Table of contents

The question of thermalisation in closed quantum many-body systems has received a lot of attention in the past few years. An intimately related question is whether a closed quantum system shows irreversible dynamics. However, irreversibility and what we actually mean by this in a quantum many-body system with unitary dynamics has been explored very little. In this work we investigate the dynamics of the Ising model in a transverse magnetic field involving an imperfect effective time reversal. We propose a definition of irreversibility based on the echo peak decay of observables. Inducing the effective time reversal by different protocols we find an algebraic decay of the echo peak heights or an ever persisting echo peak indicating that the dynamics in this model is well reversible.

We consider the sine-Gordon equation on metric graphs with simple topologies and derive vertex boundary conditions from the fundamental conservation laws together with successive space-derivatives of sine-Gordon equation. We analytically obtain traveling-wave solutions in the form of standard sine-Gordon solitons such as kinks and antikinks for star and tree graphs. We show that for this case the sine-Gordon equation becomes completely integrable just as in case of a simple 1D chain. This simple analysis provides a cornerstone for the numerical solution of the general case, including a quantification of the vertex scattering. Applications of the obtained results to Josephson junction networks and DNA double helix are discussed.

A small quantum system is studied which is a superposition of states localized in different positions in a static gravitational field. The time evolution of the correlation between different positions is investigated, and it is seen that there are two time scales for such an evolution (decoherence). Both time scales are inversely proportional to the red shift difference between the two points. These time scales correspond to decoherences which are linear and quadratic, respectively, in time.

We report on a systematic analysis of the frequency spectrum of a system often considered for quantum computing purposes, metadevice applications, and high-sensitivity sensors, namely a superconducting loop interrupted by Josephson junctions, the core of an rf-SQUID. We analyze both the cases in which a single junction closes the superconducting loop and the one in which the single junction is replaced by a superconducting interferometer. Perturbation analysis is employed to display the variety of the solutions of the system and the implications of the results for the present interest in fundamental and applied research are analyzed.

In this paper, we investigate the thermodynamic properties of black holes in the framework of rainbow gravity. By considering rainbow functions in the metric of Schwarzschild and Reissner-Nordström black holes, remnant and critical masses are found to exist. Demanding the universality of logarithmic corrections to the semi-classical area law for the entropy leads to constraining the form of the rainbow functions. The mass output and the radiation rate for these constrained form of rainbow functions have been computed for different values of the rainbow parameter η and have striking similarity to those derived from the generalized uncertainty principle.

The bouncing of an inelastic ball on a vibrating plate is a popular model used in various fields, from granular gases to nanometer-sized mechanical contacts. For random plate motion, so far, the model has been studied using Poincaré maps in which the excitation by the plate at successive bounces is assumed to be a discrete Markovian (memoryless) process. Here, we investigate numerically the behaviour of the model for continuous random excitations with tunable correlation time. We show that the system dynamics are controlled by the ratio of the Markovian mean flight time of the ball and the mean time between successive peaks in the motion of the exciting plate. When this ratio, which depends on the bandwidth of the excitation signal, exceeds a certain value, the Markovian approach is appropriate; below, memory of preceding excitations arises, leading to a significant decrease of the jump duration; at the smallest values of the ratio, chattering occurs. Overall, our results open the way for uses of the model in the low-excitation regime, which is still poorly understood.

We present a feedback protocol that is able to confine a system to a single micro-state without heat dissipation. The protocol adjusts the Hamiltonian of the system in such a way that the Bayesian posterior distribution after measurement is in equilibrium. As a result, the whole process satisfies feedback reversibility —the process is indistinguishable from its time reversal— and assures the lowest possible dissipation for confinement. In spite of the whole process being reversible it can surprisingly be implemented in finite time. We illustrate the idea with a Brownian particle in a harmonic trap with increasing stiffness and present a general theory of reversible feedback confinement for systems with discrete states.

Geometrical coupling in a co-dimensional one Randall-Sundrum scenario (RS) is used to study resonances of p-form fields. The resonances are calculated using the transfer matrix method. The studied model considers the standard RS with delta-like branes, and branes generated by kinks and domain walls as well. The parameters are changed to control the thickness of the smooth brane. With this a very interesting pattern is found for the transmission coefficient. The geometrical coupling does not generate resonances for the reduced p-form in all cases considered.

