Scientific Series

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

In this talk I will discuss some recent results on boundary degrees of freedom (or edge modes), and their description via an extended phase space structure containing extra boundary fields. Motivated by a slight modification of the covariant phase space formalism, I will show how the use of a boundary Lagrangian enables to include the edge modes in the phase space and to obtain their boundary dynamics. This will be illustrated on the example of Maxwell theory, where in addition the edge modes can be understood as contributing to entanglement entropy. The possible extension of this result to gravity will then be mentioned.

In this talk we describe a systematic way of producing stochastic solutions to the Yang-Baxter equation from a “base solution” that is not necessarily stochastic. This gives rise to a wide class of new families of stochastic (Markovian) vertex models with integrable weights. In various cases, these models are more amenable to algebraic analysis than are their non-stochastic counterparts, sometimes leading to new (and at times unexpected) refined asymptotic results for them. In other cases, these stochastic systems are amenable to probabilistic analysis, yielding results that seem less transparent to access algebraically and that can occasionally shed new light on the original (non-stochastic) model. This is partially based on joint work with Alexei Borodin and Alexey Bufetov.

The quantum Fisher information (QFI) measures the amount of information that a quantum state carries about an unknown parameter. Given a quantum channel, its entanglement-assisted QFI is the maximum QFI of the output state assuming an input state over the system and an arbitrarily large ancilla. Consider N identical copies of a quantum channel, the channel QFI grows either linearly or quadratically with N asymptotically. Here we obtain a simple criterion that determines whether the scaling is linear or quadratic. In both cases, we found a quantum error correction protocol achieving the channel QFI asymptotically and an SDP to solve the optimal code.

Through their observable properties, the first and smallest dark matter halos represent a rare probe of subkiloparsec-scale variations in the density of the early Universe. These density variations could hold clues to the nature of inflation, the postinflationary cosmic history, and the identity of dark matter. However, the dynamical complexity of these microhalos hinders their usage as cosmological probes. A theoretical understanding of the microhalo-cosmology connection demands numerical simulation, but microhalos are too small and dense to simulate up to the present day in full cosmological context. My research meets this challenge by using controlled numerical simulations to develop (semi)analytic models of dark matter structure. I will discuss these models, which describe the formation of the first halos and their subsequent evolution as they accrete onto larger systems. I will also explore two applications: breaking a degeneracy between the properties of thermal-relic dark matter and the postinflationary history, and probing inflation's late stages via the small-scale primordial power spectrum.

CMB lensing tomography has the potential to map the amplitude and growth of structure over cosmic time, provide some of the most stringent tests of gravity, and break important degeneracies between cosmological parameters. I use the unWISE photometric galaxy catalog to create three samples at median redshifts z~0.6, 1.1, and 1.5, and cross-correlate them with the most recent Planck CMB lensing maps. The resulting significance of ~80 at 100 < ell < 1000 is the highest significance detection to date of CMB lensing cross-correlation.  The redshift distribution of the two-band unWISE galaxies is a major source of systematic error. I primarily use cross-correlations with BOSS galaxies and quasars and eBOSS quasars to measure the redshift distribution, supplemented with cross-matching to deep COSMOS photometric redshifts.  I demonstrate how to propagate the uncertainty in the redshift distribution to the modeling of the signal, and perform a number of null tests. Finally, I discuss the cosmological implications of this measurement and lessons learned for CMB lensing cross-correlations with future photometric surveys.

In this talk I will review the state of the art in PN gravity, and in particular its significant advancement via the EFT of spinning gravitating objects. First, I will introduce the concept of a tower of EFTs for the binary inspiral problem. I will then present the intricate formulation of the EFT of spinning objects. Finally, I will present some advanced results accomplished within this framework.

I’ll talk about two independent works on classical and quantum neural networks connected by information theory. In the first part of the talk, I’ll treat sequence models as one-dimensional classical statistical mechanical systems and analyze the scaling behavior of mutual information. I'll provide a new perspective on why recurrent neural networks are not good at natural language processing. In the second part of the talk, I’ll study information scrambling dynamics when quantum neural networks are trained by classical gradient descent algorithm. For many problems, this hybrid quantum-classical training process consists of two stages where information scrambles very differently in the network. 

I propose [1] to use the residual anyons of overscreened Kondo physics for quantum computation. A superconducting proximity gap of Δ<TK can be utilized to isolate the anyon from the continuum of excitations and stabilize the non-trivial fixed point. We use the dynamical large-N technique [2] and bosonization to show that the residual entropy survives in a superconductor and suggest a charge Kondo setup for isolating and detecting the Majorana fermion in the two-channel Kondo impurity.
I will then conjecture that topological defects in a multichannel Kondo lattice carry anyons. Motivated by this, we look at a two-channel SU(N) Kondo lattice in the large-N limit [3].  In this model, the continuous channel-symmetry is spontaneously broken, forming a “channel ferromagnet” and realizing the so-called fractionalized order parameter [4]. By integrating out the fermions we derive an effective action that describes the symmetry breaking and its emergent collective modes. Remarkably, topological defects in the order parameter carry a U(1) flux, manifested in the Aharonov-Bohm phase picked by electrons that orbit the defect. We argue that the phase diagram contains a non-magnetic transition between a large and a small Fermi surface.
I will also briefly highlight our recent results [5] on a magnetically frustrated Kondo-screened triangle which contains two symmetry-preserving phases, transcending the Landau-Ginzburg paradigm. The quantum phase transition is driven by the proliferation of instantons of the emergent gauge theory and can be regarded as a toy model for the deconfined criticality.