Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• The quasilocal degrees of freedom of Yang-Mills theory

  Henrique Gomes, Aldo Riello

  SciPost Phys. 10, 130 (2021) · published 4 June 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Gauge theories possess nonlocal features that, in the presence of boundaries, inevitably lead to subtleties. We employ geometric methods rooted in the functional geometry of the phase space of Yang-Mills theories to: (\textit{1}) characterize a basis for quasilocal degrees of freedom (dof) that is manifestly gauge-covariant also at the boundary; (\textit{2}) tame the non-additivity of the regional symplectic forms upon the gluing of regions; and to (\textit{3}) discuss gauge and global charges in both Abelian and non-Abelian theories from a geometric perspective. Naturally, our analysis leads to splitting the Yang-Mills dof into Coulombic and radiative. Coulombic dof enter the Gauss constraint and are dependent on extra boundary data (the electric flux); radiative dof are unconstrained and independent. The inevitable non-locality of this split is identified as the source of the symplectic non-additivity, i.e. of the appearance of new dof upon the gluing of regions. Remarkably, these new dof are fully determined by the regional radiative dof only. Finally, a direct link is drawn between this split and Dirac's dressed electron.

  14 citations

• Artificial event horizons in Weyl semimetal heterostructures and their non-equilibrium signatures

  Christophe De Beule, Solofo Groenendijk, Tobias Meng, Thomas L. Schmidt

  SciPost Phys. 11, 095 (2021) · published 23 November 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We investigate transport in type-I/type-II Weyl semimetal heterostructures that realize effective black- or white-hole event horizons. We provide an exact solution to the scattering problem at normal incidence and low energies, both for a sharp and a slowly-varying Weyl cone tilt profile. In the latter case, we find two channels with transmission amplitudes analogue to those of Hawking radiation. Whereas the Hawking-like signatures of these two channels cancel in equilibrium, we demonstrate that one can favor the contribution of either channel using a non-equilibrium state, either by irradiating the type-II region or by coupling it to a magnetic lead. This in turn gives rise to a peak in the two-terminal differential conductance which can serve as an experimental indicator of the artificial event horizon.

  14 citations

• Real-time evolution in the Hubbard model with infinite repulsion

  Elena Tartaglia, Pasquale Calabrese, Bruno Bertini

  SciPost Phys. 12, 028 (2022) · published 18 January 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We consider the real-time evolution of the Hubbard model in the limit of infinite coupling. In this limit the Hamiltonian of the system is mapped into a number-conserving quadratic form of spinless fermions, i.e. the tight binding model. The relevant local observables, however, do not transform well under this mapping and take very complicated expressions in terms of the spinless fermions. Here we show that for two classes of interesting observables the quench dynamics from product states in the occupation basis can be determined exactly in terms of correlations in the tight-binding model. In particular, we show that the time evolution of any function of the total density of particles is mapped directly into that of the same function of the density of spinless fermions in the tight-binding model. Moreover, we express the two-point functions of the spin-full fermions at any time after the quench in terms of correlations of the tight binding model. This sum is generically very complicated but we show that it leads to simple explicit expressions for the time evolution of the densities of the two separate species and the correlations between a point at the boundary and one in the bulk when evolving from the so called generalised nested Néel states.

  14 citations

• Curiosities above c = 24

  A. Ramesh Chandra, Sunil Mukhi

  SciPost Phys. 6, 053 (2019) · published 6 May 2019 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Two-dimensional rational CFT are characterised by an integer $\ell$, related to the number of zeroes of the Wronskian of the characters. For two-character RCFT's with $\ell<6$ there is a finite number of theories and most of these are classified. Recently it has been shown that for $\ell \ge 6$ there are infinitely many admissible characters that could potentially describe CFT's. In this note we examine the $\ell=6$ case, whose central charges lie between 24 and 32, and propose a classification method based on cosets of meromorphic CFT's. We illustrate the method using theories on Kervaire lattices with complete root systems. In the process we construct the first known two-character RCFT's beyond $\ell=2$.

  14 citations

• On the separation of Hall and Ohmic nonlinear responses

  Stepan S. Tsirkin, Ivo Souza

  SciPost Phys. Core 5, 039 (2022) · published 8 August 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The symmetric and antisymmetric parts of the linear conductivity describe the dissipative (Ohmic) and nondissipative (Hall) parts of the current. The Hall current is always transverse to the applied electric field regardless of its orientation; the Ohmic current is purely longitudinal in cubic crystals, but in lower-symmetry crystals it has a transverse component whenever the field is not aligned with a principal axis. In this work, we extend that analysis beyond the linear regime. We consider all possible ways of partitioning the current at any order in the electric field without taking symmetry into account, and find that the Hall vs Ohmic decomposition is the only one that satisfies certain basic requirements. A general prescription is given for achieving that decomposition, and the case of the quadratic conductivity is analyzed in detail. By performing a symmetry analysis we find that in five of the 122 magnetic point groups the quadratic dc conductivity is purely Ohmic and even under time reversal, a type of response that is entirely disorder mediated.

