arXiv subjects

Michele Mesiti

Publications and source records attributed to Michele Mesiti.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2023

$Sp(2N)$ Lattice Gauge Theories and Extensions of the Standard Model of Particle Physics

We review the current status of the long-term programme of numerical investigation of $Sp(2N)$ gauge theories with and without fermionic matter content. We start by introducing the phenomenological as well as theoretical motivations for this research programme, which are related to composite Higgs models, models of partial top compositeness, dark matter models, and in general to the physics of strongly coupled theories and their approach to the large-N limit. We summarise the results of lattice studies conducted so far in the $Sp(2N)$ Yang-Mills theories, measuring the string tension, the mass spectrum of glueballs and the topological susceptibility, and discuss their large-N extrapolation. We then focus our discussion on $Sp(4)$, and summarise numerical measurements of mass and decay constant of mesons in the theories with fermion matter in either the fundamental or the antisymmetric representation, first in the quenched approximation, and then with dynamical fermions. We finally discuss the case of dynamical fermions in mixed representations, and exotic composite fermion states such as the chimera baryons. We conclude by sketching the future stages of the programme. And we describe our approach to open access.

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arXiv2022

Lattice studies of the $Sp(4)$ gauge theory with two fundamental and three antisymmetric Dirac fermions

We consider the $Sp(4)$ gauge theory coupled to $N_f=2$ fundamental and $n_f=3$ antisymmetric flavours of Dirac fermions in four dimensions. This theory serves as the microscopic origin for composite Higgs models with $SU(4)/Sp(4)$ coset, supplemented by partial top compositeness. We study numerically its lattice realisation, and couple the fundamental plaquette action to Wilson-Dirac fermions in mixed representations, by adopting a (rational) hybrid Monte Carlo method, to perform non-trivial tests of the properties of the resulting lattice theory. We find evidence of a surface (with boundaries) of first-order bulk phase transitions in the three-dimensional space of bare parameters (one coupling and two masses). Explicit evaluation of the Dirac eigenvalues confirms the expected patterns of global symmetry breaking. After investigating finite volume effects in the weak-coupling phase of the theory, for the largest available lattice we study the mass spectra of the lightest spin-0 and spin-1 flavoured mesons composed of fermions in each representation, and of the lightest half-integer spin composite particle made of fermions in different representations -- the chimera baryon. This work sets the stage for future systematical studies of the non-perturbative dynamics in phenomenologically relevant regions of parameter space.

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arXiv2021

Progress in $Sp(2N)$ lattice gauge theories

Lattice studies of gauge theories with symplectic gauge groups provide valuable information about gauge dynamics, and complement the results of lattice investigations focused on unitary gauge groups. These theories play a central role in phenomenological contexts such as composite Higgs and strongly interacting dark matter models. We report on recent progress of our lattice research programme, starting from the glueball mass spectrum and the topology of the pure gauge theory. We present our results on the mass spectrum of mesons in the quenched approximation, by varying the number of colours in the symplectic group. For the $Sp(4)$ theory, we focus on results obtained with dynamical fermion matter content comprising both fundamental and 2-index antisymmetric representations of the gauge group, as dictated by a well known model of composite Higgs with partial top compositeness.

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arXiv2021

Sp(4) gauge theories and beyond the standard model physics

We review numerical results for models with gauge group Sp(2N), discussing the glueball spectrum in the large-N limit, the quenched meson spectrum of Sp(4) with Dirac fermions in the fundamental and in the antisymmetric representation and the Sp(4) gauge model with two dynamical Dirac flavours. We also present preliminary results for the meson spectrum in the Sp(4) gauge theory with two fundamental and three antisymmetric Dirac flavours. The main motivation of our programme is to test whether this latter model is viable as a realisation of Higgs compositeness via the pseudo Nambu Goldstone mechanism and at the same time can provide partial top compositeness. In this respect, we report and briefly discuss preliminary results for the mass of the composite baryon made with two fundamental and one antisymmetric fermion (chimera baryon), whose physical properties are highly constrained if partial top compositeness is at work. Our investigation shows that a fully non-perturbative study of Higgs compositeness and partial top compositeness in Sp(4) is within reach with our current lattice methodology.

