Related papers: Transitions Between Flux Vacua
We examine classical, transient fluctuation theorems within the unifying framework of Langevin dynamics. We explicitly distinguish between the effects of non-conservative forces that violate detailed balance, and non-autonomous dynamics…
We study the mixing processes inside a forced fountain using data from direct numerical simulation. The outer boundary of the fountain with the ambient is a turbulent/non-turbulent interface. Inside the fountain, two internal boundaries,…
We report the experimental study of the bifurcations of a large-scale circulation that is formed over a turbulent flow generated by a spatially periodic forcing. After shortly describing how the flow becomes turbulent through a sequence of…
We use the closed time-path formalism to calculate fluctuations at phase transitions, both in and out of equilibrium. Specifically, we consider the creation of vortices by fluctuations, of relevance to the early universe and to $^{4}He$…
The exchange of knowledge across different areas and disciplines plays a key role in the process of knowledge creation, and can stimulate innovation and the emergence of new fields. We develop here a quantitative framework to extract…
We present a flux formulation of Double Field Theory, in which geometric and non-geometric fluxes are dynamical and field-dependent. Gauge consistency imposes a set of quadratic constraints on the dynamical fluxes, which can be solved by…
We analyze the morphological transition of a one-dimensional system described by a scalar field, where a flat state looses its stability. This scalar field may for example account for the position of a crystal growth front, an order…
By quantizing the background as well as the perturbations in a simple one fluid cosmological model, we show that there exists an ambiguity in the choice of relevant variables, potentially leading to incompatible observational physical…
We focus on D-brane models in presence of closed string background fluxes. These fluxes modify the effective interactions on Dirichlet and Euclidean branes, in particular inducing fermionic masses. We show how they can create new…
We use a perturbative approach to evaluate transition amplitudes corresponding to quantum friction, for a scalar model describing an atom which moves at a constant velocity, close to a material plane. In particular, we present results on…
Questioning the experimental basis of continuous descriptions of fundamental interactions we discuss classical gravity as an effective continuous first-order approximation of a discrete interaction. The sub-dominant contributions produce a…
The electromagnetic interaction is characterised by discrete states for bound systems in contrast to continuous states for unbound systems. The difference merely arises because the characteristic equations do not exhibit the same behaviour…
We develop an approach to investigate the non-perturbative dynamics of quantum field theories, in which specific vacuum field fluctuations are treated as the low-energy dynamical degrees of freedom, while all other vacuum field…
We provide evidence that some four-dimensional N=1 string vacua with different numbers of generations are connected through phase transitions. The transitions involve going through a point in moduli space where there is a nontrivial fixed…
The transition between ballistic and diffusive motion poses difficult problems in several fields of physics. In this work we show how to calculate the spectra of the correlation functions between fields of arbitrary spatial dependence as…
In cosmological first-order phase transitions, the microscopic interaction of the phase transition fronts with non-equilibrium plasma particles manifests itself macroscopically as friction forces. In general, it is a nontrivial problem to…
It is shown that the vacuum state of weakly interacting quantum field theories can be described, in the Heisenberg picture, as a linear combination of randomly distributed incoherent paths that obey classical equations of motion with…
Fluctuational transitions between two co-existing chaotic attractors, separated by a fractal basin boundary, are studied in a discrete dynamical system. It is shown that the mechanism for such transitions is determined by a hierarchy of…
We characterize a transition from normal to ballistic diffusion in a bouncing ball dynamics. The system is composed of a particle, or an ensemble of non-interacting particles, experiencing elastic collisions with a heavy and periodically…
We study the dynamical evolution of a phase interface or bubble in the context of a \lambda \phi^4 + g \phi^6 scalar quantum field theory. We use a self-consistent mean-field approximation derived from a 2PI effective action to construct an…