We provide a concrete link between celestial amplitudes and cosmological correlators. We first construct a map from quantum field theories (QFTs) in $(D+2)$-dimensional Euclidean space to theories on the $(D+1)$-dimensional sphere, through a Weyl rescaling and a Fourier transformation. An analytic continuation extends this map to a relation between QFTs in Minkowski spacetime $\text{M}_{D+2}$ and in de Sitter spacetime $\text{dS}_{D+1}$ with the Bunch-Davies vacuum. Combining this relation with celestial holography, we show that the extrapolated operators in de Sitter space can be represented by operators on the celestial sphere $S^{D}$. Our framework offers a systematic route to transfer computational techniques and physical insights between celestial holography and the dS/CFT correspondence.

Quantum effects in general induce scale dependence in the coupling constants. We explore this possibility in gravity, with a scale-dependent Newton coupling. When applied to Kerr black holes with such a running coupling, the consistency of black hole thermodynamics requires that the Newton coupling have a specific dependence on the black hole parameters. In this work, we consider such a class of Newton couplings and look for the possible observational implications on the highly lensed images of the black holes. In addition to placing constraints on the parameter space of the model through the latest Sgr A* images, we find that the variations in the shape of shadows in a large portion of the parameter space can be qualitatively captured by a quantity solely defined by the event horizon. Most importantly, the consistency of thermodynamics suggests a lower bound on the shadow size, beyond which either horizon disappears, or the shadow cannot keep the standard D-shaped structure. The possibility that the black holes in this model could spin faster than the Kerr bound, and the physical implications of the resulting cuspy shadows, are also discussed.

A set of tidal dissipation numbers (TDNs) quantifies the absorption of the tidal force exerted by a companion during an inspiralling phase of a binary compact object. This tidal dissipation generally affects the gravitational waveform, and measuring the TDNs of a black hole (BH) allows us to test the nature of gravity in the strong-field regime. In this paper, we develop a parametrized formalism for calculating the TDNs of static and spherically symmetric BH backgrounds using the Mano-Suzuki-Takasugi method, which connects the underlying perturbative equations with observable quantities in gravitational-wave observations in a theory-agnostic manner. Our formalism applies to any system where the master equation has the form of the Regge-Wheeler/Zerilli equation with a small correction to the effective potential. As an application of our formalism, we consider three examples: the effective field theory of BH perturbations with timelike scalar profile, the Einstein-Maxwell system, and a higher-curvature extension of general relativity. We also discuss the absence of logarithmic running for the TDNs.

The quasinormal mode spectrum of black holes is unstable against small modifications of the radial potential describing massless perturbations. We study how these small modifications affect the convergence of the quasinormal mode expansion and the mode excitation by computing the mode amplitudes from first principles, without relying on any fitting procedure. We show that the decomposition of the prompt ringdown waveform is not unique: small modifications in the radial potential produce new quasinormal mode ''basis sets'' that can improve the convergence of the quasinormal mode expansion, even capturing the late-time tail. We also study avoided crossings and exceptional points of the Kerr and Kerr-de Sitter spectrum. We show that while the mode amplitude can be resonantly excited, modes that exhibit avoided crossing destructively interfere with each other, so that the prompt ringdown waveform remains stable.

On a spherically symmetric and static background, we study the existence of linearly stable black hole (BH) solutions in nonlinear electrodynamics (NED) with a Horndeski vector-tensor (HVT) coupling, with and without curvature singularities at the center ($r=0$). Incorporating the electric charge $q_E$ and the magnetic charge $q_M$, we first show that nonsingular BHs can exist only if $q_M = 0$. We then study the stability of purely electric BHs by analyzing the behavior of perturbations in the metric and the vector field. Nonsingular electric BHs are unstable due to a Laplacian instability in the vector perturbation near the regular center. In the absence of the HVT coupling ($\beta=0$), singular BHs in power-law NED theories can be consistent with all linear stability conditions, while Born-Infeld BHs encounter strong coupling due to a vanishing propagation speed as $r \to 0$. In power-law NED and Born-Infeld theories with $\beta \neq 0$, the electric fields for singular BHs are regular near $r=0$, while the metric functions behave as $\propto r^{-1}$. Nevertheless, we show that Laplacian instabilities occur for regions inside the outer horizon $r_h$, unless the HVT coupling constant $\beta$ is significantly smaller than $r_h^2$. For $\beta \neq 0$, we also reconstruct the NED Lagrangian so that one of the metric functions takes the Reissner-Nordström form. In this case, there exists a branch where all squared propagation speeds are positive, but the ghost and strong coupling problems are present around the BH center. Thus, the dominance of the HVT coupling generally leads to BH instability in the high-curvature regime.

We study the dynamics of odd-parity perturbations on a static and spherically symmetric black hole background with a timelike vector field based on the effective field theory (EFT) approach. We derive the quadratic Lagrangian written in terms of two master variables, corresponding to the tensor and vector gravitons, which are coupled in general, while they can be decoupled on a stealth Schwarzschild(-de Sitter) background. For the stealth Schwarzschild background, we find that the quasinormal mode frequencies for both degrees of freedom are obtained from those in general relativity by simple scaling. Nonetheless, due to the fact that the metric perturbation is a non-trivial linear combination of the two degrees of freedom with different QNM spectra, the ringdown gravitational waves may exhibit characteristic modulation that can in principle be a signature of vector-tensor gravity.

