iTHEMS Theoretical Physics Seminar
90 events
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Seminar
A Strategy for Proving the Strong Eigenstate Thermalization Hypothesis: Chaotic Systems and Holography
April 3 (Thu) at 16:00 - 17:00, 2025
Taishi Kawamoto (Ph.D. Student / JSPS Research Fellow DC, Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics, Kyoto University)
The strong eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH) provides a sufficient condition for thermalization and equilibration. Although it is expected to hold in a wide class of highly chaotic theories, there are only a few analytic examples demonstrating the strong ETH in special cases, often through methods related to integrability. In this talk, I will explore sufficient conditions for the strong ETH that may apply to a broad range of chaotic theories. These conditions are expressed as inequalities involving the long-time averages of real-time thermal correlators. Specifically, I will discuss bottom-up holographic models that satisfy these conditions under certain assumptions, which are expected to hold in such models. This talk is based on the preprint 2411.09746 [hep-th].
Venue: Hybrid Format (3F #359 and Zoom), Seminar Room #359
Event Official Language: English
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Seminar
How to define a Majorana fermion?
February 20 (Thu) at 13:00 - 14:30, 2025
Kazuo Fujikawa (Professor Emeritus, The University of Tokyo)
It is fundamental in particle physics if the neutrino is a Dirac fermion or a Majorana fermion, and the seesaw model gives naturally a Majorana neutrino in an extension of the Standard Model. However, the commonly used chirality changing \(pseudo-C symmetry \) \(\nu^{\tilde C}_L=C\overline{\nu_L}^T\) of a chiral fermion is not defined in Lagrangian field theory. Precisely speaking, the neutrinoless double beta decay is not described by the pseudo-C symmetry. The Majorana neutrino obtained after a Bogoliubov-type canonical transformation, which is the one originally defined by Majorana using a Dirac-type fermion, describes consistently all the properties expected for the Majorana neutrino. Physical implication of this fact is briefly discussed.
Venue: Seminar Room #359 (Main Venue) / via Zoom
Event Official Language: English
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Seminar
New topological quantum order in 2D lattices from non-invertible symmetries
February 18 (Tue) at 15:00 - 16:00, 2025
Ayan Mukhopadhyay (Associate Professor, Valparaiso University, Chile)
I will introduce an exactly solvable 2D lattice model which reveals a large number of distinct topological phases with non-invertible (generalized) symmetries. In all these topological phases, which have topological ground state degeneracy, a commutative stabilizer monoid of Hermitian operators leave the ground state invariant and can also distinguish *all* local excitations, (These symmetries are indeed symmetry operations.) There exists novel confined fractonic excitations which change the nature of deconfined excitatons profoundly. The fusion rules form an associative but noncommutative. non-Abelian and non-unital category, and are distinct for each of these phases. A class of these phases are adiabatically connected to a limit which can be described in terms of generalized free field theories. I will describe systematic ways to construct such phases. I will also discuss phases which do not have generalized free field limits. These phases have novel forms of non-local entanglement as many of them share the same topological entanglement entropy. They also violate the entanglement bootstrap axioms. When the phases do not have a generalized free field limit, the violation of the entanglement bootstrap axioms can happen for arbitrary large subregions signifying new forms of long-range entanglement.
