Publications by Victor Gorbenko

De Sitter Bra-Ket wormholes

We study a model for the initial state of the universe based on a gravitational path integral that includes connected geometries which simultaneously produce bra and ket of the wave function. We argue that a natural object to describe this state is the Wig ...

Springer Science and Business Media LLC2025

Quantum groups as global symmetries

Victor Gorbenko, Jiaxin Qiao, Barak Gabai

We study quantum field theories which have quantum groups as global internal symmetries. We show that in such theories operators are generically non-local, and should be thought as living at the ends of topological lines. We describe the general constraint ...

Springer Science and Business Media LLC2025

QCD worldsheet axion from the bootstrap

Andrea Guerrieri, Victor Gorbenko

The worldsheet axion plays a crucial role in the dynamics of the Yang-Mills confining flux tubes. According to the lattice measurements, its mass is of order the string tension and its coupling is close to a certain critical value. Using the S-matrix Boots ...

Springer Nature2024

Two-dimensional O(n) models and logarithmic CFTs

Bernardo Zan, Victor Gorbenko

We study O(n)-symmetric two-dimensional conformal field theories (CFTs) for a continuous range of n below two. These CFTs describe the fixed point behavior of self-avoiding loops. There is a pair of known fixed points connected by an RG flow. When n is equ ...

Springer Nature2020

Walking, weak first-order transitions, and complex CFTs

Bernardo Zan, Victor Gorbenko

We discuss walking behavior in gauge theories and weak first-order phase transitions in statistical physics. Despite appearing in very different systems (QCD below the conformal window, the Potts model, deconfined criticality) these two phenomena both impl ...

Springer Nature2018

Walking, Weak first-order transitions, and Complex CFTs II. Two-dimensional Potts model at Q > 4

Bernardo Zan, Victor Gorbenko

We study complex CFTs describing fixed points of the two-dimensional Q-state Potts model with Q > 4. Their existence is closely related to the weak first-order phase transition and the "walking" renormalization group (RG) behavior present in the real Potts ...

2018