Zero-point fluctuations in rotation: Perpetuum mobile of the fourth kind without energy transfer

International audienceWe discuss a simple Casimir-type device for which the rotational energy reaches its global minimum when the device rotates about a certain axis rather than remains static. This unusual property is a direct consequence of the fact that the moment of inertia of zero-point vacuum fluctuations is a negative quantity (the rotational vacuum effect). Moreover, the device does not produce any work despite the fact that its equilibrium ground state corresponds to a permanent rotation. Counterintuitively, the device has no internally moving mechanical parts while its very existence is consistent with the laws of thermodynamics. We point out that such devices may possibly be constructed using carbon nanotubes. We call this "zero-point-driven" device as the perpetuum mobile of the fourth kind

Superconducting properties of vacuum in strong magnetic field

International audienceWe discuss superconducting phases of vacuum induced by strong magnetic field in the electroweak model and in Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) at zero temperature. In these phases, the vacuum behaves as an anisotropic inhomogeneous superconductor which supports superconductivity along the axis of the magnetic field while in the transversal directions, the superconductivity does not exist. The magnetic-field-induced anisotropic superconductivity appears as a result of condensation of electrically charged spin-one particles, which are elementary W bosons in the case of the electroweak model and composite quark-antiquark pairs with quantum numbers of ρ -mesons in the case of QCD. Due to the anisotropic nature of superconductivity, the Meissner effect is absent. Intrinsic inhomogeneities of the superconducting ground state are characterized by ensembles of certain topological vortices in an analogy with a mixed Abrikosov state of a type-II superconductivit

Anomalous dispersion, superluminality, and instabilities in two-flavor theories with local non-Hermitian mass mixing

Pseudo-Hermitian field theories possess a global continuous “similarity” symmetry, interconnecting the theories with the same physical particle content and an identical mass spectrum. In their regimes with real spectra, within this family of similarity transformations, there is a map from the non-Hermitian theory to its Hermitian similarity partner. We promote the similarity transformation to a local symmetry, which requires the introduction of a new vector similarity field as a connection in the similarity space of non-Hermitian theories. In the case of non-Hermitian two-flavor scalar or fermion mixing and by virtue of a novel IR/UV mixing effect, the effect of inhomogeneous non-Hermiticity then reveals itself via anomalous dispersion, instabilities, and superluminal group velocities at very high momenta, thus setting an upper bound on the particle momentum propagating through inhomogeneous backgrounds characterized by Lagrangians with non-Hermitian mass matrices. Such a non-Hermitian extension of the Standard Model of particle physics, encoded in a weak inhomogeneity of the non-Hermitian part of the fermion mass matrix, may nevertheless provide us with a low-energy particle spectrum consistent with experimentally observed properties.<br/

IR/UV mixing from local similarity maps of scalar non-Hermitian field theories

We propose to "gauge" the group of similarity transformations that acts on a space of non-Hermitian scalar theories. We introduce the "similarity gauge field", which acts as a gauge connection on the space of non-Hermitian theories characterized by (and equivalent to a Hermitian) real-valued mass spectrum. This extension leads to new effects: if the mass matrix is not the same in distant regions of space, but its eigenvalues coincide pairwise in both regions, the particle masses stay constant in the whole spacetime, making the model indistinguishable from a standard, low-energy and scalar Hermitian one. However, contrary to the Hermitian case, the high-energy scalar particles become unstable at a particular wavelength determined by the strength of the emergent similarity gauge field. This instability corresponds to momentum-dependent exceptional points, whose locations cannot be identified from an analysis of the eigenvalues of the coordinate-dependent squared mass matrix in isolation, as one might naively have expected. For a doublet of scalar particles with masses of the order of 1 MeV and a similarity gauge rotation of order unity at distances of 1 meter, the corrections to the masses are about 10^{-7}eV, which makes no experimentally detectable imprint on the low-energy spectrum. However, the instability occurs at 10^{18} eV, suggestively in the energy range of detectable ultra-high-energy cosmic rays, thereby making this truly non-Hermitian effect and its generalizations of phenomenological interest for high-energy particle physics.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figures; v2 matches the published versio

Anomalous dispersion, superluminality and instabilities in two-flavour theories with local non-Hermitian mass mixing

