Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• Interaction-induced strong zero modes in short quantum dot chains with time-reversal symmetry

  A. Mert Bozkurt, Sebastian Miles, Sebastiaan L. D. ten Haaf, Chun-Xiao Liu, Fabian Hassler, Michael Wimmer

  SciPost Phys. 18, 206 (2025) · published 25 June 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We theoretically explore the emergence of strong zero modes in a two-site chain consisting of two quantum dots coupled due to a central dot that mediates electron hopping and singlet superconducting pairing. In the presence of time-reversal symmetry, the on-site Coulomb interaction leads to a three-fold ground-state degeneracy when tuning the system to a sweet spot as a function of the inter-dot couplings. This degeneracy is protected against changes of the dot energies in the same way as "poor man's" Majorana bound states in short Kitaev chains. In the limit of strong interactions, this protection is maximal and the entire spectrum becomes triply degenerate, indicating the emergence of a "poor man's" version of a strong zero mode. We explain the degeneracy and protection by constructing corresponding Majorana Kramers-pair operators and $\mathbb{Z}_3$-parafermion operators. The strong zero modes share many properties of Majorana bound states in short Kitaev chains, including the stability of zero-bias peaks in the conductance and the behavior upon coupling to an additional quantum dot. However, they can be distinguished through finite-bias spectroscopy and the exhibit a different behavior when scaling to longer chains.

  1 citation

• Entanglement, partial set of measurements, and diagonality of the density matrix in the parton model

  Haowu Duan

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 8, 160 (2022) · published 14 July 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  To study quantum properties of the hadron wavefunction at small x, we derived the reduced density matrix for soft gluons in the CGC framework. We explicitly showed that the reduced density matrix is not diagonal in the particle number basis. The off-diagonal components are usually ignored in the conventional parton model. We thus defined the density matrix of ignorance by keeping only the part of the reduced density matrix which can be probed in a limited set of experimental measurements. We calculated Von Neumann entropy for both the reduced and ignorance density matrices. The entropy of ignorance is always greater than the entanglement entropy (computed drom the reduced density matrix) of gluons. Finally, we showed that the CGC reduced density matrix for soft gluons can be diagonalized in a thermal basis with Boltzmann weights suggesting thermalization of new quasi-particle states which we dubbed entangolons.

  1 citation

• Dynamics of systems with varying number of particles: From Liouville equations to general master equations for open systems

  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.

  1 citation

• Hybrid symmetry class topological insulators

  Sanjib Kumar Das, Bitan Roy

  SciPost Phys. 18, 209 (2025) · published 27 June 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Traditional topological materials belong to different Altland-Zirnbauer symmetry classes (AZSCs) depending on their non-spatial symmetries. Here we introduce the notion of hybrid symmetry class topological insulators (HSCTIs): A fusion of two different AZSC topological insulators (TIs) such that they occupy orthogonal Cartesian hyperplanes and their universal massive Dirac Hamiltonian mutually anticommute, a mathematical procedure we name hybridization. The boundaries of HSCTIs can also harbor TIs, typically affiliated with an AZSC that is different from the ones for the parent two TIs. As such, a fusion or hybridization between planar class AII quantum spin Hall and vertical class BDI Su-Schrieffer-Heeger insulators gives birth to a three-dimensional class A HSCTI, accommodating quantum anomalous Hall insulators (class A) of opposite Chern numbers and quantized Hall conductivity of opposite signs on the top and bottom surfaces. Such a response is shown to be stable against weak disorder. We extend this construction to encompass crystalline HSCTI and topological superconductors (featuring half-quantized thermal Hall conductivity of opposite sings on the top and bottom surfaces), and beyond three spatial dimensions. Non-trivial responses of three-dimensional HSCTIs to crystal defects (namely edge dislocations) in terms of mid-gap bound states at zero energy around its core only on the top and bottom surfaces are presented. Possible (meta)material platforms to harness and engineer HSCTIs are discussed.

