Related papers: Critical exponents in metastable decay via quantum…
The rate of metastable decay in nonequilibrium systems is expected to display scaling behavior: i.e., the logarithm of the decay rate should scale as a power of the distance to a bifurcation point where the metastable state disappears.…
Quantum decay rates for barrier potentials driven by external stochastic and periodic forces in the strong damping regime are studied. Based on the recently derived quantum Smoluchowski equation [Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 87}, 086802 (2001)]…
Near a bifurcation point a system experiences critical slowing down. This leads to scaling behavior of fluctuations. We find that a periodically driven system may display three scaling regimes and scaling crossovers near a saddle-node…
We study the deviations from the usual exponential decay law for quantum mechanical systems. We show that simple and physically motivated deviations from the Breit-Wigner energy distribution of the unstable state are sufficient to generate…
The time evolution of the thermally activated decay rates is considered. This evolution is of particular importance for the recent nanoscale experiments discussed in the literature, where the potential barrier is relatively low (or the…
Periodically modulated nonlinear oscillators often display bistability of forced vibrations. This bistability can be used for new types of quantum measurements. They are based on switching between coexisting vibrational states. Since…
The decay of a quasiparticle in an isolated quantum dot is considered. At relatively small time the probability to find the system in the initial state decays exponentially: $P(t)\sim \exp(-\Gamma t)$, in accordance with the golden rule.…
Quantum escape of a particle via a time-dependent confining potential in a semi-infinite one-dimensional space is discussed. We describe the time-evolution of escape states in terms of scattering states of the quantum open system, and…
We consider the phase transition of a string with tension $\eps_1$ to a string with a smaller tension $\eps_2$. The transition proceeds through quantum tunneling, and we calculate in arbitrary number of dimensions the pre-exponential factor…
We study adiabatic quantum quenches across a quantum multicritical point (MCP) using a quenching scheme that enables the system to hit the MCP along different paths. We show that the power-law scaling of the defect density with the rate of…
The quantum-mechanical theory of the decay of unstable states is revisited. We show that the decay is non-exponential both in the short-time and long-time limits using a more physical definition of the decay rate than the one usually used.…
We study the elusive transition from exponential to post-exponential (algebraic) decay of the probability density of a quantum particle emitted by an exponentially decaying source, in one dimension. The main finding is that the probability…
An unstable quantum state generally decays following an exponential law, as environmental decoherence is expected to prevent the decay products from recombining to reconstruct the initial state. Here we show the existence of deviations from…
The decay of an unstable system is usually described by an exponential law. Quantum mechanics predicts strong deviations of the survival probability from the exponential: indeed, the decay is initially quadratic, while at very large times…
We study the dynamics of a nonlinear oscillator near the critical point where period-two vibrations are first excited with the increasing amplitude of parametric driving. Above the threshold, quantum fluctuations induce transitions between…
The extinction transition in the presence of a localized quenched defect is studied numerically. When the bulk is at criticality, the correlation length diverges and even an infinite system cannot "decouple" from the defect. The results…
Magnetic excitations are studied in gapped quantum spin systems, for which spontaneous two-magnon decays are allowed by symmetry. Interaction between one- and two-particle states acquires nonanalytic frequency and momentum dependence near…
The short-time behavior of quantum decay of an unstable state initially located within an interaction region of finite range is investigated using a resonant expansion of the survival amplitude. It is shown that in general the short-time…
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…
We demonstrate the oscillatory decay of the survival probability of the stochastic dynamics $d\x_\eps=\mb{a}(\x_\eps)\, dt +\sqrt{2\eps}\,\mb{b}(\x_\eps)\,d\w$, which is activated by small noise over the boundary of the domain of attraction…