Branch-cut Singularities Research Articles

Exploring the Quantum Spectral Curve for AdS3/CFT2

Despite the rich and fruitful history of the integrability approach to string theory on the AdS3 × S3 × T4 background, it has not been possible to extract many concrete predictions from integrability, except in a strict asymptotic regime of large quantum numbers, due to the severity of wrapping effects. The situation changed radically with two independent and identical proposals for the Quantum Spectral Curve (QSC) for this system in a background of pure Ramond-Ramond flux. In other integrable superstring backgrounds there is compelling evidence that this formulation captures all wrapping effects exactly and describes the full planar spectrum. This great success motivates us to study the new proposed QSC and develop methods to extract from it concrete predictions for spectral data. The AdS3 × S3 × T4 case presents a significant novel feature and challenge compared to its higher-dimensional analogues — massless modes. It has been conjectured that these manifest themselves in a new property of this QSC: the non-quadratic nature of the branch-cut singularities of the QSC Q-functions. This feature implies new technical challenges in solving the QSC equations as compared to the well-studied case of N\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$ \\mathcal{N} $$\\end{document} = 4 SYM. In this paper we resolve these difficulties and obtain the first ever predictions for unprotected string excitations in the planar limit with finite quantum numbers and RR flux. We explain how to extract a systematic expansion around the analogue of the weak ’t Hooft coupling limit in N\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$ \\mathcal{N} $$\\end{document} = 4 SYM and also obtain high-precision numerical results. These concrete data and others obtainable from the QSC could help to identify the so-far mysterious dual CFT.

Random Cantor sets and mini-bands in local spectrum of quantum systems

In this paper we give a physically transparent picture of singular-continuous spectrum in disordered systems which possess a non-ergodic extended phase. We present a simple model of identically and independently distributed level spacing in the spectrum of local density of states and show how a fat tail appears in this distribution at the broad distribution of eigenfunction amplitudes. For the model with a power-law local spacing distribution we derive the correlation function K(ω) of the local density of states and show that depending on the relation between the eigenfunction fractal dimension D2 and the spectral fractal dimension Ds encoded in the power-law spacing distribution, a singular continuous spectrum of a random Cantor set or that of an isolated mini-band may appear. In the limit of an infinite number of degrees of freedom the function K(ω) in the non-ergodic extended phase is singular at ω=0 with the branch-cut singularity for the case of a random Cantor set and with the δ-function singularity for the case of an isolated mini-band. For an absolutely continuous spectrum K(ω) tends to a finite limit as ω→0. For an arbitrary local spacing distribution function we formulated a criterion of fractality of local spectrum and tested it on simple examples.

The analytic structure of the fixed charge expansion

We investigate the analytic properties of the fixed charge expansion for a number of conformal field theories in different space-time dimensions. The models investigated here are O(N) and QED3. We show that in d = 3 − ϵ dimensions the contribution to the O(N) fixed charge Q conformal dimensions obtained in the double scaling limit of large charge and vanishing ϵ is non-Borel summable, doubly factorial divergent, and with order sqrt{Q} optimal truncation order. By using resurgence techniques we show that the singularities in the Borel plane are related to worldline instantons that were discovered in the other double scaling limit of large Q and N of ref. [1]. In d = 4 − ϵ dimensions the story changes since in the same large Q and small E regime the next order corrections to the scaling dimensions lead to a convergent series. The resummed series displays a new branch cut singularity which is relevant for the stability of the O(N) large charge sector for negative ϵ. Although the QED3 model shares the same large charge behaviour of the O(N) model, we discover that at leading order in the large number of matter field expansion the large charge scaling dimensions are Borel summable, single factorial divergent, and with order Q optimal truncation order.

On two methods for quantitative unique continuation results for some nonlocal operators

In this article, we present two mechanisms for deducing logarithmic quantitative unique continuation bounds for certain classes of integral operators. In our first method, expanding the corresponding integral kernels, we exploit the logarithmic stability of the moment problem. In our second method we rely on the presence of branch-cut singularities for certain Fourier multipliers. As an application we present quantitative Runge approximation results for the operator with and acting on functions on

