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Time Quasilattices in Dissipative Dynamical Systems
We establish the existence of `time quasilattices' as stable trajectories in
dissipative dynamical systems. These tilings of the time axis, with two unit
cells of different durations, can be generated as cuts through a periodic
lattice spanned by two orthogonal directions of time. We show that there are
precisely two admissible time quasilattices, which we term the infinite Pell
and Clapeyron words, reached by a generalization of the period-doubling
cascade. Finite Pell and Clapeyron words of increasing length provide
systematic periodic approximations to time quasilattices which can be verified
experimentally. The results apply to all systems featuring the universal
sequence of periodic windows. We provide examples of discrete-time maps, and
periodically-driven continuous-time dynamical systems. We identify quantum
many-body systems in which time quasilattices develop rigidity via the
interaction of many degrees of freedom, thus constituting dissipative discrete
`time quasicrystals'.Comment: 38 pages, 14 figures. This version incorporates "Pell and Clapeyron
Words as Stable Trajectories in Dynamical Systems", arXiv:1707.09333.
Submission to SciPos
Cooperative surmounting of bottlenecks
The physics of activated escape of objects out of a metastable state plays a
key role in diverse scientific areas involving chemical kinetics, diffusion and
dislocation motion in solids, nucleation, electrical transport, motion of flux
lines superconductors, charge density waves, and transport processes of
macromolecules, to name but a few. The underlying activated processes present
the multidimensional extension of the Kramers problem of a single Brownian
particle. In comparison to the latter case, however, the dynamics ensuing from
the interactions of many coupled units can lead to intriguing novel phenomena
that are not present when only a single degree of freedom is involved. In this
review we report on a variety of such phenomena that are exhibited by systems
consisting of chains of interacting units in the presence of potential
barriers.
In the first part we consider recent developments in the case of a
deterministic dynamics driving cooperative escape processes of coupled
nonlinear units out of metastable states. The ability of chains of coupled
units to undergo spontaneous conformational transitions can lead to a
self-organised escape. The mechanism at work is that the energies of the units
become re-arranged, while keeping the total energy conserved, in forming
localised energy modes that in turn trigger the cooperative escape. We present
scenarios of significantly enhanced noise-free escape rates if compared to the
noise-assisted case.
The second part deals with the collective directed transport of systems of
interacting particles overcoming energetic barriers in periodic potential
landscapes. Escape processes in both time-homogeneous and time-dependent driven
systems are considered for the emergence of directed motion. It is shown that
ballistic channels immersed in the associated high-dimensional phase space are
the source for the directed long-range transport
Influence of classical resonances on chaotic tunnelling
Dynamical tunnelling between symmetry-related stable modes is studied in the
periodically driven pendulum. We present strong evidence that the tunnelling
process is governed by nonlinear resonances that manifest within the regular
phase-space islands on which the stable modes are localized. By means of a
quantitative numerical study of the corresponding Floquet problem, we identify
the trace of such resonances not only in the level splittings between
near-degenerate quantum states, where they lead to prominent plateau
structures, but also in overlap matrix elements of the Floquet eigenstates,
which reveal characteristic sequences of avoided crossings in the Floquet
spectrum. The semiclassical theory of resonance-assisted tunnelling yields good
overall agreement with the quantum-tunnelling rates, and indicates that partial
barriers within the chaos might play a prominent role
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