Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• Symmetries, conservation laws and entanglement in non-Hermitian fermionic lattices

  Rafael D. Soares, Youenn Le Gal, Chun Y. Leung, Dganit Meidan, Alessandro Romito, Marco Schirò

  SciPost Phys. 19, 094 (2025) · published 13 October 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Non-Hermitian quantum many-body systems feature steady-state entanglement transitions driven by the competition between unitary dynamics and dissipation. In this work, we reveal the fundamental role of conservation laws in shaping this competition. Focusing on translation-invariant non-interacting fermionic models with U(1) symmetry, we present a theoretical framework to understand the structure of the steady-state of these models and their entanglement content based on two ingredients: the nature of the spectrum of the non-Hermitian Hamiltonian and the constraints imposed on the steady-state single-particle occupation by the conserved quantities. These emerge from an interplay between Hamiltonian symmetries and initial state, due to the non-linearity of measurement back-action. For models with complex energy spectrum, we show that the steady state is obtained by filling single-particle right eigenstates with the largest imaginary part of the eigenvalue. As a result, one can have partially filled or fully filled bands in the steady-state, leading to an entanglement entropy undergoing a filling-driven transition between critical sub-volume scaling and area-law, similar to ground-state problems. Conversely, when the spectrum is fully real, we provide evidence that local observables can be captured using a diagonal ensemble, and the entanglement entropy exhibits a volume-law scaling independently on the initial state, akin to unitary dynamics. We illustrate these principles in the Hatano-Nelson model with periodic boundary conditions and the non-Hermitian Su-Schrieffer-Heeger model, uncovering a rich interplay between the single-particle spectrum and conservation laws in determining the steady-state structure and the entanglement transitions. These conclusions are supported by exact analytical calculations and numerical calculations relying on the Faber polynomial method.

  1 citation

• Competition of light- and phonon-dressing in microwave-dressed Bose polarons

  G. M. Koutentakis, S. I. Mistakidis, F. Grusdt, H. R. Sadeghpour, P. Schmelcher

  SciPost Phys. 19, 093 (2025) · published 13 October 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We theoretically investigate the stationary properties of a spin-1/2 impurity immersed in a one-dimensional confined Bose gas. In particular, we consider coherently coupled spin states with an external field, where only one spin component interacts with the bath, enabling light dressing of the impurity and spin-dependent bath-impurity interactions. Through detailed comparisons with ab-initio many-body simulations, we demonstrate that the composite system is accurately described by a simplified effective Hamiltonian. The latter builds upon previously developed effective potential approaches in the absence of light dressing. It can be used to extract the impurity energy, residue, effective mass, and anharmonicity induced by the phononic dressing. Light-dressing is shown to increase the polaron residue, undressing the impurity from phononic excitations because of strong spin coupling. For strong repulsions, previously shown to trigger dynamical Bose polaron decay (a phenomenon called temporal orthogonality catastrophe), it is explained that strong light-dressing stabilizes a repulsive polaron-dressed state. Our results establish the effective Hamiltonian framework as a powerful tool for exploring strongly interacting polaronic systems and corroborating forthcoming experimental realizations.

• Les Houches lectures on flow networks in biology

  Swarnavo Basu, Karen Alim

  SciPost Phys. Lect. Notes 101 (2025) · published 10 October 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Flows are essential to transport resources over large distances. As soon as diffusion becomes time-limiting, flows are needed. Flows are key for the function of multiple human organs, from the blood vasculature to the lungs, the digestive tract, the lymphatic system, and many more. While physics governs the flow dynamics, biology's response to flows governs the flow network architecture. We start with the fluid physics of Stokes flow, the prerequisite to describe the flows in biological flow networks. Then we explore how the network adaptation dynamics of biological flow networks reorganize network architecture to minimize flow dissipation or homogenize transport, storing memories of past flows along the way.

