Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• The quasilocal degrees of freedom of Yang-Mills theory

  Henrique Gomes, Aldo Riello

  SciPost Phys. 10, 130 (2021) · published 4 June 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Gauge theories possess nonlocal features that, in the presence of boundaries, inevitably lead to subtleties. We employ geometric methods rooted in the functional geometry of the phase space of Yang-Mills theories to: (\textit{1}) characterize a basis for quasilocal degrees of freedom (dof) that is manifestly gauge-covariant also at the boundary; (\textit{2}) tame the non-additivity of the regional symplectic forms upon the gluing of regions; and to (\textit{3}) discuss gauge and global charges in both Abelian and non-Abelian theories from a geometric perspective. Naturally, our analysis leads to splitting the Yang-Mills dof into Coulombic and radiative. Coulombic dof enter the Gauss constraint and are dependent on extra boundary data (the electric flux); radiative dof are unconstrained and independent. The inevitable non-locality of this split is identified as the source of the symplectic non-additivity, i.e. of the appearance of new dof upon the gluing of regions. Remarkably, these new dof are fully determined by the regional radiative dof only. Finally, a direct link is drawn between this split and Dirac's dressed electron.

  11 citations

• Symplectic reduction of Yang-Mills theory with boundaries: from superselection sectors to edge modes, and back

  Aldo Riello

  SciPost Phys. 10, 125 (2021) · published 1 June 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  I develop a theory of symplectic reduction that applies to bounded regions in electromagnetism and Yang-Mills theory. In this theory gauge-covariant superselection sectors for the electric flux through the boundary of the region play a central role: within such sectors, there exists a natural, canonically defined, symplectic structure for the reduced Yang-Mills theory. This symplectic structure does not require the inclusion of any new degrees of freedom. In the non-Abelian case, it also supports a family of Hamiltonian vector fields, which I call ``flux rotations,'' generated by smeared, Poisson-non-commutative, electric fluxes. Since the action of flux rotations affects the total energy of the system, I argue that flux rotations fail to be dynamical symmetries of Yang-Mills theory restricted to a region. I also consider the possibility of defining a symplectic structure on the union of all superselection sectors. This in turn requires including additional boundary degrees of freedom aka ``edge modes.'' However, I argue that a commonly used phase space extension by edge modes is inherently ambiguous and gauge-breaking.

  7 citations

• Convergence of hydrodynamic modes: insights from kinetic theory and holography

  Michal P. Heller, Alexandre Serantes, Michał Spaliński, Viktor Svensson, Benjamin Withers

  SciPost Phys. 10, 123 (2021) · published 1 June 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We study the mechanisms setting the radius of convergence of hydrodynamic dispersion relations in kinetic theory in the relaxation time approximation. This introduces a qualitatively new feature with respect to holography: a nonhydrodynamic sector represented by a branch cut in the retarded Green's function. In contrast with existing holographic examples, we find that the radius of convergence in the shear channel is set by a collision of the hydrodynamic pole with a branch point. In the sound channel it is set by a pole-pole collision on a non-principal sheet of the Green's function. More generally, we examine the consequences of the implicit function theorem in hydrodynamics and give a prescription to determine a set of points that necessarily includes all complex singularities of the dispersion relation. This may be used as a practical tool to assist in determining the radius of convergence of hydrodynamic dispersion relations.

  21 citations

• Selection rules for the S-Matrix bootstrap

  Anjishnu Bose, Aninda Sinha, Shaswat S Tiwari

  SciPost Phys. 10, 122 (2021) · published 31 May 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We examine the space of allowed S-matrices on the Adler zeros' plane using the recently resurrected (numerical) S-matrix bootstrap program for pion scattering. Two physical quantities, an averaged total scattering cross-section, and an averaged entanglement power for the boundary S-matrices, are studied. Emerging linearity in the leading Regge trajectory is correlated with a reduction in both these quantities. We identify two potentially viable regions where the S-matrices give decent agreement with low energy S- and P-wave scattering lengths and have leading Regge trajectory compatible with experiments. We also study the line of minimum averaged total cross section in the Adler zeros' plane. The Lovelace-Shapiro model, which was a precursor to modern string theory, is given by a straight line in the Adler zeros' plane and, quite remarkably, we find that this line intersects the space of allowed S-matrices near both these regions.

  21 citations

• A natural composite Higgs via universal boundary conditions

  Simone Blasi, Csaba Csaki, Florian Goertz

  SciPost Phys. 10, 121 (2021) · published 31 May 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We present a novel realization of a composite Higgs, which can naturally produce top partners above the current LHC bounds without increasing the tuning above 10%. The essential ingredients are softened breaking of the Higgs shift symmetry as well as maximal symmetry, which turn out to perfectly complement each other. The 5D realization of this model is particularly simple: universal UV and IR boundary conditions for the bulk fermions containing the SM fields will cure the problems of existing holographic composite Higgs models and provide a complete viable model for a naturally light Higgs without much tuning.

  7 citations

• On exotic consistent anomalies in (1+1)$d$: A ghost story

  Chi-Ming Chang, Ying-Hsuan Lin

  SciPost Phys. 10, 119 (2021) · published 28 May 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We revisit 't Hooft anomalies in (1+1)$d$ non-spin quantum field theory, starting from the consistency and locality conditions, and find that consistent U(1) and gravitational anomalies cannot always be canceled by properly quantized (2+1)$d$ classical Chern-Simons actions. On the one hand, we prove that certain exotic anomalies can only be realized by non-reflection-positive or non-compact theories; on the other hand, without insisting on reflection-positivity, the exotic anomalies present a caveat to the inflow paradigm. For the mixed U(1) gravitational anomaly, we propose an inflow mechanism involving a mixed U(1)$\times$SO(2) classical Chern-Simons action with a boundary condition that matches the SO(2) gauge field with the (1+1)$d$ spin connection. Furthermore, we show that this mixed anomaly gives rise to an isotopy anomaly of U(1) topological defect lines. The isotopy anomaly can be canceled by an extrinsic curvature improvement term, but at the cost of creating a periodicity anomaly. We survey the holomorphic $bc$ ghost system which realizes all the exotic consistent anomalies, and end with comments on a subtlety regarding the anomalies of finite subgroups of U(1).

