Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• Measuring Chern numbers in Hofstadter strips

  Samuel Mugel, Alexandre Dauphin, Pietro Massignan, Leticia Tarruell, Maciej Lewenstein, Carlos Lobo, Alessio Celi

  SciPost Phys. 3, 012 (2017) · published 15 August 2017 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Topologically non-trivial Hamiltonians with periodic boundary conditions are characterized by strictly quantized invariants. Open questions and fundamental challenges concern their existence, and the possibility of measuring them in systems with open boundary conditions and limited spatial extension. Here, we consider transport in Hofstadter strips, that is, two-dimensional lattices pierced by a uniform magnetic flux which extend over few sites in one of the spatial dimensions. As we show, an atomic wavepacket exhibits a transverse displacement under the action of a weak constant force. After one Bloch oscillation, this displacement approaches the quantized Chern number of the periodic system in the limit of vanishing tunneling along the transverse direction. We further demonstrate that this scheme is able to map out the Chern number of ground and excited bands, and we investigate the robustness of the method in presence of both disorder and harmonic trapping. Our results prove that topological invariants can be measured in Hofstadter strips with open boundary conditions and as few as three sites along one direction.

  21 citations

• Twistor space origins of the Newman-Penrose map

  Kara Farnsworth, Michael L. Graesser, Gabriel Herczeg

  SciPost Phys. 13, 099 (2022) · published 24 October 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Recently, we introduced the "Newman-Penrose map", a novel correspondence between a certain class of solutions of Einstein's equations and self-dual solutions of the vacuum Maxwell equations, which we showed was closely related to the classical double copy. Here, we give an alternative definition of this correspondence in terms of quantities that are defined naturally on twistor space, and a shear-free null geodesic congruence on Minkowski space whose twistorial character is articulated by the Kerr theorem. The advantage of this reformulation is that it is purely geometrical in nature, being manifestly invariant under both spacetime diffeomorphisms and projective transformations on twistor space. While the original formulation of the map may be more convenient for most explicit calculations, the twistorial formulation we present here may be of greater theoretical utility.

  21 citations

• Zero temperature momentum distribution of an impurity in a polaron state of one-dimensional Fermi and Tonks-Girardeau gases

  Oleksandr Gamayun, Oleg Lychkovskiy, Mikhail B. Zvonarev

  SciPost Phys. 8, 053 (2020) · published 7 April 2020 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We investigate the momentum distribution function of a single distinguishable impurity particle which formed a polaron state in a gas of either free fermions or Tonks-Girardeau bosons in one spatial dimension. We obtain a Fredholm determinant representation of the distribution function for the Bethe ansatz solvable model of an impurity-gas δ-function interaction potential at zero temperature, in both repulsive and attractive regimes. We deduce from this representation the fourth power decay at a large momentum, and a weakly divergent (quasi-condensate) peak at a finite momentum. We also demonstrate that the momentum distribution function in the limiting case of infinitely strong interaction can be expressed through a correlation function of the one-dimensional impenetrable anyons.

  21 citations

• Non-invertible and higher-form symmetries in 2+1d lattice gauge theories

  Yichul Choi, Yaman Sanghavi, Shu-Heng Shao, Yunqin Zheng

  SciPost Phys. 18, 008 (2025) · published 9 January 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We explore exact generalized symmetries in the standard 2+1d lattice $\mathbb{Z}_2$ gauge theory coupled to the Ising model, and compare them with their continuum field theory counterparts. One model has a (non-anomalous) non-invertible symmetry, and we identify two distinct non-invertible symmetry protected topological phases. The non-invertible algebra involves a lattice condensation operator, which creates a toric code ground state from a product state. Another model has a mixed anomaly between a 1-form symmetry and an ordinary symmetry. This anomaly enforces a nontrivial transition in the phase diagram, consistent with the "Higgs=SPT" proposal. Finally, we discuss how the symmetries and anomalies in these two models are related by gauging, which is a 2+1d version of the Kennedy-Tasaki transformation.

  21 citations

• Non-Wilson-Fisher kinks of $O(N)$ numerical bootstrap: from the deconfined phase transition to a putative new family of CFTs

  Yin-Chen He, Junchen Rong, Ning Su

  SciPost Phys. 10, 115 (2021) · published 26 May 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  It is well established that the $O(N)$ Wilson-Fisher (WF) CFT sits at a kink of the numerical bounds from bootstrapping four point function of $O(N)$ vector. Moving away from the WF kinks, there indeed exists another family of kinks (dubbed non-WF kinks) on the curve of $O(N)$ numerical bounds. Different from the $O(N)$ WF kinks that exist for arbitary $N$ in $2<d<4$ dimensions, the non-WF kinks exist in arbitrary dimensions but only for a large enough $N>N_c(d)$ in a given dimension $d$. In this paper we have achieved a thorough understanding for few special cases of these non-WF kinks. The first case is the $O(4)$ bootstrap in 2d, where the non-WF kink turns out to be the $SU(2)_1$ Wess-Zumino-Witten (WZW) model, and all the $SU(2)_{k>2}$ WZW models saturate the numerical bound on the left side of the kink. We further carry out dimensional continuation of the 2d $SU(2)_1$ kink towards the 3d $SO(5)$ deconfined phase transition. We find the kink disappears at around $d=2.7$ dimensions indicating the $SO(5)$ deconfined phase transition is weakly first order. The second interesting observation is, the $O(2)$ bootstrap bound does not show any kink in 2d ($N_c=2$), but is surprisingly saturated by the 2d free boson CFT (also called Luttinger liquid) all the way on the numerical curve. The last case is the $N=\infty$ limit, where the non-WF kink sits at $(\Delta_\phi, \Delta_T)=(d-1, 2d)$ in $d$ dimensions. We manage to write down its analytical four point function in arbitrary dimensions, which equals to the subtraction of correlation functions of a free fermion theory and generalized free theory. An important feature of this solution is the existence of a full tower of conserved higher spin current. We speculate that a new family of CFTs will emerge at non-WF kinks for finite $N$, in a similar fashion as $O(N)$ WF CFTs originating from free boson at $N=\infty$.

