Related papers: Orthogonality Catastrophe in Quantum Sticking
We study the backreaction of quantum fields induced through the vacuum polarization and the conformal anomaly on the collapse of a thin shell of dust. It is shown that the final fate of the collapse process depends on the physical…
The momentum transfer between the normal components to an index direction in the collision of an atom with a periodic surface is investigated. For fast atoms with grazing angle of incidence there is an interval of azimuthal angles around…
We discuss some seemingly paradoxical yet valid effects of quantum physics in information processing. Firstly, we argue that the act of ``doing nothing'' on part of an entangled quantum system is a highly non-trivial operation and that it…
Nuclear fission presents a unique example of quantum entanglement in strongly interacting many-body systems. A heavy nucleus can split into hundreds of combinations of two complementary fragments in the fission process. The entanglement of…
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…
We investigate the frictional forces due to quantum fluctuations acting on a small sphere rotating near a surface. At zero temperature, we find the frictional force near a surface to be several orders of magnitude larger than that for the…
It is often said that quantum and classical randomness are of different nature, the former being ontological and the latter epistemological. However, so far the question of "What is quantum in quantum randomness", i.e. what is the impact of…
Black holes are capable of reflection: there is a finite probability for any particle that approaches the event horizon to bounce back. The albedo of the black hole depends on its temperature and the energy of the incoming particle. The…
We present a detailed numerical study of the orthogonality catastrophe exponent for a one-dimensional lattice model of spinless fermions with nearest neighbor interaction using the density matrix remormalization group algorithm. Keeping up…
Numerous soft materials jam into an amorphous solid at high packing fraction. This non-equilibrium phase transition is best understood in the context of a model system in which particles repel elastically when they overlap. Recently,…
We have discovered that two significant quantities within hard particle systems: the probability of successfully inserting an additional particle at random and the scale distribution function, can be connected by a concise relation. We…
In this paper, we are exploring the feasibility of observing non-classical features of gravity in a low-energy regime in a quantum optomechanical experiment. If gravity is to have an underlying quantum nature, it should hold the most…
A mathematical continuum limit of the interaction energy of a random particle chain is shown to yield new insight into the effect of microscopic heterogeneities on macroscopic fracture laws in brittle materials. We derive a formula which…
We show that several interpretations of quantum mechanics admit an ontology of objects and events. This ontology reduces the breach between mind and matter. When humans act, their actions do not appear explainable in mechanical terms but…
Quantum mechanics introduces the possibility for particles to move in a direction opposite to their momentum -- a counter-intuitive and classically impossible phenomenon known as quantum backflow. The magnitude of this effect is relatively…
Constraints play an important role in dynamical systems. However, the subtle effect of constraints in quantum mechanics is not very well studied. In the present work we concentrate on the quantum dynamics of a point particle moving on a…
Multivalent particles competing for binding on the same surface can exhibit switch-like behaviour, depending on the concentration of receptors on the surface. When the receptor concentration is low, energy dominates the free energy of…
We investigate the scattering of two distinguishable particles with unequal masses and a mutual short-range interaction with the aim of quantifying the impact of a tunneling ``projectile'' particle on the quantum mechanical state of the…
Graphite, as a well-known carbon-based solid, is a paradigmatic example of the so-called van der Waals layered materials, which display a large anisotropy in their physical properties. Here we study quantum effects in structural and elastic…
This essay is an attempted to address, from a modern perspective, the motion of a particle. Quantum mechanically, motion consists of a series of localizations due to repeated interactions that, taken close to the limit of the continuum,…