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At least 217 records · Page 12

Modification to the Hawking temperature of a dynamical black hole by a flow-induced supertranslation

One interesting proposal to solve the black hole information loss paradox without modifying either general relativity or quantum field theory, is the soft hair, a diffeomorphism charge that records the anisotropic radiation in the asymptotic region. This proposal, however, has been challenged, given that away from the source the soft hair behaves as a coordinate transformation that forms an Abelian group, thus unable to store any information. To maintain the spirit of the soft hair but circumvent these obstacles, we consider Hawking radiation as a probe sensitive to the entire history of the black hole evaporation, where the soft hairs on the horizon are induced by the absorption of a null anisotropic flow, generalizing the shock wave considered in [1, 2]. To do so we introduce two different time-dependent extensions of the diffeomorphism associated with the soft hair, where one is the backreaction of the anisotropic null flow, and the other is a coordinate transformation that produces the Unruh effect and a Doppler shift to the Hawking spectrum. Together, they form an exact BMS charge generator on the entire manifold that allows the nonperturbative analysis of the black hole horizon, whose surface gravity, i.e. the Hawking temperature, is found to be modified. The modification depends on an exponential average of the anisotropy of the null flow with a decay rate of 4M, suggesting the emergence of a new 2-D degree of freedom on the horizon, which could be a way out of the information loss paradox.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Quantum signatures in nonlinear gravitational waves

The effective quantum field theory description of gravity, despite its non-renormalizability, allows for predictions beyond classical general relativity. As we enter the age of gravitational wave astronomy, an important and timely question is whether measurable quantum predictions that depart from classical gravity, analogous to quantum optics effects which cannot be explained by classical electrodynamics, can be found. In this work, we investigate quantum signatures in gravitational waves using tools from quantum optics. Squeezed-coherent gravitational waves, which can exhibit sub-Poissonian graviton statistics, can enhance or suppress the signal measured by an interferometer, a characteristic effect of quantum squeezing. Moreover, we show that Gaussian gravitational wave quantum states can be reconstructed from measurements over an ensemble of optical fields interacting with a single copy of the gravitational wave, thus opening the possibility of detecting quantum features of gravity beyond classical general relativity.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

Quantum electrodynamics mediated by a photon with continuous spin

In recent work with Zhou, we studied classical interactions of matter with a “continuous spin” field, whose excitations have zero mass but nonzero spin Casimir (spin scale) ρ . We reported evidence that such theories are a calculable infrared deformation of familiar massless theories including electromagnetism. Building on the aforementioned work, this paper presents rules for computing scattering amplitudes involving charged scalar matter and continuous spin photons with nonzero spin scale. As a concrete example, we compute the pair annihilation and Compton scattering amplitudes in this theory and comment on their physical properties, including unitarity and scaling behavior at small and large ρ . Like the classical physics and soft factors studied in prior work, these amplitudes exhibit “helicity correspondence,” recovering familiar amplitudes at energy scales ≫ ρ , but with calculable deviations that could be experimentally tested. These results bolster the conjecture that continuous spin particles with a very small ρ could mediate long-range forces in nature (e.g., the photon could be a continuous spin particle), and extend the range of physical effects that could be used to test this hypothesis. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

Renormalization group improvement of the effective potential: an EFT approach

We apply effective field theory (EFT) methods to compute the renormalization group improved effective potential for theories with a large mass hierarchy. Our method allows one to compute the effective potential in a systematic expansion in powers of the mass ratio, as well as to sum large logarithms of mass ratios using renormalization group evolution. The effective potential is the sum of one-particle irreducible diagrams (1PI) but information about which diagrams are 1PI is lost after matching to the EFT, since heavy lines get shrunk to a point. We therefore introduce a tadpole condition in place of the 1PI condition, and use the renormalization group improved value of the tadpole in computing the effective potential. We explain why the effective potential computed using an EFT is not the same as the effective potential of the EFT. We illustrate our method using the O(N) model, a theory of two scalars in the unbroken and broken phases, and the Higgs-Yukawa model. Our leading-log result, obtained by integrating the one-loop β-functions, correctly reproduces the log-squared term in explicit two-loop calculations. Our method does not have a Goldstone boson infrared divergence problem.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

