Center for Theoretical Physics

The low-energy finite-volume spectrum of the two-nucleon system at a pion mass of \(m_\pi \approx 806\) MeV is studied with lattice quantum chromodynamics (LQCD) using variational methods. The interpolating-operator sets used in [Phys.Rev.D 107 (2023) 9, 094508] are extended by including a complete basis of local hexaquark operators, as well as plane-wave dibaryon operators built from products of both positive- and negative-parity nucleon operators. Results are presented for the isosinglet and isotriplet two-nucleon channels. In both channels, these results provide compelling evidence for the presence of an additional state in the low-energy spectrum not present in a non-interacting two-nucleon system. Within the space of operators that are considered in this work, the strongest overlap of this state is onto hexaquark operators, and variational analyses based on operator sets containing only dibaryon operators are insensitive to this state over the temporal extent studied here. The consequences of these studies for the LQCD understanding of the two-nucleon spectrum are investigated.

Normalizing flows are machine-learned maps between different lattice theories which can be used as components in exact sampling and inference schemes. Ongoing work yields increasingly expressive flows on gauge fields, but it remains an open question how flows can improve lattice QCD at state-of-the-art scales. We discuss and demonstrate two applications of flows in replica exchange (parallel tempering) sampling, aimed at improving topological mixing, which are viable with iterative improvements upon presently available flows.

Scale separation is an important physical principle that has previously enabled algorithmic advances such as multigrid solvers. Previous work on normalizing flows has been able to utilize scale separation in the context of scalar field theories, but the principle has been largely unexploited in the context of gauge theories. This work gives an overview of a new method for generating gauge fields using hierarchical normalizing flow models. This method builds gauge fields from the outside in, allowing different parts of the model to focus on different scales of the problem. Numerical results are presented for \(U(1)\) and \(SU(3)\) gauge theories in 2, 3, and 4 spacetime dimensions.

We study the general framework of effective theories obtained via exact path integration of a complete theory over some sector of its degrees of freedom. Theories constructed this way contain multi-integrals which couple fields arbitrarily far apart, and in certain settings even on path-disconnected components of the space. These are not just entanglement, but genuine non-local interactions that we dub quantum wormholes. Any state the path integral of such an effective theory prepares is shown to be a partial trace of a state of the complete theory over the integrated-out sector. The resulting reduced density operator is generally mixed due to bra-ket wormholes. An infinite family of ensembles of pure states of the complete theory giving the same effective state is identified. These allow one to equivalently interpret any effective state as being prepared by an ensemble of theories. When computing entropic quantities, bra-ket wormholes give rise to replica wormholes. This causes replica path integrals for the effective theory to not factorize even when the underlying manifold does, as expected from mixing. In contrast, effective theories obtained by derivative expansions have no quantum wormholes and prepare pure states. There exist operators in the algebra of effective theories which can distinguish mixed from pure states, implying a breakdown of non-exact effective theories for sufficiently complex observables. This framework unifies and provides new insights into much of the phenomena observed in quantum gravity, including the interplay between wormholes and unitarity, the breakdown of bulk effective theory, the factorization puzzle, state ensembles, theory ensembles, quantum error correction, and baby universes. Some interesting lessons are drawn accounting also for characteristic aspects of gravity concerning IR/UV mixing and Kaluza-Klein reductions.