@phdthesis{Uhlemann2012,
  author    = {Uhlemann, Christoph Frank},
  title     = {Holographic Description of Curved-Space Quantum Field Theory and Gravity},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-74362},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg},
  year      = {2012},
  abstract  = {The celebrated AdS/CFT dualities provide a window to strongly-coupled quantum field theories (QFTs), which are realized in nature at the most fundamental level on the one hand, but are hardly accessible for the standard mathematical tools on the other hand. The prototype examples of AdS/CFT relate classical supergravity theories on (d+1)-dimensional anti-de Sitter space (AdS) to strongly-coupled d-dimensional conformal field theories (CFTs). The AdS spacetimes admit a timelike conformal boundary, on which the dual CFT is defined. In that sense the AdS/CFT dualities are holographic, and this new approach has led to remarkable progress in understanding strongly-coupled QFTs defined on Minkowski space and on the Einstein cylinder. On the other hand, the study of QFT on more generic curved spacetimes is of fundamental interest and non-trivial already for free theories. Moreover, understanding the properties of gravity as a quantum theory remains among the hardest problems to solve in physics. Both of these issues can be studied holographically and we investigate here generalizations of AdS/CFT involving on the lower-dimensional side QFTs on curved backgrounds and as a further generalization gravity. In the first part we expand on the holographic description of QFT on fixed curved backgrounds, which involves gravity on an asymptotically-AdS space with that prescribed boundary structure. We discuss geometries with de Sitter and AdS as conformal boundary to holographically describe CFTs on these spacetimes. After setting up the procedure of holographic renormalization we study the reflection of CFT unitarity properties in the dual bulk description. The geometry with AdS on the boundary exhibits a number of interesting features, mainly due to the fact that the boundary itself has a boundary. We study both cases and resolve potential tensions between the unitarity properties of the bulk and boundary theories, which would be incompatible with a duality. The origin of these tensions is partly in the structure of the geometry with AdS conformal boundary, while another one arises for a particular limiting case where the bulk and boundary descriptions naively disagree. Besides technical challenges, the hierarchy of boundaries for the geometry with AdS conformal boundary offers an interesting option. Namely, having the dual theory on the conformal boundary itself defined on an AdS space offers the logical possibility of implementing a second instance of AdS/CFT. We discuss an appropriate geometric setting allowing for the notion of the boundary of a boundary and identify limitations for such multi-layered dualities. In the second part we consider five-dimensional supergravities whose solutions can be lifted to actual string-theory backgrounds. We work out the asymptotic structure of the theories on asymptotically-AdS spaces and calculate the Weyl anomaly of the dual CFTs. These holographic calculations confirm the expectations from the field-theory side and provide a non-trivial test of the AdS/CFT conjecture. Moreover, building on the previous results we show that in addition to the usual Dirichlet also more general boundary conditions can be imposed. That allows to promote the boundary metric to a dynamical quantity and is expected to yield a holographic description for a conformal supergravity on the boundary. The boundary theory obtained this way exhibits pathologies such as perturbative ghosts, which is in fact expected for a conformal gravity. The fate of these ghosts beyond perturbation theory is an open question and our setting provides a starting point to study it from the string-theory perspective. That discussion leads to a regime where the holographic description of the boundary theory requires quantization of the bulk supergravity. A necessary ingredient of any supergravity is a number of gravitinos as superpartners of the graviton, for which we thus need an effective-QFT description to make sense of AdS/CFT beyond the limit where bulk theory becomes classical. In particular, quantization should be possible not only on rigid AdS, but also on generic asymptotically-AdS spacetimes which may not be Einstein. In the third part we study the quantization and causality properties of the gravitino on Friedmann-Robertson-Walker spacetimes to explicitly show that a consistent quantization can be carried out also on non-Einstein spaces, in contrast to claims in the recent literature. Furthermore, this reveals interesting non-standard effects for the gravitino propagation, which in certain cases is restricted to regions more narrow than the expected light cones.},