The differential cross-section for gravitational photon-photon scattering calculated in perturbative quantum gravity is shown to depend on the degree of polarization entanglement of the two photons. The interaction between photons in the symmetric Bell state is stronger than between not entangled photons. In contrast, the interaction between photons in the anti-symmetric Bell state is weaker than between not entangled photons. The results are interpreted in terms of quantum interference, and it is shown how they fit into the idea of distance-dependent forces.

Here we present a protocol for generating Lissajous curves with a trapped ion by engineering Rashba- and the Dresselhaus-type spin-orbit (SO) interactions in a Paul trap. The unique anisotropic Rashba $\alpha_{x}$, $\alpha_{y}$ and Dresselhaus $\beta_{x}$, $\beta_{y}$ couplings afforded by our setup also enable us to obtain an "unusual" Zitterbewegung, i.e., the semiconductor analog of the relativistic trembling motion of electrons, with cycloidal trajectories in the absence of magnetic fields. We have also introduced bounded SO interactions, confined to an upper-bound vibrational subspace of the Fock states, as an additional mechanism to manipulate the Lissajous motion of the trapped ion. We have also accounted for dissipative effects on the vibrational degrees of freedom of the ion and find that the Lissajous trajectories are still robust and well defined for realistic parameters.

The motion control of relativistic electrons with lasers allows for an efficient and elegant way to map the space with ultra-intense electric-field components, which, in turn, permits a unique improvement of the electron beam parameters. This perspective addresses the recent laser plasma accelerator experiments related to the phase space engineering of electron beams in a plasma medium performed at LOA.

We demonstrate the controllable nonlinear microwave modulation in a cyclically driven three-level superconducting Josephson system. By designing two subtle matched conditions in the △-type atom-field configuration, a new physical mechanism – combined action of nonlinear wave mixing and wave interference – is developed and leads to not only amplification but also attenuation for two microwave signals. Our results show that such a nonlinear manipulation of the signal transition from enhancement to damping can be tuned in a large scope by controlling the relative phase and the driving-field frequency and thus the solid-state Josephson system can act as a phase- and frequency-controlled amplitude modulator. Our study opens up a fascinating perspective for its widespread applications in nonlinear optics and quantum information science.

We study the effect of a single driven tracer particle in a bath of other particles performing the random average process on an infinite line using a stochastic hydrodynamics approach. We consider arbitrary fixed as well as random initial conditions and compute the two-point correlations. For quenched uniform and annealed steady-state initial conditions we show that in the large time T limit the fluctuations and the correlations of the positions of the particles grow subdiffusively as $\sqrt{T}$ and have well-defined scaling forms under proper rescaling of the labels. We compute the corresponding scaling functions exactly for these specific initial configurations and verify them numerically. We also consider a non-translationally invariant initial condition with linearly increasing gaps where we show that the fluctuations and correlations grow superdiffusively as $T^{3/2}$ at large times.

This letter deals with the transport of particles through granular assemblies and, specifically, with the intermittent formation of blockages originated from collective and purely mechanical clogging of constrictions. We perform numerical experiments with a micro-hydromechanical model that is able to reproduce the complex interplay between the carrier fluid, the transported particles and the granular assembly. The probability distribution functions (PDFs) of the duration of blockages and displacements give the time scale on which the effect of blockages is erased and the advection-dispersion paradigm is valid. Our experiments show that these PDFs fit exponential laws, reinforcing the idea that the formation and destruction of blockages are homogeneous Poisson processes.

We develop a microscopic picture of shear thickening in dense suspensions which emphasizes the role of frictional forces, coupling rotational and translational degrees of freedom. Simulations with contact forces and viscous drag only, reveal pronounced shear thickening with a simultaneous increase in contact number and energy dissipation by frictional forces. At high densities, when the translational motion is severely constrained, we observe liquid-like gear states with pronounced relative rotations of the particles coexisting with solid-like regions which rotate as a whole. The latter are stabilised by frustrated loops which become more numerous and persistent with increasing pressure, giving rise to an increasing lengthscale of this mosaique-like structure and a corresponding increase in viscosity.

