Biswajit Sahoo

A bstract: Defect conformal field theories have special operators of protected dimension known as displacements and tilts. They arise due to the breaking of global symmetries by the defect and the normalisations of their two-point functions are characteristics of the defect. In the case of surface defects, these normalisations are related to some of the anomaly coefficients in the surface effective action. To study these operators and their flows between different defect renormalization group fixed points we present an elegant approach using conformal perturbation theory that easily reproduces the known examples from the critical Wilson-Fisher O( N ) model in 4 − ε dimensions and allows us to construct new ones in other multiscalar theories. In all the systems that we study the flows are short and under full control, as is the change of the displacement and tilt normalizations. We point out some novel features like the existence of vortices when the defect conformal manifold is not simply connected. In addition to regular human labour, this work relied heavily on generative AI; see full disclosure in methodology section.

A bstract: Aspects of parity-preserving, three-dimensional conformal field theories (CFTs) with a global U(1) symmetry in the presence of a background magnetic field are investigated. A local effective action is constructed to four-derivative order, based on an assumption that the magnetic field drives the theory into a gapped phase. This action is evaluated in a variety of backgrounds, and is used to obtain one- and two-point functions of the conserved current and stress-energy tensor. Dispersive arguments are developed and shown to impose powerful constraints on the Wilson coefficients of the effective action, leading to universal predictions for the CFT response at large magnetic field and the scaling dimensions of background monopole operators. These general results are further examined through explicit calculations in the free complex scalar, free Dirac fermion, and a holographic Einstein-Hilbert-Maxwell model.

A bstract: If a set of charged objects collide in space and the fragments disperse, then this process will emit electromagnetic waves. Classical soft photon theorem determines the constant term and the leading power law fall-off of the wave-form at late and early times in terms of only the momenta and charges of the incoming and outgoing objects. In this paper we determine an infinite set of subleading terms in the late and early time expansion of the wave-form, which also depend only on the momenta and charges of the incoming and outgoing particles. For two-particle scattering, we derive a resummed low-frequency electromagnetic wave-form, as well as the resummed wave-form at early and late times. In this analysis we ignore the effect of long range gravitational interaction, but our result is unaffected by any other short range interactions among the objects.

If a set of charged objects collide in space and the fragments disperse, then this process will emit electromagnetic waves. Classical soft photon theorem determines the constant term and the leading power law fall-off of the wave-form at late and early times in terms of only the momenta and charges of the incoming and outgoing objects. In this paper we determine an infinite set of subleading terms in the late and early time expansion of the wave-form, which also depend only on the momenta and charges of the incoming and outgoing particles. For two-particle scattering, we derive a resummed low-frequency electromagnetic wave-form, as well as the resummed wave-form at early and late times. In this analysis we ignore the effect of long range gravitational interaction, but our result is unaffected by any other short range interactions among the objects.

We consider 3+1 dimensional Quantum Field Theories (QFTs) coupled to the dilaton and the graviton. We show that the graviton-dilaton scattering amplitude receives a universal contribution which is helicity flipping and is proportional to ∆c − ∆a along any RG flow, where ∆c and ∆a are the differences of the UV and IR c- and a-trace anomalies respectively. This allows us to relate ∆c − ∆a to spinning massive states in the spectrum of the QFT. We test our predictions in two simple examples: in the theory of a massive free scalar and in the theory of a massive Dirac fermion (a more complicated example is provided in a companion paper [1]). We discuss possible applications.

In [1], logarithmic correction to subleading soft photon and soft graviton theorems have been derived in four spacetime dimensions from the ratio of IR-finite S-matrices. This has been achieved after factoring out IR-divergent components from the traditional electromagnetic and gravitational S-matrices using Grammer-Yennie prescription. Although the loop corrected subleading soft theorems are derived from one-loop scattering amplitudes involving scalar particles in a minimally coupled theory with scalar contact interaction, it has been conjectured that the soft factors are universal (theory independent) and one-loop exact (don’t receive corrections from higher loops).This paper extends the analysis conducted in [1] to encompass general spinning particle scattering with non-minimal couplings permitted by gauge invariance and general coordinate invariance. By re-deriving the ln ω soft factors in this generic setup, we establish their universal nature. Furthermore, we summarize the results of loop corrected soft photon and graviton theorems up to sub-subleading order, which follows from the analysis of one and two loop QED and quantum gravity S-matrices. While the classical versions of these soft factors have already been derived in the literature, we put forth conjectures regarding the quantum soft factors and outline potential strategies for their derivation.

We study gapped 4d quantum field theories (QFTs) obtained from a relevant deformation of a UV conformal field theory (CFT). For simplicity, we assume the existence of a ℤ₂ symmetry and a single ℤ₂-odd stable particle and no ℤ₂-even particles at low energies. Using unitarity, crossing and the assumption of maximal analyticity we compute numerically a lower bound on the value of the a-anomaly of the UV CFT as a function of various non-perturbative parameters describing the two-to-two scattering amplitude of the particle.

Classical soft graviton theorem gives the gravitational wave-form at future null infinity at late retarded time u for a general classical scattering. The large u expansion has three known universal terms: the constant term, the term proportional to 1/u and the term proportional to ln u/u², whose coefficients are determined solely in terms of the momenta of incoming and the outgoing hard particles, including the momenta carried by outgoing gravitational and electromagnetic radiation produced during scattering. For the constant term, also known as the memory effect, the dependence on the momenta carried away by the final state radiation / massless particles is known as non-linear memory or null memory. It was shown earlier that for the coefficient of the 1/u term the dependence on the momenta of the final state massless particles / radiation cancels and the result can be written solely in terms of the momenta of the incoming particles / radiation and the final state massive particles. In this note we show that the same result holds for the coefficient of the ln u/u² term. Our result implies that for scattering of massless particles the coefficients of the 1/u and ln u/u² terms are determined solely by the incoming momenta, even if the particles coalesce to form a black hole and massless radiation. We use our result to compute the low frequency flux of gravitational radiation from the collision of massless particles at large impact parameter.