How to turn the flip of a coin into a random variable whose expected value equals a scattering amplitude? We answer this question by constructing a numerical algorithm to evaluate curve integrals - a novel formulation of scattering amplitudes - by a Monte Carlo strategy. To achieve a satisfactory accuracy we take advantage of tropical importance sampling. The crucial result is that the sampling procedure can be realized as a stochastic process on surfaces which can be simulated efficiently on a computer. The key insight is to let go of the Feynman-bias that amplitudes should be presented as a sum over diagrams, and instead re-arrange the sum as suggested by a dual triangulation of curve integrals. We attach an implementation of this algorithm as an ancillary file, which we have used to evaluate amplitudes for the massive $\mathrm{Tr}(\phi)^3$ theory in $D=2$ space-time dimensions, up to 10-loops. Interestingly, we observe experimentally that the number of sample points required to achieve a fixed accuracy remains significantly smaller than what the number of diagrams would suggest. Finally we propose an extension of our method which is inspired by ideas from artificial intelligence. We use the stochastic process to define a parametrization for a space of distributions, where we formulate importance sampling for an arbitrary curve integrand as a convex optimization problem.

The magnetic line defect in the $O(N)$ model gives rise to a non-trivial one-dimensional defect conformal field theory of theoretical and experimental value. This model is considered here in $d=4-\varepsilon$ and the full spectrum of defect operators with dimensions close to one, two and three at order $\varepsilon$ is presented. The spectrum of several classes of operators of dimension close to four and operators of large charge are also discussed. Analytic bootstrap techniques are used extensively, and efficient tools to deal with the unmixing of nearly degenerate operators are developed. Integral identities are also incorporated, and it is shown that they lead to constraints on some three-point function coefficients and anomalous dimensions to order $\varepsilon^2$.

We extend decomposition to 2d QFT's with a gauged $\text{Rep}(H)$ symmetry category for $H$ a finite-dimensional semisimple Hopf algebra with $\text{Rep}(G)$ trivially-acting and $\text{Vec}(\Gamma)$ the remaining symmetry, for $G,\Gamma$ finite groups. We check our extension by explicitly computing partition functions, and by verifying that previous results arise as special cases. Then, drawing from these computations, we formulate a plausible decomposition conjecture for the even more general case of $\text{Rep}(H'')$ trivially-acting and $\text{Rep}(H')$ the remaining symmetry, for $H',H''$ Hopf algebras, not necessarily associated with groups.

After obtaining the flavor $D6$-brane gauge fields/their fluctuations in the type IIA dual of T>T_c QCD-like theories at intermediate coupling (via the ${\cal M}$-theory uplift's ${\cal O}(R^4)$ corrections) in the absence/presence of a strong magnetic field, we compute the photoproduction spectral function and get a nice agreement with gauged supergravity backgrounds arXiv:2204.00024 [hep-th]. We demonstrate from the EoS that the holographic dual, in principle, could correspond to several $T>T_c$ scenarios: stable wormhole, stable wormhole transitioning via a smooth crossover to dark energy as the universe cools, and a paramagnetic pressure/energy-anisotropic plasma. Given that $T>T_c$ QGP is expected to be paramagnetic, see Bali et al '14, the third possibility appears to be the preferred one. We also show that it is not possible that the anisotropic plasma leads to the formation of a compact star. IR renormalization of the DBI action requires a boundary Log-det-Ricci-tensor counter term. {\it Noting (i) photoproduction spectral function, speed of sound, etc. determined from gauge field fluctuations receiving ${\cal O}(R^4)$-corrections, if complexified, include a non-analytic-complexified gauge-coupling dependence, and correspond to Contact 3-Structures; (ii) pressure/energy density, etc. determined from world-volume gauge fields and not ${\cal O}(R^4)$-corrected, if complexified, are analytic in the complexified gauge coupling, and correspond to Almost Contact 3-Structures (AC3S) both induced from the $G_2$ structure of a closed seven-fold, we conjecture (i) the lack of $N$-path connectedness in the parameter space associated with AC3S and C3S arXiv:2211.13186[hep-th] to be equivalent to that gauge field fluctuations can not be finite, and (zero-instanton sector) ${\cal O}(R^4)$ non-renormalized gauge fields produce ${\cal O}(R^4)$-corrected gauge fluctuation; (ii) C3S--UV--> AC3S.

