Publications

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• Quenched random mass disorder in the large N theory of vector bosons

  Han Ma

  SciPost Phys. 14, 039 (2023) · published 17 March 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We study the critical bosonic O(N) vector model with quenched random mass disorder in the large N limit. Due to the replicated action which is sometimes not bounded from below, we avoid the replica trick and adopt a traditional approach to directly compute the disorder averaged physical observables. At $N=\infty$, we can exactly solve the disordered model. The resulting low energy behavior can be described by two scale invariant theories, one of which has an intrinsic scale. At finite $N$, we find that the previously proposed attractive disordered fixed point at $d=2$ continues to exist at $d=2+\epsilon$ spatial dimensions. We also studied the system in the $3<d<4$ spatial dimensions where the disorder is relevant at the Gaussian fixed point. However, no physical attractive fixed point is found right below four spatial dimensions. Nevertheless, the stable fixed point at $2+\epsilon$ dimensions can still survive at $d=3$ where the system has experimental realizations. Some critical exponents are predicted in order to be checked by future numerics and experiments.

  1 citation

• Itinerant ferromagnetism in dilute SU(N) Fermi gases

  Jordi Pera, Joaquim Casulleras, Jordi Boronat

  SciPost Phys. 14, 038 (2023) · published 17 March 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We present exact analytic results for the energy of a SU(N) repulsive Fermi gas as a function of the spin-channel occupation at second order in the gas parameter. This is an extension of previous results that now incorporates the degree of polarization of the system. Therefore, the magnetic properties of the gas can be obtained, free from numerical uncertainties. For spin 1/2 we find that second-order corrections change the itinerant ferromagnetic transition from continuous to first-order. Instead, for spin larger than 1/2 the phase transition is always of first-order type. The transition critical density reduces when the spin increases, making the phase transition more accessible to experiments with ultracold dilute Fermi gases. Estimations for Fermi gases of Yb and Sr with spin 5/2 and 9/2, respectively, are reported.

  2 citations

• Probing a leptophobic top-colour model with cross section measurements and precise signal and background predictions: A case study

  Mohammad Mahdi Altakach, Jonathan Mark Butterworth, Tomáš Ježo, Michael Klasen, Ingo Schienbein

  SciPost Phys. Core 6, 014 (2023) · published 17 March 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The sensitivity of particle-level fiducial cross section measurements from ATLAS, CMS and LHCb to a leptophobic top-colour model is studied. The model has previously been the subject of resonance searches. Here we compare it directly to state-of-the-art predictions for Standard Model top quark production and also take into account next-to-leading order predictions for the new physics signal. We make use of the Contur framework to evaluate the sensitivity of the current measurements, first under the default Contur assumption that the measurement and the SM exactly coincide, and then using the full SM theory calculation for $t\bar{t}$ at next-to-leading and next-to-next-to-leading order as the background model. We derive exclusion limits, discuss the differences between these approaches, and compare to the limits from resonance searches by ATLAS and CMS.

• Quantum tricriticality of incommensurate phase induced by quantum strings in frustrated Ising magnetism

  Zheng Zhou (周正), Changle Liu (刘长乐), Dong-Xu Liu (刘东旭), Zheng Yan (严正), Yan Chen (陈焱), Xue-Feng Zhang (张学锋)

  SciPost Phys. 14, 037 (2023) · published 16 March 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Incommensurability plays a critical role in many strongly correlated systems. In some cases, the origin of such exotic order can be theoretically understood in the framework of 1d line-like topological excitations known as "quantum strings". Here we study an extended transverse field Ising model on a triangular lattice. Using large-scale quantum Monte Carlo simulations, we find that the spatial anisotropy can stabilize an incommensurate phase out of the commensurate clock order. Our results for the structure factor and the string density exhibit a linear relationship between incommensurate ordering wave vector and the density of quantum strings, which is reminiscent of hole density in under-doped cuprate superconductors. When introducing the next-nearest-neighbor interaction, we observe a quantum tricritical point out of the incommensurate phase. After carefully analyzing the ground state energies within different string topological sectors, we conclude that this tricriticality is non-trivially caused by effective long-range inter-string interactions with two competing terms following different decaying behaviors.

