arXiv subjects

Jérémie Quevillon

Publications and source records attributed to Jérémie Quevillon.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Strong-field regime within effective field theory

Building upon the Covariant Derivative Expansion, we develop a method to compute effective actions that is able to capture non-perturbative effects induced by strong background fields. We demonstrate the method in scalar QED, by deriving the full second-derivative corrections to the scalar Heisenberg--Euler effective action. The corresponding result is interpreted as an effective field theory with three characteristic scales, two of which are large (mass and field strength) in comparison with the remaining one (derivatives of the field). As an application, we show that, at this order, the transseries structure of the Schwinger pair production rate is preserved, even if the involved coefficients are modified. Our analysis also helps clarify recent disagreements concerning the coefficients of this effective action.

hep-th↗

arXiv2026

Anomalous Transport from Effective Field Theory

A systematic study of chiral effects is presented using an Effective Field Theory framework. By integrating out a massive Dirac fermion at finite temperature in presence of vector and axial background fields, the currents and their anomalies are computed from the path-integral. Chiral effects previously considered separately naturally arise in a unified computation, including new mass corrections. The link between each anomalous transport effect and the anomalies is clearly established, beyond the identification of their coefficients. In particular, we can appreciate how these effects are sourced by the anomalous nature of the theory even in configurations where the anomaly itself vanishes. The consistent and covariant anomalies are both encapsulated in master formulae for the currents which result from a careful treatment of the regularisation. It is finally found that, at finite temperature, the physical currents cannot be inferred simply from the Chern-Simons terms whose divergence reproduce the chiral anomalies.

hep-th↗

arXiv2025

Linear Standard Model extensions in the SMEFT at one loop and Tera-Z

Linear Standard Model (SM) extensions, defined as new particles that can couple linearly to SM fields, form a motivated and finite set of simplified models for exploring phenomenology Beyond the SM (BSM). Heavy BSM particles may be integrated out to obtain their low-energy effects in the SM Effective Field Theory (SMEFT) parametrised by the Wilson coefficients of higher-dimensional operators. We compute and map the dimension-6 SMEFT operator structure of all scalar and fermion linear SM extensions up to one-loop order, thus extending the existing tree-level dictionary of results. Explicit analytic matching expressions for the Wilson coefficients are provided as both Python and Mathematica code in a GitHub repository accessible through links embedded in our main table for each coefficient and within a Python package. We apply our map to highlight the sensitivity to heavy new physics of a $Z$-pole run at a future Tera-$Z$ factory; at one loop, with unit couplings, all linear SM extensions can be indirectly probed by electroweak precision measurements up to $\mathcal{O}(10)$ TeV.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2025

Examining the Anomalous Nature of Chiral Effects in Thermodynamics

Quantum anomalies give rise to novel transport phenomena, including the generation of a current in a relativistic fluid due to the presence of magnetic field or vorticity. We present an exclusive and direct computation of the chiral anomaly within the path integral for a massless fermion on a generic electromagnetic and curved background, including local temperature and chemical potential. We identify new thermodynamical contributions to the anomaly which induce the Chiral Separation and Vortical Effects. Additionally, we show that the anomaly fully vanishes at global equilibrium.

hep-th↗

arXiv2024

Model-independent results on parity violation in the trace anomaly

Anomalous parity violation in four dimensions would be significant for phenomenology (baryogenesis, gravitational waves) and mathematical physics. Over the past decade, there has been a controversy in the literature as to whether free Weyl fermions give rise to (anomalous) parity violation in the trace of the energy momentum tensor; expressed by the Pontryagin densities $R\tilde R$ and $F\tilde F$ in the gravity and the gauge sector respectively. In Ref.$^1$, we have shown, using path integral methods, that the trace anomaly of a free Weyl fermion does not violate parity (i.e the absence of the Pontryagin density). In a subsequent work$^2$ we came to the stronger conclusion that for any theory compatible with dimensional regularisation, the Pontryagin-terms are equally absent. It is the \textit{finiteness} of the diffeomorphism, the Lorentz and the gauge anomalies that prevents anomalous parity violation.

