arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to A. V. Molochkov.
We investigate the stretching of a spherically symmetric solution in the Skyrme model. The three-dimensional generalization of the Cassini ovals is considered as ansatz of extension. The linear dependence of static energy on the longitudinal deformation parameter is obtained with a slope $σ\approx 0.14\ \mathrm{ GeV}^2$, which is in good agreement with the string tension known from various models of confinement.
We use numerical Monte Carlo simulations to determine the mass spectrum of the bosonic sector of the electroweak model in an external magnetic field of the electroweak-scale strength ($10^{20}\,{\rm T}$) at zero temperature. It is known that as the magnetic field gets stronger, the electroweak vacuum undergoes two consecutive crossover-type transitions, passing from (i) the conventional symmetry-broken homogeneous phase to (ii) an intermediate inhomogeneous vortex phase characterized by a (superconducting) condensate of electrically charged $W$ bosons and then to (iii) a homogeneous phase with a restored electroweak symmetry. We show that the spin component of the $W$ boson aligned with the direction of the magnetic field is the lightest excitation in all three phases. Its mass continuously decreases in the low-field broken phase and becomes very small in the intermediate phase. We argue that this nearly massless excitation corresponds to a Goldstone acoustic phonon mode associated with vibrations of the lattice of electroweak vortices. In the high-field symmetry-restored phase, where the vortices disappear, the lightest $W$ mass rises again. Neither Higgs nor $Z$ boson masses vanish across all studied phases and crossover transitions.
The XY-plaquette model is the most straightforward lattice realization of a broad class of fractonic field theories that host quasiparticles with restricted mobility. The plaquette interaction appears naturally as a ring-exchange term in the low-energy description of exciton Bose liquids, cold atomic gases, and quantum dimer models. Using first-principle Monte Carlo simulations, we study the phase diagram and the vortex dynamics in the XY-plaquette model on a square lattice in two spatial dimensions. In its minimal formulation, the model contains a ring-exchange plaquette term in two spatial dimensions and a standard XY-link term in the (imaginary) time direction. We show that the phase diagram of the minimal XY-plaquette model possesses two phases: (i) a disordered vortex-dominated phase in which a single percolating vortex trajectory occupies the whole 3d spacetime; (ii) a partially disordered phase in which the vortices become partially immobile, with their worldlines strictly confined to one or several infinite two-dimensional planes. The spatial positions and spatial orientations (along $x$ or $y$ axis) of these vortex domain walls appear to be spontaneous. Individual vortices form a disordered system within each vortex domain wall, so the fractal spacetime dimension of vortex trajectories approaches $D_f = 2$. We argue that the appearance of the vortex walls could be interpreted as a consequence of the spontaneous breaking of a global internal symmetry in the compact XY-plaquette model.
We study the properties of gluon plasma subjected to a weak acceleration using first-principle numerical Monte Carlo simulations. We use the Luttinger (Tolman-Ehrenfest) correspondence between temperature gradient and gravitational field to impose acceleration in imaginary time formalism. Under acceleration, the system resides in global thermal equilibrium. Our results indicate that even the weakest acceleration up to $a \simeq 16$ MeV drastically softens the deconfinement phase transition, converting the first-order phase transition of a static system to a soft crossover for accelerating gluons. The accelerating environment can be relevant to the first moments of the early Universe and the initial glasma regime of relativistic heavy ion collisions. In particular, our results imply that the acceleration, if present, may also inhibit the detection of the thermodynamic phase transition from quark-gluon plasma to the hadronic phase.
The 2d superfluid (complex $ϕ^4$ theory in two dimensions) undergoes Kosterlitz-Thouless transition driven by phase fluctuations of the superfluid order parameter. We study the transition by Monte Carlo simulations and also develop an analytic approach based on the effective theory for the Goldstone mode.
Using first-principle lattice simulations, we demonstrate that in the background of a strong magnetic field (around $10^{20}$ T), the electroweak sector of the vacuum experiences two consecutive crossover transitions associated with dramatic changes in the zero-temperature dynamics of the vector $W$ bosons and the scalar Higgs particles, respectively. Above the first crossover, we observe the appearance of large, inhomogeneous structures consistent with a classical picture of the formation of $W$ and $Z$ condensates pierced by vortices. The presence of the $W$ and $Z$ condensates supports the emergence of the exotic superconducting and superfluid properties induced by a strong magnetic field in the vacuum. We find evidence that the vortices form a disordered solid or a liquid rather than a crystal. The second transition restores the electroweak symmetry. Such conditions can be realized in the near-horizon region of the magnetized black holes.
