Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• A brief introduction to extended gravity and connections to dark energy: Illustrated with scalar field examples

  Clare Burrage

  SciPost Phys. Lect. Notes 41 (2022) · published 15 March 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  These lecture notes provide a brief introduction to extensions of gravity and their connections to dark energy. Due to time and space limitations this is not a comprehensive review of the field. Instead, I aim to introduce key concepts and ideas in this area through a series of examples based on scalar field extensions of gravity and models of dark energy.

  1 citation

• Quantum enhanced metrology in the search for fundamental physical phenomena

  Konrad W. Lehnert

  SciPost Phys. Lect. Notes 40 (2022) · published 11 March 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  These notes summarize lectures given at the 2019 Les Houches summer school on Quantum Information Machines. They describe and review an application of quantum metrology concepts to searches for ultralight dark matter. In particular, for ultralight dark matter that couples as a weak classical force to a laboratory harmonic oscillator, quantum squeezing benefits experiments in which the mass of the dark matter particle is unknown. This benefit is present even if the oscillatory dark matter signal is much more coherent than the harmonic oscillator that it couples to, as is the case for microwave frequency searches for dark matter axion particles.

  1 citation

• Dark matter in astrophysics/cosmology

  Anne M. Green

  SciPost Phys. Lect. Notes 37 (2022) · published 25 January 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  These lecture notes aim to provide an introduction to dark matter from the perspective of astrophysics/cosmology. We start with a rapid overview of cosmology, including the evolution of the Universe, its thermal history and structure formation. Then we look at the observational evidence for dark matter, from observations of galaxies, galaxy clusters, the anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background radiation and large scale structure. To detect dark matter we need to know how it's distributed, in particular in the Milky Way, so next we overview relevant results from numerical simulations and observations. Finally, we conclude by looking at what astrophysical and cosmological observations can tell us about the nature of dark matter, focusing on two particular cases: warm and self-interacting dark matter.

  8 citations

• Sterile neutrinos as dark matter candidates

  Joachim Kopp

  SciPost Phys. Lect. Notes 36 (2022) · published 19 January 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  In these brief lecture notes, we introduce sterile neutrinos as dark matter candidates. We discuss in particular their production via oscillations, their radiative decay, as well as possible observational signatures and constraints.

  5 citations

• Complete set of quasi-conserved quantities for spinning particles around Kerr

  Geoffrey Compère, Adrien Druart

  SciPost Phys. 12, 012 (2022) · published 10 January 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We revisit the conserved quantities of the Mathisson-Papapetrou-Tulczyjew equations describing the motion of spinning particles on a fixed background. Assuming Ricci-flatness and the existence of a Killing-Yano tensor, we demonstrate that besides the two non-trivial quasi-conserved quantities, i.e. conserved at linear order in the spin, found by R\"udiger, non-trivial quasi-conserved quantities are in one-to-one correspondence with non-trivial mixed-symmetry Killing tensors. We prove that no such stationary and axisymmetric mixed-symmetry Killing tensor exists on the Kerr geometry. We discuss the implications for the motion of spinning particles on Kerr spacetime where the quasi-constants of motion are shown not to be in complete involution.

  7 citations

• Reconstructing the graviton

  Alfio Bonanno, Tobias Denz, Jan M. Pawlowski, Manuel Reichert

  SciPost Phys. 12, 001 (2022) · published 4 January 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We reconstruct the Lorentzian graviton propagator in asymptotically safe quantum gravity from Euclidean data. The reconstruction is applied to both the dynamical fluctuation graviton and the background graviton propagator. We prove that the spectral function of the latter necessarily has negative parts similar to, and for the same reasons, as the gluon spectral function. In turn, the spectral function of the dynamical graviton is positive. We argue that the latter enters cross sections and other observables in asymptotically safe quantum gravity. Hence, its positivity may hint at the unitarity of asymptotically safe quantum gravity.

