Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• Conductance asymmetries in mesoscopic superconducting devices due to finite bias

  André Melo, Chun-Xiao Liu, Piotr Rożek, Tómas Örn Rosdahl, Michael Wimmer

  SciPost Phys. 10, 037 (2021) · published 16 February 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Tunneling conductance spectroscopy in normal metal-superconductor junctions is an important tool for probing Andreev bound states in mesoscopic superconducting devices, such as Majorana nanowires. In an ideal superconducting device, the subgap conductance obeys specific symmetry relations, due to particle-hole symmetry and unitarity of the scattering matrix. However, experimental data often exhibits deviations from these symmetries or even their explicit breakdown. In this work, we identify a mechanism that leads to conductance asymmetries without quasiparticle poisoning. In particular, we investigate the effects of finite bias and include the voltage dependence in the tunnel barrier transparency, finding significant conductance asymmetries for realistic device parameters. It is important to identify the physical origin of conductance asymmetries: in contrast to other possible mechanisms such as quasiparticle poisoning, finite-bias effects are not detrimental to the performance of a topological qubit. To that end we identify features that can be used to experimentally determine whether finite-bias effects are the source of conductance asymmetries.

  13 citations

• Correlations of zero-entropy critical states in the XXZ model: integrability and Luttinger theory far from the ground state

  R. Vlijm, I. S. Eliëns, J. -S. Caux

  SciPost Phys. 1, 008 (2016) · published 25 October 2016 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Pumping a finite energy density into a quantum system typically leads to `melted' states characterized by exponentially-decaying correlations, as is the case for finite-temperature equilibrium situations. An important exception to this rule are states which, while being at high energy, maintain a low entropy. Such states can interestingly still display features of quantum criticality, especially in one dimension. Here, we consider high-energy states in anisotropic Heisenberg quantum spin chains obtained by splitting the ground state's magnon Fermi sea into separate pieces. Using methods based on integrability, we provide a detailed study of static and dynamical spin-spin correlations. These carry distinctive signatures of the Fermi sea splittings, which would be observable in eventual experimental realizations. Going further, we employ a multi-component Tomonaga-Luttinger model in order to predict the asymptotics of static correlations. For this effective field theory, we fix all universal exponents from energetics, and all non-universal correlation prefactors using finite-size scaling of matrix elements. The correlations obtained directly from integrability and those emerging from the Luttinger field theory description are shown to be in extremely good correspondence, as expected, for the large distance asymptotics, but surprisingly also for the short distance behavior. Finally, we discuss the description of dynamical correlations from a mobile impurity model, and clarify the relation of the effective field theory parameters to the Bethe Ansatz solution.

  13 citations

• Anomalies and symmetry fractionalization

  Diego Delmastro, Jaume Gomis, Po-Shen Hsin, Zohar Komargodski

  SciPost Phys. 15, 079 (2023) · published 5 September 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We study ordinary, zero-form symmetry $G$ and its anomalies in a system with a one-form symmetry $\Gamma$. In a theory with one-form symmetry, the action of $G$ on charged line operators is not completely determined, and additional data, a fractionalization class, needs to be specified. Distinct choices of a fractionalization class can result in different values for the anomalies of $G$ if the theory has an anomaly involving $\Gamma$. Therefore, the computation of the 't Hooft anomaly for an ordinary symmetry $G$ generally requires first discovering the one-form symmetry $\Gamma$ of the physical system. We show that the multiple values of the anomaly for $G$ can be realized by twisted gauge transformations, since twisted gauge transformations shift fractionalization classes. We illustrate these ideas in QCD theories in diverse dimensions. We successfully match the anomalies of time-reversal symmetries in $2+1d$ gauge theories, across the different fractionalization classes, with previous conjectures for the infrared phases of such strongly coupled theories, and also provide new checks of these proposals. We perform consistency checks of recent proposals about two-dimensional adjoint QCD and present new results about the anomaly of the axial $\mathbb{Z}_{2N}$ symmetry in $3+1d$ ${\cal N}=1$ super-Yang-Mills. Finally, we study fractionalization classes that lead to 2-group symmetry, both in QCD-like theories, and in $2+1d$ $\mathbb{Z}_2$ gauge theory.