The scale (conformal) anomaly can generate an electric current near the boundary of a system in the presence of a static magnetic field. The magnitude of this magnetization current, produced at zero temperature and in the absence of matter, is proportional to a beta function associated with the renormalization of the electric charge. Using first-principle lattice simulations, we investigate how the breaking of the scale symmetry affects this ``scale magnetic effect'' near a Dirichlet boundary in scalar QED (Abelian Higgs model). We demonstrate the interplay of the generated current with vortex excitations both in symmetric (normal) and broken (superconducting) phases and compare the results with the anomalous current produced in the conformal, scale-invariant regime. Possible experimental signatures of the effect in Dirac semimetals are discussed.
We formulate the ferromagnetic Ising model on a two-dimensional sphere using the Delaunay triangulation of the Fibonacci covering. The Fibonacci approach generates a uniform isotropic covering of the sphere with approximately equal-area triangles, thus potentially supporting a smooth thermodynamic limit. In the absence of a magnetic field, the model exhibits a spontaneous magnetization phase transition at a critical temperature that depends on the connectivity properties of the underlying lattice. While in the standard triangular lattice, every site is connected to 6 neighboring sites, the triangulated Fibonacci lattice of the curved surface contains a substantial density of the 5- and 7-vertices. As the number of sites in the Fibonacci sphere increases, the triangular cover of the sphere experiences a series of singular transitions that reflect a sudden change in its connectivity properties. These changes substantially influence the statistical features of the system leading to a series of first-order-like discontinuities as the radius of the sphere increases. We found that the Ising model on a uniform, Fibonacci-triangulated sphere in a large-radius limit possesses the phase transition at the critical temperature $T_c \simeq 3.33(3) J$, which is slightly lower than the thermodynamic result for an equilaterally triangulated planar lattice. This mismatch is a memory effect: the planar Fibonacci lattice remembers its origin from the curved space.
We study the Roberge-Weiss phase transition numerically. The phase transition is associated with the discontinuities in the quark-number density at specific values of imaginary quark chemical potential. We parameterize the quark number density $ρ_q$ by the polynomial fit function to compute the canonical partition functions. We demonstrate that this approach provides a good framework for analyzing lattice QCD data at finite density and a high temperature. We show numerically that at high temperature, the Lee-Yang zeros lie on the negative real semi-axis provided that the high-quark-number contributions to the grand canonical partition function are taken into account. These Lee-Yang zeros have nonzero linear density, which signals the Roberge-Weiss phase transition. We demonstrate that this density agrees with the quark density discontinuity at the transition line.
We present the results of first-principle numerical simulations of Euclidean SU(3) Yang-Mills plasma rotating with a high imaginary angular frequency. The rigid Euclidean rotation is introduced via ``rotwisted'' boundary conditions along imaginary time direction. The Polyakov loop in the co-rotating Euclidean reference frame shows the emergence of a spatially inhomogeneous confining-deconfining phase through a broad crossover transition. A continuation of our numerical results to Minkowski spacetime suggests that the gluon plasma, rotating at real angular frequencies, produces a new inhomogeneous phase possessing the confining phase near the rotation axis and the deconfinement phase in the outer regions. The inhomogeneous phase structure has a purely kinematic origin, rooted in the Tolman-Ehrenfest effect in a rotating medium. We also derive the Euclidean version of the Tolman-Ehrenfest law in imaginary time formalism and discuss two definitions of temperature at imaginary Euclidean rotation.
Compact U(1) gauge theory in 3+1 dimensions possesses the confining phase, characterized by a linear raise of the potential between particles with opposite electric charges at sufficiently large inter-particle separation. The confinement is generated by condensation of Abelian monopoles at strong gauge coupling. We study the properties of monopoles and the deconfining order parameter in zero-temperature theory in the presence of ideally conducting parallel metallic boundaries (plates) usually associated with the Casimir effect. Using first-principle numerical simulations in compact U(1) lattice gauge theory, we show that as the distance between the plates diminishes, the vacuum in between the plates experiences a deconfining transition. The phase diagram in the space of the gauge coupling and the inter-plane distance is obtained.
We discuss the prediction of critical behavior of lattice observables in SU(2) and SU(3) gauge theories. We show that feed-forward neural network, trained on the lattice configurations of gauge fields as input data, finds correlations with the target observable, which is also true in the critical region where the neural network has not been trained. We have verified that the neural network constructs a gauge-invariant function and this property does not change over the entire range of the parameter space.
We discuss the phase diagram and properties of global vortices in the non-Hermitian parity-time-symmetric relativistic model possessing two interacting scalar complex fields. The phase diagram contains stable PT-symmetric regions and unstable PT-broken regions, which intertwine nontrivially with the U(1)-symmetric and U(1)-broken phases, thus forming rich patterns in the space of parameters of the model. The notion of the PT-symmetry breaking is generalized to the interacting theory. At finite quartic couplings, the non-Hermitian model possesses classical vortex solutions in the PT-symmetric regions characterized by broken U(1) symmetry. In the long-range limit of two-component Bose-Einstein condensates, the vortices from different condensates experience mutual dissipative dynamics unless their cores overlap precisely. For comparison, we also consider a close Hermitian analog of the system and demonstrate that the non-Hermitian two-component model possesses much richer dynamics than its Hermitian counterpart.