  subject      = {AdS-CFT-Korrespondenz},
  language  = {en}
}
@phdthesis{Schenkel2011,
  author    = {Schenkel, Alexander},
  title     = {Noncommutative Gravity and Quantum Field Theory on Noncommutative Curved Spacetimes},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-65823},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg},
  year      = {2011},
  abstract  = {{\"U}ber die letzten Jahrzehnte hat sich die nichtkommutative Geometrie zu einem etablierten Teilgebiet der reinen Mathematik und der theoretischen Physik entwickelt. Die Entdeckung, dass gewisse Grenzf{\"a}lle der Quantengravitation und Stringtheorie zu nichtkommutativer Geometrie f{\"u}hren, motivierte die Suche nach Physik jenseits des Standardmodells der Elementarteilchenphysik und der Einstein'schen allgemeinen Relativit{\"a}tstheorie im Rahmen von nichtkommutativen Geometrien. Einen ergiebigen Ansatz zu letzteren Theorien, welcher Deformationsquantisierung (Sternprodukte) mit Methoden aus der Theorie der Quantengruppen kombiniert, wurde von der Gruppe um Julius Wess entwickelt. Die resultierende Gravitationstheorie ist nicht nur imstande nichtkommutative Effekte der Raumzeit zu beschreiben, sondern sie erf{\"u}llt ebenfalls ein generalisiertes allgemeines Kovarianzprinzip, welches durch eine deformierte Hopf Algebra von Diffeomorphismen beschrieben wird. Gegenstand des ersten Teils dieser Dissertation ist es Symmetriereduktion im Rahmen von nichtkommutativer Gravitation zu verstehen und damit exakte L{\"o}sungen der nichtkommutativen Einstein'schen Gleichungen zu konstruieren. Diese Untersuchungen sind von großer Bedeutung um den physikalischen Inhalt dieser Theorien herauszuarbeiten und den Kontakt zu Anwendungen, z.B. im Rahmen nichtkommutativer Kosmologie und Physik schwarzer L{\"o}cher, herzustellen. Wir verallgemeinern die {\"u}bliche Methode der Symmetriereduktion, welche eine Standardtechnik im Auffinden von L{\"o}sungen der Einstein'schen Gleichungen ist, auf nichtkommutative Gravitation. Es wird gezeigt, dass unsere Methode zur nichtkommutativen Symmetriereduktion f{\"u}r ein gegebenes symmetrisches System zu bevorzugten Deformationen f{\"u}hrt. F{\"u}r Abelsche Drinfel'd Twists klassifizieren wir alle konsistenten Deformationen von r{\"a}umlich flachen Friedmann-Robertson-Walker Kosmologien und des Schwarzschild'schen schwarzen Loches. Aufgrund der deformierten Symmetriestruktur dieser Modelle k{\"o}nnen wir viele Beispiele von exakten L{\"o}sungen der nichtkommutativen Einstein'schen Gleichungen finden, bei welchen das nichtkommutative Metrikfeld mit dem klassischen {\"u}bereinstimmt. Im Fokus des zweiten Teils sind Quantenfeldtheorien auf nichtkommutativen gekr{\"u}mmten Raumzeiten. Dazu entwickeln wir einen neuen Formalismus, welcher algebraische Methoden der Quantenfeldtheorie mit nichtkommutativer Differentialgeometrie verkn{\"u}pft. Als Resultat unseres Ansatzes erhalten wir eine Observablenalgebra f{\"u}r skalare Quantenfeldtheorien auf einer großen Klasse von nichtkommutativen gekr{\"u}mmten Raumzeiten. Es wird eine pr{\"a}zise Relation zwischen dieser Algebra und der Observablenalgebra der undeformierten Quantenfeldtheorie hergeleitet. Wir studieren ebenfalls explizite Beispiele von deformierten Wellenoperatoren und finden, dass im Gegensatz zu dem einfachsten Modell des Moyal-Weyl deformierten Minkowski-Raumes, im Allgemeinen schon die Propagation freier Felder durch die nichtkommutative Geometrie beeinflusst wird. Die Effekte von konvergenten Deformationen werden in einfachen Spezialf{\"a}llen untersucht, und wir beobachten neue Aspekte in diesen Quantenfeldtheorien, welche sich in formalen Deformationen nicht zeigten. Zus{\"a}tzlich zu der erwarteten Nichtlokalit{\"a}t finden wir, dass sich die Beziehung zwischen der deformierten und der undeformierten Quantenfeldtheorie nichttrivial ver{\"a}ndert. Wir beweisen, dass dies zu einem verbesserten Verhalten der nichtkommutativen Theorie bei kurzen Abst{\"a}nden, d.h. im Ultravioletten, f{\"u}hrt. Im dritten Teil dieser Arbeit entwickeln wir Elemente eines leistungsf{\"a}higeren, jedoch abstrakteren, mathematischen Ansatzes zur Beschreibung der nichtkommutativen Gravitation. Das Hauptaugenmerk liegt auf globalen Aspekten von Homomorphismen zwischen und Zusammenh{\"a}ngen auf nichtkommutativen Vektorb{\"u}ndeln, welche fundamentale Objekte in der mathematischen Beschreibung von