Quantum phase transitions

In recent years, quantum phase transitions have attracted the interest of both theorists and experimentalists in condensed matter physics. These transitions, which are accessed at zero temperature by variation of a non-thermal control parameter, can influence the behavior of electronic systems over a wide range of the phase diagram. Quantum phase transitions occur as a result of competing ground state phases. The cuprate superconductors which can be tuned from a Mott insulating to a d-wave superconducting phase by carrier doping are a paradigmatic example. This review introduces important concepts of phase transitions and discusses the interplay of quantum and classical fluctuations near criticality. The main part of the article is devoted to bulk quantum phase transitions in condensed matter systems. Several classes of transitions will be briefly reviewed, pointing out, e.g., conceptual differences between ordering transitions in metallic and insulating systems. An interesting separate class of transitions are boundary phase transitions where only degrees of freedom of a subsystem become critical; this will be illustrated in a few examples. The article is aimed on bridging the gap between high-level theoretical presentations and research papers specialized in certain classes of materials. It will give an overview over a variety of different quantum transitions, critically discuss open theoretical questions, and frequently make contact with recent experiments in condensed matter physics.Comment: 50 pages, 7 figs; (v2) final version as publishe

A Particle-based Multiscale Solver for Compressible Liquid-Vapor Flow

To describe complex flow systems accurately, it is in many cases important to account for the properties of fluid flows on a microscopic scale. In this work, we focus on the description of liquid-vapor flow with a sharp interface between the phases. The local phase dynamics at the interface can be interpreted as a Riemann problem for which we develop a multiscale solver in the spirit of the heterogeneous multiscale method, using a particle-based microscale model to augment the macroscopic two-phase flow system. The application of a microscale model makes it possible to use the intrinsic properties of the fluid at the microscale, instead of formulating (ad-hoc) constitutive relations

Emergence and spontaneous breaking of approximate O(4) symmetry at a weakly first-order deconfined phase transition

We investigate approximate emergent nonabelian symmetry in a class of weakly first order `deconfined' phase transitions using Monte Carlo simulations and a renormalization group analysis. We study a transition in a 3D classical loop model that is analogous to a deconfined 2+1D quantum phase transition in a magnet with reduced lattice symmetry. The transition is between the N\'eel phase and a twofold degenerate valence bond solid (lattice-symmetry-breaking) phase. The combined order parameter at the transition is effectively a four-component superspin. It has been argued that in some weakly first order `pseudocritical' deconfined phase transitions, the renormalization group flow can take the system very close to the ordered fixed point of the symmetric $O(N)$ sigma model, where $N$ is the total number of `soft' order parameter components, despite the fact that $O(N)$ is not a microscopic symmetry. This yields a first order transition with unconventional phenomenology. We argue that this occurs in the present model, with $N=4$. This means that there is a regime of lengthscales in which the transition resembles a `spin-flop' transition in the ordered $O(4)$ sigma model. We give numerical evidence for (i) the first order nature of the transition, (ii) the emergence of $O(4)$ symmetry to an accurate approximation, and (iii) the existence of a regime in which the emergent $O(4)$ is `spontaneously broken', with distinctive features in the order parameter probability distribution. These results may be relevant for other models studied in the literature, including 2+1D QED with two flavours, the `easy-plane' deconfined critical point, and the N\'eel--VBS transition on the rectangular lattice.Comment: 16 pages. v2: updated to journal versio

Gravity as an emergent phenomenon: a GFT perspective

While the idea of gravity as an emergent phenomenon is an intriguing one, little is known about concrete implementations that could lead to viable phenomenology, most of the obstructions being related to the intrinsic difficulties of formulating genuinely pregeometric theories. In this paper we present a preliminary discussion of the impact of critical behavior of certain microscopic models for gravity, based on group field theories, on the dynamics of the macroscopic regime. The continuum limit is examined in light of some scaling assumption, and the relevant consequences for low energy effective theories are discussed, the role of universality, the corrections to scaling, the emergence of gravitational theories and the nature of their thermodynamical behavior.Comment: 1+26 page

The superfluid insulator transition of ultra-cold bosons in disordered 1d traps

We derive an effective quantum Josephson array model for a weakly interacting one-dimensional condensate that is fragmented into weakly coupled puddles by a disorder potential. The distribution of coupling constants, obtained from first principles, indicate that weakly interacting bosons in a disorder potential undergo a superfluid insulator transition controlled by a strong randomness fixed point [Phys. Rev. Lett. 93, 150402 (2004)]. We compute renormalization group flows for concrete realizations of the disorder potential to facilitate finite size scaling of experimental results and allow comparison to the behavior dictated by the strong randomness fixed point. The phase diagram of the system is obtained with corrections to mean-field results.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures, expanded version including a calculation of a global phase diagra