Pseudo-Hermitian field theories possess a global continuous ``similarity'' symmetry, interconnecting the theories with the same physical particle content and an identical mass spectrum. In their regimes with real spectra, within this family of similarity transformations, there is a map from the non-Hermitian theory to its Hermitian similarity partner. We promote the similarity transformation to a local symmetry, which requires the introduction of a new vector similarity field as a connection in the similarity space of non-Hermitian theories. In the case of non-Hermitian two-flavour scalar or fermion mixing, and by virtue of a novel IR/UV mixing effect, the effect of inhomogeneous non-Hermiticity then reveals itself via anomalous dispersion, instabilities and superluminal group velocities at very high momenta, thus setting an upper bound on the particle momentum propagating through inhomogeneous backgrounds characterised by Lagrangians with non-Hermitian mass matrices. Such a non-Hermitian extension of the Standard Model of particle physics, encoded in a weak inhomogeneity of the non-Hermitian part of the fermion mass matrix, may nevertheless provide us with a low-energy particle spectrum consistent with experimentally observed properties.Comment: 19 pages, 6 figure

Rigidly-rotating scalar fields: between real divergence and imaginary fractalization

The thermodynamics of rigidly rotating systems experience divergences when the system dimensions transverse to the rotation axis exceed the critical size imposed by the causality constraint. The rotation with imaginary angular frequency, suitable for numerical lattice simulations in Euclidean imaginary-time formalism, experiences fractalization of thermodynamics in the thermodynamic limit, when the system's pressure becomes a fractal function of the rotation frequency. Our work connects two phenomena by studying how thermodynamics fractalizes as the system size grows. We examine an analytically-accessible system of rotating massless scalar matter on a one-dimensional ring and the numerically treatable case of rotation in the cylindrical geometry and show how the ninionic deformation of statistics emerges in these systems. We discuss a no-go theorem on analytical continuation between real- and imaginary-rotating theories. Finally, we compute the moment of inertia and shape deformation coefficients caused by the rotation of the relativistic bosonic gas.Comment: 40 pages, 22 figures; accepted for publication in PRD; fractalization video is available at https://youtu.be/Pk-S_10BM-

Anomalous dispersion, superluminality and instabilities in two-flavour theories with local non-Hermitian mass mixing

Pseudo-Hermitian field theories possess a global continuous ``similarity'' symmetry, interconnecting the theories with the same physical particle content and an identical mass spectrum. In their regimes with real spectra, within this family of similarity transformations, there is a map from the non-Hermitian theory to its Hermitian similarity partner. We promote the similarity transformation to a local symmetry, which requires the introduction of a new vector similarity field as a connection in the similarity space of non-Hermitian theories. In the case of non-Hermitian two-flavour scalar or fermion mixing, and by virtue of a novel IR/UV mixing effect, the effect of inhomogeneous non-Hermiticity then reveals itself via anomalous dispersion, instabilities and superluminal group velocities at very high momenta, thus setting an upper bound on the particle momentum propagating through inhomogeneous backgrounds characterised by Lagrangians with non-Hermitian mass matrices. Such a non-Hermitian extension of the Standard Model of particle physics, encoded in a weak inhomogeneity of the non-Hermitian part of the fermion mass matrix, may nevertheless provide us with a low-energy particle spectrum consistent with experimentally observed properties

A condensed matter realization of the axial magnetic effect

The axial magnetic effect, i.e., the generation of an energy current parallel to an axial magnetic field coupling with opposite signs to left- and right-handed fermions is a non-dissipative transport phenomenon intimately related to the gravitational contribution to the axial anomaly. An axial magnetic field emerges naturally in condensed matter in the so called Weyl semi-metals. We present a measurable implementation of the axial magnetic effect. We show that the edge states of a Weyl semimetal at finite temperature possess a temperature dependent angular momentum in the direction of the vector potential intrinsic to the system. Such a realization provides a plausible context for the experimental confirmation of the elusive gravitational anomaly.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

Vortical waves in a quantum fluid with vector, axial and helical charges. II. Dissipative effects

In this paper, we consider the effect of interactions on the local, average polarization of a quantum plasma of massless fermion particles characterized by vector, axial, and helical quantum numbers. Due to the helical and axial vortical effects, perturbations in the vector charge in a rotating plasma can lead to chiral and helical charge transfer along the direction of the vorticity vector. At the same time, interactions between the plasma constituents lead to the dissipation of the helical charge through helicity-violating pair annihilation (HVPA) processes and of the axial charge through the axial anomaly. We will discuss separately a QED-like plasma, in which we ignore background electromagnetic fields and thus the axial charge is roughly conserved, as well as a QCD-like plasma, where instanton effects lead to the violation of the axial charge conservation, even in the absence of background chromomagnetic fields. The non-conservation of helicity and chirality leads to a gapping of the Helical, Axial and mixed, Axial-Helical vortical waves that prevents their infrared modes from propagating. On the other hand, usual dissipative effects, such as charge diffusion, lead to significant damping of ultraviolet modes. We end this paper with a discussion of the regimes where these vortical waves may propagate.Comment: 56 pages, 14 figures. Part