While quantum computing proposes promising solutions to computational problems not accessible with classical approaches, due to current hardware constraints, most quantum algorithms are not yet capable of computing systems of practical relevance, and classical counterparts outperform them. To practically benefit from quantum architecture, one has to identify problems and algorithms with favorable scaling and improve on corresponding limitations depending on available hardware. For this reason, we developed an algorithm that solves integer linear programming problems, a classically NP-hard problem, on a quantum annealer, and investigated problem and hardware-specific limitations. This work presents the formalism of how to map ILP problems to the annealing architectures, how to systematically improve computations utilizing optimized anneal schedules, and models the anneal process through a simulation. It illustrates the effects of decoherence and many body localization for the minimum dominating set problem, and compares annealing results against numerical simulations of the quantum architecture. We find that the algorithm outperforms random guessing but is limited to small problems and that annealing schedules can be adjusted to reduce the effects of decoherence. Simulations qualitatively reproduce algorithmic improvements of the modified annealing schedule, suggesting the improvements have origins from quantum effects.

The excitation factors of black hole quasinormal modes quantify the $\textit{ease of excitation}$ of the quasinormal modes and are independent of the source of perturbation. We compute the excitation factors of Kerr black holes up to the 20th overtone and find that the 4th, 5th, and 6th overtones have the first three highest excitation factors for intermediate and high spin parameters. This provides an independent confirmation of the importance of overtones that has been confirmed by the fitting data analysis of numerical relativity waveforms beginning around the strain peak amplitude.

In black hole perturbation formalism, the gravitational waveform is obtained by the convolution of the Green's function and the source term causing radiation emission. Hence, the ringdown properties, namely its start time, depend on both functions. The unknown time-shift encoded in the Green's function introduces a "time-shift problem" for ringdown. We study the ringdown time-shift problem by reconstructing a waveform via the excitation factors of quasi-normal modes (QNMs) of a spinning black hole. For the first time, we reconstruct ringdown with a significant number of QNMs weighted with their excitation factors and confirm its excellent convergence. We then precisely identify the ringdown starting time. We also find (i) that for moderate or large spins and $\ell=m=2$, QNMs should be included up to around the $20$th prograde overtones and around fifth retrograde overtones to reconstruct the ringdown waveform for the delta-function source with a mismatch threshold M < O(10^{-3}). For higher angular modes, a more significant number of QNMs are necessary to reconstruct it; (ii) that the time shift of ringdown caused by the Green's function is the same for different $(\ell, m, n)$ modes but that nontrivial sources can change this conclusion. Finally, we demonstrate (iii) that the greybody factor can be reconstructed with the superposed QNM spectrum in the frequency domain.

The spectral amplitude of the merger-ringdown gravitational wave (GW) emitted by a comparable mass-ratio black hole merger is modeled by the greybody factor of the remnant black hole. We also include the post-Newtonian correction to the greybody factor model. Our model includes only a few fitting parameters, which could evade the overfitting issue. We perform the mass-spin inference from the SXS data without tuning the data range of each SXS waveform. Also, we find that the exponential damping in the ringdown spectral amplitude can be modeled well with the exponential damping in the greybody factor at high frequencies. Our findings could be consistent with a conjecture that the light ring of the remnant black hole, which sources the ringdown, forms as early as during the merger stage. We discuss the formation of the light ring in the static binary solution as a first step towards the understanding of how the separation of merging black holes may affect the formation of the light ring.

We study higher-form symmetries and a higher group in the low energy limit of a $(3+1)$-dimensional axion electrodynamics with a massive axion and a massive photon. A topological field theory describing topological excitations with the axion-photon coupling, which we call a topological axion electrodynamics, is obtained in the low energy limit. Higher-form symmetries of the topological axion electrodynamics are specified by equations of motion and Bianchi identities. We find that there are induced anyons on the intersections of symmetry generators. By a link of worldlines of the anyons, we show that the worldvolume of an axionic domain wall is topologically ordered. We further specify the underlying mathematical structure elegantly describing all salient features of the theory to be a 4-group.

We generalize isometric tensor network states to fermionic systems, paving the way for efficient adaptations of 1D tensor network algorithms to 2D fermionic systems. As the first application of this formalism, we developed and benchmarked a time-evolution block-decimation (TEBD) algorithm for real-time and imaginary-time evolution. The imaginary-time evolution produces ground-state energies for gapped systems, systems with a Dirac point, and systems with gapless edge modes to good accuracy. The real-time TEBD captures the scattering of two fermions and the chiral edge dynamics on the boundary of a Chern insulator.

