Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• Area law and OPE blocks in conformal field theory

  Jiang Long

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 4, 013 (2021) · published 13 August 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  This is an introduction to the relationship between area law and OPE blocks in conformal field theory.

• Scaling laws of shrinkage induced fragmentation phenomena

  Roland Szatmári, Akio Nakahara, So Kitsunezaki, Ferenc Kun

  SciPost Phys. 19, 142 (2025) · published 1 December 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We investigate the shrinkage induced breakup of thin layers of heterogeneous materials attached to a substrate, a ubiquitous natural phenomenon with a wide range of potential applications. Focusing on the evolution of the fragment ensemble, we demonstrate that the system has two distinct phases: damage phase, where the layer is cracked, however, a dominant piece persists retaining the structural integrity of the layer, and a fragmentation phase, where the layer disintegrates into numerous small pieces. Based on finite size scaling we show that the transition between the two phases occurs at a critical damage analogous to continuous phase transitions. At the critical point a fully connected crack network emerges whose structure is controlled by the strength of adhesion to the substrate. In the strong adhesion limit, damage arises from random microcrack nucleation, resembling bond percolation, while weak adhesion facilitates stress concentration and the growth of cracks to large extensions. The critical exponents of the damage to fragmentation transition agree to a reasonable accuracy with those of two-dimensional bond percolation. Our findings provide a novel insights into the mechanism of shrinkage-induced cracking revealing generic scaling laws of the phenomenon.

• Skyrmion-vortex hybrid and spin wave solutions in ferromagnetic superconductors

  Shantonu Mukherjee, Amitabha Lahiri

  SciPost Phys. 19, 022 (2025) · published 18 July 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The coexistence of Ferromagnetism and superconductivity in so called ferromagnetic superconductors (FMSC) is an intriguing phenomenon which may lead to novel physical effects as well as applications. Here in this work we have explored the interplay of topological excitations, namely vortices and Skyrmions, in ferromagnetic superconductors using a field theoretic description of such systems. In particular, numerical solutions for the continuous spin field compatible to a given vortex profile are determined in absence and presence of a Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction (DMI) term. The solutions show that the spin configuration is like a Skyrmion but intertwined with the vortex structure — the radius of the the Skyrmion-like solution depends on the penetration depth and also the polarity of the Skyrmion depends on the sign of the winding number. Thus our solution describes a Skyrmion-vortex composite — but as a topological object in a bulk ferromagnetic superconductor, rather than on the interface of a ferromagnet-superconductor heterostructure. We have also determined the spin wave solutions in such systems in presence and absence of a vortex. In absence of a vortex, the frequency and the wave vector satisfy a cubic equation which leads to various interesting features. In particular, we have shown that in the low frequency regime the minimum in dispersion relation shifts from $k=0$ to a non-zero $k$ value depending on the parameters. We also discuss the nature of spin wave dispersion when the frequency $\omega$ is close to the photon mass $\tilde{m}$\,, for which we find multiple local minima in the dispersion curve. The group velocity of the spin wave would change its sign across such a minimum which is unique to FMSC. Also, the spin wave modes around the local minimum looks like roton mode in superfluid and hence called a magnetic roton. In presence of a vortex, the spin wave amplitude is shown to vary spatially such that the profile looks like that of a Néel Skyrmion. Possible experimental signature of both solutions are also discussed.

• Gaussian approximation of dynamic cavity equations for linearly-coupled stochastic dynamics

  Mattia Tarabolo, Luca Dall'Asta

  SciPost Phys. 19, 019 (2025) · published 17 July 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Stochastic dynamics on sparse graphs and disordered systems often lead to complex behaviors characterized by heterogeneity in time and spatial scales, slow relaxation, localization, and aging phenomena. The mathematical tools and approximation techniques required to analyze these complex systems are still under development, posing significant technical challenges and resulting in a reliance on numerical simulations. We introduce a novel computational framework for investigating the dynamics of sparse disordered systems with continuous degrees of freedom. Starting with a graphical model representation of the dynamic partition function for a system of linearly-coupled stochastic differential equations, we use dynamic cavity equations on locally tree-like factor graphs to approximate the stochastic measure. Here, cavity marginals are identified with local functionals of single-site trajectories. Our primary approximation involves a second-order truncation of a small-coupling expansion, leading to a Gaussian form for the cavity marginals. For linear dynamics with additive noise, this method yields a closed set of causal integro-differential equations for cavity versions of one-time and two-time averages. These equations provide an exact dynamical description within the local tree-like approximation, retrieving classical results for the spectral density of sparse random matrices. Global constraints, non-linear forces, and state-dependent noise terms can be addressed using a self-consistent perturbative closure technique. The resulting equations resemble those of dynamical mean-field theory in the mode-coupling approximation used for fully-connected models. However, due to their cavity formulation, the present method can also be applied to ensembles of sparse random graphs and employed as a message-passing algorithm on specific graph instances.

