Papers

We formulate stochastic inflation in an open quantum system framework. The field coarse-grained in a patch of fixed physical size, and the total momentum of that patch, form a canonical pair and act on a one-mode Fock space which we identify as the "bulk". At each time step, new comoving modes join the coarse-grained patch and the bulk has to be redefined. This redefinition produces an entangled mode that is traced over, yielding a non-unitary evolution equation for the bulk's density matrix. For a free test field in de Sitter, one obtains GKLS dynamics, generated by an effective Hamiltonian and a single non-Hermitian Lindblad operator, hence diffusion and Hubble friction originate from the same quantum channel. The Wigner-Weyl transform of the GKLS equation leads to a Fokker-Planck equation for the Wigner function, which matches the one that applies to the classical phase-space distribution of stochastic inflation. We also provide several schemes under which one can unravel the GKLS dynamics into stochastic Schrodinger equations when continuous measurements of the decoupled mode are performed, making contact with Langevin formulations of stochastic inflation. In the light-field regime, an additional overdamped reduction can be performed by integrating out the momentum variable in the Wigner distribution, leading to Starobinsky's slow-roll Fokker-Planck equation. In that regime, the purity of the patch is strongly suppressed. In contrast, for heavy fields, field diffusion is suppressed and the coarse-grained patch remains close to a pure underdamped oscillator, which prevents a classical stochastic treatment.

We study the analytic structure of the QCD phase diagram by treating temperature as a complex variable. The nearest Yang-Lee edge singularities in the complex $T$ plane bound the domain of analyticity of temperature-dependent thermodynamic observables and complement the more commonly studied singularities in the complex chemical-potential plane. Our analysis combines three complementary perspectives: universal critical scaling, a first-principles extraction from lattice-QCD data, and explicit illustrations in effective models. We illustrate the resulting structure in a random-matrix model and in a quark-meson model, where the singularity trajectories can be followed explicitly. At small real chemical potential, the leading complex-temperature singularity admits an analytic expansion in $\mu^2$, while near a critical point it crosses over to the universal Puiseux form dictated by Ising critical scaling. We show that the complex-$T$ and complex-$\mu$ trajectories are controlled by the same scaling variables and mapping coefficients, so their comparison provides a stringent consistency test of critical-point searches and constrains the extent of the critical scaling regime. Finally, we analyze lattice-QCD data at $\mu=0$ using an iterated conformal-Pade approach and extract the continuum location of the nearest complex-temperature singularity. The result is consistent with the expectation that, at physical quark masses, the real part of the leading singularity lies between the chiral-limit transition temperature and the physical-mass chiral-susceptibility peak temperature, while its imaginary part remains nonzero.

The analytic integration of single-scale Feynman integrals emerging in perturbative calculations in quantum field theories can be performed within special classes of functions, which appear as consecutive generalizations of the polylogarithm in form of Kummer-Poincaré iterative integrals over special alphabets and extensions thereof. These are the polylogarithms, Nielsen integrals, the iterated integrals over linear denominator terms, cyclotomic letters, letters induced by quadratic forms, and square-root valued letters. These integrals are solutions of first-order factorizing differential equations. They are related to specific nested sums via the Mellin transform and their expansions around $x=0$. We construct the $\mu$-extensions of these iterated integrals and the associated nested sums. We present closed form solutions or provide algorithms in the case of more involved cases to derive the respective $\mu$-extensions and study the algebras of the $\mu$-extended function spaces. Except for the case of square-root valued alphabets, the $\mu$-extension maps into the same function space polynomially in $\mu$. This is also the case for the associated nested sums. For square-root valued alphabets or sums containing central binomials, the $\mu$-extension leads to higher transcendental functions. In all other cases the $\mu$-extension preserves the Hopf algebra structure implied by the (quasi)shuffle product, by supplementing $\mu$ to the ground field.

Scalar fields provide perhaps the simplest playground in which to develop our understanding of quantum field theory. In this lecture, we consider what it means to write down a scalar quantum field theory and how we can give geometrical interpretations to the space of such theories: the theory space.