Entropy variations and light ray operators from replica defects

We study the defect operator product expansion (OPE) of displacement operators in free and interacting conformal field theories using replica methods. We show that as n approaches 1 a contact term can emerge when the OPE contains defect operators of twist d - 2. For interacting theories and general states we give evidence that the only possibility is from the defect operator that becomes the stress tensor in the n → 1 limit. This implies that the quantum null energy condition (QNEC) is always saturated for CFTs with a twist gap. As a check, we show independently that in a large class of near vacuum states, the second variation of the entanglement entropy is given by a simple correlation function of averaged null energy operators as studied by Hofman and Maldacena. This suggests that sub-leading terms in the defect OPE are controlled by a defect version of the spin-3 non-local light ray operator and we speculate about the possible origin of such a defect operator. For free theories this contribution condenses to a contact term that leads to violations of QNEC saturation.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

Relativistic spin hydrodynamics with torsion and linear response theory for spin relaxation

Using the second law of local thermodynamics and the first-order Palatini formalism, we formulate relativistic spin hydrodynamics for quantum field theories with Dirac fermions, such as QED and QCD, in a torsionful curved background. We work in a regime where spin density, which is assumed to relax much slower than other non-hydrodynamic modes, is treated as an independent degree of freedom in an extended hydrodynamic description. Spin hydrodynamics in our approach contains only three non-hydrodynamic modes corresponding to a spin vector, whose relaxation time is controlled by a new transport coefficient: the rotational viscosity. We study linear response theory and observe an interesting mode mixing phenomenon between the transverse shear and the spin density modes. We propose several field-theoretical ways to compute the spin relaxation time and the rotational viscosity, via the Green-Kubo formula based on retarded correlation functions.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

Understanding the electromagnetic topology during the ohmic breakdown in tokamaks considering self-generated electric fields

We report that the physical mechanisms of the ohmic breakdown in a tokamak have been understood based on the classical Townsend avalanche theory. However, a new systematic theory (Yoo et al 2018 Nat. Commun.9 3523) recently demonstrated that electron avalanches during the ohmic breakdown are completely different from the Townsend avalanche due to strong self-generated electric fields. In this study, we elucidate the multi-dimensional effects of the self-generated electric field on plasma dynamics during the ohmic breakdown. We also propose a novel electromagnetic topology analysis method that can easily predict the overall plasma behavior and where the main plasma is generated. The topology analysis method is validated by a state-of-art particle simulation for various magnetic configurations. New physical insights into the complex electromagnetic topology would facilitate designing more reliable and optimized ohmic breakdown scenarios in future tokamaks, such as ITER and beyond.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

Characters, quasinormal modes, and Schwinger pairs in dS 2 with flux

An integral representation of the 1-loop partition function for charged scalars and spinors, minimally coupled to a uniform U(1) field on S 2 , is given in terms of SO(1, 2) Harish-Chandra group characters and evaluated exactly in terms of Hurwitz ζ-functions. Analytically continuing the U(1) field, we interpret the path integrals as quasicanonical partition functions in dS 2 with an electric field. The character itself is obtained as a trace over states living at the future boundary of de Sitter and has a quasinormal mode expansion. The imaginary part of the partition function captures Schwinger pair creation in the static patch at finite temperature. The thermal enhancement is most noticeable for scalar masses below Hubble and leads to non-monotonicity of the current as a function of the field. This parameter range, when dimensionally reducing from a charged or rotating Nariai spacetime, is excluded by Swampland-inspired bounds. Around the AdS 2 black hole, in contrast to dS 2 , there is a threshold to pair creation.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