According to the electromagnetic (EM) wave scattering field of charged spherical particles, we derived the amplitude ratio and phase difference of the transverse components of the scattered electric field. We found that in the direction perpendicular to the incident direction of the EM waves, the amplitude ratio and phase difference are linearly dependent on the surface potential. For particulate systems, the surface electric potential and relative refractive index of a charged particle are mathematically expressed by amplitude ratio and phase difference, and a method to estimate the surface potential and the relative refractive index are proposed based on the observation of EM wave signals.

The general eight-vertex model on a square lattice is studied numerically by using the Corner Transfer Matrix Renormalization Group method. The method is tested on the symmetric (zero-field) version of the model, the obtained dependence of critical exponents on model's parameters is in agreement with Baxter's exact solution and weak universality is verified with a high accuracy. It was suggested long time ago that the symmetric eight-vertex model is a special exceptional case and in the presence of external fields the eight-vertex model falls into the Ising universality class. We confirm numerically this conjecture in a subspace of vertex weights, except for two specific combinations of vertical and horizontal fields for which the system still exhibits weak universality.

We calculate the angle resolved photo-emission spectroscopy (ARPES) signature of the resonant excitonic state (RES) that was proposed as the pseudo-gap state of cuprate superconductors (Kloss T. et al., arXiv:1510.03038 (2015)). This new state can be described as a set of excitonic (particle-hole) patches with an internal checkerboard modulation. Here, we modelize the RES as a charge order with $2\textbf{p}_{F}$ wave vectors, where $2\textbf{p}_{F}$ is the ordering vector connecting two opposite sides of the Fermi surface. We calculate the spectral weight and the density of states in the RES and we find that our model correctly reproduces the opening of the PG in Bi-2201.

In this work, the ground-state properties of the solution processable semiconductor M₂SnBr₆ (M = K, Rb, Cs) have been computed using density functional theory. Similarities in the band structures are observed among these three materials and are shown to result from minimal contributions of the cation to electronic states near the Fermi level. A fundamental bandgap of 1.2 eV is predicted for the materials, which is close to the ideal bandgap for single-junction photovoltaic applications. However, in reality, a larger bandgap is expected because DFT calculations with the PBE functional underestimate the gap. Material optical properties including dielectric constants, reflective indices, reflectance and absorption coefficients are shown to be competitive for solar-energy harvesting. The ionization energies are 6 eV below the vacuum level, while effective masses are relatively small around 0.3, with light hole masses comparable to those of electrons.

Faster magnetic recording technology is indispensable to massive data storage and big data sciences. All-optical spin switching offers a possible solution, but at present it is limited to a handful of expensive and complex rare-earth ferrimagnets. The spin switching in more abundant ferromagnets may significantly expand the scope of all-optical spin switching. Here by studying 40000 ferromagnetic spins, we show that it is the optical spin-orbit torque that determines the course of spin switching in both ferromagnets and ferrimagnets. Spin switching occurs only if the effective spin angular momentum of each constituent in an alloy exceeds a critical value. Because of the strong exchange coupling, the spin switches much faster in ferromagnets than weakly coupled ferrimagnets. This establishes a paradigm for all-optical spin switching. The resultant magnetic field (65 T) is so big that it will significantly reduce high current in spintronics, thus representing the beginning of photospintronics.

Metallic ferromagnets subjected to a temperature gradient exhibit a magnonic drag of the electric current. We address this problem by solving a stochastic Landau-Lifshitz equation to calculate the magnon-drag thermopower. The long-wavelength magnetic dynamics result in two contributions to the electromotive force acting on electrons: 1) An adiabatic Berry-phase force related to the solid angle subtended by the magnetic precession and 2) a dissipative correction thereof, which is rooted microscopically in the spin-dephasing scattering. The first contribution results in a net force pushing the electrons towards the hot side, while the second contribution drags electrons towards the cold side, i.e., in the direction of the magnonic drift. The ratio between the two forces is proportional to the ratio between the Gilbert damping coefficient α and the coefficient β parametrizing the dissipative contribution to the electromotive force.

