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At least 811 records · Page 45
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DOE OSTI2023

Twistorial monopoles & chiral algebras

We initiate the study of how the insertion of magnetically charged states in 4d self-dual gauge theories impacts the 2d chiral algebras supported on the celestial sphere at asymptotic null infinity, from the point of view of the 4d/2d twistorial correspondence introduced by Costello and the second author. By reducing the 6d twistorial theory to a 3d holomorphic-topological theory with suitable boundary conditions, we can motivate certain non-perturbative enhancements of the celestial chiral algebra corresponding to extensions by modules arising from 3d boundary monopole operators. We also identify the insertion of 4d (non-abelian) monopoles with families of spectral flow automorphisms of the celestial chiral algebra.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2023

A Celestial route to AdS bulk locality

We prove a precise form of AdS bulk locality by deriving analytical two-sided bounds on bulk Wilson coefficients. Our bounds are on the Wilson coefficients themselves, rather than their ratios, as is typically found in the literature. Inspired by the Celestial amplitudes program in flat space, we perform a Celestial transform of the CFT Mellin amplitude of four identical scalars. Using the crossing symmetric dispersion relation (CSDR), we express the resulting amplitude in terms of crossing symmetric conformal partial waves. The partial waves satisy remarkable positivity properties which along with the unitarity of the CFT prove sufficient to derive the bounds. We then employ our methods in the limit of large AdS radius and recover known bounds on flat space Wilson coefficients and new bounds on their large radius corrections. We check that the planar Mellin amplitude of four stress-tensor multiplets in $\mathcal{N}$ = 4 SYM satisfies our bounds. Finally, using null constraints, we derive a form of low-spin dominance in AdS EFTs. We find that the low-spin dominance is strongest in flat space and weakens as we move away from flat space towards higher AdS curvature.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2023

c -functions in higher-derivative flows across dimensions

In the context of gravitational theories describing renormalization group flows across dimensions via AdS/CFT, we study the role of higher-derivative corrections to Einstein gravity. We use the Null Energy Condition to derive monotonicity properties of candidate holographic central charges formed by combinations of metric functions. We also implement an entropic approach to the characterization of the four-derivative flows using the Jacobson-Myers functional and demonstrate, under reasonable conditions, monotonicity of certain terms in the entanglement entropy via the appropriate generalization of the Ryu-Takayanagi prescription. In particular, we show that any flow from a higher dimensional theory to a holographic CFT 2 satisfies a type of monotonicity. We also uncover direct relations between NEC-motivated and entropic central charges.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2018

String dynamics in NS5-F1-P geometries

String theory dynamics on certain fivebrane supertube backgrounds is described by an exactly solvable null-gauged WZW model. We use this description to compute the spectrum of closed string excitations on the three-charge non-supersymmetric solution found by Jejjala, Madden, Ross and Titchener, as well as its supersymmetric limit. The low-lying spectrum matches that of supergravity modes in the effective geometry and exhibits an underlying group-theoretic structure. Winding sectors describe strings carrying the same charges as the background; processes whereby strings turn into flux or vice-versa are mediated by large gauge transformations on the worldsheet. The S-matrix of such wound strings probes microstructure of the fivebrane source that is hidden in the supergravity approximation.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2023

Isometries and the double copy

In the standard derivation of the Kerr-Schild double copy, the geodicity of the Kerr-Schild vector and the stationarity of the spacetime are presented as assumptions that are necessary for the single copy to satisfy Maxwell’s equations. However, it is well known that the vacuum Einstein equations imply that the Kerr-Schild vector is geodesic and shear-free, and that the spacetime possesses a distinguished vector field that is simultaneously a Killing vector of the full spacetime and the flat background, but need not be timelike with respect to the background metric. We show that the gauge field obtained by contracting this distinguished Killing vector with the Kerr-Schild graviton solves the vacuum Maxwell equations, and that this definition of the Kerr-Schild double copy implies the Weyl double copy when the spacetime is Petrov type D. When the Killing vector is taken to be timelike with respect to the background metric, we recover the familiar Kerr-Schild double copy, but the prescription is well defined for any vacuum Kerr-Schild spacetime and we present new examples where the Killing vector is null or spacelike. While most examples of physical interest are type D, vacuum Kerr-Schild spacetimes are generically of Petrov type II. We present a straightforward example of such a spacetime and study its double copy structure. Our results apply to real Lorentzian spacetimes as well as complex spacetimes and real spacetimes with Kleinian signature, and provide a simple correspondence between real and self-dual vacuum Kerr-Schild spacetimes. This correspondence allows us to study the double copy structure of a self-dual analog of the Kerr spacetime. We provide evidence that this spacetime may be diffeomorphic to the self-dual Taub-NUT solution.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2024

