Zero-mass Limit Research Articles

Quantum transitions, detailed balance, black holes, and nothingness

We consider vacuum transitions by bubble nucleation among 4D vacua with different values and signs of the cosmological constant Λ, including both up and down tunnelings. Following the Hamiltonian formalism, we explicitly compute the transition probabilities for all possible combinations of initial and final values of Λ and find that up tunneling is allowed starting not only from dS spacetime but also from AdS and Minkowski spacetimes. We trace the difference with the Euclidean approach, where these transitions are found to be forbidden, to the difference of treating the latter spacetimes as pure (vacuum) states rather than mixed states with correspondingly vanishing or infinite entropy. We point out that these transitions are best understood as limits of the corresponding transitions with black holes in the zero mass limit M→0. We find that detailed balance is satisfied provided we use the Hartle-Hawking sign of the wave function for nucleating spacetimes. In the formal limit Λ→−∞, the transition rates for anti–de Sitter (AdS) to dS agree with both the Hartle-Hawking and Vilenkin amplitudes for the creation of dS from nothing. This is consistent with a proposal of Brown and Dahlen to define “nothing” as AdS in this limit. For M≠0, the detailed balance is satisfied only in a range of mass values. We compute the bubble trajectory after nucleation and find that, contrary to the M=0 case, the trajectory does not correspond to the open universe slicing of dS. We briefly discuss the relevance of our results to the string landscape. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Rate of Convergence in the Smoluchowski-Kramers Approximation for Mean-field Stochastic Differential Equations

In this paper we study a second-order mean-field stochastic differential systems describing the movement of a particle under the influence of a time-dependent force, a friction, a mean-field interaction and a space and time-dependent stochastic noise. Using techniques from Malliavin calculus, we establish explicit rates of convergence in the zero-mass limit (Smoluchowski-Kramers approximation) in the Lp\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$L^p$$\\end{document}-distances and in the total variation distance for the position process, the velocity process and a re-scaled velocity process to their corresponding limiting processes.

Electrochemical transport in Dirac nodal-line semimetals

Nodal-line semimetals are topological phases where the conduction and the valence bands cross each other along one-dimensional lines in the Brillouin zone, which are symmetry protected by either spatial symmetries or time-reversal symmetry. In particular, nodal lines protected by the combined symmetry exhibits the parity anomaly of 2D Dirac fermions. In this letter, we study the electrochemical transport in Dirac nodal-line semimetals by using the semiclassical Boltzmann equation approach. We derive a general formula for the topological current that includes both the Berry curvature and the orbital magnetic moment. We first evaluate the electrochemical current by introducing a small mass term (which could be induced by inversion-breaking uniaxial strain, pressure, or an external electric field) and apply it to the hexagonal pnictide CaAgP. The electrochemical current vanishes in the zero-mass limit. Introducing a tilting term that does not spoil symmetry that protects the nodal ring, we obtain a finite electrochemical current in the zero-mass limit, which can be regarded as a direct consequence of the parity anomaly. We show that the parity-anomaly–induced electrochemical transport is also present at nonzero temperatures.

Chiral Dirac-like fermion in spin-orbit-free antiferromagnetic semimetals

Dirac semimetal is a phase of matter whose elementary excitation is described by the relativistic Dirac equation. In the limit of zero mass, its parity-time symmetry enforces the Dirac fermion in the momentum space, which is composed of two Weyl fermions with opposite chirality, to be non-chiral. Inspired by the flavor symmetry in particle physics, we theoretically propose a massless Dirac-like equation yet linking two Weyl fields with the identical chirality by assuming isospin symmetry, independent of the space-time rotation exchanging the two fields. Dramatically, such symmetry is hidden in certain solid-state spin-1/2 systems with negligible spin-orbit coupling, where the spin degree of freedom is decoupled with the lattice. Therefore, the existence of the corresponding quasiparticle, dubbed as flavor Weyl fermion, cannot be explained by the conventional (magnetic) space group framework. The 4-fold degenerate flavor Weyl fermion manifests linear dispersion and a Chern number of 2, leading to a robust network of topologically protected Fermi arcs throughout the Brillouin zone. For material realization, we show that the transition-metal chalcogenide CoNb3S6 with experimentally confirmed collinear antiferromagnetic order is ideal for flavor Weyl semimetal under the approximation of vanishing spin-orbit coupling. Our work reveals a counterpart of the flavor symmetry in magnetic electronic systems, leading to further possibilities of emergent phenomena in quantum materials.

