Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• Lefschetz thimble-inspired weight regularizations for complex Langevin simulations

  Kirill Boguslavski, Paul Hotzy, David I. Müller

  SciPost Phys. 18, 092 (2025) · published 14 March 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Complex Langevin (CL) is a computational method to circumvent the numerical sign problem with applications in finite-density quantum chromodynamics and the real-time dynamics of quantum field theories. It has long been known that, depending on the simulated system, CL does not always converge correctly. In this work, we provide numerical evidence that the success or failure of the complex Langevin method is deeply tied to the Lefschetz thimble structure of the simulated system. This is demonstrated by constructing weight function regularizations that deform the thimbles of systems with compact domains. Our results indicate that CL converges correctly when the regularized system exhibits a single relevant compact thimble. We introduce a bias correction to retrieve the values of the original theory for parameter sets where a direct complex Langevin approach fails. The effectiveness of this method is illustrated using several toy models, including the cosine model and the SU(2) and SU(3) Polyakov chains. Finally, we discuss the opportunities and limitations of this regularization approach for lattice field theories.

  2 citations

• Non-invertible T-duality at any radius via non-compact SymTFT

  Riccardo Argurio, Andrés Collinucci, Giovanni Galati, Ondrej Hulik, Elise Paznokas

  SciPost Phys. 18, 089 (2025) · published 11 March 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We extend the construction of the T-duality symmetry for the 2d compact boson to arbitrary values of the radius by including topological manipulations such as gauging continuous symmetries with flat connections. We show that the entire circle branch of the $c=1$ conformal manifold can be generated using these manipulations, resulting in a non-invertible T-duality symmetry when the gauging sends the radius to its inverse value. Using the recently proposed symmetry TFT describing continuous global symmetries of the boundary theory, we identify the topological operator corresponding to these new T-duality symmetries as an open condensation defect of the bulk theory, constructed by (higher) gauging an $\mathbb{R}$ subgroup of the bulk global symmetries. Notably, when the boundary theory is the compact boson with a rational square radius, this operator reduces to the familiar T-duality defect described by a Tambara-Yamagami fusion category. This construction thus naturally includes all possible discrete T-duality symmetries of the theory in a unified way.

  7 citations

• Constructing the infrared conformal generators on the fuzzy sphere

  Giulia Fardelli, Andrew Liam Fitzpatrick, Emanuel Katz

  SciPost Phys. 18, 086 (2025) · published 10 March 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We investigate the conformal algebra on the fuzzy sphere, and in particular the generators of translations and special conformal transformations which are emergent symmetries in the infinite IR but are broken along the RG flow. We show how to extract these generators using the energy momentum tensor, which is complicated by the fact that one does not have a priori access to the energy momentum tensor of the CFT limit but rather must construct it numerically. We discuss and quantitatively analyze the main sources of corrections to the conformal generators due to the breaking of scale-invariance at finite energy, and develop efficient methods for removing these corrections. The resulting generators have matrix elements that match CFT predictions with accuracy varying from sub-percent level for the lowest-lying states up to several percent accuracy for states with dimension $\sim 5$ with $N=16$ fermions. We show that the generators can be used to accurately identify primary operators vs descendant operators in energy ranges where the spectrum is too dense to do the identification solely based on the approximate integer spacing within conformal multiplets.

  5 citations

• Modular properties of generalised Gibbs ensembles

  Max Downing, Faisal Karimi

  SciPost Phys. 18, 085 (2025) · published 7 March 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We investigate the modular properties of Generalised Gibbs Ensembles (GGEs) in two dimensional conformal field theories. These are obtained by inserting higher spin charges in the expressions for the partition function of the theory. We investigate the particular case where KdV charges are inserted in the GGE. We first determine an asymptotic expression for the transformed GGE. This expression is an expansion in terms of the zero modes of all the quasi-primary fields in the theory, not just the KdV charges. While these charges are non-commuting they can be re-exponentiated to give an asymptotic expression for the transformed GGE in terms of another GGE. As an explicit example we focus on the Lee-Yang model. We use the Thermodynamic Bethe Ansatz in the Lee-Yang model to first replicate the asymptotic results, and then find additional energies that need to be included in the transformed GGE in order to find the exact modular transformation.

