Massless Excitations Research Articles

The fate for the interior content of a Black Hole from one-quarter entropy area-law

In this paper we continue investigations concerning the physical nature of the black hole entropy. In particular, in order to depict massless excitations (gravitons) leading to the one-quarter entropy area law, we use a mechanical statistical approach. As a first result, we obtain that, starting with a radiation field, we cannot exactly obtain the one-quarter factor in entropy area law. In the aforementioned framework, the correct black hole entropy is obtained only in the case where the internal temperature Ti, proportional to the Bekenstein-Hawking one, is such that Ti→0. As a consequence, according to other similar proposals in the literature, only a kind of Bose–Einstein condensate (BEC) can exactly support the black hole entropy.

Zero modes of massive fermions delocalize from axion strings

Massless chiral excitations can arise from the interactions between a fermion and an axion string, propagating along the string and allowing it to superconduct. The properties of these excitations, or zero modes, dictate how the string interacts with light and can thus have important phenomenological consequences. In this paper, we add a nowhere-vanishing Dirac mass for the fermion in the usual model of axion electrodynamics. We find that the zero modes exhibit an interesting phase structure in which they delocalize from the string’s core as the mass increases, up until a critical value past which they disappear. We study this structure from an analytic perspective, with explicit numerical solutions, and via anomaly inflow arguments. Finally, we derive the two-dimensional effective theory of the zero mode and its interactions with the four-dimensional gauge field and show how this effective theory breaks down as the zero modes delocalize.

Monopoles in Dirac spin liquids and their symmetries from instanton calculus

The Dirac spin liquid (DSL) is a two-dimensional (2D) fractionalized Mott insulator featuring massless Dirac spinon excitations coupled to a compact U(1) gauge field, which allows for flux-tunneling instanton events described by magnetic monopoles in (2+1)D Euclidean spacetime. The state-operator correspondence of conformal field theory has been used recently to define associated monopole operators and determine their quantum numbers, which encode the microscopic symmetries of conventional ordered phases proximate to the DSL. In this work, we utilize semiclassical instanton methods not relying on conformal invariance to construct monopole operators directly in (2+1)D spacetime as instanton-induced ’t Hooft vertices, i.e., fermion-number-violating effective interactions originating from zero modes of the Euclidean Dirac operator in an instanton background. In the presence of a flavor-adjoint fermion mass, resummation of the instanton gas is shown to select the correct monopole to be proliferated, in accordance with predictions of the state-operator correspondence. We also show that our instanton-based approach is able to determine monopole quantum numbers on bipartite lattices.

Repulsive Casimir force from a Majorana zero-mode

Fu and Kane have taught us that a Majorana zero-mode appears on the quantum spin Hall edge at the interface with a superconductor. If a magnetic scatterer is placed on the edge, the zero-point energy of massless edge excitations exerts a force on the scatterer. This is the fermionic analog of the electromagnetic Casimir effect. We show that the Majorana zero-mode produces a repulsive Casimir force, pushing the scatterer away from the superconductor. Unlike some other signatures of Majorana zero-modes, the repulsive Casimir force is directly tied to the topological invariant of the system (the sign of the determinant of the reflection matrix from the superconductor).

RG flows in 2d QCD

2d QCD, Yang-Mills theory with gauge group G and massless quarks in representations (Rℓ, Rr) of G, flows in the infrared to a CFT or a TQFT depending on whether spectrum is gapless or gapped. We identify the infrared effective theory and construct the explicit RG flow map between the QCD operators in the UV and the IR, in particular identifying which operators create massive excitations and decouple in the IR, and those that create massless excitations or vacua and remain as nontrivial IR operators. We determine the exact scaling dimensions of the QCD operators that remain in the IR, which generically acquire large anomalous dimensions. We also study QCD deformed by various operators in the ultraviolet (such as mass terms or four-fermi interactions), and determine the theory that emerges at low energies. We conjecture and provide some evidence for QCD deformed by various operators developing a nonperturbative fermion condensate that dynamically breaks the gauge symmetry G, thus explicitly realizing an old idea known as “tumbling” in an exactly soluble setting.