Entanglement generation by Newtonian gravitational potential between objects has been widely discussed to reveal the quantum nature of gravity. In this paper, we perform a quantum field theoretical analysis of a slightly modified version of the gedanken experiment by Mari and co-workers. We show that decoherence due to the presence of a detector propagates with the speed of light in terms of a retarded Green's function, as it should be consistent with causality of relativistic field theories. The quantum nature of fields, such as quantum fluctuations or emission of gravitons expressed in terms of the Keldysh Green's function also play important roles in the mechanism of decoherence due to on-shell particle creation. We also discuss the trade-off relation between the visibility of the interference and the distinguishability of the measurement, known as the wave particle duality, in our setup.

We consider wave packets of a massless scalar field that have well-localized Rindler energy, and examine how their energy appears to a Minkowski observer to study how the classical gravitational red-shift formula is modified quantum mechanically. We derive, by using the saddle point approximation, an analytic expression for the Minkowski momentum distribution of such Rindler wave packets. We find a universal lower bound on the uncertainty in the Minkowski momentum; the momentum distribution can never become arbitrarily sharp.

Leptogenesis is arguably the best motivated theory of baryogenesis given the discovery of finite neutrino masses, yet its experimental test is elusive given its high energy scale. We discuss gravitational waves (GWs) produced via graviton bremsstrahlung in right-handed neutrino decays during leptogenesis. The presence of right-handed neutrinos in the early universe can lead to a period of early matter domination. In this context, the resultant GW spectrum scales quadratically with the right-handed neutrino mass, while its peak frequency scales inversely with the Yukawa coupling. Detecting such a spectrum would provide strong evidence for leptogenesis and the existence of heavy right-handed neutrinos. We also discuss how the GW spectrum emitted from the thermal plasma is altered by an era of early matter domination. We show that it can mimic the effects of additional relativistic degrees of freedom and a higher reheating temperature, and that information from the graviton bremsstrahlung GW spectrum can break this degeneracy.

The 't Hooft anomaly matching condition provides constraints on the phase structure at $\theta=\pi$ in 4D SU($N$) Yang-Mills theory. In particular, assuming that the theory is confined and the CP symmetry is spontaneously broken at low temperature, it cannot be restored below the deconfining temperature at $\theta=\pi$. Here we investigate the CP restoration at $\theta=\pi$ in the 4D SU(2) case and provide numerical evidence that the CP restoration occurs at a temperature higher than the deconfining temperature unlike the known results in the large-$N$ limit, where the CP restoration occurs precisely at the deconfining temperature. The severe sign problem at $\theta=\pi$ is avoided by focusing on the tail of the topological charge distribution at $\theta=0$, which can be probed by performing simulations at imaginary $\theta$. By analytic continuation with respect to $\theta$, we obtain the topological charge at real $\theta$.

We compute the groupoid homology for the ample groupoids associated with algebraic actions from rings of algebraic integers and integral dynamics. We derive results for the homology of the topological full groups associated with rings of algebraic integers, and we use our groupoid homology calculation to compute the K-theory for ring C*-algebras of rings of algebraic integers, recovering the results of Cuntz and Li and of Li and L\"uck without using Cuntz--Li duality. Moreover, we compute the K-theory for C*-algebras attached to integral dynamics, resolving the conjecture by Barlak, Omland, and Stammeier in full generality.

We report on the first application of the stochastic Laplacian Heaviside method for computing multi-particle interactions with lattice QCD to the two-nucleon system. Like the Laplacian Heaviside method, this method allows for the construction of interpolating operators which can be used to construct a positive definite set of two-nucleon correlation functions, unlike nearly all other applications of lattice QCD to two nucleons in the literature. It also allows for a variational analysis in which optimal linear combinations of the interpolating operators are formed that couple predominantly to the eigenstates of the system. Utilizing such methods has become of paramount importance in order to help resolve the discrepancy in the literature on whether two nucleons in either isospin channel form a bound state at pion masses heavier than physical, with the discrepancy persisting even in the $SU(3)$-flavor symmetric point with all quark masses near the physical strange quark mass. This is the first in a series of papers aimed at resolving this discrepancy. In the present work, we employ the stochastic Laplacian Heaviside method without a hexaquark operator in the basis at a lattice spacing of $a\sim0.086$~fm, lattice volume of $L=48a\simeq4.1$~fm and pion mass $m_\pi\simeq714$ MeV. With this setup, the observed spectrum of two-nucleon energy levels strongly disfavors the presence of a bound state in either the deuteron or dineutron channel.

Building from work by Cedzich et al. and Suzuki et al., we consider topological and index-theoretic properties of chiral unitaries, which are an abstraction of the time evolution of a chiral-symmetric self-adjoint operator. Split-step quantum walks provide a rich class of examples. We use the index of a pair of projections and the Cayley transform to define topological indices for chiral unitaries on both Hilbert spaces and Hilbert $C^*$-modules. In the case of the discrete time evolution of a Hamiltonian-like operator, we relate the index for chiral unitaries to the index of the Hamiltonian. We also prove a double-sided winding number formula for anisotropic split-step quantum walks on Hilbert $C^*$-modules, extending a result by Matsuzawa.