We study long-term evolution of radiating quasi-Q-balls in 1+1 dimensional models without mass threshold. Two different models are considered, the model with a rational modification of the usual Q-ball sextic potential and the model of a Q-ball in a box with outgoing boundary conditions. We find that the outgoing boundary conditions modify the angular frequency of quasi-Q-balls which becomes complex-valued. The quasi-Q-balls decay initially very similarly, but in the last stage quasi-Q-balls in a box become linear resonances, whereas in the rationally modified model, they decay according to some power law.

We find empirically that the value of Feynman integrals follows a $\log$-$\Gamma$ distribution at large loop order. Our study of the primitive contribution to the scalar $\phi^4$ beta function in four dimensions up to 18 loops provides accompanying evidence. Guided by instanton considerations, we extrapolate the value of this contribution to all loop orders.

The $\rho$-Minkowski space-time, a Lie-algebraic deformation of the usual Minkowski space-time is considered. A star-product realization of this quantum space-time together with the characterization of the deformed Poincar\'e symmetry acting on it are presented. It is shown that appearance of UV/IR mixing is expected already in scalar field theories on $\rho$-Minkowski. Classical and one-loop features of a typical gauge theory on this quantum space-time are presented and critically compared to the situation for $\kappa$-Minkowski.

We obtain asymptotic estimates of the interaction forces between kink and antikink in a family of field-theoretic models with two vacua in (1+1)-dimensional space-time. In our study we consider a new class of soliton solutions previously found in our paper [Chaos, Solitons and Fractals 165 (2022) 112805]. We focus on the case of kinks having one exponential and one power-law asymptotics. We show that if the kink and antikink are faced each other with long-range tails, the force of attraction between them at large separations demonstrates a power-law decay with the distance. We also performed numerical simulations to measure the interaction force and obtained good agreement between the experimental values and theoretical estimates.

We construct invertible spectral parameter dependent Yang-Baxter solutions ($R$-matrices) by Baxterizing constant non-invertible Yang-Baxter solutions. The solutions are algebraic (representation independent). They are constructed using supersymmetry (SUSY) algebras. The resulting $R$-matrices are regular leading to local non-hermitian Hamiltonians written in terms of the SUSY generators. As particular examples we Baxterize the $4\times 4$ constant non-invertible solutions of Hietarinta leading to nearest-neighbor Hamiltonians. On comparing with the literature we find two of the models are new. Apart from being non-hermitian, many of them are also non-diagonalizable with interesting spectrums. With appropriate representations of the SUSY generators we obtain spin chains in all local Hilbert space dimensions.

In this note, we investigate the out-of-time-order correlators (OTOCs) for quantum fields in a holographic framework describing Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) pairs. We compute the four-point and six-point OTOCs using the gravity dual, represented by the string worldsheet theory in Anti-de Sitter (AdS) space. These correlators quantify the rate at which information is scrambled, leading to the disentanglement of the EPR pair. We demonstrate consistency between two approaches for calculating OTOCs: the holographic influence functional on worldsheets perturbed by shock waves, and the worldsheet scattering in the eikonal approximation. We show that the OTOCs exhibit an initial phase of exponential growth, with six-point correlators indicating a marginally longer scrambling time compared to four-point correlators.

This is a contribution to the memorial edition devoted to Professor Vladislav Gavrilovich Bagrov, who was my official adviser from the beginning of undergraduate period to the end of Ph.D. The text includes a mentioning of two my publications in Izvestia VUZov Fisica (Russian Physics Journal), where Vladislav Gavrilovich served as an Editor. The rest of this paper is based on the recent lectures about decoupling in quantum gravity, given in ICTP-SAIFR in Sao Paulo and at the school ``Estate Quantistica'' in Scalea, Italy. After a brief and mainly qualitative review of the decoupling theorem in semiclassical gravity and the scalar fourth-derivative model of Antoniadis and Mottola, we explain what is the expected result for the physical beta functions in fourth-derivative quantum gravity and what should remain from these beta functions in the IR.

