arXiv subjects

Jeff Murugan

Publications and source records attributed to Jeff Murugan.

At least 55 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

arXiv2020

Chaos and Complexity in Quantum Mechanics

We propose a new diagnostic for quantum chaos. We show that time evolution of complexity for a particular type of target state can provide equivalent information about the classical Lyapunov exponent and scrambling time as out-of-time-order correlators. Moreover, for systems that can be switched from a regular to unstable (chaotic) regime by a tuning of the coupling constant of the interaction Hamiltonian, we find that the complexity defines a new time scale. We interpret this time scale as recording when the system makes the transition from regular to chaotic behaviour.

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arXiv2019

Amplitudes for Astrophysicists: Known Knowns

The use of quantum field theory to understand astrophysical phenomena is not new. However, for the most part, the methods used are those that have been developed decades ago. The intervening years have seen some remarkable developments in computational quantum field theoretic tools. In particle physics, this technology has facilitated calculations that, even ten years ago would have seemed laughably difficult. It is remarkable, then, that most of these new techniques have remained firmly within the domain of high energy physics. We would like to change this. As alluded to in the title, this is the first in a series of papers aimed at showcasing the use of modern on-shell methods in the context of astrophysics and cosmology. In this first article, we use the old problem of the bending of light by a compact object as an anchor to pedagogically develop these new computational tools. Once developed, we then illustrate their power and utility with an application to the scattering of gravitational waves.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2019

Notes on the Squashed Sphere Lowest Landau Level

In a recent article, we were motivated by the question of whether any of the remarkable condensed matter phenomena, such as the quantum Hall effect (QHE), the Integer quantum Hall effect (IQHE) etc., could potentially be observed in the extreme astrophysical environments of neutron stars. As a prequel to that work, and with the aim of understanding better the role of the geometry of the conducting surface on the structure of Landau levels, in this article we study the quantum dynamics of a quantum particle on a squashed sphere. More specifically, we study the dynamics of a single particle on an oblate squashed Haldane sphere i.e. a 2-sphere enclosing a single magnetic monopole at its center. While several features of the conventional Haldane sphere persist, by numerically solving the Schrodinger equation in this background, we find that the particle becomes increasingly localised in a band between the equator and the poles, with a corresponding increase of the eccentricity of the spheroid.

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arXiv2019

One-dimensional bosonization and the SYK model

We explore the possibility of extending the familiar bosonization of two dimensions to $(0+1)$- dimensional systems with a large number of degrees of freedom. As an application of this technique, we consider a class of SYK-type models, and argue that the corresponding action on the gravity dual of the SYK model is given by an STS sequence of dualities.

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arXiv2019

Amplitudes, Gravity and Classical Discontinuities

On-shell methods have revitalized interest in scattering amplitudes which have, in turn, shed some much needed light on the structure of quantum field theories. These developments have been warmly embraced by the particle physics community. Less so in the astrophyical and cosmological contexts. As part of an effort to address this imbalance, we illustrate these methods by revisiting two classic problems in gravity: gravitational light-bending and the vDVZ discontinuity of massive gravity.

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arXiv2019

Randomness and Chaos in Qubit Models

We introduce randomness into a class of integrable models and study the spectral form factor as a diagnostic to distinguish between randomness and chaos. Spectral form factors exhibit a characteristic dip-ramp-plateau behavior in the $N>2$ SYK$_2$ model at high temperatures that is absent in the $N=2$ SYK$_2$ model. Our results suggest that this dip-ramp-plateau behavior implies the existence of random eigenvectors in a quantum many-body system. To further support this observation, we examine the Gaussian random transverse Ising model and obtain consistent results without suffering from small $N$ issues. Finally, we demonstrate numerically that expectation values of observables computed in a random quantum state at late times are equivalent to the expectation values computed in the thermal ensemble in a Gaussian random one-qubit model.

