Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• Exponential enhancement of dark matter freezeout abundance

  Bibhushan Shakya

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 12, 070 (2023) · published 5 July 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  A novel paradigm for thermal dark matter (DM), termed "bouncing dark matter", is presented. In canonical thermal DM scenarios, the DM abundance falls exponentially as the temperature drops below the mass of DM, until thermal freezeout occurs. This note explores a broader class of thermal DM models that are exceptions to this rule, where the DM abundance can deviate from the exponentially falling curve, and even rise exponentially, while in thermal equilibrium. Such scenarios can feature present day DM annihilation cross sections much larger than the canonical thermal target, improving the prospects for indirect detection of DM annihilation signals.

• Dark Sector searches with jets

  Janik von Ahnen

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 10, 029 (2022) · published 11 August 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The presence of a non-baryonic Dark Matter (DM) component in the Universe is inferred from the observation of its gravitational interaction. The ATLAS and CMS experiments located at the LHC have developed a broad search program for DM candidates, including resonance searches for the mediator and searches with large missing transverse momentum. Additionally, searches have been conducted in models where the Higgs Sector and the Dark Sector are connected leading for example to invisible Higgs boson decays. The results of recent searches on 13 TeV $pp$ data, their interplay and interpretation are presented.

• Exact effective action for the O(N) vector model in the large N limit

  Han Ma, Sung-Sik Lee

  SciPost Phys. 15, 111 (2023) · published 22 September 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We present the Wilsonian effective action as a solution of the exact RG equation for the critical $O(N)$ vector model in the large $N$ limit. Below four dimensions, the exact effective action can be expressed in a closed form as a transcendental function of two leading scaling operators with infinitely many derivatives. From the exact solution that describes the RG flow from a UV theory to the fixed point theory in the IR, we obtain the mapping between UV operators and IR scaling operators. It is shown that IR scaling operators are given by sums of infinitely many UV operators with infinitely many derivatives.

• Growth of the Wang-Casati-Prosen counter in an integrable billiard

  Zaijong Hwang, Christoph A. Marx, Joseph J. Seaward, Svetlana Jitomirskaya, Maxim Olshanii

  SciPost Phys. 14, 017 (2023) · published 10 February 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  This work is motivated by an article by Wang, Casati, and Prosen [Phys. Rev. E vol. 89, 042918 (2014)] devoted to a study of ergodicity in two-dimensional irrational right-triangular billiards. Numerical results presented there suggest that these billiards are generally not ergodic. However, they become ergodic when the billiard angle is equal to $\pi/2$ times a Liouvillian irrational, morally a class of irrational numbers which are well approximated by rationals. In particular, Wang et al. study a special integer counter that reflects the irrational contribution to the velocity orientation; they conjecture that this counter is localized in the generic case, but grows in the Liouvillian case. We propose a generalization of the Wang-Casati-Prosen counter: this generalization allows to include rational billiards into consideration. We show that in the case of a $45°\!\!:\!45°\!\!:\!90°$ billiard, the counter grows indefinitely, consistent with the Liouvillian scenario suggested by Wang et al.

• Measurement of the spectral function for the $τ^-\to K^-K_Sν_τ$ decay in BABAR experiment

  Sergey I. Serednyakov on behalf of the BABAR collaboration

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 1, 046 (2019) · published 22 February 2019 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The decay $\tau^{-}\to K^{-}K_S\nu_{\tau}$ has been studied using $430\times10^6$ $e^+e^-\to \tau^+\tau^-$ events produced at a center-of-mass energy around 10.6 GeV at the PEP-II collider and studied with the BABAR detector. The mass spectrum of the $K^{-}K_S$ system has been measured and the spectral function has been obtained. The measured branching fraction ${\cal B}(\tau^{-}\to K^{-}K_S\nu_{\tau}) = (0.739\pm 0.011(\rm stat.)\pm 0.020(\rm syst.))\times 10^{-3}$ is found to be in agreement with earlier measurements.