  13 citations

• Lattice Clifford fractons and their Chern-Simons-like theory

  Weslei B. Fontana, Pedro R. S. Gomes, Claudio Chamon

  SciPost Phys. Core 4, 012 (2021) · published 11 May 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We use Dirac matrix representations of the Clifford algebra to build fracton models on the lattice and their effective Chern-Simons-like theory. As an example we build lattice fractons in odd $D$ spatial dimensions and their $(D+1)$ effective theory. The model possesses an anti-symmetric $K$ matrix resembling that of hierarchical quantum Hall states. The gauge charges are conserved in sub-dimensional manifolds which ensures the fractonic behavior. The construction extends to any lattice fracton model built from commuting projectors and with tensor products of spin-$1/2$ degrees of freedom at the sites.

  13 citations

• Probing many-body localization in a disordered quantum dimer model on the honeycomb lattice

  Francesca Pietracaprina, Fabien Alet

  SciPost Phys. 10, 044 (2021) · published 22 February 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We numerically study the possibility of many-body localization transition in a disordered quantum dimer model on the honeycomb lattice. By using the peculiar constraints of this model and state-of-the-art exact diagonalization and time evolution methods, we probe both eigenstates and dynamical properties and conclude on the existence of a localization transition, on the available time and length scales (system sizes of up to N=108 sites). We critically discuss these results and their implications.

  13 citations

• Half-wormholes in SYK with one time point

  Baur Mukhametzhanov

  SciPost Phys. 12, 029 (2022) · published 19 January 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  In this note we study the SYK model with one time point, recently considered by Saad, Shenker, Stanford, and Yao. Working in a collective field description, they derived a remarkable identity: the square of the partition function with fixed couplings is well approximated by a "wormhole" saddle plus a "pair of linked half-wormholes" saddle. It explains factorization of decoupled systems. Here, we derive an explicit formula for the half-wormhole contribution. It is expressed through a hyperpfaffian of the tensor of SYK couplings. We then develop a perturbative expansion around the half-wormhole saddle. This expansion truncates at a finite order and gives the exact answer. The last term in the perturbative expansion turns out to coincide with the wormhole contribution. In this sense the wormhole saddle in this model does not need to be added separately, but instead can be viewed as a large fluctuation around the linked half-wormholes.

  13 citations

• Elastic photon-initiated production at the LHC: the role of hadron-hadron interactions

  Lucian A. Harland-Lang, Valery A. Khoze, Mikhail G. Ryskin

  SciPost Phys. 11, 064 (2021) · published 21 September 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We analyse in detail the role of additional hadron-hadron interactions in elastic photon-initiated (PI) production at the LHC, both in $pp$ and heavy ion collisions. We first demonstrate that the source of difference between our predictions and other results in the literature for PI muon pair production is dominantly due to an unphysical cut that is imposed in these latter results on the dimuon-hadron impact parameter. We in addition show that this is experimentally disfavoured by the shape of the muon kinematic distributions measured by ATLAS in ultraperipheral PbPb collisions. We then consider the theoretical uncertainty due to the survival probability for no additional hadron-hadron interactions, and in particular the role this may play in the tendency for the predicted cross sections to lie somewhat above ATLAS data on PI muon pair production, in both $pp$ and PbPb collisions. This difference is relatively mild, at the $\sim 10\%$ level, and hence a very good control over the theory is clearly required. We show that this uncertainty is very small, and it is only by taking very extreme and rather unphysical variations in the modelling of the survival factor that this tension can be removed. This underlines the basic, rather model independent, point that a significant fraction of elastic PI scattering occurs for hadron-hadron impact parameters that are simply outside the range of QCD interactions, and hence this sets a lower bound on the survival factor in any physically reasonable approach. Finally, other possible origins for this discrepancy are discussed.

