Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• The low-energy spectrum in DAMIC at SNOLAB

  Alvaro E. Chavarria

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 12, 011 (2023) · published 3 July 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The DAMIC experiment employs large-area, thick charge-coupled devices (CCDs) to search for the interactions of low-mass dark matter particles in the galactic halo with silicon atoms in the CCD target. From 2017 to 2019, DAMIC collected data with a seven-CCD array (40-gram target) installed in the SNOLAB underground laboratory. We report dark-matter search results, including a conspicuous excess of events above the background model below 200$V_{ee}$, whose origin remains unknown. We present details of the published spectral analysis, and update on the deployment of skipper CCDs to perform a more precise measurement by early 2023.

• Witten index of BMN matrix quantum mechanics

  Chi-Ming Chang

  SciPost Phys. 19, 147 (2025) · published 5 December 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We compute the Witten index of the Berenstein-Maldacena-Nastase matrix quantum mechanics, which counts the number of ground states as well as the difference between the numbers of bosonic and fermionic BPS states with nonzero angular momenta. The Witten index sets a lower bound on the entropy, which exhibits $N^2$ growth that provides strong evidence for the existence of BPS black holes in M-theory, asymptotic to the plane-wave geometry. We also discuss a relation between the Witten index in the infinite $N$ limit and the superconformal index of the Aharony-Bergman-Jafferis-Maldacena theory.

• Complexity and accessibility of random landscapes

  Sakshi Pahujani, Joachim Krug

  SciPost Phys. Lect. Notes 108 (2025) · published 22 December 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  These notes introduce probabilistic landscape models defined on high-dimensional discrete sequence spaces. The models are motivated primarily by fitness landscapes in evolutionary biology, but links to statistical physics and computer science are mentioned where appropriate. Elementary and advanced results on the structure of landscapes are described with a focus on features that are relevant to evolutionary searches, such as the number of local maxima and the existence of fitness-monotonic paths. The recent discovery of submodularity as a biologically meaningful property of fitness landscapes and its consequences for their accessibility is discussed in detail.

• 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.

• Transverse Single-Spin Asymmetries of Midrapidity Direct Photons and Neutral Mesons at PHENIX

  Nicole Lewis

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 8, 009 (2022) · published 11 July 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Results are presented for the transverse single-spin asymmetries of direct photons, neutral pions, and eta mesons for $|\eta|<0.35$ from $p^\uparrow + p$ collisions with $\sqrt{s} = 200$ GeV at PHENIX. As hadrons, $\pi^0$ and $\eta$ mesons are sensitive to both initial- and final-state effects and at midrapidity probe the dynamics of gluons along with a mix of quark flavors. Because direct photon production does not include hadronization, the direct photon TSSA is only sensitive to initial-state effects and at midrapidity provides a clean probe of the gluon dynamics in transversely polarized protons. All three of these results will help constrain the collinear twist-3 trigluon correlation function as well as the gluon Sivers function, improving our knowledge of spin-dependent gluon dynamics in QCD.

• Interpolating amplitudes

  Víctor Bresó-Pla, Gudrun Heinrich, Vitaly Magerya, Anton Olsson

  SciPost Phys. 19, 123 (2025) · published 10 November 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The calculation of scattering amplitudes at higher orders in perturbation theory has reached a high degree of maturity. However, their usage to produce physical predictions within Monte Carlo programs is often precluded by the slow evaluation of two- and higher-loop virtual amplitudes, particularly those calculated numerically. As a remedy, interpolation frameworks have been successfully used for amplitudes depending on up to two kinematic invariants. For amplitude interpolation with more variables, such as the five dimensions of a $2\to 3$ phase space, efficient and reliable solutions are sparse. This work aims to pave the way for using amplitude interpolation in higher-dimensional phase spaces by reviewing state-of-the-art interpolation methods, and assessing their performance on a selection of $2\to 3$ scattering amplitudes. Specifically, we investigate interpolation methods based on polynomials, splines, spatially adaptive sparse grids, and neural networks (multilayer perceptron and Lorentz-Equivariant Geometric Algebra Transformer), all under the constraint of limited obtainable data. Our additional aim is to motivate further studies of the interpolation of scattering amplitudes among both physicists and mathematicians.

• Irreducible representations of $\mathbb{Z}_2^2$-graded supersymmetry algebra and their applications

  Naruhiko Aizawa

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 14, 016 (2023) · published 23 November 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We give a brief review on recent developments of $\mathbb{Z}_2^n$-graded symmetry in physics in which hidden $\mathbb{Z}_2^n$-graded symmetries and $\mathbb{Z}_2^n$-graded extensions of known systems are discussed. This elucidates physical relevance of the $\mathbb{Z}_2^n$-graded algebras. As an example of physically interesting algebra, we take $\mathbb{Z}_2^2$-graded supersymmetry (SUSY) algebras and consider their irreducible representations (irreps). A list of irreps for ${\cal N} = 1, 2$ algebras is presented and as an application of the irreps, $\mathbb{Z}_2^2$-graded SUSY classical actions are constructed.

• What charged cosmic rays tell us on dark matter

  Pierre Salati

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 12, 067 (2023) · published 5 July 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Dark matter particles could be the major component of the haloes of galaxies. Their mutual annihilations or decays would produce an indirect signature under the form of high-energy cosmic-rays. The focus of this presentation is on antimatter species, a component so rare that any excess over the background should be easily detected. After a recap on Galactic propagation, I will discuss positrons, antiprotons and anti-nuclei. For each of these species, anomalies have been reported. The antiproton excess, for instance, is currently a hot topic. Alas, it does not resist a correct treatment of theoretical and data errors.

• The quantum cartpole: A benchmark environment for non-linear reinforcement learning

  Kai Meinerz, Simon Trebst, Mark Rudner, Evert van Nieuwenburg

  SciPost Phys. Core 7, 026 (2024) · published 7 May 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Feedback-based control is the de-facto standard when it comes to controlling classical stochastic systems and processes. However, standard feedback-based control methods are challenged by quantum systems due to measurement induced backaction and partial observability. Here we remedy this by using weak quantum measurements and model-free reinforcement learning agents to perform quantum control. By comparing control algorithms with and without state estimators to stabilize a quantum particle in an unstable state near a local potential energy maximum, we show how a trade-off between state estimation and controllability arises. For the scenario where the classical analogue is highly nonlinear, the reinforcement learned controller has an advantage over the standard controller. Additionally, we demonstrate the feasibility of using transfer learning to develop a quantum control agent trained via reinforcement learning on a classical surrogate of the quantum control problem. Finally, we present results showing how the reinforcement learning control strategy differs from the classical controller in the non-linear scenarios.

• The two-loop radiative gluon jet function for $gg\to h$ via a light quark loop

  Marvin Schnubel

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 7, 039 (2022) · published 22 June 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The Higgs-boson production channel $gg\to h$ mediated by light-quark loops receives large logarithmic corrections in QCD, which can be resummed using factorization formulae derived in soft-collinear effective theory. In these factorization formulae the radiative gluon jet function appears, which is a central object in the study of factorization beyond the leading order in scale ratios. We calculate this function at two-loop order for the first time and present the subtleties that come along with this.