Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• Dynamics of polar-core spin vortices in inhomogeneous spin-1 Bose-Einstein condensates

  Zachary L. Stevens-Hough, Matthew J. Davis, Lewis A. Williamson

  SciPost Phys. 18, 134 (2025) · published 23 April 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  In the easy-plane phase, a ferromagnetic spin-1 Bose-Einstein condensate is magnetized in a plane transverse to the applied Zeeman field. This phase supports polar-core spin vortices (PCVs), which consist of phase windings of transverse magnetization. Here we show that spin-changing collisions cause a PCV to accelerate down density gradients in an inhomogeneous condensate. The dynamics is well-described by a simplified model adapted from scalar systems, which predicts the dependence of the dynamics on trap tightness and quadratic Zeeman energy. In a harmonic trap, a PCV accelerates radially to the condensate boundary, in stark contrast to the azimuthal motion of vortices in a scalar condensate. In a trap that has a local potential maximum at the centre, the PCV exhibits oscillations around the trap centre, which persist for a remarkably long time. The oscillations coincide with the emission and reabsorption of axial spin waves, which reflect off the condensate boundary.

• Quantum robustness of the toric code in a parallel field on the honeycomb and triangular lattice

  Viktor Kott, Matthias Mühlhauser, Jan Alexander Koziol, Kai Phillip Schmidt

  SciPost Phys. 17, 053 (2024) · published 15 August 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We investigate the quantum robustness of the topological order in the toric code on the honeycomb lattice in the presence of a uniform parallel field. For a field in $z$-direction, the low-energy physics is in the flux-free sector and can be mapped to the transverse-field Ising model on the honeycomb lattice. One finds a second-order quantum phase transition in the 3D Ising$^\star$ universality class for both signs of the field. The same is true for a postive field in $x$-direction where an analogue mapping in the charge-free sector yields a ferromagnetic transverse-field Ising model on the triangular lattice and the phase transition is still 3D Ising$^\star$. In contrast, for negative $x$-field, the charge-free sector is mapped to the highly frustrated antiferromagnetic transverse-field Ising model on the triangular lattice which is known to host a quantum phase transition in the 3D XY$^\star$ universality class. Further, the charge-free sector does not always contain the low-energy physics for negative $x$-fields and a first-order phase transition to the polarized phase in the charge-full sector takes place at larger negative field values. We quantify the location of this transition by comparing quantum Monte Carlo simulations and high-field series expansions. The full extension of the topological phase in the presence of $x$- and $z$-fields is determined by perturbative linked-cluster expansions using a full graph decomposition. Extrapolating the high-order series of the charge and the flux gap allows to estimate critical exponents of the gap closing. This analysis indicates that the topological order breaks down by critical lines of 3D Ising$^\star$ and 3D XY$^\star$ type with interesting potential multi-critical crossing points. All findings for the toric code on the honeycomb lattice can be transferred exactly to the toric code on the triangular lattice.

• Remote detectability from entanglement bootstrap I: Kirby’s torus trick

  Bowen Shi, Jin-Long Huang, John McGreevy

  SciPost Phys. 18, 126 (2025) · published 14 April 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Remote detectability is often taken as a physical assumption in the study of topologically ordered systems, and it is a central axiom of mathematical frameworks of topological quantum field theories. We show under the entanglement bootstrap approach that remote detectability is a necessary property; that is, we derive it as a theorem. Starting from a single wave function on a topologically-trivial region satisfying the entanglement bootstrap axioms, we can construct states on closed manifolds. The crucial technique is to immerse the punctured manifold into the topologically trivial region and then heal the puncture. This is analogous to Kirby's torus trick. We then analyze a special class of such manifolds, which we call pairing manifolds. For each pairing manifold, which pairs two classes of excitations, we identify an analog of the topological $S$-matrix. This pairing matrix is unitary, which implies remote detectability between two classes of excitations. These matrices are in general not associated with the mapping class group of the manifold. As a by-product, we can count excitation types (e.g., graph excitations in 3+1d). The pairing phenomenon occurs in many physical contexts, including systems in different dimensions, with or without gapped boundaries. We provide a variety of examples to illustrate its scope.

• On the origin of species thermodynamics and the black hole - tower correspondence

  Alvaro Herráez, Dieter Lüst, Joaquin Masias, Marco Scalisi

  SciPost Phys. 18, 083 (2025) · published 6 March 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Species thermodynamics has been proposed in analogy to black hole thermodynamics. The entropy scales like an area and is given by the mere counting of the number of the species. In this work, we derive the constitutive relations of species thermodynamics and explain how those originate from standard thermodynamics. We consider configurations of species in thermal equilibrium inside a box of size $L$, and show that the temperature $T$ of the system, which plays a crucial role, is always upper bounded above by the species scale $\Lambda_\mathrm{sp}$. We highlight three relevant regimes: (i) when $L^{-1}< T<\Lambda_\mathrm{sp}$, and gravitational collapse is avoided, the system exhibits standard thermodynamics features, for example, with the entropy scaling like the volume of the box; (ii) in the limit $L^{-1}\simeq T→ \Lambda_\mathrm{sp}$ we recover the rules of species thermodynamics with the entropy scaling like the area of the box; (iii) an intermediate regime with $ L^{-1}\simeq T< \Lambda_\mathrm{sp}$ that avoids gravitational collapse and fulfills the Covariant Entropy Bound; this interpolates between the previous two regimes and its entropy is given simply in terms of the counting of the species contributing to the thermodynamic ensemble. This study also allows us to find a novel and independent bottom-up rationale for the Emergent String Conjecture. Finally, we present the Black Hole - Tower Correspondence as a generalization of the celebrated Black Hole - String Correspondence. This provides us with a robust framework to interpret the results of our thermodynamic investigation. Moreover, it allows us to qualitatively account for the entropy of black holes in terms of the degrees of freedom of the weakly coupled species in the tower.