  1 citation

• QDsim: A user-friendly toolbox for simulating large-scale quantum dot devices

  Valentina Gualtieri, Charles Renshaw-Whitman, Vinicius Hernandes, Eliska Greplova

  SciPost Phys. Codebases 46 (2025) · published 23 January 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We introduce QDsim, a Python package tailored for the rapid generation of charge stability diagrams in large-scale quantum dot devices, extending beyond traditional double or triple dots. QDsim is founded on the constant interaction model from which we rephrase the task of finding the lowest energy charge configuration as a convex optimization problem. Therefore, we can leverage the existing package CVXPY, in combination with an appropriate powerful solver, for the convex optimization which streamlines the creation of stability diagrams and polytopes. Through multiple examples, we demonstrate how QDsim enables the generation of large-scale dataset that can serve a basis for the training of machine-learning models for automated tuning algorithms. While the package currently does not support quantum effects beyond the constant interaction model, QDsim is a tool that directly addresses the critical need for cost-effective and expeditious data acquisition for better tuning algorithms in order to accelerate the development of semiconductor quantum devices.

  1 citation

• On the Virasoro fusion and modular kernels at any irrational central charge

  Julien Roussillon

  SciPost Phys. 17, 138 (2024) · published 20 November 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We propose a series representation for the Virasoro fusion and modular kernels at any irrational central charge. Two distinct, yet closely related formulas are needed for the cases $c∈ \mathbb{C} \backslash (-∞,1]$ and $c <1$. Our proposal for $c <1$ agrees numerically with the fusion transformation of the four-point spherical conformal blocks, whereas our proposal for $c∈ \mathbb{C} \backslash (-∞,1]$ agrees numerically with Ponsot and Teschner's integral formula for the fusion kernel. The case of the modular kernel is studied as a special case of the fusion kernel.

  1 citation

• Variance reduction via simultaneous importance sampling and control variates techniques using vegas

  Prasanth Shyamsundar, Jacob L. Scott, Stephen Mrenna, Konstantin T. Matchev, Kyoungchul Kong

  SciPost Phys. Codebases 28 (2024) · published 4 March 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Monte Carlo (MC) integration is an important calculational technique in the physical sciences. Practical considerations require that the calculations are performed as accurately as possible for a given set of computational resources. To improve the accuracy of MC integration, a number of useful variance reduction algorithms have been developed, including importance sampling and control variates. In this work, we demonstrate how these two methods can be applied simultaneously, thus combining their benefits. We provide a python wrapper, named CoVVVR, which implements our approach in the VEGAS program. The improvements are quantified with several benchmark examples from the literature.

  1 citation

• Preference for Chaudfontaine or bias towards the preferred option?

  Alexandra Sarafoglou

  J. Robust. Rep. 0-Ex2 (2025) · published 16 April 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Although participants' taste scores were influenced by their preferences, they still generally favored Chaudfontaine over tap water, which confirms the original claim.

  1 citation

• Recent progress on the study of nucleon structure from lattice QCD and future perspectives

  Constantia Alexandrou

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 3, 015 (2020) · published 25 February 2020 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We review the progress achieved within the last five years in the simulations of lattice QCD, as well as in the analysis for selected quantities probing nucleon structure. In particular, we discuss results on the nucleon electromagnetic form factors, $\sigma$-terms, the momentum fraction carried b quark in the nucleon and the helicity and transversity. All quantities are obtained using simulations generated with quark masses fixed to their physical values. In addition, we review the on-going effort to extract parton distribution functions (PDFs) directly from lattice QCD using the quasi-PDFs approach.

  1 citation

• On exactly solvable Yang-Baxter models and enhanced symmetries

  Khalil Idiab, Stijn Jurrien van Tongeren

  SciPost Phys. 17, 110 (2024) · published 10 October 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We study Yang-Baxter deformations of the flat space string that result in exactly solvable models, finding the Nappi-Witten model and its higher dimensional generalizations. We then consider the spectra of these models obtained by canonical quantization in light-cone gauge, and match them with an integrability-based Bethe Ansatz approach. By considering a generalized light-cone gauge we can describe the model by a nontrivially Drinfel'd twisted S matrix, explicitly verifying the twisted structure expected for such deformations. Next, the reformulation of the Nappi-Witten model as a Yang-Baxter deformation shows that Yang-Baxter models can have more symmetries than suggested by the $r$ matrix defining the deformation. We discuss these enhanced symmetries in more detail for some trivial and nontrivial examples. Finally, we observe that there are nonunimodular but Weyl-invariant Yang-Baxter models of a type not previously considered.

  1 citation