Daily Papers

Realizations of gauge theories in setups of quantum synthetic matter open up the possibility of probing salient exotic phenomena in condensed matter and high-energy physics, along with potential applications in quantum information and science technologies. In light of the impressive ongoing efforts to achieve such realizations, a fundamental question regarding quantum link model regularizations of lattice gauge theories is how faithfully they capture the quantum field theory limit of gauge theories. Recent work [Zache, Van Damme, Halimeh, Hauke, and Banerjee, at https://journals.aps.org/prd/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevD.106.L091502 has shown through analytic derivations, exact diagonalization, and infinite matrix product state calculations that the low-energy physics of 1+1D U(1) quantum link models approaches the quantum field theory limit already at small link spin length S. Here, we show that the approach to this limit also lends itself to the far-from-equilibrium quench dynamics of lattice gauge theories, as demonstrated by our numerical simulations of the Loschmidt return rate and the chiral condensate in infinite matrix product states, which work directly in the thermodynamic limit. Similar to our findings in equilibrium that show a distinct behavior between half-integer and integer link spin lengths, we find that criticality emerging in the Loschmidt return rate is fundamentally different between half-integer and integer spin quantum link models in the regime of strong electric-field coupling. Our results further affirm that state-of-the-art finite-size ultracold-atom and NISQ-device implementations of quantum link lattice gauge theories have the real potential to simulate their quantum field theory limit even in the far-from-equilibrium regime.

Initial states of dense matter with nonzero electron chiral imbalance could potentially give rise to strong magnetic fields through chiral plasma instability. Previous work indicated that unless chiral chemical potential is as large as the electron vector chemical potential, the growth of magnetic fields due to the instability is washed out by chirality flipping rate enabled by electron mass. We re-examine this claim in a broader range of parameters and find that at higher temperatures the hierarchy is reversed supporting a growing magnetic field for an initial electron chiral chemical potential much smaller than the electron vector chemical potential. Further, we identify a qualitatively new effect relevant for magnetized hot and dense medium where chiral magnetic effect (CME) sourced by density fluctuation acts as a powerful source of Joule heating. Remarkably, even modest chiral chemical potentials (keV) in such environment can deposit energy densities set by the QCD scale in a relatively short time of the order of a few milliseconds or seconds. We speculate how this mechanism makes CME-driven Joule heating a potentially critical ingredient in the dynamics of turbulent density fluctuation of supernovae and neutron star mergers.

We study primordial gravitational waves produced during inflation in quantum gravity at a Lifshitz point proposed by Ho{rmr}ava. Assuming power-counting renormalizability, foliation preserving diffeomorphism invariance, and the condition of detailed balance, we show that primordial gravitational waves are circularly polarized due to parity violation. The chirality of primordial gravitational waves is a quite robust prediction of quantum gravity at a Lifshitz point which can be tested through observations of cosmic microwave background radiation and stochastic gravitational waves.

We show that a simple gravitational theory can provide a holographically dual description of a superconductor. There is a critical temperature, below which a charged condensate forms via a second order phase transition and the (DC) conductivity becomes infinite. The frequency dependent conductivity develops a gap determined by the condensate. We find evidence that the condensate consists of pairs of quasiparticles.

We consider the D4-D8-D8 brane system which serves as ultraviolet completion of the Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model, where the only degrees of freedom carrying baryon charge are fermions. By turning on chemical potential for this charge one may expect the formation of the Fermi liquid ground state. At strong coupling we use the dual holographic description to investigate the responses of the system to small perturbations. In the chirally symmetric phase we find that the density dependent part of the heat capacity vanishes linearly with temperature. We also observe a zero sound excitation in the collisionless regime, whose speed is equal to that of normal sound in the hydrodynamic regime. Both the linear dependence of the heat capacity and the existence of zero sound are properties of the Fermi liquid ground state. We also compute the two-point function of the currents at vanishing frequency but do not find any singularities at finite values of the momentum.

We study the effects of a superconducting condensate on holographic Fermi surfaces. With a suitable coupling between the fermion and the condensate, there are stable quasiparticles with a gap. We find some similarities with the phenomenology of the cuprates: in systems whose normal state is a non-Fermi liquid with no stable quasiparticles, a stable quasiparticle peak appears in the condensed phase.

We investigate detailed properties of imaginary rotating matter with gluons and quarks at high temperature. Previously, we showed that imaginary rotation induces perturbative confinement of gluons at the rotation center. We perturbatively calculate the Polyakov loop potential and find inhomogeneous confinement above a certain threshold of imaginary angular velocity. We also evaluate the quark contribution to the Polyakov loop potential and confirm that spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking occurs in the perturbatively confined phase.

We demonstrate a universal mechanism of a class of instabilities in infrared regions for massless Abelian p-form gauge theories with topological interactions, which we call generalized chiral instabilities. Such instabilities occur in the presence of initial electric fields for the p-form gauge fields. We show that the dynamically generated magnetic fields tend to decrease the initial electric fields and result in configurations with linking numbers, which can be characterized by non-invertible global symmetries. The so-called chiral plasma instability and instabilities of the axion electrodynamics and (4+1)-dimensional Maxwell-Chern-Simons theory in electric fields can be described by the generalized chiral instabilities in a unified manner. We also illustrate this mechanism in the (2+1)-dimensional Goldstone-Maxwell model in electric field.

