35,976 research outputs found
Quantum Chaos and Thermalization in Isolated Systems of Interacting Particles
This review is devoted to the problem of thermalization in a small isolated
conglomerate of interacting constituents. A variety of physically important
systems of intensive current interest belong to this category: complex atoms,
molecules (including biological molecules), nuclei, small devices of condensed
matter and quantum optics on nano- and micro-scale, cold atoms in optical
lattices, ion traps. Physical implementations of quantum computers, where there
are many interacting qubits, also fall into this group. Statistical
regularities come into play through inter-particle interactions, which have two
fundamental components: mean field, that along with external conditions, forms
the regular component of the dynamics, and residual interactions responsible
for the complex structure of the actual stationary states. At sufficiently high
level density, the stationary states become exceedingly complicated
superpositions of simple quasiparticle excitations. At this stage, regularities
typical of quantum chaos emerge and bring in signatures of thermalization. We
describe all the stages and the results of the processes leading to
thermalization, using analytical and massive numerical examples for realistic
atomic, nuclear, and spin systems, as well as for models with random
parameters. The structure of stationary states, strength functions of simple
configurations, and concepts of entropy and temperature in application to
isolated mesoscopic systems are discussed in detail. We conclude with a
schematic discussion of the time evolution of such systems to equilibrium.Comment: 69 pages, 31 figure
An exact solution of the inelastic Boltzmann equation for the Couette flow with uniform heat flux
In the steady Couette flow of a granular gas the sign of the heat flux
gradient is governed by the competition between viscous heating and inelastic
cooling. We show from the Boltzmann equation for inelastic Maxwell particles
that a special class of states exists where the viscous heating and the
inelastic cooling exactly compensate each other at every point, resulting in a
uniform heat flux. In this state the (reduced) shear rate is enslaved to the
coefficient of restitution , so that the only free parameter is the
(reduced) thermal gradient . It turns out that the reduced moments of
order are polynomials of degree in , with coefficients that
are nonlinear functions of . In particular, the rheological properties
() are independent of and coincide exactly with those of the
simple shear flow. The heat flux () is linear in the thermal gradient
(generalized Fourier's law), but with an effective thermal conductivity
differing from the Navier--Stokes one. In addition, a heat flux component
parallel to the flow velocity and normal to the thermal gradient exists. The
theoretical predictions are validated by comparison with direct Monte Carlo
simulations for the same model.Comment: 16 pages, 4 figures,1 table; v2: minor change
Effects of a CPT-even and Lorentz-violating nonminimal coupling on the electron-positron scattering
We propose a new \emph{CPT}-even and Lorentz-violating nonminimal coupling
between fermions and Abelian gauge fields involving the CPT-even tensor
of the standard model extension. We thus
investigate its effects on the cross section of the electron-positron
scattering by analyzing the process .
Such a study was performed for the parity-odd and parity-even nonbirefringent
components of the Lorentz-violating tensor.
