Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• A brief tutorial on information theory

  Tarek Tohme, William Bialek

  SciPost Phys. Lect. Notes 87 (2024) · published 23 September 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  At the 2023 Les Houches Summer School on Theoretical Biological Physics, several students asked for some background on information theory, and so we added a tutorial to the scheduled lectures. This is largely a transcript of that tutorial, lightly edited. It covers basic definitions and context rather than detailed calculations. We hope to have maintained the informality of the presentation, including exchanges with the students, while still being useful.

  1 citation

• Brick wall quantum circuits with global fermionic symmetry

  Pietro Richelli, Kareljan Schoutens, Alberto Zorzato

  SciPost Phys. 17, 087 (2024) · published 23 September 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We study brick wall quantum circuits enjoying a global fermionic symmetry. The constituent 2-qubit gate, and its fermionic symmetry, derive from a 2-particle scattering matrix in integrable, supersymmetric quantum field theory in 1+1 dimensions. Our 2-qubit gate, as a function of three free parameters, is of so-called free fermionic or matchgate form, allowing us to derive the spectral structure of both the brick wall unitary $U_F$ and its, non-trivial, Hamiltonian limit $H_{\gamma}$ in closed form. We find that the fermionic symmetry pins $H_{\gamma}$ to a surface of critical points, whereas breaking that symmetry leads to non-trivial topological phases. We briefly explore quench dynamics for this class of circuits.

  4 citations

• Real-space approach for the Euler class and fragile topology in quasicrystals and amorphous lattices

  Dexin Li, Citian Wang, Huaqing Huang

  SciPost Phys. 17, 086 (2024) · published 20 September 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We propose a real-space formalism of the topological Euler class, which characterizes the fragile topology of two-dimensional systems with real wave functions. This real-space description is characterized by local Euler markers whose macroscopic average coincides with the Euler number, and it applies equally well to periodic and open boundary conditions for both crystals and noncrystalline systems. We validate this by diagnosing topological phase transitions in clean and disordered crystalline systems with the reality endowed by the space-time inversion symmetry $\mathcal{I}_{ST}$. Furthermore, we demonstrated the topological Euler phases in quasicrystals and even in amorphous lattices lacking any spatial symmetries. Our work not only provides a local characterization of the fragile topology but also significantly extends its territory beyond $\mathcal{I}_{ST}$-symmetric crystalline materials.

  3 citations

• Higher-form symmetry and chiral transport in real-time Abelian lattice gauge theory

  Arpit Das, Adrien Florio, Nabil Iqbal, Napat Poovuttikul

  SciPost Phys. 17, 085 (2024) · published 19 September 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We study classical lattice simulations of theories of electrodynamics coupled to charged matter at finite temperature, interpreting them using the higher-form symmetry formulation of magnetohydrodynamics (MHD). We compute transport coefficients using classical Kubo formulas on the lattice and show that the properties of the simulated plasma are in complete agreement with the predictions from effective field theories. In particular, the higher-form formulation allows us to understand from hydrodynamic considerations the relaxation rate of axial charge in the chiral plasma observed in previous simulations. A key point is that the resistivity of the plasma – defined in terms of Kubo formulas for the electric field in the 1-form formulation of MHD – remains a well-defined and predictive quantity at strong electromagnetic coupling. However, the Kubo formulas used to define the conventional conductivity vanish at low frequencies due to electrodynamic fluctuations, and thus the concept of the conductivity of a gauged electric current must be interpreted with care.

  2 citations

• Two infinite families of facets of the holographic entropy cone

  Bartlomiej Czech, Yu Liu, Bo Yu

  SciPost Phys. 17, 084 (2024) · published 19 September 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We verify that the recently proven infinite families of holographic entropy inequalities are maximally tight, i.e. they are facets of the holographic entropy cone. The proof is technical but it offers some heuristic insight. On star graphs, both families of inequalities quantify how concentrated/spread information is with respect to a dihedral symmetry acting on subsystems. In addition, toric inequalities viewed in the K-basis show an interesting interplay between four-party and six-party perfect tensors.

  11 citations

• General quantum-classical dynamics as measurement based feedback

  Antoine Tilloy

  SciPost Phys. 17, 083 (2024) · published 18 September 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  This note derives the stochastic differential equations and partial differential equation of general hybrid quantum--classical dynamics from the theory of continuous measurement and general (non-Markovian) feedback. The advantage of this approach is an explicit parameterization, without additional positivity constraints. The construction also neatly separates the different effects: how the quantum influences the classical and how the classical influences the quantum. This modular presentation gives a better intuition of what to expect from hybrid dynamics, especially when used to construct possibly fundamental theories.

