Fixed Point Structure Research Articles

Fermionic fixed-point structure of asymptotically safe QED with a Pauli term

We test the physical viability of a recent proposal for an asymptotically safe modification of quantum electrodynamics (QED), whose ultraviolet physics is dominated by a non-perturbative Pauli spin-field coupling. We focus in particular on its compatibility with the absence of dynamical generation of fermion mass in QED. Studying the renormalization group flow of chiral four-fermion operators and their fixed points, we discover a distinct class of behavior compared to the standard picture of fixed-point annihilation at large gauge couplings and the ensuing formation of chiral condensates. Instead, transcritical bifurcations, where the fixed points merely exchange infrared stability, are observed. Provided that non-chiral operators remain irrelevant, our theory accommodates a universality class of light fermions for Nf>1\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$N_{\ extrm{f}}> 1$$\\end{document} irreducible Dirac flavors. On the contrary, in the special case of Nf=1\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$N_{\ extrm{f}}= 1$$\\end{document} flavor, this comes only at the expense of introducing one additional relevant parameter.

Pauli-term-induced fixed points in d-dimensional QED

We explore the fixed-point structure of QED-like theories upon the inclusion of a Pauli spin-field coupling. We concentrate on the fate of UV-stable fixed points recently discovered in d=4\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$d=4$$\\end{document} spacetime dimensions upon generalizations to lower as well as higher dimensions for an arbitrary number of fermion flavors Nf.\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$N_{\ ext {f}}.$$\\end{document} As an overall trend, we observe that going away from d=4\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$d=4$$\\end{document} dimensions and increasing the flavor number tends to destabilize the non-Gaussian fixed points discovered in four spacetime dimensions. A notable exception is a non-Gaussian fixed point at finite Pauli spin-field coupling but vanishing gauge coupling, which also remains stable down to d=3\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$d=3$$\\end{document} dimensions and for small flavor numbers. This includes also the range of degrees of freedom used in effective theories of layered condensed-matter systems. As an application, we construct renormalization group trajectories that emanate from the non-Gaussian fixed point and approach a long-range regime in the conventional QED3\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$${}_3$$\\end{document} universality class that is governed by the interacting (quasi) fixed point in the gauge coupling.

UV completion of extradimensional Yang-Mills theory for Gauge-Higgs unification

The SU(N)SU(N) Yang-Mills theory in \mathbb R^4\times S^1ℝ4×S1 spacetime is studied as a simple toy model of Gauge-Higgs unification. The theory is perturbatively nonrenormalizable but could be formulated as an asymptotically safe theory, namely a nonperturbatively renormalizable theory. We study the fixed point structure of the Yang-Mills theory in \mathbb R^4\times S^1ℝ4×S1 by using the functional renormalization group in the background field approximation. We derive the functional flow equations for the gauge coupling and the background gauge-field potential. There exists a nontrivial fixed point for both couplings at finite compactification radii. At the fixed point, gauge coupling and vacuum energy are both relevant. The renormalization group flow of the gauge coupling describes the smooth transition between the ultraviolet asymptotically safe regime and the strong interacting infrared limit.

Diagnosing weakly first-order phase transitions by coupling to order parameters

The hunt for exotic quantum phase transitions described by emergent fractionalized degrees of freedom coupled to gauge fields requires a precise determination of the fixed point structure from the field theoretical side, and an extreme sensitivity to weak first-order transitions from the numerical side. Addressing the latter, we revive the classic definition of the order parameter in the limit of a vanishing external field at the transition. We demonstrate that this widely understood, yet so far unused approach provides a diagnostic test for first-order versus continuous behavior that is distinctly more sensitive than current methods. We first apply it to the family of QQ-state Potts models, where the nature of the transition is continuous for Q≤4Q≤4 and turns (weakly) first order for Q>4Q>4, using an infinite system matrix product state implementation. We then employ this new approach to address the unsettled question of deconfined quantum criticality in the S=1/2S=1/2 Néel to valence bond solid transition in two dimensions, focusing on the square lattice JJ-QQ model. Our quantum Monte Carlo simulations reveal that both order parameters remain finite at the transition, directly confirming a first-order scenario with wide reaching implications in condensed matter and quantum field theory.