• Reduction in radioactivity-induced backgrounds using a novel active veto detector for rare event search experiments

  Mouli Chaudhuri, Andrew Jastram, Glenn Agnolet, Samir Banik, Hao Chen, Vijay Iyer, Varchaswi K. S. Kashyap, Andrew Kubik, Matthew Lee, Rupak Mahapatra, Sandro Maludze, Nader Mirabolfathi, Nityasa Mishra, Bedangadas Mohanty, Himangshu Neog, Mark Platt

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 12, 017 (2023) · published 3 July 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The results of a newly developed annular cryogenic phonon-mediated active veto detector are discussed which shows a significant reduction of radioactivity-induced backgrounds in rare event search experiments. The veto detector is made up of germanium weighing $\sim$500 g with an outer diameter of 76 mm and an inner diameter of 28 mm. The detector can host a 25 mm diameter germanium inner target detector of mass $\sim$10 g. A GEANT4 simulation with the active veto and inner target detector shows a gamma background reduction of 50 - 80% which is further improved (> 90%) with 4$\pi$ veto coverage. Experimental measurements with the detector assembly agree well with the simulation.

• T-odd quark-gluon-quark correlation function in the light-front quark-diquark model

  Shubham Sharma, Narinder Kumar, Harleen Dahiya

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 8, 170 (2022) · published 14 July 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We have scrutinized the transverse momentum dependent quark-gluon-quark correlation function. We have utilized the light-front quark-diquark model to study the time-reversal-odd interaction-dependent twist-3 gluon distributions which we have obtained from the disintegration of the transverse momentum dependent quark-gluon-quark correlator. Specifically, we have studied the behavior of $\tilde{e}_{L}$ and $\tilde{e}_{T}$ while considering our diquark to be an axial-vector.

• Muon puzzle in inclined muon bundles detected by NEVOD-DECOR

  A. G. Bogdanov, N. S. Barbashina, S. S. Khokhlov, V. V. Kindin, R. P. Kokoulin, K. G. Kompaniets, A. Y. Konovalova, G. Mannocchi, A. A. Petrukhin, V. V. Shutenko, G. Trinchero, V. S. Vorobev, I. I. Yashin, E. A. Yurina, E. A. Zadeba

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 13, 003 (2023) · published 28 September 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The data of cosmic ray NEVOD-DECOR experiment on the investigation of inclined muon bundles for a long time period (May 2012 - March 2021) are presented. The analysis showed that the observed intensity of muon bundles at primary cosmic ray energies of about 1 EeV and higher can be compatible with the expectation in frame of widely used hadron interaction models only under the assumption of an extremely heavy mass composition. This conclusion is consistent with data of several experiments on investigations of muon content in air showers, but contradicts the available fluorescence data on $X_{\text{max}}$ which favor a light mass composition at these energies. In order to clarify the nature of the "muon puzzle", investigations of the muon bundle energy deposit in the detector material were carried out. For the first time, experimental estimates of the average energy of muons in the bundles of inclined air showers initiated by primary particles with energies from 10 to 1000 PeV have been obtained.

• Quantized fragmentation of three-dimensional QCD string

  S. Todorova-Nova

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 10, 013 (2022) · published 10 August 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Recent developments of the model of quantized helical QCD string are presented, notably the baryon production. An overview of the experimental evidence is discussed as well as possible applications.

• Duality and hidden symmetry breaking in the q-deformed Affleck-Kennedy-Lieb-Tasaki model

  Tyler Franke, Thomas Quella

  SciPost Phys. Core 7, 078 (2024) · published 2 December 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We revisit the question of string order and hidden symmetry breaking in the $q$-deformed AKLT model, an example of a spin chain that possesses generalized symmetry. We first argue that the non-local Kennedy-Tasaki duality transformation that was previously proposed to relate the string order to a local order parameter leads to a non-local Hamiltonian and thus does not provide a physically adequate description of the symmetry breaking. We then present a modified non-local transformation which is based on a recently developed generalization of Witten's Conjugation to frustration-free lattice models and capable of resolving this issue.

• The low-energy spectrum in DAMIC at SNOLAB

  Alvaro E. Chavarria

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 12, 011 (2023) · published 3 July 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The DAMIC experiment employs large-area, thick charge-coupled devices (CCDs) to search for the interactions of low-mass dark matter particles in the galactic halo with silicon atoms in the CCD target. From 2017 to 2019, DAMIC collected data with a seven-CCD array (40-gram target) installed in the SNOLAB underground laboratory. We report dark-matter search results, including a conspicuous excess of events above the background model below 200$V_{ee}$, whose origin remains unknown. We present details of the published spectral analysis, and update on the deployment of skipper CCDs to perform a more precise measurement by early 2023.