Related papers: Non-adiabatic dynamics across a first order quantu…
False vacuum decay in quantum mechanical first order phase transitions is a phenomenon with wide implications in cosmology, and presents interesting theoretical challenges. In the standard approach, it is assumed that false vacuum decay…
Distinguishing whether a system supports alternate low-energy (locally stable) states -- stable (true vacuum) versus metastable (false vacuum) -- by direct observation can be difficult when the lifetime of the state is very long but…
Classical metastability manifests as noise-driven switching between disjoint basins of attraction and slowing down of relaxation, quantum systems like qubits and Rydberg atoms exhibit analogous behavior through collective quantum jumps and…
Quantum mechanics makes the otherwise stable vacua of a theory metastable through the nucleation of bubbles of the new vacuum. This in turn causes a first order phase transition. These cosmological phase transitions may have played an…
Metastable quantum dynamics of an asymmetric triangular cluster that is coupled to a reservoir is investigated. The dynamics is governed by bath-mediated transitions, which in part require a thermal activation process. The decay rate is…
Quantum Ising model is an exactly solvable model of quantum phase transition. This paper gives an exact solution when the system is driven through the critical point at finite rate. The evolution goes through a series of Landau-Zener level…
We study the interplay between regular and chaotic dynamics at the critical point of a generic first-order quantum phase transition in an interacting boson model of nuclei. A classical analysis reveals a distinct behavior of the coexisting…
We argue that in a second order quantum phase transition driven by an inhomogeneous quench density of quasiparticle excitations is suppressed when velocity at which a critical point propagates across a system falls below a threshold…
Nucleation is the onset of a first-order phase transition by which a metastable phase transforms into a more stable one. Such a phase transition occurs when an initial system initially in equilibrium is destabilized by the change of an…
Metastable `false' vacuum states are an important feature of the Standard Model of particle physics and many theories beyond it. Describing the dynamics of a phase transition out of a false vacuum via the nucleation of bubbles is essential…
We present experimental evidence for a first-order freezing/melting phase transition in a nonequilibrium system -- an oscillated two-dimensional isobaric granular fluid. The steady-state transition occurs between a gas and a crystal and is…
The dipole-coupled two-level atoms(qubits) in a single-mode resonant cavity is studied by extended bosonic coherent states. The numerically exact solution is presented. For finite systems, the first-order quantum phase transitions occur at…
A periodically kicked ring of a Bose-Einstein condensate is considered as a nonlinear generalization of the quantum kicked rotor, where the nonlinearity stems from the mean field interactions between the condensed atoms. For weak…
This paper is devoted to the study of quantum dissipation in cluster decay phenomena in the frame of the Lindblad approach to quantum open systems. The tunneling of a metastable state across a piecewise quadratic potential is envisaged for…
A quantum phase transition is an unequivocal signature of strongly correlated many-body physics. Signatures of such phenomena are yet to be observed in ballistic transport through quantum wires. Recent developments in quantum wires have…
Quantum information processing exploits all the features quantum mechanics offers. Among them there is the possibility to induce nonlinear maps on a quantum system by involving two or more identical copies of the given system in the same…
We present a study of the phase diagram of a random optimization problem in presence of quantum fluctuations. Our main result is the characterization of the nature of the phase transition, which we find to be a first-order quantum phase…
Quantum adiabatic dynamics is the crucial element of adiabatic quantum computing and quantum annealing. Shortcuts to adiabaticity enable acceleration of the computational time by suppressing unwanted non-adiabatic processes with designed…
Quantum transitions are described semiclassically as motions of systems along (complex) trajectories. We consider the cases when the semiclassical trajectories are unstable and find that durations of the corresponding transitions are large.…
A line of first-order phase transitions is conjectured in the phase diagram of Quantum Chromodynamics at non-zero baryon density. If this is the case, numerical simulations of neutron star mergers suggest that various regions of the stars…