The statistical mechanics of near-BPS black holes

Due to the failure of thermodynamics for low temperature near-extremal black holes, it has long been conjectured that a "thermodynamic mass gap'' exists between an extremal black hole and the lightest near-extremal state. For non-supersymmetric near-extremal black holes in Einstein gravity with an AdS2 throat, no such gap was found. Rather, at that energy scale, the spectrum exhibits a continuum of states, up to non-perturbative corrections. In this paper, we compute the partition function of near-BPS black holes in supergravity where the emergent, broken, symmetry is PSU(1,1|2). To reliably compute this partition function, we show that the gravitational path integral can be reduced to that of a N=4 supersymmetric extension of the Schwarzian theory, which we define and exactly quantize. In contrast to the non-supersymmetric case, we find that black holes in supergravity have a mass gap and a large extremal black hole degeneracy consistent with the Bekenstein-Hawking area. Our results verify a plethora of string theory conjectures, concerning the scale of the mass gap and the counting of extremal micro-states.

Deformations of JT gravity via topological gravity and applications

We study the duality between JT gravity and the double-scaled matrix model including their respective deformations. For these deformed theories we relate the thermal partition function to the generating function of topological gravity correlators that are determined as solutions to the KdV hierarchy. We specialise to those deformations of JT gravity coupled to a gas of defects, which conforms with known results in the literature. We express the (asymptotic) thermal partition functions in a low temperature limit, in which non-perturbative corrections are suppressed and the thermal partition function becomes exact. In this limit we demonstrate that there is a Hawking-Page phase transition between connected and disconnected surfaces for this instance of JT gravity with a transition temperature affected by the presence of defects. Furthermore, the calculated spectral form factors show the qualitative behaviour expected for a Hawking-Page phase transition. The considered deformations cause the ramp to be shifted along the real time axis. Finally, we comment on recent results related to conical Weil-Petersson volumes and the analytic continuation to two-dimensional de Sitter space.

D-instantons in Type IIA string theory on Calabi-Yau threefolds

Type IIA string theory compactified on a Calabi-Yau threefold has a hypermultiplet moduli space whose metric is known to receive non-perturbative corrections from Euclidean D2-branes wrapped on 3-cycles. These corrections have been computed earlier by making use of mirror symmetry, S-duality and twistorial description of quaternionic geometries. In this paper we compute the leading corrections in each homology class using a direct world-sheet approach without relying on any duality symmetry or supersymmetry. Our results are in perfect agreement with the earlier predictions.

Quantum work and information geometry of a quantum Myers-Perry black hole

In this paper, we will obtain quantum work for a quantum scale five dimensional Myers-Perry black hole. Unlike heat represented by Hawking radiation, the quantum work is represented by a unitary information preserving process, and becomes important for black holes only at small quantum scales. It will be observed that at such short distances, the quantum work will be corrected by non-perturbative quantum gravitational corrections. We will use the Jarzynski equality to obtain this quantum work modified by non-perturbative quantum gravitational corrections. These non-perturbative corrections will also modify the stability of a quantum Myers-Perry black hole. We will define a quantum corrected information geometry by incorporating the non-perturbative quantum corrections in the information geometry of a Myers-Perry black hole. We will use several different quantum corrected effective information metrics to analyze the stability of a quantum Myers-Perry black hole.

Quantum corrections to the thermodynamics of black branes

In this paper we study the thermodynamics of black branes at quantum scales. We analyze both perturbative and non-perturbative corrections to the thermodynamics of such black branes. It will be observed that these corrections will modify the relation between the entropy and area of these black branes. This will in turn modify their specific heat, and thus their stability. So, such corrections can have important consequences for the stability of black branes at quantum scales. We also analyze the effect of these perturbative and non-perturbative quantum corrections on various other thermodynamic quantities. Then, we obtain the metric for the quantum corrected geometry for black branes.

