One-thimble regularisation of lattice field theories: is it only a dream?

Abstract

Lefschetz thimbles regularisation of (lattice) field theories was put forward as a possible solution to the sign problem. Despite elegant and conceptually simple, it has many subtleties, a major one boiling down to a plain question: how many thimbles should we take into account? In the original formulation, a single thimble dominance hypothesis was put forward: in the thermodynamic limit, universality arguments could support a scenario in which the dominant thimble (associated to the global minimum of the action) captures the physical content of the field theory. We know by now many counterexamples and we have been pursuing multi-thimble simulations ourselves. Still, a single thimble regularisation would be the real breakthrough. We report on ongoing work aiming at a single thimble formulation of lattice field theories, in particular putting forward the proposal of performing Taylor expansions on the dominant thimble.