We formulate a one-to-one correspondence between states and defects for higher-form gauge theories in arbitrary dimensions. The correspondence is not predicated on conformal invariance, as these theories are in general not conformal. Instead, it relies on the existence of infinitely many conserved charges associated with the mixed anomaly of electric and magnetic higher-form symmetries. In $p$-form Maxwell theory, these charges generate an extended Kac-Moody algebra that acts simultaneously on states and on extended operators. We show that this algebra organizes the Hilbert space on $S^p \times S^{d-p-1}$ into highest-weight representations allowing for a direct identification between states and $p$-dimensional defects. In particular, Wilson-'t Hooft defects dressed with local gauge-invariant operators are mapped to squeezed energy eigenstates. We further relate these novel symmetries to higher-spin currents and demonstrate that their construction persists in a class of interacting non-linear electrodynamics theories.

We propose a generic, largely inflaton-potential-independent mechanism in which a light axion spectator, initialized near the hilltop of its potential, reshapes inflationary observables through purely gravitational multi-field dynamics. During inflation the axion is frozen and the background follows an effectively single-field trajectory. After inflation ends, the axion rolls, inducing a turn in field space and transient tachyonic phases of the isocurvature mode. The resulting “tachyonic encore” occurs entirely on super-horizon scales. These phases generate a nearly scale-invariant enhancement of the curvature power spectrum, suppressing the tensor-to-scalar ratio and shifting the scalar tilt to a weighted combination of adiabatic and entropic tilts at horizon crossing. We show that these effects can reconcile otherwise disfavored inflaton potentials with current CMB constraints. The same dynamics predict local non-Gaussianity, $f_{\rm NL}^{\rm loc.}\sim \mathcal{O}(1)$, within reach of upcoming surveys.

We develop a perturbative description of vacuum radiative processes in quantum electrodynamics with a prescribed external electromagnetic background capable of producing electron-positron pairs. Since the initial vacuum is then unstable and the in- and out-vacua are inequivalent, radiative observables require a real-time formulation beyond the ordinary in-out approach of vacuum-stable QED. Using the Keldysh-Schwinger-Fradkin nonequilibrium technique, we derive the mean number density of emitted photons through the second nonvanishing order in the fine-structure constant. The leading term, of order $\alpha$, reproduces the known vertex and tadpole mechanisms, while the complete order-$\alpha^2$ correction contains interference, loop, and induced-current contributions. We also give an independent derivation based on the spectral decomposition of the identity operator in the in-Fock space, where the photon number density is represented as a sum of squared transition amplitudes and vacuum-disconnected terms are canceled by the optical theorem generalized to an unstable vacuum. In addition, we compute the mean electromagnetic field through order $e^3$, including the electromagnetic dressing of the induced vacuum current, and verify it using the corresponding Schwinger-Dyson equations. The final formulas are expressed in terms of exact solutions and propagators of the Dirac equation in the external background and apply to general spacetime-dependent field configurations.

The Gertsenshtein effect can be used to probe the stochastic gravitational wave background at high frequencies, well above the range of standard cosmological sources. In this paper, we revisit the conversion between electromagnetic and gravitational waves in the magnetosphere of magnetars by solving the evolution equations of the associated Stokes parameters. In the process, we point out that the adiabatic approximation usually taken in the literature is not generally justified in the context of the Gertsenshtein effect. To derive analytical results, we focus our attention on two specific geometries where the adiabatic approximation is valid. From these, we derive a lower bound on the stochastic gravitational wave background from the conversion of magnetar electromagnetic emission into gravitational waves, and an upper bound by requiring that the conversion of background gravitational waves into electromagnetic radiation does not exceed the observed magnetar flux in the X-ray band. Our results demonstrate that gravitational waves generated through the Gertsenshtein conversion of magnetar electromagnetic emission produce a negligible stochastic background, as anticipated.

