Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• Testing the mechanism of lepton compositeness

  Vincenzo Afferrante, Axel Maas, René Sondenheimer, Pascal Törek

  SciPost Phys. 10, 062 (2021) · published 10 March 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Strict gauge invariance requires that physical left-handed leptons are actually bound states of the elementary left-handed lepton doublet and the Higgs field within the standard model. That they nonetheless behave almost like pure elementary particles is explained by the Fr\"ohlich-Morchio-Strocchi mechanism. Using lattice gauge theory, we test and confirm this mechanism for fermions. Though, due to the current inaccessibility of non-Abelian gauged Weyl fermions on the lattice, a model which contains vectorial leptons but which obeys all other relevant symmetries has been simulated.

  4 citations

• Higher-order topology protected by latent crystalline symmetries

  Lumen Eek, Malte Röntgen, Anouar Moustaj, Cristiane Morais Smith

  SciPost Phys. 18, 061 (2025) · published 20 February 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We demonstrate that rotation symmetry is not a necessary requirement for the existence of fractional corner charges in $C_n$-symmetric higher-order topological crystalline insulators. Instead, it is sufficient to have a latent rotation symmetry, which may be revealed upon performing an isospectral reduction on the system. We introduce the concept of a filling anomaly for latent crystalline symmetric systems, and propose modified topological invariants. The notion of higher-order topology in two dimensions protected by $C_n$ symmetry is thus generalized to a protection by latent symmetry. Our claims are corroborated by concrete examples of models that show non-trivial corner charge in the absence of $C_n$-symmetry. This work extends the classification of topological crystalline insulators to include latent symmetries.

  4 citations

• Colour unwound - disentangling colours for azimuthal asymmetries in Drell-Yan scattering

  Daniël Boer, Tom van Daal, Jonathan R. Gaunt, Tomas Kasemets, Piet J. Mulders

  SciPost Phys. 3, 040 (2017) · published 19 December 2017 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  It has been suggested that a colour-entanglement effect exists in the Drell-Yan cross section for the 'double T-odd' contributions at low transverse momentum $Q_T$, rendering the colour structure different from that predicted by the usual factorisation formula [1]. These T-odd contributions can come from the Boer-Mulders or Sivers transverse momentum dependent distribution functions. The different colour structure should be visible already at the lowest possible order that gives a contribution to the double Boer-Mulders (dBM) or double Sivers (dS) effect, that is at the level of two gluon exchanges. To discriminate between the different predictions, we compute the leading-power contribution to the low-$Q_T$ dBM cross section at the two-gluon exchange order in the context of a spectator model. The computation is performed using a method of regions analysis with Collins subtraction terms implemented. The results conform with the predictions of the factorisation formula. In the cancellation of the colour entanglement, diagrams containing the three-gluon vertex are essential. Furthermore, the Glauber region turns out to play an important role - in fact, it is possible to assign the full contribution to the dBM cross section at the given order to the region in which the two gluons have Glauber scaling. A similar disentanglement of colour is found for the dS effect.

  4 citations

• Kernel polynomial method for linear spin wave theory

  Harry Lane, Hao Zhang, David Dahlbom, Sam Quinn, Rolando D. Somma, Martin Mourigal, Cristian D. Batista, Kipton Barros

  SciPost Phys. 17, 145 (2024) · published 26 November 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Calculating dynamical spin correlations is essential for matching model magnetic exchange Hamiltonians to momentum-resolved spectroscopic measurements. A major numerical bottleneck is the diagonalization of the dynamical matrix, especially in systems with large magnetic unit cells, such as those with incommensurate magnetic structures or quenched disorder. In this paper, we demonstrate an efficient scheme based on the kernel polynomial method for calculating dynamical correlations of relevance to inelastic neutron scattering experiments. This method reduces the scaling of numerical cost from cubic to linear in the magnetic unit cell size.

  4 citations

• Matrix product operator representations for the local conserved quantities of the Heisenberg chain

  Kyoichi Yamada, Kohei Fukai

  SciPost Phys. Core 6, 069 (2023) · published 19 October 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We present the explicit expressions for the matrix product operator (MPO) representation for the local conserved quantities of the Heisenberg chain. The bond dimension of the MPO grows linearly with the locality of the charges. The MPO has more simple form than the local charges themselves, and their Catalan tree patterns naturally emerge from the matrix products. The MPO representation of local conserved quantities is generalized to the integrable SU(N) invariant spin chain.

