Quantum Markovian activated surface diffusion of interacting adsorbates

A quantum Markovian activated atom-surface diffusion model with interacting adsorbates is proposed for the intermediate scattering function, which is shown to be complex-valued and factorizable into a classical-like and a quantum-mechanical factor. Applications to the diffusion of Na atoms on flat (weakly corrugated) and corrugated-Cu(001) surfaces at different coverages and surface temperatures are analyzed. Quantum effects are relevant to diffusion at low surface temperatures and coverages even for relatively heavy particles, such as Na atoms, where transport by tunneling is absent.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figure

Vacuum fluctuations and the conditional homodyne detection of squeezed light

Conditional homodyne detection of quadrature squeezing is compared with standard nonconditional detection. Whereas the latter identifies nonclassicality in a quantitative way, as a reduction of the noise power below the shot noise level, conditional detection makes a qualitative distinction between vacuum state squeezing and squeezed classical noise. Implications of this comparison for the realistic interpretation of vacuum fluctuations (stochastic electrodynamics) are discussed.Comment: 14 pages, 7 figures, to appear in J. Opt. B: Quantum Semiclass. Op

Phase-dependent exciton transport and energy harvesting from thermal environments

Non-Markovian effects in the evolution of open quantum systems have recently attracted widespread interest, particularly in the context of assessing the efficiency of energy and charge transfer in nanoscale biomolecular networks and quantum technologies. With the aid of many-body simulation methods, we uncover and analyse an ultrafast environmental process that causes energy relaxation in the reduced system to depend explicitly on the phase relation of the initial state preparation. Remarkably, for particular phases and system parameters, the net energy flow is uphill, transiently violating the principle of detailed balance, and implying that energy is spontaneously taken up from the environment. A theoretical analysis reveals that non-secular contributions, significant only within the environmental correlation time, underlie this effect. This suggests that environmental energy harvesting will be observable across a wide range of coupled quantum systems.Comment: 5 + 4 pages, 3 + 2 figures. Comments welcom

Dynamics of an inhomogeneous quantum phase transition

We argue that in a second order quantum phase transition driven by an inhomogeneous quench density of quasiparticle excitations is suppressed when velocity at which a critical point propagates across a system falls below a threshold velocity equal to the Kibble-Zurek correlation length times the energy gap at freeze-out divided by $\hbar$. This general prediction is supported by an analytic solution in the quantum Ising chain. Our results suggest, in particular, that adiabatic quantum computers can be made more adiabatic when operated in an "inhomogeneous" way.Comment: 7 pages; version to appear in a special issue of New J. Phy

Homogenization of the one-dimensional wave equation

We present a method for two-scale model derivation of the periodic homogenization of the one-dimensional wave equation in a bounded domain. It allows for analyzing the oscillations occurring on both microscopic and macroscopic scales. The novelty reported here is on the asymptotic behavior of high frequency waves and especially on the boundary conditions of the homogenized equation. Numerical simulations are reported

Quantification of aircraft trajectory prediction uncertainty using polynomial chaos expansions

A novel approach to quantify the uncertainty associated with any aircraft trajectory prediction based on the application of the Polynomial Chaos (PC) theory is presented. The proposed method relies on univariate polynomial descriptions of the uncertainty sources affecting the trajectory prediction process. Those descriptions are used to build the multivariate polynomial expansions that represent the variability of the aircraft state variables along the predicted trajectory. A case study compares the results obtained by a classical Monte Carlo approach with those generated by applying the so-called arbitrary Polynomial Chaos Expansions (aPCE). The results provided herein lead to conclude that this new methodology can be used to accurately quantify trajectory prediction uncertainty with a very low computational effort, enabling the capability of computing the uncertainty of the individual trajectories of a traffic sample of thousands flights within very short time intervals

Line Shape Broadening in Surface Diffusion of Interacting Adsorbates with Quasielastic He Atom Scattering

The experimental line shape broadening observed in adsorbate diffusion on metal surfaces with increasing coverage is usually related to the nature of the adsorbate-adsorbate interaction. Here we show that this broadening can also be understood in terms of a fully stochastic model just considering two noise sources: (i) a Gaussian white noise accounting for the surface friction, and (ii) a shot noise replacing the physical adsorbate-adsorbate interaction potential. Furthermore, contrary to what could be expected, for relatively weak adsorbate-substrate interactions the opposite effect is predicted: line shapes get narrower with increasing coverage.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures (slightly revised version

Dispersion cancellation and quantum eraser experiments analyzed in the Wigner function formalism

We extend the Wigner function formalism for parametric down-conversion experiments presented in a previous paper [Phys. Rev. A 55 3879 (1997)] to experiments involving propagation through a dispersive medium [Steinberg et al., Phys. Rev. A 45, 6659 (1992)], and polarization [Kwiat et al., Phys. Rev. A 45, 7729 (1992)]