We study Gibbs measures with log-correlated base Gaussian fields on the d-dimensional torus. In the defocusing case, the construction of such Gibbs measures follows from Nelson’s argument. In this paper, we consider the focusing case with a quartic interaction. Using the variational formulation, we prove nonnormalizability of the Gibbs measure. When $d = 2$, our argument provides an alternative proof of the nonnormalizability result for the focusing $\Phi ^4_2$-measure by Brydges and Slade (1996). Furthermore, we provide a precise rate of divergence, where the constant is characterized by the optimal constant for a certain Bernstein’s inequality on $\mathbb R^d$. We also go over the construction of the focusing Gibbs measure with a cubic interaction. In the appendices, we present (a) nonnormalizability of the Gibbs measure for the two-dimensional Zakharov system and (b) the construction of focusing quartic Gibbs measures with smoother base Gaussian measures, showing a critical nature of the log-correlated Gibbs measure with a focusing quartic interaction.

The $c_2$ invariant is an arithmetic graph invariant related to quantum field theory. We give a relation modulo p between the $c_2$ invariant at p and the $c_2$ invariant at $p^s$ by proving a relation modulo p between certain coefficients of powers of products of particularly nice polynomials. The relation at the level of the $c_2$ invariant provides evidence for a conjecture of Schnetz.

Let $(M,g)$ be a closed Riemannian $4$ -manifold and let E be a vector bundle over M with structure group G, where G is a compact Lie group. We consider a new higher order Yang–Mills–Higgs functional, in which the Higgs field is a section of $\Omega ^0(\text {ad}E)$ . We show that, under suitable conditions, solutions to the gradient flow do not hit any finite time singularities. In the case that E is a line bundle, we are able to use a different blow-up procedure and obtain an improvement of the long-time result of Zhang [‘Gradient flows of higher order Yang–Mills–Higgs functionals’, J. Aust. Math. Soc. 113 (2022), 257–287]. The proof relies on properties of the Green function, which is very different from the previous techniques.

Let $G$ be a compact connected simple Lie group of type $(n_{1},\,\ldots,\,n_{l})$, where $n_{1}<\cdots < n_{l}$. Let $\mathcal {G}_k$ be the gauge group of the principal $G$-bundle over $S^{4}$ corresponding to $k\in \pi _3(G)\cong \mathbb {Z}$. We calculate the mod-$p$ homology of the classifying space $B\mathcal {G}_k$ provided that $n_{l}< p-1$.

We relate the quantum cohomology of minuscule flag manifolds to the tt*-Toda equations, a special case of the topological–antitopological fusion equations which were introduced by Cecotti and Vafa in their study of supersymmetric quantum field theories. To do this, we combine the Lie-theoretic treatment of the tt*-Toda equations of Guest–Ho with the Lie-theoretic description of the quantum cohomology of minuscule flag manifolds from Chaput–Manivel–Perrin and Golyshev–Manivel.

We construct and study some vertex theoretic invariants associated with Poisson varieties, specializing in the conformal weight $0$ case to the familiar package of Poisson homology and cohomology. In order to do this conceptually, we sketch a version of the calculus, in the sense of [12], adapted to the context of vertex algebras. We obtain the standard theorems of Poisson (co)homology in this chiral context. This is part of a larger project related to promoting noncommutative geometric structures to chiral versions of such.

Wilson loop diagrams are an important tool in studying scattering amplitudes of SYM $N=4$ theory and are known by previous work to be associated to positroids. In this paper, we study the structure of the associated positroids, as well as the structure of the denominator of the integrand defined by each diagram. We give an algorithm to derive the Grassmann necklace of the associated positroid directly from the Wilson loop diagram, and a recursive proof that the dimension of these cells is thrice the number of propagators in the diagram. We also show that the ideal generated by the denominator in the integrand is the radical of the ideal generated by the product of Grassmann necklace minors.

We compute the large N limit of the partition function of the Euclidean Yang–Mills measure on orientable compact surfaces with genus $g\geqslant 1$ and non-orientable compact surfaces with genus $g\geqslant 2$ , with structure group the unitary group ${\mathrm U}(N)$ or special unitary group ${\mathrm{SU}}(N)$ . Our proofs are based on asymptotic representation theory: more specifically, we control the dimension and Casimir number of irreducible representations of ${\mathrm U}(N)$ and ${\mathrm{SU}}(N)$ when N tends to infinity. Our main technical tool, involving ‘almost flat’ Young diagram, makes rigorous the arguments used by Gross and Taylor (1993, Nuclear Phys. B400(1–3) 181–208) in the setting of QCD, and in some cases, we recover formulae given by Douglas (1995, Quantum Field Theory and String Theory (Cargèse, 1993), Vol. 328 of NATO Advanced Science Institutes Series B: Physics, Plenum, New York, pp. 119–135) and Rusakov (1993, Phys. Lett. B303(1) 95–98).

