Related papers: On the Thermodynamic Origin of the Quantum Potenti…
The nonzero ground-state energy of the quantum mechanical harmonic oscillator implies quantum fluctuations around the minimum of the potential with the mean square value proportional to Planck's constant. In classical mechanics thermal…
Quantum pumping holds great potential for future applications in micro- and nanotechnology. Its main feature, dissipationless charge transport, is theoretically possible via several different mechanisms. However, since no unambiguous…
The standard {\em system-plus-reservoir} approach used in the study of dissipative systems can be meaningfully generalized to a dissipative coupling involving the momentum, instead of the coordinate: the corresponding equation of motion…
It is demonstrated that quantum systems classically exhibiting strong and homogeneous chaos in a bounded region of the phase space can induce a global quantum diffusion. As an ideal model system, a small quantum chaos with finite Hilbert…
We present and discuss, at a general level, new mathematical results on the spatial nonuniformity of thermal quantum fields coupled minimally to static background electromagnetic potentials. Two distinct examples are worked through in some…
We apply the large-deviation method to study trajectories in dissipative quantum systems. We show that in the long time limit the statistics of quantum jumps can be understood from thermodynamic arguments by exploiting the analogy between…
The vacuum is the lowest energy state of a field in a certain region of space. This definition implies that no particles can be present in the vacuum state. In classical physics, the only features of vacuum are those of its geometry. For…
Quantum mechanical motion of a particle in a periodic asymmetric potential is studied theoretically at zero temperature. It is shown based on semi-classical approximation that the tunneling probability from one local minimum to the next…
We study a quantum particle propagating through a ``quantum mechanically chaotic'' background, described by parametric random matrices with only short range spatial correlations. The particle is found to exhibit turbulent-like diffusion…
Quantum coherence, the ability of a quantum system to be in a superposition of orthogonal quantum states, is a distinct feature of the quantum mechanics, thus marking a deviation from classical physics. Coherence finds its applications in…
The Euclidean space, obtained by the analytical continuation of time, to an imaginary time, is used to model thermal systems. In this work, it is taken a step further to systems with spatial thermal variation, by developing an equivalence…
A new model of quantum mechanics, Classical Quantum Mechanics, is based on the (nearly heretical) postulate that electrons are physical objects that obey classical physical laws. Indeed, ionization energies, excitation energies etc. are…
We report on a microscopic theory of quantum friction. Our approach investigates the interplay between the dispersive response and the relative center-of-mass motion of two ground-state atoms. This coupling yields a quantum force, which can…
In classical thermodynamics the Euler relation is an expression for the internal energy as a sum of the products of canonical pairs of extensive and intensive variables. For quantum systems the situation is more intricate, since one has to…
Some interactions between classical or quantum fields and matter are known to be irreversible processes. Here we associate an entropy to the electromagnetic field from well-known notions of statistical quantum mechanics, in particular the…
Quantum mechanics has many counter-intuitive consequences which contradict our intuition which is based on classical physics. Here we discuss a special aspect of quantum mechanics, namely the possibility of entanglement between two or more…
A microscopic formalism to calculate thermal transport coefficients is presented based on a thermal vector potential, whose time-derivative is related to a thermal force. The formalism is free from unphysical divergences reported to arise…
A sweep through a quantum phase transition by means of a time-dependent external parameter (e.g., pressure) entails non-equilibrium phenomena associated with a break-down of adiabaticity: At the critical point, the energy gap vanishes and…
The thermodynamic influence of quantum probing on an object is studied. Here, quantum probing is understood as a pre-measurement based on a non-demolition interaction, which records some information of the probed object, but does not change…
The electromagnetic vacuum is known to have energy. It has been recently argued that the quantum vacuum can possess momentum, that adds up to the momentum of matter. This ``Casimir momentum'' is closely related to the Casimir effect, in…