arXiv subjects

N. Regnault

Publications and source records attributed to N. Regnault.

At least 91 records · Page 5Linked to original sources

arXiv2011

Hierarchical structure in the orbital entanglement spectrum in Fractional Quantum Hall systems

We investigate the non-universal part of the orbital entanglement spectrum (OES) of the nu = 1/3 fractional quantum Hall effect (FQH) ground-state with Coulomb interactions. The non-universal part of the spectrum is the part that is missing in the Laughlin model state OES whose level counting is completely determined by its topological order. We find that the OES levels of the Coulomb interaction ground-state are organized in a hierarchical structure that mimic the excitation-energy structure of the model pseudopotential Hamiltonian which has a Laughlin ground state. These structures can be accurately modeled using Jain's "composite fermion" quasihole-quasiparticle excitation wavefunctions. To emphasize the connection between the entanglement spectrum and the energy spectrum, we also consider the thermodynamical OES of the model pseudopotential Hamiltonian at finite temperature. The observed good match between the thermodynamical OES and the Coulomb OES suggests a relation between the entanglement gap and the true energy gap.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2011

Supernova Constraints and Systematic Uncertainties from the First 3 Years of the Supernova Legacy Survey

We combine high redshift Type Ia supernovae from the first 3 years of the Supernova Legacy Survey (SNLS) with other supernova (SN) samples, primarily at lower redshifts, to form a high-quality joint sample of 472 SNe (123 low-$z$, 93 SDSS, 242 SNLS, and 14 {\it Hubble Space Telescope}). SN data alone require cosmic acceleration at >99.9% confidence, including systematic effects. For the dark energy equation of state parameter (assumed constant out to at least $z=1.4$) in a flat universe, we find $w = -0.91^{+0.16}_{-0.20}(\mathrm{stat}) ^{+0.07}_{-0.14} (\mathrm{sys})$ from SNe only, consistent with a cosmological constant. Our fits include a correction for the recently discovered relationship between host-galaxy mass and SN absolute brightness. We pay particular attention to systematic uncertainties, characterizing them using a systematics covariance matrix that incorporates the redshift dependence of these effects, as well as the shape-luminosity and color-luminosity relationships. Unlike previous work, we include the effects of systematic terms on the empirical light-curve models. The total systematic uncertainty is dominated by calibration terms. We describe how the systematic uncertainties can be reduced with soon to be available improved nearby and intermediate-redshift samples, particularly those calibrated onto USNO/SDSS-like systems.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2011

Bulk-Edge Correspondence in the Entanglement Spectra

Li and Haldane conjectured and numerically substantiated that the entanglement spectrum of the reduced density matrix of ground-states of time-reversal breaking topological phases (fractional quantum Hall states) contains information about the counting of their edge modes when the ground-state is cut in two spatially distinct regions and one of the regions is traced out. We analytically substantiate this conjecture for a series of FQH states defined as unique zero modes of pseudopotential Hamiltonians by finding a one to one map between the thermodynamic limit counting of two different entanglement spectra: the particle entanglement spectrum, whose counting of eigenvalues for each good quantum number is identical (up to accidental degeneracies) to the counting of bulk quasiholes, and the orbital entanglement spectrum (the Li-Haldane spectrum). As the particle entanglement spectrum is related to bulk quasihole physics and the orbital entanglement spectrum is related to edge physics, our map can be thought of as a mathematically sound microscopic description of bulk-edge correspondence in entanglement spectra. By using a set of clustering operators which have their origin in conformal field theory (CFT) operator expansions, we show that the counting of the orbital entanglement spectrum eigenvalues in the thermodynamic limit must be identical to the counting of quasiholes in the bulk. The latter equals the counting of edge modes at a hard-wall boundary placed on the sample. Moreover, we show this to be true even for CFT states which are likely bulk gapless, such as the Gaffnian wavefunction.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2011

Topological Entanglement in Abelian and non-Abelian Excitation Eigenstates

Entanglement in topological phases of matter has so far been investigated through the perspective of their ground-state wave functions. In contrast, we demonstrate that the \emph{excitations} of fractional quantum Hall (FQH) systems also contain information to identify the system's topological order. Entanglement spectrum of the FQH quasihole (QH) excitations is shown to differentiate between the conformal field theory (CFT) sectors, based on the relative position of the QH with respect to the entanglement cut. For Read-Rezayi model states, as well as Coulomb interaction eigenstates, the counting of the QH entanglement levels in the thermodynamic limit matches exactly the CFT counting, and sector changes occur as non-Abelian quasiholes successively cross the entanglement cut.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2010

