Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• Holographic thermal correlators from supersymmetric instantons

  Matthew Dodelson, Alba Grassi, Cristoforo Iossa, Daniel Panea Lichtig, Alexander Zhiboedov

  SciPost Phys. 14, 116 (2023) · published 16 May 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We present an exact formula for the thermal scalar two-point function in four-dimensional holographic conformal field theories. The problem of finding it reduces to the analysis of the wave equation on the AdS-Schwarzschild background. The two-point function is computed from the connection coefficients of the Heun equation, which can be expressed in terms of the Nekrasov-Shatashvili partition function of an $SU(2)$ supersymmetric gauge theory with four fundamental hypermultiplets. The result is amenable to numerical evaluation upon truncating the number of instantons in the convergent expansion of the partition function. We also examine it analytically in various limits. At large spin the instanton expansion of the thermal two-point function directly maps to the light-cone bootstrap analysis of the heavy-light four-point function. Using this connection, we compute the OPE data of heavy-light double-twist operators. We compare our prediction to the perturbative results available in the literature and find perfect agreement.

  19 citations

• A tail of eternal inflation

  Timothy Cohen, Daniel Green, Akhil Premkumar

  SciPost Phys. 14, 109 (2023) · published 12 May 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Non-trivial inflaton self-interactions can yield calculable signatures of primordial non-Gaussianity that are measurable in cosmic surveys. We calculate the non-Gaussian corrections to Stochastic Inflation within the framework of Soft de Sitter Effective Theory, from which we derive the associated probability distribution for the scalar fluctuations. As a consequence of this new result, we show that the phase transition to slow-roll eternal inflation is often incalculable in these models. Instead, this transition is sensitive to the non-Gaussian tail of the distribution of scalar fluctuations, which probes physics inside the horizon, potentially beyond the cutoff scale of the Effective Field Theory of Inflation. We delineate the parameter space consistent with current observations and weak coupling at horizon crossing in which the large fluctuations relevant for eternal inflation can only be determined by appealing to a UV completion. We also argue that this breakdown of the perturbative description is required for the de Sitter entropy to reflect the number of de Sitter microstates.

  2 citations

• Marginal quenches and drives in Tomonaga-Luttinger liquids

  Shouvik Datta, Bastien Lapierre, Per Moosavi, Apoorv Tiwari

  SciPost Phys. 14, 108 (2023) · published 11 May 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We study Tomonaga-Luttinger liquids thrown out of equilibrium by marginal deformations in the form of interaction modulations. This is modeled by quenching or periodically driving the Luttinger parameter or, equivalently, the compactification radius of the free boson conformal field theory between two different values. We obtain exact analytical results for the evolution of the Loschmidt echo and observables such as the particle and energy densities. Starting from generic initial states, the quench dynamics are shown to exhibit revivals and temporal orthogonalities. For the periodic drive, we show stability or instability of time-evolved physical quantities dependent on the drive parameters. We also compare the corresponding marginally deformed thermal density matrices by non-perturbatively evaluating their Rényi divergence as a Euclidean quench. All the dynamics are shown to be crucially dependent on the ratio of the Luttinger parameters, which corresponds to the Zamolodchikov distance in the space of marginal deformations. Our setup is equivalently interpreted as the dynamics of the bosonic string upon instantaneous changes of the target-space radius.

  4 citations

• A gauge theory for shallow water

  David Tong

  SciPost Phys. 14, 102 (2023) · published 9 May 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The shallow water equations describe the horizontal flow of a thin layer of fluid with varying height. We show that the equations can be rewritten as a $d=2+1$ dimensional Abelian gauge theory. The magnetic field corresponds to the conserved height of the fluid, while the electric charge corresponds to the conserved vorticity. In a certain linearised approximation, the shallow water equations reduce to relativistic Maxwell-Chern-Simons theory. This describes Poincaré waves. The chiral edge modes of the theory are identified as coastal Kelvin waves.

  7 citations

• Natural boundaries for scattering amplitudes

  Sebastian Mizera

  SciPost Phys. 14, 101 (2023) · published 9 May 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Singularities, such as poles and branch points, play a crucial role in investigating the analytic properties of scattering amplitudes that inform new computational techniques. In this note, we point out that scattering amplitudes can also have another class of singularities called \emph{natural boundaries} of analyticity. They create a barrier beyond which analytic continuation cannot be performed. More concretely, we use unitarity to show that $2 \to 2$ scattering amplitudes in theories with a mass gap can have a natural boundary on the second sheet of the lightest threshold cut. There, an infinite number of ladder-type Landau singularities densely accumulates on the real axis in the center-of-mass energy plane. We argue that natural boundaries are generic features of higher-multiplicity scattering amplitudes in gapped theories.