Arrow of Time and Quantum Physics

Based on the hypothesis that the (non-reversible) arrow of time is intrinsic in any system, no matter how small, the consequences are discussed. Within the framework of local quantum physics it is shown how such a semi-group action of time can consistently be extended to that of the group of spacetime translations in Minkowski space. In presence of massless excitations, however, there arise ambiguities in the theoretical extensions of the time translations to the past. The corresponding loss of quantum information on states upon time is determined. Finally, it is explained how the description of operations in classical terms combined with constraints imposed by the arrow of time leads to a quantum theoretical framework. These results suggest that the arrow of time is fundamental in nature and not merely a consequence of statistical effects on which the Second Law is based.

Ground state energy of twisted AdS3 × S3 × T4 superstring and the TBA

We use the lightcone AdS3 × S3 × T4 superstring sigma model with fermions and bosons subject to twisted boundary conditions to find the ground state energy in the semi-classical approximation where effective string tension h and the light-cone momentum L are sent to infinity in such a way that J\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$ \\mathcal{J} $$\\end{document} ≡ L/h is kept fixed. We then analyse the ground state energy of the model by means of the mirror TBA equations for the AdS3 × S3 × T4 superstring in the pure RR background. The calculation is performed for small twist μ with L and h fixed, for large L with μ and h fixed, and for small h with μ and L fixed. In these limits the contribution of the gapless worldsheet modes coming from the T4 bosons and fermions can be computed exactly, and is shown to be proportional to hL/(4L2 – 1). Comparison with the semi-classical result shows that the TBA equations involve only one Y0-function for massless excitations but not two as was conjectured before. Some of the results obtained are generalised to the mixed-flux AdS3× S3× T4 superstring.

Tangent Fermions: Dirac or Majorana Fermions on a Lattice Without Fermion Doubling

AbstractMethods to discretize the Hamiltonian of a topological insulator or topological superconductor, without giving up on the topological protection of the massless excitations (respectively, Dirac fermions or Majorana fermions) are reviewed. The method of tangent fermions, pioneered by Richard Stacey, is singled out as being uniquely suited for this purpose. Tangent fermions propagate on a dimensional space‐time lattice with a tangent dispersion: in dimensionless units. They avoid the fermion doubling lattice artefact that will spoil the topological protection, while preserving the fundamental symmetries of the Dirac Hamiltonian. Although the discretized Hamiltonian is nonlocal, as required by the fermion‐doubling no‐go theorem, it is possible to transform the wave equation into a generalized eigenproblem that is local in space and time. Applications that are discussed include Klein tunneling of Dirac fermions through a potential barrier, the absence of localization by disorder, the anomalous quantum Hall effect in a magnetic field, and the thermal metal of Majorana fermions.

Embedding Unimodular Gravity in string theory

Unimodular Gravity is a theory displaying Weyl rescalings of the metric and transverse (volume-preserving) diffeomorphisms as gauge symmetries, as opposed to the full set of diffeomorphisms displayed by General Relativity. Recently, we presented a systematic comparison of both theories, concluding that both of them are equivalent in everything but the behaviour of the cosmological constant under radiative corrections. A careful study of how Unimodular Gravity can be embedded in the string theory framework has not been provided yet and was not analyzed there in detail. In this article, we provide such an explicit analysis, filling the gap in the literature. We restrict ourselves to the unoriented bosonic string theory in critical dimension for the sake of simplicity, although we argue that no differences are expected for other string theories. Our conclusions are that both a Diff and a WTDiff invariance principle are equally valid for describing the massless excitations of the string spectrum.

Localisation of Dirac modes in gauge theories and Goldstone’s theorem at finite temperature

I discuss the possible effects of a finite density of localised near-zero Dirac modes in the chiral limit of gauge theories with Nf degenerate fermions. I focus in particular on the fate of the massless quasi-particle excitations predicted by the finite-temperature version of Goldstone’s theorem, for which I provide an alternative and generalised proof based on a Euclidean SU(Nf )A Ward-Takahashi identity. I show that localised near-zero modes can lead to a divergent pseudoscalar-pseudoscalar correlator that modifies this identity in the chiral limit. As a consequence, massless quasi-particle excitations can disappear from the spectrum of the theory in spite of a non-zero chiral condensate. Three different scenarios are possible, depending on the detailed behaviour in the chiral limit of the ratio of the mobility edge and the fermion mass, which I prove to be a renormalisation-group invariant quantity.