Venue: Hybrid Format (3F #359 and Zoom), Seminar Room #359
Event Official Language: English
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Seminar
Linking quantum error correction and gauge theories with quantum reference frames
February 14 (Fri) at 10:30 - 11:30, 2025
Philipp Hoehn (Assistant Professor, Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST))
Redundancy is the hallmark of both quantum error correction and gauge theories. In this talk, I will show that this analogy is not merely a coincidence but that there is a deeper underlying structural relationship. The key ingredient to this observation is quantum reference frames (QRFs), which constitute a universal tool for dealing with symmetries in quantum systems. They define a split between redundant and physical information in gauge systems, thereby establishing a notion of encoding in that context. This leads to an exact dictionary between (group-based) quantum error correcting codes and QRF setups. In stabilizer codes, this uncovers a correspondence between errors and QRFs: every maximal set of correctable errors generates a unique QRF, and each QRF is associated with a unique class of correctable errors. This allows for a reinterpretation of the Knill-Laflamme condition and novel insights into the relation between correctability and redundancy. The dictionary also reveals a novel error duality, based on Pontryagin duality, and somewhat akin to electromagnetic duality. Time permitting, I will illustrate these findings in surface codes, which can be understood as both codes and lattice gauge theories. These findings may find use in code design and quantum simulations of gauge theories.
Venue: #345-347, 3F, Main Research Building
Event Official Language: English
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Seminar
Reheating after a cosmological constant relaxation and gravitational waves lensed by a supermassive black hole
January 30 (Thu) at 14:00 - 15:30, 2025
Paul Martens (Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Physics, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, China)
This presentation will be articulated in two parts. In a first part, I will present the a reheating mechanism that follows a dynamically relaxed cosmological constant. The latter is achieved by the dynamics of a scalar field whose kinetic term is modulated by an inverse power of spacetime curvature. While it is at work against radiative corrections to the dark energy, this process alone would wipe out not only the vacuum energy, but also all other matter contents. A reheating phase is thus introduced, which exploits a null-energy-condition violating sector. In a second part, I shall present a more recent and still ongoing project to describe and characterize the lensing of gravitational waves by an active galactic nuclei (or any supermassive black hole), in the geometric limit. Such systems are simple enough for constraints to be derived with only few assumptions. Yet, they present interesting features that could provide information on e.g. on binary black hole formation mechanisms and quasinormal modes.
Venue: Hybrid Format (3F #359 and Zoom), Seminar Room #359
Event Official Language: English
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Seminar
Krylov subspace method for quantum dynamics
December 23 (Mon) at 14:00 - 15:00, 2024
Kazutaka Takahashi (Postdoctoral Researcher, Department of Physics and Materials Science, University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg)
For a given system, the structure of the minimal subspace where the state unfolds determines the static and dynamical properties of the state. The Krylov subspace method is a mathematical framework for constructing the space systematically and has been applied to a wide variety of problems. The method was applicable only for systems with time-indepedent generators. As applications to quantum dynamics with time-dependent Hamiltonians, we discuss the constrution of the adiabatic gauge potential and the generalization of the Krylov algorithm to time-dependent generators.
Venue: Hybrid Format (3F #359 and Zoom), Seminar Room #359
Event Official Language: English
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Seminar
Perturbative unitarity of Higgs inflation in the Riemannian and generalized geometry
December 13 (Fri) at 16:00 - 17:30, 2024
Yusuke Mikura (Ph.D. Student, C-Lab, Department of Physics, Institute for Advanced Research, Nagoya University)
In a simple Higgs inflation model in metric-affine gravity, it is known that its UV cutoff is much smaller than the Planck scale. While it calls for UV completion, a concrete example has not yet been found, even with the large-N limit known as a successful technique to complete an original Higgs inflation defined on the Riemannian geometry. In this talk, after a review of the unitarity issue and previous attempts to complete Higgs inflation models, we investigate how small deformation of the simple Higgs inflation affects the emergence and properties of dynamical fields particularly in the large-N limit.
Venue: Hybrid Format (3F #359 and Zoom), Seminar Room #359
Event Official Language: English
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Seminar
Dark matter from inflationary quantum fluctuations
December 9 (Mon) at 14:00 - 15:30, 2024
Mohammad Ali Gorji (Junior Faculty, Center for Theoretical Physics of the Universe, Institute for Basic Science, Republic of Korea)
We explore a scenario in which dark matter is a massive bosonic field, arising solely from quantum fluctuations generated during inflation. In this framework, dark matter exhibits primordial isocurvature perturbations with an amplitude of O(1) at small scales that are beyond the reach of current observations, such as those from the CMB and large-scale structure. Assuming a monochromatic initial power spectrum, we identify the viable parameter space defined by dark matter mass and the length scale of perturbations. A key prediction of this scenario is copious formation of subsolar dark matter halos at high redshifts.