Analytic structure of thermodynamic systems with repulsive interactions

Thermodynamic properties of systems with repulsive interactions, are considered in the grand canonical ensemble. The analytic structure of the excluded-volume model in the complex plane of the system chemical potential (fugacity) is elaborated, based on the fact that the pressure function can be given in terms of the Lambert W-function. Even though the excluded volume model has no phase transitions at real values of the chemical potential, it does exhibit a branch cut singularity in the complex plane, thus limiting the convergence range of the Taylor expansion in the chemical potential. Close similarities to analytic properties of the other models with repulsive interactions, such as a cluster expansion model, the mean-field model, and the ideal Fermi gas model, are pointed out. As an example, repulsive baryonic interactions in a hadron gas, with a focus on the fugacity/virial and Taylor expansion methods used in lattice QCD, are presented. The asymptotic behavior of the Fourier expansion coefficients in these various models suggests that the singular part of net baryonic density can to leading order be universally expressed in terms of polylogarithms.

Cluster adjacency beyond MHV

We explore further the notion of cluster adjacency, focussing on non-MHV amplitudes. We extend the notion of adjacency to the BCFW decomposition of tree-level amplitudes. Adjacency controls the appearance of poles, both physical and spurious, in individual BCFW terms. We then discuss how this notion of adjacency is connected to the adjacency already observed at the level of symbols of scattering amplitudes which controls the appearance of branch cut singularities. Poles and symbols become intertwined by cluster adjacency and we discuss the relation of this property to the overline{Q} -equation which imposes constraints on the derivatives of the transcendental functions appearing in loop amplitudes.

Black holes, dark wormholes, and solitons in f(T) gravities

By choosing an appropriate vielbein basis, we obtain a class of spherically-symmetric solutions in $f(T)$ gravities. The solutions are asymptotic to Minkowski spacetimes with leading falloffs the same as those of the Schwarzschild black hole. In general, these solutions have branch-cut singularities in the middle. For appropriately chosen $f(T)$ functions, extremal black holes can also emerge. Furthermore, we obtain wormhole configurations whose spatial section is analogous to an Ellis wormhole, but $-g_{tt}$ runs from 0 to 1 as the proper radial coordinate runs from $-\infty$ to $+\infty$. Thus a signal sent from $-\infty$ to $+\infty$ through the wormhole will be infinitely red-shifted. We call such a spacetime configuration a dark wormhole. By introducing a bare cosmological constant $\Lambda_0$, we construct smooth solitons that are asymptotic to local AdS with an effective $\Lambda_{\rm eff}$. In the middle of bulk, the soliton metric behaves like the AdS of bare $\Lambda_0$ in global coordinates. We also embed AdS planar and Lifshitz black holes in $f(T)$ gravities. Finally we couple the Maxwell field to the $f(T)$ theories and construct electrically-charged solutions.

Hypergeometric resummation of self-consistent sunset diagrams for steady-state electron-boson quantum many-body systems out of equilibrium

A newly developed hypergeometric resummation technique [H. Mera et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 115, 143001 (2015)] provides an easy-to-use recipe to obtain conserving approximations within the self-consistent nonequilibrium many-body perturbation theory. We demonstrate the usefulness of this technique by calculating the phonon-limited electronic current in a model of a single-molecule junction within the self-consistent Born approximation for the electron-phonon interacting system, where the perturbation expansion for the nonequilibrium Green function in powers of the free bosonic propagator typically consists of a series of non-crossing \sunset" diagrams. Hypergeometric resummation preserves conservation laws and it is shown to provide substantial convergence acceleration relative to more standard approaches to self-consistency. This result strongly suggests that the convergence of the self-consistent \sunset" series is limited by a branch-cut singularity, which is accurately described by Gauss hypergeometric functions. Our results showcase an alternative approach to conservation laws and self-consistency where expectation values obtained from conserving perturbation expansions are \summed" to their self-consistent value by analytic continuation functions able to mimic the convergence-limiting singularity structure.

Gauge-invariant approach to quark dynamics

The main aspects of a gauge-invariant approach to the description of quark dynamics in the nonperturbative regime of QCD are first reviewed. In particular, the role of the parallel transport operation in constructing gauge-invariant Green's functions is presented, and the relevance of Wilson loops for the representation of the interaction is emphasized. Recent developments, based on the use of polygonal lines for the parallel transport operation, are then presented. An integro-differential equation is obtained for the quark Green's function defined with a phase factor along a single, straight line segment. It is solved exactly and analytically in the case of two-dimensional QCD in the large $N_c$ limit. The solution displays the dynamical mass generation phenomenon for quarks, with an infinite number of branch-cut singularities that are stronger than simple poles.