Given a quantum critical wavefunction in any dimension, we propose a reconstructed Hamiltonian, analogous to the ones previously found for 1+1d CFT and for 2+1d bosonic liquid topologically-ordered states. We test numerically that, for known regularized approximate CFT groundstates (on the icosahedron and the fuzzy sphere), (1) they are close to the groundstate of their reconstructed Hamiltonian, and (2) the spectrum of their reconstructed Hamiltonian on the unit sphere has CFT properties (integer spacing of descendants) and matches known low-lying energies. We show that this provides an automated method to improve the finite-size effects in a fixed Hilbert space.

Recent efforts to formulate quantum mechanics in a way that treats space and time on a more equal footing have led to a large variety of spacetime-oriented approaches. In this work we present a detailed study of spacetime states, the objects that play the role of quantum states in the recently introduced framework of spacetime quantum mechanics, and show that the main proposals in the literature are different manifestations of the same underlying object. Path integrals, quantum states over time, pseudo-density matrices, the Page and Wootters mechanism, superdensity operators, and timelike-entanglement proposals all arise from spacetime states through particular evaluations, reduced information, linear maps, or quantum channels. This unification provides explicit mathematical representations of these formalisms, reveals relations among them, and clarifies the spacetime information each one captures. We also study the broader relevance of the spacetime-state point of view for Leggett-Garg inequalities, OTOCs, temporal tensor networks, fermionic systems, relativistic QFTs, quantum reference frames, and classical physics, together with additional insights and perspectives revealed by the common unifying framework.

We construct Wigner-like equations of motion for symmetric continuous-spin fields in anti-de Sitter space of arbitrary dimension, treating both the bosonic and fermionic cases. We generalise the classical flat-space Wigner constraints for bosonic continuous-spin fields, and for the fermionic case we adopt the equations proposed by Bekaert and Mourad as our starting point. This is achieved by covariantising the ordinary derivatives and deforming the resulting constraints so that they form a closed algebra. The construction is carried out in a metric-like formalism and yields a system of first-class constraints that define a representation of the $\mathfrak{so}(2,D-1)$ isometry algebra, realised via the Lie-Lorentz derivative. Using these constraints, we compute the eigenvalues of the quadratic and quartic Casimir operators and compare the obtained values with Metsaev's classification of continuous-spin representations for both the bosonic and fermionic cases. A crucial algebraic role is played by special operators of the (super)algebra Howe-dual to the Lorentz subalgebra $\mathfrak{so}(1,D-1)$: the $\mathfrak{sl}(2)$ Casimir operator in the bosonic case, and the Casimir's ghost of the $\mathfrak{osp}(1|2)$ superalgebra in the fermionic case. Both objects naturally organise the constraint algebra and ensure its consistency.

This is a streamlined introduction to the global (infrared) completion of Maxwell-type higher gauge fields (as in the higher gauge sectors of higher dimensional supergravity and its brane probes) by electromagnetic flux quantization in differential nonabelian cohomology, using cohesive homotopy theory. Applications include D/NS brane charge in (unstable) K-theory, M-brane charge in unstable Cohomotopy and geometric engineering of topological quantum order on probe M5-branes.

We study perturbations of Yang-Mills plasma, represented by scalar quasinormal modes of AdS black branes, as functions of the wave number $q$ in the entire range from zero to infinity. At finite $q$, these modes can be computed by classical spectral methods based on truncating the boundary value problem. We show that this truncation admits a natural analytic interpretation in terms of quantum Seiberg–Witten periods in the Nekrasov–Shatashvili limit, with the spectral condition organised as an instanton expansion around small values of the counting parameter. The physical black-brane problem corresponds to evaluating this series at a finite value of the counting parameter, and the Seiberg–Witten formulation provides a systematic way to analyse when the truncation is under control. In particular, it reveals that, as $q$ or the mode number $N$ increases, the physical point approaches the boundary of the domain of convergence of the instanton expansion, limiting the validity of the truncation approach. We overcome this limitation through an exact WKB analysis in which $q^{-1}$ acts as the expansion parameter. The resulting exact quantisation conditions, expressed in terms of period integrals and the associated Stokes geometry, incorporate both perturbative and non-perturbative corrections. The resummed quasinormal modes remain accurate far beyond the strict large-$q$ regime and can be analytically continued all the way to $q=0$, notably by using the Seiberg–Witten approach, providing a consistent description of the QNM spectrum.