hep-th↗

arXiv2024

New Directions for ALP Searches Combining Nuclear Reactors and Haloscopes

In this work we propose reactoscope, a novel experimental setup for axion-like particle (ALP) searches. Nuclear reactors produce a copious number of photons, a fraction of which could convert into ALPs via Primakoff process in the reactor core. The generated flux of ALPs leaves the nuclear power plant and its passage through a region with a strong magnetic field results in the efficient conversion to photons which can be detected. Such magnetic field is the key component of axion haloscope experiments. Adjacent nuclear reactor and axion haloscope experiment exist in Grenoble, France. There, the Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL) research reactor is situated only $\sim 700$ m from GrAHal, the axion haloscope platform designed to offer several volume and magnetic field (up to 43 T) configurations. We derive sensitivity projections for photophilic ALP searches with ILL and GrAHal, and also scrutinize analogous realizations, such as the one comprising of CAST experiment at CERN and Bugey nuclear power plant. The results that we obtain complement and extend the reach of existing laboratory experiments, e.g. light-shining-through-walls. While the derived sensitivities are not competitive when compared to the astrophysical limits, our analysis is free from the assumptions associated to those.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2024

Trace Anomaly of Weyl Fermions via the Path Integral

We compute the trace, diffeomorphism and Lorentz anomalies of a free Weyl fermion in a gravitational background field by path integral methods. This is achieved by regularising the variation of the determinant of the Weyl operator building on earlier work by Leutwyler. The trace anomaly is found to be one half of the one of a Dirac fermion. Most importantly we establish that the potential parity-odd curvature term $R \tilde R$, corresponding to the Pontryagin density, vanishes. This is to the contrary of some recent findings in the literature which gave rise to a controversy. We verify, that the regularisation does not lead to (spurious) anomalies in the Lorentz and diffeomorphism symmetries. We argue that in $d = 2\;(\textrm{mod } 4)$ $P$- and $CP$-odd terms cannot appear and that for $d = 4\;(\textrm{mod } 4)$ they are absent at least at leading order.

hep-th↗

arXiv2024

Gravity-gauge Anomaly Constraints on the Energy-momentum Tensor

We derive constraints on the four dimensional energy-momentum tensor from gravitational and gauge anomalies. Our work can be considered an extension of Duff's analysis [1] to include parity-odd terms and explicit symmetry breaking. The constraints imply the absence of the parity-odd $R\tilde R$ and $F\tilde F$ terms, for theories whose symmetries are compatible with dimensional regularisation, in a model-independent way. Remarkably, even in the case of explicit symmetry breaking the $\Box R$-anomaly is found to be finite and unambiguous after applying the symmetry constraints. We compute mixed gravity-gauge anomalies at leading order and deduce phenomenological consequences for vector bosons associated with global chiral symmetries.

hep-th↗

arXiv2024

Interference Effects in $\mathbf{gg \to H \to Z γ}$ Beyond Leading Order

The ATLAS and CMS collaborations at the LHC have recently announced evidence for the rare Higgs boson decay into a $Z$ boson and a photon. We analyze the interference between the process $gg\! \to \! H \! \to \! Z γ$ induced by loops of heavy particles, which is by far the dominant contribution to the signal, and the continuum $gg \to Z γ$ QCD background process mediated by light quark loops. This interference modifies the event yield, the resonance line-shape and the apparent mass of the Higgs boson. We calculate the radiative corrections to this interference beyond the leading-order approximation in perturbative QCD and find that, while differing numerically from the corresponding effects on the more studied $gg \! \to \! γγ$ signal, they are generally rather small. As such, they do not impact significantly the interpretation of the present measurements of the $H \to Z γ$ decay mode.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2023

The Universal One-Loop Effective Action with Gravity

We complete the so-called Universal One-Loop Effective Action (UOLEA) with effects of gravity and provide a systematic approach to incorporate higher dimensional operators in curved spacetime. The functional determinant stemming from the path integral is computed using the Covariant Derivative Expansion (CDE), in a momentum representation that does not rely on a specific choice of coordinate to be defined, as it often is. This very simple and efficient approach also manifests an interesting novelty as it allows to integrate out chiral fermions in curved spacetime in a direct manner. The presented method would very well fit in a code that performs CDE, offering the possibility to integrate out at one-loop fields on a curved spacetime background, including spin-2 fields, like the graviton. Eventually these results should provide an interesting way to study low energy effects of UV completions of gravity.

hep-th↗

arXiv2023

Quadratic Coupling of the Axion to Photons

We show that the QCD axion couples to the electromagnetic kinetic term at one loop. The result is that if axions make up dark matter, they induce temporal variation of the fine structure constant $α$, which is severely constrained. We recast these constraints on the QCD axion parameter space. We also discuss how to generalise our finding to axion-like particles, and the resulting constraints.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2023

Axion-like ALPs

The Effective Field Theory (EFT) Lagrangian for a generic axion-like particle (ALP) has many free parameters, and leaves quite some freedom for the expected phenomenology. In this work, we set up more constrained EFTs by enforcing true axion-like properties for the ALP. Indeed, though the Peccei-Quinn symmetry of the QCD axion is anomalous, it is so in specific ways, and this shows up as consistency conditions between the gauge boson and fermion couplings. We propose to enforce such conditions, as inspired from the DFSZ and KSVZ scenarios, on the generic ALP EFTs. These truly axion-like ALP EFTs are then particularly well-suited as benchmark scenarios, to be used in the search for ALPs both at colliders and at low-energy experiments.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2023