Finally, by using experimental data available in the literature, we have
imposed upper bounds as tight as on the magnitude of the
CPT-even and Lorentz-violating parameters while nonminimally coupled.Comment: LaTeX2e, 06 pages, 01 figure
Radiative generation of the CPT-even gauge term of the SME from a dimension-five nonminimal coupling term
In this letter we show for the first time that the usual CPT-even gauge term
of the standard model extension (SME) can be radiatively generated, in a gauge
invariant level, in the context of a modified QED endowed with a dimension-five
nonminimal coupling term recently proposed in the literature. As a consequence,
the existing upper bounds on the coefficients of the tensor can be
used improve the bounds on the magnitude of the nonminimal coupling,
by the factors or The nonminimal coupling
also generates higher-order derivative contributions to the gauge field
effective action quadratic terms.Comment: Revtex style, two columns, 6 pages, revised final version to be
published in the Physics Letters B (2013
Impurity in a granular gas under nonlinear Couette flow
We study in this work the transport properties of an impurity immersed in a
granular gas under stationary nonlinear Couette flow. The starting point is a
kinetic model for low-density granular mixtures recently proposed by the
authors [Vega Reyes F et al. 2007 Phys. Rev. E 75 061306]. Two routes have been
considered. First, a hydrodynamic or normal solution is found by exploiting a
formal mapping between the kinetic equations for the gas particles and for the
impurity. We show that the transport properties of the impurity are
characterized by the ratio between the temperatures of the impurity and gas
particles and by five generalized transport coefficients: three related to the
momentum flux (a nonlinear shear viscosity and two normal stress differences)
and two related to the heat flux (a nonlinear thermal conductivity and a cross
coefficient measuring a component of the heat flux orthogonal to the thermal
gradient). Second, by means of a Monte Carlo simulation method we numerically
solve the kinetic equations and show that our hydrodynamic solution is valid in
the bulk of the fluid when realistic boundary conditions are used. Furthermore,
the hydrodynamic solution applies to arbitrarily (inside the continuum regime)
large values of the shear rate, of the inelasticity, and of the rest of
parameters of the system. Preliminary simulation results of the true Boltzmann
description show the reliability of the nonlinear hydrodynamic solution of the
kinetic model. This shows again the validity of a hydrodynamic description for
granular flows, even under extreme conditions, beyond the Navier-Stokes domain.Comment: 23 pages, 11 figures; v2: Preliminary DSMC results from the Boltzmann
equation included, Fig. 11 is ne
Localization and the effects of symmetries in the thermalization properties of one-dimensional quantum systems
We study how the proximity to an integrable point or to localization as one
approaches the atomic limit, as well as the mixing of symmetries in the chaotic
domain, may affect the onset of thermalization in finite one-dimensional
systems. We consider systems of hard-core bosons at half-filling with nearest
neighbor hopping and interaction, and next-nearest neighbor interaction. The
latter breaks integrability and induces a ground-state superfluid to insulator
transition. By full exact diagonalization, we study chaos indicators and
few-body observables. We show that when different symmetry sectors are mixed,
chaos indicators associated with the eigenvectors, contrary to those related to
the eigenvalues, capture the onset of chaos. The results for the complexity of
the eigenvectors and for the expectation values of few-body observables confirm
the validity of the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis in the chaotic regime,
and therefore the occurrence of thermalization. We also study the properties of
the off-diagonal matrix elements of few-body observables in relation to the
transition from integrability to chaos and from chaos to localization.Comment: 12 pages, 13 figures, as published (Fig.09 was corrected in this
final version
Nonlinear viscosity and velocity distribution function in a simple longitudinal flow
A compressible flow characterized by a velocity field is
analyzed by means of the Boltzmann equation and the Bhatnagar-Gross-Krook
kinetic model. The sign of the control parameter (the longitudinal deformation
rate ) distinguishes between an expansion () and a condensation ()
phenomenon. The temperature is a decreasing function of time in the former
case, while it is an increasing function in the latter. The non-Newtonian
behavior of the gas is described by a dimensionless nonlinear viscosity
, that depends on the dimensionless longitudinal rate . The
Chapman-Enskog expansion of in powers of is seen to be only
asymptotic (except in the case of Maxwell molecules). The velocity distribution
function is also studied. At any value of , it exhibits an algebraic
high-velocity tail that is responsible for the divergence of velocity moments.
For sufficiently negative , moments of degree four and higher may diverge,
while for positive the divergence occurs in moments of degree equal to or
larger than eight.Comment: 18 pages (Revtex), including 5 figures (eps). Analysis of the heat
flux plus other minor changes added. Revised version accepted for publication
in PR
Natural inflation in 5D warped backgrounds
In light of the five-year data from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe
(WMAP), we discuss models of inflation based on the pseudo Nambu-Goldstone
potential predicted in five-dimensional gauge theories for different
backgrounds: flat Minkowski, anti-de Sitter, and dilatonic spacetime. In this
framework, the inflaton potential is naturally flat due to shift symmetries and
the mass scales associated with it are related to 5D geometrical quantities.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figures; matches version to appear in Phys. Rev.
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