Quantum liquids are characterized by the distinctive properties such as the low temperature behavior of heat capacity and the spectrum of low-energy quasiparticle excitations. In particular, at low temperature, Fermi liquids exhibit the zero sound, predicted by L. D. Landau in 1957 and subsequently observed in liquid He-3. In this paper, we ask a question whether such a characteristic behavior is present in theories with holographically dual description. We consider a class of gauge theories with fundamental matter fields whose holographic dual in the appropriate limit is given in terms of the Dirac-Born-Infeld action in AdS_{p+1} space. An example of such a system is the N=4 SU(N_c) supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory with N_f massless N=2 hypermultiplets at strong coupling, finite baryon number density, and low temperature. We find that these systems exhibit a zero sound mode despite having a non-Fermi liquid type behavior of the specific heat. These properties suggest that holography identifies a new type of quantum liquids.

The superfluid phase transition dynamics and associated spontaneous vortex formation with the crossing of the critical temperature in a disk geometry is studied in the framework of the AdS/CFT correspondence by solving the Einstein-Abelian-Higgs model in an AdS_4 black hole. For a slow quench, the vortex density admits a universal scaling law with the cooling rate as predicted by the Kibble-Zurek mechanism (KZM), while for fast quenches, the density shows a universal scaling behavior as a function of the final temperature, that lies beyond the KZM prediction. The vortex number distribution in both the power-law and saturation regimes can be approximated by a normal distribution. However, the study of the universal scaling of the cumulants reveals non-normal features and indicates that vortex statistics in the newborn superfluid is best described by the Poisson binomial distribution, previously predicted in the KZM regime [Phys. Rev. Lett. 124, 240602 (2020)]. This is confirmed by studying the cumulant scalings as a function of the quench time and the quench depth. Our work supports the existence of a universal defect number distribution that accommodates the KZM scaling, its breakdown at fast quenches, and the additional universal scaling laws as a function of the final value of the control parameter.

We address effects of spin-orbit coupling (SOC), phenomenologically added to a two-component Bose-Einstein condensate composed of particles moving by Levy flights, in one- and two-dimensional (1D and 2D) settings. The corresponding system of coupled Gross-Pitaevskii equations includes fractional kinetic-energy operators, characterized by the Levy index, \alpha < 2 (the normal kinetic energy corresponds to \alpha = 2). The SOC terms, with strength \lambda, produce strong effects in the 2D case: they create families of stable solitons of the semi-vortex (SV) and mixed-mode (MM) types in the interval of 1 < \alpha < 2, where the supercritical collapse does not admit the existence of stable solitons in the absence of the SOC. At \lambda --> 0, amplitudes of these solitons vanish as (\lambda)^{1/(\alpha - 1)}.

Quantum materials hosting Weyl fermions have opened a new era of research in condensed matter physics. First proposed in 1929 in particle physics, Weyl fermions have yet to be observed as elementary particles. In 2015, Weyl fermions were detected as collective electronic excitations in the strong spin-orbit coupled material tantalum arsenide, TaAs. This discovery was followed by a flurry of experimental and theoretical explorations of Weyl phenomena in materials. Weyl materials naturally lend themselves to the exploration of the topological index associated with Weyl fermions and their divergent Berry curvature field, as well as the topological bulk-boundary correspondence giving rise to protected conducting surface states. Here, we review the broader class of Weyl topological phenomena in materials, starting with the observation of emergent Weyl fermions in the bulk and of Fermi arc states on the surface of the TaAs family of crystals by photoemission spectroscopy. We then discuss some of the exotic optical and magnetic responses observed in these materials, as well as the progress in developing some of the related chiral materials. We discuss the conceptual development of high-fold chiral fermions, which generalize Weyl fermions, and we review the observation of high-fold chiral fermion phases by taking the rhodium silicide, RhSi, family of crystals as a prime example. Lastly, we discuss recent advances in Weyl-line phases in magnetic topological materials. With this Review, we aim to provide an introduction to the basic concepts underlying Weyl physics in condensed matter, and to representative materials and their electronic structures and topology as revealed by spectroscopic studies. We hope this work serves as a guide for future theoretical and experimental explorations of chiral fermions and related topological quantum systems with potentially enhanced functionalities.

We set up precision holography for the non-conformal branes preserving 16 supersymmetries. The near-horizon limit of all such p-brane solutions with p \leq 4, including the case of fundamental string solutions, is conformal to AdS_{p+2} x S^{8-p} with a linear dilaton. We develop holographic renormalization for all these cases. In particular, we obtain the most general asymptotic solutions with appropriate Dirichlet boundary conditions, find the corresponding counterterms and compute the holographic 1-point functions, all in complete generality and at the full non-linear level. The result for the stress energy tensor properly defines the notion of mass for backgrounds with such asymptotics. The analysis is done both in the original formulation of the method and also using a radial Hamiltonian analysis. The latter formulation exhibits most clearly the existence of an underlying generalized conformal structure. In the cases of Dp-branes, the corresponding dual boundary theory, the maximally supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory SYM_{p+1}, indeed exhibits the generalized conformal structure found at strong coupling. We compute the holographic 2-point functions of the stress energy tensor and gluon operator and show they satisfy the expected Ward identities and the constraints of generalized conformal structure. The holographic results are also manifestly compatible with the M-theory uplift, with the asymptotic solutions, counterterms, one and two point functions etc of the IIA F1 and D4 appropriately descending from those of M2 and M5 branes, respectively. We present a few applications including the computation of condensates in Witten's model of holographic YM_4 theory.