To answer the above question, we study low-frequency scattering in the four-dimensional traversable wormhole of Maldacena, Milekhin, and Popov. The resulting transmission probabilities reveal that wormhole traversability depends strongly on the nature of the probe. For scalar probes, both neutral and charged, traversability depends on the time scale. On time scales of order the light-crossing time after sending in a signal, the transmission is parametrically suppressed, with most of the incoming signal reflected or temporarily trapped inside the wormhole throat. As time progresses, the trapped signal gradually leaks out, so that at late times the accumulated transmission cross-section approaches one half of the corresponding black hole absorption cross-section. Despite this generic suppression at low frequencies, the transmission spectrum also exhibits resonant frequencies at which transmission becomes perfect. Charged massless fermions tell a very different story. Unlike scalars, they traverse the wormhole with essentially unit probability at low energies. The same mechanism underlies their efficient absorption by magnetic black holes and realizes a channel closely analogous to the Callan-Rubakov effect, revealing unexpected connections with monopole-fermion scattering. Putting everything together, we conclude that scalar probes are best suited for uncovering distinct features of these magnetic wormholes, while charged massless fermions are the ideal carriers of information through them.

We study the time evolution of tripartite genuine multientropy in heavy local quenches via AdS${}_3$/CFT${}_2$. Its linear response around the vacuum cancels pointwise for arbitrary adjacent intervals. At finite backreaction, the vacuum-subtracted genuine multientropy arises only from an incompatibility gap between the triplet of windings selected by the trivalent geodesic network and the windings selected independently by the bipartite geodesics. The heavy-light vacuum-block calculation reproduces the same formula from the boundary perspective. The time dependence is kinematically fixed and is independent of the heavy operator dimension. These results show that the genuine multipartite entanglement is controlled by global saddle transition rather than by local energy response or quasiparticle propagation.

We construct the phase space for an arbitrary cut of a null hypersurface in Minkowski spacetime and demonstrate that it is symplectomorphic to the infrared phase space of asymptotically flat gravity. Fluctuations of the cut are mapped to the leading soft graviton mode. Furthermore, the supertranslation Goldstone mode is mapped to the product of the size of the cut with its symplectic partner, the null time offset.

We analyze Maxwell theory coupled to an axion domain wall as a spectral boundary value problem. We find that a finite-width axion domain wall generically supports a localized normalizable chiral electromagnetic mode with linear, gapless dispersion. This mode arises from helicity-dependent coupling sourced by the axion gradient: one polarization experiences an effective attractive potential and forms a bound state, while the opposite polarization is repelled. The existence of this chiral surface photon is robust over a wide regime of wall structures and axion masses. Our result shows that axion domain walls generically support a localized chiral photon that has been missed in previous analyses.

A key property of a global symmetry's anomaly is its order: the smallest integer $n$ for which the diagonal symmetry of the $n$-copy system is anomaly-free. While many familiar lattice anomalies have finite order, perturbative anomalies in the continuum$-$those captured by Feynman diagrams$-$have infinite order. In this paper, we show that the Onsager symmetry, a lattice realization of the chiral symmetry of a 1+1d massless Dirac fermion, has an order-two anomaly. However, imposing lattice CPT symmetry enhances this anomaly from order two to infinite order, yielding a lattice chiral symmetry structure that more faithfully matches the continuum chiral anomaly. We also discuss the corresponding 2+1d symmetry-protected topological phases for these infinite-order lattice anomalies.

