Related papers: Gauge and gravitational instantons: From 3-forms a…
Compact quantum electrodynamics (CQED$_3$) with Dirac fermionic matter provides an adequate framework for elucidating the universal low-energy physics of a wide variety of (2+1)D strongly correlated systems. Fractionalized states of matter…
It is widely believed and in part established that exact global symmetries are inconsistent with quantum gravity. One then expects that approximate global symmetries can be quantitatively constrained by quantum gravity or swampland…
In this work, we critically reanalyze the explicit breaking of the Peccei-Quinn global symmetry -- and the corresponding corrections to the QCD axion potential -- induced by gravity. Specifically, we examine the role of gravitational…
Non-perturbative effects of instanton-like solutions are studied within the framework of supergravity theories with field-dependent gauge functions. Fermionic zero modes are constructed and some typical correlation functions are evaluated.…
Axions play a central role in inflationary model building and other cosmological applications. This is mainly due to their flat potential, which is protected by a global shift symmetry. However, quantum gravity is known to break global…
The instanton vacuum provides an effective description of chiral symmetry breaking by local topological fluctuations of the gauge fields, as observed in lattice QCD simulations. The resulting effective dynamics at momenta below $1/\bar\rho…
We investigate the fate of the Standard Model (SM) $\mathbb Z_6^{(1)}$ electric $1$-form global symmetry in the background of gravitational instantons, focusing on Eguchi-Hanson (EH) geometries. We show that EH instantons support quantized…
We study anomalous chiral symmetry breaking in two-flavour QCD induced by gravitational and QCD-instantons within asymptotically safe gravity within the functional renormalisation group approach. Similarly to QCD-instantons, gravitational…
The gapless fermionic excitations in superfluid 3He-A have the "relativistic" spectrum close to the gap nodes. This allowed us to model the modern cosmological scenaria of baryogenesis and magnetogenesis. The same massless fermions induce…
We study the combined effect of world-volume and background fluxes on Euclidean D3-brane instantons in F-theory compactifications. We derive an appropriate form of the fermionic effective action, in which the fermions are topologically…
We study non-invertible global symmetries in 4d quantum field theories, aiming to generalize existing discussions to theories with multiple instantons and axions, and to make the subject more accessible to particle phenomenology. Building…
Nontrivial topological structures of non-Abelian gauge fields were discovered in the 1970's. Instanton solutions, describing vacuum tunneling through topological barriers, have fermionic zero modes which are at the origin of $^\prime$t…
The $S$-matrix formulation of gravity suggests that the $\theta$-vacuum structure must not be sustained by the theory. We point out that, when applied to the vacuum of general relativity, this criterion hints to supersymmetry. The…
We study the massive Schwinger model, quantum electrodynamics of massive, Dirac fermions, in 1+1 dimensions; with space compactified to a circle. In the limit that transitions to fermion--anti-fermion pairs can be neglected, we study the…
We discuss quantum gravitational effects in Einstein theory coupled to periodic axion scalars to analyze the viability of several proposals to achieve superplanckian axion periods (aka decay constants) and their possible application to…
We develop methods for resummation of instanton lattice series. Using these tools, we investigate the consequences of the Weak Gravity Conjecture for large-field axion inflation. We find that the Sublattice Weak Gravity Conjecture implies a…
We examine the contribution of small instantons to the axion mass in various UV completions of QCD. We show that the reason behind the potential dominance of such contributions is the non-trivial embedding of QCD into the UV theory. The…
Certain topological invariants of the moduli space of gravitational instantons are defined and studied. Several amplitudes of two and four dimensional topological gravity are computed. A notion of puncture in four dimensions, that is…
We show that heavy fermions decouple from the low energy physics also in non-perturbative instanton effects. Provided the heavy fermions are lighter than the symmetry breaking scale, all the instanton effects should be expressed as local…
Gauge symmetry invariance is an indispensable aspect of the field-theoretic models in classical and quantum physics. Geometrically this symmetry is often modelled with current groups and current algebras, which are used to capture both the…