Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• Polarization-sensitive imaging in magnetic environments

  Nejc Blaznik, Dries van Oosten, Peter van der Straten

  SciPost Phys. Core 8, 076 (2025) · published 31 October 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Nondestructive spin-resolved imaging of ultracold atomic gases requires calculating the differences of the refractive indices seen by two circular probe polarizations. Perfect overlap of the two images, corresponding to two different polarizations, is required well below the feature size of interest. In this paper, we demonstrate that the birefringence of atoms in magnetic field gradients results in polarization-dependent aberrations in the image, which deteriorates the overlap. To that end, we develop a model that couples atomic tensor polarizability with position-dependent spin orientation and yields aberration predictions for accumulated phase shifts in arbitrary field geometries. Applied to data from an ultra-cold atomic cloud trapped in a Ioffe-Pritchard trap, the model quantitatively reproduces the observed distortion across a range of temperatures. A residual offset of $\sim1\;\mu\mathrm{m}$ remains even under uniform field conditions, likely due to optical asymmetries. For images obtained through off-axis holography, the full complex field of the probe enables post-processing removal of all magnetically induced aberrations through a single numerically calculated Fourier-space phase mask.

• New $\tau$-based evaluation of the hadronic vacuum polarization contribution to the muon anomalous magnetic moment

  Jesús Alejandro Miranda Hernández, Pablo Roig Garcés

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 16, 032 (2025) · published 15 July 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We revisit the radiative corrections to the $\tau^-\to\pi^-\pi^0\nu_\tau(\gamma)$ decays using Resonance Chiral Theory for the structure-dependent part. This channel is the most important one to understand the hadronic vacuum polarization piece of the muon g-2, which dominates the uncertainty of its data-driven prediction in the Standard Model. Using our results, the discrepancy between theory and experiment for this observable is reduced to $\sim2.2\sigma$.

• Probing gluon density fluctuations at large momentum transfer $|t|$ at HERA

  Arjun Kumar

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 8, 166 (2022) · published 14 July 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The information on the gluonic structure and its fluctuations is captured by the differential $|t|$ spectrum in diffractive events. The incoherent cross-section is sensitive to the fluctuations in the target wavefunction in such events. We investigate the incoherent $ep$ cross-section in $J/\psi$ photoproduction using the impact-parameter dependent dipole model. The spatial gluonic structure is modelled as hotspots of gluon density having substructure where this substructure is modelled as hotspots within hotspots. We find that three levels of the substructure provide a good description of all the data, available up to $|t|=30~$GeV$^2$. We investigate these fluctuations in both the saturated and non-saturated dipole models and compare our predictions with the HERA Data.

• Adiabatic and irreversible classical discrete time crystals

  Adrian Ernst, Anna M. E. B. Rossi, Thomas M. Fischer

  SciPost Phys. 13, 091 (2022) · published 11 October 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We simulate the dynamics of paramagnetic colloidal particles that are placed above a magnetic hexagonal pattern and exposed to an external field periodically changing its direction along a control loop. The conformation of three colloidal particles above one unit cell adiabatically responds with half the frequency of the external field creating a time crystal at arbitrary low frequency. The adiabatic time crystal occurs because of the non-trivial topology of the stationary manifold. When coupling colloidal particles in different unit cells, many body effects cause the formation of topologically isolated time crystals and dynamical phase transitions between different adiabatic reversible and non-adiabatic irreversible space-time-crystallographic arrangements.

• The effect of dephasing and spin-lattice relaxation during the switching processes in quantum antiferromagnets

  Asliddin Khudoyberdiev, Götz S. Uhrig

  SciPost Phys. 19, 117 (2025) · published 29 October 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The control of antiferromagnetic order can pave the way to large storage capacity as well as fast manipulation of stored data. Here achieving a steady-state of sublattice magnetization after switching is crucial to prevent loss of stored data. The present theoretical approach aims to obtain instantaneous stable states of the order after reorienting the Néel vector in open quantum antiferromagnets using time-dependent Schwinger boson mean-field theory. The Lindblad formalism is employed to couple the system to the environment. The quantum theoretical approach comprises differences in the effects of dephasing, originating from destructive interference of different wave vectors, and spin-lattice relaxation. We show that the spin-lattice relaxation results in an exponentially fast convergence to the steady-state after full ultrafast switching.

• Proton reconstruction with the Precision Proton Spectrometer (PPS) in Run 2 and the PPS at HL-LHC

  Fabrizio Ferro

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 8, 062 (2022) · published 12 July 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The Precision Proton Spectrometer (PPS) started operating in 2016 and has collected more than 110 fb$^{-1}$ of data over the course of the LHC Run 2, now fully available for physics analysis. This contribution covers the key features of the PPS alignment and optics calibration, which have been developed from scratch. The reconstructed proton distributions, the performance of the PPS simulation and finally the validation of the full reconstruction chain with physics data (dilepton events) are also illustrated.