We present a self-contained and consistent formulation of noncommutative (NC) gauge theory of gravity, focusing on spherically symmetric black hole geometries. Our construction starts from the gauge-theoretic viewpoint of Poincar\'{e} (or de Sitter) gravity and introduces noncommutativity through the Moyal star product and the Seiberg-Witten map, retaining NC gauge invariance at each order in the deformation parameter $\Theta$. Working systematically to second order in $\Theta$, we obtain explicit NC corrections to the spin connection, the vierbein, and various geometric objects such as the metric and curvature scalars. Using these results, we compute NC modifications of four-dimensional Schwarzschild and Reissner-Nordstr\"{o}m solutions, including scenarios with a cosmological constant, as well as three-dimensional BTZ-type black holes (both uncharged and charged). For each black hole solution, we explore various possible Moyal twists, each of which generally breaks some symmetries and modifies the horizon structure, surface gravity, and curvature invariants. In particular, we show that while the radial location of horizons in Schwarzschild-like solutions remains unchanged for some twists, other twists introduce important but finite deformations in curvature scalars and can decouple the Killing horizon from the causal horizon. Similar patterns arise in the charged and lower-dimensional cases. Beyond constructing explicit examples, our approach provides a blueprint for systematically incorporating short-distance quantum corrections through noncommutativity in gravitational settings. The methods and expansions we present can be extended to more general geometries including rotating black holes and additional matter fields, offering a broad framework for future studies of NC effects in classical solutions of general relativity.

Density matrices are powerful mathematical tools for the description of closed and open quantum systems. Recently, methods for the direct computation of density matrix elements in scalar quantum field theory were developed based on thermo field dynamics (TFD) and the Schwinger-Keldysh formalism. In this article, we provide a more detailed discussion of these methods and derive expressions for density matrix elements of closed and open systems. At first, we look at closed systems by discussing general solutions to the Schr\"odinger-like form of the quantum Liouville equations in TFD, showing that the dynamical map is indeed divisible, deriving a path integral-based expression for the density matrix elements in Fock space, and explaining why perturbation theory enables us to use the last even in situations where all initial states in Fock space are occupied. Subsequently, we discuss open systems in the same manner after tracing out environmental degrees of freedom from the solutions for closed systems. We find that, even in a general basis, the dynamical map is not divisible, which renders the dynamics of open systems non-Markovian. Finally, we show how the resulting expressions for open systems can be used to obtain quantum master equations, and comment on the artificiality of time integrals over density matrices that usually appear in many other master equations in the literature but are absent in ours.

We propose an entropy function for AdS$_4$ BPS black holes in M-theory with general magnetic charges, resolving in particular a long-standing puzzle about baryonic charges. The entropy function is constructed from a gravitational block defined solely in terms of topological data of the internal manifold. We show that the entropy of twisted black holes can always be reformulated as an $\mathcal{I}$-extremization problem -- even in cases where existing large-$N$ field theory computations fail to provide an answer. Furthermore, we correctly reproduce the entropy for a class of known black holes with purely baryonic magnetic charges. Our results offer both a conjecture for the general gravitational block for AdS$_4$ black holes in M-theory and a prediction for the large-$N$ limit of several partition functions whose saddle points have yet to be found.

We review recent progress in constructing maximal, classical supergravity models and their applications.

We calculate the logarithmic temperature corrections to the thermodynamic entropy of four-dimensional near-extremal Reissner-Nordstr\"{o}m de Sitter (dS) black hole by computing a one-loop contribution within the path integral framework in the near-horizon limit. Due to the presence of three horizons, the extremal limit of a charged dS black hole is uniquely intriguing and remarkably different from its flat and AdS counterparts. In the near-horizon limit, there are three distinct extremal limits known as cold, Nariai, and ultracold configurations, each corresponding to a different product geometry structure involving AdS$_2$, dS$_2$ and Mink$_2$ respectively, where all of them contain a $S^2$. We compute the tensor zero modes of the Lichnerowicz operator acting on linearized metric perturbations for the cold and Nariai extremal limits which are associated with near-horizon AdS$_2$ and dS$_2$ asymptotic symmetries. While the path integral over these zero modes results in an infrared divergence within the one-loop approximation to the partition function, we regulate the divergence by introducing a small, finite temperature perturbative correction to the extremal geometry.

