Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• Collective modes in superconductors including Coulomb repulsion

  Joshua Althüser, Götz S. Uhrig

  SciPost Phys. 19, 067 (2025) · published 4 September 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We numerically study the collective excitations present in isotropic superconductors including a screened Coulomb interaction. By varying the screening strength, we analyze its impact on the system. We use a formulation of the effective phonon-mediated interaction between electrons that depends on the energy transfer between particles, rather than being a constant in a small energy shell around the Fermi edge. This justifies considering also rather large attractive interactions. We compute the system's Green's functions using the iterated equations of motion (iEoM) approach, which ultimately enables a quantitative analysis of collective excitations. For weak couplings, we identify the well-known amplitude (Higgs) mode at the two-particle continuum's lower edge and the phase (Anderson-Bogoliubov) mode at $\omega = 0$ for a neutral system, which shifts to higher energies as the Coulomb interaction is switched on. As the phononic coupling is increased, the Higgs mode separates from the continuum, and additional phase and amplitude modes appear, persisting even in the presence Coulomb interactions.

• Mergers as a probe of particle dark matter

  Anupam Ray

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 12, 056 (2023) · published 5 July 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Black holes below Chandrasekhar mass limit (1.4 $M_{\odot}$) can not be produced via any standard stellar evolution. Recently, gravitational wave experiments have also discovered unusually low mass black holes whose origin is yet to be known. We propose a simple yet novel formation mechanism of such low mass black holes. Non-annihilating particle dark matter, owing to their interaction with stellar nuclei, can gradually accumulate inside compact stars, and eventually swallows them to low mass black holes, ordinarily impermissible by the Chandrasekhar limit. We point out several avenues to test this proposal, concentrating on the cosmic evolution of the binary merger rates.

• Entanglement flow in the Kane-Fisher quantum impurity problem

  Chunyu Tan, Yuxiao Hang, Stephan Haas, Hubert Saleur

  SciPost Phys. Core 8, 002 (2025) · published 8 January 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The problem of a local impurity in a Luttinger liquid, just like the anisotropic Kondo problem (of which it is technically a cousin), describes many different physical systems. As shown by Kane and Fisher, the presence of interactions profoundly modifies the physics familiar from Fermi liquid theory, and leads to non-intuitive features, best described in the Renormalization Group language (RG), such as flows towards healed or split fixed points. While this problem has been studied for many years using more traditional condensed matter approaches, it remains somewhat mysterious from the point of view of entanglement, both for technical and conceptual reasons. We propose and explore in this paper a new way to think of this important aspect. We use the realization of the Kane Fisher universality class provided by an XXZ spin chain with a modified bond strength between two sites, and explore the difference of (Von Neumann) entanglement entropies of a region of length $\ell$ with the rest of the system - to which it is connected with a modified bond - in the cases when $\ell$ is even and odd. Surprisingly, we find out that this difference $\delta S\equiv S^e-S^o$ remains of $O(1)$ in the thermodynamic limit, and gives rise now, depending on the sign of the interactions, to "resonance" curves, interpolating between $-\ln 2$ and $0$, and depending on the product $\ell T_B$, where $1/T_B$ is a characteristic length scale akin to the Kondo length in Kondo problems. $\delta S$ can be interpreted as a measure of the hybridization of the left-over spin in odd length subsystems with the "bath" constituted by the rest of the chain. The problem is studied both numerically using DMRG and analytically near the healed and split fixed points. Interestingly - and in contrast with what happens in other impurity problems - $\delta S$ can, at least to lowest order, be tackled by conformal perturbation theory.

• 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.

• Entanglement Rényi entropies in celestial holography

  Federico Capone, Andy O’Bannon, Ronnie Rodgers, Somyadip Thakur

  SciPost Phys. 19, 042 (2025) · published 15 August 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Celestial holography is the conjecture that scattering amplitudes in $(d+2)$-dimensional asymptotically Minkowski spacetimes are dual to correlators of a $d$-dimensional conformal field theory (CFT) on the celestial sphere, called the celestial CFT (CCFT). In a CFT, we can calculate sub-region entanglement Rényi entropies (EREs), including entanglement entropy (EE), from correlators of twist operators, via the replica trick. We argue that CCFT twist operators are holographically dual to cosmic branes in the $(d+2)$-dimensional spacetime, and that their correlators are holographically dual to the $(d+2)$-dimensional partition function (the vacuum-to-vacuum scattering amplitude) in the presence of these cosmic branes. We hence compute the EREs of a spherical sub-region of the CCFT's conformal vacuum, finding the form dictated by conformal symmetry, including a universal contribution determined by the CCFT's sphere partition function (odd $d$) or Weyl anomaly (even $d$). We find that this universal contribution vanishes when $d=4$ mod $4$, and otherwise is proportional to $i$ times the $d^{\textrm{th}}$ power of the $(d+2)$-dimensional long-distance cutoff in Planck units.