  5 citations

• Similarity between the kinematic viscosity of quark-gluon plasma and liquids at the viscosity minimum

  Kostya Trachenko, Vadim Brazhkin, Matteo Baggioli

  SciPost Phys. 10, 118 (2021) · published 27 May 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Recently, it has been found that the kinematic viscosity of liquids at the minimum, $\nu_m$, can be expressed in terms of fundamental physical constants, giving $\nu_m$ on the order of $10^{-7}~{\rm m^2/s}$. Here, we show that the kinematic viscosity of quark-gluon plasma (QGP) has a similar value and support this finding by experimental data and theoretical estimations. The similarity is striking, given that the dynamic viscosity and the density of QGP are about 16 orders of magnitude larger than in liquids and that the two systems have disparate interactions and fundamental theories. We discuss the implications of this result for understanding the QGP including the similarity of flow and particle dynamics at the viscosity minimum, the associated dynamical crossover and universality of shear diffusivity.

  10 citations

• Non-Wilson-Fisher kinks of $O(N)$ numerical bootstrap: from the deconfined phase transition to a putative new family of CFTs

  Yin-Chen He, Junchen Rong, Ning Su

  SciPost Phys. 10, 115 (2021) · published 26 May 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  It is well established that the $O(N)$ Wilson-Fisher (WF) CFT sits at a kink of the numerical bounds from bootstrapping four point function of $O(N)$ vector. Moving away from the WF kinks, there indeed exists another family of kinks (dubbed non-WF kinks) on the curve of $O(N)$ numerical bounds. Different from the $O(N)$ WF kinks that exist for arbitary $N$ in $2<d<4$ dimensions, the non-WF kinks exist in arbitrary dimensions but only for a large enough $N>N_c(d)$ in a given dimension $d$. In this paper we have achieved a thorough understanding for few special cases of these non-WF kinks. The first case is the $O(4)$ bootstrap in 2d, where the non-WF kink turns out to be the $SU(2)_1$ Wess-Zumino-Witten (WZW) model, and all the $SU(2)_{k>2}$ WZW models saturate the numerical bound on the left side of the kink. We further carry out dimensional continuation of the 2d $SU(2)_1$ kink towards the 3d $SO(5)$ deconfined phase transition. We find the kink disappears at around $d=2.7$ dimensions indicating the $SO(5)$ deconfined phase transition is weakly first order. The second interesting observation is, the $O(2)$ bootstrap bound does not show any kink in 2d ($N_c=2$), but is surprisingly saturated by the 2d free boson CFT (also called Luttinger liquid) all the way on the numerical curve. The last case is the $N=\infty$ limit, where the non-WF kink sits at $(\Delta_\phi, \Delta_T)=(d-1, 2d)$ in $d$ dimensions. We manage to write down its analytical four point function in arbitrary dimensions, which equals to the subtraction of correlation functions of a free fermion theory and generalized free theory. An important feature of this solution is the existence of a full tower of conserved higher spin current. We speculate that a new family of CFTs will emerge at non-WF kinks for finite $N$, in a similar fashion as $O(N)$ WF CFTs originating from free boson at $N=\infty$.

  17 citations

• Symmetry decomposition of negativity of massless free fermions

  Sara Murciano, Riccarda Bonsignori, Pasquale Calabrese

  SciPost Phys. 10, 111 (2021) · published 19 May 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We consider the problem of symmetry decomposition of the entanglement negativity in free fermionic systems. Rather than performing the standard partial transpose, we use the partial time-reversal transformation which naturally encodes the fermionic statistics. The negativity admits a resolution in terms of the charge imbalance between the two subsystems. We introduce a normalised version of the imbalance resolved negativity which has the advantage to be an entanglement proxy for each symmetry sector, but may diverge in the limit of pure states for some sectors. Our main focus is then the resolution of the negativity for a free Dirac field at finite temperature and size. We consider both bipartite and tripartite geometries and exploit conformal field theory to derive universal results for the charge imbalance resolved negativity. To this end, we use a geometrical construction in terms of an Aharonov-Bohm-like flux inserted in the Riemann surface defining the entanglement. We interestingly find that the entanglement negativity is always equally distributed among the different imbalance sectors at leading order. Our analytical findings are tested against exact numerical calculations for free fermions on a lattice.

  66 citations

• A physical protocol for observers near the boundary to obtain bulk information in quantum gravity

  Chandramouli Chowdhury, Olga Papadoulaki, and Suvrat Raju

  SciPost Phys. 10, 106 (2021) · published 17 May 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We consider a set of observers who live near the boundary of global AdS, and are allowed to act only with simple low-energy unitaries and make measurements in a small interval of time. The observers are not allowed to leave the near-boundary region. We describe a physical protocol that nevertheless allows these observers to obtain detailed information about the bulk state. This protocol utilizes the leading gravitational back-reaction of a bulk excitation on the metric, and also relies on the entanglement-structure of the vacuum. For low-energy states, we show how the near-boundary observers can use this protocol to completely identify the bulk state. We explain why the protocol fails completely in theories without gravity, including non-gravitational gauge theories. This provides perturbative evidence for the claim that one of the signatures of holography --- the fact that information about the bulk is also available near the boundary --- is already visible in the low-energy theory of gravity.

  30 citations