Scientific Series

After more than 12 years of continuous data taking, the Pierre Auger Observatory has collected the largest dataset of ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECR) to date. The results obtained in the last years include, for example, precise and accurate measurements of the UHECR flux across a few decades in energy, revealing distinctive spectral features that can bring valuable information on different astrophysical processes like: the transition from galactic to extragalactic fluxes; the different energy loss processes to which ultra-relativistic charged particles are subject during their propagation; the energetics of the production and acceleration of particles at the candidate sources. In this talk, I should however focus on a particular observational probe, that is, the small levels of anisotropy in the flux of UHECR at different angular scales: from the small and intermediate ones, important for the identification of possible point sources, to the large angular scales, usually used to search for signs of the galactic to extragalactic transition. In particular, special attention will be devoted to the first observation of a large scale anisotropy signal at energies above 8x10^18 eV recently reported by the collaboration.

Quantum Monte Carlo methods, when applicable, offer reliable ways to extract the nonperturbative physics of strongly-correlated many-body systems. However, there are some bottlenecks to the applicability of these methods including the sign problem and algorithmic update inefficiencies. Using the t-V model Hamiltonian as the example, I demonstrate how the Fermion Bag Approach--originally developed in the context of lattice field theories--has aided in solving the sign problem for this model as well as aided in developing a more efficient algorithm to study the model. Finally, I discuss some other potential uses for the new algorithm, including for a broader class of models known to be sign-problem-free due to fermion bag ideas.

Atiyah and Segal's axiomatic approach to topological and conformal quantum field theories provided a beautiful link between the geometry of "spacetimes" (cobordisms) and algebraic structures. Combining this with the physical notion of "locality" led to the introduction of the language of higher categories into the topic.
Natural targets for extended topological field theories are higher Morita categories: generalizations of the bicategory of algebras, bimodules, and homomorphisms.

After giving an introduction to topological field theories, I will explain how one can use geometric arguments to obtain results on dualizablity in a ``factorization version’’ of the Morita category and using this, examples of low-dimensional field theories “relative” to their observables. An example will be given by polynomial differential operators, i.e. the Weyl algebra, in positive characteristic and its center. This is joint work with Owen Gwilliam.

In this talk, I will discuss how to assign geometries, such as metric tensors, to certain tensor networks using quantum entanglement and tensor Radon transform. In addition, we show that behaviour similar to linearized gravity can naturally emerge in said tensor networks, provided a modified version of Jacobson's entanglement equilibrium is satisfied. Since the aforementioned properties can be reached without relying on AdS/CFT, the approach also shows promise towards constructing tensor network models for cosmological spacetimes. 

TBA In the framework set by the AdS/MERA conjecture, we investigate a generalisation of the Tensor Network description of bulk geometry in the language of Group Field Theories, a promising convergence of insights and results from Matrix Models, Loop Quantum Gravity and simplicial approaches. We establish a first dictionary between Group Field Theory and Tensor Network states. With such a dictionary at hand, we target the calculation of the Ryu-Takayanagi formula recently derived for Random Tensor Networks in the quantum gravity formalism.

A great deal of progress has been made toward a classification of bosonic topological orders whose microscopic constituents are bosons. Much less is known about the classification of their fermionic counterparts. In this talk I will describe a systematic way of producing fermionic topological orders using the technique of fermion condensation. Roughly, this can be understood as binding a physical fermion to an emergent fermion and condensing the pair. I will discuss the `super pivotal categories' that describe universal properties of these phases and use them to construct exactly solvable string-net models. These string-net models feature conventional anyons and two flavours of vortices. I will show that one of the vortex types is similar to a vortex in a p+ip superconductor binding a Majorana zero mode, and will mention some possible applications.

In this talk I will discuss issues and possibilities to outline Quantum Gravity Phenomenology using cosmological and astrophysical data. After a brief review on some formal aspect of the problem I will focus on the analysis of in-vacuo dispersion features for GRB (gamma-ray-burst) neutrinos of energy in the range of 100 TeV, and for GRB photons with energy in the range of 10 GeV. I will introduce a strategy of data analysis which has the advantage of being applicable to several alternative possibilities for the laws of propagation of neutrinos and other particles in a quantum spacetime. Far from being conclusive, the results to be shown should nonetheless motivate a vigorous program of investigation following the methodology of multi-messenger astronomy.

We will discuss recent trapping and cooling experiments with optically levitated nanoparticles [1]. We will report on the cooling of all translational motional degrees of freedom of a single trapped silica particle to 1mK simultaneously at vacuum of 10-5 mbar using a parabolic mirror. We will further report on the squeezing of a thermal motional state of the trapped particle by rapid switching of the trap frequency [2]. 

We will further discuss ideas to experimentally test quantum mechanics by means of collapse models [3] by both matter-wave interferometry [4] and non-interferometric methods [5]. While first experimental bounds by non-interferometric tests have been achieved during the last year by a number of different experiments according to our idea [4], we at Southampton work on setting up the Nanoparticle Talbot Interferometer (NaTalI) to test the quantum superposition principle directly for one million atomic mass unit (amu) particles.

We will further discuss some ideas to probe the interplay between quantum mechanics and gravity by such levitated optomechanics experiments. One idea is to seek experimental evidence about the fundamentally quantum or classical nature of gravity by using the torsional motion of a non-spherical trapped particle [6], while a second idea is to test the effect of the gravity related shift of energy levels of the mechanical harmonic oscillator, which is predicted by semi-classical gravity (Schroedinger-Newton equation) [7] or thirdly try to pick up entanglement mediated by gravity [8].

Periodically driven (Floquet) systems can display entirely new many-body phases of matter that have no analog in stationary systems. One such phase is the Floquet time crystal, which spontaneously breaks a discrete time-translation symmetry. In this talk, I will survey the physics of these new phases of matter. I explain how they can be stabilized either through strong quenched disorder (many-body localization), or alternatively in clean systems in a "prethermal" regime which persists until a time that is exponentially long in a small parameter.

I will discuss a class of models in which thermal dark matter is lighter than an MeV. If dark matter thermalizes with the Standard Model below the temperature of neutrino-photon decoupling, constraints from measurements of the effective number of neutrino species are alleviated. This framework motivates new experiments in the direct search for sub-MeV thermal dark matter and light force carriers.

In this talk first I will introduce and motivate the problem of finding finite energy Yang-Mills instantons on curved backgrounds.  

After the historical introduction, I will focus the example of the Euclidean Schwarzschild (ES) manifold from Quantum gravity. The ES manifold was first introduced by Hawking in the late 70's. It is an asymptotically locally flat solution of the Euclidean Einstein equation, but not hyper-Kahler, which makes instanton theory harder. Throughout the past four decades, related results have been sporadic: there have been only finitely many (at most 2) known solutions for each energy value.

In our work, making use of an old idea of Witten, and subsequently Taubes and Garcia-Prada, we produce infinitely many unit energy solutions, and also solutions of continuously varying energy, a feature (seemingly) unique to asymptotically locally flat spaces. These instantons describe vortex-like pseudoparticles; at the end of the talk I will present an intuitive picture in terms of planar (Ginzburg-Landau) vortices.

This is joint work with Gonçalo Oliveira (IMPA).