• What charged cosmic rays tell us on dark matter

  Pierre Salati

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 12, 067 (2023) · published 5 July 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Dark matter particles could be the major component of the haloes of galaxies. Their mutual annihilations or decays would produce an indirect signature under the form of high-energy cosmic-rays. The focus of this presentation is on antimatter species, a component so rare that any excess over the background should be easily detected. After a recap on Galactic propagation, I will discuss positrons, antiprotons and anti-nuclei. For each of these species, anomalies have been reported. The antiproton excess, for instance, is currently a hot topic. Alas, it does not resist a correct treatment of theoretical and data errors.

• Transverse Single Spin Asymmetries of Heavy Flavor Electrons and Charged Pions in 200 GeV $p+p^{\uparrow}$ Collisions at Midrapidity

  Dillon Fitzgerald

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 8, 012 (2022) · published 11 July 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Transverse single spin asymmetries of particles produced in $p+p^{\uparrow}$ collisions provide insight on the partonic spin and momentum structure of hadrons; heavy flavor electrons provide access to initial state spin-momentum correlations of gluons in the proton, while charged pions provide access to initial and final state transverse spin effects. Charged particles are measured at midrapidity at PHENIX using the silicon vertex detector and central arm spectrometer, made of an electromagnetic calorimeter, a ring-imaging Cherenkov detector, and drift and pad chambers. Recent results for both electron and charged pion measurements from the 2015 running period will be presented.

• Complexity and accessibility of random landscapes

  Sakshi Pahujani, Joachim Krug

  SciPost Phys. Lect. Notes 108 (2025) · published 22 December 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  These notes introduce probabilistic landscape models defined on high-dimensional discrete sequence spaces. The models are motivated primarily by fitness landscapes in evolutionary biology, but links to statistical physics and computer science are mentioned where appropriate. Elementary and advanced results on the structure of landscapes are described with a focus on features that are relevant to evolutionary searches, such as the number of local maxima and the existence of fitness-monotonic paths. The recent discovery of submodularity as a biologically meaningful property of fitness landscapes and its consequences for their accessibility is discussed in detail.

• Reference measurements for indirect dark matter searches with p+C collisions at the NA61/SHINE experiment

  Michał Naskręt on behalf of the NA61/SHINE Collaboration

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 12, 068 (2023) · published 5 July 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  NA61/SHINE is a large-acceptance fixed-target experiment located at the CERN SPS, which studies final hadronic states in interactions of various particles and nuclei. It is unique in terms of providing data on a variety of collision systems at different collision energies. This allows for wide deuteron, antiproton and antideuteron production cross-section studies. The latter are currently considered a possible dark matter interaction signal with exceptionally small background. The measurements on carbon targets are important to reduce systematic experimental effects due to experiment-internal antideuteron production, as the most abundant element in the path of an incoming particle for the AMS-02 experiment is carbon. This manuscript will focus on analysis of NA61/SHINE data on p+C thin target collisions in the context of light (anti)nuclei production. A preliminary analysis of experimental data and the particle identification method as well as current deuteron and antideuteron yields will be described.

• A family of vertex algebras from Argyres-Douglas theory

  Heeyeon Kim, Jaewon Song

  SciPost Phys. 19, 144 (2025) · published 2 December 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We find that multiple vertex algebras can arise from a single 4d $\mathcal{N}=2$ superconformal field theory (SCFT). The connection is given by the BPS monodromy operator $M$, which is a wall-crossing invariant quantity that captures the BPS spectrum on the Coulomb branch. For a class of low-rank Argyres-Douglas theories, we find that the trace of the multiple powers of the monodromy operator Tr$M^N$ yield modular functions that can be identified with the vacuum characters of certain vertex algebra for each $N$. In particular, we realize unitary VOAs of the Deligne-Cvitanović exceptional series type $(A_2)_1$, $(G_2)_1$, $(D_4)_1$, $(F_4)_1$, $(E_6)_1$ from Argyres-Douglas theories. We also find the modular invariant characters of the 'intermediate vertex algebras' $(E_{7\frac{1}{2}})_1$ and $(X_1)_1$. Our analysis allows us to construct 3d $\mathcal{N}=2$ gauge theories that flow to $\mathcal{N}=4$ SCFTs in the IR, whose specialized half-index can be identified with these modular invariant characters.