Bosonization, duality, and the C-theorem in the non-abelian Thirring model

We revisit the two dimensional non-Abelian Thirring model in order to investigate its fixed point structure and the corresponding renormalization group (RG) flow. For this purpose we discuss the bosonization of the model, and we present different, but of course equivalent, bosonic versions of the theory. The bosonic theories are illuminating in that they exhibit the fixed points in a manifest way, and also possess a remarkable strong/weak duality that sheds light on the fixed point structure of the theory. We study the RG flow through the computation of the Zamolodchikov C-function and of the β-function in the large-level limit. Within this framework, we discuss how close to the infrared fixed point the RG flow can reach, since this point is strictly unachievable due to an emergent gauge invariance.

Model-Independent Learning of Quantum Phases of Matter with Quantum Convolutional Neural Networks.

Quantum convolutional neural networks (QCNNs) have been introduced as classifiers for gapped quantum phases of matter. Here, we propose a model-independent protocol for training QCNNs to discover order parameters that are unchanged under phase-preserving perturbations. We initiate the training sequence with the fixed-point wave functions of the quantum phase and add translation-invariant noise that respects the symmetries of the system to mask the fixed-point structure on short length scales. We illustrate this approach by training the QCNN on phases protected by time-reversal symmetry in one dimension, and test it on several time-reversal symmetric models exhibiting trivial, symmetry-breaking, and symmetry-protected topological order. The QCNN discovers a set of order parameters that identifies all three phases and accurately predicts the location of the phase boundary. The proposed protocol paves the way toward hardware-efficient training of quantum phase classifiers on a programmable quantum processor.

Expressive architectures enhance interpretability of dynamics-based neural population models.

Artificial neural networks that can recover latent dynamics from recorded neural activity may provide a powerful avenue for identifying and interpreting the dynamical motifs underlying biological computation. Given that neural variance alone does not uniquely determine a latent dynamical system, interpretable architectures should prioritize accurate and low-dimensional latent dynamics. In this work, we evaluated the performance of sequential autoencoders (SAEs) in recovering latent chaotic attractors from simulated neural datasets. We found that SAEs with widely-used recurrent neural network (RNN)-based dynamics were unable to infer accurate firing rates at the true latent state dimensionality, and that larger RNNs relied upon dynamical features not present in the data. On the other hand, SAEs with neural ordinary differential equation (NODE)-based dynamics inferred accurate rates at the true latent state dimensionality, while also recovering latent trajectories and fixed point structure. Ablations reveal that this is mainly because NODEs (1) allow use of higher-capacity multi-layer perceptrons (MLPs) to model the vector field and (2) predict the derivative rather than the next state. Decoupling the capacity of the dynamics model from its latent dimensionality enables NODEs to learn the requisite low-D dynamics where RNN cells fail. Additionally, the fact that the NODE predicts derivatives imposes a useful autoregressive prior on the latent states. The suboptimal interpretability of widely-used RNN-based dynamics may motivate substitution for alternative architectures, such as NODE, that enable learning of accurate dynamics in low-dimensional latent spaces.

Fixed point structures on a set-mapping pair and cartesian product

Abstract In this paper we study the following problem (Problem 4.2 in, I.A. Rus, Sets with structure, mappings and fixed point property: fixed point structures, Fixed Point Theory 23, No. 2 (2022), 689-706): Let (𝒰, 𝒮, M) be a fixed point structure on (𝒰, M). We suppose that (𝒰, M) is with cartesian product. In which conditions, we have that: X,Y∈𝒮⇒X×Y∈𝒮? Some results in terms of exponential with fixed point property are also given. The basic results are illustrated by examples.

Out-of-Time-Order correlators in driven conformal field theories

We compute Out-of-Time-Order correlators (OTOCs) for conformal field theories (CFTs) subjected to either continuous or discrete periodic drive protocols. This is achieved by an appropriate analytic continuation of the stroboscopic time. After detailing the general structure, we perform explicit calculations in large-c CFTs where we find that OTOCs display an exponential, an oscillatory and a power-law behaviour in the heating phase, the non-heating phase and on the phase boundary, respectively. In contrast to this, for the Ising CFT representing an integrable model, OTOCs never display such exponential growth. This observation hints towards how OTOCs can demarcate between integrable and chaotic CFT models subjected to a periodic drive. We further explore properties of the light-cone which is characterized by the corresponding butterfly velocity as well as the Lyapunov exponent. Interestingly, as a consequence of the spatial inhomogeneity introduced by the drive, the butterfly velocity, in these systems, has an explicit dependence on the initial location of the operators. We chart out the dependence of the Lyapunov exponent and the butterfly velocities on the frequency and amplitude of the drive for both protocols and discuss the fixed point structure which differentiates such driven CFTs from their undriven counterparts.

