In this study, we investigate the holographic Schwinger effect within the framework of $$\mathcal {N}=4$$ super Yang–Mills theory on the Coulomb branch (cSYM). The Coulomb branch is characterized by spontaneous conformal symmetry breaking via the Higgs mechanism, which dynamically generates a characteristic energy scale $$\Lambda $$ . We conduct a detailed analysis to examine how the dimensionless ratio of temperature to energy scale ( $$T/\Lambda $$ ) influences the quark–antiquark separation length, the potential barrier, and the critical electric field. Our findings indicate that the maximum quark–antiquark separation length exhibits a monotonic suppression as $$T/\Lambda $$ increases, suggesting that $$T/\Lambda $$ promotes the dissociation of quark-pair. Additionally, we observe that $$T/\Lambda $$ reduces both the height and width of the potential barrier. The critical electric field displays suppression with increasing $$T/\Lambda $$ . These results demonstrate that in strongly coupled cSYM, increasing $$T/\Lambda $$ enhances the Schwinger effect.

China

Rui Zhou

Zhou-Run Zhu

Holographic Schwinger effect in strongly coupled $$\mathcal {N}$$ = 4 super Yang–Mills plasma on the Coulomb branch

In this note, we present a novel formulation of <math altimg='si1.svg'><mrow><mn>4</mn><mi>d</mi></mrow></math> pure Yang-Mills theory within the unfolded framework of Vasiliev higher-spin gravity. This formulation is first-order and exhibits manifest diffeomorphism and gauge invariance. Our approach builds upon a recently proposed unfolding method, previously applied to scalar electrodynamics. Additionally, we discuss the features of various unfolding maps defined by the unfolded equations.

Russia

Nikita Misuna

Unfolded formulation of <math altimg='si1.svg'><mrow><mn>4</mn><mi>d</mi></mrow></math> Yang-Mills theory

In this paper we discuss a connection between Dirac operators on configuration spaces and Yang-Mills quantum field theory. We first show that the Hamilton operators of the self-dual and anti-self-dual sectors of a Yang-Mills quantum field theory emerge from unitary transformations of a Dirac equation formulated on a configuration space of gauge connections. Secondly, we formulate a Bott-Dirac operator on the configuration space and demonstrate how the Hamilton operator of a Yang-Mills quantum field theory coupled to a fermionic sector emerges from its square. Finally, we discuss a spectral invariant that emerges in this framework.

Germany

Johannes Aastrup

Jesper Møller Grimstrup

Dirac operators on configuration spaces and Yang-Mills quantum field theory

Using accurate computational methods, we compute the quasinormal frequencies of a massive scalar field propagating near a black hole in the framework of non-minimal Einstein–Yang–Mills theory with a non-zero cosmological constant. We show that increasing the mass of the scalar field significantly decreases the damping rate of the quasinormal modes for both asymptotically flat and de Sitter black holes. However, in the de Sitter case, arbitrarily long-lived modes can exist, whereas in the asymptotically flat case, the damping rate never vanishes completely. In the limit of quasi-resonances, we observe a kind of universal behavior where the frequencies do not depend on the coupling constant. Applying the time-domain integration of perturbation equations we show that even when the effective potential has a negative gap, the scalar field is stable and the perturbations decay in time. In the regime of large mass of the field we obtain the analytic formula for quasinormal modes.

Spain

Alexey Dubinsky

Long-lived quasinormal modes and quasi-resonances around non-minimal Einstein–Yang–Mills black holes

The path integral over massless quantum fields in Minkowski space with scattering boundary conditions defines a Carrollian partition function on the null boundary. We develop this framework for non-Abelian gauge theory, both from a general perspective and through explicit examples that highlight subtle aspects of soft modes and asymptotic symmetries. These include falloff conditions, Goldstone modes and their antipodal matching, and factors of two associated with conditionally convergent integrals arising in the derivation of soft theorems. We employ path integral (rather than canonical) methods throughout.

