Featured Researches

High Energy Physics Theory

Revisiting Coleman-de Luccia transitions in the AdS regime using holography

Coleman-de Luccia processes for AdS to AdS decays in Einstein-scalar theories are studied. Such tunnelling processes are interpreted as vev-driven holographic RG flows of a quantum field theory on de Sitter space-time. These flows do not exist for generic scalar potentials, which is the holographic formulation of the fact that gravity can act to stabilise false AdS vacua. The existence of Coleman-de Luccia tunnelling solutions in a potential with a false AdS vacuum is found to be tied to the existence of exotic RG flows in the same potential. Such flows are solutions where the flow skips possible fixed points or reverses direction in the coupling. This connection is employed to construct explicit potentials that admit Coleman-de Luccia instantons in AdS and to study the associated tunnelling solutions. Thin-walled instantons are observed to correspond to dual field theories with a parametrically large value of the dimension?for the operator dual to the scalar field, casting doubt on the attainability of this regime in holography. From the boundary perspective, maximally symmetric instantons describe the probability of symmetry breaking of the dual QFT in de Sitter. It is argued that, even when such instantons exist, they do not imply an instability of the same theory on flat space or onR?S3.

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High Energy Physics Theory

Revisiting Higher-Spin Gyromagnetic Couplings

We analyze Bosonic, Heterotic, and Type II string theories compactified on a generic torus having constant moduli. By computing the hamiltonian giving the interaction between massive string excitations andU(1)gauge fields arising from the graviton and Kalb-Ramond field upon compactification, we derive a general formula for such couplings that turns out to be universal in all these theories. We also confirm our result by explicitly evaluating the relevant string three-point amplitudes. From this expression, we determine the gyromagnetic ratiogof massive string states coupled to both gauge-fields. For a generic mixed symmetry state, there is one gyromagnetic coupling associated with each row of the corresponding Young Tableau diagram. For all the states having zero Kaluza Klein or Winding charges, the value ofgturns out to be1. We also explicitly consider totally symmetric and mixed symmetry states (having two rows in the Young diagram) associated with the first Regge-trajectory and obtain their correspondinggvalue.

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High Energy Physics Theory

Revisiting non-Gaussianity in non-attractor inflation models in the light of the cosmological soft theorem

We revisit the squeezed-limit non-Gaussianity in the single-field non-attractor inflation models from the viewpoint of the cosmological soft theorem. In the single-field attractor models, inflaton's trajectories with different initial conditions effectively converge into a single trajectory in the phase space, and hence there is only one \emph{clock} degree of freedom (DoF) in the scalar part. Its long-wavelength perturbations can be absorbed into the local coordinate renormalization and lead to the so-called \emph{consistency relation} betweenn- and(n+1)-point functions. On the other hand, if the inflaton dynamics deviates from the attractor behavior, its long-wavelength perturbations cannot necessarily be absorbed and the consistency relation is expected not to hold any longer. In this work, we derive a formula for the squeezed bispectrum including the explicit correction to the consistency relation, as a proof of its violation in the non-attractor cases. First one must recall that non-attractor inflation needs to be followed by attractor inflation in a realistic case. Then, even if a specific non-attractor phase is effectively governed by a single DoF of phase space (represented by the exact ultra-slow-roll limit) and followed by a single-DoF attractor phase, its transition phase necessarily involves two DoF in dynamics and hence its long-wavelength perturbations cannot be absorbed into the local coordinate renormalization. Thus, it can affect local physics, even taking account of the so-called \emph{local observer effect}, as shown by the fact that the bispectrum in the squeezed limit can go beyond the consistency relation. More concretely, the observed squeezed bispectrum does not vanish in general for long-wavelength perturbations exiting the horizon during a non-attractor phase.

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High Energy Physics Theory

Root Bundles and Towards Exact Matter Spectra of F-theory MSSMs

Motivated by the appearance of fractional powers of line bundles in studies of vector-like spectra in 4d F-theory compactifications, we analyze the structure and origin of these bundles. Fractional powers of line bundles are also known as root bundles and can be thought of as generalizations of spin bundles. We explain how these root bundles are linked to inequivalent F-theory gauge potentials of aG4-flux.While this observation is interesting in its own right, it is particularly valuable for F-theory Standard Model constructions. In aiming for MSSMs, it is desired to argue for the absence of vector-like exotics. We work out the root bundle constraints on all matter curves in the largest class of currently-known F-theory Standard Model constructions without chiral exotics and gauge coupling unification. On each matter curve, we conduct a systematic "bottom"-analysis of all solutions to the root bundle constraints and all spin bundles. Thereby, we derive a lower bound for the number of combinations of root bundles and spin bundles whose cohomologies satisfy the physical demand of absence of vector-like pairs.On a technical level, this systematic study is achieved by a well-known diagrammatic description of root bundles on nodal curves. We extend this description by a counting procedure, which determines the cohomologies of so-called limit root bundles on full blow-ups of nodal curves. By use of deformation theory, these results constrain the vector-like spectra on the smooth matter curves in the actual F-theory geometry.