In the $E_8\times\omega E_8$ octonionic unification program, each $E_8$ branches as $SU(3)_{st}\times E_6$, supplying one geometric $SU(3)_{st}$ per branch, while the split-complex unit $\omega$ grades the visible and pre-gravitational branches; matter and gauge content is carried by $E_6\times E_6$, with chiral fermions realized as Cl(6) minimal-ideal spinors rather than $E_8$ representation components – which places the chiral sector outside the Distler-Garibaldi no-go theorem. Comparing the 496-label two-branch adjoint reservoir with the 208 structures matched in the Generalized Trace Dynamics Lagrangian leaves a residual 288. We argue that this 288 is an adjoint-lineage representation-label ledger – bookkeeping for the scaffolding – and not a particle spectrum. The bifermionic seed is Hermitian, with $E_6$-covariant channels classified by $\bar{27}\otimes 27 = 1\oplus 78\oplus 650$: each branch's 78 supplies the gauge currents and a composite electroweak doublet, while the $E_6$ singlet is electroweak-inert. The charge-sum sector A is absent from the bare seed, and the 252 $SU(3)_{st}$-charged labels cannot be matter bilinears in any reservoir, conditional on the spinor ontology. The size of $E_8\times\omega E_8$ is thus the dimension of a label ledger, not a count of particles; beyond the Standard Model, the framework's content is sterile neutrinos and a second composite scalar.

We critically examine the expectation that in a fundamental quantum field theory, dimensionless couplings in the Lagrangian density should all be of order unity. We propose a measure to quantify the adherence of a theory to this: the spread (the ratio of the largest to the smallest of the magnitudes) of such dimensionless couplings, obtaining various closed-form results. If we take independent and identically distributed (IID) couplings to parameterise our uncertainty on the values of the order-unity couplings, the spread can be much larger than one might naively expect. For a theory with 20 IID unit normal couplings, the probability that the spread is greater than 100 is 0.29, for example. Even when the IID couplings have exponentially suppressed tails, the distribution of the spread has fat power-law tails whose amplitude grows with the number of independent couplings.

Extensive systems have a simple thermodynamic signature: the dimensionless canonical free energy scales homogeneously with the size of the system. We show that the failure of this scaling, measured by the replica energy ${\cal E}$, provides a useful bridge between statistical mechanics and quantum field theory. The associated differential operator $(1-\frac1d L\partial_L)$ removes the leading bulk contribution to $\mathcal{F}=\beta F_{\rm can}=-\log Z$ and isolates the part that is sensitive to boundaries, topology, defects, long-range forces, or other sources of nonadditivity. In quantum field theory this thermodynamic idea has two closely related uses. For ordinary finite-volume or spherical partition functions, suitable higher-order versions of the same filter remove local counterterms and extract universal fixed-point data such as the central charge, the sphere free energy $F$, and the Euler anomaly coefficient $a$. For replica geometries with entangling defects, the same filtering principle gives the renormalized defect free energy. In $2+1$ dimensions, its $n\to1$ limit gives the entropic $F$-function, with the sign fixed below by the standard free-energy convention. We use this perspective to distinguish ordinary finite-size corrections, topology-dependent constants in gapped phases, subextensive fracton degeneracies, and genuinely nonextensive systems with long-range interactions such as self-gravitating thermal matter. Replica energy therefore offers a common thermodynamic language for additivity, defect free energies, and renormalization-group irreversibility.

A central issue in lattice formulations of chiral gauge theories is how the anomaly cancellation mechanism of the continuum theory can be realized at finite lattice spacing. In the present paper, based on non-Abelian bosonization, we propose a lattice formulation of the bosonic theory corresponding to a two-dimensional non-Abelian chiral gauge theory. In the continuum theory, the gauge anomaly of chiral fermions is represented, in the bosonized description, as anomaly inflow from a three-dimensional Chern–Simons-type bulk contribution contained in a gauged Wess–Zumino–Witten model. Motivated by this structure, we introduce gauge-neutral spectator fermions and use the resulting bosonized description. We then construct a lattice counterpart of the gauged Wess–Zumino–Witten model with a three-dimensional bulk extension under appropriate smoothness conditions. A salient feature of this lattice formulation is the cancellation of the left and right bulk contributions in the exponentiated action. This cancellation occurs even before taking the continuum limit when the anomaly-free condition is satisfied, namely when the left and right representations have identical quadratic indices. Thus, the present construction realizes the anomaly-cancellation mechanism at finite lattice spacing via the bosonized description of two-dimensional anomaly-free chiral gauge theories. Establishing the desired continuum limit remains an important open problem.