Extracting Excitations From Model State Entanglement

We extend the concept of entanglement spectrum from the geometrical to the particle bipartite partition. We apply this to several Fractional Quantum Hall (FQH) wavefunctions on both sphere and torus geometries to show that this new type of entanglement spectra completely reveals the physics of bulk quasihole excitations. While this is easily understood when a local Hamiltonian for the model state exists, we show that the quasiholes wavefunctions are encoded within the model state even when such a Hamiltonian is not known. As a nontrivial example, we look at Jain's composite fermion states and obtain their quasiholes directly from the model state wavefunction. We reach similar conclusions for wavefunctions described by Jack polynomials.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2010

Subluminous Type Ia Supernovae at High Redshift from the Supernova Legacy Survey

The rate evolution of subluminous Type Ia Supernovae is presented using data from the Supernova Legacy Survey. This sub-sample represents the faint and rapidly-declining light-curves of the observed supernova Ia (SN Ia) population here defined by low stretch values (s<0.8). Up to redshift z=0.6, we find 18 photometrically-identified subluminous SNe Ia, of which six have spectroscopic redshift (and three are spectroscopically-confirmed SNe Ia). The evolution of the subluminous volumetric rate is constant or slightly decreasing with redshift, in contrast to the increasing SN Ia rate found for the normal stretch population, although a rising behaviour is not conclusively ruled out. The subluminous sample is mainly found in early-type galaxies with little or no star formation, so that the rate evolution is consistent with a galactic mass dependent behavior: $r(z)=A\times M_g$, with $A=(1.1\pm0.3)\times10^{-14}$ SNe per year and solar mass.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2010

The Supernova Legacy Survey 3-year sample: Type Ia Supernovae photometric distances and cosmological constraints

We present photometric properties and distance measurements of 252 high redshift Type Ia supernovae (0.15 < z < 1.1) discovered during the first three years of the Supernova Legacy Survey (SNLS). These events were detected and their multi-colour light curves measured using the MegaPrime/MegaCam instrument at the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT), by repeatedly imaging four one-square degree fields in four bands. Follow-up spectroscopy was performed at the VLT, Gemini and Keck telescopes to confirm the nature of the supernovae and to measure their redshifts. Systematic uncertainties arising from light curve modeling are studied, making use of two techniques to derive the peak magnitude, shape and colour of the supernovae, and taking advantage of a precise calibration of the SNLS fields. A flat LambdaCDM cosmological fit to 231 SNLS high redshift Type Ia supernovae alone gives Omega_M = 0.211 +/- 0.034(stat) +/- 0.069(sys). The dominant systematic uncertainty comes from uncertainties in the photometric calibration. Systematic uncertainties from light curve fitters come next with a total contribution of +/- 0.026 on Omega_M. No clear evidence is found for a possible evolution of the slope (beta) of the colour-luminosity relation with redshift.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2010

Atypical Fractional Quantum Hall Effect in Graphene at Filling Factor 1/3

We study the recently observed graphene fractional quantum Hall state at a filling factor $ν_G=1/3$ using a four-component trial wave function and exact diagonalization calculations. Although it is adiabatically connected to a 1/3 Laughlin state in the upper spin branch, with SU(2) valley-isospin ferromagnetic ordering and a completely filled lower spin branch, it reveals physical properties beyond such a state that is the natural ground state for a large Zeeman effect. Most saliently, it possesses at experimentally relevant values of the Zeeman gap low-energy spin-flip excitations that may be unveiled in inelastic light-scattering experiments.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2010

Supernova Legacy Survey: Using Spectral Signatures To Improve Type Ia Supernovae As Distance Indicators

GMOS optical long-slit spectroscopy at the Gemini-North telescope was used to classify targets from the Supernova Legacy Survey (SNLS) from July 2005 and May 2006 - May 2008. During this time, 95 objects were observed. Where possible the objects' redshifts (z) were measured from narrow emission or absorption features in the host galaxy spectrum, otherwise they were measured from the broader supernova features. We present spectra of 68 confirmed or probable SNe Ia from SNLS with redshifts in the range 0.17 \leq z \leq 1.02. In combination with earlier SNLS Gemini and VLT spectra, we used these new observations to measure pseudo-equivalent widths (EWs) of three spectral features - CaII H&K, SiII and MgII - in 144 objects and compared them to the EWs of low-redshift SNe Ia from a sample drawn from the literature. No signs of changes with z are seen for the CaII H&K and MgII features. Systematically lower EW SiII is seen at high redshift, but this can be explained by a change in demographics of the SNe Ia population within a two-component model combined with an observed correlation between EW SiII and photometric lightcurve stretch.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2010