The dual of non-extremal area: differential entropy in higher dimensions

The Ryu-Takayanagi formula relates entanglement entropy in a field theory to the area of extremal surfaces anchored to the boundary of a dual AdS space. It is interesting to ask if there is also an information theoretic interpretation of the areas of non-extremal surfaces that are not necessarily boundary-anchored. In general, the physics outside such surfaces is associated to observers restricted to a time-strip in the dual boundary field theory. When the latter is two-dimensional, it is known that the differential entropy associated to the strip computes the length of the dual bulk curve, and has an interpretation in terms of the information cost in Bell pairs of restoring correlations inaccessible to observers in the strip. A general realization of this formalism in higher dimensions is unknown. We first prove a no-go theorem eliminating candidate expressions for higher dimensional differential entropy based on entropic c-theorems. Then we propose a new formula in terms of an integral of shape derivatives of the entanglement entropy of ball shaped regions. Our proposal stems from the physical requirement that differential entropy must be locally finite and conformally invariant. Demanding cancelation of the well-known UV divergences of entanglement entropy in field theory guides us to our conjecture, which we test for surfaces in AdS 4 . Our results suggest a candidate c-function for field theories in arbitrary dimensions.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

Q-balls meet fuzzballs: non-BPS microstate geometries

We construct a three-parameter family of non-extremal microstate geometries, or “microstrata”, that are dual to states and deformations of the D1-D5 CFT. These families are non-extremal analogues of superstrata. We find these microstrata by using a Q-ball-inspired Ansatz that reduces the equations of motion to solving for eleven functions of one variable. We then solve this system both perturbatively and numerically and the results match extremely well. We find that the solutions have normal mode frequencies that depend upon the amplitudes of the excitations. We also show that, at higher order in perturbations, some of the solutions, having started with normalizable modes, develop a “non-normalizable” part, suggesting that the microstrata represent states in a perturbed form of the D1-D5 CFT. This paper is intended as a “Proof of Concept” for the Q-ball-inspired approach, and we will describe how it opens the way to many interesting follow-up calculations both in supergravity and in the dual holographic field theory.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

A compendium of sphere path integrals

We study the manifestly covariant and local 1-loop path integrals on S d+1 for general massive, shift-symmetric and (partially) massless totally symmetric tensor fields of arbitrary spin s ≥ 0 in any dimensions d ≥ 2. After reviewing the cases of massless fields with spin s = 1, 2, we provide a detailed derivation for path integrals of massless fields of arbitrary integer spins s ≥ 1. Following the standard procedure of Wick-rotating the negative conformal modes, we find a higher spin analog of Polchinski’s phase for any integer spin s ≥ 2. The derivations for low-spin (s = 0, 1, 2) massive, shift-symmetric and partially massless fields are also carried out explicitly. Finally, we provide general prescriptions for general massive and shift-symmetric fields of arbitrary integer spins and partially massless fields of arbitrary integer spins and depths.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

Monitored Fluctuating Hydrodynamics

We introduce a hydrodynamic framework for describing monitored classical stochastic processes. We study the conditional ensembles for these monitored processes—i.e., we compute spacetime correlation functions conditioned on a fixed, typical measurement record. In the presence of global symmetries we show that these conditional ensembles can undergo measurement-induced “sharpening” phase transitions as a function of the monitoring rate; moreover, even weak monitoring can give rise to novel critical phases, derived entirely from a classical perspective. We give a simple hydrodynamic derivation of the known “charge-fuzzy phase” for weakly monitored diffusive many-body quantum systems. We show that although the unmonitored symmetric and asymmetric exclusion processes are in different universality classes of transport, the fluctuations in their conditional ensembles flow to the same fixed point with emergent relativistic invariance under monitoring. On the other hand, weakly monitored systems with non-Abelian symmetries enter a novel strongly coupled fixed point with nontrivial dynamical exponent, which we characterize. Our formalism naturally accounts for monitoring general observables, such as currents or density gradients, and allows for a direct calculation of information-theoretic diagnostics of sharpening transitions, including the Shannon entropy of the measurement record.

classical statistical mechanics↗

The expressivity of classical and quantum neural networks on entanglement entropy

Abstract Analytically continuing the von Neumann entropy from Rényi entropies is a challenging task in quantum field theory. While then-th Rényi entropy can be computed using the replica method in the path integral representation of quantum field theory, the analytic continuation can only be achieved for some simple systems on a case-by-case basis. In this work, we propose a general framework to tackle this problem using classical and quantum neural networks with supervised learning. We begin by studying several examples with known von Neumann entropy, where the input data is generated by representing$${\text {Tr}}\rho _A^n$$ Tr ρ A n with a generating function. We adopt KerasTuner to determine the optimal network architecture and hyperparameters with limited data. In addition, we frame a similar problem in terms of quantum machine learning models, where the expressivity of the quantum models for the entanglement entropy as a partial Fourier series is established. Our proposed methods can accurately predict the von Neumann and Rényi entropies numerically, highlighting the potential of deep learning techniques for solving problems in quantum information theory.

