Dynamics of a Quantum Phase Transition and Relaxation to a Steady State

We review recent theoretical work on two closely related issues: excitation of an isolated quantum condensed matter system driven adiabatically across a continuous quantum phase transition or a gapless phase, and apparent relaxation of an excited system after a sudden quench of a parameter in its Hamiltonian. Accordingly the review is divided into two parts. The first part revolves around a quantum version of the Kibble-Zurek mechanism including also phenomena that go beyond this simple paradigm. What they have in common is that excitation of a gapless many-body system scales with a power of the driving rate. The second part attempts a systematic presentation of recent results and conjectures on apparent relaxation of a pure state of an isolated quantum many-body system after its excitation by a sudden quench. This research is motivated in part by recent experimental developments in the physics of ultracold atoms with potential applications in the adiabatic quantum state preparation and quantum computation.Comment: 117 pages; review accepted in Advances in Physic

Malignant melanoma of the cerebello-pontine angle region

A case of malignant melanoma in the cerebello-pontine angle region is presented in a 72 years old female patient, who had neurological examination and CT scan suggestive of acoustic neuroma. The surgical finding and the histological examination provided the diagnosis. As a primary focus was not found on clinical examination and although autopsy was not carried out, there is a possibility of the diagnosis being a primary malignant melanoma in CNS. This specific location for this kind of tumor was found to be rare when literature is looked up