Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• Foliated field theory and string-membrane-net condensation picture of fracton order

  Kevin Slagle, David Aasen, Dominic Williamson

  SciPost Phys. 6, 043 (2019) · published 12 April 2019 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Foliated fracton order is a qualitatively new kind of phase of matter. It is similar to topological order, but with the fundamental difference that a layered structure, referred to as a foliation, plays an essential role and determines the mobility restrictions of the topological excitations. In this work, we introduce a new kind of field theory to describe these phases: a foliated field theory. We also introduce a new lattice model and string-membrane-net condensation picture of these phases, which is analogous to the string-net condensation picture of topological order.

  84 citations

• Phases Of Adjoint QCD$_3$ And Dualities

  Jaume Gomis, Zohar Komargodski, Nathan Seiberg

  SciPost Phys. 5, 007 (2018) · published 23 July 2018 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We study 2+1 dimensional gauge theories with a Chern-Simons term and a fermion in the adjoint representation. We apply general considerations of symmetries, anomalies, and renormalization group flows to determine the possible phases of the theory as a function of the gauge group, the Chern-Simons level $k$, and the fermion mass. We propose an inherently quantum mechanical phase of adjoint QCD with small enough $k$, where the infrared is described by a certain Topological Quantum Field Theory (TQFT). For a special choice of the mass, the theory has ${\cal N}=1$ supersymmetry. There this TQFT is accompanied by a massless Majorana fermion - a Goldstino signaling spontaneous supersymmetry breaking. Our analysis leads us to conjecture a number of new infrared fermion-fermion dualities involving $SU$, $SO$, and $Sp$ gauge theories. It also leads us to suggest a phase diagram of $SO/Sp$ gauge theories with a fermion in the traceless symmetric/antisymmetric tensor representation of the gauge group.

  83 citations

• Fractons, dipole symmetries and curved spacetime

  Leo Bidussi, Jelle Hartong, Emil Have, Jørgen Musaeus, Stefan Prohazka

  SciPost Phys. 12, 205 (2022) · published 28 June 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We study complex scalar theories with dipole symmetry and uncover a no-go theorem that governs the structure of such theories and which, in particular, reveals that a Gaussian theory with linearly realised dipole symmetry must be Carrollian. The gauging of the dipole symmetry via the Noether procedure gives rise to a scalar gauge field and a spatial symmetric tensor gauge field. We construct a worldline theory of mobile objects that couple gauge invariantly to these gauge fields. We systematically develop the canonical theory of a dynamical symmetric tensor gauge field and arrive at scalar charge gauge theories in both Hamiltonian and Lagrangian formalism. We compute the dispersion relation of the modes of this gauge theory, and we point out an analogy with partially massless gravitons. It is then shown that these fractonic theories couple to Aristotelian geometry, which is a non-Lorentzian geometry characterised by the absence of boost symmetries. We generalise previous results by coupling fracton theories to curved space and time. We demonstrate that complex scalar theories with dipole symmetry can be coupled to general Aristotelian geometries as long as the symmetric tensor gauge field remains a background field. The coupling of the scalar charge gauge theory requires a Lagrange multiplier that restricts the Aristotelian geometries.

  83 citations

• Energy diffusion and the butterfly effect in inhomogeneous Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev chains

  Yingfei Gu, Andrew Lucas, Xiao-Liang Qi

  SciPost Phys. 2, 018 (2017) · published 28 May 2017 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We compute the energy diffusion constant $D$, Lyapunov time $\tau_{\text{L}}$ and butterfly velocity $v_{\text{B}}$ in an inhomogeneous chain of coupled Majorana Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) models in the large $N$ and strong coupling limit. We find $D\le v_{\text{B}}^2 \tau_{\text{L}}$ from a combination of analytical and numerical approaches. Our example necessitates the sharpening of postulated transport bounds based on quantum chaos.

  77 citations

• Exotic $\mathbb{Z}_N$ symmetries, duality, and fractons in 3+1-dimensional quantum field theory

  Nathan Seiberg, Shu-Heng Shao

  SciPost Phys. 10, 003 (2021) · published 8 January 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Following our earlier analyses of nonstandard continuum quantum field theories, we study here gapped systems in 3+1 dimensions, which exhibit fractonic behavior. In particular, we present three dual field theory descriptions of the low-energy physics of the X-cube model. A key aspect of our constructions is the use of discontinuous fields in the continuum field theory. Spacetime is continuous, but the fields are not.