Topological aspects of the geometry of DNA and similar chiral molecules have received a lot of attention, while the topology of their electronic structure is less explored. Previous experiments have revealed that DNA can efficiently filter spin-polarized electrons between metal contacts, a process called chiral-induced spin-selectivity (CISS). However, the underlying correlation between chiral structure and electronic spin remains elusive. In this work, we reveal an orbital texture in the band structure, a topological characteristic induced by the chirality. We find that this orbital texture enables the chiral molecule to polarize the quantum orbital. This orbital polarization effect (OPE) induces spin polarization assisted by the spin-orbit interaction from a metal contact and leads to magnetorestistance and chiral separation. The orbital angular momentum of photoelectrons also plays an essential role in related photoemission experiments. Beyond CISS, we predict that OPE can induce spin-selective phenomena even in achiral but inversion-breaking materials.

Precise determination of thermodynamic parameters in ultracold Bose gases remains challenging due to the destructive nature of conventional measurement techniques and inherent experimental uncertainties. We demonstrate an artificial intelligence approach for rapid, non-destructive estimation of the chemical potential and temperature from single-shot, in situ imaged density profiles of finite-temperature Bose gases. Our convolutional neural network is trained exclusively on quasi-2D `pancake' condensates in harmonic trap configurations. It achieves parameter extraction within fractions of a second. The model also demonstrates zero-shot generalisation across both trap geometry and thermalisation dynamics, successfully estimating thermodynamic parameters for toroidally trapped condensates with errors of only a few nanokelvin despite no prior exposure to such geometries during training, and maintaining predictive accuracy during dynamic thermalisation processes after a relatively brief evolution without explicit training on non-equilibrium states. These results suggest that supervised learning can overcome traditional limitations in ultracold atom thermometry, with extension to broader geometric configurations, temperature ranges, and additional parameters potentially enabling comprehensive real-time analysis of quantum gas experiments. Such capabilities could significantly streamline experimental workflows whilst improving measurement precision across a range of quantum fluid systems.

A general approach is formulated to describe spontaneous surface current distribution in a chiral p-wave superconductor. We use the quasiclassical Eilenberger formalism in the Ricatti parametrization to describe various types of the superconductor surface, including arbitrary roughness and metallic behaviour of the surface layer. We calculate angle resolved distributions of the spontaneous surface currents and formulate the conditions of their observability. We argue that local measurements of these currents by muSR technique may provide an information on the underlying pairing symmetry in the bulk superconductor.

We consider holographic superconductors whose bulk description consists of gravity minimally coupled to a Maxwell field and charged scalar field with general potential. We give an analytic argument that there is no "hard gap": the real part of the conductivity at low frequency remains nonzero (although typically exponentially small) even at zero temperature. We also numerically construct the gravitational dual of the ground state of some holographic superconductors. Depending on the charge and dimension of the condensate, the infrared theory can have emergent conformal or just Poincare symmetry. In all cases studied, the area of the horizon of the dual black hole goes to zero in the extremal limit, consistent with a nondegenerate ground state.

Obtaining the desired effect of drugs is highly dependent on their molecular geometries. Thus, the current prevailing paradigm focuses on 3D point-cloud atom representations, utilizing graph neural network (GNN) parametrizations, with rotational symmetries baked in via E(3) invariant layers. We prove that such models must necessarily disregard chirality, a geometric property of the molecules that cannot be superimposed on their mirror image by rotation and translation. Chirality plays a key role in determining drug safety and potency. To address this glaring issue, we introduce a novel field-based representation, proposing reference rotations that replace rotational symmetry constraints. The proposed model captures all molecular geometries including chirality, while still achieving highly competitive performance with E(3)-based methods across standard benchmarking metrics.

We study a system of a self-gravitating condensate, a boson star, formed from scalar ultra-light dark matter (ULDM), with a black hole hosted at its center. We numerically solve the equations of hydrostatic equilibrium in the non-relativistic limit, consistently incorporating the gravitational potential of the black hole, to obtain all possible configurations of this BS-BH system for different boson star masses, interaction types, and black hole masses. We also propose an analytic expression for the density profile and compare it with the numerical results, finding good agreement for attractive interactions and for a finite range of mass ratios between the black hole and boson star. Finally, considering the inspiral of this BS-BH system with a second, smaller black hole, we study the dephasing of gravitational waves due to the presence of the ULDM environment. A Fisher matrix analysis reveals the regions of parameter space of the ULDM mass and self-coupling that future gravitational-wave observatories such as LISA can probe.

In this work, we compute multi-field core and halo properties in wave Dark Matter models. We focus on the case where Dark Matter consists of two light (real) scalars, interacting gravitationally. As in the single-field Ultra Light Dark Matter (ULDM) case, the scalar field behaves as a coherent BEC with a definite ground state (at fixed total mass), often referred to in the literature as a gravitational soliton. We establish an efficient algorithm to find the ground and excited states of such two-field systems. We then use simulations to investigate the gravitational collapse and virialization, starting from different initial conditions, into solitons and surrounding halo. As in the single-field case, a virialized halo forms with a gravitational soliton (ground state) at the center. We find some evidence for an empirical relation between the soliton mass and energy and those of the host halo. We use this to then find a numerical relation between the properties of the two. Finally, we use this to address the issue of alleviating some of the tensions that single-field ULDM has with observational data, in particular, the issue of how a galaxy's core and radius are related. We find that if galaxies of different masses have similar percentages of the two species, then the core-radius scaling tension is not addressed. However, more general possibilities occur if the relative abundance of species in each halo correlates with the total mass of the galaxy. If this is the case, the model predicts several other phenomenological signatures.