  14 citations

• Quantum oscillations in interaction-driven insulators

  Andrew A. Allocca, Nigel R. Cooper

  SciPost Phys. 12, 123 (2022) · published 8 April 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  In recent years it has become understood that quantum oscillations of the magnetization as a function of magnetic field, long recognized as phenomena intrinsic to metals, can also manifest in insulating systems. Theory has shown that in certain simple band insulators, quantum oscillations can appear with a frequency set by the area traced by the minimum gap in momentum space, and are suppressed for weak fields by an intrinsic "Dingle damping" factor reflecting the size of the bandgap. Here we examine quantum oscillations of the magnetization in excitonic and Kondo insulators, for which interactions play a crucial role. In models of these systems, self-consistent parameters themselves oscillate with changing magnetic field, generating additional contributions to quantum oscillations. In the low-temperature, weak-field regime, we find that the lowest harmonic of quantum oscillations of the magnetization are unaffected, so that the zero-field bandgap can still be extracted by measuring the Dingle damping factor of this harmonic. However, these contributions dominate quantum oscillations at all higher harmonics, thereby providing a route to measure this interaction effect.

  14 citations

• Assessment of Quantum Annealing for the Construction of Satisfiability Filters

  Marlon Azinović, Daniel Herr, Bettina Heim, Ethan Brown, Matthias Troyer

  SciPost Phys. 2, 013 (2017) · published 7 April 2017 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Satisfiability filters, introduced by S. A. Weaver et al. in 2014, are a new and promising type of filters to address set membership testing. In order to construct satisfiability filters, it is necessary to find disparate solutions to hard random $k$-SAT problems. This paper compares simulated annealing, simulated quantum annealing and walkSAT, an open-source SAT solver, in terms of their ability to find such solutions. The results indicate that solutions found by simulated quantum annealing are generally less disparate than solutions found by the other solvers and therefore less useful for the construction of satisfiability filters.

  14 citations

• Finite-temperature symmetric tensor network for spin-1/2 Heisenberg antiferromagnets on the square lattice

  Didier Poilblanc, Matthieu Mambrini, Fabien Alet

  SciPost Phys. 10, 019 (2021) · published 28 January 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Within the tensor network framework, the (positive) thermal density operator can be approximated by a double layer of infinite Projected Entangled Pair Operator (iPEPO) coupled via ancilla degrees of freedom. To investigate the thermal properties of the spin-1/2 Heisenberg model on the square lattice, we introduce a family of fully spin-$SU(2)$ and lattice-$C_{4v}$ symmetric on-site tensors (of bond dimensions $D=4$ or $D=7$) and a plaquette-based Trotter-Suzuki decomposition of the imaginary-time evolution operator. A variational optimization is performed on the plaquettes, using a full (for $D=4$) or simple (for $D=7$) environment obtained from the single-site Corner Transfer Matrix Renormalization Group fixed point. The method is benchmarked by a comparison to quantum Monte Carlo in the thermodynamic limit. Although the iPEPO spin correlation length starts to deviate from the exact exponential growth for inverse-temperature $\beta \gtrsim 2$, the behavior of various observables turns out to be quite accurate once plotted w.r.t the inverse correlation length. We also find that a direct $T=0$ variational energy optimization provides results in full agreement with the $\beta\rightarrow\infty$ limit of finite-temperature data, hence validating the imaginary-time evolution procedure. Extension of the method to frustrated models is described and preliminary results are shown.

  14 citations

• Perturbative and nonperturbative studies of CFTs with MN global symmetry

  Johan Henriksson, Andreas Stergiou

  SciPost Phys. 11, 015 (2021) · published 16 July 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Fixed points in three dimensions described by conformal field theories with $MN_{m,n}= O(m)^n\rtimes S_n$ global symmetry have extensive applications in critical phenomena. Associated experimental data for $m=n=2$ suggest the existence of two non-trivial fixed points, while the $\varepsilon$ expansion predicts only one, resulting in a puzzling state of affairs. A recent numerical conformal bootstrap study has found two kinks for small values of the parameters $m$ and $n$, with critical exponents in good agreement with experimental determinations in the $m=n=2$ case. In this paper we investigate the fate of the corresponding fixed points as we vary the parameters $m$ and $n$. We find that one family of kinks approaches a perturbative limit as $m$ increases, and using large spin perturbation theory we construct a large $m$ expansion that fits well with the numerical data. This new expansion, akin to the large $N$ expansion of critical $O(N)$ models, is compatible with the fixed point found in the $\varepsilon$ expansion. For the other family of kinks, we find that it persists only for $n=2$, where for large $m$ it approaches a non-perturbative limit with $\Delta_\phi\approx 0.75$. We investigate the spectrum in the case $MN_{100,2}$ and find consistency with expectations from the lightcone bootstrap.

  14 citations

• A general algorithm for computing bound states in infinite tight-binding systems

  M. Istas, C. Groth, A. R. Akhmerov, M. Wimmer, X. Waintal

  SciPost Phys. 4, 026 (2018) · published 23 May 2018 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We propose a robust and efficient algorithm for computing bound states of infinite tight-binding systems that are made up of a finite scattering region connected to semi-infinite leads. Our method uses wave matching in close analogy to the approaches used to obtain propagating states and scattering matrices. We show that our algorithm is robust in presence of slowly decaying bound states where a diagonalization of a finite system would fail. It also allows to calculate the bound states that can be present in the middle of a continuous spectrum. We apply our technique to quantum billiards and the following topological materials: Majorana states in 1D superconducting nanowires, edge states in the 2D quantum spin Hall phase, and Fermi arcs in 3D Weyl semimetals.

  14 citations