Recovering information in an asymptotically flat spacetime in quantum gravity

As an extension of Chowdhury et al (2021 SciPost Phys. 10 106) and Laddha et al (2021 SciPost Phys. 10 041) we present a physical protocol that a set of observers can use to detect a pure state in the bulk when they are spread across a small cut near in flat spacetime. The protocol involves the modification of a bulk state using simple unitary operators and measurements of the energy of the state. The states that we study are constructed by acting with low energy operators on a vacuum state such that a perturbative analysis is valid. We restrict ourselves to dimensional spacetimes and only consider massless excitations. From this analysis, the principle of holography of information becomes manifest in the case of asymptotically flat spacetime.

Gapless vortex bound states in superconducting topological semimetals.

We find that the vortex bound states in superconducting topological semimetals are gapless owing to topological massless excitations in their normal states. We demonstrate this universal result in a variety of semimetals, including Dirac and Weyl semimetals, three-fold degenerate spin-1 fermions, spin-3/2 Rarita-Schwinger-Weyl fermion semimetals and other exotic fermion semimetals. The formation of these gapless bound states is closely related to their Andreev specular reflection and propagating Andreev modes in π-phase superconductor-normal metal-superconductor junctions. We further demonstrate that these gapless states are topologically protected and can be derived from a topological pumping process.

Interaction-induced velocity renormalization in magic-angle twisted multilayer graphene

Twistronics heterostructures provide a novel route to control the electronic single particle velocity and thereby to engineer strong effective interactions. Here we show that the reverse may also hold, i.e. that these interactions strongly renormalize the band structure. We demonstrate this mechanism for alternating-twist magic-angle three- and four-layer graphene at charge neutrality and in the vicinity of a phase transition which can be described by an Ising Gross-Neveu critical point corresponding, e.g. to the onset of valley Hall or Hall order. While the non-interacting model displays massless Dirac excitations with strongly different velocities, we show that interaction corrections make them equal in the infrared. However, the renormalization group flow of the velocities and of the coupling to the critical bosonic mode is strongly non-monotonic and dominated by the vicinity of a repulsive fixed point. We predict experimental consequences of this theory for tunneling and transport experiments and discuss the expected behavior at other quantum critical points, including those corresponding to intervalley coherent ordering.

Observation of Massless and Massive Collective Excitations with Faraday Patterns in a Two-Component Superfluid.

We report on the experimental measurement of the dispersion relation of the density and spin collective excitation modes in an elongated two-component superfluid of ultracold bosonic atoms. Our parametric spectroscopic technique is based on the external modulation of the transverse confinement frequency, leading to the formation of density and spin Faraday waves. We show that the application of a coherent coupling between the two components reduces the phase symmetry and gives a finite mass to the spin modes.

Complete classification of band nodal structures and massless excitations

Nodal structures (NSrs) where energy bands meet to be degenerate in the Brillouin zone (BZ) in the form of point, line or surface, received immense research interest in the past decade. However, the nearly NSrs with negligible gaps, can also own many exotic quantum responses and nontrivial topological properties and deserve a systematic investigation. Here, we provide a complete list of all symmetry-diagonalizable strictly and nearly NSrs in the 1651 magnetic space groups (MSGs) and 528 magnetic layer groups (MLGs) in both spinful and spinless settings. We first apply compatibility relations (CRs) which encode how bands split from a band node (BN) (located at a symmetric point of BZ), to obtain all NSrs (emanating from the BN). The NSrs by CRs are definitely strict and are exhaustively enumerated based on all irreducible representations of the little groups for all BNs. We then construct $k\cdot p$ models around BNs and prove that there is a cutoff $k\cdot p$ order (6 at most) for any BN which is sufficient to predict the corresponding strictly NSrs and including higher-order $k\cdot p$ terms cannot gap the NSrs. We provide all $k\cdot p$ models up to the cutoff orders around all the BNs, and comprehensively explore all the nearly NSrs by lowering the $k\cdot p$ order. Our results reveal that the same as BNs, the NSrs, especially the nearly NSrs, are also ubiquitous. For example, while strictly nodal surface can only exist in some nonsymmorphic MSGs, nearly nodal surface can occur even in many low symmetric MSGs. Moreover, we also find that for some BNs, the method of $k\cdot p$ modeling could give more strictly NSrs than CRs. With our complete list, one can conveniently obtain all possible NSrs for any two/three-dimensional and nonmagnetic/magnetic material, and given a target NSr, one can also design/search for materials realizations based on the MSGs/MLGs.

