Related papers: The Quantum Nature of a Nuclear Phase Transition
The broad range of accumulated experimental data on the binding energies for single-particle states in nuclei is examined as a function of the constituent number of neutrons and protons and an unexpectedly simple pattern emerges. The…
Nuclear liquid-gas phase transitions are investigated in the framework of static antisymmetrized molecular dynamics (static AMD) model under either a constant volume or a constant pressure. A deuteron quadrupole momentum fluctuation…
Liquid helium under negative pressures represents a unique possibility for studying nucleation and growth dynamics of cavities at low temperatures down to absolute zero. We analyze the growth dynamics of cavities and determine the…
We investigate a new mechanism for the cosmological QCD phase transition: inhomogeneous nucleation. The primordial temperature fluctuations, measured to be $\delta T/T \sim 10^{-5}$, are larger than the tiny temperature interval, in which…
We theoretically investigate the nucleation of liquid droplets from vapor in the presence of a charged spherical particle. Due to field gradients, sufficiently close to the critical point of the vapor--gas system, the charge destabilizes…
The liquid-gas phase transition in hot asymmetric nuclear matter is studied within density-dependent relativistic mean-field models where the density dependence is introduced according to the Brown-Rho scaling and constrained by available…
The dynamics of weak vs. strong first order phase transitions is investigated numerically for 2+1 dimensional scalar field models. It is argued that the change from a weak to a strong transition is itself a (second order) phase transition,…
Dynamical quantum phase transitions can occur following quenches in quantum systems when the rate function, a dynamical analogue of the free energy, becomes non-analytic at critical times. Here we exhaustively investigate in an exemplary…
The influence of the nuclear symmetry energy on the formation of a mixed quark-nucleon phase in neutron star cores is studied. We use simple parametrizations of the nuclear matter equation of state, and the bag model for the quark phase.…
Recent analyses of multifragmentation in terms of Fisher's model and the related construction of a phase diagram brings forth the problem of the true existence of the vapor phase and the meaning of its associated pressure. Our analysis…
Microscopic signatures of nuclear ground-state shape phase transitions in Nd isotopes are studied using excitation spectra and collective wave functions obtained by diagonalization of a five-dimensional Hamiltonian for quadrupole…
We study a Heisenberg S=1/2 ring-exchange antiferromagnet which exhibits a quantum phase transition from a spontaneously dimerized (valence bond solid) phase to a magnetically ordered (Neel) phase. We argue that the quantum transition is of…
A quantum phase transition that was recently observed in a high-mobility silicon MOSFET is analyzed in terms of a scaling theory. The most striking characteristic of the transition is a divergence of the thermopower, according to an inverse…
Atomic nuclei are quantum many-body systems of protons and neutrons held together by strong nuclear forces. Under the proper conditions, nuclei can break into two (sometimes three) fragments which will subsequently decay by emitting…
We study the physics of quantum phase transitions from the perspective of non-equilibrium thermodynamics. For first order quantum phase transitions, we find that the average work done per quench in crossing the critical point is…
Phase transitions ruled by nucleation and growth can occur by nonrandom arrangement of nuclei. This is verified, for instance, in thin film growth at solid surfaces by vapor condensation or by electrodeposition where, around each nucleus, a…
An interacting one-dimensional electron system, the Luttinger liquid, is distinct from the "conventional" Fermi liquids formed by interacting electrons in two and three dimensions. Some of its most spectacular properties are revealed in the…
Quantum criticality describes the collective fluctuations of matter undergoing a second-order phase transition at zero temperature. It is being discussed in a number of strongly correlated electron systems. A prototype case occurs in the…
Under hydrostatic pressure, the ground state of a two-dimensional electron gas at $\nu=5/2$ changes from a fractional quantum Hall state to the stripe phase. By measuring the energy gap of the fractional quantum Hall state and of the onset…
A quantum system can undergo a continuous phase transition at the absolute zero of temperature as some parameter entering its Hamiltonian is varied. These transitions are particularly interesting for, in contrast to their classical finite…