  41 citations

• Black holes, quantum chaos, and the Riemann hypothesis

  Panagiotis Betzios, Nava Gaddam, Olga Papadoulaki

  SciPost Phys. Core 4, 032 (2021) · published 10 December 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Quantum gravity is expected to gauge all global symmetries of effective theories, in the ultraviolet. Inspired by this expectation, we explore the consequences of gauging CPT as a quantum boundary condition in phase space. We find that it provides for a natural semiclassical regularisation and discretisation of the continuous spectrum of a quantum Hamiltonian related to the Dilation operator. We observe that the said spectrum is in correspondence with the zeros of the Riemann zeta and Dirichlet beta functions. Following ideas of Berry and Keating, this may help the pursuit of the Riemann hypothesis. It strengthens the proposal that this quantum Hamiltonian captures the near horizon dynamics of the scattering matrix of the Schwarzschild black hole, given the rich chaotic spectrum upon discretisation. It also explains why the spectrum appears to be erratic despite the unitarity of the scattering matrix.

  12 citations

• Relativistic Landau quantization in non-uniform magnetic field and its applications to white dwarfs and quantum information

  Srishty Aggarwal, Banibrata Mukhopadhyay, Gianluca Gregori

  SciPost Phys. 11, 093 (2021) · published 18 November 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We investigate the two-dimensional motion of relativistic cold electrons in the presence of ‘strictly’ spatially varying magnetic fields satisfying, however, no magnetic monopole condition. We find that the degeneracy of Landau levels, which arises in the case of the constant magnetic field, lifts out when the field is variable and the energy levels of spin-up and spin-down electrons align in an interesting way depending on the nature of change of field. Also the varying magnetic field splits Landau levels of electrons with zero angular momentum from positive angular momentum, unlike the constant field which only can split the levels between positive and negative angular momenta. Exploring Landau quantization in non-uniform magnetic fields is a unique venture on its own and has interdisciplinary implications in the fields ranging from condensed matter to astrophysics to quantum information. As examples, we show magnetized white dwarfs, with varying magnetic fields, involved simultaneously with Lorentz force and Landau quantization affecting the underlying degenerate electron gas, exhibiting a significant violation of the Chandrasekhar mass-limit; and an increase in quantum speed of electrons in the presence of a spatially growing magnetic field.

  3 citations

• Quantum aspects of chaos and complexity from bouncing cosmology: A study with two-mode single field squeezed state formalism

  Parth Bhargava, Sayantan Choudhury, Satyaki Chowdhury, Anurag Mishara, Sachin Panneer Selvam, Sudhakar Panda, Gabriel D. Pasquino

  SciPost Phys. Core 4, 026 (2021) · published 7 October 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  $Circuit~ Complexity$, a well known computational technique has recently become the backbone of the physics community to probe the chaotic behaviour and random quantum fluctuations of quantum fields. This paper is devoted to the study of out-of-equilibrium aspects and quantum chaos appearing in the universe from the paradigm of two well known bouncing cosmological solutions viz. $Cosine~ hyperbolic$ and $Exponential$ models of scale factors. Besides $circuit~ complexity$, we use the $Out-of-Time~ Ordered~ correlation~ (OTOC)$ functions for probing the random behaviour of the universe both at early and the late times. In particular, we use the techniques of well known two-mode squeezed state formalism in cosmological perturbation theory as a key ingredient for the purpose of our computation. To give an appropriate theoretical interpretation that is consistent with the observational perspective we use the scale factor and the number of e-foldings as a dynamical variable instead of conformal time for this computation. From this study, we found that the period of post bounce is the most interesting one. Though it may not be immediately visible, but an exponential rise can be seen in the $complexity$ once the post bounce feature is extrapolated to the present time scales. We also find within the very small acceptable error range a universal connecting relation between Complexity computed from two different kinds of cost functionals-$linearly~ weighted$ and $geodesic~ weighted$ with the OTOC. Furthermore, from the $complexity$ computation obtained from both the cosmological models and also using the well known MSS bound on quantum Lyapunov exponent, $\lambda\leq 2\pi/\beta$ for the saturation of chaos, we estimate the lower bound on the equilibrium temperature of our universe at late time scale. Finally, we provide a rough estimation of the scrambling time in terms of the conformal time.

  14 citations

• The derivative expansion in asymptotically safe quantum gravity: general setup and quartic order

  Benjamin Knorr

  SciPost Phys. Core 4, 020 (2021) · published 9 September 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We present a general framework to systematically study the derivative expansion of asymptotically safe quantum gravity. It is based on an exact decoupling and cancellation of different modes in the Landau limit, and implements a correct mode count as well as a regularisation based on geometrical considerations. It is applicable independent of the truncation order. To illustrate the power of the framework, we discuss the quartic order of the derivative expansion and its fixed point structure as well as physical implications.

  19 citations