arXiv subjects

Jing-Jun Zhang

Publications and source records attributed to Jing-Jun Zhang.

8 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Flavor--Kinetic Entanglement Production from Decay and Scattering at Finite Density

We extend the scattering-entanglement dictionary to finite-density environments by investigating the flavor--kinetic bipartition of the Hilbert space. We show that tracing over kinematic degrees of freedom maps the total branch-changing transition probability directly onto the leading flavor--kinetic linear entanglement entropy. At finite density, the vacuum branch-changing probability is replaced by an occupation-weighted collision probability, built from the same directed reaction-density kernel that enters the integrated Boltzmann equation. The resulting observable is the bath-averaged flavor--kinetic entanglement entropy of a pair sampled from the medium. As a proof of principle, this framework is applied to an $O(N)$ singlet-scalar extended model to probe thermal phase transitions. In the examples studied, the resulting entanglement entropy serves as a collision-based phase-transition-type diagnostic, exhibiting a finite discontinuity across a first-order phase transition and a nonanalytic temperature derivative for continuous transitions. These examples suggest a novel way to characterize thermal phase structures, distinct from traditional thermodynamic order parameters.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2026

Can we live in a baby universe formed by a delayed first-order phase transition?

We examine the idea that our universe began as a baby universe and show that this is feasible in a gauged $U(1)_{B-L}$ extension of the Standard Model with the classically conformal principle. For the first time, we define a measure to describe the probability that we reside in a baby universe, and find that it can be close to 1 in a considerable portion of the parameter space. The framework is consistent with current cosmological data, and it predicts the existence of a heavy neutral gauge boson, which could be detected at colliders, thereby offering a direct link between early-universe dynamics and experimentally testable signatures at the TeV scale.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2026

Chiral phase transition with primordial black holes: Distinct phase structure and catalysis

We study the impact of primordial black holes (PBHs) on the chiral phase transition and its associated stochastic gravitational-wave (GW) signals. Using the three-flavor Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model, we construct the chiral effective potential in a Schwarzschild spacetime background. We find that PBHs promote chiral symmetry restoration and induce a nontrivial local phase structure in the vicinity of the event horizon simultaneously. In particular, this structure exhibits a novel chiral symmetry breaking pattern involving both second- and first-order phase transitions, a feature absent in flat spacetime. We further demonstrate that PBHs act as genuine catalysts for the chiral phase transition by analyzing the bounce solution in curved spacetime. The presence of PBHs substantially enhances the inverse duration parameter $β/H$ while leaving the overall transition strength comparable to that in flat spacetime. As a consequence, even a small population of PBHs can induce $\mathcal{O}(1)$ shifts in both the peak frequency and the peak amplitude of the GW spectrum generated by the first-order dark chiral phase transition.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2025

Parameter Inference from Final-State Entanglement in Higgs Decays

The decay out-states of unstable Standard Model (SM) particles provide a unique, well-defined intrinsic quantum-information probe of the SM parameter space. We use Higgs decays as a test case: after tracing out kinematics, we compute entanglement among final-state spins and colors across all decay channels and impose a near-maximal entanglement-entropy criterion. This criterion yields quantitative indications for fundamental parameters. Within the SM, the entanglement entropy exhibits a global maximum close to the observed Higgs mass and the measured $W$ mass, the latter being equivalent to the $SU(2)_L$ gauge coupling. In a two-parameter kappa framework, applying the same criterion points to an SM-like balance between vector and fermion couplings, constraining the ratio of the sector-wide rescalings. These results suggest that entanglement extremality can serve as a complementary handle on fundamental parameters.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2025

Scattering Entanglement Entropy and Its Implications for Electroweak Phase Transitions