In this paper, we define a family of functionals generalizing the Yang–Mills–Higgs functionals on a closed Riemannian manifold. Then we prove the short-time existence of the corresponding gradient flow by a gauge-fixing technique. The lack of a maximum principle for the higher order operator brings us a lot of inconvenience during the estimates for the Higgs field. We observe that the $L^2$ -bound of the Higgs field is enough for energy estimates in four dimensions and we show that, provided the order of derivatives appearing in the higher order Yang–Mills–Higgs functionals is strictly greater than one, solutions to the gradient flow do not hit any finite-time singularities. As for the Yang–Mills–Higgs k-functional with Higgs self-interaction, we show that, provided $\dim (M)<2(k+1)$ , for every smooth initial data the associated gradient flow admits long-time existence. The proof depends on local $L^2$ -derivative estimates, energy estimates and blow-up analysis.

Wilson loop diagrams are an important tool in studying scattering amplitudes of SYM $N=4$ theory and are known by previous work to be associated to positroids. We characterize the conditions under which two Wilson loop diagrams give the same positroid, prove that an important subclass of subdiagrams (exact subdiagrams) corresponds to uniform matroids, and enumerate the number of different Wilson loop diagrams that correspond to each positroid cell. We also give a correspondence between those positroids which can arise from Wilson loop diagrams and directions in associahedra.

Fundamental group of a manifold gives a deep effect on its underlying smooth structure. In this paper we introduce a new variant of the Donaldson invariant in Yang–Mills gauge theory from twisting by the Picard group of a 4-manifold in the case when the fundamental group is free abelian. We then generalise it to the general case of fundamental groups by use of the framework of non commutative geometry. We also verify that our invariant distinguishes smooth structures between some homeomorphic 4-manifolds.

We introduce a new family of real-analytic modular forms on the upper-half plane. They are arguably the simplest class of ‘mixed’ versions of modular forms of level one and are constructed out of real and imaginary parts of iterated integrals of holomorphic Eisenstein series. They form an algebra of functions satisfying many properties analogous to classical holomorphic modular forms. In particular, they admit expansions in $q,\overline{q}$ and $\log |q|$ involving only rational numbers and single-valued multiple zeta values. The first nontrivial functions in this class are real-analytic Eisenstein series.

We obtain simple quadratic recurrence formulas counting bipartite maps on surfaces with prescribed degrees (in particular, $2k$-angulations) and constellations. These formulas are the fastest known way of computing these numbers.

Our work is a natural extension of previous works on integrable hierarchies (2-Toda and KP), namely, the Pandharipande recursion for Hurwitz numbers (proved by Okounkov and simplified by Dubrovin–Yang–Zagier), as well as formulas for several models of maps (Goulden–Jackson, Carrell–Chapuy, Kazarian–Zograf). As for those formulas, a bijective interpretation is still to be found. We also include a formula for monotone simple Hurwitz numbers derived in the same fashion.

These formulas also play a key role in subsequent work of the author with T. Budzinski establishing the hyperbolic local limit of random bipartite maps of large genus.

Let $p_{n}(x)=\int _{0}^{\infty }J_{0}(xt)[J_{0}(t)]^{n}xt\,dt$ be Kluyver’s probability density for $n$-step uniform random walks in the Euclidean plane. Through connection to a similar problem in two-dimensional quantum field theory, we evaluate the third-order derivative $p_{5}^{\prime \prime \prime }(0^{+})$ in closed form, thereby giving a new proof for a conjecture of J. M. Borwein. By further analogies to Feynman diagrams in quantum field theory, we demonstrate that $p_{n}(x),0\leq x\leq 1$ admits a uniformly convergent Maclaurin expansion for all odd integers $n\geq 5$, thus settling another conjecture of Borwein.

For almost any compact connected Lie group $G$ and any field $\mathbb{F}_{p}$, we compute the Batalin–Vilkovisky algebra $H^{\star +\text{dim}\,G}(\text{LBG};\mathbb{F}_{p})$ on the loop cohomology of the classifying space introduced by Chataur and the second author. In particular, if $p$ is odd or $p=0$, this Batalin–Vilkovisky algebra is isomorphic to the Hochschild cohomology $HH^{\star }(H_{\star }(G),H_{\star }(G))$. Over $\mathbb{F}_{2}$ , such an isomorphism of Batalin–Vilkovisky algebras does not hold when $G=\text{SO}(3)$ or $G=G_{2}$. Our elaborate considerations on the signs in string topology of the classifying spaces give rise to a general theorem on graded homological conformal field theory.

