Related papers: Surface-induced decoherence and heating of charged…

Quantum effects of plasmonic phenomena have been explored through ab-initio studies, but only for exceedingly small metallic nanostructures, leaving most experimentally relevant structures too large to handle. We propose instead an…

Or: ``How to generate an ensemble in a single event?'' Following recent work on entropy in strong interactions, I explain the concept of environment-induced quantum decoherence in elementary quantum mechanics. The classically chaotic…

We present a simple calculation leading to the quantum gravitationally-induced decoherence of a spatial superposition of a massive object in the linear coupling regime. The point of this calculation is to illustrate that the…

Heterogeneous nucleation on catalytic surfaces plunged into a fluid is described through a stochastic model. To generate this non-equilibrium process we assume that the turn on of a electrostatic potential triggers a complex dynamics that…

A key concept underlying the specific functionalities of metasurfaces, i.e. arrays of subwavelength nanoparticles, is the use of constituent components to shape the wavefront of the light, on-demand. Metasurfaces are versatile and novel…

Quantum coherence is highly involved in photochemical functioning of complex molecular systems. Co-existence and intermixing of electronic and/or vibrational coherences, while never unambiguously identified experimentally, has been proposed…

Correlations between electrons and the effective dimensionality are crucial factors that shape the properties of an interacting electron system. For example, the onsite Coulomb repulsion, U, may inhibit, or completely block the intersite…

Levitation in vacuum has evolved into a versatile technique which has already benefited diverse scientific directions, from force sensing and thermodynamics to material science and chemistry. It also holds great promises of advancing the…

The theory of inflation provides a mechanism to explain the structures we observe today in the Universe, starting from quantum-mechanically generated fluctuations. However, this leaves the question of: how did the quantum-to-classical…

Prompted by recent experimental developments, a theory of surface scattering of fast atoms at grazing incidence is developed. The theory gives rise to a quantum mechanical limit for ordered surfaces that describes coherent diffraction peaks…

Lubrication forces depend to a high degree on elasticity, texture, charge, chemistry, and temperature of the interacting surfaces. Therefore, by appropriately designing surface properties, we may tailor lubrication forces to reduce…

Ultrahigh rate performance of active particles used in lithium-ion battery electrodes has been revealed by single-particle measurements, which indicates a huge potential for developing high-power batteries. However, the charging/discharging…

Environment-induced decoherence presents a great challenge to realizing a quantum computer. We point out the somewhat surprising fact that decoherence can be useful, indeed necessary, for practical quantum computation, in particular, for…

The physical processes at the interface of a low-temperature plasma and a solid are extremely complex. They involve a huge number of elementary processes in the plasma, in the solid as well as charge, momentum and energy transfer across the…

Dielectrophoresis (DEP), the motion of polarizable particles in non-uniform electric fields, has become an important tool for the transport, separation, and characterization of microparticles in biomedical and nanoelectronics research. In…

Metasurfaces mold the flow of classical light waves by engineering sub-wavelength patterns from dielectric or metallic thin films. We describe and analyze a method in which quantum operator-valued reflectivity can be used to control both…

We present a general master equation for the quantum dynamics of a scalar bosonic particle interacting with an external weak and stochastic gravitational field. The dynamics predicts decoherence in position as well as in momentum. We show…

Polarisable atoms and molecules experience the Casimir-Polder force near magnetoelectric bodies, a force that is induced by quantum fluctuations of the electromagnetic field and the matter. Atoms and molecules in relative motion to a…

The physics of low-energy quantum systems is usually studied without explicit consideration of the background spacetime. Phenomena inherent to quantum theory on curved space-time, such as Hawking radiation, are typically assumed to be only…

Surface energy is a fundamental property of materials and is particularly important in describing nanomaterials where atoms or molecules at the surface constitute a large fraction of the material. Traditionally, surface energy is considered…