Venue: Hybrid Format (3F #359 and Zoom), Seminar Room #359
Event Official Language: English
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Seminar
Nuclear clustering phenomena revealed by knockout reaction
November 20 (Wed) at 15:30 - 17:00, 2024
Kazuki Yoshida (Assistant Professor, Research Center for Nuclear Physics, Osaka University)
Nuclear clustering is one of the unique phenomena in the nucleon many-body system. Historically, alpha formation has been known since the very early years of the nuclear physics, in the light and heavy mass regions. The former is known as the alpha clustering and its threshold rule, which was introduced by the Ikeda diagram in 1968. The latter has been known since the beginning of the nuclear physics as the alpha decay phenomena; the formation of alpha particles and their tunneling through the Coulomb barrier. Recently, the alpha clustering has been experimentally confirmed in the medium mass nuclei, 112-124Sn (Tin isotopes), using the alpha knockout reaction. Triggered by the experimental observation, the alpha knockout reaction is used as a reaction probe for the alpha clustering phenomena. In this talk, I will give an overview of the clustering phenomena and its reaction observables, in particular I will introduce the idea that the alpha knockout reaction can be a probe for the alpha formation on the alpha decay nuclei. In general, this idea can be applied to probe the particle trapped in the potential resonance.
Venue: Hybrid Format (3F #359 and Zoom), Seminar Room #359
Event Official Language: English
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Seminar
Forming primordial black holes
November 11 (Mon) at 14:00 - 15:30, 2024
Zachary Picker (Postdoctoral Researcher, University of California, Los Angeles, USA)
Primordial black holes (PBHs) are black holes which form in the early universe. Not only are PBHs good dark matter candidates, but they have a wide range of fascinating phenomenology (even if they are only a fraction of the dark matter). In this talk I will review a somewhat under-discussed aspect of the PBH gospel---their formation mechanisms. In fact, there is a wide variety of ways to form PBHs of different sizes and abundances, and many of our favorite BSM theories can have PBHs in their spectra. I will then discuss some of our particular upcoming research on PBH formation, where attractive Yukawa forces in a dark sector can lead to the early formation of dense dark structures called Fermi balls which can collapse to black holes, with novel cosmological implications.
Venue: Hybrid Format (3F #359 and Zoom), Seminar Room #359
Event Official Language: English
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Seminar
Quantum signature kernels
October 30 (Wed) at 14:00 - 15:00, 2024
Samuel Crew (Postdoctoral Fellow, Imperial College London, UK)
Arising from rough path theory, the signature transform captures features of time-series data by constructing a so-called path signature. This feature has proven valuable for various machine learning tasks. However, computing the associated signature kernel classically remains computationally intensive. In this talk, I will present recent developments in generalising the signature kernel to randomised Lie group path developments. I will discuss a quantum approach via matrix models with an associated unitary quantum signature kernel to propose a quantum algorithm for its computation.