We consider a movable conducting plate of finite mass, between two fixed ones, whose mechanical degrees of freedom are treated quantum-mechanically and bound to its equilibrium position by a harmonic potential. The movable wall is thus subjected to quantum fluctuations of its position. This creates a system of two subcavities separated by the movable fluctuating plate, and two massless one-dimensional scalar fields, one in each subcavity. This system is described by an appropriate generalization of the Law Hamiltonian. The presence of the movable wall yields an effective plate-fields interaction, as well as an effective interaction between the field modes. We obtain, at the second order in perturbation theory, the ground state of the interacting system and the reduced density operator of the fields in each subcavity by tracing out the wall's degrees of freedom. We calculate the entanglement between two field modes, one in each cavity, by evaluating analytically the negativity; we then evaluate numerically also the total multimode negativity. Our results show that in both cases the fields in the two subcavities are entangled, in contrast to the case in which the wall is fixed in space. We discuss the amount of the field entanglement present as a function of relevant physical parameters of the system such as the mass and oscillation frequency of the movable wall, its distance from the fixed walls and the frequencies of the field modes considered.

In this paper, one constructs a nonlocal extension of the Rarita-Schwinger theory for spin-$3/2$ fermions. Two classes of analytic form factors are considered: scalar form factors $f(\Box)$ and Dirac-operator form factors $f(\slashed{\partial})$. The massless theory is treated together with a covariant nonlocal gauge fixing, which allows the propagator to be written directly in terms of the spin-$3/2$ projector. In the massive theory, we show that the free Rarita-Schwinger constraints remain intact for analytic form factors, so that the unphysical spin-$1/2$ sector does not become dynamical. For $f(\Box)$ the tensor-spinor structure of the propagator is the same as in the local theory, while the pole equation is deformed by the scalar form factor. For $f(\slashed{\partial})$ the physical modes obey a nonlocal Dirac-type equation, leading to modified dispersion relations that can be written explicitly for exponential form factors. We discuss the conditions under which the construction is ghost-free at the free level and identify the natural limitations that must be addressed before interactions are introduced.

We use effective field theory to factorize production matrix elements that appear in the NRQCD framework for quarkonium cross sections. By applying a Hubbard-Stratonovich transformation and appropriate field redefinitions, we show that the soft and ultrasoft sectors of NRQCD can be decoupled from the heavy quark and antiquark fields in a hybrid vNRQCD/pNRQCD Lagrangian at leading order in the velocity power-counting. This enables us to re-factorize quarkonium production matrix elements in terms of matrix elements of color-singlet composite fields, which we can write as the wave-function at the origin, and state independent vacuum correlators of chromo-electric and chromo-magnetic gluon fields. This approach verifies powerful relationships between the LDMEs of different S-wave quarkonia originally derived using pNRQCD. Additionally, it allows us to derive new relationships for the production matrix elements used in the transverse momentum dependent factorization (TMD) framework, known as TMD soft transition functions, providing a much stronger set of constraints on these nonperturbative operators. This work significantly advances our understanding of quarkonium production, particularly in the TMD framework.

Motivated by earlier approaches, we develop a worldsheet framework for computing correlation functions in the single trace $T \overline{T}$-deformed tensionless AdS$_3$/CFT$_2$ duality. By describing the deformed bulk theory as a Berkovits-Vafa $\mathcal{N}=4$ topological string, we obtain a consistent definition of physical states and correlation functions, yielding a tractable setup for testing aspects of holography beyond AdS/CFT. We construct deformed physical vertex operators and compute their tree-level two-point functions exactly. We discuss the relation of our results to previous proposals for $T \overline{T}$-deformed two-point functions obtained from alternative worldsheet approaches, JT gravity, and perturbative field theory computations.

We study spherical T-duality for iterated sphere bundles. We show that for a class of iterated sphere bundles the cohomological data contained in its Gysin sequences can be repackaged into data for a vanishing Massey product. We further show that if these bundles are endowed with an integral cohomology class of transgressive degree one, then they have a T-dual iterated sphere bundle, namely, the one associated to the same Massey product read backwards.