We numerically investigate some properties of unbalanced St\"{u}ckelberg holographic superconductors, by considering backreaction effects of fields on the background geometry. More precisely, we study the impacts of the chemical potential mismatch and St\"{u}ckelberg mechanism on the condensation and conductivity types (electrical, spin, mixed, thermo-electric, thermo-spin and thermal conductivity). Our results show that the St\"{u}ckelberg's model parameters C_{alpha} and alpha not only have significant impacts on the phase transition, but also affect the conductivity pseudo-gap and the strength of conductivity fluctuations. Moreover, the effects of these parameters on a system will be gradually reduced as the imbalance grows. We also find that the influence of alpha on the amplitude of conductivity fluctuations depends on the magnitude of the both C_{alpha} and deltamu/mu in the electric and thermal conductivity cases. This results in that increasing alpha can damp the conductivity fluctuations of an unbalanced system in contrast to balanced ones.

We study chromo-natural inflation in the axiverse. More precisely, we investigate natural inflation with two axions coupled with a SU(2) gauge field. Assuming a hierarchy between the coupling constants, we find that for certain initial conditions, conventional natural inflation commences and continues for tens of e-foldings, and subsequently chromo-natural inflation takes over from natural inflation. For these solutions, we expect that the predictions are in agreement with observations on CMB scales. Moreover, since chromo-natural inflation occurs in the latter part of the inflationary stage, chiral primordial gravitational waves are produced in the interesting frequency range higher than 10^{-10}Hz, which might be detectable by future gravitational wave observations.

We investigate the signatures of Fermi liquid formation in the N=4 super Yang-Mills theory coupled to fundamental hypermultiplet at nonvanishing chemical potential for the global U(1) vector symmetry. At strong 't Hooft coupling the system can be analyzed in terms of the D7 brane dynamics in AdS_5 x S^5 background. The phases with vanishing and finite charge density are separated at zero temperature by a quantum phase transition. In case of vanishing hypermultiplet mass, Karch, Son and Starinets discovered a gapless excitation whose speed equals the speed of sound. We find that this zero sound mode persists to all values of the hypermultiplet mass, and its speed vanishes at the point of phase transition. The value of critical exponent and the ratio of the velocities of zero and first sounds are consistent with the predictions of Landau Fermi liquid theory at strong coupling.

Ultracold gases of highly magnetic lanthanide atoms have enabled the realisation of dipolar quantum droplets and supersolids. However, future studies could be limited by the achievable atom numbers and hindered by high three-body loss rates. Here we study density-dependent atom loss in an ultracold gas of {}^{166}Er for magnetic fields below 4 G, identifying six previously unreported, strongly temperature-dependent features. We find that their positions and widths show a linear temperature dependence up to at least 15,muK. In addition, we observe a weak, polarisation-dependent shift of the loss features with the intensity of the light used to optically trap the atoms. This detailed knowledge of the loss landscape allows us to optimise the production of dipolar BECs with more than 2 times 10^5 atoms and points towards optimal strategies for the study of large-atom-number dipolar gases in the droplet and supersolid regimes.

We consider the possibility that gravity breaks parity, with left and right handed gravitons coupling to matter with a different Newton's constant and show that this would affect their zero-point vacuum fluctuations during inflation. Should there be a cosmic background of gravity waves, the effect would translate into anomalous CMB polarization. Non-vanishing TB (and EB) polarization components emerge, revealing interesting experimental targets. Indeed if reasonable chirality is present a TB measurement would provide the easiest way to detect a gravitational wave background. We speculate on the theoretical implications of such an observation.

In this note, we show that the Local Molecular Field theory of Weeks et. al. can be re-derived as an extremum problem for an approximate Helmholtz free energy. Using the resulting free energy as a classical, fluid density functional yields an implicit solvent method identical in form to the Molecular Density Functional theory of Borgis et. al., but with an explicit formula for the 'ideal' free energy term. This new expression for the ideal free energy term can be computed from all-atom molecular dynamics of a solvent with only short-range interactions. The key hypothesis required to make the theory valid is that all smooth (and hence long-range) energy functions obey Gaussian statistics. This is essentially a random phase approximation for perturbations from a short-range only, 'reference,' fluid. This single hypothesis is enough to prove that the self-consistent LMF procedure minimizes a novel density functional whose 'ideal' free energy is the molecular system under a specific, reference Hamiltonian, as opposed to the non-interacting gas of conventional density functionals. Implementation of this new functional into existing software should be straightforward and robust.

Inflation typically predicts a quasi scale-invariant spectrum of gravitational waves. In models of slow-roll inflation, the amplitude of such a background is too small to allow direct detection without a dedicated space-based experiment such as the proposed BBO or DECIGO. In this paper we note that particle production during inflation can generate a feature in the spectrum of primordial gravitational waves. We discuss the possibility that such a feature might be detected by ground-based laser interferometers such as Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo, which will become operational in the next few years. We also discuss the prospects of detection by a space interferometer like LISA. We first study gravitational waves induced by nonperturbative, explosive particle production during inflation: while explosive production of scalar quanta does not generate a significant bump in the primordial tensor spectrum, production of vectors can. We also show that chiral gravitational waves produced by electromagnetic fields amplified by an axion-like inflaton could be detectable by Advanced LIGO.

Mesogenic materials, quinoxaline derivatives with semi-flexible cores, are reported to form new type of 3D columnar structure with large crystallographic unit cell and Fddd symmetry below columnar hexagonal phase. The 3D columnar structure is a result of frustration imposed by arrangement of helical columns of opposite chirality into triangular lattice. The studied materials exhibit fluorescent properties that could be easily tuned by modification of molecular structure, compounds with the extended {\pi} electron conjugated systems form aggregates and fluorescence is quenched. For molecules with flexible structure the fluorescence quantum yield reaches 25%. On the other hand, compounds with more rigid mesogenic core, for which fluorescence is suppressed show strong hole photocurrent. For some materials also bi-polar: hole and electron transfer was observed.