Venue: Hybrid Format (3F #359 and Zoom), Seminar Room #359
Event Official Language: English
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Seminar
Holographic Gubser flow
October 29 (Tue) at 13:30 - 14:30, 2024
Sukrut Mondkar (Postdoctoral Researcher, Harish-Chandra Research Institute, India)
Gubser flow is an evolution with cylindrical and boost symmetries, which can be best studied by mapping the future wedge of Minkowski space ℝ^{(3,1)} to dS_3 × ℝ in a conformal relativistic theory. Here, we sharpen the analytic results of Banerjee, Mitra, Mukhopadhyay Soloviev, EPJC (2024) and validate them via the first numerical exploration of the Gubser flow in a holographic conformal field theory. Remarkably, the leading generic behavior at large de Sitter time is free-streaming in transverse directions and the sub-leading behavior is that of a color glass condensate. We also show that Gubser flow can be smoothly glued to the vacuum outside the future Minkowski wedge generically given that the energy density vanishes faster than any power when extrapolated to early proper time or to large distances from the central axis. We find that at intermediate times the ratio of both the transverse and longitudinal pressures to the energy density converge approximately to a fixed point which is hydrodynamic only for large initial energy densities. We argue that our results suggest that the Gubser flow is better applied to collective behavior in jets rather than the full medium in the phenomenology of heavy ion collisions and can reveal new clues to the mechanism of confinement. The talk will be based on Mitra, Mondkar, Mukhopadhyay, Soloviev, arxiv:2408.04001/hep-th (accepted for publication in JHEP).
Venue: Hybrid Format (3F #359 and Zoom), Main Research Building
Event Official Language: English
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Seminar
Open Effective Field Theories for primordial cosmology
October 18 (Fri) at 13:30 - 15:00, 2024
Thomas Colas (Postdoc, Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, University of Cambridge, UK)
Imprints of new physics on observable cosmology may require the modelling of dissipation and noise. In this talk, I will present an open effective field theory for primordial cosmology where the inflaton sector interacts with an unknown environment. The approach recovers the usual effective field theory of inflation in a certain limit and extends it to account for local dissipation and noise. Non-Gaussianities are generated that peak in the equilateral configuration for large dissipation and in the folded configurations for small dissipation. The construction provides an embedding for local dissipative models of inflation and a framework to study dissipative and stochastic effects in cosmology.
Venue: Hybrid Format (3F #359 and Zoom), Seminar Room #359
Event Official Language: English
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Seminar
Application of Complex Scaling Method to Scattering Calculations of Atomic Systems
October 8 (Tue) at 13:30 - 15:00, 2024
Taishi Sano (Master's Student, Waseda University)
Based on our paper [1], this presentation will show the application of complex scaling method(CSM) to scattering calculations of atomic systems. While CSM has been extensively used to study resonance states, the application of CSM to scattering calculations was proposed recently with applications in nuclear physics. In our study, we apply the CSM scattering calculation to atomic systems and propose an effective correction to avoid the problem of slow convergence to the number of complex eigen energies. Our results with the effective correction agree well with those reported in the literature for positron scattering with the targets Ne, Ar, Kr, Xe, H, He, He+, and Li2+. In this presentation, we introduce the framework of phase-shift calculation using the CSM together with the examples of the positron scattering, and advantages and features of this approach. [This seminar is co-hosted by Few-body Systems in Physics Laboratory, RIKEN Nishina Center.]
Venue: Hybrid Format (3F #359 and Zoom), Seminar Room #359
Event Official Language: English
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Seminar
Algebraic curves and parametric resurgence
July 29 (Mon) at 16:30 - 17:45, 2024
Samuel Crew (Postdoctoral Fellow, Imperial College London, UK)
In this talk I will discuss recent work together with Ines Aniceto (Southampton) on algebraic examples of parametric resurgence. We discuss a simple example to elucidate the so-called higher order Stokes phenomena and discuss how a Borel inner-outer matching procedure allows us to view parametric resurgence as a series of non-parametric resurgence problems.