Explicit entropic proofs of irreversibility theorems for holographic RG flows

We revisit the existence of monotonic quantities along renormalization group flows using only the Null Energy Condition and the Ryu-Takayanagi formula for the entanglement entropy of field theories with anti-de Sitter gravity duals. In particular, we consider flows within the same dimension and holographically reprove the c-, F -, and a-theorems in dimensions two, three, and four. We focus on the family of maximally spherical entangling surfaces, define a quasi-constant of motion corresponding to the breaking of conformal invariance, and use a properly defined distance between minimal surfaces to construct a holographic c-function that is monotonic along the flow. We then apply our method to the case of flows across dimensions: there, we reprove the monotonicity of flows from AdS D+1 to AdS 3 and prove the novel case of flows from AdS 5 to AdS 4 .

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2019

Celestial amplitudes: conformal partial waves and soft limits

Massless scattering amplitudes in four-dimensional Minkowski spacetime can be Mellin-transformed to correlation functions on the celestial sphere at null infinity called celestial amplitudes. We study various properties of massless four-point scalar and gluon celestial amplitudes such as conformal partial wave decomposition, crossing relations and optical theorem. As a byproduct, we derive the analog of the single and double soft limits for all gluon celestial amplitudes.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2019

Generalized asymptotics for gauge fields

An interesting question is to characterize the general class of allowed boundary conditions for gauge theories, including gravity, at spatial and null infinity. This has played a role in discussions of soft charges, where antipodal symmetry has typically been assumed. However, the existence of electric and gravitational line operators, arising from gauge-invariant dressed observables, for example associated to axial or Fefferman-Graham like gauges, indicates the existence of non-antipodally symmetric initial data. This note studies aspects of the solutions corresponding to such non-symmetric initial data. The explicit evolution can be found, via a Green function, and bounds can be given on the asymptotic behavior of such solutions, evading arguments for singular behavior. Likewise, objections to such solutions based on infinite symplectic form are also avoided, although these solutions may be superselected. Soft charge conservation laws, and their modification, are briefly examined for such solutions. This discussion strengthens (though is not necessary for) arguments that soft charges characterize gauge field degrees of freedom, but not necessarily the degrees of freedom associated to the matter sourcing the field.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2019

Asymptotic symmetries and Weinberg’s soft photon theorem in Mink d+2

We show that Weinberg's leading soft photon theorem in massless abelian gauge theories implies the existence of an infinite-dimensional large gauge symmetry which acts non-trivially on the null boundaries ${\mathscr I}^\pm$ of $(d+2)$-dimensional Minkowski spacetime. These symmetries are parameterized by an arbitrary function $\varepsilon(x)$ of the $d$-dimensional celestial sphere living at ${\mathscr I}^\pm$. This extends the previously established equivalence between Weinberg's leading soft theorem and asymptotic symmetries from four and higher even dimensions to all higher dimensions.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2019

Asymptotic symmetries in (d + 2)-dimensional gauge theories

We show that the subleading soft photon theorem in a $(d+2)$-dimensional massless abelian gauge theory gives rise to a Ward identity corresponding to divergent large gauge transformations acting on the celestial sphere at null infinity. We further generalize our analysis to $(d+2)$-dimensional non-abelian gauge theories and show that the leading and subleading soft gluon theorem give rise to Ward identities corresponding to asymptotic symmetries of the theory.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2022

