Related papers: Quantum and Thermal Fluctuations in Field Theory
The fundamental vacuum state of quantum fields, related to Minkowski space, produces divergent fluctuations that must be suppressed in order to bring reality to the description of physical systems. As a consequence, negative vacuum…
The zero temperature, or quantum, metal-superconductor phase transition is studied in disordered systems in dimension greater than two. A effective local field theory is developed that keeps all soft modes or fluctuations explicitly. A…
Quantum vacuum fluctuations of the electromagnetic field in empty space seem not to produce observable effects over the motion of a charged test particle. However, when a change in the background vacuum state is implemented, as for instance…
The nonzero ground-state energy of the quantum mechanical harmonic oscillator implies quantum fluctuations around the minimum of the potential with the mean square value proportional to Planck's constant. In classical mechanics thermal…
We study the Yang-Mills theory and quantum gravity at finite temperature, in the presence of Lagrange multiplier fields. These restrict the path integrals to field configurations which obey the classical equations of motion. This has the…
Techniques of zero-temperature field theory that have found application in the analysis of field theory at finite temperature are revisited. Specifically, several of the results that are discussed are relevant to the study of…
We use the quantum Brownian model to derive the uncertainty relation for a quantum open system. We examine how the fluctuations of a quantum system evolve after it is brought in contact with a heat bath at finite temperature. We study the…
Quantum fluctuations or other moments of a state contribute to energy expectation values and can imply interesting physical effects. In quantum cosmology, they turn out to be important for a discussion of density bounds and instabilities of…
One of the fundamental questions in Quantum Field Theory regards the determination of a measure of the degrees of freedom of theories that is consistent with the Renormalization Group flow. The answer seems to be encoded in the C-theorems,…
Quantum field theory is constructed upon the assumption of stabilities of the vacuum and of the one-particle state. For finite temperature, the one-particle state becomes unstable because of thermal fluctuations, whereas the thermal vacuum…
The uncertainty principle guarantees a non-zero value for the positional uncertainty, $\left\langle \Delta x^2\right\rangle > 0$, even without thermal fluctuations. This implies that quantum fluctuations inherently enhance positional…
Quantum fluctuations are believed to play an important role in the thermalization of classical fields in inflationary cosmology but their relevance for isotropization/thermalization of the classical fields produced in heavy ion collisions…
The theory of quantum thermodynamics investigates how the concepts of heat, work, and temperature can be carried over to the quantum realm, where fluctuations and randomness are fundamentally unavoidable. Of particular practical relevance…
Quantum phase transitions occur at zero temperature when some non-thermal control-parameter like pressure or chemical composition is changed. They are driven by quantum rather than thermal fluctuations. In this review we first give a…
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…
A quantum scalar field theory with spacetime-dependent coupling is studied. Surprisingly, while translation invariance is explicitly broken in the classical theory, momentum conservation is recovered at the quantum level for some specific…
The effect of quantum fluctuations on a nearly flat, nonrelativistic two-dimensional membrane with extrinsic curvature stiffness and tension is investigated. The renormalization group analysis is carried out in first-order perturbative…
The most important recent results in the theory of phase transitions and quantum effects in quantum anharmonic crystals are presented and discussed. In particular, necessary and sufficient conditions for a phase transition to occur at some…
We establish the general framework of quantum fluctuation theorems by finding the symmetry between the forward and backward transitions of any given quantum channel. The Petz recovery map is adopted as the reverse quantum channel, and the…
Thermophoresis is the migration of a particle due to a thermal gradient. Here, we theoretically uncover the quantum version of thermophoresis. As a proof of principle, we analytically find a thermophoretic force on a trapped quantum…