Vortex Effects in Merging Black Holes and Saturons.

Vorticity has recently been suggested to be a property of highly spinning black holes. The connection between vorticity and limiting spin represents a universal feature shared by objects of maximal microstate entropy, so-called saturons. Using Q-ball-like saturons as a laboratory for black holes, we study the collision of two such objects and find that vorticity can have a large impact on the emitted radiation as well as on the charge and angular momentum of the final configuration. As black holes belong to the class of saturons, we expect that the formation of vortices can cause similar effects in black hole mergers, leading to macroscopic deviations in gravitational radiation. This could leave unique signatures detectable with upcoming gravitational-wave searches, which can thereby serve as a portal to macroscopic quantum effects in black holes.

The role of gravity in naturalness versus consistency: strong-CP and dark energy.

There is an ongoing debate on how seriously one should take the naturalness puzzles as the guidelines to new physics. In this debate gravity is often put aside, as an insignificant spectator force. However, this attitude misses the entire essence of the story. Through its [Formula: see text]-matrix formulation, gravity promotes certain puzzles, such as the cosmological constant and strong-[Formula: see text] problems, into the consistency issues. The respective consistency requirements make the theory highly predictive. In particular, the cosmological vacuum energy must be zero. This has fundamental implications both for strong-[Formula: see text] and for dark energy puzzles. QCD must include an axion as an intrinsic part of the gauge redundancy, without the need of any global symmetry. This gives [Formula: see text] to all orders in operator expansion. Applied to cosmology, the [Formula: see text]-matrix implies that the energy budget of the Universe cannot come from a constant. Correspondingly, the dark energy is an unambiguous signal of new physics around the Hubble scale. This article is part of the theme issue 'The particle-gravity frontier'.

Time- and Space-Varying Neutrino Mass Matrix from Soft Topological Defects.

We study the formation and evolution of topological defects that arise in the postrecombination phase transition predicted by the gravitational neutrino mass model in Dvali and Funcke [Phys. Rev. D 93, 113002 (2016)PRVDAQ2470-001010.1103/PhysRevD.93.113002]. In the transition, global skyrmions, monopoles, strings, and domain walls form due to the spontaneous breaking of the neutrino flavor symmetry. These defects are unique in their softness and origin; as they appear at a very low energy scale, they only require standard model particle content, and they differ fundamentally depending on the Majorana or Dirac nature of the neutrinos. One of the observational signatures is the time dependence and space dependence of the neutrino mass matrix, which could be observable in future neutrino experiments. Already existing data rule out parts of the parameter space in the Majorana case. The detection of this effect could shed light onto the open question of the Dirac versus Majorana neutrino nature.

Vortices in Black Holes.

We argue that black holes admit vortex structure. This is based both on a graviton-condensate description of a black hole as well as on a correspondence between black holes and generic objects with maximal entropy compatible with unitarity, so-called saturons. We show that due to vorticity, a Q-ball-type saturon of a calculable renormalizable theory obeys the same extremality bound on the spin as the black hole. Correspondingly, a black hole with extremal spin emerges as a graviton condensate with vorticity. This offers a topological explanation for the stability of extremal black holes against Hawking evaporation. Next, we show that in the presence of mobile charges, the global vortex traps a magnetic flux of the gauge field. This can have macroscopically observable consequences. For instance, the most powerful jets observed in active galactic nuclei can potentially be accounted for. As a signature, such emissions can occur even without a magnetized accretion disk surrounding the black hole. The flux entrapment can provide an observational window to various hidden sectors, such as millicharged dark matter.

Bounds on quantum information storage and retrieval.