Axion Effective Action

In this paper, we discuss the construction of Effective Field Theories (EFTs) in which a chiral fermion, charged under both gauge and global symmetries, is integrated out. Inspired by typical axion models, these symmetries can be spontaneously broken, and the global ones might also be anomalous. In this context, particular emphasis is laid on the derivative couplings of the Goldstone bosons to the fermions, as these lead to severe divergences and ambiguities when building the EFT. We show how to precisely solve these difficulties within the path integral formalism, by adapting the anomalous Ward identities to the EFT context. Our results are very generic, and when applied to axion models, they reproduce the non-intuitive couplings between the massive SM gauge fields and the axion. Altogether, this provides an efficient formalism, paving the way for a systematic and consistent methodology to build entire EFTs involving anomalous symmetries, as required for axion or ALP searches.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2023

Anomalies from an effective field theory perspective

The path-integral measure of a gauge-invariant fermion theory is transformed under the chiral transformation and leads to an elegant derivation of the anomalous chiral Ward-Takahashi identities, as we know from the seminal work of Fujikawa. We present in this work an alternative and illuminating way to calculate the Jacobian in the path-integral measure from the Covariant Derivative Expansion technique used in Effective Field Theory. We present several ways to customize the crucial regularization such that the anomaly is located in the desired current, which is unprecedented within the path integral approach. We are then able to derive, in a transparent and unified way the covariant, consistent, gravitational and scale anomalies.

hep-th↗

arXiv2021

The Grenoble Axion Haloscope platform (GrAHal): development plan and first results

In this note we report on the development plans and first results of the Grenoble Axion Haloscope (GrAHal) project. It is aimed at developing a haloscope platform dedicated to the search for axion dark matter particles. We discuss its general framework and the plans to reach the sensitivity required to probe well known invisible axion models, over particularly relevant axion masses and coupling regions. We also present our first haloscope prototype and the result of its test run at liquid He temperature, setting a new exclusion limit $g_{a γγ} \leq 2.2 \times 10^{-13}~ \text{GeV}^{-1}$ ($g_{a γγ} \leq 22 \times g_{\text{KSVZ}}$) around 6.375 GHz ($m_a \simeq 26.37$ $μ\text{eV}$).

hep-ex↗

arXiv2020

Variations on the SU(5) axion

The simultaneous embeddings of an axion state and a seesaw mechanism within the SU(5) Grand Unification Theory, both minimal and flipped, are systematically studied. It is shown that whenever B-L is active as a global symmetry, the PQ charges of the fermions are ambiguous. Various realizations of the seesaw mechanism are then found to differ only in the way this ambiguity is resolved. But since the ambiguity is unphysical, all these models are thereby predicted to be equivalent, in the sense that the axion phenomenology is identical at the low energy scale.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2020

The Fermionic Universal One-Loop Effective Action

Recent development of path integral matching techniques based on the covariant derivative expansion has made manifest a universal structure of one-loop effective Lagrangians. The universal terms can be computed once and for all to serve as a reference for one-loop matching calculations and to ease their automation. Here we present the fermionic universal one-loop effective action (UOLEA), resulting from integrating out heavy fermions with scalar, pseudo-scalar, vector and axial-vector couplings. We also clarify the relation of the new terms computed here to terms previously computed in the literature and those that remain to complete the UOLEA. Our results can be readily used to efficiently obtain analytical expressions for effective operators arising from heavy fermion loops.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2020

Baryon and lepton number intricacies in axion models

Because the Peccei-Quinn (PQ) symmetry has to be anomalous to solve the strong CP puzzle, some colored and chiral fermions have to transform non-trivially under this symmetry. But when the SM fermions are charged, as in the PQ or DFSZ models, this symmetry ends up entangled with the SM global symmetries, baryon (B) and lepton (L) numbers. This raises several questions addressed in this paper. First, the compatibility of axion models with some explicit B and/or L violating effects is analyzed, including those arising from seesaw mechanisms, electroweak instanton interactions, or explicit B and L violating effective operators. Second, how many of these effects can be simultaneously present is quantified, along with the consequences for the axion mass and vacuum alignment if too many of them are introduced. Finally, large classes of B and/or L violating interactions without impact on axion phenomenology are identified, like for example the various implementations of the type I and II seesaw mechanisms in the DFSZ context.

hep-ph↗