Fractonic matter with dipole symmetry can be coupled to a two-index symmetric tensor gauge field. In this work, we show that this symmetric tensor field, along with other related generalized Maxwell theories, can be consistently coupled to curved backgrounds in a covariant and gauge-invariant way by reformulating dipole symmetry using conventional vector gauge fields. We identify a family of curved geometries where global dipole symmetry is preserved and derive energy-momentum conservation laws as Ward identities associated with background diffeomorphisms. Our results pave the way for future extensions, including generalizations to higher-order multipole theories.

We give a prescription for minimally coupling massive matter to JT gravity with either sign of cosmological constant directly in its formulation as a topological BF theory. This coupling takes the form of a `Wilson spool,' originally introduced in the context of three-dimensional gravity. The Wilson spool expresses the exact one-loop partition function as the integral over a Wilson loop operator. We construct the spool by considering the partition function of a massive scalar field on Euclidean dS$_2$ and on Euclidean AdS$_2$. We discuss its extension to other geometries (including the `trumpet' and conical defect geometries) and its relation to the three-dimensional spool through dimensional reduction.

We present a Hamiltonian method of constructing BBGKY-like hierarchies for quantum field theories. With suitable choices, our method creates a hierarchical system of evolution equations for the k-th order reduced density matrices. These equations can be closed at finite order using methods developed for the classical BBGKY hierarchy to give non-perturbative approximations for the full quantum equations of motion. Classical observables can then be numerically computed from these approximate equations, providing an analytically tractable method of modeling high-energy environments where quantum effects play a pronounced role.

Black hole solutions in general scalar-tensor theories are known to permit hair, i.e. non-trivial scalar profiles and/or metric solutions different from the ones of General Relativity (GR). Imposing that some such solutions$\unicode{x2013}$e.g. Schwarzschild or de Sitter solutions motivated in the context of black hole physics or cosmology$\unicode{x2013}$should exist, the space of scalar-tensor theories is strongly restricted. Here we investigate precisely what these restrictions are within general quadratic/cubic higher-order scalar-tensor theories for stealth solutions, whose metric is given by that in GR, supporting time-dependent scalar hair with a constant kinetic term. We derive, in a fully covariant approach, the conditions under which the Euler-Lagrange equations admit all (or a specific set of) exact GR solutions, as the first step toward our understanding of a wider class of theories that admit approximately stealth solutions. Focusing on static and spherically symmetric black hole spacetimes, we study the dynamics of linear odd-parity perturbations and discuss possible deviations from GR. Importantly, we find that requiring the existence of all stealth solutions prevents any deviations from GR in the odd-parity sector. In less restrictive scenarios, in particular for theories only requiring the existence of Schwarzschild(-de Sitter) black holes, we identify allowed deviations from GR, derive the stability conditions for the odd modes, and investigate the generic deviation of a non-trivial speed of gravitational waves. All calculations performed in this paper are reproducible via companion $\texttt {Mathematica}$ notebooks.

This paper investigates the thermodynamic properties of the coexistence region of two horizons in the charged 4-dimensional Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet (4D-EGB) spacetime. Initially, we apply the universal first law of thermodynamics to derive the corresponding thermodynamic quantities for the coexistence region between the black hole event horizon and the cosmological event horizon, subject to the relevant boundary conditions. Next we examine the thermal properties of the thermodynamic system described by these equivalent quantities. Our analysis reveals that the peak of the heat capacity as a function of temperature exhibits characteristics similar to those observed in a paramagnetic system under specific conditions. We further conclude that, under certain conditions, the heat capacity mirrors that of a two-level system formed by two horizons with distinct temperatures. By comparing the heat capacity of the 4D-EGB spacetime's equivalent thermodynamic system with that of a two-level system defined by the two horizons in the spacetime, we can estimate the number of microscopic degrees of freedom at the two horizons. This findings sheds light on the quantum properties of de Sitter (dS) spacetime with two horizon interfaces and offers a novel approach to exploring the quantum properties of black holes and dS spacetime.