• Muonium reaction in MgO: A showcase for the final steps of ion implantation

  Rui C. Vilão, Ali Roonkiani, Apostolos G. Marinopoulos, Helena V. Alberto, João M. Gil, Ricardo B. L. Vieira, Robert Scheuermann, Alois Weidinger

  SciPost Phys. Core 8, 056 (2025) · published 26 August 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We present an in-depth investigation of the implantation of positive muons in magnesium oxide (MgO). Muonium, the positive muon plus an electron is an analogue of the hydrogen atom. This study describes the final stage of the implantation process, from muon diffusion over the potential barrier and the stopping by an inelastic reaction to the final embedding of the muon into the lattice structure. A special aspect is a relatively long-lived intermediate configuration which lasts for several hundred nanoseconds or more and is accessible to muon spin spectroscopy. The model presented here provides a framework for the analysis of the general case of ion implantation.

• Ultra-high energy neutrinos searches with the Pierre Auger Observatory

  Marta Trini for the Pierre Auger Collaboration

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 1, 047 (2019) · published 22 February 2019 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  In the EeV range, neutrinos are expected to be produced by ultra-high energy cosmic rays interactions with the Cosmic Microwave Background during propagation in the Universe. We report on the search for ultra-high energy neutrinos in data collected with the Surface Detector of the Pierre Auger Observatory. The searches are most efficient in the zenith angle range from 60 degrees to 95 degrees with tau neutrinos skimming in the Earth playingdominant role. The present non-detection of UHE neutrinos in the Pierre Auger Observatory excludes the most optimistic scenarios of neutrino production in terms of UHE cosmic rays chemical composition and cosmological evolution of the acceleration sites. We also report on the searches for neutrinos in coincidence with the recent Gravitational Wave events detected by LIGO/Virgo.

• Towards two- and three-loop QCD corrections to the width difference in $B_s-\bar{B}_s$ mixing

  Vladyslav Shtabovenko

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 7, 025 (2022) · published 21 June 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  In this work we address the issue of large perturbative uncertainties in the theory prediction for $\Delta \Gamma_s$, the width difference in the $B^0_s - \bar{B}^0_s$ mixing process. To this aim we complete important steps towards the full analytic result for the previously unknown Wilson coefficients from the matching between $|\Delta B|=1$ and $|\Delta B|=2$ effective Hamiltonians at next-to-next-leading order (NNLO) in the strong coupling constant. We provide a thorough discussion of technical and conceptual difficulties behind this computation and give an outlook regarding the availability of the new NNLO theory prediction for $\Delta \Gamma_s$.

• Gaussian state approximation of quantum many-body scars

  Wouter Buijsman, Yevgeny Bar Lev

  SciPost Phys. 17, 055 (2024) · published 15 August 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Quantum many-body scars are atypical, highly nonthermal eigenstates embedded in a sea of thermal eigenstates that have been observed in, for example, kinetically constrained quantum many-body models. These special eigenstates are characterized by a bipartite entanglement entropy that scales as most logarithmically with the subsystem size. We use numerical optimization techniques to investigate if quantum many-body scars of the experimentally relevant PXP model can be well approximated by Gaussian states. Gaussian states are described by a number of parameters that scales quadratically with system size, thereby having a much lower complexity than generic quantum many-body states, for which this number scales exponentially. We find that while quantum many-body scars can typically be well approximated by (symmetrized) Gaussian states, this is not the case for ergodic (thermal) eigenstates. This observation suggests that the non-ergodic part of the PXP Hamiltonian is related to certain quadratic parent Hamiltonians, thereby hinting on the origin of the quantum many-body scars.

• Inclusive and diffractive dijet photoproduction in ultraperipheral heavy ion collisions at the LHC

  V. Guzey, M. Klasen

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 8, 141 (2022) · published 14 July 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We calculate the cross section of inclusive dijet photoproduction in ultraperipheral collisions (UPCs) of heavy ions at the CERN Large Hadron Collider using next-to-leading order perturbative QCD and demonstrate that it provides a good description of the ATLAS data. We study the role of this data in constraining nuclear parton distribution functions (nPDFs) using the Bayesian reweighting technique and find that it can reduce current uncertainties of nPDFs at small $x$ by a factor of 2. We also make predictions for diffractive dijet photoproduction in UPCs and examine its potential to shed light on the disputed mechanism of QCD factorization breaking in diffraction.