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arXiv2019

An Introduction to Topological Data Analysis for Physicists: From LGM to FRBs

Topological Data Analysis (TDA) is a novel, and relatively new approach to analysing high-dimensional data sets. It does this by focussing on global properties like the shape and connectivity of the data giving it a significant advantage over more conventional tools based on cluster analysis, a localised property of the data. However, some of its mathematical foundations, like algebraic topology and discrete Morse theory, are perceived as an intimidatingly steep upramp into the subject. Consequently, it has enjoyed much less popularity as a data-analysis tool than less abstract methods. This article aims to change this. By focusing on a small set of simple examples, chosen primarily for their pedagogical value, we introduce and explain TDA's two principle branches; persistent homology and the Mapper algorithm. We then illustrate the universality of the method by discussing its application to the intriguing data set of fast radio burst (FRB) observations. We close the article with a discussion of the resilience of topological data analysis to noise and some statistical and computational challenges faced by the method.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2019

Chaos and Scrambling in Quantum Small Worlds

Quantum small-worlds are quantum many-body systems that interpolate between completely ordered (nearest-neighbour, next-to-nearest-neighbour etc.) and completely random interactions. As such, they furnish a novel new laboratory to study quantum systems transitioning between regular and chaotic behaviour. In this article, we introduce the idea of a quantum small-world network by starting from a well understood integrable system, a spin-1 Heisenberg chain. We then inject a small number of long-range interactions into the spin chain and study its ability to scramble quantum information using two primary devices: the out-of-time-order correlator (OTOC) and the spectral form factor (SFF). We find that the system shows increasingly rapid scrambling as its interactions become progressively more random, with no evidence of quantum chaos.

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arXiv2018

Astrophysical Quantum Matter: Spinless charged particles on a magnetic dipole sphere

We consider the quantum mechanics of a spinless charged particle on a 2-dimensional sphere. When threaded with a magnetic monopole field, this is the well-known Haldane sphere that furnishes a translationally-invariant, incompressible quantum fluid state of a gas of electrons confined to the sphere. This letter presents the results of a novel variant of the Haldane solution where the monopole field is replaced by that of a dipole. We argue that this system is relevant to the physics on the surface of compact astrophysical objects like neutron stars.

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arXiv2017

Comments on scattering in massive gravity, vDVZ and BCFW

Armed with the latest technology in the computation of scattering amplitudes involving massive particles of any spin, we revisit the van Dam-Veltman-Zakharov (vDVZ) discontinuity of massive gravity and show how it may be understood in terms of the Britto-Cachazo-Feng-Witten (BCFW) relations.

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arXiv2017

More on Supersymmetric and 2d Analogs of the SYK Model

In this paper, we explore supersymmetric and 2d analogs of the SYK model. We begin by working out a basis of (super)conformal eigenfunctions appropriate for expanding a four-point function. We use this to clarify some details of the 1d supersymmetric SYK model. We then introduce new bosonic and supersymmetric analogs of SYK in two dimensions. These theories consist of $N$ fields interacting with random $q$-field interactions. Although models built entirely from bosons appear to be problematic, we find a supersymmetric model that flows to a large $N$ CFT with interaction strength of order one. We derive an integral formula for the four-point function at order $1/N$, and use it to compute the central charge, chaos exponent and some anomalous dimensions. We describe a problem that arises if one tries to find a 2d SYK-like CFT with a continuous global symmetry.

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arXiv2017

Particle-vortex duality in topological insulators and superconductors

We investigate the origins and implications of the duality between topological insulators and topological superconductors in three and four spacetime dimensions. In the latter, the duality transformation can be made at the level of the path integral in the standard way, while in three dimensions, it takes the form of "self-duality in odd dimensions". In this sense, it is closely related to the particle-vortex duality of planar systems. In particular, we use this to elaborate on Son's conjecture that a three dimensional Dirac fermion that can be thought of as the surface mode of a four dimensional topological insulator is dual to a composite fermion.