We consider classes of translationally invariant black hole solutions whose equations of state closely resemble that of QCD at zero chemical potential. We use these backgrounds to compute the ratio zeta/s of bulk viscosity to entropy density. For a class of black holes that exhibits a first order transition, we observe a sharp rise in zeta/s near T_c. For constructions that exhibit a smooth cross-over, like QCD does, the rise in zeta/s is more modest. We conjecture that divergences in zeta/s for black hole horizons are related to extrema of the entropy density as a function of temperature.

We evaluate electromagnetic-response observables in a half-filled Chern band, across a topological phase transition between a composite Fermi liquid (CFL) and a Fermi liquid (FL) phase. While a sharp gapped plasma mode exists deep in the CFL phase, we demonstrate that it is damped near the proposed continuous phase transition between CFL and FL. This plasmon-damping phenomenon originates from emergent gauge fields and a Dirac-fermion-like spectrum. Similar features also occur in other continuous deconfined topological phase transitions, such as the Laughlin to superfluid transition in a bosonic system. In particular, this damping behavior extends over a finite range across the phase boundary, and, hence, we expect it to persist even when the transition is weakly first-order. Furthermore, we analyze the behavior of the Drude weight, the wavevector-dependent conductivity, and the chiral mirror effect across these topological phase transitions.

The Weak Gravity Conjecture has recently been re-formulated in terms of a particle with non-negative self-binding energy. Because of the dual conformal field theory (CFT) formulation in the anti-de Sitter space the conformal dimension Delta (Q) of the lowest-dimension operator with charge Q under some global U(1) symmetry must be a convex function of Q. This property has been conjectured to hold for any (unitary) conformal field theory and generalized to larger global symmetry groups. Here we refine and further test the convex charge conjecture via semiclassical computations for fixed charge sectors of different theories in different dimensions. We analyze the convexity properties of the leading and next-to-leading order terms stemming from the semiclassical computation, de facto, extending previous tests beyond the leading perturbative contributions and to arbitrary charges. In particular, the leading contribution is sufficient to test convexity in the semiclassical computations. We also consider intriguing cases in which the models feature a transition from real to complex conformal dimensions either as a function of the charge or number of matter fields. As a relevant example of the first kind, we investigate the O(N) model in 4+epsilon dimensions. As an example of the second type we consider the U(N)times U(M) model in 4-epsilon dimensions. Both models display a rich dynamics where, by changing the number of matter fields and/or charge, one can achieve dramatically different physical regimes. We discover that whenever a complex conformal dimension appears, the real part satisfies the convexity property.

The last decade has seen a marked shift in how the internal structure of hadrons is understood. Modern experimental facilities, new theoretical techniques for the continuum bound-state problem and progress with lattice-regularised QCD have provided strong indications that soft quark+quark (diquark) correlations play a crucial role in hadron physics. For example, theory indicates that the appearance of such correlations is a necessary consequence of dynamical chiral symmetry breaking, viz. a corollary of emergent hadronic mass that is responsible for almost all visible mass in the universe; experiment has uncovered signals for such correlations in the flavour-separation of the proton's electromagnetic form factors; and phenomenology suggests that diquark correlations might be critical to the formation of exotic tetra- and penta-quark hadrons. A broad spectrum of such information is evaluated herein, with a view to consolidating the facts and therefrom moving toward a coherent, unified picture of hadron structure and the role that diquark correlations might play.

We use the AdS/CFT correspondence to study the thermodynamics of massive N=2 supersymmetric hypermultiplets coupled to N=4 supersymmetric SU(Nc) Yang-Mills theory in the limits of large Nc and large 't Hooft coupling. In particular, we study the theory at finite baryon number density. At zero temperature, we present an exact expression for the hypermultiplets' leading-order contribution to the free energy, and in the supergravity description we clarify which D-brane configuration is appropriate for any given value of the chemical potential. We find a second-order phase transition when the chemical potential equals the mass. At finite temperature, we present an exact expression for the hypermultiplets' leading-order contribution to the free energy at zero mass.

We review theoretical and experimental highlights in transport in two-dimensional materials focussing on key developments over the last five years. Topological insulators are finding applications in magnetic devices, while Hall transport in doped samples and the general issue of topological protection remain controversial. In transition metal dichalcogenides valley-dependent electrical and optical phenomena continue to stimulate state-of-the-art experiments. In Weyl semimetals the properties of Fermi arcs are being actively investigated. A new field, expected to grow in the near future, focuses on the non-linear electrical and optical responses of topological materials, where fundamental questions are once more being asked about the intertwining roles of the Berry curvature and disorder scattering. In topological superconductors the quest for chiral superconductivity, Majorana fermions and topological quantum computing is continuing apace.

Energy-energy correlators are constructed by averaging the number of charged particle pairs within jets, weighted by the product of their transverse momenta, as a function of the angular separation of the particles within a pair. They are sensitive to a multitude of perturbative and nonperturbative quantum chromodynamics phenomena in high-energy particle collisions. Using lead-lead data recorded with the CMS detector, energy-energy correlators inside high transverse momentum jets are measured in heavy ion collisions for the first time. The data are obtained at a nucleon-nucleon center-of-mass energy of 5.02 TeV and correspond to an integrated luminosity of 1.70 nb^{-1}. A similar analysis is done for proton-proton collisions at the same center-of-mass energy to establish a reference. The ratio of lead-lead to proton-proton energy-energy correlators reveals significant jet substructure modifications in the quark-gluon plasma. The results are compared to different models that incorporate either color coherence or medium response effects, where the two effects predict similar substructure modifications.

