Raphaël Photopoulos, Antoine Boulet

SciPost Phys. 18, 003 (2025) · published 6 January 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

Introducing low-energy effective Hamiltonians is usual to grasp most correlations in quantum many-body problems. For instance, such effective Hamiltonians can be treated at the mean-field level to reproduce some physical properties of interest. Employing effective Hamiltonians that contain many-body correlations renders the use of perturbative many-body techniques difficult because of the overcounting of correlations. In this work, we develop a strategy to apply an extension of the many-body perturbation theory starting from an effective interaction that contains correlations beyond the mean-field level. The goal is to re-organize the many-body calculation to avoid the overcounting of correlations originating from the introduction of correlated effective Hamiltonians in the description. For this purpose, we generalize the formulation of the Rayleigh-Schrödinger perturbation theory by including free parameters adjusted to reproduce the appropriate limits. In particular, the expansion in the bare weak-coupling regime and the strong-coupling limit serves as a valuable input to fix the value of the free parameters appearing in the resulting expression. This method avoids double counting of correlations using beyond-mean-field strategies for the description of many-body systems. The ground state energy of various systems relevant for ultracold atomic, nuclear, and condensed matter physics is reproduced qualitatively beyond the domain of validity of the standard many-body perturbation theory. Finally, our method suggests interpreting the formal results obtained as an effective field theory using the proposed reorganization of the many-body calculation. The results, like ground state energies, are improved systematically by considering higher orders in the extended many-body perturbation theory while maintaining a straightforward polynomial expansion.

Zhen Zhao

SciPost Phys. 18, 002 (2025) · published 6 January 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

We calculate the low-temperature spectral function of the symmetric single impurity Anderson model using a recently proposed dynamical exchange-correlation (xc) field formalism. The xc field, coupled to the one-particle Green's function, is obtained through analytic analysis and numerical extrapolation based on finite clusters. In the Kondo regime, the xc field is modeled by an Ansatz that takes into account the different asymptotic behaviors in the small- and large-time regimes. The small-time xc field contributes to the Hubbard side-band, whereas the large-time to the Kondo resonance. We illustrate these features in terms of analytical and numerical calculations for small- and medium-size finite clusters, and in the thermodynamic limit. The results indicate that the xc field formalism provides a good trade-off between accuracy and complexity in solving impurity problems. Consequently, it can significantly reduce the complexity of the many-body problem faced by first-principles approaches to strongly correlated materials.

Mauricio J. del Razo, Luigi Delle Site

SciPost Phys. 18, 001 (2025) · published 6 January 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

A varying number of particles is one of the most relevant characteristics of systems of interest in nature and technology, ranging from the exchange of energy and matter with the surrounding environment to the change of particle number through internal dynamics such as reactions. The physico-mathematical modeling of these systems is extremely challenging, with the major difficulty being the time dependence of the number of degrees of freedom and the additional constraint that the increment or reduction of the number and species of particles must not violate basic physical laws. Theoretical models, in such a case, represent the key tool for the design of computational strategies for numerical studies that deliver trustful results. In this manuscript, we review complementary physico-mathematical approaches of varying number of particles inspired by rather different specific numerical goals. As a result of the analysis on the underlying common structure of these models, we propose a unifying master equation for general dynamical systems with varying number of particles. This equation embeds all the previous models and can potentially model a much larger range of complex systems, ranging from molecular to social agent-based dynamics.

Justin Kaidi, Yuji Tachikawa, Hao Y. Zhang

SciPost Phys. 17, 169 (2024) · published 19 December 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

We discuss a class of selection rules which i) do not come from group actions on fields, ii) are exact at tree level in perturbation theory, iii) are increasingly violated as the loop order is raised, and iv) eventually reduce to selection rules associated with an ordinary group symmetry. We start from basic field-theoretical examples in which fields are labeled by conjugacy classes rather than representations of a group, and discuss generalizations using fusion algebras or hypergroups. We also discuss how such selection rules arise naturally in string theory, such as for non-Abelian orbifolds or other cases with non-invertible worldsheet symmetries.

Joe Davighi, Nakarin Lohitsiri

SciPost Phys. 17, 168 (2024) · published 13 December 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

We consider a 4d non-linear sigma model on the coset $(\text{SU}(N)_L × \text{SU}(N)_R × \text{SU}(2))/(\text{SU}(N)_{L+R}× \mathrm{U}(1))\cong \text{SU}(N) × S^2$, that features a topological Wess–Zumino–Witten (WZW) term whose curvature is $\frac{n}{24\pi^2}{Tr}(g^{-1}dg)^3 \wedge \mathrm{Vol}_{S^2}$ where $g$ is the $\text{SU}(N)$ pion field. This WZW term, unlike its familiar cousin in QCD, does not match any chiral anomaly, so its microscopic origin is not obviously QCD-like. We find that generalised symmetries provide a key to unlocking a UV completion. The $S^2$ winding number bestows the theory with a 1-form symmetry, and the WZW term intertwines this with the $\text{SU}(N)^2$ flavour symmetry into a 2-group global symmetry. Like a 't Hooft anomaly, the 2-group symmetry should match between UV and IR, precluding QCD-like completions that otherwise give the right pion manifold. We instead construct a weakly-coupled UV completion that matches the 2-group symmetry, in which an abelian gauge field connects the QCD baryon number current to the winding number current of a $\mathbb{C}P^1$ model, and explicitly show how the mixed WZW term arises upon flowing to the IR. The coefficient is fixed to be the number of QCD colours and, strikingly, this matching must be 'tree-level exact' to satisfy a quantization condition. We discuss generalisations, and elucidate the more intricate generalised symmetry structure that arises upon gauging an anomaly-free subgroup of $\text{SU}(N)_{L+R}$. This WZW term may even play a phenomenological role as a portal to a dark sector, that determines the relic abundance of dark matter.