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At least 1,549 records · Page 86
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DOE OSTI2022

Microstructure in matrix elements

We investigate the simple model of Pennington, Shenker, Stanford and Yang for modeling the density matrix of Hawking radiation, but further include dynamics for EOW branes behind the horizon. This allows interactions that scatter one interior state to another, and also allows EOW loops. At strong coupling, we find that EOW states are no longer random; the ensemble has collapsed, and coupling constants encode the microscopic matrix elements of Hawking radiation. This suggests strong interior dynamics are important for understanding evaporating black holes, without any ensemble average. In this concrete model the density matrix of the radiation deviates from the thermal state, small off-diagonal fluctuations encode equivalences between naively orthogonal states, and bound the entropy from above. For almost evaporated black holes the off-diagonal terms become as large as the diagonal ones, eventually giving a pure state. We also find the unique analytic formula for all Renyi entropies.

2D gravity↗
DOE OSTI2024

Approximate CFTs and random tensor models

Abstract A key issue in both the field of quantum chaos and quantum gravity is an effective description of chaotic conformal field theories (CFTs), that is CFTs that have a quantum ergodic limit. We develop a framework incorporating the constraints of conformal symmetry and locality, allowing the definition of ensembles of ‘CFT data’. These ensembles take on the same role as the ensembles of random Hamiltonians in more conventional quantum ergodic phases of many-body quantum systems. To describe individual members of the ensembles, we introduce the notion of approximate CFT, defined as a collection of ‘CFT data’ satisfying the usual CFT constraints approximately, i.e. up to small deviations. We show that they generically exist by providing concrete examples. Ensembles of approximate CFTs are very natural in holography, as every member of the ensemble is indistinguishable from a true CFT for low-energy probes that only have access to information from semi-classical gravity. To specify these ensembles, we impose successively higher moments of the CFT constraints. Lastly, we propose a theory of pure gravity in AdS 3 as a random matrix/tensor model implementing approximate CFT constraints. This tensor model is the maximum ignorance ensemble compatible with conformal symmetry, crossing invariance, and a primary gap to the black-hole threshold. The resulting theory is a random matrix/tensor model governed by the Virasoro 6j-symbol.

Physics↗
DOE OSTI2025

Differential equations for cosmological correlators

Cosmological fluctuations retain a memory of the physics that generated them in their spatial correlations. The strength of correlations varies smoothly as a function of external kinematics, which is encoded in differential equations satisfied by cosmological correlation functions. In this work, we provide a broader perspective on the origin and structure of these differential equations. As a concrete example, we study conformally coupled scalar fields in a power-law cosmology. The wavefunction coefficients in this model have integral representations, with the integrands being the product of the corresponding flat-space results and “twist factors” that depend on the cosmological evolution. Similar twisted integrals arise for loop amplitudes in dimensional regularization, and their recent study has led to the discovery of rich mathematical structures and powerful new tools for computing multi-loop Feynman integrals in quantum field theory. The integrals of interest in cosmology are also part of a finite-dimensional basis of master integrals, which satisfy a system of first-order differential equations. We develop a formalism to derive these differential equations for arbitrary tree graphs. The results can be represented in graphical form by associating the singularities of the differential equations with a set of graph tubings. Upon differentiation, these tubings grow in a local and predictive fashion. In fact, a few remarkably simple rules allow us to predict — by hand — the equations for all tree graphs. While the rules of this “kinematic flow” are defined purely in terms of data on the boundary of the spacetime, they reflect the physics of bulk time evolution. We also study the analogous structures in tr ϕ 3 theory, and see some glimpses of hidden structure in the sum over planar graphs. This suggests that there is an autonomous combinatorial or geometric construction from which cosmological correlations, and the associated spacetime, emerge.

Cosmological models↗
DOE OSTI2015

Chiral drag force

Here, we provide a holographic evaluation of novel contributions to the drag force acting on a heavy quark moving through strongly interacting plasma. The new contributions are chiral in the sense that they act in opposite directions in plasmas containing an excess of left- or right-handed quarks. The new contributions are proportional to the coefficient of the axial anomaly, and in this sense also are chiral. These new contributions to the drag force act either parallel to or antiparallel to an external magnetic field or to the vorticity of the fluid plasma. In all these respects, these contributions to the drag force felt by a heavy quark are analogous to the chiral magnetic effect (CME) on light quarks. However, the new contribution to the drag force is independent of the electric charge of the heavy quark and is the same for heavy quarks and antiquarks, meaning that these novel effects do not in fact contribute to the CME current. We show that although the chiral drag force can be non-vanishing for heavy quarks that are at rest in the local fluid rest frame, it does vanish for heavy quarks that are at rest in a suitably chosen frame. In this frame, the heavy quark at rest sees counterpropagating momentum and charge currents, both proportional to the axial anomaly coefficient, but feels no drag force. This provides strong concrete evidence for the absence of dissipation in chiral transport, something that has been predicted previously via consideration of symmetries. Along the way to our principal results, we provide a general calculation of the corrections to the drag force due to the presence of gradients in the flowing fluid in the presence of a nonzero chemical potential. We close with a consequence of our result that is at least in principle observable in heavy ion collisions, namely an anticorrelation between the direction of the CME current for light quarks in a given event and the direction of the kick given to the momentum of all the heavy quarks and antiquarks in that event.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2015