Venue: Hybrid Format (3F #359 and Zoom), Main Research Building
Event Official Language: English
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Seminar
Thermal radiation exchange in primordial gravitational waves
July 18 (Thu) at 13:30 - 15:00, 2024
Atsuhisa Ota (Postdoctoral Fellow, Institute for Advanced Study, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, China)
The radiation-dominated universe is a key component of standard Big Bang cosmology. Radiation comprises numerous quantum elementary particles, and its macroscopic behavior is described by taking the quantum thermal average of its constituents. The dynamics of gravitational waves are considered in this smooth fluid. While interactions between individual particles and gravitational waves are often neglected in this context, it raises the question of whether such a hydrodynamical approximation is reasonable. To address this question, we explored the quantum mechanical aspects of gravitational waves in a universe dominated by a massless scalar field, whose averaged energy-momentum tensor serves as background radiation. We computed thermal loop corrections for the gravitational wave power spectrum using the Schwinger-Keldysh formalism. Interestingly, we found that the loop effect enhances the super-horizon primordial gravitational wave spectrum, indicating that the inflationary spectrum is not conserved, contrary to conventional wisdom. These findings have significant implications for our understanding of the early universe. In this talk, I will begin with the basics of cosmology and explain the significance of these results and their relevant observational consequences.
Venue: Seminar Room #359 (Main Venue) / via Zoom
Event Official Language: English
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Seminar
Surface defect in N=4 SYM and integrability
July 17 (Wed) at 16:00 - 17:00, 2024
Hiroki Kawai (Ph.D. Student, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA)
In the N=4 super Yang-Mills theory, it is well-known that the one-loop anomalous dimension operator for the single trace operators is equivalent to an integrable spin chain. Recent works have extended the application of integrability to scenarios involving a BPS boundary or defects such as 't Hooft line. One can describe the correlators of the single trace operators as an overlap between the Bethe state and the corresponding defect state. This overlap can be exactly calculated if the defect state is a so-called integrable state. We show that the state corresponding to the Gukov-Witten surface defect is integrable. We also calculate the tree-level one-point function of the single trace operators and set up the perturbation calculation in this defect background for one-loop corrections.
Venue: Hybrid Format (3F #359 and Zoom), Main Research Building
Event Official Language: English
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Seminar
Quantum Error Transmutation
July 17 (Wed) at 10:30 - 11:30, 2024
Daniel Zhang (Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Oxford, UK)
We introduce a generalisation of quantum error correction, relaxing the requirement that a code should identify and correct a set of physical errors on the Hilbert space of a quantum computer exactly, instead allowing recovery up to a pre-specified admissible set of errors on the code space. We call these quantum error transmuting codes. They are of particular interest for the simulation of noisy quantum systems, and for use in algorithms inherently robust to errors of a particular character. Necessary and sufficient algebraic conditions on the set of physical and admissible errors for error transmutation are derived, generalising the Knill-Laflamme quantum error correction conditions. We demonstrate how some existing codes, including fermionic encodings, have error transmuting properties to interesting classes of admissible errors. Additionally, we report on the existence of some new codes, including low-qubit and translation invariant examples.
Venue: Hybrid Format (3F #359 and Zoom), Seminar Room #359
Event Official Language: English
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Seminar
Mapping the Phase Space of toric Calabi-Yau 3-folds using Explainable Machine Learning
July 16 (Tue) at 13:30 - 14:30, 2024
Rak-Kyeong Seong (Assistant Professor, Department of Mathematical Sciences, Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), Republic of Korea)
This talk will give a brief introduction on how bipartite graphs on a torus represent 4-dimensional quiver gauge theories and their moduli space which is a toric Calabi-Yau 3-fold - a cone over a Sasaki-Einstein 5-manifold. Under mirror symmetry, the bipartite graph can be identified with the tropical projection of the mirror curve obtained from the Newton polytope associated to the toric Calabi-Yau 3-fold. Changes to the complex structure moduli of the mirror Calabi-Yau determine the overall shape of the bipartite graph on the torus. For certain choices of complex structure moduli, the bipartite graph undergoes a graph mutation which is identified with Seiberg duality of the associated 4-dimensional quiver gauge theory. This talk will discuss recent progress in understanding when such mutations occur from the point of view of Calabi-Yau mirror symmetry with the help of new computational techniques such as machine learning.
Venue: Hybrid Format (3F #359 and Zoom), Seminar Room #359
Event Official Language: English
90 events