$c$-functions in flows across dimensions

We explore the notion of c-functions in renormalization group flows between theories in different spacetime dimensions. We discuss functions connecting central charges of the UV and IR fixed point theories on the one hand, and functions which are monotonic along the flow on the other. First, using the geometric properties of the holographic dual RG flows across dimensions and the constraints from the null energy condition, we construct a monotonic holographic c-function and thereby establish a holographic c-theorem across dimensions. Second, we use entanglement entropies for two different types of entangling regions in a field theory along the RG flow across dimensions to construct candidate c-functions which satisfy one of the two criteria but not both. In due process we also discuss an interesting connection between corner contributions to the entanglement entropy and the topology of the compact internal space. As concrete examples for both approaches, we holographically study twisted compactifications of 4d N =4 SYM and compactifications of 6d N = (2, 0) theories.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2022

Perturbative unitarity and NEC violation in genesis cosmology

Explorations of the violation of null energy condition (NEC) in cosmology could enrich our understanding of the very early universe and the related gravity theories. Although a fully stable NEC violation can be realized in the “beyond Horndeski” theory, it remains an open question whether a violation of the NEC is allowed by some fundamental properties of UV-complete theories or the consistency requirements of effective field theory (EFT). We investigate the tree-level perturbative unitarity for stable NEC violations in the contexts of both Galileon and “beyond Horndeski” genesis cosmology, in which the universe is asymptotically Minkowskian in the past. We find that the constraints of perturbative unitarity imply that we may need some unknown new physics below the cut-off scale of the EFT other than that represented by the “beyond Horndeski” operators.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2025

An apologia for islands

Entanglement islands have played a key role in the recent derivation of the Page curve and other progress on the black hole information problem. Arising from the inclusion of connected wormhole saddles in a gravitational replica trick, islands signal that degrees of freedom in the black hole interior are not microscopically independent of the exterior Hawking radiation. Islands were originally discovered in the context of AdS/CFT coupled to an external, nongravitating reservoir, where the coupling gives graviton excitations an anomalous boundary scaling dimension (or “mass”). It has been claimed in the literature that this mass is crucial for the existence of islands and even the Page curve itself. In this paper, however, we explain how entanglement islands can also appear in setups with massless gravitons and no external reservoir, giving a number of examples including the entanglement wedges of boundary CFT regions, of radiation at null infinity in asymptotically flat spacetimes, and of radiation inside a semiclassical but gravitating spacetime. In each case, the Page curve is physically observable and can be determined with sufficiently careful experiments on many copies of the black hole. We give general arguments for the existence of gauge-invariant operators in gravity which are compactly supported to all orders in perturbation theory (whenever no isometries of the background spacetime exist) and refine a recently-proposed explicit construction of such operators. When applied to islands, these results — together with entanglement wedge reconstruction — guarantee that semiclassical operators in the island can be approximated by nonperturbative operators on the Hawking radiation.

AdS-CFT Correspondence↗
DOE OSTI2017

N =1 supergravitational heterotic galileons

Heterotic M -theory consists of a five-dimensional manifold of the form S 1 /Z 2 × M 4 . It has been shown that one of the two orbifold planes, the “observable” sector, can have a low energy particle spectrum which is precisely the N = 1 super-symmetric standard model with three right-handed neutrino chiral supermultiplets. The other orbifold plane constitutes a “hidden” sector which, since its communication with the observable sector is suppressed, will be ignored in this paper. However, the finite fifth-dimension allows for the existence of three-brane solitons which, in order to render the vacuum anomaly free, must appear. That is, heterotic M -theory provides a natural framework for brane-world cosmological scenarios coupled to realistic particle physics. The complete worldvolume action of such three-branes is unknown. Here, treating these solitons as probe branes, we construct their scalar worldvolume Lagrangian as a derivative expansion of the heterotic DBI action. In analogy with similar calculations in the M 5 and AdS 5 context, this leads to the construction of “heterotic Galileons”. However, realistic vacua of heterotic M -theory are necessarily N = 1 supersymmetric in four dimensions. Hence, we proceed to supersymmetrize the three-brane worldvolume action, first in flat superspace and then extend the results to N = 1 supergravity. Such a worldvolume action may lead to interesting cosmology, such as “bouncing” universe models, by allowing for the violation of the Null Energy Condition (NEC).

