Related papers: Probing thermal fluctuations through scalar test p…
It has been proved in the context of quantum fields in Minkowski spacetime that the vacuum state is a thermal state according to uniformly accelerated observers -- a seminal result known as the Unruh effect. Recent claims, however, have…
Both black hole thermodynamics and finite volume effects in quantum field theory violate the null energy condition. Motivated by this, we compare thermodynamic features between two $1+1$-dimensional systems: (i) a scalar field confined to a…
Fluctuation Theorems are central in stochastic thermodynamics, as they allow for quantifying the irreversibility of single trajectories. Although they have been experimentally checked in the classical regime, a practical demonstration in…
Heat fluctuations are studied in a dissipative system with both mechanical and stochastic components for a simple model: a Brownian particle dragged through water by a moving potential. An extended stationary state fluctuation theorem is…
The retarded Van der Waals force between a polarizable particle and a perfectly conducting plate is re-examined. The expression for this force given by Casimir and Polder represents a mean force, but there are large fluctuations around this…
We consider thermal effects in the propagation of gravitational waves on a cosmological background. In particular, we consider scalar field cosmologies and study gravitational modes near cosmological singularities. We point out that the…
Quantum vacuum fluctuations tend to be strongly anti-correlated, which reduces their observable effects. However, time dependence can upset the cancellation of these anti-correlated fluctuations and greatly enhance their effects. This form…
We consider a scalar QED model for the frictional force and the momentum fluctuations of a polarizable particle in thermal equilibrium with radiation or in hyperbolic motion in a vacuum. In the former case the loss of particle kinetic…
I study the effect of quantum and thermal phase fluctuations on the in-plane and c-axis superfluid stiffness of layered d-wave superconductors. First, I show that quantum phase fluctuations in the superconductor can be damped in the…
The interplay between quantum and thermal fluctuations in the presence of quenched random disorder is a long-standing open theoretical problem which has been made more urgent by advances in modern experimental techniques. The fragility of…
Ultracold atomic gases can undergo phase transitions that mimic relativistic vacuum decay, allowing us to empirically test early-Universe physics in tabletop experiments. We investigate the physics of these analog systems, going beyond…
We consider the nonequilibrium dynamics of a a real scalar field in a degenerate double-well potential. The system is prepared in the lowest free energy state in one of the wells and the dynamics is driven by the coupling of the field to a…
Turbulent thermals emerge in a wide variety of geophysical and industrial flows, such as atmospheric cumulus convection and pollutant dispersal in oceans and lakes. When a buoyant fluid mass rises, or sinks, heat and mass transfers occur by…
The effects of thermal diffuse scattering on the transmission and eventual diffraction of highly accelerated electrons are investigated with a method that incorporates the frozen phonon approximation to the exact numerical solution of the…
We show that spinless and neutral black holes in thermal equilibrium with radiation undergo fluctuations of charge and angular momentum. The corresponding spreads for a black hole in contact with charged scalar particles is calculated. The…
We study the effects of random fluctuations on quantum phase transitions by the energy gap analysis. For the infinite-ranged spin-glass models with a transverse field, we find that a strong sample-to-sample fluctuation effect leads to broad…
Light scalar fields play a variety of roles in modern physics, especially in cosmology and modified theories of gravity. For this reason, there is a zoo of experiments actively trying to find evidence for many scalar field models that have…
We analyze the matching of high and low temperature expansions of the effective action of massive scalar fields confined between two infinite walls with different boundary conditions. One remarkable low temperature effect is the exponential…
The phase transition patterns displayed by a model of two coupled complex scalar fields are studied at finite temperature and chemical potential. Possible phenomena like symmetry persistence and inverse symmetry breaking at high…
It is well known that radiative corrections evaluated in nontrivial backgrounds lead to effective dispersion relations which are not Lorentz invariant. Since gravitational interactions increase with energy, gravity-induced radiative…