nichtkommutativer Gravitation sind. Wir beweisen, dass sich alle Homomorphismen und Zusammenh{\"a}nge der deformierten Theorie mittels eines Quantisierungsisomorphismus aus den undeformierten Homomorphismen und Zusammenh{\"a}ngen ableiten lassen. Es wird ebenfalls untersucht wie sich Homomorphismen und Zusammenh{\"a}nge auf Tensorprodukte von Moduln induzieren lassen. Das Verst{\"a}ndnis dieser Induktion erlaubt es uns die nichtkommutative Gravitationstheorie von Wess et al. um allgemeine Tensorfelder zu erweitern. Als eine nichttriviale Anwendung des neuen Formalismus erweitern wir unsere Studien zu exakten L{\"o}sungen der nichtkommutativen Einstein'schen Gleichungen auf allgemeinere Klassen von Deformationen.},
  subject      = {Nichtkommutative Geometrie},
  language  = {en}
}
@phdthesis{Fries2022,
  author    = {Fries, Pascal},
  title     = {On the r{\^o}le of entanglement in quantum field theory},
  doi       = {10.25972/OPUS-25846},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-258465},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg},
  year      = {2022},
  abstract  = {In this thesis, I study entanglement in quantum field theory, using methods from operator algebra theory. More precisely, the thesis covers original research on the entanglement properties of the free fermionic field. After giving a pedagogical introduction to algebraic methods in quantum field theory, as well as the modular theory of Tomita-Takesaki and its relation to entanglement, I present a coherent framework that allows to solve Tomita-Takesaki theory for free fermionic fields in any number of dimensions. Subsequently, I use the derived machinery on the free massless fermion in two dimensions, where the formulae can be evaluated analytically. In particular, this entails the derivation of the resolvent of restrictions of the propagator, by means of solving singular integral equations. In this way, I derive the modular flow, modular Hamiltonian, modular correlation function, R\'enyi entanglement entropy, von-Neumann entanglement entropy, relative entanglement entropy, and mutual information for multi-component regions. All of this is done for the vacuum and thermal states, both on the infinite line and the circle with (anti-)periodic boundary conditions. Some of these results confirm previous results from the literature, such as the modular Hamiltonian and entanglement entropy in the vacuum state. The non-universal solutions for modular flow, modular correlation function, and R\'enyi entropy, however are new, in particular at finite temperature on the circle. Additionally, I show how boundaries of spacetime affect entanglement, as well as how one can define relative (entanglement) entropy and mutual information in theories with superselection rules. The findings regarding modular flow in multi-component regions can be summarised as follows: In the non-degenerate vacuum state, modular flow is multi-local, in the sense that it mixes the field operators along multiple trajectories, with one trajectory per component. This was already known from previous literature but is presented here in a more explicit form. In particular, I present the exact solution for the dynamics of the mixing process. What was not previously known at all, is that the modular flow of the thermal state on the circle is infinitely multi-local even for a connected region, in the sense that it mixes the field along an infinite, discretely distributed set, of trajectories. In the limit of high temperatures, all trajectories but the local one are pushed towards the boundary of the region, where their amplitude is damped exponentially, leaving only the local result. At low temperatures, on the other hand, these trajectories distribute densely in the region to either---for anti-periodic boundary conditions---cancel, or---for periodic boundary conditions---recover the non-local contribution due to the degenerate vacuum state. Proceeding to spacetimes with boundaries, I show explicitly how the presence of a boundary implies entanglement between the two components of the Dirac spinor. By computing the mutual information between the components inside a connected region, I show quantitatively that this entanglement decreases as an inverse square law at large distances from the boundary. In addition, full conformal symmetry (which is explicitly broken due to the presence of a boundary) is recovered from the exact solution for modular flow, far away from the boundary. As far as I know, all of these results are new, although related results were published by another group during the final stage of this thesis. Finally, regarding relative entanglement