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arXiv2017

Holographic Entanglement Entropy for Gravitational Anomaly in Four Dimensions

We compute the holographic entanglement entropy for the anomaly polynomial $\mathrm{Tr} R^2$ in 3+1 dimensions. Using the perturbative method developed for computing entanglement entropy for quantum field theories, we also compute the parity odd contribution to the entanglement entropy of the dual field theory that comes from a background gravitational Chern-Simons term. We find that, in leading order in the perturbation of the background geometry, the two contributions match except for a logarithmic divergent term on the field theory side. We interpret this extra contribution as encoding our ignorance of the source which creates the perturbation of the geometry.

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arXiv2016

Fermionic T-Duality of $AdS_n \times S^n (\times S^n) \times T^m$ using IIA Supergravity

We show that the string backgrounds AdS2 x S2 x T6 and AdSd x Sd x Sd x T{10 - 3d} (d = 2, 3) are self-dual under a series of bosonic and fermionic T-dualities. We do this using the fermionic Buscher rules derived by Berkovits and Maldacena, thus working at the level of the supergravity fields. This allows us to explicitly track the behaviour of the RR fields, from which we see that we need T-duality along some torus directions. For the AdS x S x S cases, which contain cosets of D(2,1;alpha), it is necessary to perform bosonic T-duality along some complexified Killing spinors in one of the spheres.

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arXiv2015

A nonabelian particle-vortex duality in gauge theories

We define a nonabelian version of particle-vortex duality, by dimensionally extending usual (1+1)-dimensional nonabelian T-duality to (2+1) dimensions. While we will explicitly describe a global $SU(2)$ symmetry, our methods can also be applied to a larger group $G$, by gauging an appropriate subgroup. We will exemplify our duality with matter in both adjoint and fundamental representations by considering a modification of ${\cal N}=2$ supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory (Seiberg-Witten theory reduced to (2+1) dimensions), and an $SU(2)\times U(1)$ color-flavor locked theory that exhibits nonabelian vortex solutions.

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arXiv2015

T-Duality of Green-Schwarz Superstrings on AdS(d) x S(d) x M(10-2d)

We verify the self-duality of Green-Schwarz supercoset sigma models on AdS$_d \times S^d $ backgrounds (d=2,3,5) under combined bosonic and fermionic T-dualities without gauge fixing kappa symmetry. We also prove this property for superstrings on AdS$_d \times S^d \times S^d$ (d=2,3) described by supercoset sigma models with the isometries governed by the exceptional Lie supergroups $D(2,1;α)$ (d=2) and $D(2,1;α)\times D(2,1;α)$ (d=3), which requires an additional T-dualisation along one of the spheres. Then, by taking into account the contribution of non-supercoset fermionic modes (up to the second order), we provide evidence for the T-self-duality of the complete type IIA and IIB Green-Schwarz superstring theory on AdS$_d\times S^d \times T^{10-2d}$ (d=2,3) backgrounds with Ramond-Ramond fluxes. Finally, applying the Buscher-like rules to T-dualising supergravity fields, we prove the T-self-duality of the whole class of the AdS$_d\times S^d \times M^{10-2d}$ superbackgrounds with Ramond-Ramond fluxes in the context of supergravity.

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arXiv2015

The KLT relations in unimodular gravity

With this article, we initiate a systematic study of some of the symmetry properties of unimodular gravity, building on much of the known structure of general relativity, and utilising the powerful technology developed in that context. In particular, we show, up to four-points and tree-level, that the KLT relations of perturbative gravity hold for tracefree or unimodular gravity.

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arXiv2015

Nonrelativistic limit of the abelianized ABJM model and the ADS/CMT correspondence

We consider the nonrelativistic limit of the abelian reduction of the massive ABJM model proposed in \cite{Mohammed:2012gi}, obtaining a supersymmetric version of the Jackiw-Pi model. The system exhibits an ${\cal N}=2$ Super-Schrödinger symmetry with the Jackiw-Pi vortices emerging as BPS solutions. We find that this $(2+1)$-dimensional abelian field theory is dual to a certain (3+1)-dimensional gravity theory that differs somewhat from previously considered abelian condensed matter stand-ins for the ABJM model. We close by commenting on progress in the top-down realization of the AdS/CMT correspondence in a critical string theory.

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