Quasinormal modes and shadow of noncommutative black hole

In this paper we investigate quasinormal modes (QNM) for a scalar field around a noncommutative Schwarzschild black hole. We verify the effect of noncommutativity on quasinormal frequencies by applying two procedures widely used in the literature. The first is the Wentzel–Kramers–Brillouin (WKB) approximation up to sixth order. In the second case we use the continuous fraction method developed by Leaver. Besides, we also show that due to noncommutativity, the shadow radius is reduced when we increase the noncommutative parameter. In addition, we find that the shadow radius is nonzero even at the zero mass limit for finite noncommutative parameter.

Polarization observables in elastic lepton-deuteron scattering and their sensitivity to realistic NN potentials

Polarization effects in the elastic lepton scattering on the deuteron process are studied in the one-photon-exchange Born approximation within the limit of zero mass of the lepton. Numerical estimations for the spin asymmetries with an unpolarized lepton beam and a tensor polarized target are given. The estimated results are analysed at various lepton beam energies and scattering angles. For the first time, the sensitivity of the results for tensor spin asymmetries to the choice of modern NN potential used for the deuteron wave function (DWF) is investigated. A considerable influence of the results on the realistic and modern DWFs at incident beam energies greater than 0.6 GeV and scattering angles greater than 30 is obtained.

A translational flavor symmetry in the mass terms of Dirac and Majorana fermions

Requiring the effective mass term for a category of fundamental Dirac or Majorana fermions of the same electric charge to be invariant under the translational transformations ψ αL(R) → ψ αL(R) + n α z ψL(R) in the flavor space, where n α and z ψL(R) stand respectively for the flavor-dependent complex numbers and a constant spinor field anticommuting with the fermion fields, we show that n α can be identified as the elements U αi in the ith column of the unitary matrix U used to diagonalize the corresponding Hermitian or symmetric fermion mass matrix M ψ , and m i = 0 holds accordingly. We find that the reverse is also true. Now that the mass spectra of charged leptons, up- and down-type quarks are all strongly hierarchical and current experimental data allow the lightest neutrino to be massless, we argue that the zero mass limit for the first-family fermions and the translational flavor symmetry behind it should be a natural starting point for building viable fermion mass models.

Universal form of thermodynamic uncertainty relation for Langevin dynamics.

The thermodynamic uncertainty relation (TUR) provides a stricter bound for entropy production (EP) than that of the thermodynamic second law. This stricter bound can be utilized to infer the EP and derive other tradeoff relations. Though the validity of the TUR has been verified in various stochastic systems, its application to general Langevin dynamics has not been successfully unified, especially for underdamped Langevin dynamics, where odd parity variables in time-reversal operation such as velocity get involved. Previous TURs for underdamped Langevin dynamics are neither experimentally accessible nor reduced to the original form of the overdamped Langevin dynamics in the zero-mass limit. Here, we find a TUR for underdamped Langevin dynamics with an arbitrary time-dependent protocol, which is operationally accessible when all mechanical forces are controllable. We show that the original TUR is a consequence of our underdamped TUR in the zero-mass limit. This indicates that the TUR formulation presented here can be regarded as the universal form of the TUR for general Langevin dynamics.

Relativistic Borromean states * *Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (11875002, 11804376), Postdoctoral Innovative Talent Support Program of China (BX20190180). Also supported by the Zhuobai Program of Beihang University

In this work, the existence of Borromean states is discussed for bosonic and fermionic cases in both the relativistic and non-relativistic limits from the 3-momentum shell renormalization. With the linear bosonic model, we check the existence of Efimov-like states in the bosonic system. In both limits a geometric series of singularities is found in the 3-boson interaction vertex, while the energy ratio is reduced by around 70% in the relativistic limit because of the anti-particle contribution. Motivated by the quark-diquark model in heavy baryon studies, we have carefully examined the p-wave quark-diquark interaction and found an isolated Borromean pole at finite energy scale. This may indicate a special baryonic state of light quarks in high energy quark matter. In other cases, trivial results are obtained as expected. In the relativistic limit, for both bosonic and fermionic cases, potential Borromean states are independent of the mass, which means the results would also be valid even in the zero-mass limit.