It has been shown that a gravitational dual to a superconductor can be obtained by coupling anti-de Sitter gravity to a Maxwell field and charged scalar. We review our earlier analysis of this theory and extend it in two directions. First, we consider all values for the charge of the scalar field. Away from the large charge limit, backreaction on the spacetime metric is important. While the qualitative behaviour of the dual superconductor is found to be similar for all charges, in the limit of arbitrarily small charge a new type of black hole instability is found. We go on to add a perpendicular magnetic field B and obtain the London equation and magnetic penetration depth. We show that these holographic superconductors are Type II, i.e., starting in a normal phase at large B and low temperatures, they develop superconducting droplets as B is reduced.

A new research framework is proposed to incorporate machine learning techniques into the field of experimental chemistry to facilitate chromatographic enantioseparation. A documentary dataset of chiral molecular retention times (CMRT dataset) in high-performance liquid chromatography is established to handle the challenge of data acquisition. Based on the CMRT dataset, a quantile geometry-enhanced graph neural network is proposed to learn the molecular structure-retention time relationship, which shows a satisfactory predictive ability for enantiomers. The domain knowledge of chromatography is incorporated into the machine learning model to achieve multi-column prediction, which paves the way for chromatographic enantioseparation prediction by calculating the separation probability. Experiments confirm that the proposed research framework works well in retention time prediction and chromatographic enantioseparation facilitation, which sheds light on the application of machine learning techniques to the experimental scene and improves the efficiency of experimenters to speed up scientific discovery.

A fully differential calculation in perturbative quantum chromodynamics is presented for the production of massive photon pairs at hadron colliders. All next-to-leading order perturbative contributions from quark-antiquark, gluon-(anti)quark, and gluon-gluon subprocesses are included, as well as all-orders resummation of initial-state gluon radiation valid at next-to-next-to-leading logarithmic accuracy. The region of phase space is specified in which the calculation is most reliable. Good agreement is demonstrated with data from the Fermilab Tevatron, and predictions are made for more detailed tests with CDF and DO data. Predictions are shown for distributions of diphoton pairs produced at the energy of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Distributions of the diphoton pairs from the decay of a Higgs boson are contrasted with those produced from QCD processes at the LHC, showing that enhanced sensitivity to the signal can be obtained with judicious selection of events.

We explore a minimal scenario where the sole Standard-Model Higgs is responsible for reheating the Universe after inflation, produces a significant background of gravitational waves and maintains the full classical stability of the electroweak vacuum. As the Higgs self-coupling runs toward negative values at high energy scales, a non-minimal interaction with curvature during a stiff background expansion era drives the Higgs fluctuations closer to the instability scale. This curvature-induced tachyonic instability leads to an intense production of Higgs particles, accompanied by a stochastic gravitational-wave background. The characteristic features of such signal can be directly correlated to the inflationary scale, the non-minimal coupling parameter and the top quark Yukawa coupling. We distinguish between three possible scenarios: absolute stability with low top quark masses, potential vacuum instability, and absolute stability with new physics above the instability scale. Our findings suggest that the detection of a peaked background of gravitational waves together with its inflationary tail has the potential to unveil the features of the Higgs effective potential at very high energy scales while providing a minimal explanation for the reheating phase and the emergence of the Standard-Model plasma in the early Universe. Unlike other studies in the literature, the generation of gravitational waves in our scenario does not depend on the quantum instability of the Standard Model vacuum.

We investigate BZT shocks and the QCD phase transition in the dense core of a cold quark star in beta equilibrium subject to the multicomponent van der Waals (MvdW) equation of state (EoS) as a model of internal structure. When this system is expressed in terms of multiple components, it can be used to explore the impact of a phase transition from a hadronic state to a quark plasma state with a complex clustering structure. The clustering can take the form of colored diquarks or triquarks and bound colorless meson, baryon, or hyperon states at the phase transition boundary. The resulting multicomponent EoS system is nonconvex, which can give rise to Bethe-Zel'dovich-Thompson (BZT) phase changing shock waves. Using the BZT shock wave condition we find constraints on the quark density and examine how this changes the tidal deformability of the compact core. These results are then combined with the TOV equations to find the resulting mass and radius relationship. These state are compared to recent astrophysical high-mass neutron star systems, which may provide evidence for a core that has undergone a quark gluon phase transition such as PSR 0943+10 or GW 190814.

We compute the elliptic genera of two-dimensional N=(2,2) and N=(0,2) gauged linear sigma models via supersymmetric localization, for rank-one gauge groups. The elliptic genus is expressed as a sum over residues of a meromorphic function whose argument is the holonomy of the gauge field along both the spatial and the temporal directions of the torus. We illustrate our formulas by a few examples including the quintic Calabi-Yau, N=(2,2) SU(2) and O(2) gauge theories coupled to N fundamental chiral multiplets, and a geometric N=(0,2) model.

We reformulate the Landau analysis of Feynman integrals with the aim of advancing the state of the art in modern particle-physics computations. We contribute new algorithms for computing Landau singularities, using tools from polyhedral geometry and symbolic/numerical elimination. Inspired by the work of Gelfand, Kapranov, and Zelevinsky (GKZ) on generalized Euler integrals, we define the principal Landau determinant of a Feynman diagram. We illustrate with a number of examples that this algebraic formalism allows to compute many components of the Landau singular locus. We adapt the GKZ framework by carefully specializing Euler integrals to Feynman integrals. For instance, ultraviolet and infrared singularities are detected as irreducible components of an incidence variety, which project dominantly to the kinematic space. We compute principal Landau determinants for the infinite families of one-loop and banana diagrams with different mass configurations, and for a range of cutting-edge Standard Model processes. Our algorithms build on the Julia package Landau.jl and are implemented in the new open-source package PLD.jl available at https://mathrepo.mis.mpg.de/PLD/.