  6 citations

• Gauging Lie group symmetry in (2+1)d topological phases

  Meng Cheng, Po-Shen Hsin, Chao-Ming Jian

  SciPost Phys. 14, 100 (2023) · published 9 May 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We present a general algebraic framework for gauging a 0-form compact, connected Lie group symmetry in (2+1)d topological phases. Starting from a symmetry fractionalization pattern of the Lie group $G$, we first extend $G$ to a larger symmetry group $\tilde{G}$, such that there is no fractionalization with respect to $\tilde{G}$ in the topological phase, and the effect of gauging $\tilde{G}$ is to tensor the original theory with a $\tilde{G}$ Chern-Simons theory. To restore the desired gauge symmetry, one then has to gauge an appropriate one-form symmetry (or, condensing certain Abelian anyons) to obtain the final result. Studying the consistency of the gauging procedure leads to compatibility conditions between the symmetry fractionalization pattern and the Hall conductance. When the gauging can not be consistently done (i.e. the compatibility conditions can not be satisfied), the symmetry $G$ with the fractionalization pattern has an 't Hooft anomaly and we present a general method to determine the (3+1)d topological term for the anomaly. We provide many examples, including projective simple Lie groups and unitary groups to illustrate our approach.

  4 citations

• Universal Gibbons-Hawking-York term for theories with curvature, torsion and non-metricity

  Johanna Erdmenger, Bastian Heß, Ioannis Matthaiakakis, René Meyer

  SciPost Phys. 14, 099 (2023) · published 8 May 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Motivated by establishing holographic renormalization for gravitational theories with non-metricity and torsion, we present a new and efficient general method for calculating Gibbons-Hawking-York (GHY) terms. Our method consists of linearizing any nonlinearity in curvature, torsion or non-metricity by introducing suitable Lagrange multipliers. Moreover, we use a split formalism for differential forms, writing them in $(n-1)+1$ dimensions. The boundary terms of the action are manifest in this formalism by means of Stokes' theorem, such that the compensating GHY term for the Dirichlet problem may be read off directly. We observe that only those terms in the Lagrangian that contain curvature contribute to the GHY term. Terms polynomial solely in torsion and non-metricity do not require any GHY term compensation for the variational problem to be well-defined. We test our method by confirming existing results for Einstein-Hilbert and four-dimensional Chern-Simons modified gravity. Moreover, we obtain new results for torsionful Lovelock-Chern-Simons and metric-affine gravity. For all four examples, our new method and results contribute to a new approach towards a systematic hydrodynamic expansion for spin and hypermomentum currents within AdS/CFT.

  6 citations

• Sequential flows by irrelevant operators

  Christian Ferko, Savdeep Sethi

  SciPost Phys. 14, 098 (2023) · published 8 May 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We explore whether one can $T\overline{T}$ deform a collection of theories that are already $T\overline{T}$-deformed. This allows us to define classes of irrelevant deformations that know about subsystems. In some basic cases, we explore the spectrum that results from this procedure and we provide numerical evidence in favor of modular invariance. We also study the flow of the classical Lagrangian for free bosons and free fermions under successive deformations. Some of the models found by sequentially flowing are likely to have interesting holographic interpretations.

  11 citations

• Quantum bit threads

  Andrew Rolph

  SciPost Phys. 14, 097 (2023) · published 8 May 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We give a bit thread prescription that is equivalent to the quantum extremal surface prescription for holographic entanglement entropy. Our proposal is inspired by considerations of bit threads in doubly holographic models, and equivalence is established by proving a generalisation of the Riemannian max-flow min-cut theorem. We explore our proposal's properties and discuss ways in which islands and spacetime are emergent phenomena from the quantum bit thread perspective.

  9 citations

• Spaces of states of the two-dimensional $O(n)$ and Potts models

  Jesper Lykke Jacobsen, Sylvain Ribault, Hubert Saleur

  SciPost Phys. 14, 092 (2023) · published 3 May 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We determine the spaces of states of the two-dimensional $O(n)$ and $Q$-state Potts models with generic parameters $n,Q\in \mathbb{C}$ as representations of their known symmetry algebras. While the relevant representations of the conformal algebra were recently worked out, it remained to determine the action of the global symmetry groups: the orthogonal group for the $O(n)$ model, and the symmetric group $S_Q$ for the $Q$-state Potts model. We do this by two independent methods. First we compute the twisted torus partition functions of the models at criticality. The twist in question is the insertion of a group element along one cycle of the torus: this breaks modular invariance, but allows the partition function to have a unique decomposition into characters of irreducible representations of the global symmetry group. Our second method reduces the problem to determining branching rules of certain diagram algebras. For the $O(n)$ model, we decompose representations of the Brauer algebra into representations of its unoriented Jones-Temperley-Lieb subalgebra. For the $Q$-state Potts model, we decompose representations of the partition algebra into representations of the appropriate subalgebra. We find explicit expressions for these decompositions as sums over certain sets of diagrams, and over standard Young tableaux. We check that both methods agree in many cases. Moreover, our spaces of states are consistent with recent bootstrap results on four-point functions of the corresponding CFTs.

  5 citations