115 research outputs found
Fluctuations in the level density of a Fermi gas
We present a theory that accurately describes the counting of excited states
of a noninteracting fermionic gas. At high excitation energies the results
reproduce Bethe's theory. At low energies oscillatory corrections to the
many--body density of states, related to shell effects, are obtained. The
fluctuations depend non-trivially on energy and particle number. Universality
and connections with Poisson statistics and random matrix theory are
established for regular and chaotic single--particle motion.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figur
Universality in the flooding of regular islands by chaotic states
We investigate the structure of eigenstates in systems with a mixed phase
space in terms of their projection onto individual regular tori. Depending on
dynamical tunneling rates and the Heisenberg time, regular states disappear and
chaotic states flood the regular tori. For a quantitative understanding we
introduce a random matrix model. The resulting statistical properties of
eigenstates as a function of an effective coupling strength are in very good
agreement with numerical results for a kicked system. We discuss the
implications of these results for the applicability of the semiclassical
eigenfunction hypothesis.Comment: 11 pages, 12 figure
Average ground-state energy of finite Fermi systems
Semiclassical theories like the Thomas-Fermi and Wigner-Kirkwood methods give
a good description of the smooth average part of the total energy of a Fermi
gas in some external potential when the chemical potential is varied. However,
in systems with a fixed number of particles N, these methods overbind the
actual average of the quantum energy as N is varied. We describe a theory that
accounts for this effect. Numerical illustrations are discussed for fermions
trapped in a harmonic oscillator potential and in a hard wall cavity, and for
self-consistent calculations of atomic nuclei. In the latter case, the
influence of deformations on the average behavior of the energy is also
considered.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figure
The Statistics of the Points Where Nodal Lines Intersect a Reference Curve
We study the intersection points of a fixed planar curve with the
nodal set of a translationally invariant and isotropic Gaussian random field
\Psi(\bi{r}) and the zeros of its normal derivative across the curve. The
intersection points form a discrete random process which is the object of this
study. The field probability distribution function is completely specified by
the correlation G(|\bi{r}-\bi{r}'|) = .
Given an arbitrary G(|\bi{r}-\bi{r}'|), we compute the two point
correlation function of the point process on the line, and derive other
statistical measures (repulsion, rigidity) which characterize the short and
long range correlations of the intersection points. We use these statistical
measures to quantitatively characterize the complex patterns displayed by
various kinds of nodal networks. We apply these statistics in particular to
nodal patterns of random waves and of eigenfunctions of chaotic billiards. Of
special interest is the observation that for monochromatic random waves, the
number variance of the intersections with long straight segments grows like , as opposed to the linear growth predicted by the percolation model,
which was successfully used to predict other long range nodal properties of
that field.Comment: 33 pages, 13 figures, 1 tabl
Avoided intersections of nodal lines
We consider real eigen-functions of the Schr\"odinger operator in 2-d. The
nodal lines of separable systems form a regular grid, and the number of nodal
crossings equals the number of nodal domains. In contrast, for wave functions
of non integrable systems nodal intersections are rare, and for random waves,
the expected number of intersections in any finite area vanishes. However,
nodal lines display characteristic avoided crossings which we study in the
present work. We define a measure for the avoidance range and compute its
distribution for the random waves ensemble. We show that the avoidance range
distribution of wave functions of chaotic systems follow the expected random
wave distributions, whereas for wave functions of classically integrable but
quantum non-separable wave functions, the distribution is quite different.
Thus, the study of the avoidance distribution provides more support to the
conjecture that nodal structures of chaotic systems are reproduced by the
predictions of the random waves ensemble.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figure
Casimir force between integrable and chaotic pistons
We have computed numerically the Casimir force between two identical pistons
inside a very long cylinder, considering different shapes for the pistons. The
pistons can be considered as quantum billiards, whose spectrum determines the
vacuum force. The smooth part of the spectrum fixes the force at short
distances, and depends only on geometric quantities like the area or perimeter
of the piston. However, correcting terms to the force, coming from the
oscillating part of the spectrum which is related to the classical dynamics of
the billiard, are qualitatively different for classically integrable or chaotic
systems. We have performed a detailed numerical analysis of the corresponding
Casimir force for pistons with regular and chaotic classical dynamics. For a
family of stadium billiards, we have found that the correcting part of the
Casimir force presents a sudden change in the transition from regular to
chaotic geometries.Comment: 13 pages, 10 figure
Geometric characterization of nodal domains: the area-to-perimeter ratio
In an attempt to characterize the distribution of forms and shapes of nodal
domains in wave functions, we define a geometric parameter - the ratio
between the area of a domain and its perimeter, measured in units of the
wavelength . We show that the distribution function can
distinguish between domains in which the classical dynamics is regular or
chaotic. For separable surfaces, we compute the limiting distribution, and show
that it is supported by an interval, which is independent of the properties of
the surface. In systems which are chaotic, or in random-waves, the
area-to-perimeter distribution has substantially different features which we
study numerically. We compare the features of the distribution for chaotic wave
functions with the predictions of the percolation model to find agreement, but
only for nodal domains which are big with respect to the wavelength scale. This
work is also closely related to, and provides a new point of view on
isoperimetric inequalities.Comment: 22 pages, 11 figure
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