We discuss possible vacuum structures of SU(n) × SU(n) gauge theories with bifundamental matters at finite θ angles. In order to give a precise constraint, a mixed 't Hooft anomaly is studied in detail by gauging the center Z n one-form symmetry of the bifundamental gauge theory. We propose phase diagrams that are consistent with the constraints, and also give a heuristic explanation of the result based on the dual superconductor scenario of confinement.

An 't Hooft anomaly is the obstruction for gauging symmetries, and it constrains possible low-energy behaviors of quantum field theories by excluding trivial infrared theories. Global inconsistency condition is recently proposed as a milder condition but is expected to play an almost same role by comparing high symmetry points in the theory space. In order to clarify the consequence coming from this new condition, we discuss several quantum mechanical models with topological angles and explicitly compute their energy spectra. It turns out that the global inconsistency can be saturated not only by the ground-state degeneracy at either of high symmetry points but also by the level crossing (phase transition) separating those high symmetry points.

We elucidate that the phase diagram of massless N -flavor QCD under ZN flavor-twisted boundary condition (massless ZN -QCD) is constrained by an 't Hooft anomaly involving two-form gauge fields. As a consequence, massless ZN -QCD turns out to realize persistent order at any temperatures and quark chemical potentials, namely, the symmetric and gapped phase is strictly forbidden. This is the first result on the finite-(T, µ) phase diagram in QCD-type theories based on anomaly matching related to center and discrete axial symmetries.

We have successfully developed environmentally-friendly and cost-effective thermoelectric materials based on colusites Cu26A2Sn6S32 (A = Nb, Ta). The vanadium-free colusites show enhanced thermoelectric figure of merit ZT at high temperature.

Autophagy and the ubiquitin-proteasome system are the major degradation processes for intracellular components in eukaryotes. Although ubiquitination acts as a signal inducing organelle-targeting autophagy, the interaction between ubiquitination and autophagy in chloroplast turnover has not been addressed. In this study, we found that two chloroplast-associated E3 enzymes, SUPPRESSOR OF PPI1 LOCUS1 and PLANT U-BOX4 (PUB4), are not necessary for the induction of either piecemeal autophagy of chloroplast stroma or chlorophagy of whole damaged chloroplasts in Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana). Double mutations of an autophagy gene and PUB4 caused synergistic phenotypes relative to single mutations. The double mutants developed accelerated leaf chlorosis linked to the overaccumulation of reactive oxygen species during senescence and had reduced seed production. Biochemical detection of ubiquitinated proteins indicated that both autophagy and PUB4-associated ubiquitination contributed to protein degradation in the senescing leaves. Furthermore, the double mutants had enhanced susceptibility to carbon or nitrogen starvation relative to single mutants. Together, these results indicate that autophagy and chloroplast-associated E3s cooperate for protein turnover, management of reactive oxygen species accumulation, and adaptation to starvation.

We perform a digital quantum simulation of a gauge theory with a topological term in Minkowski spacetime, which is practically inaccessible by standard lattice Monte Carlo simulations. We focus on 1 + 1 dimensional quantum electrodynamics with the θ-term known as the Schwinger model. We construct the true vacuum state of a lattice Schwinger model using adiabatic state preparation which, in turn, allows us to compute an expectation value of the fermion mass operator with respect to the vacuum. Upon taking a continuum limit we find that our result in massless case agrees with the known exact result. In massive case, we find an agreement with mass perturbation theory in small mass regime and deviations in large mass regime. We estimate computational costs required to take a reasonable continuum limit. Our results imply that digital quantum simulation is already useful tool to explore non-perturbative aspects of gauge theories with real time and topological terms. * bc335ATdamtp.cam.ac.uk † mh974ATdamtp.cam.ac.uk ‡ izubuchiATquark.phy.bnl.gov § yuta.kikuchiATriken.jp ¶ akio.tomiyaATriken.jp

We derive the second-order hydrodynamic equation for reactive multi-component systems from the relativistic Boltzmann equation. In the reactive system, particles can change their species under the restriction of the imposed conservation laws during the collision process. Our derivation is based on the renormalization group (RG) method, in which the Boltzmann equation is solved in an organized perturbation method as faithfully as possible and possible secular terms are resummed away by a suitable setting of the initial value of the distribution function. The microscopic formulae of the relaxation times and the lengths are explicitly given as well as those of the transport coefficients for the reactive multi-component system. The resultant hydrodynamic equation with these formulae has nice properties that it satisfies the positivity of the entropy production rate and the Onsager's reciprocal theorem, which ensure the validity of our derivation.

The thermoelectric performance of colusite materials Cu26A2E6S32 (A = Nb, Ta; E = Sn, Ge) has been successfully enhanced using E-site non stoichiometry. Value of ZT near unity is achieved at 670 K.