Publications

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• Anomalies in the space of coupling constants and their dynamical applications I

  Clay Córdova, Daniel S. Freed, Ho Tat Lam, Nathan Seiberg

  SciPost Phys. 8, 001 (2020) · published 6 January 2020 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  It is customary to couple a quantum system to external classical fields. One application is to couple the global symmetries of the system (including the Poincar\'{e} symmetry) to background gauge fields (and a metric for the Poincar\'{e} symmetry). Failure of gauge invariance of the partition function under gauge transformations of these fields reflects 't Hooft anomalies. It is also common to view the ordinary (scalar) coupling constants as background fields, i.e. to study the theory when they are spacetime dependent. We will show that the notion of 't Hooft anomalies can be extended naturally to include these scalar background fields. Just as ordinary 't Hooft anomalies allow us to deduce dynamical consequences about the phases of the theory and its defects, the same is true for these generalized 't Hooft anomalies. Specifically, since the coupling constants vary, we can learn that certain phase transitions must be present. We will demonstrate these anomalies and their applications in simple pedagogical examples in one dimension (quantum mechanics) and in some two, three, and four-dimensional quantum field theories. An anomaly is an example of an invertible field theory, which can be described as an object in (generalized) differential cohomology. We give an introduction to this perspective. Also, we use Quillen's superconnections to derive the anomaly for a free spinor field with variable mass. In a companion paper we will study four-dimensional gauge theories showing how our view unifies and extends many recently obtained results.

  101 citations

• Topological order in matrix Ising models

  Sean A. Hartnoll, Edward A. Mazenc, Zhengyan D. Shi

  SciPost Phys. 7, 081 (2019) · published 19 December 2019 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We study a family of models for an $N_1 \times N_2$ matrix worth of Ising spins $S_{aB}$. In the large $N_i$ limit we show that the spins soften, so that the partition function is described by a bosonic matrix integral with a single `spherical' constraint. In this way we generalize the results of [1] to a wide class of Ising Hamiltonians with $O(N_1,\mathbb{Z})\times O(N_2,\mathbb{Z})$ symmetry. The models can undergo topological large $N$ phase transitions in which the thermal expectation value of the distribution of singular values of the matrix $S_{aB}$ becomes disconnected. This topological transition competes with low temperature glassy and magnetically ordered phases.

  2 citations

• Krotov: A Python implementation of Krotov's method for quantum optimal control

  Michael H. Goerz, Daniel Basilewitsch, Fernando Gago-Encinas, Matthias G. Krauss, Karl P. Horn, Daniel M. Reich, Christiane P. Koch

  SciPost Phys. 7, 080 (2019) · published 12 December 2019 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We present a new open-source Python package, krotov, implementing the quantum optimal control method of that name. It allows to determine time-dependent external fields for a wide range of quantum control problems, including state-to-state transfer, quantum gate implementation and optimization towards an arbitrary perfect entangler. Krotov's method compares to other gradient-based optimization methods such as gradient-ascent and guarantees monotonic convergence for approximately time-continuous control fields. The user-friendly interface allows for combination with other Python packages, and thus high-level customization.

  61 citations

• Gravitational thermodynamics of causal diamonds in (A)dS

  Ted Jacobson, Manus R. Visser

  SciPost Phys. 7, 079 (2019) · published 10 December 2019 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The static patch of de Sitter spacetime and the Rindler wedge of Minkowski spacetime are causal diamonds admitting a true Killing field, and they behave as thermodynamic equilibrium states under gravitational perturbations. We explore the extension of this gravitational thermodynamics to all causal diamonds in maximally symmetric spacetimes. Although such diamonds generally admit only a conformal Killing vector, that seems in all respects to be sufficient. We establish a Smarr formula for such diamonds and a ``first law" for variations to nearby solutions. The latter relates the variations of the bounding area, spatial volume of the maximal slice, cosmological constant, and matter Hamiltonian. The total Hamiltonian is the generator of evolution along the conformal Killing vector that preserves the diamond. To interpret the first law as a thermodynamic relation, it appears necessary to attribute a negative temperature to the diamond, as has been previously suggested for the special case of the static patch of de Sitter spacetime. With quantum corrections included, for small diamonds we recover the ``entanglement equilibrium'' result that the generalized entropy is stationary at the maximally symmetric vacuum at fixed volume, and we reformulate this as the stationarity of free conformal energy with the volume not fixed.