Tunneling-driven breakdown of the 331 state and the emergent Pfaffian and composite Fermi liquid phases

We examine the possibility of creating the Moore-Read Pfaffian in the lowest Landau level when the multicomponent Halperin 331 state (believed to describe quantum Hall bilayers and wide quantum wells at the filling factor $ν=1/2$) is destroyed by the increase of tunneling. Using exact diagonalization of the bilayer Hamiltonian with short-range and long-range (Coulomb) interactions in spherical and periodic rectangular geometries, we establish that tunneling is a perturbation that drives the 331 state into a compressible composite Fermi liquid, with the possibility for an intermediate critical state that possesses some properties of the Moore-Read Pfaffian. These results are interpreted in the two-component BCS model for Cauchy pairing with a tunneling constraint. We comment on the conditions to be imposed on a system with fluctuating density in order to achieve the stable Pfaffian phase.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2010

Photometric redshifts for supernovae Ia in the Supernova Legacy Survey

We present a method using the SALT2 light curve fitter to determine the redshift of Type Ia supernovae in the Supernova Legacy Survey (SNLS) based on their photometry in g', r', i' and z'. On 289 supernovae of the first three years of SNLS data, we obtain a precision $σ_{Δz/(1+z)} = 0.022$ on average up to a redshift of 1.0, with a higher precision of 0.016 for z<0.45 and a lower one of 0.025 for z>0.45. The rate of events with $|Δz|/(1+z)>0.15$ (catastrophic errors) is 1.4%. Both the precision and the rate of catastrophic errors are better than what can be currently obtained using host galaxy photometric redshifts. Photometric redshifts of this precision may be useful for future experiments which aim to discover up to millions of supernovae Ia but without spectroscopy for most of them.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2010

Real-time Analysis and Selection Biases in the Supernova Legacy Survey

The Supernova Legacy Survey (SNLS) has produced a high-quality, homogeneous sample of Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) out to redshifts greater than z=1. In its first four years of full operation (to June 2007), the SNLS discovered more than 3000 transient candidates, 373 of which have been confirmed spectroscopically as SNe Ia. Use of these SNe Ia in precision cosmology critically depends on an analysis of the observational biases incurred in the SNLS survey due to the incomplete sampling of the underlying SN Ia population. This paper describes our real-time supernova detection and analysis procedures, and uses detailed Monte Carlo simulations to examine the effects of Malmquist bias and spectroscopic sampling. Such sampling effects are found to become apparent at z~0.6, with a significant shift in the average magnitude of the spectroscopically confirmed SN Ia sample towards brighter values for z>0.75. We describe our approach to correct for these selection biases in our three-year SNLS cosmological analysis (SNLS3), and present a breakdown of the systematic uncertainties involved.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2010

The Dependence of Type Ia Supernova Luminosities on their Host Galaxies

(Abridged) Precision cosmology with Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) makes use of the fact that SN Ia luminosities depend on their light-curve shapes and colours. Using Supernova Legacy Survey (SNLS) and other data, we show that there is an additional dependence on the global characteristics of their host galaxies: events of the same light-curve shape and colour are, on average, 0.08mag (~4.0sigma) brighter in massive host galaxies (presumably metal-rich) and galaxies with low specific star-formation rates (sSFR). SNe Ia in galaxies with a low sSFR also have a smaller slope ("beta") between their luminosities and colours with ~2.7sigma significance, and a smaller scatter on SN Ia Hubble diagrams (at 95% confidence), though the significance of these effects is dependent on the reddest SNe. SN Ia colours are similar between low-mass and high-mass hosts, leading us to interpret their luminosity differences as an intrinsic property of the SNe and not of some external factor such as dust. If the host stellar mass is interpreted as a metallicity indicator, the luminosity trends are in qualitative agreement with theoretical predictions. We show that the average stellar mass, and therefore the average metallicity, of our SN Ia host galaxies decreases with redshift. The SN Ia luminosity differences consequently introduce a systematic error in cosmological analyses, comparable to the current statistical uncertainties on parameters such as w. We show that the use of two SN Ia absolute magnitudes, one for events in high-mass (metal-rich) galaxies, and one for events in low-mass (metal-poor) galaxies, adequately corrects for the differences. Cosmological fits incorporating these terms give a significant reduction in chi^2 (3.8-4.5sigma). We conclude that future SN Ia cosmological analyses should use a correction of this (or similar) form to control demographic shifts in the galaxy population.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2010

Gravitational lensing in the Supernova Legacy Survey (SNLS)

