Center for Theoretical Physics Publications

We begin developing tools to compute off-shell string amplitudes with the recently proposed hyperbolic string vertices of Costello and Zwiebach. Exploiting the relation between a boundary value problem for Liouville's equation and a monodromy problem for a Fuchsian equation, we construct the local coordinates around the punctures for the generalized hyperbolic three-string vertex and investigate their various limits. This vertex corresponds to the general pants diagram with three boundary geodesics of unequal lengths. We derive the conservation laws associated with such vertex and perform sample computations. We note the relevance of our construction to the calculations of the higher-order string vertices using the pants decomposition of hyperbolic Riemann surfaces.

The axial charge of the triton is investigated using lattice quantum chromodynamics (QCD). Extending previous work at heavier quark masses, calculations are performed using three ensembles of gauge field configurations generated with quark masses corresponding to a pion mass of 450 MeV. Finite-volume energy levels for the triton, as well as for the deuteron and diproton systems, are extracted from analysis of correlation functions computed on these ensembles, and the corresponding energies are extrapolated to infinite volume using finite-volume pionless effective field theory (FVEFT). It is found with high likelihood that there is a compact bound state with the quantum numbers of the triton at these quark masses. The axial current matrix elements are computed using background field techniques on one of the ensembles and FVEFT is again used to determine the axial charge of the proton and triton. A simple quark mass extrapolation of these results and earlier calculations at heavier quark masses leads to a value of the ratio of the triton to proton axial charges at the physical quark masses of \(g_A^{^{3}{\rm H}}/g_A^p=0.91\substack{+0.07 \\ -0.09}\). This result is consistent with the ratio determined from experiment and prefers values less than unity (in which case the triton axial charge would be unmodified from that of the proton), thereby demonstrating that QCD can explain the modification of the axial charge of the triton.

I review recent applications of the open quantum system framework in the understanding of quarkonium suppression in heavy-ion collisions, which has been used as a probe of the quark-gluon plasma for decades. The derivation of the Lindblad equations for quarkonium in both the quantum Brownian motion and the quantum optical limits and their semiclassical counterparts is explained. The hierarchy of time scales assumed in the derivation is justified from the separation of energy scales in nonrelativistic effective field theories of QCD. Physical implications of the open quantum system approach are also discussed. Finally, I list some open questions for future studies.

Path integral contour deformations have been shown to mitigate sign and signal-to-noise problems associated with phase fluctuations in lattice field theories. We define a family of contour deformations applicable to \(SU(N)\) lattice gauge theory that can reduce sign and signal-to-noise problems associated with complex actions and complex observables. For observables, these contours can be used to define deformed observables with identical expectation value but different variance. As a proof-of-principle, we apply machine learning techniques to optimize the deformed observables associated with Wilson loops in two dimensional \(SU(2)\) and \(SU(3)\) gauge theory. We study loops consisting of up to 64 plaquettes and achieve variance reduction of up to 4 orders of magnitude.

This notebook tutorial demonstrates a method for sampling Boltzmann distributions of lattice field theories using a class of machine learning models known as normalizing flows. The ideas and approaches proposed in arXiv:1904.12072, arXiv:2002.02428, and arXiv:2003.06413 are reviewed and a concrete implementation of the framework is presented. We apply this framework to a lattice scalar field theory and to U(1) gauge theory, explicitly encoding gauge symmetries in the flow-based approach to the latter. This presentation is intended to be interactive and working with the attached Jupyter notebook is recommended.

There have been a number of recent proposals to enhance the performance of machine learning strategies for collider physics by combining many distinct events into a single ensemble feature. To evaluate the efficacy of these proposals, we study the connection between single-event classifiers and multi-event classifiers under the assumption that collider events are independent and identically distributed (IID). We show how one can build optimal multi-event classifiers from single-event classifiers, and we also show how to construct multi-event classifiers such that they produce optimal single-event classifiers. This is illustrated for a Gaussian example as well as for classification tasks relevant for searches and measurements at the Large Hadron Collider. We extend our discussion to regression tasks by showing how they can be phrased in terms of parametrized classifiers. Empirically, we find that training a single-event (per-instance) classifier is more effective than training a multi-event (per-ensemble) classifier, as least for the cases we studied, and we relate this fact to properties of the loss function gradient in the two cases. While we did not identify a clear benefit from using multi-event classifiers in the collider context, we speculate on the potential value of these methods in cases involving only approximate independence, as relevant for jet substructure studies.