• Superstring amplitudes meet surfaceology

  Qu Cao, Jin Dong, Song He, Fan Zhu

  SciPost Phys. 19, 114 (2025) · published 28 October 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We reformulate tree-level amplitudes in open superstring theory (type-I) in terms of stringy Tr$(\phi^3)$ amplitudes with various kinematical shifts in the "curve-integral" formulation: while the bosonic-string amplitude with $n$ pairs of "scaffolding" scalars comes from a particularly simple shift of the Tr$(\phi^3)$ one (corresponding to $n$ length-$2$ cycles), the analogous superstring amplitude requires "correction" terms given by bosonic-string amplitudes with longer, even-length "cycles", which are also Tr$(\phi^3)$ ones at shifted kinematics dictated by the cycles; in total it is expressed as a sum of $(2n-3)!!$ shifted amplitudes originated from the expansion of a reduced Pfaffian. Upon taking $n$ scaffolding residues, this leads to a new formula of the $n$-gluon superstring amplitude, which is manifestly symmetric in $n-1$ legs, as a gauge-invariant combination of mixed bosonic string amplitudes with gluons and scalars, which come from length-$2$ cycles and longer ones respectively (the total sum is associated with the expansion a $n× n$ symmetrical determinant); the corresponding prefactors are nested commutators of $2n$-gon kinematical variables, which nicely become traces of field-strengths for those legs corresponding to scalars in the mixed amplitudes. These interesting linear combinations of bosonic string amplitudes must guarantee the cancellation of tachyon poles and $F^3$ vertices etc., and they give new relations between the superstring amplitude and its bosonic-string building blocks to all orders in the $\alpha'$ expansion (the first order gives a new formula for gluon amplitudes with a single $F^3$ insertion in terms of Yang-Mills-scalar amplitudes). We provide both the worldsheet and "curve-integral" derivations, and discuss applications to heterotic and type II cases.

• Quantum Monte Carlo simulations in the restricted Hilbert space of Rydberg atom arrays

  Pranay Patil

  SciPost Phys. 20, 022 (2026) · published 27 January 2026 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Rydberg atom arrays have emerged as a powerful platform to simulate a number of exotic quantum ground states and phase transitions. To verify these capabilities numerically, we develop a versatile quantum Monte Carlo sampling technique which operates in the reduced Hilbert space generated by enforcing the constraint of a Rydberg blockade. We use the framework of stochastic series expansion and show that in the restricted space, the configuration space of operator strings can be understood as a hard rod gas in $d+1$ dimensions. We use this mapping to develop cluster algorithms which can be visualized as various non-local movements of rods. We study the efficiency of each of our updates individually and collectively. To elucidate the utility of the algorithm, we show that it can efficiently generate the phase diagram of a Rydberg atom array, to temperatures much smaller than all energy scales involved, on a kagomé link lattice. This is of broad interest as the presence of a $Z_2$ spin liquid has been hypothesized recently.

• The fate of entanglement

  Gilles Parez, William Witczak-Krempa

  SciPost Phys. 20, 002 (2026) · published 8 January 2026 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Quantum entanglement manifests itself in non-local correlations between the constituents of a system. In its simplest realization, a measurement on one subsystem is affected by a prior measurement on its partner, irrespective of their separation. For multiple parties, purely collective types of entanglement exist but their detection, even theoretically, remains an outstanding open question. Here, we argue that all forms of multipartite entanglement entirely disappear during the typical evolution of a physical state as it heats up, evolves in time in a large family of dynamical protocols, or as its parts become separated. We focus on the generic case where the system interacts with an environment. These results mainly follow from the geometry of the entanglement-free continent in the space of physical states, and hold in great generality. We illustrate these phenomena with a frustrated molecular quantum magnet in and out of equilibrium, and a quantum spin chain. In contrast, if the particles are fermions, such as electrons, another notion of entanglement exists that protects bipartite quantum correlations. However, genuinely collective fermionic entanglement disappears during typical evolution, thus sharing the same fate as in bosonic systems. These findings provide fundamental knowledge about the structure of entanglement in quantum matter and architectures, paving the way for its manipulation.

• Precise quantum-geometric electronic properties from first principles

  José Luís Martins, Carlos Loia Reis, Ivo Souza

  SciPost Phys. 19, 109 (2025) · published 24 October 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The calculation of quantum-geometric properties of Bloch electrons – Berry curvature, quantum metric, orbital magnetic moment and effective mass – was implemented in a pseudopotential plane-wave code. The starting point was the first derivative of the periodic part of the wavefunction $\psi_{k}(r)$ with respect to wavevector $k$. This was evaluated with perturbation theory by solving a Sternheimer equation. Comparison of effective masses obtained from perturbation theory for silicon and gallium arsenide with carefully-converged numerical second derivatives of band energies confirmed the high precision of the method. Calculations of quantum-geometric quantities for gapped graphene were performed by adding a bespoke symmetry-breaking potential to first-principles graphene. As the two bands near the opened gap are reasonably isolated, the results could be compared with those obtained from an analytical two-band model, allowing to assess the strengths and limitations of such widely-used models. The final application was trigonal tellurium, where some quantum-geometric quantities flip sign with chirality.