Symmetries play a central role in both equilibrium and nonequilibrium phase transitions, yet their quantitative characterization in dynamical quantum phase transitions (DQPTs) remains an open challenge. In this work, we establish a direct connection between symmetry properties of a many-body model and measures of quantum asymmetry, showing that asymmetry monotones provide a robust and physically transparent indicator of dynamical quantum criticality. Focusing on the quenched Lipkin-Meshkov-Glick model, we demonstrate that asymmetry measures associated with collective spin generators faithfully capture the onset of DQPTs, reflecting the dynamical restoration or breaking of underlying symmetries. Remarkably, the time-averaged asymmetry exhibits clear signatures of the dynamical critical point, in close correspondence with both the dynamical order parameter and the behavior of entropy production. We further uncover a quantitative link between asymmetry generation and thermodynamic irreversibility, showing that peaks in asymmetry coincide with maximal entropy production across the transition. Our results position asymmetry as a unifying concept bridging symmetry, information-theoretic quantifiers, and nonequilibrium thermodynamics in dynamical quantum phase transitions, providing a powerful framework for understanding critical dynamics beyond traditional order parameters.

We demonstrate that the unitarity of quantum field theory, through the positivity of spectral functions, underlies thermodynamic irreversibility for a subsystem separated by a horizon, in direct analogy with the irreversibility of renormalization-group flows. To this end, we explicitly find the shear and bulk viscosities -- the entanglement viscosities -- for thermal radiation in Rindler space using the universal spectral representation. A direct consequence of the obtained general formulas is the relationship between the acceleration-induced shear viscosity in flat space and the conformal quantum anomaly in curved space, pointing to a possible novel probe of the conformal anomaly in systems with extreme acceleration. Moreover, for conformal field theories, we explicitly show that globally entanglement viscosity saturates the Kovtun-Son-Starinets bound.

Four lectures on holography and the AdS/CFT correspondence applied to condensed matter systems. The first lecture introduces the concept of a quantum phase transition. The second lecture discusses linear response theory and Ward identities. The third lecture presents transport coefficients derived from AdS/CFT that should be applicable in the quantum critical region associated to a quantum phase transition. The fourth lecture builds in the physics of a superconducting or superfluid phase transition to the simple holographic model of the third lecture.

Colloids play an important role in fundamental science as well as in nature and technology. They have had a strong impact on the fundamental understanding of statistical physics. For example, colloids have helped to obtain a better understanding of collective phenomena, ranging from phase transitions and glass formation to the swarming of active Brownian particles. Yet the success of colloidal systems hinges crucially on the specific physical and chemical properties of the colloidal particles, i.e. particles with the appropriate characteristics must be available. Here we present an idea to create particles with freely selectable properties. The properties might depend, for example, on the presence of other particles (hence mimicking specific pair or many-body interactions), previous configurations (hence introducing some memory or feedback), or a directional bias (hence changing the dynamics). Without directly interfering with the sample, each particle is fully controlled and can receive external commands through a predefined algorithm that can take into account any input parameters. This is realized with computer-controlled colloids, which we term cybloids - short for cybernetic colloids. The potential of cybloids is illustrated by programming a time-delayed external potential acting on a single colloid and interaction potentials for many colloids. Both an attractive harmonic potential and an annular potential are implemented. For a single particle, this programming can cause subdiffusive behavior or lend activity. For many colloids, the programmed interaction potential allows to select a crystal structure at wish. Beyond these examples, we discuss further opportunities which cybloids offer.

We allow the Higgs field Phi to interact with a dilaton field chi of the background spacetime via the coupling chi^2,Phi^daggerPhi. Upon spontaneous gauge symmetry breaking, the Higgs VEV becomes proportional to chi. While traditionally this linkage is employed to make the Planck mass and particle masses dependent on chi, we present an textit alternative mechanism: the Higgs VEV will be used to construct Planck's constant hbar and speed of light c. Specifically, each open set vicinity of a given point x^* on the spacetime manifold is equipped with a replica of the Glashow-Weinberg-Salam action operating with its own effective values of hbar_* and c_* per hbar_*proptochi^{-1/2}(x^*) and c_*proptochi^{1/2}(x^*), causing these ``fundamental constants'' to vary alongside the dynamical field chi. Moreover, in each open set around x^*, the prevailing value chi(x^*) determines the length and time scales for physical processes occurring in this region as lproptochi^{-1}(x^*) and tauproptochi^{-3/2}(x^*). This leads to an textit anisotropic relation tau^{-1}propto l^{-3/2} between the rate of clocks and the length of rods, resulting in a distinct set of novel physical phenomena. For late-time cosmology, the variation of c along the trajectory of light waves from distant supernovae towards the Earth-based observer necessitates modifications to the Lema\^itre redshift relation and the Hubble law. These modifications are capable of: (1) Accounting for the Pantheon Catalog of SNeIa through a declining speed of light in an expanding Einstein--de Sitter universe, thus avoiding the need for dark energy; (2) Revitalizing Blanchard-Douspis-Rowan-Robinson-Sarkar's CMB power spectrum analysis that bypassed dark energy [A&A 412, 35 (2003)]; and (3) Resolving the H_0 tension without requiring a dynamical dark energy component.