Soft photon theorem in the small negative cosmological constant limit

We study the effect of electromagnetic interactions on the classical soft theorems on an asymptotically AdS background in 4 spacetime dimensions, in the limit of a small cosmological constant or equivalently a large AdS radius l. This identifies 1/l2 perturbative corrections to the known asymptotically flat spacetime leading and subleading soft factors. Our analysis is only valid to leading order in 1/l2. The leading soft factor can be expected to be universal and holds beyond tree level. This allows us to derive a 1/l2 corrected Ward identity, following the known equivalence between large gauge Ward identities and soft theorems in asymptotically flat spacetimes.

Short-distance constraints for the longitudinal component of the hadronic light-by-light amplitude: an update

We reassess the impact of short-distance constraints for the longitudinal component of the hadronic light-by-light amplitude on the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon, $$a_\mu =(g-2)_\mu /2$$ a μ = ( g - 2 ) μ / 2 , by comparing different solutions that have recently appeared in the literature. In particular, we analyze the relevance of the exact axial anomaly and its impact on $$a_\mu $$ a μ and conclude that it remains rather limited. We show that all recently proposed solutions agree well within uncertainties on the numerical estimate of the impact of short-distance constraints on $$a_\mu $$ a μ , despite differences in the concrete implementation. We also take into account the recently calculated perturbative corrections to the massless quark loop to update our estimate and outline the path towards future improvements.

Soft-drop grooming for hadronic event shapes

Soft-drop grooming of hadron-collision final states has the potential to significantly reduce the impact of non-perturbative corrections, and in particular the underlying-event contribution. This eventually will enable a more direct comparison of accurate perturbative predictions with experimental measurements. In this study we consider soft-drop groomed dijet event shapes. We derive general results needed to perform the resummation of suitable event-shape variables to next-to-leading logarithmic (NLL) accuracy matched to exact next-to-leading order (NLO) QCD matrix elements. We compile predictions for the transverse-thrust shape accurate to NLO + NLL′ using the implementation of the Caesar formalism in the Sherpa event generator framework. We complement this by state-of-the-art parton- and hadron-level predictions based on NLO QCD matrix elements matched with parton showers. We explore the potential to mitigate non-perturbative corrections for particle-level and track-based measurements of transverse thrust by considering a wide range of soft-drop parameters. We find that soft-drop grooming indeed is very efficient in removing the underlying event. This motivates future experimental measurements to be compared to precise QCD predictions and employed to constrain non-perturbative models in Monte-Carlo simulations.

Toward massless and massive event shapes in the large-β0 limit

We present results for SCET and bHQET matching coefficients and jet functions in the large-β0 limit. Our computations exactly predict all terms of the form $$ {\alpha}_s^{n+1}{n}_f^n $$ α s n + 1 n f n for any n ≥ 0, and we find full agreement with the coefficients computed in the full theory up to $$ \mathcal{O}\left({\alpha}_s^4\right) $$ O α s 4 . We obtain all-order closed expressions for the cusp and non-cusp anomalous dimensions (which turn out to be unambiguous) as well as matrix elements (with ambiguities) in this limit, which can be easily expanded to arbitrarily high powers of αs using recursive algorithms to obtain the corresponding fixed-order coefficients. Examining the poles laying on the positive real axis of the Borel-transform variable u we quantify the perturbative convergence of a series and estimate the size of non-perturbative corrections. We find a so far unknown u = 1/2 renormalon in the bHQET hard factor Hm that affects the normalization of the peak differential cross section for boosted top quark pair production. For ambiguous series the so-called Borel sum is defined with the principal value prescription. Furthermore, one can assign an ambiguity based on the arbitrariness of avoiding the poles by contour deformation into the positive or negative imaginary half-plane. Finally, we compute the relation between the pole mass and four low-scale short distance masses in the large-β0 approximation (MSR, RS and two versions of the jet mass), work out their μ- and R-evolution in this limit, and study how their implementation improves the convergence of the position-space bHQET jet function, whose three-loop coefficient in full QCD is numerically estimated.