Physics↗

Quantum Information for Particle Theorists

Lectures given at the Theoretical Advanced Study Institute (TASI 2020), 1-26 June 2020. The topics covered include quantum circuits, entanglement, quantum teleportation, Bell inequalities, quantum entropy and decoherence, classical versus quantum measurement, the area law for entanglement entropy in quantum field theory, and simulating quantum field theory on a quantum computer. Along the way we confront the fundamental sloppiness of how we all learned (and some of us taught) quantum mechanics in college. Links to a Python notebook and Mathematica notebooks will allow the reader to reproduce and extend the calculations, as well as perform five experiments on a quantum simulator.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Non-invertible global symmetries and completeness of the spectrum

It is widely believed that consistent theories of quantum gravity satisfy two basic kinematic constraints: they are free from any global symmetry, and they contain a complete spectrum of gauge charges. For compact, abelian gauge groups, completeness follows from the absence of a 1-form global symmetry. However, this correspondence breaks down for more general gauge groups, where the breaking of the 1-form symmetry is insufficient to guarantee a complete spectrum. We show that the correspondence may be restored by broadening our notion of symmetry to include non-invertible topological operators, and prove that their absence is sufficient to guarantee a complete spectrum for any compact, possibly disconnected gauge group. In addition, we prove an analogous statement regarding the completeness of twist vortices: codimension-2 objects defined by a discrete holonomy around their worldvolume, such as cosmic strings in four dimensions. We discuss how this correspondence is modified in various, more general contexts, including non-compact gauge groups, Higgsing of gauge theories, and the addition of Chern-Simons terms. Finally, we discuss the implications of our results for the Swampland program, as well as the phenomenological implications of the existence of twist strings.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

T$ \overline{T} $ deformation in SCFTs and integrable supersymmetric theories

We calculate the \( \mathcal{S} \) -multiplets for two-dimensional Euclidean \( \mathcal{N} \) = (0 , 2) and \( \mathcal{N} \) = (2 , 2) superconformal field theories under the T \( \overline{T} \) deformation at leading order of perturbation theory in the deformation coupling. Then, from these \( \mathcal{N} \) = (0 , 2) deformed multiplets, we calculate two- and three-point correlators. We show the \( \mathcal{N} \) = (0 , 2) chiral ring’s elements do not flow under the T \( \overline{T} \) deformation. Specializing to integrable supersymmetric seed theories, such as \( \mathcal{N} \) = (2 , 2) Landau-Ginzburg models, we use the thermodynamic Bethe ansatz to study the S-matrices and ground state energies. From both an S-matrix perspective and Melzer’s folding prescription, we show that the deformed ground state energy obeys the inviscid Burgers’ equation. Finally, we show that several indices independent of D -term perturbations including the Witten index, Cecotti-Fendley-Intriligator-Vafa index and elliptic genus do not flow under the T \( \overline{T} \) deformation.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

Construction of two-dimensional topological field theories with non-invertible symmetries

We construct the defining data of two-dimensional topological field theories (TFTs) enriched by non-invertible symmetries/topological defect lines. Simple formulae for the three-point functions and the lasso two-point functions are derived, and crossing symmetry is proven. The key ingredients are open-to-closed maps and a boundary crossing relation, by which we show that a diagonal basis exists in the defect Hilbert spaces. We then introduce regular TFTs, provide their explicit constructions for the Fibonacci, Ising and Haagerup $\mathscr{H}$ 3 fusion categories, and match our formulae with previous bootstrap results. We end by explaining how non-regular TFTs are obtained from regular TFTs via generalized gauging.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