New chiral fermions, a new gauge interaction, Dirac neutrinos, and dark matter

Here, we propose that all light fermionic degrees of freedom, including the Standard Model (SM) fermions and all possible light beyond-the-standard-model fields, are chiral with respect to some spontaneously broken abelian gauge symmetry. Hypercharge, for example, plays this role for the SM fermions. We introduce a new symmetry, U(1) ν , for all new light fermionic states. Anomaly cancellations mandate the existence of several new fermion fields with nontrivial U(1) ν charges. We develop a concrete model of this type, for which we show that (i) some fermions remain massless after U(1) ν breaking — similar to SM neutrinos — and (ii) accidental global symmetries translate into stable massive particles — similar to SM protons. These ingredients provide a solution to the dark matter and neutrino mass puzzles assuming one also postulates the existence of heavy degrees of freedom that act as “mediators” between the two sectors. The neutrino mass mechanism described here leads to parametrically small Dirac neutrino masses, and the model also requires the existence of at least four Dirac sterile neutrinos. Finally, we describe a general technique to write down chiral-fermions-only models that are at least anomaly-free under a U(1) gauge symmetry.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2018

Freezing in, heating up, and freezing out: predictive nonthermal dark matter and low-mass direct detection

Freeze-in dark matter (DM) mediated by a light ($\ll$ keV) weakly-coupled dark-photon is an important benchmark for the emerging low-mass direct detection program. Since this is one of the only predictive, detectable freeze-in models, we investigate how robustly such testability extends to other scenarios. For concreteness, we perform a detailed study of models in which DM couples to a light scalar mediator and acquires a freeze-in abundance through Higgs-mediator mixing. Unlike dark-photons, whose thermal properties weaken stellar cooling bounds, the scalar coupling to Standard Model (SM) particles is subject to strong astrophysical constraints, which severely limit the fraction of DM that can be produced via freeze-in. While it seems naively possible to compensate for this reduction by increasing the mediator-DM coupling, sufficiently large values eventually thermalize the dark sector with itself and yield efficient DM annihilation to mediators, which depletes the freeze-in population; only a small window of DM candidate masses near the $\sim$ GeV scale can accommodate the total observed abundance. Since many qualitatively similar issues arise for other light mediators, we find it generically difficult to realize a viable freeze-in scenario in which production arises only from renormalizable interactions with SM particles. Furthermore, we also comment on several model variations that may evade these conclusions.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2019

Higher spin de Sitter Hilbert space

We propose a complete microscopic definition of the Hilbert space of minimal higher spin de Sitter quantum gravity and its Hartle-Hawking vacuum state. The fundamental degrees of freedom are 2N bosonic fields living on the future conformal boundary, where N is proportional to the de Sitter horizon entropy. The vacuum state is normalizable. The model agrees in perturbation theory with expectations from a previously proposed dS-CFT description in terms of a fermionic Sp(N) model, but it goes beyond this, both in its conceptual scope and in its computational power. In particular it resolves the apparent pathologies affecting the Sp(N) model, and it provides an exact formula for late time vacuum correlation functions. We illustrate this by computing probabilities for arbitrarily large field excursions, and by giving fully explicit examples of vacuum 3- and 4-point functions. We discuss bulk reconstruction and show the perturbative bulk QFT canonical commutations relations can be reproduced from the fundamental operator algebra, but only up to a minimal error term ~e -O(N) , and only if the operators are coarse grained in such a way that the number of accessible “pixels” is less than O(N). Independent of this, we show that upon gauging the higher spin symmetry group, one is left with 2N physical degrees of freedom, and that all gauge invariant quantities can be computed by a 2N × 2N matrix model. This suggests a concrete realization of the idea of cosmological complementarity.