We propose Geometric Clifford Algebra Networks (GCANs) for modeling dynamical systems. GCANs are based on symmetry group transformations using geometric (Clifford) algebras. We first review the quintessence of modern (plane-based) geometric algebra, which builds on isometries encoded as elements of the Pin(p,q,r) group. We then propose the concept of group action layers, which linearly combine object transformations using pre-specified group actions. Together with a new activation and normalization scheme, these layers serve as adjustable geometric templates that can be refined via gradient descent. Theoretical advantages are strongly reflected in the modeling of three-dimensional rigid body transformations as well as large-scale fluid dynamics simulations, showing significantly improved performance over traditional methods.

We present a model for chi^{(2)} waveguides accounting for three modes, two of which make an avoided crossing at the second harmonic wavelength. We introduce two linearly coupled pure modes and adjust the coupling to replicate the waveguide dispersion near the avoided crossing. Analysis of the nonlinear system reveals continuous wave (CW) solutions across much of the parameter-space and prevalence of its modulational instability. We also predict the existence of the avoided-crossing solitons, and study peculiarities of their dynamics and spectral properties, which include formation of a pedestal in the pulse tails and associated pronounced spectral peaks. Mapping these solitons onto the linear dispersion diagrams, we make connections between their existence and CW existence and stability. We also simulate the two-color soliton generation from a single frequency pump pulse to back up its formation and stability properties.

We present a consistent Kaluza-Klein truncation of D=11 supergravity on an arbitrary seven-dimensional Sasaki-Einstein space (SE_7) to a D=4 theory containing a metric, a gauge-field, a complex scalar field and a real scalar field. We use this D=4 theory to construct various black hole solutions that describe the thermodynamics of the d=3 CFTs dual to skew-whiffed AdS_4 X SE_7 solutions. We show that these CFTs have a rich phase diagram, including holographic superconductivity with, generically, broken parity and time reversal invariance. At zero temperature the superconducting solutions are charged domain walls with a universal emergent conformal symmetry in the far infrared.

Strong correlation brings a rich array of emergent phenomena, as well as a daunting challenge to theoretical physics study. In condensed matter physics, the fractional quantum Hall effect is a prominent example of strong correlation, with Landau level mixing being one of the most challenging aspects to address using traditional computational methods. Deep learning real-space neural network wavefunction methods have emerged as promising architectures to describe electron correlations in molecules and materials, but their power has not been fully tested for exotic quantum states. In this work, we employ real-space neural network wavefunction techniques to investigate fractional quantum Hall systems. On both 1/3 and 2/5 filling systems, we achieve energies consistently lower than exact diagonalization results which only consider the lowest Landau level. We also demonstrate that the real-space neural network wavefunction can naturally capture the extent of Landau level mixing up to a very high level, overcoming the limitations of traditional methods. Our work underscores the potential of neural networks for future studies of strongly correlated systems and opens new avenues for exploring the rich physics of the fractional quantum Hall effect.

We present a neural flow wavefunction, Gauge-Fermion FlowNet, and use it to simulate 2+1D lattice compact quantum electrodynamics with finite density dynamical fermions. The gauge field is represented by a neural network which parameterizes a discretized flow-based transformation of the amplitude while the fermionic sign structure is represented by a neural net backflow. This approach directly represents the U(1) degree of freedom without any truncation, obeys Guass's law by construction, samples autoregressively avoiding any equilibration time, and variationally simulates Gauge-Fermion systems with sign problems accurately. In this model, we investigate confinement and string breaking phenomena in different fermion density and hopping regimes. We study the phase transition from the charge crystal phase to the vacuum phase at zero density, and observe the phase seperation and the net charge penetration blocking effect under magnetic interaction at finite density. In addition, we investigate a magnetic phase transition due to the competition effect between the kinetic energy of fermions and the magnetic energy of the gauge field. With our method, we further note potential differences on the order of the phase transitions between a continuous U(1) system and one with finite truncation. Our state-of-the-art neural network approach opens up new possibilities to study different gauge theories coupled to dynamical matter in higher dimensions.

The dynamics of Einstein-conformally coupled Higgs field (EccH) system is investigated near the initial singularities in the presence of Friedman-Robertson--Walker symmetries. We solve the field equations asymptotically up to fourth order near the singularities analytically, and determine the solutions numerically as well. We found all the asymptotic, power series singular solutions, which are (1) solutions with a scalar polynomial curvature singularity but the Higgs field is bounded (`Small Bang'), or (2) solutions with a Milne type singularity with bounded spacetime curvature and Higgs field, or (3) solutions with a scalar polynomial curvature singularity and diverging Higgs field (`Big Bang'). Thus, in the present EccH model there is a new kind of physical spacetime singularity (`Small Bang'). We also show that, in a neighbourhood of the singularity in these solutions, the Higgs sector does not have any symmetry breaking instantaneous vacuum state, and hence then the Brout-Englert-Higgs mechanism does not work. The large scale behaviour of the solutions is investigated numerically as well. In particular, the numerical calculations indicate that there are singular solutions that cannot be approximated by power series.

The singlet-doublet vector-like fermion dark matter model has been extensively studied in the literature over the past decade. An important parameter in this model is the singlet-doublet mixing angle (sintheta). All the previous studies have primarily focused on annihilation and co-annihilation processes for obtaining the correct dark matter relic density, assuming that the singlet and doublet components decouple at the same epoch. In this work, we demonstrate that this assumption holds only for larger mixing angles with a dependency on the mass of the dark matter. However, it badly fails for the mixing angle sintheta<0.05. We present a systematic study of the parameter space of the singlet-doublet dark matter relic, incorporating annihilation, co-annihilation, and, for the first time, co-scattering processes. Additionally, the freeze-in parameter space is also explored. We found that due to the inclusion of co-scattering processes, the correct relic density parameter space is shifted towards the detection sensitivity range of the LHC and MATHUSLA via displaced vertex signatures.