  2 citations

• Microcanonical and canonical fluctuations in atomic Bose-Einstein condensates – Fock state sampling approach

  Maciej Bartłomiej Kruk, Dawid Hryniuk, Mick Kristensen, Toke Vibel, Krzysztof Pawłowski, Jan Arlt, Kazimierz Rzążewski

  SciPost Phys. 14, 036 (2023) · published 16 March 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The fluctuations of the atom number between a Bose-Einstein condensate and the surrounding thermal gas have been the subject of a long standing theoretical debate. This discussion is centered around the appropriate thermodynamic ensemble to be used for theoretical predictions and the effect of interactions on the observed fluctuations. Here we introduce the so-called Fock state sampling method to solve this classic problem of current experimental interest for weakly interacting gases. A suppression of the predicted peak fluctuations is observed when using a microcanonical with respect to a canonical ensemble. Moreover, interactions lead to a shift of the temperature of peak fluctuations for harmonically trapped gases. The absolute size of the fluctuations furthermore depends on the total number of atoms and the aspect ratio of the trapping potential. Due to the interplay of these effect, there is no universal suppression or enhancement of fluctuations.

  1 citation

• Cover your bases: asymptotic distributions of the profile likelihood ratio when constraining effective field theories in high-energy physics

  Florian Urs Bernlochner, Daniel C. Fry, Stephen Burns Menary, Eric Persson

  SciPost Phys. Core 6, 013 (2023) · published 16 March 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We investigate the asymptotic distribution of the profile likelihood ratio (PLR) when constraining effective field theories (EFTs) and show that Wilks' theorem is often violated, meaning that we should not assume the PLR to follow a $\chi^2$-distribution. We derive the correct asymptotic distributions when either one or two real EFT couplings modulate observable cross sections with a purely linear or quadratic dependence. We then discover that when both the linear and quadratic terms contribute, the PLR distribution does not have a simple form. In this case we provide a partly-numerical solution for the one-parameter case. Using a novel approach, we find that the constants which define our asymptotic distributions may be obtained experimentally using a profile of the Asimov likelihood contour. Our results may be immediately used to obtain the correct coverage when deriving real-world EFT constraints using the PLR as a test-statistic.

• Lifshitz symmetry: Lie algebras, spacetimes and particles

  José Figueroa-O'Farrill, Ross Grassie, Stefan Prohazka

  SciPost Phys. 14, 035 (2023) · published 15 March 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We study and classify Lie algebras, homogeneous spacetimes and coadjoint orbits (``particles'') of Lie groups generated by spatial rotations, temporal and spatial translations and an additional scalar generator. As a first step we classify Lie algebras of this type in arbitrary dimension. Among them is the prototypical Lifshitz algebra, which motivates this work and the name "Lifshitz Lie algebras". We classify homogeneous spacetimes of Lifshitz Lie groups. Depending on the interpretation of the additional scalar generator, these spacetimes fall into three classes: 1. ($d+2$)-dimensional Lifshitz spacetimes which have one additional holographic direction; 2. ($d+1$)-dimensional Lifshitz—Weyl spacetimes which can be seen as the boundary geometry of the spacetimes in (1) and where the scalar generator is interpreted as an anisotropic dilation; 3. and $(d+1)$-dimensional aristotelian spacetimes with one scalar charge, including exotic fracton-like symmetries that generalise multipole algebras. We also classify the possible central extensions of Lifshitz Lie algebras and we discuss the homogeneous symplectic manifolds of Lifshitz Lie groups in terms of coadjoint orbits.

