Related papers: Thermal False Vacuum Decay Is More Than It Seems
In a recently proposed model of ``ghost condensation'', spatially homogeneous states may mix, via tunneling, with inhomogeneous states which are somewhat similar to bubbles in the theory of false vacuum decay, the corresponding bubble…
Quantum dissipation in thermal environment is investigated, using the path integral approach. The reduced density matrix of the harmonic oscillator system coupled to thermal bath of oscillators is derived for arbitrary spectrum of bath…
$\alpha$ decay is one of the prominent decay modes in the nucleosynthesis of heavy and super-heavy elements synthesized at temperatures of the order of Giga Kelvin. To facilitate the investigation of the role played by the $\alpha$ decay…
We review an scenario for the non-equilibrium dynamics of glassy systems that has been motivated by the exact solution of simple models. This approach allows one to set on firmer grounds well-known phenomenological theories. The old ideas…
We consider the notion of thermal equilibrium for an individual closed macroscopic quantum system in a pure state, i.e., described by a wave function. The macroscopic properties in thermal equilibrium of such a system, determined by its…
We question the microcanonical hypothesis, often made to account for the thermalization of complex closed quantum systems, on the specific example of a chain of two-level atoms optically driven by a resonant laser beam and strongly…
In this paper we show how to compute in a consistent way nucleation rates in field theory at finite temperatures, with metastable vacuum. Using the semiclassical approach in field theory at finite temperature we show that the prefactor term…
Almost a century ago, Johnson and Nyquist presented evidence of fluctuating electrical current and the governing fluctuation dissipation theorem (FDT). Whether, likewise, temperature T can fluctuate is a controversial topic and has led to…
A quantum system and a thermal bath can reach thermal equilibrium through an interaction, whereupon the system acquires the same temperature as the bath. But how does a delocalised quantum system thermalise with a bath whose local…
The condition of thermal equilibrium simplifies the theoretical treatment of fluctuations as found in the celebrated Einstein's relation between mobility and diffusivity for Brownian motion. Several recent theories relax the hypothesis of…
We show that the vacuum (zero-point) energy of a low-temperature quantum liquid is a variable property which changes with the state of the system, in notable contrast to the static vacuum energy in solids commonly considered. We further…
The concept of negative temperatures has occasionally been used in connection with quantum systems. A recent example of this sort is reported in the paper of S. Braun et al. [Science 339,52 (2013)], where an attractively interacting…
We consider the Skyrme model modified by the addition of mass terms which explicitly break chiral symmetry and pick out a specific point on the model's target space as the unique true vacuum. However, they also allow the possibility of…
We consider blocks of quantum spins in a chain at thermal equilibrium, focusing on their properties from a thermodynamical perspective. Whereas in classical systems the temperature behaves as an intensive magnitude, a deviation from this…
By numerically exact calculations of spin-1/2 antiferromagnetic Heisenberg models on small clusters, we demonstrate that quantum entanglement between subsystems $A$ and $B$ in a pure ground state of a whole system $A+B$ can induce thermal…
We highlight a dynamical anomaly in which the rate of relaxation towards thermal equilibrium in a bi-partite quantum system violates the standard linear-response (Kubo) formulation, even when the underlying dynamics is highly chaotic. This…
Theoretically predicted linear correlation between the volume coefficient of thermal expansion and the thermal heat capacity was investigated for highly symmetrical atomic arrangements. Normalizing the data of these thermodynamic parameters…
We consider the non-equilibrium evolution of the inflaton field coupled to both lighter scalars and fermions. The dissipational dynamics of this field is studied and found to be quite different than that believed in inflationary models. In…
We study metastability and nucleation in a kinetic two-dimensional Ising model which is driven out of equilibrium by a small random perturbation of the usual dynamics at temperature T. We show that, at a mesoscopic/cluster level, a…
Experimentalists have come to temperatures very close to absolute zero at which physics that was once ordinary becomes extraordinary. In such a regime quantum effects and fluctuations start to play a dominant role. In this context we study…