Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• Ab initio electron-lattice downfolding: Potential energy landscapes, anharmonicity, and molecular dynamics in charge density wave materials

  Arne Schobert, Jan Berges, Erik G. C. P. van Loon, Michael A. Sentef, Sergey Brener, Mariana Rossi, Tim O. Wehling

  SciPost Phys. 16, 046 (2024) · published 9 February 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The interplay of electronic and nuclear degrees of freedom presents an outstanding problem in condensed matter physics and chemistry. Computational challenges arise especially for large systems, long time scales, in nonequilibrium, or in systems with strong correlations. In this work, we show how downfolding approaches facilitate complexity reduction on the electronic side and thereby boost the simulation of electronic properties and nuclear motion-in particular molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. Three different downfolding strategies based on constraining, unscreening, and combinations thereof are benchmarked against full density functional calculations for selected charge density wave (CDW) systems, namely 1H-TaS$_2$, 1T-TiSe$_2$, 1H-NbS$_2$, and a one-dimensional carbon chain. We find that the downfolded models can reproduce potential energy surfaces on supercells accurately and facilitate computational speedup in MD simulations by about five orders of magnitude in comparison to purely ab initio calculations. For monolayer 1H-TaS$_2$ we report classical and path integral replica exchange MD simulations, revealing the impact of thermal and quantum fluctuations on the CDW transition.

• Global Analysis of SSAs and the Impact of the EIC and SoLID on Tensor Charge Extractions

  Daniel Pitonyak

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 8, 044 (2022) · published 12 July 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Single transverse-spin asymmetries (SSAs) give great insight into the 3-dimensional structure of hadrons. We report on the first global QCD analysis of SSAs in semi-inclusive deep-inelastic scattering, electron-positron annihilation, Drell-Yan, and single-inclusive proton-proton collisions. One byproduct of the analysis is an extraction of the transversity function, from which the nucleon tensor charges can be computed, and we find, for the first time, agreement with lattice QCD for these quantities. Based on this analysis, we perform an impact study of future data on extractions of the nucleon tensor charges.

• Study of Short-Range nuclear Correlations in light nuclei using the BeAGLE event generator

  Zhoudunming Tu

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 8, 042 (2022) · published 12 July 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Nuclear dynamics at short distances among nucleons is one of the most outstanding phenomena in nuclear physics. Understanding the role of QCD in generating nuclear forces is important for uncovering the underlying physics of Short-Range Correlations (SRCs). In recent years, SRCs has been observed from light to heavy nuclei using fixed target experiments at Jefferson lab via high energy electron-nucleus scattering. In this talk, I will talk about the opportunity of studying SRCs using light nuclei with collider experiments, e.g., the Electron Ion Collider (EIC). The experimental technique of studying the light nuclei can be based on exclusive processes with tagging final-state particles, in order to fully control the initial state of the target wavefunction. In particular, incoherent diffractive production of $J/\psi$ particle off deuteron will be presented. In addition, the spectral function in light nuclei has been recently modeled in the BeAGLE event generator, where the decay kinematics of the light nuclei and their influence on the very forward detector design at the EIC will be discussed.

• Phase transitions of wave packet dynamics in disordered non-Hermitian systems

  Helene Spring, Viktor Könye, Fabian A. Gerritsma, Ion Cosma Fulga, Anton R. Akhmerov

  SciPost Phys. 16, 120 (2024) · published 3 May 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Disorder can localize the eigenstates of one-dimensional non-Hermitian systems, leading to an Anderson transition with a critical exponent of 1. We show that, due to the lack of energy conservation, the dynamics of individual, real-space wave packets follows a different behavior. Both transitions between localization and unidirectional amplification, as well as transitions between distinct propagating phases become possible. The critical exponent of the transition is close to 1/2 in propagating-propagating and (de)localization transitions.