1/N expansion↗
DOE OSTI2019

Topological string entanglement

We investigate how topological entanglement of Chern-Simons theory is captured in a string theoretic realization. Our explorations are motivated by a desire to understand how quantum entanglement of low energy open string degrees of freedom is encoded in string theory (beyond the oft discussed classical gravity limit). Concretely, we realize the Chern-Simons theory as the worldvolume dynamics of topological D-branes in the topological A-model string theory on a Calabi-Yau target. Via the open/closed topological string duality one can map this theory onto a pure closed topological A-model string on a different target space, one which is related to the original Calabi-Yau geometry by a geometric/conifold transition. We demonstrate how to uplift the replica construction of Chern-Simons theory directly onto the closed string and show that it provides a meaningful definition of reduced density matrices in topological string theory. Furthermore, we argue that the replica construction commutes with the geometric transition, thereby providing an explicit closed string dual for computing reduced states, and Rényi and von Neumann entropies thereof. While most of our analysis is carried out for Chern-Simons on $\hbox{S}^3$, the emergent picture is rather general. Specifically, we argue that quantum entanglement on the open string side is mapped onto quantum entanglement on the closed string side and briefly comment on the implications of our result for physical holographic theories where entanglement has been argued to be crucial ingredient for the emergence of classical geometry.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2020

Effective entropy of quantum fields coupled with gravity

Entanglement entropy, or von Neumann entropy, quantifies the amount of uncertainty of a quantum state. For quantum fields in curved space, entanglement entropy of the quantum field theory degrees of freedom is well-defined for a fixed background geometry. In this paper, we propose a generalization of the quantum field theory entanglement entropy by including dynamical gravity. The generalized quantity named effective entropy, and its Renyi entropy generalizations, are defined by analytic continuation of a replica calculation. The replicated theory is defined as a gravitational path integral with multiple copies of the original boundary conditions, with a co-dimension-2 brane at the boundary of region we are studying. We discuss different approaches to define the region in a gauge invariant way, and show that the effective entropy satisfies the quantum extremal surface formula. When the quantum fields carry a significant amount of entanglement, the quantum extremal surface can have a topology transition, after which an entanglement island region appears. Our result generalizes the Hubeny-Rangamani-Takayanagi formula of holographic entropy (with quantum corrections) to general geometries without asymptotic AdS boundary, and provides a more solid framework for addressing problems such as the Page curve of evaporating black holes in asymptotic flat spacetime. We apply the formula to two example systems, a closed two-dimensional universe and a four-dimensional maximally extended Schwarzchild black hole. We discuss the analog of the effective entropy in random tensor network models, which provides more concrete understanding of quantum information properties in general dynamical geometries. We show that, in absence of a large boundary like in AdS space case, it is essential to introduce ancilla that couples to the original system, in order for correctly characterizing quantum states and correlation functions in the random tensor network. Using the superdensity operator formalism, we study the system with ancilla and show how quantum information in the entanglement island can be reconstructed in a state-dependent and observer-dependent map. We study the closed universe (without spatial boundary) case and discuss how it is related to open universe.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2022

Double holography in string theory

We develop the notion of double holography in Type IIB string theory realizations of braneworld models. The Type IIB setups are based on the holographic duals of 4d BCFTs comprising 4d N = 4 SYM on a half space coupled to 3d N = 4 SCFTs on the boundary. Based on the concrete BCFTs and their brane construction, we provide microscopic realizations of the intermediate holographic description, obtained by dualizing only the 3d degrees of freedom. Triggered by recent observations in bottom-up models, we discuss the causal structures in the full BCFT duals and intermediate descriptions. This confirms qualitative features found in the bottom-up models but suggests a refinement of their interpretation.

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

Leptonic cascade decays of a heavy Higgs boson through vectorlike leptons at the LHC

We demonstrate the potential of fully leptonic cascade decays of a heavy neutral Higgs boson through vectorlike leptons as a simultaneous probe for extended Higgs sectors and extra matter particles at the LHC. The processes we explore are unique in that their event topologies lead to di-boson-like leptonic final states with a lepton pair which does not reconstruct the mass of a gauge boson. By recasting existing $2\ell$ + $E^{\text{miss}}_{R}$ and $3/4\ell$ searches channels using run2 data from the LHC we obtain model independent bounds on the masses of heavy scalars and vectorlike leptons and use these results to explore future prospects at the HL-LHC. Our results can be directly applied to any kind of new physics scenarios sharing the final states and the event topology. For concreteness, we apply our results to a benchmark scenario: a two Higgs doublet model type-II augmented with vectorlike leptons. Remarkably, even with current data the sensitivity of our analysis shows a reach for masses of a heavy neutral Higgs and vectorlike leptons up to 2 TeV and 1.5 TeV, respectively. Even for low tan β ≳ 1, the analysis retains sensitivity to heavy Higgs masses slightly above 1 TeV. The future sensitivities at the HL-LHC extend the reach for heavy Higgses and new leptons to 2.7 TeV and 2 TeV, respectively.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2023