  4 citations

• Design of a Majorana trijunction

  Juan Daniel Torres Luna, Sathish R. Kuppuswamy, Anton R. Akhmerov

  SciPost Phys. 16, 044 (2024) · published 9 February 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Braiding of Majorana states demonstrates their non-Abelian exchange statistics. One implementation of braiding requires control of the pairwise couplings between all Majorana states in a trijunction device. To have adiabaticity, a trijunction device requires the desired pair coupling to be sufficiently large and the undesired couplings to vanish. In this work, we design and simulate a trijunction device in a two-dimensional electron gas with a focus on the normal region that connects three Majorana states. We use an optimisation approach to find the operational regime of the device in a multi-dimensional voltage space. Using the optimization results, we simulate a braiding experiment by adiabatically coupling different pairs of Majorana states without closing the topological gap. We then evaluate the feasibility of braiding in a trijunction device for different shapes and disorder strengths.

  4 citations

• The propagator of the finite XXZ spin-$\tfrac{1}{2}$ chain

  Gyorgy Z. Fehér, Balázs Pozsgay

  SciPost Phys. 6, 063 (2019) · published 28 May 2019 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We derive contour integral formulas for the real space propagator of the spin-$\tfrac12$ XXZ chain. The exact results are valid in any finite volume with periodic boundary conditions, and for any value of the anisotropy parameter. The integrals are on fixed contours, that are independent of the Bethe Ansatz solution of the model and the string hypothesis. The propagator is obtained by two different methods. First we compute it through the spectral sum of a deformed model, and as a by-product we also compute the propagator of the XXZ chain perturbed by a Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction term. As a second way we also compute the propagator through a lattice path integral, which is evaluated exactly utilizing the so-called $F$-basis in the mirror (or quantum) channel. The final expressions are similar to the Yudson representation of the infinite volume propagator, with the volume entering as a parameter. As an application of the propagator we compute the Loschmidt amplitude for the quantum quench from a domain wall state.

  4 citations

• Proliferation of non-linear excitations in the piecewise-linear perceptron

  Antonio Sclocchi, Pierfrancesco Urbani

  SciPost Phys. 10, 013 (2021) · published 21 January 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We investigate the properties of local minima of the energy landscape of a continuous non-convex optimization problem, the spherical perceptron with piecewise linear cost function and show that they are critical, marginally stable and displaying a set of pseudogaps, singularities and non-linear excitations whose properties appear to be in the same universality class of jammed packings of hard spheres. The piecewise linear perceptron problem appears as an evolution of the purely linear perceptron optimization problem that has been recently investigated in [1]. Its cost function contains two non-analytic points where the derivative has a jump. Correspondingly, in the non-convex/glassy phase, these two points give rise to four pseudogaps in the force distribution and this induces four power laws in the gap distribution as well. In addition one can define an extended notion of isostaticity and show that local minima appear again to be isostatic in this phase. We believe that our results generalize naturally to more complex cases with a proliferation of non-linear excitations as the number of non-analytic points in the cost function is increased.

  4 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.

  4 citations

• Pivoting through the chiral-clock family

  Nick G. Jones, Abhishodh Prakash, Paul Fendley

  SciPost Phys. 18, 094 (2025) · published 14 March 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The Onsager algebra, invented to solve the two-dimensional Ising model, can be used to construct conserved charges for a family of integrable $N$-state chiral clock models. We show how it naturally gives rise to a "pivot" procedure for this family of chiral Hamiltonians. These Hamiltonians have an anti-unitary CPT symmetry that when combined with the usual $\mathbb{Z}_N$ clock symmetry gives a non-Abelian dihedral symmetry group $D_{2N}$. We show that this symmetry gives rise to symmetry-protected topological (SPT) order in this family for all even $N$, and representation-SPT (RSPT) physics for all odd $N$. The simplest such example is a next-nearest-neighbour chain generalising the spin-1/2 cluster model, an SPT phase of matter. We derive a matrix-product state representation of its fixed-point ground state along with the ensuing entanglement spectrum and symmetry fractionalisation. We analyse a rich phase diagram combining this model with the Onsager-integrable chiral Potts chain, and find trivial, symmetry-breaking and (R)SPT orders, as well as extended gapless regions. For odd $N$, the phase transitions are "unnecessarily" critical from the SPT point of view.

  4 citations