In this work, we apply deformed light-cone null reduction method to a complex Maxwell theory in a manifestly gauge-invariant formulation. We show that the local U(1) gauge structure degenerates in the $c\to 0$ limit: the Gauss law constraint reduces from a restriction on initial data to a conservation law, releasing the longitudinal gauge mode as an independent degree of freedom (d.o.f). This raises the physical field count from $2(d-1)$ to $2d$. We prove a no-go theorem: under the single-mode Kaluza-Klein(KK)-like ansatz, no scaling of the field components can simultaneously preserve nontrivial dynamics and a first-class Gauss law, due to an inherent mismatch between velocity-type and constraint-type contributions in the parent action. Rather than representing the Carrollian electrodynamics derived via group contraction, the free complex scalar theory that emerges is merely an artifact of the truncation procedure at $c\to0$.

Witten recently proposed a background-independent algebraic framework for quantum gravity, wherein an observer endowed with a Hamiltonian defines a diffeomorphism invariant worldline algebra manifested by the modified Hamiltonian constraint. In the semiclassical limit, this construction admits a lift to a von Neumann algebra acting on a Hilbert space defined by geodesic in a fixed background. Motivated by this, we revisit quantization of certain class of deformed CFT Hamiltonian on a cylinder to capture non-perturbative aspects of black holes. We construct a type-I Von-Neuman algebra by imposing conformal boundary conditions on cut-offs near fixed points of Hamiltonian flow, acting on a GNS Hilbert space built from highest-weight representation of `emergent modular Virasoro algebra'. Upon identifying the Hamiltonian with the modular Hamiltonian of a sharp subregion associated to a fixed reference KMS (vacuum) state, the algebra changes to type-III$_{1}$ factor. We also discuss the structure of emergent Hilbert spaces using `open-closed string' duality after incorporating an emergent non-trivial center made out of scalars at fixed points. We further employ this modular quantization of a single holographic CFT to demonstrate how the boundary limit of exact Hartle-Hawking correlator of smooth BTZ background emerge in the strict semiclassical limit in an alternative dual description, while at finite $G_{N}$, the corresponding description is intrinsically non-smooth, featuring both a stretched horizon and a boundary cutoff. The exact correlator has also been precisely reproduced from the vacuum correlators in modular quantization. We further discuss the effect of incorporating gravity by including the center via AdS/CFT on boundary correlators, for which the description of a smooth horizon is replaced by a (stretched) horizon containing explicit microstructures embedded within it.

Motivated by the observed $KD^{(*)}$ molecular candidates $D_{s0}(2317)$ and $D_{s1}(2460)$, their bottom–strange counterparts, $K\bar{B}^{(*)}$ molecular states, are naturally expected, although not yet experimentally established. This discrepancy may reflect sizable heavy-quark flavor symmetry breaking, which introduces significant model uncertainties. Current studies of heavy-quark flavor symmetry breaking effects still exhibit strong parameter dependence, and further experimental input is required to constrain these effects, in particular regarding possible additional $K^{(*)}D^{(*)}$ and $K^{(*)}\bar{B}^{(*)}$ molecular states. In this work, we examine whether additional $K^{*}D^{(*)}$ molecular states can be identified among the observed $D_s$ resonances. Within the Gaussian expansion method, we solve the Schrödinger equation using $\sigma$, $\rho$, $\omega$, $\pi$, and $\eta$ exchange potentials, systematically including $S$-wave and higher partial waves. We find that $D_{s1}(2700)$ can be interpreted as a pure $P$-wave $DK^{*}$ molecule, while $D_{s1}(2860)$ and $D_{s3}(2860)$ are well described as $D^{*}K^{*}$ molecular states dominated by the $^{1}P_{1}$ and $^{5}P_{3}$ components, respectively. We also predict additional molecular states with various $J^{P}$ quantum numbers. These results provide a new description of the charmed-strange spectrum, and once confirmed will provide additional input data for studies of heavy-quark flavor symmetry breaking effects.