  76 citations

• Reconstructing the gluon

  Anton K. Cyrol, Jan M. Pawlowski, Alexander Rothkopf, Nicolas Wink

  SciPost Phys. 5, 065 (2018) · published 20 December 2018 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We reconstruct the gluon spectral function in Landau gauge QCD from numerical data for the gluon propagator. The reconstruction relies on two novel ingredients: Firstly we derive analytically the low frequency asymptotics of the spectral function. Secondly we construct a functional basis from a careful consideration of the analytic properties of the gluon propagator in Landau gauge. This allows us to reliably capture the non-perturbative regime of the gluon spectrum. We also compare different reconstruction methods and discuss the respective systematic errors.

  74 citations

• Matchmakereft: automated tree-level and one-loop matching

  Adrián Carmona, Achilleas Lazopoulos, Pablo Olgoso, José Santiago

  SciPost Phys. 12, 198 (2022) · published 23 June 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We introduce matchmakereft, a fully automated tool to compute the tree-level and one-loop matching of arbitrary models onto arbitrary effective theories. Matchmakereft performs an off-shell matching, using diagrammatic methods and the background field method when gauge theories are involved. The large redundancy inherent to the off-shell matching together with explicit gauge invariance offers a significant number of non-trivial checks of the results provided. These results are given in the physical basis but several intermediate results, including the matching in the Green basis before and after canonical normalization, are given for flexibility and the possibility of further cross-checks. As a non-trivial example we provide the complete matching in the Warsaw basis up to one loop of an extension of the Standard Model with a charge -1 vector-like lepton singlet. Matchmakereft has been built with generality, flexibility and efficiency in mind. These ingredients allow matchmakereft to have many applications beyond the matching between models and effective theories. Some of these applications include the one-loop renormalization of arbitrary theories (including the calculation of the one-loop renormalization group equations for arbitrary theories); the translation between different Green bases for a fixed effective theory or the check of (off-shell) linear independence of the operators in an effective theory. All these applications are performed in a fully automated way by matchmakereft.

  74 citations

• Effective universality in quantum gravity

  Astrid Eichhorn, Peter Labus, Jan M. Pawlowski, Manuel Reichert

  SciPost Phys. 5, 031 (2018) · published 4 October 2018 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We investigate the asymptotic safety scenario for a scalar-gravity system. This system contains two avatars of the dynamical Newton coupling, a gravitational self-coupling and a scalar-graviton coupling. We uncover an effective universality for the dynamical Newton coupling on the quantum level: its momentum-dependent avatars are in remarkable quantitative agreement in the scaling regime of the UV fixed point. For the background Newton coupling, this effective universality is not present, but qualitative agreement remains.

  73 citations

• Symmetry decomposition of negativity of massless free fermions

  Sara Murciano, Riccarda Bonsignori, Pasquale Calabrese

  SciPost Phys. 10, 111 (2021) · published 19 May 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We consider the problem of symmetry decomposition of the entanglement negativity in free fermionic systems. Rather than performing the standard partial transpose, we use the partial time-reversal transformation which naturally encodes the fermionic statistics. The negativity admits a resolution in terms of the charge imbalance between the two subsystems. We introduce a normalised version of the imbalance resolved negativity which has the advantage to be an entanglement proxy for each symmetry sector, but may diverge in the limit of pure states for some sectors. Our main focus is then the resolution of the negativity for a free Dirac field at finite temperature and size. We consider both bipartite and tripartite geometries and exploit conformal field theory to derive universal results for the charge imbalance resolved negativity. To this end, we use a geometrical construction in terms of an Aharonov-Bohm-like flux inserted in the Riemann surface defining the entanglement. We interestingly find that the entanglement negativity is always equally distributed among the different imbalance sectors at leading order. Our analytical findings are tested against exact numerical calculations for free fermions on a lattice.

  73 citations

• Reconstructing the graviton

  Alfio Bonanno, Tobias Denz, Jan M. Pawlowski, Manuel Reichert

  SciPost Phys. 12, 001 (2022) · published 4 January 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We reconstruct the Lorentzian graviton propagator in asymptotically safe quantum gravity from Euclidean data. The reconstruction is applied to both the dynamical fluctuation graviton and the background graviton propagator. We prove that the spectral function of the latter necessarily has negative parts similar to, and for the same reasons, as the gluon spectral function. In turn, the spectral function of the dynamical graviton is positive. We argue that the latter enters cross sections and other observables in asymptotically safe quantum gravity. Hence, its positivity may hint at the unitarity of asymptotically safe quantum gravity.

  69 citations