PT symmetric fermionic field theories with axions: Renormalization and dynamical mass generation

We consider the renormalization properties of non-Hermitian Yukawa theories involving a pseudoscalar (axion) field at or near four dimensions. The non-Hermiticity is $\mathcal{P}\mathcal{T}$ symmetric where $\mathcal{P}$ is a linear operator (such as parity) and $\mathcal{T}$ is an antilinear idempotent operator (such as time reversal). The coupling constants of the Yukawa and quartic scalar coupling terms reflect this non-Hermiticity. The path integral representing the field theory is used to discuss the Feynman rules associated with the field theory. The fixed point structure associated with the renormalization group has $\mathcal{P}\mathcal{T}$ symmetric and Hermitian fixed points. At two loops in the massless theory, we demonstrate the flow from Hermitian to non-Hermitian fixed points. From the one-loop renormalization of a massive Yukawa theory, a self-consistent Nambu--Jona-Lasinio gap equation is established and its real solutions are discussed.

FPGA Implementation of Fixed-Point Model for a Single-Phase AC-DC Converter with Unity Power Factor

This paper presents a design of digital control based on a fixed-point model for an application of a single phase AC-DC boost Converter with a high power factor and low current distortion. The system uses a simple closed-loop control with a slow voltage loop (outer loop) to stabilize the output DC bus voltage at the required level and a fast current loop (inner loop) to achieve input power factor correction. The digital control uses a fixed-point structure that improves the control accuracy without increasing the number of arithmetic operations and does not require specific running conditions. The behavior of the system is fully verified by using a digital simulation under Matlab/Simulink environment and experimentally with an implementation in real-time using Xilinx ISE 14.7 software, hardware description language VHDL, Xilinx FPGA ML605 board, and EVAL-AD7656 evaluation board for high-speed analog-to-digital conversion. The obtained results show a good agreement between experiments and simulations for steady-state and transient-responses.

Complex couplings in renormalization

The functional renormalization group equations are derived in Minkowski space–time for scalar models. It is shown that the couplings become complex, which can change the fixed point structure. New phases appear, and the models can build up complex fixed points.

Inverse Renormalization Group in Quantum Field Theory.

We propose inverse renormalization group transformations within the context of quantum field theory that produce the appropriate critical fixed point structure, give rise to inverse flows in parameter space, and evade the critical slowing down effect in calculations pertinent to criticality. Given configurations of the two-dimensional ϕ^{4} scalar field theory on sizes as small as V=8^{2}, we apply the inverse transformations to produce rescaled systems of size up to V^{'}=512^{2} which we utilize to extract two critical exponents. We conclude by discussing how the approach is generally applicable to any method that successfully produces configurations from a statistical ensemble and how it can give novel insights into the structure of the renormalization group.

Fixed point structure of the gradient flow exact renormalization group for scalar field theories

Abstract The gradient flow exact renormalization group (GFERG) is a framework for defining the Wilson action via a gradient flow equation. We study the fixed point structure of the GFERG equation associated with a general gradient flow equation for scalar field theories, and show that it is the same as that of the conventional Wilson–Polchinski (WP) equation in general. Furthermore, we see that the GFERG equation has a similar RG flow structure around a fixed point to the WP equation. We illustrate these results with the O(N) non-linear sigma model in 4 − ϵ dimensions and the Wilson–Fisher fixed point.

RG flow and symmetry breaking in a weakly coupled model

We explore a weakly coupled $SU({N}_{c})$ gauge theory, examining its fixed-point structure and the transition from infrared conformality to spontaneous symmetry breaking. Following a previous study, we couple the gauge field to ${N}_{s}$ scalars and ${N}_{f}$ fermions, take the large-${N}_{c}$ limit with ${N}_{s}/{N}_{c}$ and ${N}_{f}/{N}_{c}$ fixed, and adjust these ratios to produce weakly coupled infrared fixed points while maintaining asymptotic freedom. We map out renormalization-group trajectories and describe the transition to symmetry breaking as the ratio ${N}_{s}/{N}_{c}$ is increased. We examine the breaking by employing the one-loop effective potential. At tree level, a scalar-field vacuum expectation value (VEV) of a certain form is allowed, leading to masses for a subset of the scalar fields. Among the remaining massless scalars, one corresponds to a massless dilaton and the others are Nambu-Goldstone bosons absorbed by the gauge fields. The one-loop potential breaks the scale symmetry explicitly, determining the VEV and generating a dilaton mass suppressed relative to the other masses by a factor of the weak scalar coupling.