• Remote detectability from entanglement bootstrap I: Kirby’s torus trick

  Bowen Shi, Jin-Long Huang, John McGreevy

  SciPost Phys. 18, 126 (2025) · published 14 April 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Remote detectability is often taken as a physical assumption in the study of topologically ordered systems, and it is a central axiom of mathematical frameworks of topological quantum field theories. We show under the entanglement bootstrap approach that remote detectability is a necessary property; that is, we derive it as a theorem. Starting from a single wave function on a topologically-trivial region satisfying the entanglement bootstrap axioms, we can construct states on closed manifolds. The crucial technique is to immerse the punctured manifold into the topologically trivial region and then heal the puncture. This is analogous to Kirby's torus trick. We then analyze a special class of such manifolds, which we call pairing manifolds. For each pairing manifold, which pairs two classes of excitations, we identify an analog of the topological $S$-matrix. This pairing matrix is unitary, which implies remote detectability between two classes of excitations. These matrices are in general not associated with the mapping class group of the manifold. As a by-product, we can count excitation types (e.g., graph excitations in 3+1d). The pairing phenomenon occurs in many physical contexts, including systems in different dimensions, with or without gapped boundaries. We provide a variety of examples to illustrate its scope.

• Fourier-transformed gauge theory models of three-dimensional topological orders with gapped boundaries

  Siyuan Wang, Yanyan Chen, Hongyu Wang, Yuting Hu, Yidun Wan

  SciPost Phys. 19, 018 (2025) · published 17 July 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  In this paper, we apply the method of Fourier transform and basis rewriting developed in [H. Wang et al., J. High Energy Phys. 02, 030 (2020)] for the two-dimensional quantum double model of topological orders to the three-dimensional gauge theory model (with a gauge group $G$) of three-dimensional topological orders. We find that the gapped boundary condition of the gauge theory model is characterized by a Frobenius algebra in the representation category $Rep(G)$ of $G$, which also describes charge splitting and condensation on the boundary. We also show that our Fourier transform maps the three-dimensional gauge theory model with input data $G$ to the Walker-Wang model with input data $Rep(G)$ on a trivalent lattice with dangling edges, after truncating the Hilbert space by projecting all dangling edges to the trivial representation of $G$. This Fourier transform also provides a systematic construction of the gapped boundary theory of the Walker-Wang model. This establishes a correspondence between two types of topological field theories: the extended Dijkgraaf-Witten and extended Crane-Yetter theories.

• Tunable anharmonicity in cavity optomechanics in the unresolved sideband regime

  Jonathan L. Wise, Clement Dutreix, Fabio Pistolesi

  SciPost Phys. 19, 016 (2025) · published 16 July 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Introducing a controlled and strong anharmonicity in mechanical systems is a present challenge of nanomechanics. In cavity optomechanics a mechanical oscillator may be made anharmonic by ponderomotively coupling its motion to the light field of a laser-driven cavity. In the regime where the mechanical resonating frequency and the single-photon coupling constant are small compared to the decay rate of the cavity field, it turns out that the quantum electromagnetic fluctuations of the laser field drive the oscillator into a high-temperature thermal state. The motional state may however be highly non-Gaussian; we show that a precise tuning of system parameters may even lead to a purely quartic effective potential for the mechanical oscillator. We present a theory that predicts the measurable signatures left by the mechanical anharmonicity. In particular, we obtain analytically and numerically the mechanical displacement spectrum, and explore the imprints of the mechanical anharmonicity on the cavity light field.

• Anisotropic Kondo line defect and ODE/IM correspondence

  Jingxiang Wu

  SciPost Phys. 15, 248 (2023) · published 20 December 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We study the anisotropic Kondo line defects in products of chiral SU(2) WZW models. We propose an ODE/IM correspondence for the anisotropic Kondo problems by considering the four-dimensional Chern Simons theory in the trigonometric case. We verify the claim both by explicit perturbative calculations in the ultraviolet and by exact WKB analysis in the infrared. In doing so, we derived the infrared dynamics of a large class of anisotropic line defects.

• Status of the MUonE experiment

  Riccardo N. Pilato

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 16, 034 (2025) · published 15 July 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The latest measurement of the muon g-2, recently announced at Fermilab, exhibits a 4.2$\sigma$ discrepancy from the Standard Model prediction. The hadronic contribution $a_{\mu}^{HLO}$ represents the main source of uncertainty on the theoretical prediction. The MUonE experiment proposes a novel approach to determine $a_{\mu}^{HLO}$ by measuring the effective electromagnetic coupling in the space-like region, via $\mu - e$ elastic scattering. The measurement is performed by scattering a 160 GeV muon beam, available at CERN, on atomic electrons of a low-Z target. A Test run on a reduced detector is planned in 2022, to validate this proposal. The status of the experiment in view of the Test run is presented.

• Interaction quenches in Bose gases studied with a time-dependent hypernetted-chain Euler-Lagrange method

  Mathias Gartner, David Miesbauer, Michael Kobler, Julia Freund, Giuseppe Carleo, Robert E. Zillich

  SciPost Phys. 18, 123 (2025) · published 9 April 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We present a new variational method to study the dynamics of a closed bosonic many-body system, the time-dependent hypernetted-chain Euler-Lagrange method, tHNC. Based on the Jastrow ansatz, it accounts for quantum fluctuations in a non-perturbative way. The tHNC method scales well with the number of dimensions, as demonstrated by our results on one-, two-, and three-dimensional systems. We apply the tHNC method to interaction quenches, i.e. sudden changes of the interaction strength, in homogeneous Bose gases. When the quench is strong enough that the final state has roton excitations (as found and predicted for dipolar and Rydberg-dressed Bose-Einstein condensates, respectively), the pair distribution function exhibits stable oscillations. For validation, we compare tHNC results with time-dependent variational Monte Carlo results in one and two dimensions.