Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• Twisted holography of defect fusions

  Jihwan Oh, Yehao Zhou

  SciPost Phys. 10, 105 (2021) · published 14 May 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  In the twisted M-theory setting, various types of fusion of M2 and M5 branes induce coproducts between the algebra of operators on M2 branes and the algebra of operators on M5 branes. By doing a perturbative computation in the gravity side, which is captured by the 5d topological holomorphic $U(1)$ Chern-Simons theory, we reproduce the non-perturbative coproducts.

  4 citations

• EFT asymptotics: the growth of operator degeneracy

  Tom Melia, Sridip Pal

  SciPost Phys. 10, 104 (2021) · published 14 May 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We establish formulae for the asymptotic growth (with respect to the scaling dimension) of the number of operators in effective field theory, or equivalently the number of $S$-matrix elements, in arbitrary spacetime dimensions and with generic field content. This we achieve by generalising a theorem due to Meinardus and applying it to Hilbert series -- partition functions for the degeneracy of (subsets of) operators. Although our formulae are asymptotic, numerical experiments reveal remarkable agreement with exact results at very low orders in the EFT expansion, including for complicated phenomenological theories such as the standard model EFT. Our methods also reveal phase transition-like behaviour in Hilbert series. We discuss prospects for tightening the bounds and providing rigorous errors to the growth of operator degeneracy, and of extending the analytic study and utility of Hilbert series to EFT.

  15 citations

• Information transfer with a gravitating bath

  Hao Geng, Andreas Karch, Carlos Perez-Pardavila, Suvrat Raju, Lisa Randall, Marcos Riojas, Sanjit Shashi

  SciPost Phys. 10, 103 (2021) · published 14 May 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Late-time dominance of entanglement islands plays a critical role in addressing the information paradox for black holes in AdS coupled to an asymptotic non-gravitational bath. A natural question is how this observation can be extended to gravitational systems. To gain insight into this question, we explore how this story is modified within the context of Karch-Randall braneworlds when we allow the asymptotic bath to couple to dynamical gravity. We find that because of the inability to separate degrees of freedom by spatial location when defining the radiation region, the entanglement entropy of radiation emitted into the bath is a time-independent constant, consistent with recent work on black hole information in asymptotically flat space. If we instead consider an entanglement entropy between two sectors of a specific division of the Hilbert space, we then find non-trivial time-dependence, with the Page time a monotonically decreasing function of the brane angle---provided both branes are below a particular angle. However, the properties of the entropy depend discontinuously on this angle, which is the first example of such discontinuous behavior for an AdS brane in AdS space.

  148 citations

• Lattice Clifford fractons and their Chern-Simons-like theory

  Weslei B. Fontana, Pedro R. S. Gomes, Claudio Chamon

  SciPost Phys. Core 4, 012 (2021) · published 11 May 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We use Dirac matrix representations of the Clifford algebra to build fracton models on the lattice and their effective Chern-Simons-like theory. As an example we build lattice fractons in odd $D$ spatial dimensions and their $(D+1)$ effective theory. The model possesses an anti-symmetric $K$ matrix resembling that of hierarchical quantum Hall states. The gauge charges are conserved in sub-dimensional manifolds which ensures the fractonic behavior. The construction extends to any lattice fracton model built from commuting projectors and with tensor products of spin-$1/2$ degrees of freedom at the sites.

  13 citations

• STrEAMlining EFT Matching

  Timothy Cohen, Xiaochuan Lu, Zhengkang Zhang

  SciPost Phys. 10, 098 (2021) · published 3 May 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  This paper presents STrEAM (SuperTrace Evaluation Automated for Matching), a Mathematica package that calculates all functional supertraces which arise when matching a generic UV model onto a relativistic Effective Field Theory (EFT) at one loop and to arbitrary order in the heavy mass expansion. STrEAM implements the covariant derivative expansion to automate the most tedious step of the streamlined functional matching prescription presented in arXiv:2011.02484 . The code and an example notebook are available at https://www.github.com/EFTMatching/STrEAM .