We construct Hamiltonian models on a 3+1d cubic lattice for a single Weyl fermion and for a single Weyl doublet protected by exact (as opposed to emergent) chiral symmetries. In the former, we find a not-on-site, non-compact chiral symmetry which can be viewed as a Hamiltonian analog of the Ginsparg-Wilson symmetry in Euclidean lattice models of Weyl fermions. In the latter, we combine an on-site $U(1)$ symmetry with a not-on-site $U(1)$ symmetry, which together generate the $SU(2)$ flavor symmetry of the doublet at low energies, while in the UV they generate an algebra known in integrability as the Onsager algebra. This latter model is in fact the celebrated magnetic Weyl semimetal which is known to have a chiral anomaly from the action of $U(1)$ and crystalline translation, that gives rise to an anomalous Hall response - however reinterpreted in our language, it has two exact $U(1)$ symmetries that gives rise to the global $SU(2)$ anomaly which protects the gaplessness even when crystalline translations are broken. We also construct an exact symmetry-protected single Dirac cone in 2+1d with the $U(1) \rtimes T$ parity anomaly. Our constructions evade both old and recently-proven no-go theorems by using not-on-siteness in a crucial way, showing our results are sharp.

Eigenstate thermalization has played a prominent role as a determiner of the validity of quantum statistical mechanics since von Neumann's early works on quantum ergodicity. However, its connection to the dynamical process of quantum thermalization relies sensitively on nondegeneracy properties of the energy spectrum, as well as detailed features of individual eigenstates that are effective only over correspondingly large timescales, rendering it generically inaccessible given practical timescales and finite experimental resources. Here, we introduce the notion of energy-band thermalization to address these limitations, which coarse-grains over energy level spacings with a finite energy resolution. We show that energy-band thermalization implies the thermalization of an observable in almost all physical states over accessible timescales without relying on microscopic properties of the energy eigenvalues or eigenstates, and conversely, can be efficiently accessed in experiments via the dynamics of a single initial state (for a given observable) with only polynomially many resources in the system size. This allows us to directly determine thermalization, including in the presence of conserved charges, from this state: Most strikingly, if an observable thermalizes in this initial state over a finite range of times, then it must thermalize in almost all physical initial states over all longer timescales. As applications, we derive a finite-time Mazur-Suzuki inequality for quantum transport with approximately conserved charges, and establish the thermalization of local observables over finite timescales in almost all accessible states in (generally inhomogeneous) dual-unitary quantum circuits. We also propose measurement protocols for general many-qubit systems. This work initiates a rigorous treatment of quantum thermalization in terms of experimentally accessible quantities.

We present a new exact solution of Einstein-Maxwell field equations which represents a rotating black hole with both electric and magnetic charges immersed in a universe which itself is also rotating and magnetized, i.e. the dyonic Kerr-Newman black hole in a Melvin-swirling universe. We show that the solution is completely regular and free of any type of singularity; then we analyze its physical properties, such as the ergoregions and the shape of the event horizons. Finally we present the extremal near horizon geometry of the metric and study its entropy via the Kerr/CFT correspondence.

Extensions of equivalent representations of gravity are discussed in the metric-affine framework. First, we focus on: (i) General Relativity, based upon the metric tensor whose dynamics is given by the Ricci curvature scalar $R$; (ii) the Teleparallel Equivalent of General Relativity, based on tetrads and spin connection whose dynamics is given by the torsion scalar $T$; (iii) the Symmetric Teleparallel Equivalent of General Relativity, formulated with respect to both the metric tensor and the affine connection and characterized by the non-metric scalar $Q$ with the role of gravitational field. They represent the so-called Geometric Trinity of Gravity, because, even if based on different frameworks and different dynamical variables, such as curvature, torsion, and non-metricity, they express the same gravitational dynamics. Starting from this framework, we construct their extensions with the aim to study possible equivalence. We discuss the straightforward extension of General Relativity, the $f(R)$ gravity, where $f(R)$ is an arbitrary function of the Ricci scalar. With this paradigm in mind, we take into account $f(T)$ and $f(Q)$ extensions showing that they are not equivalent to $f(R)$. Dynamical equivalence is achieved if boundary terms are considered, that is $f(T-\tilde{B})$ and $f(Q-B)$ theories. The latter are the extensions of Teleparallel Equivalent of General Relativity and Symmetric Teleparallel of General Relativity, respectively. We obtain that $f(R)$, $f(T-\tilde{B})$, and $f(Q-B)$ form the Extended Geometric Trinity of Gravity. The aim is to show that also if dynamics are equivalent, foundations of theories of gravity can be very different.

