Classical and quantum aspects of tomography

We present here a set of lecture notes on tomography. The Radon transform and some of its generalizations are considered and their inversion formulae are proved. We will also look from a group-theoretc point of view at the more general problem of expressing a function on a manifold in terms of its integrals over certain submanifolds. Finally, the extension of the tomographic maps to the quantum case is considered, as a Weyl-Wigner quantization of the classical case.Comment: 32 pages, 9 figure

On the derivation of the GKLS equation for weakly coupled systems

We consider the reduced dynamics of a small quantum system in interaction with a reservoir when the initial state is factorized. We present a rigorous derivation of a GKLS master equation in the weak-coupling limit for a generic bath, which is not assumed to have a bosonic or fermionic nature, and whose reference state is not necessarily thermal. The crucial assumption is a reservoir state endowed with a mixing property: the n-point connected correlation function of the interaction must be asymptotically bounded by the product of two-point functions (clustering property).Comment: 26 pages, 2 figure

Self-adjoint extensions and unitary operators on the boundary

We establish a bijection between the self-adjoint extensions of the Laplace operator on a bounded regular domain and the unitary operators on the boundary. Each unitary encodes a specific relation between the boundary value of the function and its normal derivative. This bijection sets up a characterization of all physically admissible dynamics of a nonrelativistic quantum particle confined in a cavity. More- over, this correspondence is discussed also at the level of quadratic forms. Finally, the connection between this parametrization of the extensions and the classical one, in terms of boundary self-adjoint operators on closed subspaces, is shown.Comment: 16 page

Quantum cavities with alternating boundary conditions

We consider the quantum dynamics of a free nonrelativistic particle moving in a cavity and we analyze the effect of a rapid switching between two different boundary conditions. We show that this procedure induces, in the limit of infinitely frequent switchings, a new effective dynamics in the cavity related to a novel boundary condition. We obtain a dynamical composition law for boundary conditions which gives the emerging boundary condition in terms of the two initial ones

Tomography: mathematical aspects and applications

In this article we present a review of the Radon transform and the instability of the tomographic reconstruction process. We show some new mathematical results in tomography obtained by a variational formulation of the reconstruction problem based on the minimization of a Mumford-Shah type functional. Finally, we exhibit a physical interpretation of this new technique and discuss some possible generalizations.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figure

Random walks in a one-dimensional L\'evy random environment

We consider a generalization of a one-dimensional stochastic process known in the physical literature as L\'evy-Lorentz gas. The process describes the motion of a particle on the real line in the presence of a random array of marked points, whose nearest-neighbor distances are i.i.d. and long-tailed (with finite mean but possibly infinite variance). The motion is a continuous-time, constant-speed interpolation of a symmetric random walk on the marked points. We first study the quenched random walk on the point process, proving the CLT and the convergence of all the accordingly rescaled moments. Then we derive the quenched and annealed CLTs for the continuous-time process.Comment: Final version to be published in J. Stat. Phys. 23 pages. (Changes from v1: Theorem 2.4 and Corollary 2.6 have been removed.

Universality of the weak pushed-to-pulled transition in systems with repulsive interactions

We consider a $d$-dimensional gas in canonical equilibrium under pairwise screened Coulomb repulsion and external confinement, and subject to a volume constraint. We show that its excess free energy displays a generic third-order singularity separating the pushed and pulled phases, irrespective of range of the pairwise interaction, dimension and details of the confining potential. The explicit expression of the excess free energy is universal and interpolates between the Coulomb (long-range) and the delta (zero-range) interaction. The order parameter of this transition - the electrostatic pressure generated by the surface excess charge - is determined by invoking a fundamental energy conservation argument.Comment: 12 pages, 2 figures. Revised versio

Universality of the third-order phase transition in the constrained Coulomb gas

The free energy at zero temperature of Coulomb gas systems in generic dimension is considered as a function of a volume constraint. The transition between the 'pulled' and the 'pushed' phases is characterised as a third-order phase transition, in all dimensions and for a rather large class of isotropic potentials. This suggests that the critical behaviour of the free energy at the 'pulled-to-pushed' transition may be universal, i.e., to some extent independent of the dimension and the details of the pairwise interaction.Comment: 18 pages, 2 figures. v2: References adde

The semiclassical limit of a quantum Zeno dynamics

Motivated by a quantum Zeno dynamics in a cavity quantum electrodynamics setting, we study the asymptotics of a family of symbols corresponding to a truncated momentum operator, in the semiclassical limit of vanishing Planck constant $\hbar\to0$ and large quantum number $N\to\infty$, with $\hbar N$ kept fixed. In a suitable topology, the limit is the discontinuous symbol $p\chi_D(x,p)$ where $\chi_D$ is the characteristic function of the classically permitted region $D$ in phase space. A refined analysis shows that the symbol is asymptotically close to the function $p\chi_D^{(N)}(x,p)$, where $\chi_D^{(N)}$ is a smooth version of $\chi_D$ related to the integrated Airy function. We also discuss the limit from a dynamical point of view.Comment: 28 pages, 5 figure