• On the origin of species thermodynamics and the black hole - tower correspondence

  Alvaro Herráez, Dieter Lüst, Joaquin Masias, Marco Scalisi

  SciPost Phys. 18, 083 (2025) · published 6 March 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Species thermodynamics has been proposed in analogy to black hole thermodynamics. The entropy scales like an area and is given by the mere counting of the number of the species. In this work, we derive the constitutive relations of species thermodynamics and explain how those originate from standard thermodynamics. We consider configurations of species in thermal equilibrium inside a box of size $L$, and show that the temperature $T$ of the system, which plays a crucial role, is always upper bounded above by the species scale $\Lambda_\mathrm{sp}$. We highlight three relevant regimes: (i) when $L^{-1}< T<\Lambda_\mathrm{sp}$, and gravitational collapse is avoided, the system exhibits standard thermodynamics features, for example, with the entropy scaling like the volume of the box; (ii) in the limit $L^{-1}\simeq T→ \Lambda_\mathrm{sp}$ we recover the rules of species thermodynamics with the entropy scaling like the area of the box; (iii) an intermediate regime with $ L^{-1}\simeq T< \Lambda_\mathrm{sp}$ that avoids gravitational collapse and fulfills the Covariant Entropy Bound; this interpolates between the previous two regimes and its entropy is given simply in terms of the counting of the species contributing to the thermodynamic ensemble. This study also allows us to find a novel and independent bottom-up rationale for the Emergent String Conjecture. Finally, we present the Black Hole - Tower Correspondence as a generalization of the celebrated Black Hole - String Correspondence. This provides us with a robust framework to interpret the results of our thermodynamic investigation. Moreover, it allows us to qualitatively account for the entropy of black holes in terms of the degrees of freedom of the weakly coupled species in the tower.

  12 citations

• Bayesian RG flow in neural network field theories

  Jessica N. Howard, Marc S. Klinger, Anindita Maiti, Alexander G. Stapleton

  SciPost Phys. Core 8, 027 (2025) · published 5 March 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The Neural Network Field Theory correspondence (NNFT) is a mapping from neural network (NN) architectures into the space of statistical field theories (SFTs). The Bayesian renormalization group (BRG) is an information-theoretic coarse graining scheme that generalizes the principles of the exact renormalization group (ERG) to arbitrarily parameterized probability distributions, including those of NNs. In BRG, coarse graining is performed in parameter space with respect to an information-theoretic distinguishability scale set by the Fisher information metric. In this paper, we unify NNFT and BRG to form a powerful new framework for exploring the space of NNs and SFTs, which we coin BRG-NNFT. With BRG-NNFT, NN training dynamics can be interpreted as inducing a flow in the space of SFTs from the information-theoretic 'IR' $→$ 'UV'. Conversely, applying an information-shell coarse graining to the trained network's parameters induces a flow in the space of SFTs from the information-theoretic 'UV' $→$ 'IR'. When the information-theoretic cutoff scale coincides with a standard momentum scale, BRG is equivalent to ERG. We demonstrate the BRG-NNFT correspondence on two analytically tractable examples. First, we construct BRG flows for trained, infinite-width NNs, of arbitrary depth, with generic activation functions. As a special case, we then restrict to architectures with a single infinitely-wide layer, scalar outputs, and generalized cos-net activations. In this case, we show that BRG coarse-graining corresponds exactly to the momentum-shell ERG flow of a free scalar SFT. Our analytic results are corroborated by a numerical experiment in which an ensemble of asymptotically wide NNs are trained and subsequently renormalized using an information-shell BRG scheme.

  2 citations

• Generalized toric polygons, T-branes, and 5d SCFTs

  Antoine Bourget, Andrés Collinucci, Sakura Schäfer-Nameki

  SciPost Phys. 18, 079 (2025) · published 4 March 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  5d Superconformal Field Theories (SCFTs) are intrinsically strongly-coupled UV fixed points, whose realization hinges on string theoretic methods: they can be constructed by compactifying M-theory on local Calabi-Yau threefold singularities or alternatively from the world-volume of 5-brane-webs in type IIB string theory. There is a correspondence between 5-brane-webs and toric Calabi-Yau threefolds, however this breaks down when multiple 5-branes are allowed to end on a single 7-brane. In this paper, we extend this connection and provide a geometric realization of brane configurations including 7-branes. A web with 7-branes defines a so-called generalized toric polygon (GTP), which corresponds to combinatorial data that is obtained by removing vertices along external edges of a toric polygon. We identify the geometries associated to GTPs as non-toric deformations of toric Calabi-Yau threefolds and provide a precise, algebraic description of the geometry, when 7-branes are introduced along a single edge. The key ingredients in our analysis are T-branes in a type IIA frame, which includes D6-branes. We show that performing Hanany-Witten moves for the 7-branes on the type IIB side corresponds to switching on semisimple vacuum expectation values on the worldvolume of D6-branes, which in turn uplifts to complex structure deformations of the Calabi-Yau geometries. We test the proposal by computing the crepant resolutions of the deformed geometries, thereby checking consistency with the expected properties of the SCFTs.