I examine the regime of forward scattering of an energetic particle in a Plasma medium in thermal equilibrium. Treating the particle as an open quantum system interacting with a bath, I look at the time evolution of the reduced density matrix of the system. The kinematic and dynamical time scales that emerge can exist in several possible hierarchies which can lead to different EFT formulations. I show that in certain hierarchies, it becomes necessary to account for arbitrary number of coherent exchanges between the system and the bath going beyond the independent scattering paradigm. Analytic results are obtained in certain limits and the formalism is applied for the measurement of transverse momentum broadening of a quark in a Quark Gluon Plasma medium.

We develop a factorization framework to compute the double differential cross section in soft drop groomed jet mass and groomed jet radius. We describe the effective theories in the large, intermediate, and small groomed jet radius regions defined by the interplay of the jet mass and the groomed jet radius measurement. As an application we present the NLL\('\) results for the perturbative moments that are related to the coefficients \(C_1\) and \(C_2\) that specify the leading hadronization corrections up to three universal parameters. We compare our results with Monte Carlo simulations and a calculation using the coherent branching method.

We review the prospects for quarkonium-production studies in proton and nuclear collisions accessible during the upcoming phases of the CERN Large Hadron Collider operation after 2021, including the ultimate high-luminosity phase, with increased luminosities compared to LHC Runs 1 and 2. We address the current experimental and theoretical open issues in the field and the perspectives for future studies in quarkonium-related physics through the exploitation of the huge data samples to be collected in proton-proton, with integrated luminosities reaching up to 3/ab, in proton-nucleus and in nucleus-nucleus collisions, both in the collider and fixed-target modes. Such investigations include, among others, those of: (i) the quarkonia produced in association with other hard particles; (ii) the chi(Q) and eta(Q) down to small transverse momenta; (iii) the constraints brought in by quarkonia on gluon PDFs, nuclear PDFs, TMDs, GPDs and GTMDs, as well as on the low-x parton dynamics; (iv) the gluon Sivers effect in polarised-nucleon collisions; (v) the properties of the quark-gluon plasma produced in ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions and of collective partonic effects in general; and (vi) double and triple parton scatterings.

We present results for the 2-jettiness differential distribution for boosted top quark pairs produced in \(e^+e^-\) collisions in the peak region accounting for QCD large-logarithm resummation at next-to-next-to-next-to-leading logarithmic (N\(^3\)LL) order and fixed-order corrections to matrix elements at next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) calculated in the framework of soft-collinear effective theory and boosted heavy quark effective theory. Electroweak and finite-width effects are included at leading order. We study the perturbative convergence of the cross section in the pole and MSR mass schemes, with and without soft gap subtractions. We find that there is a partial cancellation between the pole mass and soft function renormalons. When renormalon subtractions concerning the top mass and the soft function are implemented, the perturbative uncertainties are, however, systematically smaller and an improvement in the stability of the peak position is observed. We find that the top MSR mass may be determined with perturbative uncertainties well below \(100\)\,MeV from the peak position of the 2-jettiness distribution. This result has important applications for Monte Carlo top quark mass calibrations.

We prove that consistency of the holographic dictionary implies a hallmark prediction of the weak cosmic censorship conjecture: that in classical gravity, trapped surfaces lie behind event horizons. In particular, the existence of a trapped surface implies the existence of an event horizon, and that furthermore this event horizon must be outside of the trapped surface. More precisely, we show that the formation of event horizons outside of a strong gravity region is a direct consequence of causal wedge inclusion, which is required by entanglement wedge reconstruction. We make few assumptions beyond the absence of evaporating singularities in strictly classical gravity. We comment on the implication that spacetimes with naked trapped surfaces do not admit a holographic dual, note a possible application to holographic complexity, and speculate on the dual CFT interpretation of a trapped surface.