Additivity property and emergence of power laws in nonequilibrium steady states.

We show that an equilibriumlike additivity property can remarkably lead to power-law distributions observed frequently in a wide class of out-of-equilibrium systems. The additivity property can determine the full scaling form of the distribution functions and the associated exponents. The asymptotic behavior of these distributions is solely governed by branch-cut singularity in the variance of subsystem mass. To substantiate these claims, we explicitly calculate, using the additivity property, subsystem mass distributions in a wide class of previously studied mass aggregation models as well as in their variants. These results could help in the thermodynamic characterization of nonequilibrium critical phenomena.

Why is the neutrino oscillation formula expanded in Δm 21 2 /Δm 31 2 still accurate near the solar resonance in matter?

The conventional approximate formula for neutrino oscillation in matter which is obtained from the expansion in terms of the ratio of mass square differences $\alpha=\Delta m_{21}^{2}/\Delta m_{31}^{2}\approx0.03$, first proposed by Cervera, et al and Freund, turns out to be an accurate formula for accelerator neutrino experiments. Originally it required the neutrino energy to be well above the solar resonance to validate the expansion but it is found to be still very accurate when the formula is extrapolated to the resonance, which is practically important for the T2K experiment. This paper shows that the accuracy is guaranteed by cancellations of branch cut singularities and also, for the first time, analytically computes the actual error of the formula. The actual error implies that the original requirement can be safely removed in current experiments.

Singularity extraction for reflected Sommerfeld integrals over multilayered media

A new analytical-numerical method based on singularity extraction is presented for efficient and accurate evaluation of one of the reflected Sommerfeld integrals over multilayered media backed by a conducting (PEC) plane. Method is based on extraction of all the poles of the integrand. The method is demonstrated on one element of the tensor multilayered Green's function, where only the singular part of the integrand, i.e. the reflection coefficient, is taken into consideration, as the cause of the largest calculation difficulties. It was also shown that the method practically eliminates all the branch cut singularities except for one.

Modified saddle-point integral near a singularity for the large deviation function

Long-time-integrated quantities in stochastic processes, in or out of equilibrium, usually exhibit rare but huge fluctuations. Work or heat production is such a quantity, for which the probability distribution function displays an exponential decay characterized by the large deviation function (LDF). The LDF is often deduced from the cumulant generating function through the inverse Fourier transformation. The saddle-point integration method is a powerful technique to obtain the asymptotic results in the Fourier integral, but special care should be taken when the saddle point is located near a singularity of the integrand. In this paper, we present a modified saddle-point method to handle such a difficulty efficiently. We investigate the dissipated and injected heat production in equilibration processes with various initial conditions, for example, where the generating functions contain branch-cut singularities as well as power-law ones. Exploiting the new modified saddle-point integrations, we obtain the leading finite-time corrections for the LDFs, which are confirmed by numerical results.

Optimal contours for high-order derivatives

As a model of more general contour integration problems we consider the numerical calculation of highorder derivatives of holomorphic functions using Cauchy’s integral formula. Bornemann (2011, Accuracy and stability of computing high-order derivatives of analytic functions by Cauchy integrals. Found. Comput. Math., 11, 1–63) showed that the condition number of the Cauchy integral strongly depends on the chosen contour and solved the problem of minimizing the condition number for circular contours. In this paper, we minimize the condition number within the class of grid paths of step size h using Provan’s algorithm for finding a shortest enclosing walk in weighted graphs embedded in the plane. Numerical examples show that optimal grid paths yield small condition numbers even in those cases where circular contours are known to be of limited use, such as for functions with branch-cut singularities.

An Accurate and Efficient Evaluation of Planar Multilayered Green's Functions Using Modified Fast Hankel Transform Method

When the fast Hankel transform (FHT) filter technique is used to calculate the spatial-domain Green's functions for planar multilayered media, it can be difficult to obtain accurate numerical results because of branch-cut singularities and the surface-wave pole singularities. Although the singularities can be efficiently avoided through deforming the integration path of the Hankel transform from the real axis to the first quadrant in the complex plane, the argument of the integral kernel becomes a complex number so that the FHT filter algorithm cannot be directly applied. The modified FHT filter algorithm is proposed to overcome this problem by expressing the Bessel function with a complex argument as a sum of terms of product of Bessel function with the real part of the argument and Bessel function with the imaginary part of the argument. The FHT filter technique can then be applied to each expansion term. Numerical results confirm that the proposed approach has high accuracy and good efficiency in the near and intermediate fields. More importantly, it successfully extends the applicability of the conventional FHT method for general multilayered geometries.

