Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• Improved Galactic diffuse emission model strengthens the case for a Millisecond Pulsar explanation of the Fermi GeV excess

  Oscar Macias, Martin Pohl, Chris Gordon, Phaedra Coleman

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 12, 049 (2023) · published 4 July 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  After more than a decade since its discovery, the Galactic center gamma-ray excess - discovered with the Fermi Large Area Telescope - remains puzzling. While the spectrum of the signal can be explained by either dark matter or an unresolved population of millisecond pulsars, the spatial morphology of this excess seems to hold the key to separate the two theories. In this contribution, we present the results of a recent study in which we use bleeding edge models for interstellar gas, inverse Compton emission, and stellar mass models to reanalyze the Galactic center excess. We find that the spatial morphology of the excess is highly correlated with stellar matter in the Galactic bulge, providing strong support for the millisecond pulsar hypothesis.

• Hadron Production in terms of Green's Functions in Non-Equilibrium Matter

  A. V. Koshelkin

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 10, 037 (2022) · published 11 August 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Following the quark-hadron duality concept, we show that the number of hadrons generated in the deconfinement matter is entirely determined by the exact non-equilibrium Green's functions of partons in the medium and the vertex function governing the probability of the confinement-deconfinement phase transition. In such an approach, compactifying the standard (3+1) chromodynamics into $ QCD_{xy} + QCD_{zt}$, the rate of the hadrons produced in particle collisions is derived in the explicit form provided that the hadronization is the first order phase transition. The pion production is found to be in good agreement to the experimental results on the pion yield in pp collisions.

• Recent Studies of Exotic Hadrons at the LHCb Experiment

  Gary Robertson

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 8, 030 (2022) · published 11 July 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Recent results on studies of exotic hadrons at the LHCb experiment are summarised. These are the observation of new resonances decaying to J/$\psi K^{+}$ and J/$\psi\phi$, evidence of a J/$\psi\Lambda$ structure and observation of excited $\Xi^{-}$ states in the $\Xi_{b}^{-}\to J/\psi \Lambda K^{-}$ decay and the study of $B_{s}^{0}\to J/\psi\pi^{+}\pi^{-}K^{+}K^{-}$ decays.

• Fusion of low-entanglement excitations in 2D toric code

  Jing-Yu Zhao, Xie Chen

  SciPost Phys. 18, 106 (2025) · published 20 March 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  On top of a $D$-dimensional gapped bulk state, Low Entanglement Excitations (LEE) on $d(<D)$-dimensional sub-manifolds can have extensive energy but preserves the entanglement area law of the ground state. Due to their multi-dimensional nature, the LEEs embody a higher-category structure in quantum systems. They are the ground state of a modified Hamiltonian and hence capture the notions of 'defects' of generalized symmetries. In previous works, we studied the low-entanglement excitations in a trivial phase as well as those in invertible phases. We find that LEEs in these phases have the same structure as lower-dimensional gapped phases and their defects within. In this paper, we study the LEEs inside non-invertible topological phases. We focus on the simple example of $\mathbb{Z}_2$ toric code and discuss how the fusion result of 1d LEEs with 0d morphisms can depend on both the choice of fusion circuit and the ordering of the fused defects.

• Wigner function analysis of finite matter-radiation systems

  Eduardo Nahmad-Achar, Ramón López-Peña, Sergio Cordero, Octavio Castaños Garza

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 14, 039 (2023) · published 24 November 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We show that the behaviour in phase space of the Wigner function associated to the electromagnetic modes carries the information of both, the entanglement properties between matter and field, and the regions in parameter space where quantum phase transitions take place. A finer classification for the continuous phase transitions is obtained through the computation of the surface of minimum fidelity.

• Tau identification in CMS during LHC run 2

  Mohammad Hassan Hassanshahi

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 16, 018 (2025) · published 15 July 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The LHC Run 2 data-taking period was characterized by an increase in instantaneous luminosity and center-of-mass energy. Several techniques have been deployed in the CMS experiment to reconstruct and identify tau leptons in this environment. The DeepTau identification algorithm is used to identify hadronically decaying tau leptons from quark and gluon induced jets, electrons, and muons. Compared to previously used MVA identification algorithms, the use of deep-learning techniques brought a noticeable improvement in the tau identification and rejection of contaminating sources. Low transverse momentum topologies were addressed separately with a dedicated identification algorithm, while machine learning techniques were implemented to improve the identification of the tau hadronic decay channels. These algorithms have been already used for several published physics analyses in CMS. The algorithms are presented together with their measured performances.

