Related papers: Velocity-dependent quantum phase slips in 1D atomi…
Tackling the low-temperature fate of supercooled liquids is challenging due to the immense timescales involved, which prevent equilibration and lead to the operational glass transition. Relating glassy behaviour to an underlying,…
Evidence of a non-thermal magnetic relaxation in the intermediate state of a type-I superconducor is presented. It is attributed to quantum tunneling of interfaces separating normal and superconducting regions. Tunneling barriers are…
The decay rate of metastable states is determined at high temperatures by thermal activation, whereas at temperatures close to zero quantum tunneling is relevant. At some temperature $T_{c}$ the transition from classical to…
Quantum fluctuations are pivotal in driving quantum phase transitions, exemplified by the quantum melting of Wigner crystals into Fermi liquids in electron systems. However, their impact on superconducting systems near zero temperature,…
The observation of quantum oscillations in underdoped cuprates has generated intense debate about the nature of the field-induced resistive state and its implications for the `normal state' of high T_c superconductors. Quantum oscillations…
We describe measurements of the thermally-activated transitions between fluxoid states of a single isolated superconducting ring. We compare these measurements with theoretical predictions in which all of the relevant parameters are…
Relative motion in a two-component, trapped atomic gas provides a sensitive probe of interactions. By studying the lowest frequency excitations of a two spin-state gas confined in a magnetic trap, we have explored the transition from the…
We discuss the dependence of the phase diagram of a hypothetical isotope of helium with nuclear mass less than 4 atomic mass units. We argue that with decreasing nucleus mass, the temperature of the superfluid phase transition (about 2.2 K…
I use simple thermodynamic reasoning to argue that at temperatures of order a trillion kelvin, QCD, the theory which describes strongly interacting particles such as protons and neutrons under normal conditions, undergoes a phase transition…
In this work we revisit collapse and revival oscillations in superfluids suddenly quenched by strong local interactions for the case of a one-dimensional Bose-Hubbard model. As the main result we identify the inherent nonequilibrium quantum…
We analyze heat and charge transport through a single-level quantum dot coupled to two BCS superconductors at different temperatures to first order in the tunnel coupling. In order to describe the system theoretically, we extend a real-time…
Using recent insights obtained in heavy fermion physics on the thermodynamic singularity structure associated with quantum phase transitions, we present here an experimental strategy to establish if the zero-temperature transition in the…
Ultracold atomic Fermi gases present an opportunity to study strongly interacting Fermi systems in a controlled and uncomplicated setting. The ability to tune attractive interactions has led to the discovery of superfluidity in these…
We have observed the superfluid phase transition in a strongly interacting Fermi gas via high-precision measurements of the local compressibility, density and pressure down to near-zero entropy. Our data completely determine the universal…
In recent years, quantum phase transitions have attracted the interest of both theorists and experimentalists in condensed matter physics. These transitions, which are accessed at zero temperature by variation of a non-thermal control…
We analyze the interplay of dissipative and quantum effects in the proximity of a quantum phase transition. The prototypical system is a resistively shunted two-dimensional Josephson junction array, studied by means of an advanced Fourier…
We consider the possibility of topological quantum phase transitions of ultracold fermions in optical lattices, which can be studied as a function of interaction strength or atomic filling factor (density). The phase transitions are…
The gas-liquid transition is a first-order transition terminating at a finite-temperature critical point with diverging density fluctuations. Mott transition, a metal-insulator transition driven by Coulomb repulsion between electrons, has…
This thesis presents a set of studies on atomic systems where quantum effects are particularly relevant. These studies have been developed by applying a variety of tools from many-body physics. First of all, we have studied the prospects…
The study of liquid-gas phase transition in heavy ion collisions has generated a lot of interest amongst the nuclear physicists in the recent years. In heavy ion collisions, there is no direct way of measuring the state variables like…