entropy in theories with superselection sectors, I introduce charge and flux resolved relative entropies, which are novel measures for the distinguishability of states, incorporating a charge operator, central to the algebra of observables. While charge resolved relative entropy has the interpretation of being a ``distinguishability per charge sector'', I argue that it is physically meaningless without placing a cutoff, due to infinite short-distance entanglement. Flux resolved relative entropy, on the other hand, overcomes this problem by inserting an Aharonov-Bohm flux and thus passing to a variant of the grand canonical ensemble. It takes a well defined value, even without putting a cutoff, and I compute its value between various states of the free massless fermion on the line, the charge operator being the total fermion number.},
  subject      = {Quanteninformation},
  language  = {en}
}
@phdthesis{Banik2023,
  author    = {Banik, Amitayus},
  title     = {Two Approaches to the Baryon Asymmetry of the Universe},
  doi       = {10.25972/OPUS-32046},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-320468},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg},
  year      = {2023},
  abstract  = {Explaining the baryon asymmetry of the Universe has been a long-standing problem of particle physics, with the consensus being that new physics is required as the Standard Model (SM) cannot resolve this issue. Beyond the Standard Model (BSM) scenarios would need to incorporate new sources of \(CP\) violation and either introduce new departures from thermal equilibrium or modify the existing electroweak phase transition. In this thesis, we explore two approaches to baryogenesis, i.e. the generation of this asymmetry. In the first approach, we study the two-particle irreducible (2PI) formalism as a means to investigate non-equilibrium phenomena. After arriving at the renormalised equations of motions (EOMs) to describe the dynamics of a phase transition, we discuss the techniques required to obtain the various counterterms in an on-shell scheme. To this end, we consider three truncations up to two-loop order of the 2PI effective action: the Hartree approximation, the scalar sunset approximation and the fermionic sunset approximation. We then reconsider the renormalisation procedure in an \(\overline{\text{MS}}\) scheme to evaluate the 2PI effective potential for the aforementioned truncations. In the Hartree and the scalar sunset approximations, we obtain analytic expressions for the various counterterms and subsequently calculate the effective potential by piecing together the finite contributions. For the fermionic sunset approximation, we obtain similar equations for the counterterms in terms of divergent parts of loop integrals. However, these integrals cannot be expressed in an analytic form, making it impossible to evaluate the 2PI effective potential with the fermionic contribution. Our main results are thus related to the renormalisation programme in the 2PI formalism: \( (i) \)the procedure to obtain the renormalised EOMs, now including fermions, which serve as the starting point for the transport equations for electroweak baryogenesis and \( (ii) \) the method to obtain the 2PI effective potential in a transparent manner. In the second approach, we study baryogenesis via leptogenesis. Here, an asymmetry in the lepton sector is generated, which is then converted into the baryon asymmetry via the sphaleron process in the SM. We proceed to consider an extension of the SM along the lines of a scotogenic framework. The newly introduced particles are charged odd under a \(\mathbb{Z}_2\) symmetry, and masses for the SM neutrinos are generated radiatively. The \(\mathbb{Z}_2\) symmetry results in the lightest BSM particle being stable, allowing for a suitable dark matter (DM) candidate. Furthermore, the newly introduced heavy Majorana fermionic singlets provide the necessary sources of \(CP\) violation through their Yukawa interactions and their out-of-equilibrium decays produce a lepton asymmetry. This model is constrained from a wide range of observables, such as consistency with neutrino oscillation data, limits on branching ratios of charged lepton flavour violating decays, electroweak observables and obtaining the observed DM relic density. We study leptogenesis in this model in light of the results of a Markov chain Monte Carlo scan, implemented in consideration of the aforementioned constraints. Successful leptogenesis in this model, to account for the baryon asymmetry, then severely constrains the available parameter space.},
  subject      = {Baryonenasymmetrie},
  language  = {en}
}