• Apparent fine tunings for field theories with broken space-time symmetries

  Alberto Nicolis, Ira Z. Rothstein

  SciPost Phys. 16, 045 (2024) · published 9 February 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We exhibit a class of effective field theories that have hierarchically small Wilson coefficients for operators that are not protected by symmetries but are not finely tuned. These theories possess bounded target spaces and vacua that break space-time symmetries. We give a physical interpretation of these theories as generalized solids with open boundary conditions. We show that these theories realize unusual RG flows where higher dimensional (seemingly irrelevant) operators become relevant even at weak coupling. Finally, we present an example of a field theory whose vacuum energy relaxes to a hierarchically small value compared to the UV cut-off.

• Comment on Coleman-DeLuccia instantons

  Tom Banks, Bingnan Zhang

  SciPost Phys. 12, 015 (2022) · published 11 January 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We complete an old argument that causal diamonds in the crunching region of the Lorentzian continuation of a Coleman-Deluccia instanton for transitions out of de Sitter space have finite area, and provide quantum models consistent with the principle of detailed balance, which can mimic the instanton transition probabilities for the cases where this diamond is larger or smaller than the causal patch of de Sitter space. We review arguments that potentials which do not have a positive energy theorem when the lowest de Sitter minimum is shifted to zero, may not correspond to real models of quantum gravity.

• DsTau: study of tau neutrino production with nuclear emulsion in the CERN-SPS

  Ali Murat Guler

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 8, 094 (2022) · published 13 July 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Tau neutrino is one of the least known particle of Standard Model; there are only few measurements with a limited statistics. The DONUT experiment first reported the tau neutrino interaction cross-section but their measurement suffers from large systematic error of more than $50\%$ which is mainly due to uncertainty in the tau neutrino flux prediction. The tau neutrino cross section is an essential ingredient in neutrino experiments and its precise measurement would enable a search for new physics effects such as testing the Lepton Universality in neutrino interactions. The main goal of the DsTau experiment is to measure an inclusive differential cross-section of a $D_s$ production with a consecutive decay to tau lepton in p-A interactions at the CERN-SPS. The measurement of DsTau will reduce the systematic uncertainty in tau neutrino interaction cross-section to $10\%$ level. The results from the pilot run and the prospect for physics runs in 2021-2022 will be discussed.

• Fluctuations and Selection Bias in 5 and 13 TeV p-p Collisions: Where are the jets?

  Thomas A. Trainor

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 10, 003 (2022) · published 10 August 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The ALICE collaboration recently reported high-statistics $\bf p_t$ spectra from 5 TeV and 13 TeV p-p collisions with intent to determine the role of jets in high-multiplicity collisions. In the present study a two-component (soft + hard) model (TCM) of hadron production in p-p collisions is applied to ALICE $\bf p_t$ spectra. As in previous TCM studies of A-B collision systems jet and nonjet contributions to $\bf p_t$ spectra are accurately separated over the entire $\bf p_t$ acceptance. The statistical significance of data-model differences is established leading to insights concerning selection bias and spectrum model validity.

• Transverse Momentum Dependent and collinear densities based on Parton Branching method

  S. Taheri Monfared, H. Jung

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 10, 008 (2022) · published 10 August 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We review the current status of collinear and Transverse Momentum Dependent densities based on the Parton Branching method. We investigate the performance of the PB-TMD evolution as well as PB-TMD parton shower with different configurations of the hard process in the four- and five-flavour schemes.

• Non-minimal coupling, negative null energy, and effective field theory

  Jackson R. Fliss, Ben Freivogel, Eleni-Alexandra Kontou, Diego Pardo Santos

  SciPost Phys. 16, 119 (2024) · published 2 May 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The non-minimal coupling of scalar fields to gravity has been claimed to violate energy conditions, leading to exotic phenomena such as traversable wormholes, even in classical theories. In this work we adopt the view that the non-minimal coupling can be viewed as part of an effective field theory (EFT) in which the field value is controlled by the theory's cutoff. Under this assumption, the average null energy condition, whose violation is necessary to allow traversable wormholes, is obeyed both classically and in the context of quantum field theory. In addition, we establish a type of "smeared" null energy condition in the non-minimally coupled theory, showing that the null energy averaged over a region of spacetime obeys a state dependent bound, in that it depends on the allowed field range. We finally motivate our EFT assumption by considering when the gravity plus matter path integral remains semi-classically controlled.