The involutive system of higher-spin equations

We revisit the problem of consistent free propagation of higher-spin fields in nontrivial backgrounds, focusing on symmetric tensor(-spinor)s. The Fierz-Pauli equations for massive fields in flat space form an involutive system, whose algebraic consistency owes to certain gauge identities. The zero mass limit of the former leads directly to massless higher-spin equations in the transverse-traceless gauge, where both the field and the gauge parameter have their respective involutive systems and gauge identities. In nontrivial backgrounds, it is the preservation of these gauge identities and symmetries that ensures the correct number of propagating degrees of freedom. With this approach we find consistent sets of equations for massive and massless higher-spin bosons and fermions in certain gravitational/electromagnetic backgrounds. We also present the involutive system of partially massless fields, and give an explicit form of their gauge transformations. We consider the Lie superalgebra of the operators on symmetric tensor(-spinor)s in flat space, and show that in AdS space the algebra closes nonlinearly and requires a central extension.

Absorption and scattering by a self-dual black hole

In this paper we investigate the process of massless scalar wave scattering due to a self-dual black hole through the partial wave method. We calculate the phase shift analytically at the low energy limit and we show that the dominant term of the differential scattering cross section at the small angle limit is modified by the presence of parameters related to the polymeric function and minimum area of a self-dual black hole. We also find that the result for the absorption cross section is given by the event horizon area of the self-dual black hole at the low frequency limit. We also show that, contrarily to the case of a Schwarzschild black hole, the differential scattering/absorption cross section of a self-dual black hole is nonzero at the zero mass limit. In addition, we verify these results by numerically solving the radial equation for arbitrary frequencies.

The Nonequilibrium Back Reaction of Hawking Radiation to a Schwarzschild Black Hole

We investigate the nonequilibrium back reaction on the Schwarzschild black hole from the radiation field. The back reactions are characterized by the membrane close to the black hole. When the membrane is thin, we found that larger temperature difference can lead to more significant negative surface tension, larger thermodynamic dissipation cost, and back reaction in energy and entropy as well as larger black hole area. This may be relevant to the primordial black holes in early universe. Moreover, our nonequilibrium model can resolve the inconsistency issue of the black hole back reaction under zero mass limit in the equilibrium case. In the thick membrane case, the nonequilibrium back reaction is found to be more significant than that in the thin membrane case. The nonequilibrium temperature difference can increase the energy and entropy loss as well as the thermodynamic dissipation of the black hole and the membrane back reactions. The nonequilibrium dissipation cost characterized by the entropy production rate appears to be significant compared to the entropy rate radiated by the black hole under finite temperature difference. This may shed light on the black hole information paradox due to the information loss from the entropy production rate in the nonequilibrium cases. The nonequilibrium thermodynamic fluctuations can also reflect the effects of the back reactions of the Hawking radiation on the evolution of a black hole.

The zero mass limit of Kerr and Kerr-(anti) de Sitter space-times: revisited

We continue studying the zero mass limit of the Kerr-(Anti) de Sitter space-times by investigating the possibility of special values of the frequencies to have polynomial solutions for the radial wave equation and compute the reflection coefficients at the origin for waves coming from the infinity for the AdS and from the cosmological horizon in the dS cases.

Null hypersurfaces in Kerr–(A)dS spacetimes

For many purposes, a three-dimensional foliation of spacetime is more advantageous to understanding its light cone structure. We derive the equations describing such foliations for the Kerr geometry with non-zero cosmological constant, and show that they reduce to null hypersurfaces in vacuum (anti-)de Sitter spacetime in the limit of zero mass. Furthermore, we find that these null hypersurfaces are free of caustics everywhere for r > 0. Our construction has applications in numerical studies of rotating black holes, and in defining Kruskal coordinates for rotating black holes with non-zero cosmological constant.

Magnetoresistance of a three-dimensional Dirac gas

We study the transversal magnetoconductivity and magnetoresistance of a massive Dirac fermion gas. This can be used as a simple model for gapped Dirac materials. In the zero-mass limit, the case of gapless Dirac semimetals is also studied. In the case of Weyl semimetals, to reproduce the nonsaturating linear magnetoresistance seen in experiments, the use of screened charged impurities is inevitable. In this paper, these are included using the first Born approximation for the self-energy. The screening wave number is calculated using the random phase approximation with the polarization function taking into account the electron-electron interaction. The Hall conductivity is calculated analytically in the case of no impurities and is shown to be perfectly inversely proportional to the magnetic field. Thus the magnetic field dependence of the magnetoresistance is mainly determined by $\sigma_{xx}$. We show that in the extreme quantum limit at very high magnetic fields the gapped Dirac materials are expected to have $\sigma_{xx}\propto B^{-3}$ leading to $\varrho_{xx}\propto B^{-1}$, in contrast with the gapless case where $\sigma_{xx}\propto B^{-1}$ and $\varrho_{xx}\propto B$. At lower fields, we find that the effect of the mass term is negligible and in the region of the Shubnikov-de Haas oscillations the two systems behave almost identically. We suggest a phenomenological scattering rate that is able to reproduce the linear behavior at the oscillating region. We show that in the case of the scattering rate calculated using the Born approximation, the strength of the relative permittivity and the density of impurities affects the magnetic field dependence of the conductivity significantly.