Perturbations of a Schwarzschild black hole in torsion bigravity

In this paper we pursue the study of linear perturbations around a Schwarzschild black hole in a generalized Einstein-Cartan theory of gravity, called torsion bigravity. This theory contains both massless and massive spin-2 excitations. Here we consider non spherically-symmetric perturbations with generic multipolarity $L \geq 1$. We extend the conclusion of linear stability, previously obtained for $L=0$ [Phys. Rev. D 104, 024032], to the generic $L \geq 1$ case. We prove that the mass $\kappa$ of the massive spin-2 excitation must be large enough, namely $\kappa r_h > \sqrt{1+\eta}$, to avoid the presence of singularities in the perturbation equations. The perturbation equations are shown to have a triangular structure, where massive spin-2 excitations satisfy decoupled equations, while the Einstein-like massless spin-2 ones satisfy inhomogeneous equations sourced by the massive spin-2 sector. We study quasi-bound states, and exhibit some explicit complex quasi-bound frequencies. We briefly discuss the issue of superradiance instabilities.

Spin-triplet superconductivity in Weyl nodal-line semimetals

Topological semimetals are three dimensional materials with symmetry-protected massless bulk excitations. As a special case, Weyl nodal-line semimetals are realized in materials having either no inversion or broken time-reversal symmetry and feature bulk nodal lines. The 111-family, including LaNiSi, LaPtSi and LaPtGe materials (all lacking inversion symmetry), belongs to this class. Here, by combining muon-spin rotation and relaxation with thermodynamic measurements, we find that these materials exhibit a fully-gapped superconducting ground state, while spontaneously breaking time-reversal symmetry at the superconducting transition. Since time-reversal symmetry is essential for protecting the normal-state topology, its breaking upon entering the superconducting state should remarkably result in a topological phase transition. By developing a minimal model for the normal-state band structure and assuming a purely spin-triplet pairing, we show that the superconducting properties across this family can be described accurately. Our results demonstrate that the 111 materials reported here provide an ideal test-bed for investigating the rich interplay between the exotic properties of Weyl nodal-line fermions and unconventional superconductivity.

The staircase model: massless flows and hydrodynamics

The staircase model (SM) is a simple generalization of the sinh-Gordon model, obtained by complexifying the coupling constant. This produces a new theory with many interesting features. Chief among them is the fact that scaling functions such as Zamolodchikov’s c-function display ‘roaming’ behaviour, that is, they visit the vicinity of an infinite number of conformal fixed points, the unitary minimal models of conformal field theory. This rich structure also makes the model an interesting candidate for study using the generalized hydrodynamic approach to integrable quantum field theory (IQFT). By studying hydrodynamic quantities such as the effective velocities of quasiparticles we can develop a more physical picture of interaction in the theory, both at and away from equilibrium. Indeed, we find that in the SM the effective velocity displays monotonicity features not found in any other IQFT. These admit a natural interpretation when investigated in the context of the massless theories known as models, which provide an effective description of massless flows between consecutive unitary minimal models. Consequently, we find that the effective velocity in the SM can be reconstructed by a ‘cut and paste’ procedure involving the equivalent functions associated to the massless excitations of suitable models. We also investigate the average currents and densities of higher spin conserved quantities in the partitioning protocol.

Localised Dirac eigenmodes, chiral symmetry breaking, and Goldstone’s theorem at finite temperature

I show that a finite density of near-zero localised Dirac modes in the chirally broken phase of a gauge theory can lead to the disappearance of the massless excitations predicted by the Goldstone theorem at finite temperature.

Strings in bimetric spacetimes

We put forward a two-dimensional nonlinear sigma model that couples (bosonic) matter fields to topological Hořava gravity on a nonrelativistic worldsheet. In the target space, this sigma model describes classical strings propagating in a curved spacetime background, whose geometry is described by two distinct metric fields. We evaluate the renormalization group flows of this sigma model on a flat worldsheet and derive a set of beta-functionals for the bimetric fields. Imposing worldsheet Weyl invariance at the quantum level, we uncover a set of gravitational field equations that dictate the dynamics of the bimetric fields in the target space, where a unique massless spin-two excitation emerges. When the bimetric fields become identical, the sigma model gains an emergent Lorentz symmetry. In this single metric limit, the beta-functionals of the bimetric fields reduce to the Ricci flow equation that arises in bosonic string theory, and the bimetric gravitational field equations give rise to Einstein’s gravity.