A note on the switching adiabatic theorem

We derive a nearly optimal upper bound on the running time in the adiabatic theorem for a switching family of Hamiltonians. We assume the switching Hamiltonian is in the Gevrey class $G^\alpha$ as a function of time, and we show that the error in adiabatic approximation remains small for running times of order $g^{-2}\,|\ln\,g\,|^{6\alpha}$. Here $g$ denotes the minimal spectral gap between the eigenvalue(s) of interest and the rest of the spectrum of the instantaneous Hamiltonian.Comment: 20 pages, no figures, to appear in JM

Transport and Dissipation in Quantum Pumps

This paper is about adiabatic transport in quantum pumps. The notion of ``energy shift'', a self-adjoint operator dual to the Wigner time delay, plays a role in our approach: It determines the current, the dissipation, the noise and the entropy currents in quantum pumps. We discuss the geometric and topological content of adiabatic transport and show that the mechanism of Thouless and Niu for quantized transport via Chern numbers cannot be realized in quantum pumps where Chern numbers necessarily vanish.Comment: 31 pages, 10 figure

Dynamics of a classical Hall system driven by a time-dependent Aharonov--Bohm flux

We study the dynamics of a classical particle moving in a punctured plane under the influence of a strong homogeneous magnetic field, an electrical background, and driven by a time-dependent singular flux tube through the hole. We exhibit a striking classical (de)localization effect: in the far past the trajectories are spirals around a bound center; the particle moves inward towards the flux tube loosing kinetic energy. After hitting the puncture it becomes ``conducting'': the motion is a cycloid around a center whose drift is outgoing, orthogonal to the electric field, diffusive, and without energy loss

The weak localization for the alloy-type Anderson model on a cubic lattice

We consider alloy type random Schr\"odinger operators on a cubic lattice whose randomness is generated by the sign-indefinite single-site potential. We derive Anderson localization for this class of models in the Lifshitz tails regime, i.e. when the coupling parameter $\lambda$ is small, for the energies $E \le -C \lambda^2$.Comment: 45 pages, 2 figures. To appear in J. Stat. Phy

Extinction Rates for Fluctuation-Induced Metastabilities : A Real-Space WKB Approach

The extinction of a single species due to demographic stochasticity is analyzed. The discrete nature of the individual agents and the Poissonian noise related to the birth-death processes result in local extinction of a metastable population, as the system hits the absorbing state. The Fokker-Planck formulation of that problem fails to capture the statistics of large deviations from the metastable state, while approximations appropriate close to the absorbing state become, in general, invalid as the population becomes large. To connect these two regimes, a master equation based on a real space WKB method is presented, and is shown to yield an excellent approximation for the decay rate and the extreme events statistics all the way down to the absorbing state. The details of the underlying microscopic process, smeared out in a mean field treatment, are shown to be crucial for an exact determination of the extinction exponent. This general scheme is shown to reproduce the known results in the field, to yield new corollaries and to fit quite precisely the numerical solutions. Moreover it allows for systematic improvement via a series expansion where the small parameter is the inverse of the number of individuals in the metastable state

Rate of Convergence Towards Hartree Dynamics

We consider a system of N bosons interacting through a two-body potential with, possibly, Coulomb-type singularities. We show that the difference between the many-body Schr\"odinger evolution in the mean-field regime and the effective nonlinear Hartree dynamics is at most of the order 1/N, for any fixed time. The N-dependence of the bound is optimal.Comment: 26 page

Dynamical Collapse of Boson Stars

We study the time evolution in system of $N$ bosons with a relativistic dispersion law interacting through an attractive Coulomb potential with coupling constant $G$. We consider the mean field scaling where $N$ tends to infinity, $G$ tends to zero and $\lambda = G N$ remains fixed. We investigate the relation between the many body quantum dynamics governed by the Schr\"odinger equation and the effective evolution described by a (semi-relativistic) Hartree equation. In particular, we are interested in the super-critical regime of large $\lambda$ (the sub-critical case has been studied in \cite{ES,KP}), where the nonlinear Hartree equation is known to have solutions which blow up in finite time. To inspect this regime, we need to regularize the Coulomb interaction in the many body Hamiltonian with an $N$ dependent cutoff that vanishes in the limit $N\to \infty$. We show, first, that if the solution of the nonlinear equation does not blow up in the time interval $[-T,T]$, then the many body Schr\"odinger dynamics (on the level of the reduced density matrices) can be approximated by the nonlinear Hartree dynamics, just as in the sub-critical regime. Moreover, we prove that if the solution of the nonlinear Hartree equation blows up at time $T$ (in the sense that the $H^{1/2}$ norm of the solution diverges as time approaches $T$), then also the solution of the linear Schr\"odinger equation collapses (in the sense that the kinetic energy per particle diverges) if $t \to T$ and, simultaneously, $N \to \infty$ sufficiently fast. This gives the first dynamical description of the phenomenon of gravitational collapse as observed directly on the many body level.Comment: 40 page

Anomalous decay of a prepared state due to non-Ohmic coupling to the continuum

We study the decay of a prepared state $E_0$ into a continuum {E_k} in the case of non-Ohmic models. This means that the coupling is $|V_{k,0}| \propto |E_k-E_0|^{s-1}$ with $s \ne 1$. We find that irrespective of model details there is a universal generalized Wigner time $t_0$ that characterizes the evolution of the survival probability $P_0(t)$. The generic decay behavior which is implied by rate equation phenomenology is a slowing down stretched exponential, reflecting the gradual resolution of the bandprofile. But depending on non-universal features of the model a power-law decay might take over: it is only for an Ohmic coupling to the continuum that we get a robust exponential decay that is insensitive to the nature of the intra-continuum couplings. The analysis highlights the co-existence of perturbative and non-perturbative features in the dynamics. It turns out that there are special circumstances in which $t_0$ is reflected in the spreading process and not only in the survival probability, contrary to the naive linear response theory expectation.Comment: 13 pages, 11 figure