The eigenstates of a quantum spin glass Hamiltonian with long-range interaction are examined from the point of view of localisation and entanglement. In particular, low particle sectors are examined and an anomalous family of eigenstates is found that is more delocalised but also has larger inter-spin entanglement. These are then identified as particle-added eigenstates from the one-particle sector. This motivates the introduction and the study of random promoted two-particle states, and it is shown that they may have large delocalisation such as generic random states and scale exactly like them. However, the entanglement as measured by two-spin concurrence displays different scaling with the total number of spins. This shows how for different classes of complex quantum states entanglement can be qualitatively different even if localisation measures such as participation ratio are not.

We demonstrate experimentally extreme multiphoton-absorption cascades in GaAs. We show (2 + 3)- and (2 + 4)-photon luminescence, in which a two-photon transition occurs from the valence to the lower conduction band, followed by another 3- or 4-photon transition to the upper conduction band —inducing luminescence corresponding to several inter-band transitions in GaAs. Our systematic study of the observed effects verifies the cascaded multiphoton absorption, by monitoring the pump intensity and wavelength dependence of the observed luminescence spectra. The measurements are in good agreement with our modeling of multiphoton effects including Auger recombination. Our results open new directions in bulk-material band-structure exploration.

Temperature-dependent structural studies of polycrystalline Bi_1−xSb_x $(0.10 \leq x \leq 0.20)$ alloys were carried out using synchrotron x-ray diffraction. In-depth powder diffraction analysis reveals that an iso-structural phase transition takes place in the rhombohedral Bi-Sb alloy around 200 K, which is accompanied by anomalous behavior in the temperature-dependent linear thermal expansion data. In addition, the thermal variation of refined isotropic thermal parameters or Debye-Waller factor (B_iso), ratio $(a_{H}/c_{H})$ of the lattice parameters and Debye temperature $(\theta_{\mathrm{D}})$ indicates that anisotropy, arising due to local structural disorder, plays a significant role in this material.

By designing a two-dimension acoustic complementary medium of water, we demonstrate the possibility of realizing a sound-impenetrable hole that can block acoustic waves in water. The complementary medium is composed of core-shell rubber cylinders in a square lattice, and possesses the exact negative values of water in both the effective density and bulk modulus at a working frequency. The effects of negative refraction as well as the sound-impenetrable hole are verified by numerical simulations. Interestingly, by introducing a small amount of loss, we find that the functionality of such a sound-impenetrable hole becomes robust and works in a broad frequency range.

We propose a new perspective on turbulence using information theory. We compute the entropy rate of a turbulent velocity signal and we particularly focus on its dependence on the scale. We first report how the entropy rate is able to describe the distribution of information amongst scales, and how one can use it to isolate the injection, inertial and dissipative ranges, in perfect agreement with the Batchelor model and with a fractional Brownian motion (fBM) model. We provide analytical derivations of the entropy rate scalings in these two models. In a second stage, we design a conditioning procedure in order to finely probe the asymmetries in the statistics that are responsible for the energy cascade. Our approach is very generic and can be applied to any multiscale complex system.

Cascading failures and epidemic dynamics, as two successful application realms of network science, are usually investigated separately. How do they affect each other is still an open, interesting problem. In this letter, we couple both processes and put them into the framework of interdependent networks, where each network only supports one dynamical process. Of particular interest, they spontaneously form a feedback loop: virus propagation triggers cascading failures of systems while cascading failures suppress virus propagation (i.e., the interplay between cascading failures and virus propagation, also named CF-VP model). Under this novel model, the interdependent networks will collapse completely if virus transmissibility exceeds a crucial threshold. In addition, only when the network sustaining the epidemic dynamics has a larger average degree, will the interdependent networks become more vulnerable, which is opposite to the observation of traditional cascading models in interdependent networks. To protect interdependent networks we also propose control measures based on the identification capability: a stronger identification capability leads to more robust interdependent networks.