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arXiv2021

Critical Behaviour in the Single Flavor Planar Thirring Model

We report results of simulations of the $2+1d$ Thirring model with $N$ fermion flavors, defined on a lattice using domain wall fermions. This approach is devised to respect as far as possible the underlying U($2N$) symmetry of the continuum model, expected to be recovered in the limit wall separation $L_s\to\infty$. For $N=1$ there is a symmetry-breaking phase transition associated with bilinear condensation at strong fermion self-interaction, which is a plausible location for a quantum critical point. Fits to a renormalisation group-inspired equation of state yield critical exponents distinct from those obtained using a version of the model defined using staggered fermions.

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arXiv2020

Critical Behaviour in the Single Flavor Thirring Model in 2+1d

Results of a lattice field theory simulation of the single-flavor Thirring model in 2+1 spacetime dimensions are presented. The lattice model is formulated using domain wall fermions as a means to recover the correct U(2) symmetries of the continuum model in the limit where wall separation $L_s\to\infty$. Simulations on $12^3, 16^3\times L_s$, varying self-interaction strength $g^2$ and bare mass $m$ are performed with $L_s = 8, \ldots 48$, and the results for the bilinear condensate $\langle\barψψ\rangle$ fitted to a model equation of state assuming a U(2)$\to$U(1)$\otimes$U(1) symmetry-breaking phase transition at a critical $g_c^2$. First estimates for $g^{-2}a$ and critical exponents are presented, showing small but significant departures from mean-field values. The results confirm that a symmetry-breaking transition does exist and therefore the critical number of flavors for the Thirring model $N_c > 1$. Results for both condensate and associated susceptibility are also obtained in the broken phase on $16^3\times48$, suggesting that here the $L_s\to\infty$ extrapolation is not yet under control. We also present results obtained with the associated 2+1$d$ truncated overlap operator DOL demonstrating exponential localisation, a necessary condition for the recovery of U(2) global symmetry, but that recovery of the Ginsparg-Wilson condition as $L_s\to\infty$ is extremely slow in the broken phase.

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arXiv2020

Sp(4) gauge theories on the lattice: Quenched fundamental and antisymmetric fermions

We perform lattice studies of meson mass spectra and decay constants of the $Sp(4)$ gauge theory in the quenched approximation. We consider two species of (Dirac) fermions as matter field content, transforming in the 2-index antisymmetric and the fundamental representation of the gauge group, respectively. All matter fields are formulated as Wilson fermions. We extrapolate to the continuum and massless limits, and compare to each other the results obtained for the two species of mesons. In the case of two fundamental and three antisymmetric fermions, the long-distance dynamics is relevant for composite Higgs models. This is the first lattice study of this class of theories. The global $SU(4) \times SU(6)$ symmetry is broken to the $Sp(4) \times SO(6)$ subgroup, and the condensates align with the explicit mass terms present in the lattice formulation of the theory. The main results of our quenched calculations are that, with fermions in the 2-index antisymmetric representation of the group, the masses squared and decay constant squared of all the mesons we considered are larger than the corresponding quantities for the fundamental representation, by factors that vary between $\sim$1.2 and $\sim$2.7. We also present technical results that will be useful for future lattice investigations of dynamical simulations, of composite chimera baryons, and of the approach to large $N$ in the $Sp(2N)$ theories considered. We briefly discuss their high-temperature behaviour, where symmetry restoration and enhancement are expected.