  13 citations

• Exact hydrodynamic solution of a double domain wall melting in the spin-1/2 XXZ model

  Stefano Scopa , Pasquale Calabrese, Jérôme Dubail

  SciPost Phys. 12, 207 (2022) · published 28 June 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We investigate the non-equilibrium dynamics of a one-dimensional spin-1/2 XXZ model at zero-temperature in the regime $|\Delta|< 1$, initially prepared in a product state with two domain walls i.e, $|\downarrow\dots\downarrow\uparrow\dots\uparrow\downarrow\dots\downarrow\rangle$. At early times, the two domain walls evolve independently and only after a calculable time a non-trivial interplay between the two emerges and results in the occurrence of a split Fermi sea. For $\Delta=0$, we derive exact asymptotic results for the magnetization and the spin current by using a semi-classical Wigner function approach, and we exactly determine the spreading of entanglement entropy exploiting the recently developed tools of quantum fluctuating hydrodynamics. In the interacting case, we analytically solve the Generalized Hydrodynamics equation providing exact expressions for the conserved quantities. We display some numerical results for the entanglement entropy also in the interacting case and we propose a conjecture for its asymptotic value.

  13 citations

• Effective theory for matter in non-perturbative cavity QED

  Juan Román-Roche, David Zueco

  SciPost Phys. Lect. Notes 50 (2022) · published 10 May 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Starting from a general material system of $N$ particles coupled to a cavity, we use a coherent-state path integral formulation to produce a non-perturbative effective theory for the material degrees of freedom. We tackle the effects of image charges, the $A^2$ term and a multimode arbitrary-geometry cavity. The resulting (non-local) action has the photonic degrees of freedom replaced by an effective position-dependent interaction between the particles. In the large-$N$ limit, we discuss how the theory can be cast into an effective Hamiltonian where the cavity induced interactions are made explicit. The theory is applicable, beyond cavity QED, to any system where bulk material is linearly coupled to a diagonalizable bosonic bath. We highlight the differences of the theory with other well-known methods and numerically study its finite-size scaling on the Dicke model. Finally, we showcase its descriptive power with three examples: photon condensation, the 2D free electron gas in a cavity and the modification of magnetic interactions between molecular spins; recovering, condensing and extending some recent results in the literature.

  13 citations

• Goldstone equivalence and high energy electroweak physics

  Gabriel Cuomo, Luca Vecchi, Andrea Wulzer

  SciPost Phys. 8, 078 (2020) · published 15 May 2020 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The transition between the broken and unbroken phases of massive gauge theories, namely the rearrangement of longitudinal and Goldstone degrees of freedom that occurs at high energy, is not manifestly smooth in the standard formalism. The lack of smoothness concretely shows up as an anomalous growth with energy of the longitudinal polarization vectors, as they emerge in Feynman rules both for real on-shell external particles and for virtual particles from the decomposition of the gauge field propagator. This makes the characterization of Feynman amplitudes in the high-energy limit quite cumbersome, which in turn poses peculiar challenges in the study of Electroweak processes at energies much above the Electroweak scale. We develop a Lorentz-covariant formalism where polarization vectors are well-behaved and, consequently, energy power-counting is manifest at the level of individual Feynman diagrams. This allows us to prove the validity of the Effective $W$ Approximation and, more generally, the factorization of collinear emissions and to compute the corresponding splitting functions at the tree-level order. Our formalism applies at all orders in perturbation theory, for arbitrary gauge groups and generic linear gauge-fixing functionals. It can be used to simplify Standard Model loop calculations by performing the high-energy expansion directly on the Feynman diagrams. This is illustrated by computing the radiative corrections to the decay of the top quark.

  13 citations