We investigate the advantages of machine learning techniques to recognize the dynamics of topological objects in quantum field theories. We consider the compact U(1) gauge theory in three spacetime dimensions as the simplest example of a theory that exhibits confinement and mass gap phenomena generated by monopoles. We train a neural network with a generated set of monopole configurations to distinguish between confinement and deconfinement phases, from which it is possible to determine the deconfinement transition point and to predict several observables. The model uses a supervised learning approach and treats the monopole configurations as three-dimensional images (holograms). We show that the model can determine the transition temperature with accuracy, which depends on the criteria implemented in the algorithm. More importantly, we train the neural network with configurations from a single lattice size before making predictions for configurations from other lattice sizes, from which a reliable estimation of the critical temperatures are obtained.
We study the machine learning techniques applied to the lattice gauge theory's critical behavior, particularly to the confinement/deconfinement phase transition in the SU(2) and SU(3) gauge theories. We find that the neural network, trained on lattice configurations of gauge fields at an unphysical value of the lattice parameters as an input, builds up a gauge-invariant function, and finds correlations with the target observable that is valid in the physical region of the parameter space. In particular, if the algorithm aimed to predict the Polyakov loop as the deconfining order parameter, it builds a trace of the gauge group matrices along a closed loop in the time direction. As a result, the neural network, trained at one unphysical value of the lattice coupling $β$ predicts the order parameter in the whole region of the $β$ values with good precision. We thus demonstrate that the machine learning techniques may be used as a numerical analog of the analytical continuation from easily accessible but physically uninteresting regions of the coupling space to the interesting but potentially not accessible regions.
Vacuum fluctuations of quantum fields between physical objects depend on the shapes, positions, and internal composition of the latter. For objects of arbitrary shapes, even made from idealized materials, the calculation of the associated zero-point (Casimir) energy is an analytically intractable challenge. We propose a new numerical approach to this problem based on machine-learning techniques and illustrate the effectiveness of the method in a (2+1) dimensional scalar field theory. The Casimir energy is first calculated numerically using a Monte-Carlo algorithm for a set of the Dirichlet boundaries of various shapes. Then, a neural network is trained to compute this energy given the Dirichlet domain, treating the latter as black-and-white pixelated images. We show that after the learning phase, the neural network is able to quickly predict the Casimir energy for new boundaries of general shapes with reasonable accuracy.
Using numerical simulations of lattice QCD with physical quark masses, we reveal the influence of magnetic-field background on chiral and deconfinement crossovers in finite-temperature QCD at low baryonic density. In the absence of thermodynamic singularity, we identify these transitions with inflection points of the approximate order parameters: normalized light-quark condensate and renormalized Polyakov loop, respectively. We show that the quadratic curvature of the chiral transition temperature in the ``temperature--chemical potential'' plane depends rather weakly on the strength of the background magnetic field. At weak magnetic fields, the thermal width of the chiral crossover gets narrower as the density of the baryon matter increases, possibly indicating a proximity to a real thermodynamic phase transition. Remarkably, the curvature of the chiral thermal width flips its sign at $eB_{\mathrm{fl}} \simeq 0.6\,\mathrm{GeV}^2$, so that above the flipping point $B > B_{\mathrm{fl}}$, the chiral width gets wider as the baryon density increases. Approximately at the same strength of magnetic field, the chiral and deconfining crossovers merge together at $T \approx 140\,\mathrm{MeV}$. The phase diagram in the parameter space ``temperature-chemical potential-magnetic field'' is outlined, and single-quark entropy and single-quark magnetization are explored. The curvature of the chiral thermal width allows us to estimate an approximate position of the chiral critical endpoint at zero magnetic field: $(T_c^{\text{CEP}}, μ_B^{\text{CEP}})= (100(25)\, \text{MeV},\ 800(140)\,\text{MeV})$.
We study properties of SU(2) Yang-Mills theory on a four-dimensional Euclidean spacetime in which two directions are compactified into a finite two-dimensional torus ${\mathbb T}^2$ while two others constitute a large ${\mathbb R}^2$ subspace. This Euclidean ${\mathbb T}^2 \times {\mathbb R}^2$ manifold corresponds simultaneously to two systems in a (3+1) dimensional Minkowski spacetime: a zero-temperature theory with two compactified spatial dimensions and a finite-temperature theory with one compactified spatial dimension. Using numerical lattice simulations we show that the model exhibits two phase transitions related to the breaking of center symmetries along the compactified directions. We find that at zero temperature the transition lines cross each other and form the Greek letter $γ$ in the phase space parametrized by the lengths of two compactified spatial dimensions. There are four different phases. We also demonstrate that the compactification of only one spatial dimension enhances the confinement property and, consequently, increases the critical deconfinement temperature.