Effective action for fermions with anomalous magnetic moment from Foldy-Wouthuysen transformation

In this paper we calculate the effective action for neutral particles with anomalous magnetic moment in an external magnetic and electric field. We show that we can take advantage from the Foldy Wouthuysen transformation for such systems, determined in our previous works: indeed, by this transformation we have explicitly evaluated the diagonalized Hamiltonian, allowing to present a closed form for the corresponding effective action and for the partition function at finite temperature from which the thermodynamical potentials can be calculated

Relativistic two-body calculation of bbˉb\bar{b}-mesons radiative decays

This paper is a prosecution of a previous work where we presented a unified two-fermion covariant scheme which produced very precise results for the masses of light and heavy mesons. We extend the analysis to some radiative decays of mesons $\Upsilon,\,\chi_{b2}\,,h_b\,,\chi_{b1}\,,\chi_{b0}\,,\eta_b\,$ and we calculate their branching ratios and their widths. For most of them we can make a comparison with experimental data finding a good agreement.For the decays for which data are not available we compare ours with other recent theoretical previsions.Comment: 7 pages, 1 figur

Relativistic two fermion treatment of hyperfine transitions

A system of two fermions with different masses and interacting by the Coulomb potential is presented in a completely covariant framework. The spin-spin interaction, including the anomalous magnetic moments of the two fermions, is added by means of a Breit term. We solve the resulting fourth order differential system by evaluating the spectrum and the eigenfunctions. The interaction vertex with an external electromagnetic field is then determined. The relativistic eigenfunctions are used to study the photon emission from a hyperfine transition and are checked for the calculation of the Lamb shift due to the electron vacuum polarization in the muonic Hydrogen.Comment: 8 page

Thermodynamics of quantum dissipative many-body systems

We consider quantum nonlinear many-body systems with dissipation described within the Caldeira-Leggett model, i.e., by a nonlocal action in the path integral for the density matrix. Approximate classical-like formulas for thermodynamic quantities are derived for the case of many degrees of freedom, with general kinetic and dissipative quadratic forms. The underlying scheme is the pure-quantum self-consistent harmonic approximation (PQSCHA), equivalent to the variational approach by the Feynman-Jensen inequality with a suitable quadratic nonlocal trial action. A low-coupling approximation permits to get manageable PQSCHA expressions for quantum thermal averages with a classical Boltzmann factor involving an effective potential and an inner Gaussian average that describes the fluctuations originating from the interplay of quanticity and dissipation. The application of the PQSCHA to a quantum phi4-chain with Drude-like dissipation shows nontrivial effects of dissipation, depending upon its strength and bandwidth.Comment: ReVTeX, 12 pages, 9 embedded figures (vers.2: typo mistake fixed

States of the Dirac equation in confining potentials

We study the Dirac equation in confining potentials with pure vector coupling, proving the existence of metastable states with longer and longer lifetimes as the non-relativistic limit is approached and eventually merging with continuity into the Schr\"odinger bound states. We believe that the existence of these states could be relevant in high energy model construction and in understanding possible resonant scattering effects in systems like Graphene. We present numerical results for the linear and the harmonic cases and we show that the the density of the states of the continuous spectrum is well described by a sum of Breit-Wigner lines. The width of the line with lowest positive energy, as expected, reproduces very well the Schwinger pair production rate for a linear potential: we thus suggest a different way of obtaining informations on the pair production in unbounded, non uniform electric fields, where very little is known.Comment: 4 page

Foldy-Wouthuysen Transformation for a Spinning Particle with Anomalous Magnetic Moment

We study the Foldy-Wouthuysen transformation for a pseudoclassical particle with anomalous magnetic moment in an external, stationary electromagnetic field. We show that the transformation can be expressed in a closed form for neutral particles in purely electrostatic fields and for neutral and charged particles in external magnetostatic fields. The explicit expressions of the diagonalized Hamiltonians are calculated.Comment: 10 page

Quantum thermodynamics of systems with anomalous dissipative coupling

The standard {\em system-plus-reservoir} approach used in the study of dissipative systems can be meaningfully generalized to a dissipative coupling involving the momentum, instead of the coordinate: the corresponding equation of motion differs from the Langevin equation, so this is called {\em anomalous} dissipation. It occurs for systems where such coupling can indeed be derived from the physical analysis of the degrees of freedom which can be treated as a dissipation bath. Starting from the influence functional corresponding to anomalous dissipation, it is shown how to derive the effective classical potential that gives the quantum thermal averages for the dissipative system in terms of classical-like calculations; the generalization to many degrees of freedom is given. The formalism is applied to a single particle in a double-well and to the discrete $\phi^4$ model. At variance with the standard case, the fluctuations of the coordinate are enhanced by anomalous dissipative coupling.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures, to be published in Phys. Rev.

Quantum fluctuations in one-dimensional arrays of condensates

The effects of quantum and thermal fluctuations upon the fringe structure predicted to be observable in the momentum distribution of coupled Bose-Einstein condensates are studied by the effective-potential method. For a double-well trap, the coherence factor recently introduced by Pitaevskii and Stringari [Phys. Rev. Lett. 87, 180402 (2001)] is calculated using the effective potential approach and is found in good agreement with their result. The calculations are extended to the case of a one-dimensional array of condensates, showing that quantum effects are essentially described through a simple renormalization of the energy scale in the classical analytical expression for the fringe structure. The consequences for the experimental observability are discussed.Comment: RevTeX, 4 pages, 5 eps figures (published version with updated references