• Athermal creep deformation of ultrastable amorphous solids

  Pinaki Chaudhuri, Ludovic Berthier, Misaki Ozawa

  SciPost Phys. 19, 092 (2025) · published 10 October 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We numerically investigate the athermal creep deformation of amorphous materials having a wide range of stability. The imposed shear stress serves as the control parameter, allowing us to examine the time-dependent transient response through both the macroscopic strain and microscopic observables. Least stable samples exhibit monotonicity in the transient strain rate versus time, while more stable samples display a pronounced non-monotonic S-shaped curve, corresponding to failure by sharp shear band formation. We identify a diverging timescale associated with the fluidization process and extract the corresponding critical exponents. Our results are compared with predictions from existing scaling theories relevant to soft matter systems. The numerical findings for stable, brittle-like materials represent a challenge for theoretical descriptions. We monitor the microscopic initiation of shear bands during creep responses. Our study encompasses creep deformation across a variety of materials ranging from ductile soft matter to brittle metallic and oxide glasses, all within the same numerical framework.

• Bayesian active search on parameter space: A 95 GeV spin-0 resonance in the ($B-L$)SSM

  Mauricio A. Diaz, Giorgio Cerro, Srinandan Dasmahapatra, Stefano Moretti

  SciPost Phys. Core 8, 068 (2025) · published 10 October 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  In the attempt to explain possible data anomalies from collider experiments in terms of New Physics (NP) models, computationally expensive scans over their parameter spaces are typically required in order to match theoretical predictions to experimental observations. Under the assumption that anomalies seen at a mass of about 95 GeV by the Large Electron-Positron (LEP) and Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiments correspond to a NP signal, which we attempt to interpret as a spin-0 resonance in the $(B-L)$ Supersymmetric Standard Model ($(B-L)$SSM), chosen as an illustrative example, we introduce a novel Machine Learning (ML) approach based on a multi-objective active search method, called b-CASTOR, able to achieve high sample efficiency and diversity, due to the use of probabilistic surrogate models and a volume based search policy, outperforming competing algorithms, such as those based on Markov-Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods.

  1 citation

• Fractal decompositions and tensor network representations of Bethe wavefunctions

  Subhayan Sahu, Guifre Vidal

  SciPost Phys. Core 8, 067 (2025) · published 10 October 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We investigate the entanglement structure of a generic $M$-particle Bethe wavefunction (not necessarily an eigenstate of an integrable model) on a 1d lattice by dividing the lattice into $L$ parts and decomposing the wavefunction into a sum of products of $L$ local wavefunctions. Using the fact that a Bethe wavefunction accepts a fractal multipartite decomposition – it can always be written as a linear combination of $L^M$ products of $L$ local wavefunctions, where each local wavefunction is in turn also a Bethe wavefunction – we then build exact, analytical tensor network representations with finite bond dimension $\chi=2^M$, for a generic planar tree tensor network (TTN), which includes a matrix product states (MPS) and a regular binary TTN as prominent particular cases. For a regular binary tree, the network has depth $\log_{2}(N/M)$ and can be transformed into an adaptive quantum circuit of the same depth, composed of unitary gates acting on $2^M$-dimensional qudits and mid-circuit measurements, that deterministically prepares the Bethe wavefunction. Finally, we put forward a much larger class of generalized Bethe wavefunctions, for which the above decompositions, tensor network and quantum circuit representations are also possible.

• Electromagnetic multipole expansions and the logarithmic soft photon theorem

  Geoffrey Compère, Dima Fontaine, Kevin Nguyen

  SciPost Phys. Core 8, 066 (2025) · published 10 October 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We study the general structure of the electromagnetic field in the vicinity of spatial infinity. Starting from the general solution of the sourced Maxwell equations written in terms of multipole moments as obtained by Iyer and Damour, we derive the expansion of the electromagnetic field perturbatively in the electromagnetic coupling. At leading order, where the effect of long-range Coulombic interactions between charged particles is neglected, we discover infinite sets of antipodal matching relations satisfied by the electromagnetic field, which extend and sometimes correct previously known relations. At next-to-leading order, electromagnetic tails resulting from these Coulombic interactions appear, which affect the antipodal matching relations beyond those equivalent to the leading soft photon theorem. Moreover, new antipodal matching relations arise, which we use to re-derive the classical logarithmic soft photon theorem of Sahoo and Sen. Our analysis largely builds upon that of Campiglia and Laddha, although it invalidates the antipodal matching relation which they originally used in their derivation. The antipodal matching relations and the proof of the classical logarithmic soft photon theorem agree with an earlier analysis of Bhatkar, which we generalize using other methods.