Evaluation of quadratic cost functionals for a class of distributed-delay systems

The quadratic cost functional or integral square error (ISE) defined as I=∫0∞ e2(t) dt has been widely used in the analytical design of optimal control systems. In most control literature, the integral I, by virtue of Parseval's theorem, is represented by the complex integral (1/i2π)∫−i∞i∞ E(s)E(−s) ds, i=√−1, and many efficient parametric expressions derived for the evaluation of I are based on a product-to-sum decomposition E(s)E(−s)=Z(s)+Z(−s). The evaluation of ISE for linear feedback control of systems involving a distributed delay exp(−τs/√(s2+b2)) is considered. It is shown that because multivalued square root function (s2+b2)1/2 has a non-removable branch-cut singularity on the imaginary axis, the product-to-sum decomposition approach fails to generate a parametric expression for the evaluation of I. Also shown is that pitfall exists with the use of the Laplace-transform-based representation of Parseval identity when the value of I is computed by a numerical integration of the complex integral in a computer. The findings gained from numerical results indeed clarify the correct use of a useful numerical approach of solving differential equations to compute the quadratic cost functionals.

Correction for Shekhter et al., Branch-cut singularities in thermodynamics of Fermi liquid systems

Correction for Shekhter et al., Branch-cut singularities in thermodynamics of Fermi liquid systems

Branch-cut singularities in thermodynamics of Fermi liquid systems.

The recently measured spin susceptibility of the two-dimensional electron gas exhibits a strong dependence on temperature, which is incompatible with the standard Fermi liquid phenomenology. In this article, we show that the observed temperature behavior is inherent to ballistic two-dimensional electrons. Besides the single-particle and collective excitations, the thermodynamics of Fermi liquid systems includes effects of the branch-cut singularities originating from the edges of the continuum of pairs of quasiparticles. As a result of the rescattering induced by interactions, the branch-cut singularities generate nonanalyticities in the thermodynamic potential that reveal themselves in anomalous temperature dependences. Calculation of the spin susceptibility in such a situation requires a nonperturbative treatment of the interactions. As in high-energy physics, a mixture of the collective excitations and pairs of quasiparticles can effectively be described by a pole in the complex momentum plane. This analysis provides a natural explanation for the observed temperature dependence of the spin susceptibility, both in sign and in magnitude.

Recursion method and one-hole spectral function of the Majumdar-Ghosh model

We consider the application of the recursion method to the calculation of one-particle Green's functions for strongly correlated systems and propose a new way how to extract the information about the infinite system from the exact diagonalisation of small clusters. Comparing the results for several cluster sizes allows us to establish those Lanczos coefficients that are not affected by the finite size effects and provide the information about the Green's function of the macroscopic system. The analysis of this 'bulk-related' subset of coefficients supplemented by alternative analytic approaches allows to infer their asymptotic behaviour and to propose an approximate analytical form for the 'terminator' of the Green's function continued fraction expansion for the infinite system. As a result, the Green's function acquires the branch cut singularity corresponding to the incoherent part of the spectrum. The method is applied to the spectral function of one-hole in the Majumdar-Ghosh model (the one-dimensional $ t-J-J^{\prime}$ model at $J^{\prime}/J=1/2$). For this model, the branch cut starts at finite energy $\omega_0$, but there is no upper bound of the spectrum, corresponding to a linear increase of the recursion coefficients. Further characteristics of the spectral function are band gaps in the middle of the band and bound states below $\omega_0$ or within the gaps. The band gaps arise due to the period doubling of the unit cell and show up as characteristic oscillations of the recursion coefficients on top of the linear increase.

Gauge-invariant Green functions of Dirac fermions coupled to gauge fields

We develop a unified approach to both infrared and ultraviolet asymptotics of the fermion Green functions in the condensed matter systems that allow for an effective description in the framework of the Quantum Electrodynamics. By applying a path integral representation to the previously suggested form of the physical electron propagator we demonstrate that in the massless case this gauge invariant function features a "stronger-than-a-pole" branch-cut singularity instead of the conjectured Luttinger-like behavior. The obtained results alert one to the possibility that construction of physically relevant amplitudes in the effective gauge theories might prove more complex than previously thought.