We present certain universal bounds on the capacity of quantum information storage and on the time scale of its retrieval for a generic quantum field theoretic system. The capacity, quantified by the microstate entropy, is bounded from above by the surface area of the object measured in units of a Goldstone decay constant. The Goldstone bosons are universally present due to the spontaneous breaking of Poincare and internal symmetries by the information-storing object. Applied to a black hole, the bound reproduces the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy. However, the relation goes beyond gravity. The minimal time-scale required for retrieving the quantum information from a system is equal to its volume measured in units of the same Goldstone scale. For a black hole, this reproduces the Page time as well as the quantum break-time. Again, the expression for the information retrieval time is very general and is shared by non-gravitational saturated states in gauge theories including QCD. All such objects exhibit universal signatures such as the emission of ultra-soft radiation. Similar bounds apply to non-relativistic many-body systems. This article is part of the theme issue 'Quantum technologies in particle physics'.

Dielectric Haloscopes: A New Way to Detect Axion Dark Matter.

We propose a new strategy to search for dark matter axions in the mass range of 40-400 µeV by introducing dielectric haloscopes, which consist of dielectric disks placed in a magnetic field. The changing dielectric media cause discontinuities in the axion-induced electric field, leading to the generation of propagating electromagnetic waves to satisfy the continuity requirements at the interfaces. Large-area disks with adjustable distances boost the microwave signal (10-100 GHz) to an observable level and allow one to scan over a broad axion mass range. A sensitivity to QCD axion models is conceivable with 80 disks of 1 m^{2} area contained in a 10 T field.

Finding critical states of enhanced memory capacity in attractive cold bosons.

We discuss a class of quantum theories which exhibit a sharply increased memory storage capacity due to emergent gapless degrees of freedom. Their realization, both theoretical and experimental, is of great interest. On the one hand, such systems are motivated from a quantum information point of view. On the other hand, they can provide a framework for simulating systems with enhanced capacity of pattern storage, such as black holes and neural networks. In this paper, we develop an analytic method that enables us to find critical states with increased storage capabilities in a generic system of cold bosons with weak attractive interactions. The enhancement of memory capacity arises when the occupation number N of certain modes reaches a critical level. Such modes, via negative energy couplings, assist others in becoming effectively gapless. This leads to degenerate microstates labeled by the occupation numbers of the nearly-gapless modes. In the limit of large N, they become exactly gapless and their decoherence time diverges. In this way, a system becomes an ideal storer of quantum information. We demonstrate our method on a prototype model of N attractive cold bosons contained in a one-dimensional box with Dirichlet boundary conditions. Although we limit ourselves to a truncated system, we observe a rich structure of quantum phases with a critical point of enhanced memory capacity.

Black holes as critical point of quantum phase transition.

We reformulate the quantum black hole portrait in the language of modern condensed matter physics. We show that black holes can be understood as a graviton Bose-Einstein condensate at the critical point of a quantum phase transition, identical to what has been observed in systems of cold atoms. The Bogoliubov modes that become degenerate and nearly gapless at this point are the holographic quantum degrees of freedom responsible for the black hole entropy and the information storage. They have no (semi)classical counterparts and become inaccessible in this limit. These findings indicate a deep connection between the seemingly remote systems and suggest a new quantum foundation of holography. They also open an intriguing possibility of simulating black hole information processing in table-top labs.

Strong CP problem with 10(32) standard model copies.

We show that a recently proposed solution to the hierarchy problem simultaneously solves the strong CP problem, without requiring an axion or any further new physics. Consistency of black hole physics implies a nontrivial relation between the number of particle species and particle masses, so that with approximately 10(32) copies of the standard model, the TeV scale is naturally explained. At the same time, as shown here, this setup predicts a typical expected value of the strong-CP parameter in QCD of theta approximately 10(-9). This strongly motivates a more sensitive measurement of the neutron electric dipole moment.

Gravity cutoff in theories with large discrete symmetries.

We set an upper bound on the gravitational cutoff in theories with exact quantum numbers of large N periodicity, such as Z(N) discrete symmetries. The bound stems from black hole physics. It is similar to the bound appearing in theories with N particle species, though a priori, a large discrete symmetry does not imply a large number of species. Thus, there emerges a potentially wide class of new theories that address the hierarchy problem by lowering the gravitational cutoff due to the existence of large Z(10(32))-type symmetries.

