Related papers: Surface instability and isotopic impurities in qua…
Experiments and computer simulations have shown that the melt-ing temperature of solid hydrogen drops with pressure above about 65 GPa, suggesting that a liquid state might exist at low temperatures. It has also been suggested that this low…
Jamming is a geometric phase transition occurring in dense particle systems in the absence of temperature. We use computer simulations to analyse the effect of thermal fluctuations on several signatures of the transition. We show that…
Inverse melting is the phenomenon, observed in both Helium isotopes, by which a crystal melts when cooled at constant pressure. I investigate discrete-space analogs of inverse melting by means of two instances of a triangular-lattice-gas…
The contrasting melting behavior of different surface orientations in metals can be explained in terms of a repulsive or attractive effective interaction between the solid-liquid and the liquid-vapor interface. We show how a crucial part of…
We suggest that below a certain temperature T_k, the free energy for the creation of kinks-antikinks pairs in the dislocation network of solid He4 becomes negative. The underlying physical mechanism is the related liberation of vacancies…
We give an approach for studying quantum gravity effects on black hole thermodynamics. This combines a quantum framework for gravitational collapse with quasi-local definitions of energy and surface gravity. Our arguments suggest that (i)…
We investigate the effects of localized integrability-breaking perturbations on the large times dynamics of thermodynamic quantum and classical systems. In particular, we suddenly activate an impurity which breaks the integrability of an…
Impurities that are present on the surface of a metal often have internal degrees of freedom. Inelastic scattering due to impurities can be revealed by observing local features seen in the tunneling current with scanning tunneling…
We present a new method to detect Fermi surface instabilities for interacting systems at finite temperature. We first apply it to a list of cases studied previously, recovering already known results in a very economic way, and obtaining…
We study melting in a two-dimensional system of classical particles with Gaussian-core interactions in disordered environments. The pure system validates the conventional two-step melting with a hexatic phase intervening between the solid…
The local electron temperature distribution is calculated considering a two dimensional electron system in the integer quantum Hall regime in presence of disorder and uniform perpendicular magnetic fields. We solve thermal-hydrodynamical…
We examine the stability of a pinned superfluid helium vortex line by measuring its persistence at elevated temperatures. Each vortex terminates at the surface of the container, at either a rounded bump or a conical indentation. We find…
Large-scale atomistic calculations, using empirical potentials for modeling semiconductors, have been performed on a stressed system with linear surface defects like steps. Although the elastic limits of systems with surface defects remain…
Local quantum coherence in a two-level system (TLS) is typically generated via time-dependent driving. However, it can also emerge autonomously from symmetry-breaking interactions between the TLS and its surrounding environment at a low…
We show that the interaction of a particle with a directionally solidified interface induces the onset of morphological instability provided that the particle-interface distance falls below a critical value. This instability occurs at…
We have carried out torsional oscillator experiments on solid $^4$He at temperatures between 1.3K and 1.9K. We discovered phenomena similar to those observed at temperatures below 0.2K, which currently are under debate regarding their…
Topological defects can be formed during inflation by phase transitions as well as by quantum nucleation. We study the effect of the expansion of the Universe on the internal structure of the defects. We look for stationary solutions to the…
The compressibility of solid helium (3He and 4He) in the hcp and fcc phases has been studied by path-integral Monte Carlo. Simulations were carried out in both canonical (NVT) and isothermal-isobaric (NPT) ensembles at temperatures between…
We study the finite temperature properties of quantum magnets close to a continuous quantum phase transition between two distinct valence bond solid phases in two spatial dimension. Previous work has shown that such a second order quantum…
Levitating charged particles in ultra-high vacuum provides a preeminent platform for quantum information processing, for quantum-enhanced force and torque sensing, for probing physics beyond the standard model, and for high-mass tests of…