Wrinkles in the Froggatt-Nielsen mechanism and flavorful new physics

Abstract When the Froggatt-Nielsen mechanism is used to explain the Standard Model flavor hierarchy, new physics couplings are also determined by the horizontal symmetry. However, additional symmetries or dynamics in the UV can sometimes lead to a departure from this naïve scaling for the new physics couplings. We show that an effective way to keep track of these changes is by using the new spurions of the U(3) 5 global flavor symmetry, where we parameterize extra suppression or enhancement factors, referred to aswrinkles, using the same power counting parameter as in the original Froggatt-Nielsen model. As a concrete realization, we consider two flavor spurions of theS 1 leptoquark, and demonstrate that wrinkles can be used to make an enhanced value of$$ \textrm{BR}\left({B}^{+}\to {K}^{+}\nu \overline{\nu}\right) $$ BR B + → K + ν ν ¯ consistent with other flavor observables. We also present example UV models that realize wrinkles, and comment on choosing consistent charges in ordinary Froggatt-Nielsen models without the typical monotonicity condition.

Physics↗
DOE OSTI2018

Detecting a boosted diboson resonance

New light scalar particles in the mass range of hundreds of GeV, decaying into a pair of W/Z bosons can appear in several extensions of the SM. The focus of collider studies for such a scalar is often on its direct production, where the scalar is typically only mildly boosted. The observed W/Z are therefore well-separated, allowing analyses for the scalar resonance in a standard fashion as a low-mass diboson resonance. In this work we instead focus on the scenario where the direct production of the scalar is suppressed, and it is rather produced via the decay of a significantly heavier (a few TeV mass) new particle, in conjunction with SM particles. Such a process results in the scalar being highly boosted, rendering the W/Z’s from its decay merged. The final state in such a decay is a “fat” jet, which can be either four pronged (for fully hadronic W/Z decays), or may be like a W/Z jet, but with leptons buried inside (if one of the W/Z decays leptonically). In addition, this fat jet has a jet mass that can be quite different from that of the W/Z/Higgs/top quark-induced jet, and may be missed by existing searches. In this work, we develop dedicated algorithms for tagging such multi-layered “boosted dibosons” at the LHC. As a concrete application, we discuss an extension of the standard warped extra dimensional framework where such a light scalar can arise. We demonstrate that the use of these algorithms gives sensitivity in mass ranges that are otherwise poorly constrained.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2020

Building bases of loop integrands

We describe a systematic approach to the construction of loop-integrand bases at arbitrary loop-order, sufficient for the representation of general quantum field theories. We provide a graph-theoretic definition of ‘power-counting’ for multi-loop integrands beyond the planar limit, and show how this can be used to organize bases according to ultraviolet behavior. This allows amplitude integrands to be constructed iteratively. We illustrate these ideas with concrete applications. In particular, we describe complete integrand bases at two loops sufficient to represent arbitrary-multiplicity amplitudes in four (or fewer) dimensions in any massless quantum field theory with the ultraviolet behavior of the Standard Model or better. We also comment on possible extensions of our framework to arbitrary (including regulated) numbers of dimensions, and to theories with arbitrary mass spectra and charges. At three loops, we describe a basis sufficient to capture all ‘leading-(transcendental-)weight’ contributions of any four-dimensional quantum theory; for maximally supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory, this basis should be sufficient to represent all scattering amplitude integrands in the theory — for generic helicities and arbitrary multiplicity.

1/NExpansion↗
DOE OSTI2022

BRST symmetry and the convolutional double copy

Motivated by the results of Anastasiou et al., we consider the convolutional double copy for BRST and anti-BRST covariant formulations of gravitational and gauge theories in more detail. We give a general BRST and anti-BRST invariant formulation of linearised $\mathcal{N}$ = 0 supergravity using superspace methods and show how this may be obtained from the square of linearised Yang-Mills theories. We demonstrate this relation for the Schwarzschild black hole and the ten-dimensional black string solution as two concrete examples.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2014

New solutions with accelerated expansion in string theory

We present concrete solutions with accelerated expansion in string theory, requiring a small, tractable list of stress energy sources. We explain how this construction (and others in progress) evades previous no go theorems for simple accelerating solutions. Our solutions respect an approximate scaling symmetry and realize discrete sequences of values for the equation of state, including one with an accumulation point at w = –1 and another accumulating near w = –1/3 from below. In another class of models, a density of defects generates scaling solutions with accelerated expansion. Here, we briefly discuss potential applications to dark energy phenomenology, and to holography for cosmology.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2021

Gravitational waves and dark photon dark matter from axion rotations

An axion rotating in field space can produce dark photons in the early universe via tachyonic instability. This explosive particle production creates a background of stochastic gravitational waves that may be visible at pulsar timing arrays or other gravitational wave detectors. This scenario provides a novel history for dark photon dark matter. The dark photons may be warm at a level detectable in future 21-cm line surveys. For a consistent cosmology, the radial direction of the complex field containing the axion must be thermalized. We explore a concrete thermalization mechanism in detail and also demonstrate how this setup can be responsible for the generation of the observed baryon asymmetry.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