Asymmetric tunneling, Andreev reflection and dynamic conductance spectra in strongly correlated metals

Landau Fermi liquid theory predicts that the differential conductivity between metallic point and metal is a symmetric function of voltage bias V. This symmetry holds if the particle-hole symmetry is preserved. We show that the situation can be different when one of the two metals is a strongly correlated one whose electronic system can be represented by a heavy fermion liquid. When the heavy fermion liquid undergoes fermion condensation quantum phase transition, the particle-hole symmetry is violated making both the differential tunneling conductivity and dynamic conductance asymmetric as a function of applied voltage. This asymmetry can be observed when the strongly correlated metal is either normal or superconducting. We show that at small values of $V the asymmetric part of the dynamic conductance is a linear function of V and inversely proportional to the maximum value of the gap and does not depend on temperature provided that metal is superconducting, when it becomes normal the asymmetric part diminishes at elevated temperatures.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figure

Pair Production Beyond the Schwinger Formula in Time-Dependent Electric Fields

We investigate electron-positron pair production in pulse-shaped electric background fields using a non-Markovian quantum kinetic equation. We identify a pulse-length range for subcritical fields still in the nonperturbative regime where the number of produced pairs significantly exceeds that of a naive expectation based on the Schwinger formula. From a conceptual viewpoint, we find a remarkable quantitative agreement between the (real-time) quantum kinetic approach and the (imaginary-time) effective action approach.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures. Typos corrected and references added, PRD Versio

Band-aid for information loss from black holes

We summarize, simplify and extend recent work showing that small deviations from exact thermality in Hawking radiation, first uncovered by Kraus and Wilczek, have the capacity to carry off the maximum information content of a black hole. This goes a considerable way toward resolving a long-standing "information-loss paradox"

Finite-size fluctuations and photon statistics near the polariton condensation transition in a single-mode microcavity

We consider polariton condensation in a generalized Dicke model, describing a single-mode cavity containing quantum dots, and extend our previous mean-field theory to allow for finite-size fluctuations. Within the fluctuation-dominated regime the correlation functions differ from their (trivial) mean-field values. We argue that the low-energy physics of the model, which determines the photon statistics in this fluctuation-dominated crossover regime, is that of the (quantum) anharmonic oscillator. The photon statistics at the crossover are different in the high- and low- temperature limits. When the temperature is high enough for quantum effects to be neglected we recover behavior similar to that of a conventional laser. At low enough temperatures, however, we find qualitatively different behavior due to quantum effects.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures. v2: Revised version with minor corrections (typos, added reference, correction in argument following Eq. 25). v3: further typos correcte

Virtual Processes and Superradiance in Spin-Boson Models

We consider spin-boson models composed by a single bosonic mode and an ensemble of $N$ identical two-level atoms. The situation where the coupling between the bosonic mode and the atoms generates real and virtual processes is studied, where the whole system is in thermal equilibrium with a reservoir at temperature $\beta^{-1}$. Phase transitions from ordinary fluorescence to superradiant phase in three different models is investigated. First a model where the coupling between the bosonic mode and the $j-th$ atom is via the pseudo-spin operator $\sigma^{,z}_{(j)}$ is studied. Second, we investigate the generalized Dicke model, introducing different coupling constants between the single mode bosonic field and the environment, $g_{1}$ and $g_{2}$ for rotating and counter-rotating terms, respectively. Finally it is considered a modified version of the generalized Dicke model with intensity-dependent coupling in the rotating terms. In the first model the zero mode contributes to render the canonical entropy a negative quantity for low temperatures. The last two models presents phase transitions, even when only Hamiltonian terms which generates virtual processes are considered

Fermion condensation: a strange idea successfully explaining behavior of numerous objects in Nature

Strongly correlated Fermi systems are among the most intriguing, best experimentally studied and fundamental systems in physics. These are, however, in defiance of theoretical understanding. The ideas based on the concepts like Kondo lattice and involving quantum and thermal fluctuations at a quantum critical point have been used to explain the unusual physics. Alas, being suggested to describe one property, these approaches fail to explain the others. This means a real crisis in theory suggesting that there is a hidden fundamental law of nature, which remains to be recognized. A theory of fermion condensation quantum phase transition, preserving the extended quasiparticles paradigm and intimately related to unlimited growth of the effective mass as a function of temperature, magnetic field etc, is capable to resolve the problem. We discuss the construction of the theory and show that it delivers theoretical explanations of vast majority of experimental results in strongly correlated systems such as heavy-fermion metals and quasi-two-dimensional Fermi systems.Comment: 12 pages, 14 figures, Invited talk at Bogolyubov Kyiv Conference, Modern Problems of Theoretical and Mathematical Physics, 2009, Kyiv, Ukrain