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2017

Bounds on OPE coefficients from interference effects in the conformal collider

We apply the average null energy condition to obtain upper bounds on the three-point function coefficients of stress tensors and a scalar operator, ⟨TTO⟩, in general CFTs. We also constrain the gravitational anomaly of U(1) currents in four-dimensional CFTs, which are encoded in three-point functions of the form ⟨TTJ⟩. In theories with a large N AdS dual we translate these bounds into constraints on the coefficient of a higher derivative bulk term of the form ∫Φ W 2 . We speculate that these bounds also apply in de-Sitter. In this case our results constrain inflationary observables, such as the amplitude for chiral gravity waves that originate from higher derivative terms in the Lagrangian of the form Φ W W*.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2020

Duality and supersymmetry constraints on the weak gravity conjecture

Positivity bounds coming from consistency of UV scattering amplitudes are not always sufficient to prove the weak gravity conjecture for theories beyond Einstein-Maxwell. Additional ingredients about the UV may be necessary to exclude those regions of parameter space which are naïvely in conflict with the predictions of the weak gravity conjecture. In this paper we explore the consequences of imposing additional symmetries inherited from the UV theory on higher-derivative operators for Einstein-Maxwell-dilaton-axion theory. Using black hole thermodynamics, for a preserved SL(2, $\mathbb{R}$) symmetry we find that the weak gravity conjecture then does follow from positivity bounds. For a preserved O(d, d; $\mathbb{R}$) symmetry we find a simple condition on the two Wilson coefficients which ensures the positivity of corrections to the charge-to-mass ratio and that follows from the null energy condition alone. We find that imposing supersymmetry on top of either of these symmetries gives corrections which vanish identically, as expected for BPS states.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2020

Shocks, superconvergence, and a stringy equivalence principle

We study propagation of a probe particle through a series of closely situated gravitational shocks. We argue that in any UV-complete theory of gravity the result does not depend on the shock ordering — in other words, coincident gravitational shocks commute. Shock commutativity leads to nontrivial constraints on low-energy effective theories. In particular, it excludes non-minimal gravitational couplings unless extra degrees of freedom are judiciously added. In flat space, these constraints are encoded in the vanishing of a certain “superconvergence sum rule.” In AdS, shock commutativity becomes the statement that average null energy (ANEC) operators commute in the dual CFT. We prove commutativity of ANEC operators in any unitary CFT and establish sufficient conditions for commutativity of more general light-ray operators. Superconvergence sum rules on CFT data can be obtained by inserting complete sets of states between light-ray operators.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2022

The connected wedge theorem and its consequences

In the AdS/CFT correspondence, bulk causal structure has consequences for boundary entanglement. In quantum information science, causal structures can be replaced by distributed entanglement for the purposes of information processing. In this work, we deepen the understanding of both of these statements, and their relationship, with a number of new results. Centrally, we present and prove a new theorem, the n-to-n connected wedge theorem, which considers n input and n output locations at the boundary of an asymptotically AdS 2+1 spacetime described by AdS/CFT. When a sufficiently strong set of causal connections exists among these points in the bulk, a set of n associated regions in the boundary will have extensive-in-N mutual information across any bipartition of the regions. The proof holds in three bulk dimensions for classical spacetimes satisfying the null curvature condition and for semiclassical spacetimes satisfying standard conjectures. The n-to-n connected wedge theorem gives a precise example of how causal connections in a bulk state can emerge from large-N entanglement features of its boundary dual. It also has consequences for quantum information theory: it reveals one pattern of entanglement which is sufficient for information processing in a particular class of causal networks. We argue this pattern is also necessary, and give an AdS/CFT inspired protocol for information processing in this setting. Our theorem generalizes the 2-to-2 connected wedge theorem proven in [3]. We also correct some errors in the proof presented there, in particular a false claim that existing proof techniques work above three bulk dimensions.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