Taking into account the temperature corrections of the energy equipartition law for the bits of information that are coarse-grained on the holographic screen leads to a modification of Einstein's gravitational field equations. In the very high-temperature limit, which corresponds to strong gravitational fields, the modified gravitational equations reduce to the standard Einstein equations of general relativity, but in the low-temperature limit, which corresponds to the weak gravity regime, the modified equations show significant deviations from the standard Einstein equations. We solve the modified Einstein equations for the FRW metric and obtain the modified Friedmann equations. We see that the Friedmann equations obtained with this approach agree with the Friedmann equations previously obtained from the thermodynamic corrections of classical Newtonian mechanics. Using the modified Friedmann equations for a flat universe, we investigate the implications of our modified entropic cosmology (MEC) model. We show that our model can explain the dynamics of the universe without requiring any kind of dark energy. Using the Pantheon supernovae dataset, BAO data, Planck 2018 CMB data, and SH0ES measurements for $H_0$, we test the MEC model against observations. We will see that MEC fits the observational data better than the standard cosmological model of $\Lambda$CDM. We also see that our model can successfully solve the $H_0$ tension that challenges the standard cosmological model.

We investigate anisotropic inflation within the single-field model featuring an intermediate scale factor. Our analysis reveals that the anisotropic nature of the Friedmann equations in this framework affects the slow-roll parameters, which in turn influence key perturbation parameters. Using a numerical approach, we derive constraints on the intermediate parameter $\beta$ and the anisotropic parameter $c$. Our results show that the model is consistent with Planck2018 TT, TE, EE +lowE+lensing+BK14+BAO data at $68\%$ CL, for $0.84<\beta<1$ and $7.34

With the help of a semi-classical kinetic theory, a new collision kernel is proposed, which simultaneously conserves the energy-momentum tensor and the spin tensor of a relativistic fluid of spin-1/2 particles irrespective of the frame and matching conditions, even when relaxation time is momentum dependent. The relativistic Boltzmann's equation is solved using this new collision kernel to obtain the expressions of the transport coefficients with general definitions for the frame and matching conditions. The results indicate the expected existence of Barnett-like effect and the non-existence of Einstein--de-Haas-like effects.

The origin of neutrino masses remains unknown to date. One popular idea involves interactions between neutrinos and ultralight dark matter, described as fields or particles with masses $m_\phi \ll 10\,\mathrm{eV}$. Due to the large phase-space number density, this type of dark matter exists in coherent states and can be effectively described by an oscillating classical field. As a result, neutrino mass-squared differences undergo field-induced interference in spacetime, potentially generating detectable effects in oscillation experiments. We demonstrate that if $m_\phi\gg 10^{-14}\,\mathrm{eV}$, the mechanism becomes sensitive to dark matter density fluctuations, which suppresses the oscillatory behavior of flavor-changing probabilities as a function of neutrino propagation distance in a model-independent way, thereby ruling out this regime. Furthermore, by analyzing data from the Kamioka Liquid Scintillator Antineutrino Detector (KamLAND), a benchmark long-baseline reactor experiment, we show that the hypothesis of a dark origin for the neutrino masses is disfavored for $m_\phi \ll 10^{-14}\,\mathrm{eV}$, compared to the case of constant mass values in vacuum. This result holds at more than the 4$\sigma$ level across different datasets and parameter choices. The mass range $10^{-17}\,\mathrm{eV} \lesssim m_\phi \lesssim 10^{-14}\,\mathrm{eV}$ can be further tested in current and future oscillation experiments by searching for time variations (rather than periodicity) in oscillation parameters.