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arXiv2018

AVX-512 extension to OpenQCD 1.6

We publish an extension of openQCD-1.6 with AVX-512 vector instructions using Intel intrinsics. Recent Intel processors support extended instruction sets with operations on 512-bit wide vectors, increasing both the capacity for floating point operations and register memory. Optimal use of the new capabilities requires reorganising data and floating point operations into these wider vector units. We report on the implementation and performance of the AVX-512 OpenQCD extension on clusters using Intel Knights Landing and Xeon Scalable (Skylake) CPUs. In complete HMC trajectories with physically relevant parameters we observe a performance increase of 5% to 10%.

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arXiv2018

Effects of a strong magnetic field on the QCD flux tube

In this work we investigate the effect of an external magnetic field B on the shape of flux tubes in QCD by means of lattice simulations, performed with N_f=2+1 flavors of stout improved dynamical staggered quarks with physical masses. After having discussed some difficulties in the practical definition of the flux tube at B=0, we show that these ambiguities do not affect the determination of the flux tube modifications induced by the magnetic field. Different results are obtained depending on the relative orientations of the flux tube and of the magnetic field: they confirm that the magnetic field acts as transverse confinement catalyser and longitudinal confinement inhibitor; moreover, the flux tube itself loses its axial symmetry when it is not directed along the magnetic background.

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arXiv2018

Roberge-Weiss endpoint and chiral symmetry restoration in $N_f = 2+1$ QCD

We investigate the fate of the Roberge-Weiss endpoint transition and its connection with the restoration of chiral symmetry as the chiral limit of $N_f = 2+1$ QCD is approached. We adopt a stout staggered discretization on lattices with $N_t = 4$ sites in the temporal direction; the chiral limit is approached maintaining a constant physical value of the strange-to-light mass ratio and exploring three different light quark masses, corresponding to pseudo-Goldstone pion masses $m_π\simeq 100, 70$ and 50 MeV around the transition. A finite size scaling analysis provides evidence that the transition remains second order, in the 3D Ising universality class, in all the explored mass range. The residual chiral symmetry of the staggered action also allows us to investigate the relation between the Roberge-Weiss endpoint transition and the chiral restoration transition as the chiral limit is approached: our results, including the critical scaling of the chiral condensate, are consistent with a coincidence of the two transitions in the chiral limit; however we are not able to discern the symmetry controlling the critical behavior, because the critical indexes relevant to the scaling of the chiral condensate are very close to each other for the two possible universality classes (3D Ising or O(2)).

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arXiv2018

Portable multi-node LQCD Monte Carlo simulations using OpenACC

This paper describes a state-of-the-art parallel Lattice QCD Monte Carlo code for staggered fermions, purposely designed to be portable across different computer architectures, including GPUs and commodity CPUs. Portability is achieved using the OpenACC parallel programming model, used to develop a code that can be compiled for several processor architectures. The paper focuses on parallelization on multiple computing nodes using OpenACC to manage parallelism within the node, and OpenMPI to manage parallelism among the nodes. We first discuss the available strategies to be adopted to maximize performances, we then describe selected relevant details of the code, and finally measure the level of performance and scaling-performance that we are able to achieve. The work focuses mainly on GPUs, which offer a significantly high level of performances for this application, but also compares with results measured on other processors.

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arXiv2017

Gauge-invariant screening masses and static quark free energies in $N_f = 2+1$ QCD at non-zero baryon density

We discuss the extension of gauge-invariant electric and magnetic screening masses in the Quark-Gluon Plasma to the case of a finite baryon density, defining them in terms of a matrix of Polyakov loop correlators. We present lattice results for $N_f=2+1$ QCD with physical quark masses, obtained using the imaginary chemical potential approach, which indicate that the screening masses increase as a function of $μ_B$. A separate analysis is carried out for the theoretically interesting case $μ_B/T=3 i π$, where charge conjugation is not explicitly broken and the usual definition of the screening masses can be used for temperatures below the Roberge-Weiss transition. Finally, we investigate the dependence of the static quark free energy on the baryon chemical potential, showing that it is a decreasing function of $μ_B$ which displays a peculiar behavior as the pseudocritical transition temperature at $μ_B=0$ is approached.