Gunningham [‘Spin Hurwitz numbers and topological quantum field theory’, Geom. Topol.20(4) (2016), 1859–1907] constructed an extended topological quantum field theory (TQFT) to obtain a closed formula for all spin Hurwitz numbers. In this note, we use a gluing theorem for spin Hurwitz numbers to re-prove Gunningham’s formula. We also describe a TQFT formalism naturally induced by the gluing theorem.

Conformal loop ensembles (CLEs) are random collections of loops in a simply connected domain, whose laws are characterized by a natural conformal invariance property. The set of points not surrounded by any loop is a canonical random connected fractal set — a random and conformally invariant analog of the Sierpinski carpet or gasket.

In the present paper, we derive a direct relationship between the CLEs with simple loops ($\text{CLE}_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D705}}$ for $\unicode[STIX]{x1D705}\in (8/3,4)$, whose loops are Schramm’s $\text{SLE}_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D705}}$-type curves) and the corresponding CLEs with nonsimple loops ($\text{CLE}_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D705}^{\prime }}$ with $\unicode[STIX]{x1D705}^{\prime }:=16/\unicode[STIX]{x1D705}\in (4,6)$, whose loops are $\text{SLE}_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D705}^{\prime }}$-type curves). This correspondence is the continuum analog of the Edwards–Sokal coupling between the $q$-state Potts model and the associated FK random cluster model, and its generalization to noninteger $q$.

Like its discrete analog, our continuum correspondence has two directions. First, we show that for each $\unicode[STIX]{x1D705}\in (8/3,4)$, one can construct a variant of $\text{CLE}_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D705}}$ as follows: start with an instance of $\text{CLE}_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D705}^{\prime }}$, then use a biased coin to independently color each $\text{CLE}_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D705}^{\prime }}$ loop in one of two colors, and then consider the outer boundaries of the clusters of loops of a given color. Second, we show how to interpret $\text{CLE}_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D705}^{\prime }}$ loops as interfaces of a continuum analog of critical Bernoulli percolation within $\text{CLE}_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D705}}$ carpets — this is the first construction of continuum percolation on a fractal planar domain. It extends and generalizes the continuum percolation on open domains defined by $\text{SLE}_{6}$ and $\text{CLE}_{6}$.

These constructions allow us to prove several conjectures made by the second author and provide new and perhaps surprising interpretations of the relationship between CLEs and the Gaussian free field. Along the way, we obtain new results about generalized $\text{SLE}_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D705}}(\unicode[STIX]{x1D70C})$ curves for $\unicode[STIX]{x1D70C}<-2$, such as their decomposition into collections of $\text{SLE}_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D705}}$-type ‘loops’ hanging off of $\text{SLE}_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D705}^{\prime }}$-type ‘trunks’, and vice versa (exchanging $\unicode[STIX]{x1D705}$ and $\unicode[STIX]{x1D705}^{\prime }$). We also define a continuous family of natural $\text{CLE}$ variants called boundary conformal loop ensembles (BCLEs) that share some (but not all) of the conformal symmetries that characterize $\text{CLE}$s, and that should be scaling limits of critical models with special boundary conditions. We extend the $\text{CLE}_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D705}}$/$\text{CLE}_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D705}^{\prime }}$ correspondence to a $\text{BCLE}_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D705}}$/$\text{BCLE}_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D705}^{\prime }}$ correspondence that makes sense for the wider range $\unicode[STIX]{x1D705}\in (2,4]$ and $\unicode[STIX]{x1D705}^{\prime }\in [4,8)$.

We introduce PyCFTBoot, a wrapper designed to reduce the barrier to entry in conformal bootstrap calculations that require semidefinite programming. Symengine and SDPB are used for the most intensive symbolic and numerical steps respectively. After reviewing the built-in algorithms for conformal blocks, we explain how to use the code through a number of examples that verify past results. As an application, we show that the multi-correlator bootstrap still appears to single out the Wilson-Fisher fixed points as special theories in dimensions between 3 and 4 despite the recent proof that they violate unitarity.

We apply the spectral curve topological recursion to Dubrovin’s universal Landau–Ginzburg superpotential associated to a semi-simple point of any conformal Frobenius manifold. We show that under some conditions the expansion of the correlation differentials reproduces the cohomological field theory associated with the same point of the initial Frobenius manifold.