Onset of classical behaviour after a phase transition

We analyze the onset of classical behaviour in a scalar field after a continuous phase transition, in which the system-field, the long wavelength order parameter of the model, interacts with an environment of its own short-wavelength modes. We compute the decoherence time for the system-field modes from the master equation and compare it with the other time scales of the model. Within our approximations the decoherence time is in general the smallest dynamical time scale. Demanding diagonalisation of the decoherence functional produces identical results. The inclusion of other environmental fields makes diagonalisation occur even earlier.Comment: Seven pages, no figures. Contributed talk to the Second International Workshop DICE2004, Piombino, Italy. To be published in the Brazilian Journal of Physic

Decoherence and Loss of Entanglement in Acoustic Black Holes

We studied the process of decoherence in acoustic black holes. We focused on the ion trap model proposed by Horstmann et al. (Phys. Rev. Lett. 104, 250403 (2010)) but the formalism is general to any experimental implementation. For that particular setup, we computed the decoherence time for the experimental parameters that they proposed. We found that a quantum to classical transition occurs during the measurement and we proposed improved parameters to avoid such a feature. We also studied the entanglement between the Hawking-pair phonons for an acoustic black hole while in contact with a reservoir, through the quantum correlations, showing that they remain strongly correlated for small enough times and temperatures.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures, accepted in Phys. Rev. Let

Hund and pair-hopping signature in transport properties of degenerate nanoscale devices

We investigate the signature of a complete Coulomb interaction in transport properties of double-orbital nanoscale devices. We analyze the specific effects of Hund exchange and pair hopping terms, calculating in particular stability diagrams. It turns out that a crude model, with partial Coulomb interaction, may lead to a misinterpretation of experiments. In addition, it is shown that spectral weight transfers induced by gate and bias voltages strongly influence charge current. The low temperature regime is also investigated, displaying inelastic cotunneling associated with the exchange term, as well as Kondo conductance enhancement.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

Radiatively Induced Breaking of Conformal Symmetry in a Superpotential

Radiatively induced symmetry breaking is considered for a toy model with one scalar and one fermion field unified in a superfield. It is shown that the classical quartic self-interaction of the superfield possesses a quantum infrared singularity. Application of the Coleman-Weinberg mechanism for effective potential leads to the appearance of condensates and masses for both scalar and fermion components. That induces a spontaneous breaking of the initial classical symmetries: the supersymmetry and the conformal one. The energy scales for the scalar and fermion condensates appear to be of the same order, while the renormalization scale is many orders of magnitude higher. A possibility to relate the considered toy model to conformal symmetry breaking in the Standard Model is discussed.Comment: Improved final version with new references and misprints corrected, 9 pages , no figure

Conditions for requiring nonlinear thermoelectric transport theory in nanodevices

In this paper, we examine the conditions under which the nonlinear transport theory is inescapable, when a correlated quantum dot is symmetrically coupled to two leads submitted to temperature and voltage biases. By detailed numerical comparisons between nonlinear and linear currents, we show that the claimed nonlinear behavior in a temperature gradient for the electric current is not so genuine, and the linear theory made at the operating temperature $\bar{T}= (T_H+T_C)/2$ is unexpectedly robust. This is demonstrated for the single impurity Anderson model, in different regimes: resonant tunneling, Coulomb blockade and Kondo regimes

Fluctuations, correlations and the sign problem in QCD

We study the distribution of the phase angle and the magnitude of the fermion determinant as well as its correlation with the chiral condensate and the baryon number for QCD at non-zero quark chemical potential. Results are derived to one-loop order in Chiral Perturbation Theory (ChPT), as well as by analytical and numerical calculations in QCD in one Euclidean dimension. We find a qualitative change of the distribution of the phase of the fermion determinant when the quark mass enters the spectrum of the Dirac operator: it changes from a periodicized Gaussian distribution to a periodicized Lorentzian distribution. We also explore the possibility that some observables remain weakly correlated with the phase of the fermion determinant even though the sign problem is severe. We discuss the practical implications of our findings on lattice simulations of QCD at non-zero baryon chemical potential.Comment: Presented at the XXVII International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory, July 26-31, 2009, Peking University, Beijing, China, 7 page

QCD in One Dimension at Nonzero Chemical Potential

Using an integration formula recently derived by Conrey, Farmer and Zirnbauer, we calculate the expectation value of the phase factor of the fermion determinant for the staggered lattice QCD action in one dimension. We show that the chemical potential can be absorbed into the quark masses; the theory is in the same chiral symmetry class as QCD in three dimensions at zero chemical potential. In the limit of a large number of colors and fixed number of lattice points, chiral symmetry is broken spontaneously, and our results are in agreement with expressions based on a chiral Lagrangian. In this limit, the eigenvalues of the Dirac operator are correlated according to random matrix theory for QCD in three dimensions. The discontinuity of the chiral condensate is due to an alternative to the Banks-Casher formula recently discovered for QCD in four dimensions at nonzero chemical potential. The effect of temperature on the average phase factor is discussed in a schematic random matrix model.Comment: Latex, 23 pages and 5 figures; Added two references and corrected several typo