The observed brightness of Type Ia supernovae is affected by gravitational lensing caused by the mass distribution along the line of sight, which introduces an additional dispersion into the Hubble diagram. We look for evidence of lensing in the SuperNova Legacy Survey 3-year data set. We investigate the correlation between the residuals from the Hubble diagram and the gravitational magnification based on a modeling of the mass distribution of foreground galaxies. A deep photometric catalog, photometric redshifts, and well established mass luminosity relations are used. We find evidence of a lensing signal with a 2.3 sigma significance. The current result is limited by the number of SNe, their redshift distribution, and the other sources of scatter in the Hubble diagram. Separating the galaxy population into a red and a blue sample has a positive impact on the significance of the signal detection. On the other hand, increasing the depth of the galaxy catalog, the precision of photometric redshifts or reducing the scatter in the mass luminosity relations have little effect. We show that for the full SuperNova Legacy Survey sample (~400 spectroscopically confirmed Type Ia SNe and ~200 photometrically identified Type Ia SNe), there is an 80% probability of detecting the lensing signal with a 3 sigma significance.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2009

The Type Ia Supernova Rate in Radio and Infrared Galaxies from the CFHT Supernova Legacy Survey

We have combined the large SN Ia database of the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Supernova Legacy Survey and catalogs of galaxies with photometric redshifts, VLA 1.4 GHz radio sources, and Spitzer infrared sources. We present eight SNe Ia in early-type host galaxies which have counterparts in the radio and infrared source catalogs. We find the SN Ia rate in subsets of radio and infrared early-type galaxies is ~1-5 times the rate in all early-type galaxies, and that any enhancement is always <~ 2 sigma. Rates in these subsets are consistent with predictions of the two component "A+B" SN Ia rate model. Since infrared properties of radio SN Ia hosts indicate dust obscured star formation, we incorporate infrared star formation rates into the "A+B" model. We also show the properties of SNe Ia in radio and infrared galaxies suggest the hosts contain dust and support a continuum of delay time distributions for SNe Ia, although other delay time distributions cannot be ruled out based on our data.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2009

The entanglement gap and a new principle of adiabatic continuity

We give a complete definition of the entanglement gap separating low-energy, topological levels, from high-energy, generic ones, in the "entanglement spectrum" of Fractional Quantum Hall (FQH) states. By removing the magnetic length inherent in the FQH problem - a procedure which we call taking the "conformal limit", we find that the entanglement spectrum of an incompressible ground-state of a generic (i.e. Coulomb) lowest Landau Level Hamiltonian re-arranges into a low-(entanglement) energy part separated by a full gap from the high energy entanglement levels. As previously observed, the counting of these levels starts off as the counting of modes of the edge theory of the FQH state, but quickly develops finite-size effects which we show can also serve as a fingerprint of the FQH state. As the sphere manifold where the FQH resides grows, the level spacing of the states at the same angular momentum goes to zero, suggestive of the presence of relativistic gapless edge-states. By using the adiabatic continuity of the low entanglement energy levels, we investigate whether two states are topologically connected.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2009

S3 Quantum Hall Wavefunctions

We construct a family of quantum Hall Hamiltonians whose ground states, at least for small system sizes, give correlators of the S3 conformal field theories. The ground states are considered as trial wavefunctions for quantum Hall effect of bosons at filling fraction nu=3/4 interacting either via delta function interaction or delta function plus dipole interaction. While the S3 theories can be either unitary or nonunitary, we find high overlaps with exact diagonalizations only for the nonunitary case, suggesting that these wavefunctions may correspond to critical points, possibly analogous to the previously studied Gaffnian wavefunction. These wavefunctions give an explicit example which cannot be fully characterized by their thin-torus limit or by their pattern of zeros.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2009

Interaction-tuned compressible-to-incompressible phase transitions in the quantum Hall systems

We analyze transitions between quantum Hall ground states at prominent filling factors $ν$ in the spherical geometry by tuning the width parameter of the Zhang-Das Sarma interaction potential. We find that incompressible ground states evolve adiabatically under this tuning, whereas the compressible ones are driven through a first order phase transition. Overlap calculations show that the resulting phase is increasingly well described by appropriate analytic model wavefunctions (Laughlin, Moore-Read, Read-Rezayi). This scenario is shared by both odd ($ν=1/3, 1/5, 3/5, 7/3, 11/5, 13/5$) and even denominator states ($ν=1/2, 1/4, 5/2, 9/4$). In particular, the Fermi liquid-like state at $ν=1/2$ gives way, at large enough value of the width parameter, to an incompressible state identified as the Moore-Read Pfaffian on the basis of its entanglement spectrum.

cond-mat.str-el↗