The weak gravity conjecture posits that there should exist at least one state with a charge-to-mass ratio $q/M>1$, ensuring that an extremal charged black hole can still decay. In this paper, we study the corrections to the thermodynamics of Reissner-Nordstr\"om black holes within an effective field theory framework. The effective action originates from integrating out massless particles, including gravitons, at one-loop level. As a proof of the weak gravity conjecture, we show that these quantum gravity effects naturally lead to the super-extremality of charged black holes. It is important to note that our results are model-independent and have predictive capacities.

The environment surrounding a black hole or black hole binaries is generally expected to play an important role in understanding various astrophysical phenomena around them. In this paper, we study relativistic, low angular momentum, inviscid, and advective hot accretion flow onto a galactic supermassive black hole dressed with a cold dark matter halo. Focusing on different relativistic dark matter distributions with an inner density spike, we analyze the effect of the dark matter halo on the topology and properties of the accretion flow. Our results show enhancement of disk luminosity in the presence of dark matter, which depends on the nature and properties (halo mass and compactness) of the dark matter distribution. Since the dominant contribution to the disk luminosity for compact and massive halo comes from the inner region of the accretion disk, our analysis suggests that luminosity measurement can indeed be useful to probe the exact nature of the dark matter density spike.

In an earlier paper, two of the authors defined a $5$-vertex Yang-Baxter algebra (a Hopf algebra) which acts on the sum of the equivariant quantum K-rings of Grassmannians $\mathrm{Gr}(k;n)$, where $k$ varies from $0$ to $n$. We construct geometrically defined operators on quantum K-rings describing this action. In particular, the $R$-matrix defining the Yang-Baxter algebra corresponds to the left Weyl group action. Most importantly, we use the `quantum=classical' statement for the quantum K-theory of Grassmannians to prove an explicit geometric interpretation of the action of generators of the Yang-Baxter algebra. The diagonal entries of the monodromy matrix are given by quantum K-multiplications by explicitly defined classes, and the off-diagonal entries by certain push-pull convolutions. We use this to find a quantization of the classes of fixed points in the quantum K-rings, corresponding to the Bethe vectors of the Yang-Baxter algebra. On each of the quantum K-rings, we prove that the two Frobenius structures (one from geometry, and the other from the integrable system construction) coincide. We discuss several applications, including an action of the extended affine Weyl group on the quantum K-theory ring (extending the Seidel action), a quantum version of the localization map (which is a ring homomorphism with respect to the quantum K-product), and a graphical calculus to multiply by Hirzebruch $\lambda_y$ classes of the dual of the tautological quotient bundle. In an Appendix we illustrate our results in the case when $n=2$.

We consider isotropic and Lagrangian embeddings of coadjoint orbits of compact Lie groups into products of coadjoint orbits. After reviewing the known facts in the case of $\mathrm{SU}(n)$ we initiate a similar study for $\mathrm{SO}$ and $\mathrm{Sp}$ cases. In the second part we apply this to the study of dynamical systems with $\mathrm{SU}(n)$ symmetry, proving equivalence between systems of two types: those describing magnetic geodesic flow on flag manifolds and classical `spin chains' of a special type.

We study the eigenmodes of the spin-2 Laplacian in orientable Euclidean manifolds and their implications for the tensor-induced part of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature and polarization anisotropies. We provide analytic expressions for the correlation matrices of Fourier-mode amplitudes and of spherical harmonic coefficients. We demonstrate that non-trivial spatial topology alters the statistical properties of CMB tensor anisotropies, inducing correlations between harmonic coefficients of differing $\ell$ and $m$ and across every possible pair of temperature and $E$- and $B$-modes of polarization. This includes normally forbidden $TB$ and $EB$ correlations. We compute the Kullback-Leibler (KL) divergence between the pure tensor-induced CMB fluctuations in the usual infinite covering space and those in each of the non-trivial manifolds under consideration, varying both the size of the manifolds and the location of the observer. We find that the amount of information about the topology of the Universe contained in tensor-induced anisotropies does not saturate as fast as its scalar counterpart; indeed, the KL divergence continues to grow with the inclusion of higher multipoles up to the largest $\ell$ we have computed. Our results suggest that CMB polarization measurements from upcoming experiments can provide new avenues for detecting signatures of cosmic topology, motivating a full analysis where scalar and tensor perturbations are combined and noise is included.