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High Energy Physics Theory

Rotating Central Charge Membranes

In this work we obtain dynamical solutions of the bosonic sector of the supermembrane theory with central charges formulated onM9?T2, denoted by MIM2. The theory with this condition corresponds to a supermembrane with aC??flux. This sector of the M2-brane is very interesting since classically is stable as it does not contain string-like spikes with zero energy and at quantum level has a purely discrete supersymmetric spectrum. We find rotating solutions of the MIM2 equations of motion fulfilling all of the constraints. By showing that the MIM2 mass operator, contains the mass operator discussed in [Brugues, Rojo, Russo, Nucl. Phys. B 710, 2005], then we show that the rotating solutions previously found in the aforementioned work that also satisfy the topological central charge condition, are solutions of the MIM2. Finally, we find new distinctive rotating membrane solutions that include the presence of a new non-vanishing dynamical scalar field defined on its worldvolume.

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High Energy Physics Theory

Satisfiability Modulo Theories and Chiral Heterotic String Vacua with Positive Cosmological Constant

We apply Boolean Satisfiability (SAT) and Satisfiability Modulo Theories (SMT) solvers in the context of finding chiral heterotic string models with positive cosmological constant fromZ2?Z2orbifolds. The power of using SAT/SMT solvers to sift large parameter spaces quickly to decide satisfiability, both to declare and prove unsatisfiability and to declare satisfiability, are demonstrated in this setting. These models are partly chosen to be small enough to plot the performance against exhaustive search, which takes around 2 hours 20 minutes to comb through the parameter space. We show that making use of SMT based techniques with integer encoding is rather simple and effective, while a more careful Boolean SAT encoding provides a significant speed-up -- determining satisfiability or unsatisfiability has, in our experiments varied between 0.03 and 0.06 seconds, while determining all models (where models exist) took 19 seconds for a constraint system that allows for 2048 models and 8.4 seconds for a constraint system that admits 640 models. We thus gain several orders of magnitude in speed, and this advantage is set to grow with a growing parameter space. This holds the promise that the method scales well beyond the initial problem we have used it for in this paper.

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High Energy Physics Theory

Scalar-Vector Effective Field Theories from Soft Limits

We give an overview of the implementation of the soft-bootstrap method applied to the landscape of theories where the Special Galileon couples to a massless vector particle. We also describe the corresponding traditional Lagrangian approach for this model, which takes into account the formal geometrical interpretation of the Special Galileon as fluctuations of aD-dimensional brane embedded in a2D-dimensional flat space.

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High Energy Physics Theory

Scattering Amplitudes and Conservative Binary Dynamics atO(G4)

Using scattering amplitudes, we obtain the potential contributions to conservative binary dynamics in general relativity at fourth post-Minkowskian order,O(G4). As in previous lower-order calculations, we harness powerful tools from the modern scattering amplitudes program including generalized unitarity, the double copy, and advanced multiloop integration methods, in combination with effective field theory. The classical amplitude involves polylogarithms with up to transcendental weight two and elliptic integrals. We derive the radial action directly from the amplitude, and determine the corresponding Hamiltonian in isotropic gauge. Our results are in agreement with known overlapping terms up to sixth post-Newtonian order, and with the probe limit. We also determine the post-Minkowskian energy loss from radiation emission atO(G3)via its relation to the tail effect.

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High Energy Physics Theory

Scattering from production in 2d

In 1968, Atkinson proved the existence of functions that satisfy all S-matrix axioms in four spacetime dimensions. His proof is constructive and to our knowledge it is the only result of this type. Remarkably, the methods to construct such functions used in the proof were never implemented in practice. In the present paper, we test the applicability of those methods in the simpler setting of two-dimensional S-matrices. We solve the problem of reconstructing the scattering amplitude starting from a given particle production probability. We do this by implementing two numerical iterative schemes (fixed-point iteration and Newton's method), which, by iterating unitarity and dispersion relations, converge to solutions to the S-matrix axioms. We characterize the region in the amplitude-space in which our algorithms converge, and discover a fractal structure connected to the so-called CDD ambiguities which we call "CDD fractal". To our surprise, the question of convergence naturally connects to the recent study of the coupling maximization in the two-dimensional S-matrix bootstrap. The methods exposed here pave the way for applications to higher dimensions, and expose some of the potential challenges that will have to be overcome.

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High Energy Physics Theory

Schwarzschild black hole states and entropies on a nice slice

In this work, we define a quantum gravity state on a nice slice. The nice slices provide a foliation of spacetime and avoid regions of strong curvature. We explore the topology and the geometry of the manifold obtained from a nice slice after evolving it in complex time. We compute its associated semiclassical thermodynamics entropy for a 4d Schwarzschild black hole. Despite the state one can define on a nice slice is not a global pure state, remarkably, we get a similar result to Hawking's calculation. In the end, we discuss the entanglement entropy of two segments on a nice slice and comment on the relation of this work with the replica wormhole calculation.

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