We present the analytic formula for the Energy-Energy Correlation (EEC) in electron-positron annihilation computed in perturbative QCD to next-to-next-to-next-to-leading order (N\(^3\)LO) in the back-to-back limit. In particular, we consider the EEC arising from the annihilation of an electron-positron pair into a virtual photon as well as a Higgs boson and their subsequent inclusive decay into hadrons. Our computation is based on a factorization theorem of the EEC formulated within Soft-Collinear Effective Theory (SCET) for the back-to-back limit. We obtain the last missing ingredient for our computation - the jet function - from a recent calculation of the transverse-momentum dependent fragmentation function (TMDFF) at N\(^3\)LO. We combine the newly obtained N\(^3\)LO jet function with the well known hard and soft function to predict the EEC in the back-to-back limit. The leading transcendental contribution of our analytic formula agrees with previously obtained results in \(\mathcal{N} = 4\) supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory. We obtain the \(N=2\) Mellin moment of the bulk region of the EEC using momentum sum rules. Finally, we obtain the first resummation of the EEC in the back-to-back limit at N\(^3\)LL\(^\prime\) accuracy, resulting in a factor of \(\sim 4\) reduction of uncertainties in the peak region compared to N\(^3\)LL predictions.

We compute the unpolarized quark and gluon transverse-momentum dependent fragmentation functions (TMDFFs) at next-to-next-to-next-to-leading order (N\(^3\)LO) in perturbative QCD. The calculation is based on a relation between the TMDFF and the limit of the semi-inclusive deep inelastic scattering cross section where all final-state radiation becomes collinear to the detected hadron. The required cross section is obtained by analytically continuing our recent computation of the Drell-Yan and Higgs boson production cross section at N\(^3\)LO expanded around the limit of all final-state radiation becoming collinear to one of the initial states. Our results agree with a recent independent calculation by Luo et al.

We study the brane world scenario with codimension higher than one. When the extra dimensions are not small, localization of gravity around the brane is needed in order to reproduce the observable four-dimensional gravity. We focus on the case of noncompact extra dimensions, where the possibility of localized gravity becomes non-trivial. We show that in large class of gravity models, localization of gravity is not possible for codimension-2 branes with at least one noncompact extra dimension. With additional mild assumptions on field backgrounds, we also show that it is not possible for higher codimensional branes with two or more noncompact extra dimensions.

We observe that in many F-theory models, tuning a specific gauge group \(G\) and matter content \(M\) under certain circumstances leads to an automatic enhancement to a larger gauge group \(G' \supset G\) and matter content \(M' \supset M\). We propose that this is true for any theory \(G, M\) whenever there exists a containing theory \(G', M'\) that cannot be Higgsed down to \(G, M\). We give a number of examples including non-Higgsable gauge factors, nonabelian gauge factors, abelian gauge factors, and exotic matter. In each of these cases, tuning an F-theory model with the desired features produces either an enhancement or an inconsistency, often when the associated anomaly coefficient becomes too large. This principle applies to a variety of models in the apparent 6D supergravity swampland, including some of the simplest cases with U(1) and SU(N) gauge groups and generic matter, as well as infinite families of U(1) models with higher charges presented in the prior literature, potentially ruling out all these apparent swampland theories.

We study four coupled SYK models and nearly AdS\(_2\) gravities. In the SYK model side, we construct a model that couples two copies of two coupled SYK models. In nearly AdS\(_2\) gravity side, we entangle matter fields in two copies of traversable wormholes. In both cases, the systems show first order phase transitions at zero temperature by changing couplings, which is understood as the exchange of traversable wormhole configurations. In nearly AdS\(_2\) gravity cases, by exchanging the role of space and time the wormholes are interpreted as bra-ket wormholes. In Lorentzian signature, these bra-ket wormholes lead to two closed universes that are entangled with each other as well as matter fields in the flat space without dynamical gravity. We study the effect of projection or entangling operation for matters on flat spaces and they cause phase transitions in bra-ket wormholes, which leads to the pair annihilation of closed universes. Using these bra-ket wormholes, we discuss the way to embed states in 2d holographic CFTs into Hilbert space of many 2d free fields.