  3 citations

• Yukawa-Lorentz symmetry of interacting non-Hermitian birefringent Dirac fermions

  Sk Asrap Murshed, Bitan Roy

  SciPost Phys. 18, 073 (2025) · published 27 February 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The energy spectra of linearly dispersing gapless spin-3/2 Dirac fermions display birefringence, featuring two effective Fermi velocities, thus breaking the space-time Lorentz symmetry. Here, we consider a non-Hermitian (NH) generalization of this scenario by introducing a masslike anti-Hermitian birefringent Dirac operator to its Hermitian counterpart. The resulting NH operator shows real eigenvalue spectra over an extended NH parameter regime, and a combination of non-spatial and discrete rotational symmetries protects the gapless nature of such quasiparticles. However, at the brink of dynamic mass generation, triggered by Hubbardlike local interactions, the birefringent parameter always vanishes under coarse grain due to the Yukawa-type interactions with scalar bosonic order-parameter fluctuations. The resulting quantum critical state is, therefore, described by two decoupled copies of spin-1/2 Dirac fermions with a unique terminal Fermi velocity, which is equal to the bosonic order-parameter velocity, thereby fostering an emergent space-time Lorentz symmetry. Furthermore, depending on the internal algebra between the anti-Hermitian birefringent Dirac operator and the candidate mass order, the system achieves the emergent Yukawa-Lorentz symmetry either by maintaining its non-Hermiticity or by recovering a full Hermiticity. We discuss the resulting quantum critical phenomena and possible microscopic realizations of the proposed scenarios.

  4 citations

• BPS chaos

  Yiming Chen, Henry W. Lin, Stephen H. Shenker

  SciPost Phys. 18, 072 (2025) · published 27 February 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Black holes are chaotic quantum systems that are expected to exhibit random matrix statistics in their finite energy spectrum. Lin, Maldacena, Rozenberg and Shan (LMRS) have proposed a related characterization of chaos for the ground states of BPS black holes with finite area horizons. On a separate front, the "fuzzball program" has uncovered large families of horizon-free geometries that account for the entropy of holographic BPS systems, but only in situations with sufficient supersymmetry to exclude finite area horizons. The highly structured, non-random nature of these solutions seems in tension with strong chaos. We verify this intuition by performing analytic and numerical calculations of the LMRS diagnostic in the corresponding boundary quantum system. In particular we examine the 1/2 and 1/4-BPS sectors of $\mathcal{N}=4$ SYM, and the two charge sector of the D1-D5 CFT. We find evidence that these systems are only weakly chaotic, with a Thouless time determining the onset of chaos that grows as a power of $N$. In contrast, finite horizon area BPS black holes should be strongly chaotic, with a Thouless time of order one. In this case, finite energy chaotic states become BPS as $N$ is decreased through the recently discovered "fortuity" mechanism. Hence they can plausibly retain their strongly chaotic character.

  13 citations

• Mixmasters in Wonderland: Chaotic dynamics from Carroll limits of gravity

  Gerben Oling, Juan F. Pedraza

  SciPost Phys. Core 8, 025 (2025) · published 27 February 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We demonstrate that the Carroll limit of general relativity coupled to matter captures the chaotic mixmaster dynamics of near-singularity limits. Zooming in on the behavior of general relativity close to spacelike singularities reveals rich and solvable ultra-local Belinski-Khalatnikov-Lifshitz (BKL) dynamics, which we show to be captured by a Carroll limit. Specifically, building on recent work on geometric Carroll expansions of general relativity, we establish that leading-order Carroll gravity, with suitable matter coupling, accurately describes well-known cosmological billiards behavior. Since the Carroll limit implements the ultra-local limit off shell, this opens up the door to a wide range of possible tractable applications, including spatially inhomogeneous setups and the emergence of spikes at late times. This further suggests that Carroll gravity, along with its subleading corrections, could serve as a valuable tool for studying deep infrared physics in AdS/CFT.

  5 citations