  12 citations

• Riemannian optimization of photonic quantum circuits in phase and Fock space

  Yuan Yao, Filippo Miatto, Nicolás Quesada

  SciPost Phys. 17, 082 (2024) · published 18 September 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We propose a framework to design and optimize generic photonic quantum circuits composed of Gaussian objects (pure and mixed Gaussian states, Gaussian unitaries, Gaussian channels, Gaussian measurements) as well as non-Gaussian effects such as photon-number-resolving measurements. In this framework, we parametrize a phase space representation of Gaussian objects using elements of the symplectic group (or the unitary or orthogonal group in special cases), and then we transform it into the Fock representation using a single linear recurrence relation that computes the Fock amplitudes of any Gaussian object recursively. We also compute the gradient of the Fock amplitudes with respect to phase space parameters by differentiating through the recurrence relation. We can then use Riemannian optimization on the symplectic group to optimize $M$-mode Gaussian objects, avoiding the need to commit to particular realizations in terms of fundamental gates. This allows us to "mod out" all the different gate-level implementations of the same circuit, which now can be chosen after the optimization has completed. This can be especially useful when looking to answer general questions, such as bounding the value of a property over a class of states or transformations, or when one would like to worry about hardware constraints separately from the circuit optimization step. Finally, we make our framework extendable to non-Gaussian objects that can be written as linear combinations of Gaussian ones, by explicitly computing the change in global phase when states undergo Gaussian transformations. We implemented all of these methods in the freely available open-source library MrMustard, which we use in three examples to optimize the 216-mode interferometer in Borealis, and 2- and 3-modes circuits (with Fock measurements) to produce cat states and cubic phase states.

  12 citations

• Flux-tunable Kitaev chain in a quantum dot array

  Juan Daniel Torres Luna, A. Mert Bozkurt, Michael Wimmer, Chun-Xiao Liu

  SciPost Phys. Core 7, 065 (2024) · published 18 September 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Connecting quantum dots through Andreev bound states in a semiconductor-superconductor hybrid provides a platform to create a Kitaev chain. Interestingly, in a double quantum dot, a pair of poor man's Majorana zero modes can emerge when the system is fine-tuned to a sweet spot, where superconducting and normal couplings are equal in magnitude. Control of the Andreev bound states is crucial for achieving this, usually implemented by varying its chemical potential. In this work, we propose using Andreev bound states in a short Josephson junction to mediate both types of couplings, with the ratio tunable by the phase difference across the junction. Now a minimal Kitaev chain can be easily tuned into the strong coupling regime by varying the phase and junction asymmetry, even without changing the dot-hybrid coupling strength. Furthermore, we identify an optimal sweet spot at $\pi$ phase, enhancing the excitation gap and robustness against phase fluctuations. Our proposal introduces a new device platform and a new tuning method for realizing quantum-dot-based Kitaev chains.

  12 citations

• A portable parton-level event generator for the high-luminosity LHC

  Enrico Bothmann, Taylor Childers, Walter Giele, Stefan Höche, Joshua Isaacson, Max Knobbe

  SciPost Phys. 17, 081 (2024) · published 16 September 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The rapid deployment of computing hardware different from the traditional CPU+RAM model in data centers around the world mandates a change in the design of event generators for the Large Hadron Collider, in order to provide economically and ecologically sustainable simulations for the high-luminosity era of the LHC. Parton-level event generation is one of the most computationally demanding parts of the simulation and is therefore a prime target for improvements. We present a production-ready leading-order parton-level event generation framework capable of utilizing most modern hardware and discuss its performance in the standard candle processes of vector boson and top-quark pair production with up to five additional jets.

  8 citations

• Kicking it off(-shell) with direct diffusion

  Anja Butter, Tomáš Ježo, Michael Klasen, Mathias Kuschick, Sofia Palacios Schweitzer, Tilman Plehn

  SciPost Phys. Core 7, 064 (2024) · published 16 September 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Off-shell effects in large LHC backgrounds are crucial for precision predictions and, at the same time, challenging to simulate. We present a novel method to transform high-dimensional distributions based on a diffusion neural network and use it to generate a process with off-shell kinematics from the much simpler on-shell one. Applied to a toy example of top pair production at LO we show how our method generates off-shell configurations fast and precisely, while reproducing even challenging on-shell features.

  18 citations