Related papers: Domain Wall Dynamics of Phase Interfaces
We consider the dynamics of a scalar field non-minimally coupled to gravity in the context of cosmology. It is demonstrated that there exists a new phase for the scalar field, in addition to the inflationary and dust-like (reheating period)…
Double layer quantum Hall systems have interesting properties associated with interlayer correlations. At $\nu =1/m$ where $m$ is an odd integer they exhibit spontaneous symmetry breaking equivalent to that of spin $1/2$ easy-plane…
The surface free energy is the difference between the free energies for a system with open boundary conditions and the same system with periodic boundary conditions. We use the quantum transfer matrix formalism to express the surface free…
I review why and how physical states with fractional quantum numbers can occur, emphasizing basic mechanisms in simple contexts. The general mechanism of charge fractionalization is the passage from states created by local action of fields…
The dynamics of typical phase transitions is studied out of equilibrium in weakly coupled inflaton-type scalar field theories in Minkowski space. The shortcomings of the effective potential and equilibrium descriptions are pointed out. A…
A vast array of phenomena, ranging from chemical reactions to phase transformations, are analysed in terms of a free energy surface defined with respect to a single or multiple order parameters. Enhanced sampling methods are typically used,…
We study the phase diagram of the $U(2) \times U(2)$ scalar model in $d=4$ dimensions. We find that the phase transition is of first order in most of the parameter space. The theory can still be relevant to continuum physics (as an…
This paper looks at the early theory of phase transitions. It considers a group of related concepts derived from condensed matter and statistical physics. The key technical ideas here go under the names of "singularity", "order parameter",…
We compute thermal and quantum fluctuations in the background of a domain wall in a scalar field theory at finite temperature using the exact scalar propagator in the subspace orthogonal to the wall's translational mode. The propagator…
In the framework of an extended phenomenological approach to phase transitions, it is shown that existing nonlinear relation between local critical atomic parameters and phenomenological order parameter induces the corresponding nonlinear…
Point interactions for the second derivative operator in one dimension are studied. Every operator from this family is described by the boundary conditions which include a $ 2 \times 2 $ real matrix with the unit determinant and a phase.…
A novel approach for studying phase transitions in systems with quantum degrees of freedom is discussed. Starting from the microscopic hamiltonian of a quantum model, we first derive a set of exact differential equations for the free energy…
Dynamics near the surface of glasses is generally much faster than in the bulk. Neglecting static perturbations of structure at the surface, we use random first order transition theory to show the free energy barrier for activated motion…
Transition State Theory is a central cornerstone in reaction dynamics. Its key step is the identification of a dividing surface that is crossed only once by all reactive trajectories. This assumption is often badly violated, especially when…
A quantum phase space version of the continuity equation for systems with internal degrees of freedom is derived. The $1$ -- D Dirac equation is introduced and its phase space counterpart is found. The phase space representation of free…
We construct two spin models on lattices (both two and three-dimensional) to study the capability of quantum computational power as a function of temperature and the system parameter. There exists a finite region in the phase diagram such…
We consider thermal QCD in the large N_C limit, mainly in 1+1 dimensions. The gauge coupling is only taken into account to minimal order, by projection onto colour singlets. An expression for the free energy, exact as N_C goes to infinity,…
We discuss a simple procedure for computing one-loop quantum energies of any static field configuration that depends non-trivially on only a single spatial coordinate. We specifically focus on domain wall-type field configurations that…
We study an active random walker model in which a particle's motion is determined by a self-generated field. The field encodes information about the particle's path history. This leads to either self-attractive or self-repelling behavior.…
We argue that the finite temperature dynamics of the integer quantum Hall system is governed by two independent length scales. The consistent scaling description of the transition makes crucial use of two temperature critical exponents,…