• Doping lattice non-Abelian quantum Hall states

  Zhengyan Darius Shi, Carolyn Zhang, Senthil Todadri

  SciPost Phys. 19, 150 (2025) · published 9 December 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We study quantum phases of a fluid of mobile charged non-Abelian anyons, which arise upon doping the lattice Moore-Read quantum Hall state at lattice filling $\nu = 1/2$ and its generalizations to the Read-Rezayi ($RR_k$) sequence at $\nu = k/(k+2)$. In contrast to their Abelian counterparts, non-Abelian anyons present unique challenges due to their non-invertible fusion rules and non-Abelian braiding structures. We address these challenges using a Chern-Simons-Ginzburg-Landau (CSGL) framework that incorporates the crucial effect of energy splitting between different anyon fusion channels at nonzero dopant density. For the Moore-Read state, we show that doping the charge $e/4$ non-abelion naturally leads to a fully gapped charge-$2$ superconductor without any coexisting topological order. The chiral central charge of the superconductor depends on details of the interactions determining the splitting of anyon fusion channels. For general $RR_k$ states, our analysis of states obtained by doping the basic non-abelion $a_0$ with charge $e/(k+2)$ reveals a striking even/odd pattern in the Read-Rezayi index $k$. We develop a general physical picture for anyon-driven superconductivity based on charge-flux unbinding, and show how it relates to the CSGL description of doped Abelian quantum Hall states. Finally, as a bonus, we use the CSGL formalism to describe transitions between the $RR_k$ state and a trivial period-$(k+2)$ CDW insulator at fixed filling, driven by the gap closure of the fundamental non-Abelian anyon $a_0$. Notably, for $k=2$, this predicts a period-4 CDW neighboring the Moore-Read state at half-filling, offering a potential explanation of recent numerical observations in models of twisted MoTe$_2$.

• Theoretical modeling of QCD radiation in off-shell Higgs production through gluon fusion

  Rafael Coelho Lopes de Sá, Martina Javurkova, Matteo Lazzeretti, Raoul Röntsch

  SciPost Phys. Comm. Rep. 12 (2025) · published 4 September 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The measurement of the Higgs boson width is a critical test of the Standard Model, with significant implications for understanding electroweak symmetry breaking. Direct measurements are limited by detector resolution, but it can be measured with greater precision through a combined analysis of on-shell and off-shell Higgs boson production. While results for on-shell production have been computed to a very high accuracy, theoretical predictions for off-shell Higgs boson production are not as well controlled due to the breakdown of the heavy-top approximation and the large interference with non-resonant amplitudes. Seeking to understand and improve the theoretical control, we compare leading-order and next-to-leading-order plus parton shower differential cross-sections for signal, background, and full physical processes in off-shell Higgs boson production at the Large Hadron Collider, using Powheg, MadGraph, and Sherpa. We analyze the impact of higher-order quantum chromodynamics effects and theoretical uncertainties, highlighting differences between predictions using jet merging with parton showers, and those from next-to-leading order computations matched to parton showers. The results provide insights for improving theoretical predictions and their application to experimental measurements in the future.

• Non-adiabatic linear response in open quantum systems

  Xiaotian Nie, Wei Zheng

  SciPost Phys. 19, 161 (2025) · published 19 December 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Adiabatic theorem and non-adiabatic corrections have been widely applied in modern quantum technology. Recently, non-adiabatic linear response theory has been developed to probe the many-body correlations in closed systems. In this work, we generalize the non-adiabatic linear response theory to open quantum many-body systems. We show that, similar to the closed case, the first-order deviation from the instantaneous steady state is memoryless—it depends only on the final parameters and not on the initial state or ramping path. When ramping the Hamiltonian, the linear response of observables is governed by the derivative of the retarded Green's function, as in closed systems. In contrast, ramping the dissipation gives rise to a different response, characterized by a high-order correlation function defined in the steady state. Our results offer a compact and physically transparent formulation of non-adiabatic response in open systems, and demonstrate that ramping dynamics can serve as a versatile tool for probing many-body correlations beyond equilibrium.

• Electronic structure of liquid xenon in the context of light dark matter direct detection

  Riccardo Catena, Luca Marin, Marek Matas, Nicola A. Spaldin, Einar Urdshals

  SciPost Phys. 19, 064 (2025) · published 3 September 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We present a description of the electronic structure of xenon within the density-functional theory formalism with the goal of accurately modeling dark-matter-induced ionisation in liquid xenon detectors. We compare the calculated electronic structures of the atomic, liquid and crystalline solid phases, and find that the electronic charge density and its derivatives in momentum space are similar in the atom and the liquid, consistent with the weak interatomic van der Waals bonding. The only notable difference is a band broadening of the highest occupied $5p$ levels, reflected in the densities of states of the condensed phases, as a result of the inter-atomic interactions. We therefore use the calculated density of states of the liquid phase, combined with the standard literature approach for the isolated atom, to recompute ionisation rates and exclusion limit curves for the XENON10 and XENON1T experiments. We find that the broadening of the 5$p$ levels induced by the liquid phase is relevant only for dark matter masses below 6 MeV, where it increases the ionisation rate relative to that of the isolated atom. For most of the explored mass range, the energies of the discrete 4$d$ and 5$s$ levels have the strongest effect on the rate. Our findings suggest a simple scheme for calculating dark matter-electron scattering rates in liquid noble gas detectors, using the calculated values for the atom weighted by the density of states of the condensed phase.