• Worldsheet fermion correlators, modular tensors and higher genus integration kernels

  Eric D'Hoker, Oliver Schlotterer

  SciPost Phys. 19, 091 (2025) · published 9 October 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The cyclic product of an arbitrary number of Szegö kernels for even spin structure $\delta$ on a compact higher-genus Riemann surface $\Sigma$ may be decomposed via a descent procedure which systematically separates the dependence on the points $z_i ∈ \Sigma$ from the dependence on the spin structure $\delta$. In this paper, we prove two different, but complementary, descent procedures to achieve this decomposition. In the first procedure, the dependence on the points $z_i ∈ \Sigma$ is expressed via the meromorphic multiple-valued Enriquez kernels of e-print 1112.0864 while the dependence on $\delta$ resides in multiplets of functions that are independent of $z_i$, locally holomorphic in the moduli of $\Sigma$ and generally do not have simple modular transformation properties. The $\delta$-dependent constants are expressed as multiple convolution integrals over homology cycles of $\Sigma$, thereby generalizing a similar representation of the individual Enriquez kernels. In the second procedure, which was proposed without proof in e-print 2308.05044, the dependence on $z_i$ is expressed in terms the single-valued, modular invariant, but non-meromorphic DHS kernels introduced in e-print 2306.08644 while the dependence on $\delta$ resides in modular tensors that are independent of $z_i$ and are generally non-holomorphic in the moduli of $\Sigma$. Although the individual building blocks of these decompositions have markedly different properties, we show that the combinatorial structure of the two decompositions is virtually identical, thereby extending the striking correspondence observed earlier between the roles played by Enriquez and DHS kernels. Both decompositions are further generalized to the case of linear chain products of Szegö kernels.

  1 citation

• The open XYZ spin 1/2 chain: Separation of variables and scalar products for boundary fields related by a constraint

  Giuliano Niccoli, Veronique Terras

  SciPost Phys. 19, 090 (2025) · published 8 October 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We consider the open XYZ spin chain with boundary fields. We solve the model by the new Separation of Variables approach introduced in [J. M. Maillet and G. Niccoli, J. Stat. Mech.: Theory Exp. 094020 (2019)]. In this framework, the transfer matrix eigenstates are obtained as a particular sub-class of the class of so-called separate states. We consider the problem of computing scalar products of such separate states. As usual, they can be represented as determinants with rows labelled by the inhomogeneity parameters of the model. We notably focus on the special case in which the boundary parameters parametrising the two boundary fields satisfy one constraint, hence enabling for the description of part of the transfer matrix spectrum and eigenstates in terms of some elliptic polynomial $Q$-solution of a usual $TQ$-equation. In this case, we show how to transform the aforementioned determinant for the scalar product into some more convenient form for the consideration of the homogeneous and thermodynamic limits: as in the open XXX or XXZ cases, our result can be expressed as some generalisation of the so-called Slavnov determinant.

• Duality-Symmetry Enhancement in Maxwell Theory

  Shani Meynet, Daniele Migliorati, Raffaele Savelli, Michele Tortora

  SciPost Phys. 19, 089 (2025) · published 8 October 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Free Maxwell theory on general four-manifolds may, under certain conditions on the background geometry, exhibit holomorphic factorization in its partition function. We show that when this occurs, new discrete symmetries emerge at orbifold points of the conformal manifold. These symmetries, which act only on a sublattice of flux configurations, are not associated with standard dualities, yet they may carry 't Hooft anomalies, potentially causing the partition function to vanish even in the absence of apparent pathologies. We further explore their non-invertible extensions and argue that their anomalies can account for zeros of the partition function at smooth points in the moduli space.

  1 citation