0000000000086354
AUTHOR
Camila S. Machado
Enumerating higher-dimensional operators with on-shell amplitudes
We establish a simple formula for the minimal dimension of operators leading to any helicity amplitude. It eases the systematic enumeration of independent operators from the construction of massless non-factorizable on-shell amplitudes. Little-group constraints can then be solved algorithmically for each helicity configuration to extract a complete set of spinor structures with lowest dimension. Occasionally, further reduction using momentum conservation, on-shell conditions and Schouten identities is required. A systematic procedure to account for the latter is presented. Dressing spinor structures with dot products of momenta finally yields the independent Lorentz structures for each heli…
Silence of Binary Kerr Black Holes
A nontrivial S matrix generally implies a production of entanglement: starting with an incoming pure state, the scattering generally returns an outgoing state with nonvanishing entanglement entropy. It is then interesting to ask if there exists a nontrivial S matrix that generates no entanglement. In this Letter, we argue that the answer is the S-matrix for the scattering of classical black holes. We study the spin entanglement in the scattering of arbitrary spinning particles. Augmenting the S-matrix with Thomas–Wigner rotation factors, we derive the entanglement entropy from the gravitational induced 2→2 amplitude. In the Eikonal limit, we find that the relative entanglement entropy, defi…
Gravitational wave probes of axionlike particles
We have recently shown that axions and axion-like particles (ALPs) may emit an observable stochastic gravitational wave (GW) background when they begin to oscillate in the early universe. In this note, we identify the regions of ALP parameter space which may be probed by future GW detectors, including ground- and space-based interferometers and pulsar timing arrays. Interestingly, these experiments have the ability to probe axions from the bottom up, i.e. in the very weakly coupled regime which is otherwise unconstrained. Furthermore, we discuss the effects of finite dark photon mass and kinetic mixing on the mechanism, as well as the (in)sensitivity to couplings of the axion to Standard Mo…
Super-Planckian axions from near-conformality
We present a novel framework for obtaining large hierarchies in axion decay constants as well as trans-Planckian field excursions, with no need for tuning or a large number of fields. We consider a model with two or more conformal field theories with a common cutoff, which are linked by a gauged diagonal symmetry. This construction is dual to the geometry of a warped space with two or more throats glued at a common brane. Besides allowing for calculability, the dual picture makes it possible to interpret the hierarchy of decay constants entirely in terms of the geometry. Our setup can be applied to any framework which requires large field excursions or multiple hierarchies of decay constant…