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arXiv2017

Influence of magnetic fields on the color screening masses

We present some recent results obtained in the study of the color magnetic and electric screening masses in the QCD plasma. In particular, we discuss how the masses get modified by strong external fields which are expected to be created in physical situations such as heavy-ion collisions.

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arXiv2017

Flux tubes in $N_f=2+1$ QCD with external magnetic fields

We study the behavior of the confining flux tube in $N_f=2+1$ QCD at the physical point, discretized with the stout smearing improved staggered quark action and the tree level Symanzik gauge action. We discuss how it depends on a uniform external magnetic field, showing how it displays anisotropies with respect to the magnetic field direction. Moreover, we compare the observed anisotropy pattern with that of the static quark-antiquark potential we obtained in our previous works.

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arXiv2017

Screening masses in strong external magnetic fields

We present results for the (color)magnetic and (color)electric screening masses of the Quark-Gluon Plasma in the presence of an external magnetic field. The screening masses are extracted from the correlators of Polyakov loops, determined by lattice QCD simulations at the physical point. We explore temperatures in the range $200\,\mathrm{MeV}\lesssim T\lesssim 330\,\mathrm{MeV}$ and magnetic field intensities up to $|e|B \sim 1.3\,\mathrm{GeV}^2$. We find that both screening masses are increasing functions of the magnetic field and that the dependence on $B$ becomes weaker for larger temperatures. In the case of the magnetic screening mass a slight anisotropy is also observable.

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arXiv2017

Effects of magnetic fields on quark-antiquark interactions

We discuss some recent results obtained in the study of strong quark-antiquark interactions in the presence of intense external magnetic fields by means of lattice QCD simulations. We confirm previous findings and show that both at zero and finite temperature the external field induces anisotropies in the static quark potential. An in-depth study suggests that the effects are essentially due to the variation of the string tension whose angular dependence can be nicely parametrized by the first allowed term in a Fourier expansion. In the confined phase at high temperature, we observe that the suppression of the string tension is enhanced as the strength of the external field increases. Our results support the idea that the loss of confining properties is the dominant effect related to the decrease of $T_c$ as a function of $B$.

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arXiv2017

Design and optimization of a portable LQCD Monte Carlo code using OpenACC

The present panorama of HPC architectures is extremely heterogeneous, ranging from traditional multi-core CPU processors, supporting a wide class of applications but delivering moderate computing performance, to many-core GPUs, exploiting aggressive data-parallelism and delivering higher performances for streaming computing applications. In this scenario, code portability (and performance portability) become necessary for easy maintainability of applications; this is very relevant in scientific computing where code changes are very frequent, making it tedious and prone to error to keep different code versions aligned. In this work we present the design and optimization of a state-of-the-art production-level LQCD Monte Carlo application, using the directive-based OpenACC programming model. OpenACC abstracts parallel programming to a descriptive level, relieving programmers from specifying how codes should be mapped onto the target architecture. We describe the implementation of a code fully written in OpenACC, and show that we are able to target several different architectures, including state-of-the-art traditional CPUs and GPUs, with the same code. We also measure performance, evaluating the computing efficiency of our OpenACC code on several architectures, comparing with GPU-specific implementations and showing that a good level of performance-portability can be reached.

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arXiv2016

Recent progress on QCD inputs for axion phenomenology

The properties of the QCD axion are strictly related to the dependence of strong interactions on the topological parameter theta. We present a determination of the topological properties of QCD for temperatures up to around 600 MeV, obtained by lattice QCD simulations with 2+1 flavors and physical quark masses. Numerical results for the topological susceptibility, when compared to instanton gas computations, differ both in size and in the temperature dependence. We discuss the implications of such findings for axion phenomenology, also in comparison to similar studies in the literature, and the prospects for future investigations.

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