We investigate the connection between the entanglement entropy in scattering processes and the dynamics of electroweak phase transitions. Recent work has shown that the scattering entanglement entropy can provide new insight into Standard Model parameters. In this study, we propose that the maximum of the entanglement entropy in scattering amplitudes may serve as a diagnostic for first-order electroweak phase transitions in the early universe. We analyze a simplified extension of the Standard Model consisting of the Higgs boson $h$ coupled to $O(N)$ real singlet scalars $S$ via the Higgs portal coupling $λ_{hS}$. By explicitly calculating the maximum entanglement entropy, we demonstrate that it grows with increasing $λ_{hS}$, and that both first-order and strong first-order electroweak phase transitions are favored in regions of parameter space with large maximum entropy. Our results suggest that entanglement-based observables may encode meaningful information about the underlying dynamics of electroweak symmetry breaking and provide a novel perspective on phase transition phenomena.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2025

PHYBench: Holistic Evaluation of Physical Perception and Reasoning in Large Language Models

Current benchmarks for evaluating the reasoning capabilities of Large Language Models (LLMs) face significant limitations: task oversimplification, data contamination, and flawed evaluation items. These deficiencies necessitate more rigorous assessment methods. To address these limitations, we introduce PHYBench, a benchmark of 500 original physics problems ranging from high school to Physics Olympiad difficulty. PHYBench addresses data contamination through original content and employs a systematic curation pipeline to eliminate flawed items. Evaluations show that PHYBench activates more tokens and provides stronger differentiation between reasoning models compared to other baselines like AIME 2024, OlympiadBench and GPQA. Even the best-performing model, Gemini 2.5 Pro, achieves only 36.9% accuracy compared to human experts' 61.9%. To further enhance evaluation precision, we introduce the Expression Edit Distance (EED) Score for mathematical expression assessment, which improves sample efficiency by 204% over binary scoring. Moreover, PHYBench effectively elicits multi-step and multi-condition reasoning, providing a platform for examining models' reasoning robustness, preferences, and deficiencies. The benchmark results and dataset are publicly available at https://www.phybench.cn/.

cs.CL↗

arXiv2022

Thermality of the Unruh effect with intermediate statistics

Utilizing quantum coherence monotone, we reexamine the thermal nature of the Unruh effect of an accelerating detector. We consider an UDW detector coupling to a n-dimensional conformal field in Minkowski spacetime, whose response spectrum generally exhibits an intermediate statistics of (1+1) anyon field. We find that the thermal nature of the Unruh effect guaranteed by KMS condition is characterized by a vanishing asymptotic quantum coherence. We show that the time-evolution of coherence monotone can distinguish the different thermalizing ways of the detector, which depends on the scaling dimension of the conformal primary field. In particular, for the conformal background with certain scaling dimension, we demonstrate that at fixed proper time a revival of coherence can occur even for growing Unruh decoherence. Finally, we show that coherence monotone has distinct dynamics under the Unruh decoherence and a thermal bath for a static observer.

hep-th↗

arXiv2022

Quantum Fisher information as a probe for Unruh thermality

A long-standing debate on Unruh effect is about its obscure thermal nature. In this Letter, we use quantum Fisher information (QFI) as an effective probe to explore the thermal nature of Unruh effect from both local and global perspectives. By resolving the full dynamics of UDW detector, we find that the QFI is a time-evolving function of detector's energy gap, Unruh temperature $T_U$ and particularities of background field, e.g., mass and spacetime dimensionality. We show that the asymptotic QFI whence detector arrives its equilibrium is solely determined by $T_U$, demonstrating the global side of Unruh thermality alluded by the KMS condition. We also show that the local side of Unruh effect, i.e., the different ways for the detector to approach the same thermal equilibrium, is encoded in the corresponding time-evolution of the QFI. In particular, we find that with massless scalar background the QFI has unique monotonicity in $n=3$ dimensional spacetime, and becomes non-monotonous for $n\neq3$ models where a local peak value exists at early time and for finite acceleration, indicating an enhanced precision of estimation on Unruh temperature at a relative low acceleration can be achieved. Once the field acquiring mass, the related QFI becomes significantly robust against the Unruh decoherence in the sense that its local peak sustains for a very long time. While coupling to a more massive background, the persistence can even be strengthened and the QFI possesses a larger maximal value. Such robustness of QFI can surely facilitate any practical quantum estimation task.

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