  49 citations

• Novel attractive pairing interaction in strongly correlated superconductors

  Priyo Adhikary, Tanmoy Das

  SciPost Phys. 7, 078 (2019) · published 9 December 2019 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Conventional and unconventional superconductivity, respectively, arise from attractive (electron-phonon) and repulsive (many-body Coulomb) interactions with fixed-sign and sign-reversal pairing symmetries. Although heavy-fermions, cuprates, and pnictides are widely believed to be unconventional superconductors, recent evidence in one of the heavy fermion superconductor (CeCu$_2$Si$_2$) indicate the presence of a novel conventional type pairing symmetry beyond the electron-phonon coupling. We present a new mechanism of attractive potential between electrons, mediated by emergent boson fields (vacuum or holon) in the strongly correlated mixed valence compounds. In the strong coupling limit, localized electron sites are protected from double occupancy, which results in an emergent holon gauge fields. The holon states can, however, attract conduction electrons through valence fluctuation channel, and the resulting doubly occupied states with local and conduction electrons condense as Cooper pairs with onsite, fixed-sign, $s$ -wave pairing symmetry. We develop the corresponding self-consistent theory of superconductivity, and compare the results with experiments. Our theory provides a new mechanism of superconductivity whose applicability extends to the wider class of intermetallic/mixed-valence materials and other flat-band metals.

  2 citations

• A localization transition underlies the mode-coupling crossover of glasses

  Daniele Coslovich, Andrea Ninarello, Ludovic Berthier

  SciPost Phys. 7, 077 (2019) · published 6 December 2019 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We study the equilibrium statistical properties of the potential energy landscape of several glass models in a temperature regime so far inaccessible to computer simulations. We show that unstable modes of the stationary points undergo a localization transition in real space close to the mode-coupling crossover temperature determined from the dynamics. The concentration of localized unstable modes found at low temperature is a non-universal, finite dimensional feature not captured by mean-field glass theory. Our analysis reconciles, and considerably expands, previous conflicting numerical results and provides a characteristic temperature for glassy dynamics that unambiguously locates the mode-coupling crossover.

  29 citations

• Class imbalance techniques for high energy physics

  Christopher W. Murphy

  SciPost Phys. 7, 076 (2019) · published 5 December 2019 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  A common problem in a high energy physics experiment is extracting a signal from a much larger background. Posed as a classification task, there is said to be an imbalance in the number of samples belonging to the signal class versus the number of samples from the background class. In this work we provide a brief overview of class imbalance techniques in a high energy physics setting. Two case studies are presented: (1) the measurement of the longitudinal polarization fraction in same-sign $WW$ scattering, and (2) the decay of the Higgs boson to charm-quark pairs.

  7 citations

• How to GAN LHC events

  Anja Butter, Tilman Plehn, Ramon Winterhalder

  SciPost Phys. 7, 075 (2019) · published 4 December 2019 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Event generation for the LHC can be supplemented by generative adversarial networks, which generate physical events and avoid highly inefficient event unweighting. For top pair production we show how such a network describes intermediate on-shell particles, phase space boundaries, and tails of distributions. In particular, we introduce the maximum mean discrepancy to resolve sharp local features. It can be extended in a straightforward manner to include for instance off-shell contributions, higher orders, or approximate detector effects.

  98 citations

• An introduction to spontaneous symmetry breaking

  Aron J. Beekman, Louk Rademaker, Jasper van Wezel

  SciPost Phys. Lect. Notes 11 (2019) · published 4 December 2019 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Perhaps the most important aspect of symmetry in physics is the idea that a state does not need to have the same symmetries as the theory that describes it. This phenomenon is known as spontaneous symmetry breaking. In these lecture notes, starting from a careful definition of symmetry in physics, we introduce symmetry breaking and its consequences. Emphasis is placed on the physics of singular limits, showing the reality of symmetry breaking even in small-sized systems. Topics covered include Nambu-Goldstone modes, quantum corrections, phase transitions, topological defects and gauge fields. We provide many examples from both high energy and condensed matter physics. These notes are suitable for graduate students.

  67 citations

• Neutrino non-standard interactions: A status report

  P. S. Bhupal Dev, K. S. Babu, Peter B. Denton, Pedro A. N. Machado, Carlos A. Argüelles, Joshua L. Barrow, Sabya Sachi Chatterjee, Mu-Chun Chen, André de Gouvêa, Bhaskar Dutta, Dorival Gonçalves, Tao Han, Matheus Hostert, Sudip Jana, Kevin J. Kelly, Shirley Weishi Li, Ivan Martinez-Soler, Poonam Mehta, Irina Mocioiu, Yuber F. Perez-Gonzalez, Jordi Salvado, Ian M. Shoemaker, Michele Tammaro, Anil Thapa, Jessica Turner, Xun-Jie Xu

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 2, 001 (2019) · published 4 December 2019 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  This report summarizes the present status of neutrino non-standard interactions (NSI). After a brief overview, several aspects of NSIs are discussed, including connection to neutrino mass models, model-building and phenomenology of large NSI with both light and heavy mediators, NSI phenomenology in both short- and long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiments, neutrino cross-sections, complementarity of NSI with other low- and high-energy experiments, fits with neutrino oscillation and scattering data, DUNE sensitivity to NSI, effective field theory of NSI, as well as the relevance of NSI to dark matter and cosmology. We also discuss the open questions and interesting future directions that can be pursued by the community at large. This report is based on talks and discussions during the Neutrino Theory Network NSI workshop held at Washington University in St. Louis from May 29-31, 2019 (https://indico.cern.ch/event/812851/)

  57 citations