  5 citations

• Rational $Q$-systems, Higgsing and mirror symmetry

  Jie Gu, Yunfeng Jiang, Marcus Sperling

  SciPost Phys. 14, 034 (2023) · published 15 March 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The rational $Q$-system is an efficient method to solve Bethe ansatz equations for quantum integrable spin chains. We construct the rational $Q$-systems for generic Bethe ansatz equations described by an $A_{\ell-1}$ quiver, which include models with multiple momentum carrying nodes, generic inhomogeneities, generic diagonal twists and $q$-deformation. The rational $Q$-system thus constructed is specified by two partitions. Under Bethe/Gauge correspondence, the rational $Q$-system is in a one-to-one correspondence with a 3d $\mathcal{N}=4$ quiver gauge theory of the type ${T}_{{\rho}}^{{\sigma}}[\mathrm{SU}(n)]$, which is also specified by the same partitions. This shows that the rational $Q$-system is a natural language for the Bethe/Gauge correspondence, because known features of the ${T}_{{\rho}}^{{\sigma}}[\mathrm{SU}(n)]$ theories readily translate. For instance, we show that the Higgs and Coulomb branch Higgsing correspond to modifying one of the partitions in the rational $Q$-system while keeping the other untouched. Similarly, mirror symmetry is realized in terms of the rational $Q$-system by simply swapping the two partitions - exactly as for ${T}_{{\rho}}^{{\sigma}}[\mathrm{SU}(n)]$. We exemplify the computational efficiency of the rational $Q$-system by evaluating topologically twisted indices for 3d $\mathcal{N}=4$ $\mathrm{U}(n)$ SQCD theories with $n=1,\ldots,5$.

  5 citations

• Hot and heavy dark matter from a weak scale phase transition

  Iason Baldes, Yann Gouttenoire, Filippo Sala

  SciPost Phys. 14, 033 (2023) · published 14 March 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We point out that dark matter which is produced non-adiabatically in a phase transition (PT) with fast bubble walls receives a boost in velocity which leads to long free-streaming lengths. We find that this could be observed via the suppressed matter power spectrum for dark matter masses around $\mathbf{ 10^8 - 10^9}$ GeV and energy scales of the PT around $\mathbf{ 10^{2} - 10^3}$ GeV. The PT should take place at the border of the supercooled regime, i.e. approximately when the Universe becomes vacuum dominated. This work offers novel physics goals for galaxy surveys, Lyman-$\alpha$, stellar stream, lensing, and 21-cm observations, and connects these to the gravitational waves from such phase transitions, and more speculatively to possible telescope signals of heavy dark matter decay.

  9 citations

• Learning a restricted Boltzmann machine using biased Monte Carlo sampling

  Nicolas Béreux, Aurélien Decelle, Cyril Furtlehner, Beatriz Seoane

  SciPost Phys. 14, 032 (2023) · published 14 March 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Restricted Boltzmann Machines are simple and powerful generative models that can encode any complex dataset. Despite all their advantages, in practice the trainings are often unstable and it is difficult to assess their quality because the dynamics are affected by extremely slow time dependencies. This situation becomes critical when dealing with low-dimensional clustered datasets, where the time required to sample ergodically the trained models becomes computationally prohibitive. In this work, we show that this divergence of Monte Carlo mixing times is related to a phenomenon of phase coexistence, similar to that which occurs in physics near a first-order phase transition. We show that sampling the equilibrium distribution using the Markov chain Monte Carlo method can be dramatically accelerated when using biased sampling techniques, in particular the Tethered Monte Carlo (TMC) method. This sampling technique efficiently solves the problem of evaluating the quality of a given trained model and generating new samples in a reasonable amount of time. Moreover, we show that this sampling technique can also be used to improve the computation of the log-likelihood gradient during training, leading to dramatic improvements in training RBMs with artificial clustered datasets. On real low-dimensional datasets, this new training method fits RBM models with significantly faster relaxation dynamics than those obtained with standard PCD recipes. We also show that TMC sampling can be used to recover the free-energy profile of the RBM. This proves to be extremely useful to compute the probability distribution of a given model and to improve the generation of new decorrelated samples in slow PCD-trained models. The main limitations of this method are, first, the restriction to effective low-dimensional datasets and, second, the fact that the Tethered MC method breaks the possibility of performing parallel alternative Monte Carlo updates, which limits the size of the systems we can consider in practice.

  4 citations