Bell's inequality sets a strict threshold for how strongly correlated the outcomes of measurements on two or more particles can be, if the outcomes of each measurement are independent of actions undertaken at arbitrarily distant locations. Quantum mechanics, on the other hand, predicts that measurements on particles in entangled states can be more strongly correlated than Bell's inequality would allow. Whereas experimental tests conducted over the past half-century have consistently measured violations of Bell's inequality---consistent with the predictions of quantum mechanics---the experiments have been subject to one or more "loopholes," by means of which certain alternatives to quantum theory could remain consistent with the experimental results. This chapter reviews three of the most significant loopholes, often dubbed the "locality," "fair-sampling," and "freedom-of-choice" loopholes, and describes how recent experiments have addressed them.

We investigate the combined effects of anisotropy and a magnetic field in strongly interacting gauge theories by the gauge/gravity correspondence. Our main motivation is the quark-gluon plasma produced in off-central heavy-ion collisions which exhibits large anisotropy in pressure gradients as well as large external magnetic fields. We explore two different configurations, with the anisotropy either parallel or perpendicular to the magnetic field, focusing on the competition and interplay between the two. A detailed study of the RG flow in the ground state reveals a rich structure where depending on which of the two, anisotropy or magnetic field, is stronger, intermediate geometries with approximate AdS\(_4\times \mathbb{R}\) and AdS\(_3\times \mathbb{R}^2\) factors arise. This competition is also manifest in the phase structure at finite temperature, specifically in the dependence of the chiral transition temperature on anisotropy and magnetic field, from which we infer the presence of inverse magnetic and anisotropic catalyses of the chiral condensate. Finally, we consider other salient observables in the theory, including the quark-antiquark potential, shear viscosity, entanglement entropy and the butterfly velocity. We demonstrate that they serve as good probes of the theory, in particular, distinguishing between the effects of the magnetic field and anisotropy in the ground and plasma states. We also find that the butterfly velocity, which codifies how fast information propagates in the plasma, exhibits a rich structure as a function of temperature, anisotropy and magnetic field, exceeding the conformal value in certain regimes.

Dark matter (DM) could be a relic of freeze-in through a light mediator, where the DM is produced by extremely feeble, IR-dominated processes in the thermal Standard Model plasma. In the simplest viable models with the DM mass below the MeV scale, the DM has a small effective electric charge and is born with a nonthermal phase-space distribution. This DM candidate would cause observable departures from standard cosmological evolution. In this work, we combine data from the cosmic microwave background (CMB), Lyman-\(\alpha\) forest, quasar lensing, stellar streams, and Milky Way satellite abundances to set a lower limit on freeze-in DM masses up to \(\sim 20\,\)keV, with the exact constraint depending on whether the DM thermalizes in its own sector. We perform forecasts for the CMB-S4 experiment, the Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array, and the Vera Rubin Observatory, finding that freeze-in DM masses up to \(\sim 80\,\)keV can be explored. These cosmological probes are highly complementary with proposed direct-detection efforts to search for this DM candidate.

We fully explore the thermal freezeout histories of a vector-portal dark matter model, in the region of parameter space in which the ratio of masses of the dark photon \(A^{\prime}\) and dark matter \(\chi\) is in the range \(1 \lesssim m_{A^{\prime}}/m_{\chi} \lesssim 2\). In this region \(2 \rightarrow 2\) and \(3 \rightarrow 2\) annihilation processes within the dark sector, as well as processes that transfer energy between the dark sector and the Standard Model, play important roles in controlling the thermal freezeout of the dark matter. We carefully track the temperatures of all species, relaxing the assumption of previous studies that the dark and Standard Model sectors remain in thermal equilibrium throughout dark matter freezeout. Our calculations reveal a rich set of novel pathways which lead to the observed relic density of dark matter, and we develop a simple analytic understanding of these different regimes. The viable parameter space in our model provides a target for future experiments searching for light (MeV-GeV) dark matter, and includes regions where the dark matter self-interaction cross section is large enough to affect the small-scale structure of galaxies.