entanglement of quantum bits through interactions of sufficiently long range. Two decades ago, spin chains have been proposed for quantum communication. Unfortunately, couplings are of very short range in general which drastically limits the communication to very short distances. Here, we demonstrate that the presence of flat bands (FBs) can trigger very long-distance magnetic couplings in spin chains. Furthermore, we show that the typical decaying lengthscale is directly related to the quantum metric of the flat band eigenstates. We have validated the robustness of our results in the case where flat bands become weakly dispersive. We believe that our unexpected findings could open up an alternative route to enable long-distance quantum communication.

  1 citation

• Equal-time approach to real-time dynamics of quantum fields

  Robert Ott, Torsten V. Zache, Jürgen Berges

  SciPost Phys. 14, 011 (2023) · published 1 February 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We employ the equal-time formulation of quantum field theory to derive effective kinetic theories, first for a weakly coupled non-relativistic Bose gas, and then for a strongly correlated system of self-interacting $N$-component fields. Our results provide the link between state-of-the-art measurements of equal-time effective actions using quantum simulator platforms, as employed in [Phys. Rev. X 10, 011020 (2020); Nat. Phys. 16, 1012 (2020)], and observables underlying effective kinetic or hydrodynamic descriptions. New non-perturbative approximation schemes can be developed and certified this way, where the a priori time-local formulation of the equal-time effective action has crucial advantages over the conventional closed-time-path approach which is non-local in time.

  1 citation

• Generalized parton distribution functions of $\rho$ meson

  Baodong Sun, Yubing Dong

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 3, 014 (2020) · published 25 February 2020 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We report our recent calculations for the generalized parton distribution functions of the $\rho$ meson with the help of a light-front constituent quark model. The electromagnetic form factors and structure functions of the system are given. Moreover, we also show our results for its gravitational form factors (or energy-momentum tensor form factors) and for other mechanical properties, like its mass distributions, pressures, share-forces, and $D-$term.

  1 citation

• Influence of Geant4 physics list on simulation accuracy and performance

  Róbert Breier, Alexander Fuss, Holger Kluck, Valentyna Mokina, Veronika Palušová, Pavel Povinec

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 12, 063 (2023) · published 5 July 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  A main goal of current low background physics is the search for rare and novel phenomena beyond the Standard Model of particle physics, e.g. the scattering off of a potential Dark Matter particle inside a CaWO$_4$ crystal or the neutrinoless double beta decay of Ge nucleus. The success of such searches depends on a reliable background prediction via Monte Carlo simulations. A widely used toolkit to construct these simulations is GEANT4, which offers a wide choice of physics models, so-called physics lists. To facilitate the selection of physics lists for simulations of CaWO$_4$ and Ge targets, we quantify their impact on the total energy deposition for several test cases.

  1 citation

• Duality-Symmetry Enhancement in Maxwell Theory

  Shani Meynet, Daniele Migliorati, Raffaele Savelli, Michele Tortora

  SciPost Phys. 19, 089 (2025) · published 8 October 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Free Maxwell theory on general four-manifolds may, under certain conditions on the background geometry, exhibit holomorphic factorization in its partition function. We show that when this occurs, new discrete symmetries emerge at orbifold points of the conformal manifold. These symmetries, which act only on a sublattice of flux configurations, are not associated with standard dualities, yet they may carry 't Hooft anomalies, potentially causing the partition function to vanish even in the absence of apparent pathologies. We further explore their non-invertible extensions and argue that their anomalies can account for zeros of the partition function at smooth points in the moduli space.

  1 citation

• Spatial separation of spin currents in transition metal dichalcogenides

  Antonio L. R. Manesco, Artem Pulkin

  SciPost Phys. Core 6, 036 (2023) · published 1 May 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We theoretically predict spatial separation of spin-polarized ballistic currents in transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) due to trigonal warping. We quantify the effect in terms of spin polarization of charge carrier currents in a prototypical 3-terminal ballistic device where spin-up and spin-down charge carriers are collected by different leads. We show that the magnitude of the current spin polarization depends strongly on the charge carrier energy and the direction with respect to crystallographic orientations in the device. We study the (negative) effect of lattice imperfections and disorder on the observed spin polarization. Our investigation provides an avenue towards observing spin discrimination in a defect-free time reversal-invariant material.

  1 citation