  21 citations

• Unbounded entanglement production via a dissipative impurity

  Vincenzo Alba

  SciPost Phys. 12, 011 (2022) · published 10 January 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We investigate the entanglement dynamics in a free-fermion chain initially prepared in a Fermi sea and subjected to localized losses (dissipative impurity). We derive a formula describing the dynamics of the entanglement entropies in the hydrodynamic limit of long times and large intervals. The result depends only on the absorption coefficient of the effective delta potential describing the impurity in the hydrodynamic limit. Genuine dissipation-induced entanglement is certified by the linear growth of the logarithmic negativity. Finally, in the quantum Zeno regime at strong dissipation the entanglement growth is arrested (Zeno entanglement death).

  21 citations

• Bubble instabilities of mIIA on AdS$_4\times S^6$

  Pieter Bomans, Davide Cassani, Giuseppe Dibitetto, Nicolò Petri

  SciPost Phys. 12, 099 (2022) · published 18 March 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We consider compactifications of massive IIA supergravity on a six-sphere. This setup is known to give rise to non-supersymmetric AdS$_4$ vacua preserving SO$(7)$ as well as G$_2$ residual symmetry. Both solutions have a round $S^6$ metric and are supported by the Romans’ mass and internal $F_6$ flux. While the SO$(7)$ invariant vacuum is known to be perturbatively unstable, the G$_2$ invariant one has been found to have a fully stable Kaluza-Klein spectrum. Moreover, it has been shown to be protected against brane-jet instabilities. Motivated by these results, we study possible bubbling solutions connected to the G$_2$ vacuum, representing non-perturbative instabilities of the latter. We indeed find an instability channel represented by the nucleation of a bubble of nothing dressed up with a homogeneous D2 brane charge distribution in the internal space. Our solution generalizes to the case where $S^6$ is replaced by any six-dimensional nearly-Kähler manifold.

  21 citations

• Collective radiative interactions in the discrete truncated Wigner approximation

  Christopher D. Mink, Michael Fleischhauer

  SciPost Phys. 15, 233 (2023) · published 8 December 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Interfaces of light and matter serve as a platform for exciting many-body physics and photonic quantum technologies. Due to the recent experimental realization of atomic arrays at sub-wavelength spacings, collective interaction effects such as superradiance have regained substantial interest. Their analytical and numerical treatment is however quite challenging. Here we develop a semiclassical approach to this problem that allows to describe the coherent and dissipative many-body dynamics of interacting spins while taking into account lowest-order quantum fluctuations. For this purpose we extend the discrete truncated Wigner approximation, originally developed for unitarily coupled spins, to include collective, dissipative spin processes by means of truncated correspondence rules. This maps the dynamics of the atomic ensemble onto a set of semiclassical, numerically inexpensive stochastic differential equations. We benchmark our method with exact results for the case of Dicke decay, which shows excellent agreement. For small arrays we compare to exact simulations, again showing good agreement at early times and at moderate to strong driving, and to a second order cumulant expansion. We conclude by studying the radiative properties of a spatially extended three-dimensional, coherently driven gas and compare the coherence of the emitted light to experimental results.

  21 citations

• Modeling hadronization using machine learning

  Phil Ilten, Tony Menzo, Ahmed Youssef, Jure Zupan

  SciPost Phys. 14, 027 (2023) · published 2 March 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We present the first steps in the development of a new class of hadronization models utilizing machine learning techniques. We successfully implement, validate, and train a conditional sliced-Wasserstein autoencoder to replicate the Pythia generated kinematic distributions of first-hadron emissions, when the Lund string model of hadronization implemented in Pythia is restricted to the emissions of pions only. The trained models are then used to generate the full hadronization chains, with an IR cutoff energy imposed externally. The hadron multiplicities and cumulative kinematic distributions are shown to match the Pythia generated ones. We also discuss possible future generalizations of our results.

  21 citations

• Transport in one-dimensional integrable quantum systems

  Jesko Sirker

  SciPost Phys. Lect. Notes 17 (2020) · published 20 August 2020 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  These notes are based on a series of three lectures given at the Les Houches summer school on 'Integrability in Atomic and Condensed Matter Physics' in August 2018. They provide an introduction into the unusual transport properties of integrable models in the linear response regime focussing, in particular, on the spin-1/2 XXZ spin chain.

  21 citations