  36 citations

• 3d N=4 Bootstrap and Mirror Symmetry

  Chi-Ming Chang, Martin Fluder, Ying-Hsuan Lin, Shu-Heng Shao, Yifan Wang

  SciPost Phys. 10, 097 (2021) · published 30 April 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We investigate the non-BPS realm of 3d ${\cal N} = 4$ superconformal field theory by uniting the non-perturbative methods of the conformal bootstrap and supersymmetric localization, and utilizing special features of 3d ${\cal N} = 4$ theories such as mirror symmetry and a protected sector described by topological quantum mechanics (TQM). Supersymmetric localization allows for the exact determination of the conformal and flavor central charges, and the latter can be fed into the mini-bootstrap of the TQM to solve for a subset of the OPE data. We examine the implications of the $\mathbb{Z}_2$ mirror action for the SCFT single- and mixed-branch crossing equations for the moment map operators, and apply numerical bootstrap to obtain universal constraints on OPE data for given flavor symmetry groups. A key ingredient in applying the bootstrap analysis is the determination of the mixed-branch superconformal blocks. Among other results, we show that the simplest known self-mirror theory with $SU(2) \times SU(2)$ flavor symmetry saturates our bootstrap bounds, which allows us to extract the non-BPS data and examine the self-mirror $\mathbb{Z}_2$ symmetry thereof.

  9 citations

• A general definition of $JT_a$ -- deformed QFTs

  Tarek Anous, Monica Guica

  SciPost Phys. 10, 096 (2021) · published 30 April 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We propose a general path-integral definition of two-dimensional quantum field theories deformed by an integrable, irrelevant vector operator constructed from the components of the stress tensor and those of a $U(1)$ current. The deformed theory is obtained by coupling the original QFT to a flat dynamical gauge field and "half" a flat dynamical vielbein. The resulting partition function is shown to satisfy a geometric flow equation, which perfectly reproduces the flow equations for the deformed energy levels that were previously derived in the literature. The S-matrix of the deformed QFT differs from the original S-matrix only by an overall phase factor that depends on the charges and momenta of the external particles, thus supporting the conjecture that such QFTs are UV complete, although intrinsically non-local. For the special case of an integrable QFT, we check that this phase factor precisely reproduces the change in the finite-size spectrum via the Thermodynamic Bethe Ansatz equations.

  11 citations

• Semi-classical quantisation of magnetic solitons in the anisotropic Heisenberg quantum chain

  Yuan Miao, Enej Ilievski, Oleksandr Gamayun

  SciPost Phys. 10, 086 (2021) · published 22 April 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Using the algebro-geometric approach, we study the structure of semi-classical eigenstates in a weakly-anisotropic quantum Heisenberg spin chain. We outline how classical nonlinear spin waves governed by the anisotropic Landau-Lifshitz equation arise as coherent macroscopic low-energy fluctuations of the ferromagnetic ground state. Special emphasis is devoted to the simplest types of solutions, describing precessional motion and elliptic magnetisation waves. The internal magnon structure of classical spin waves is resolved by performing the semi-classical quantisation using the Riemann-Hilbert problem approach. We present an expression for the overlap of two semi-classical eigenstates and discuss how correlation functions at the semi-classical level arise from classical phase-space averaging.

  4 citations

• Interface junctions in QCD${}_4$

  Pranay Gorantla, Ho Tat Lam

  SciPost Phys. 10, 085 (2021) · published 22 April 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We study 3+1 dimensional $SU(N)$ Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) with $N_f$ degenerate quarks that have a spatially varying complex mass. It leads to a network of interfaces connected by interface junctions. We use anomaly inflow to constrain these defects. Based on the chiral Lagrangian and the conjectures on the interfaces, characterized by a spatially varying $\theta$-parameter, we propose a low-energy description of such networks of interfaces. Interestingly, we observe that the operators in the effective field theories on the junctions can carry baryon charges, and their spin and isospin representations coincide with baryons. We also study defects, characterized by spatially varying coupling constants, in 2+1 dimensional Chern-Simons-matter theories and in a 3+1 dimensional real scalar theory.

  2 citations

• Conformal partial waves in momentum space

  Marc Gillioz

  SciPost Phys. 10, 081 (2021) · published 13 April 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The decomposition of 4-point correlation functions into conformal partial waves is a central tool in the study of conformal field theory. We compute these partial waves for scalar operators in Minkowski momentum space, and find a closed-form result valid in arbitrary space-time dimension $d \geq 3$ (including non-integer $d$). Each conformal partial wave is expressed as a sum over ordinary spin partial waves, and the coefficients of this sum factorize into a product of vertex functions that only depend on the conformal data of the incoming, respectively outgoing operators. As a simple example, we apply this conformal partial wave decomposition to the scalar box integral in $d = 4$ dimensions.

  9 citations