Non-Pauli-Fierz massive gravitons.

We study general Lorentz invariant theories of massive gravitons. We show that, contrary to the standard lore, there exist consistent theories where the graviton mass term violates Pauli-Fierz structure. For theories where the graviton is a resonance, this does not imply the existence of a scalar ghost if the deviation from a Pauli-Fierz structure becomes sufficiently small at high energies. These types of mass terms are required by any consistent realization of the Dvali-Gabadadze-Porrati model in higher dimension.

Cascading gravity: extending the Dvali-Gabadadze-Porrati model to higher dimension.

We present a generalization of the Dvali-Gabadadze-Porrati scenario to higher codimensions which, unlike previous attempts, is free of ghost instabilities. The 4D propagator is made regular by embedding our visible 3-brane within a 4-brane, each with their own induced gravity terms, in a flat 6D bulk. The model is ghost-free if the tension on the 3-brane is larger than a certain critical value, while the induced metric remains flat. The gravitational force law "cascades" from a 6D behavior at the largest distances followed by a 5D and finally a 4D regime at the shortest scales.

Photon-mass bound destroyed by vortices.

The Particle Data Group gives an upper bound on the photon mass m < 2 x 10(-16) eV from a laboratory experiment and lists, but does not adopt, an astronomical bound m < 3 x 10(-27) eV, both of which are based on the plausible assumption of large galactic vector potential. We argue that the interpretations of these experiments should be changed, which alters significantly the bounds on m. If m arises from a Higgs effect, both limits are invalid because the Proca vector potential of the galactic magnetic field may be neutralized by vortices giving a large-scale magnetic field that is effectively Maxwellian. If, on the other hand, the galactic magnetic field is in the Proca regime, the very existence of the observed large-scale magnetic field gives m(-1) > or = 1 kpc, or m < or = 10(-26) eV.

Topological mass generation in four dimensions.

We show that in a large class of physically interesting systems the mass-generation phenomenon can be understood in terms of topological structures, without requiring a detailed knowledge of the underlying dynamics. This is first demonstrated by showing that Schwinger's mechanism for mass generation relies on topological structures of a two-dimensional gauge theory. In the same manner, corresponding four-dimensional topological entities give rise to topological mass generation in four dimensions. This formulation offers a unified topological description of some seemingly unrelated phenomena, such as two-dimensional superconductivity, and the generation of eta' and axion masses by QCD, and possibly by gravity.

Infrared Lorentz violation and slowly instantaneous electricity.

We study a modification of electromagnetism which violates Lorentz invariance at large distances. In this theory, electromagnetic waves are massive, but the static force between charged particles is Coulomb, not Yukawa. At very short distances the theory looks just like QED. But for distances larger than 1/m the massive dispersion relation of the waves can be appreciated, and the Coulomb force can be used to communicate faster than the speed of light. In fact, electrical signals are transmitted instantly, but take a time approximately 1/m to build up to full strength. After that, undamped oscillations of the electric field are set in and continue until they are dispersed by the arrival of the Lorentz-obeying part of the transmission. Experimental constraints imply that the Compton wavelength of the photon may be as small as 6000 km. This bound is weaker than for a Lorentz-invariant mass, essentially because the Coulomb constraint is removed.

Changing alpha with time: implications for fifth-force-type experiments and quintessence.

If the recent observations suggesting a time variation of the fine structure constant are correct, they imply the existence of an ultralight scalar particle. This particle inevitably couples to nucleons through the alpha dependence of their masses and thus mediates an isotope-dependent long-range force. The strength of the coupling is within a couple of orders of magnitude of the existing experimental bounds for such forces. The new force can be potentially measured in precision experimental tests of the equivalence principle. Because of a coincidence of the required time scales, the scalar field can at the same time play the role of a quintessence field.