United States

Per Kraus

Richard Myers

Carrollian partition function for bulk Yang-Mills theory

We clarify the origin of magic angles in twisted multilayered graphene using Yang-Mills flows in two dimensions. We relate the effective Hamiltonian describing the electrons in the multilayered graphene to the $$ {\overline{\partial}}_A $$ operator on a two dimensional torus coupled to an SU($\textit{N}$) gauge field. Despite the absence of a characteristic class such as $\textit{c}$ relevant for the quantum Hall effect, we show that there are topological invariants associated with the zero modes occuring in a family of Hamiltonians. The flatbands in the spectrum of the effective Hamiltonian are associated with Yang-Mills connections, studied by M. Atiyah and R. Bott long time ago. The emergent U(1) magnetic field with nonzero flux is presumably responsible for the observed Hall effect in the absence of (external) magnetic field. We provide a numeric algorithm transforming the original single-particle Hamiltonian to the direct sum of $$ {\overline{\partial}}_A $$ operators coupled to abelian gauge fields with non-zero $\textit{c}$ ’s. Our gradient flow perspective gives a simple bound for magic angles: if the gauge field $\textit{A}$($\textit{α}$) is such that the YM energy $$ {\int}_{{\mathbbm{T}}^2} $$ tr $$ {F}_{A\left(\alpha \right)}^2 $$ is smaller than that of U(1) magnetic flux embedded into SU(2), then $\textit{α}$ is not magic.

Vasilii Iugov

Nikita Nekrasov

Yang-Mills flows for multilayered graphene

<p>We apply the variational Monte Carlo method based on neural network quantum states, using a neural autoregressive flow architecture as our ansatz, to determine the ground state wave function of the bosonic <math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mrow><mi>SU</mi><mo stretchy="false">(</mo><mi>N</mi><mo stretchy="false">)</mo></mrow></math> Yang-Mills-type two-matrix model at strong coupling. Previous literature hinted at the inaccuracy of such an approach at strong coupling. In this work, the accuracy of the results is tested using lattice Monte Carlo simulations: we benchmark the expectation value of the energy of the ground state for system sizes <math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mi>N</mi></math> that are beyond brute-force exact diagonalization methods. We observe that the variational method with neural network states reproduces the right ground state energy when the width of the network employed in this work is sufficiently large. We confirm that the correct result is obtained for <math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mi>N</mi><mo>=</mo><mn>2</mn></math> and 3, while obtaining a precise value for <math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mi>N</mi><mo>=</mo><mn>4</mn></math> requires more resources than the amount available for this work.</p>

Norbert Bodendorfer

Türkiye

Onur Oktay

United Kingdom

Vaibhav Gautam

Masanori Hanada

Japan

Enrico Rinaldi

Variational Monte Carlo with neural network quantum states for a Yang-Mills matrix model

In recent work Amorosso et al. (2024), we computed a novel flux tube entanglement entropy (FTE) of the color flux tube stretched between a heavy quark-antiquark pair on a Euclidean lattice in (2+1)D Yang–Mills theory. Our numerical results suggested that FTE can be partitioned into an internal color entanglement entropy and a vibrational entropy corresponding to the transverse excitations of a QCD string, with the latter described by a thin string model. Since the color flux tube does not have transverse excitations in (1+1)D Yang–Mills theory, we use this simpler framework to perform an exact analytical computation of the contribution of the internal color degrees of freedom to FTE. For the multipartite partitioning of the color flux tube, we find the remarkable result that FTE depends only on the dimension of the color group representation and the number of times the flux tube crosses the boundary between the traced and untraced spatial regions but not on the string length. Our proof is independent of whether the replica and region boundaries on the lattice are placed on vertices or in plaquette centers.

Rocco Amorosso

Sergey Syritsyn

Raju Venugopalan

Entanglement entropy of a color flux tube in (1+1)D Yang–Mills theory

We construct defect networks in pure Yang-Mills theory in two dimensions using a refinement of the lattice approach. The refinement preserves the locality properties of individual defects, and is compatible with solvability of the theory via subdivision invariance. We explicitly demonstrate closure of the building blocks under fusion.

Italy

Luca Griguolo

Elisa Marieni

Itamar Yaakov

Lattice defect networks in 2d Yang-Mills

We propose that chiral two-dimensional Yang-Mills theory on a Riemann surface is dual to a deformed stationary subsector of the Gromov-Witten theory of that surface. Firstly, we argue that the algebraic structure that underlies the large $\textit{N}$ limit of the chiral gauge theory is a partial permutation algebra of observables which codes covering maps of all degrees simultaneously. Secondly, we exploit the Gromov-Witten/Hurwitz correspondence to interpret chiral Yang-Mills theory as a finite deformation of a Gromov-Witten theory by an area-dependent transposition interaction and an operator that codes a compactification of Hurwitz space. The proposed string dual manifestly includes an integral over the moduli space of Riemann surfaces as well as the identification of closed string states as completed cycles.

France

Lior Benizri

Jan Troost

The string dual to two-dimensional Yang-Mills theory