Axial current in rotating and accelerating medium

Statistical average of the axial current is evaluated on the basis of the covariant Wigner function. In the resulting formula, chemical potential $\mu$, angular velocity $\Omega$ and acceleration $a$ enter in combination $\mu \pm (\Omega \pm ia)/2$. The limiting cases of zero mass and zero temperature are investigated in detail. In the zero-mass limit, the axial current is described by a smooth function only at temperatures higher than the Unruh temperature. At zero temperature, the axial current, as a function of the angular velocity and chemical potential, vanishes in a two-dimensional plane region.

The Proca Field in Curved Spacetimes and its Zero Mass Limit

We investigate the classical and quantum Proca field (a massive vector potential) of mass $m>0$ in arbitrary globally hyperbolic spacetimes and in the presence of external sources. We motivate a notion of continuity in the mass for families of observables $\left\{O_m\right\}_{m>0}$ and we investigate the massless limit $m\to0$. Our limiting procedure is local and covariant and it does not require a choice of reference state. We find that the limit exists only on a subset of observables, which automatically implements a gauge equivalence on the massless vector potential. For topologically non-trivial spacetimes, one may consider several inequivalent choices of gauge equivalence and our procedure selects the one which is expected from considerations involving the Aharonov-Bohm effect and Gauss' law. We note that the limiting theory does not automatically reproduce Maxwell's equation, but it can be imposed consistently when the external current is conserved. To recover the correct Maxwell dynamics from the limiting procedure would require an additional control on limits of states. We illustrate this only in the classical case, where the dynamics is recovered when the Lorenz constraint remains well behaved in the limit.

Heavy quark jet fragmentation

In this paper we study the fragmentation of a parton into a jet containing a heavy quark. When heavy quarks are involved in a jet, the quark mass can lead to a numerically significant correction to the jet cross section and its substructure. With this motivation, we calculated the heavy quark mass effects to next-to-leading order in αs on the fragmentation functions to a jet (FFJs) and the jet fragmentation functions (JFFs), where the former describes fragmentation of parton into a jet and the latter describes fragmenting processes inside a jet. The finite size of the heavy quark mass does not change the ultraviolet behaviors, but it can give significant corrections to the finite contributions. When we take the zero mass limit, we find that the FFJs and the JFFs reproduce established results for massless partons. If we define the heavy quark jet as one that include at least one heavy (anti-)quark, the tagged heavy quark jet production is sensitive to the heavy quark mass and produces large logarithms of the mass. Taking advantage of the FFJs and JFFs, we formulate a factorization theorem for heavy quark jet production in order to resum these large logarithms systematically. As an application, we study inclusive b-jet production and show phenomenological implications due to keeping a non-zero quark mass.

Implementation of Nonreversible Metropolis-Hastings algorithms

Metropolis-Hastings algorithm which keeps the detailed balance is the basic element for most Markov chain Monte Carlo sampling algorithms in which undermined Markov processes are reversible. Previous research shows that nonreversible Markov processes have a faster rate of convergence than reversible ones. Taking advantage of the “lifting” idea, this paper develops a general framework for designing Metropolis-Hastings algorithms breaking detailed balance and implements two new nonreversible Metropolis-Hastings algorithms based on the Gaussian proposal conditional probability and Langevin dynamics in the zero-mass limit respectively. Numerical simulations in one and two dimensions demonstrate that new nonreversible Metropolis-Hastings algorithms can speed up the convergence to target stationary distributions, which supports the theoretical finding and the design of our new algorithms.

Correction to: The zero mass limit of Kerr and Kerr-(anti-)de-Sitter space-times: exact solutions and wormholes

Here we want to report an unfortunate misprint in the last equation, eq.(28), in our paper The zero mass limit of Kerr and Kerr-(anti-)de-Sitter space-times: exact solutions and wormholes , which was published in General Relativity and Gravitation, [1].