Opinion formation on social networks with algorithmic bias: dynamics and bias imbalance

We investigate opinion dynamics and information spreading on networks under the influence of content filtering technologies. The filtering mechanism, present in many online social platforms, reduces individuals’ exposure to disagreeing opinions, producing algorithmic bias. We derive evolution equations for global opinion variables in the presence of algorithmic bias, network community structure, noise (independent behavior of individuals), and pairwise or group interactions. We consider the case where the social platform shows a predilection for one opinion over its opposite, unbalancing the dynamics in favor of that opinion. We show that if the imbalance is strong enough, it may determine the final global opinion and the dynamical behavior of the population. We find a complex phase diagram including phases of coexistence, consensus, and polarization of opinions as possible final states of the model, with phase transitions of different order between them. The fixed point structure of the equations determines the dynamics to a large extent. We focus on the time needed for convergence and conclude that this quantity varies within a wide range, showing occasionally signatures of critical slowing down and meta-stability.

Minimization arguments in analysis of variational–hemivariational inequalities

In this paper, an alternative approach is provided in the well-posedness analysis of elliptic variational–hemivariational inequalities in real Hilbert spaces. This includes the unique solvability and continuous dependence of the solution on the data. In most of the existing literature on elliptic variational–hemivariational inequalities, well-posedness results are obtained by using arguments of surjectivity for pseudomonotone multivalued operators, combined with additional compactness and pseudomonotonicity properties. In contrast, following (Han in Nonlinear Anal B Real World Appl 54:103114, 2020; Han in Numer Funct Anal Optim 42:371–395, 2021), the approach adopted in this paper is based on the fixed point structure of the problems, combined with minimization principles for elliptic variational–hemivariational inequalities. Consequently, only elementary results of functional analysis are needed in the approach, which makes the theory of elliptic variational–hemivariational inequalities more accessible to applied mathematicians and engineers. The theoretical results are illustrated on a representative example from contact mechanics.

Macdonald polynomials and cyclic sieving

The Garsia–Haiman module is a bigraded Sn-module whose Frobenius image is a Macdonald polynomial. The method of orbit harmonics promotes an Sn-set X to a graded polynomial ring. The orbit harmonics can be applied to prove cyclic sieving phenomena which is a notion that encapsulates the fixed-point structure of finite cyclic group action on a finite set. By applying this idea to the Garsia–Haiman module, we provide cyclic sieving results regarding the enumeration of matrices that are invariant under certain cyclic row and column rotation and translation of entries.

The derivative expansion in asymptotically safe quantum gravity: general setup and quartic order

We present a general framework to systematically study the derivative expansion of asymptotically safe quantum gravity. It is based on an exact decoupling and cancellation of different modes in the Landau limit, and implements a correct mode count as well as a regularisation based on geometrical considerations. It is applicable independent of the truncation order. To illustrate the power of the framework, we discuss the quartic order of the derivative expansion and its fixed point structure as well as physical implications.

Asymptotically Safe Gravity-Fermion Systems on Curved Backgrounds

We set up a consistent background field formalism for studying the renormalization group (RG) flow of gravity coupled to Nf Dirac fermions on maximally symmetric backgrounds. Based on Wetterich’s equation, we perform a detailed study of the resulting fixed point structure in a projection including the Einstein–Hilbert action, the fermion anomalous dimension, and a specific coupling of the fermion bilinears to the spacetime curvature. The latter constitutes a mass-type term that breaks chiral symmetry explicitly. Our analysis identified two infinite families of interacting RG fixed points, which are viable candidates to provide a high-energy completion through the asymptotic safety mechanism. The fixed points exist for all values of Nf outside of a small window situated at low values Nf and become weakly coupled in the large Nf-limit. Symmetry-wise, they correspond to “quasi-chiral” and “non-chiral” fixed points. The former come with enhanced predictive power, fixing one of the couplings via the asymptotic safety condition. Moreover, the interplay of the fixed points allows for cross-overs from the non-chiral to the chiral fixed point, giving a dynamical mechanism for restoring the symmetry approximately at intermediate scales. Our discussion of chiral symmetry breaking effects provides strong indications that the topology of spacetime plays a crucial role when analyzing whether quantum gravity admits light chiral fermions.