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  • About
  • The Global ETD Search service is a free service for researchers to find electronic theses and dissertations. This service is provided by the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations.
    Our metadata is collected from universities around the world. If you manage a university/consortium/country archive and want to be added, details can be found on the NDLTD website.
1

Non-equilibrium transport in quantum hall edge states

Milletari, Mirco 30 September 2013 (has links) (PDF)
This thesis deals with the study of transport properties of integer and fractional QH edge states and it is based on the work I performed during my Ph.D. studies. The focus of this thesis is on Luttinger liquids far from equilibrium and their relaxation dynamics. Since Boltzmann, a fundamental aspect of statistical mechanics has been the understanding of the emergence of an equilibrium state. Interactions play a crucial role in the thermalization process that drives a system through states described by the Gibbs equilibrium ensemble. Therefore, it seems counterintuitive that a strongly interacting system, such as the Luttinger liquid, should not present any relaxation dynamics. This peculiar fact is due to the integrability of the Luttinger model, i.e. the existence of an infinite number of conserved quantities that precludes the equilibration process. However, in the past few years it has become clear that integrable systems can present some kind of relaxation, even though not towards the Gibbs equilibrium ensemble. Remarkably, the necessity of correctly taking into account some particular non-equilibrium configurations, also revealed the necessity of modifying bosonization, a technique widely used to study strongly interacting systems in one dimension. In this work we focus on three different cases: • Relaxation of high energy electrons injected in a ν = 1/3 chiral Luttinger liquid and in a standard Luttinger liquid. • Heating and the emergence of effective temperatures in a Quantum Hall system at fractional filling fraction ν = 2/3 partitioned by a Quantum Point Contact. • Effect of relaxation on shot-noise measurement of the quasi-particle charge in a ν = 2 QH state.
2

Non liquide de Fermi dans les conducteurs organiques unidimensionnels

Moser, Joel 13 October 1999 (has links) (PDF)
Cette thèse étudie le passage liquide de Luttinger liquide de Fermi au moyen de l'application d'une pression hydrostatique dans le conducteur organique quasi unidimensionnel TMTSF2PF6. La dépendance en température de la résistivité le long the l'axe de moindre conductivité fait apparaître un régime haute température qui s'interpréter par des chaînes de Luttinger alors qu'au dessous de 100K le système évolue vers un régime de chaînes couplés avec une physique de type liquide de Fermi.Ce modèle est aussi confirmé par l'étude de l'effet Hall dans le même composé.
3

Non-equilibrium transport in quantum hall edge states

Milletari, Mirco 16 July 2013 (has links)
This thesis deals with the study of transport properties of integer and fractional QH edge states and it is based on the work I performed during my Ph.D. studies. The focus of this thesis is on Luttinger liquids far from equilibrium and their relaxation dynamics. Since Boltzmann, a fundamental aspect of statistical mechanics has been the understanding of the emergence of an equilibrium state. Interactions play a crucial role in the thermalization process that drives a system through states described by the Gibbs equilibrium ensemble. Therefore, it seems counterintuitive that a strongly interacting system, such as the Luttinger liquid, should not present any relaxation dynamics. This peculiar fact is due to the integrability of the Luttinger model, i.e. the existence of an infinite number of conserved quantities that precludes the equilibration process. However, in the past few years it has become clear that integrable systems can present some kind of relaxation, even though not towards the Gibbs equilibrium ensemble. Remarkably, the necessity of correctly taking into account some particular non-equilibrium configurations, also revealed the necessity of modifying bosonization, a technique widely used to study strongly interacting systems in one dimension. In this work we focus on three different cases: • Relaxation of high energy electrons injected in a ν = 1/3 chiral Luttinger liquid and in a standard Luttinger liquid. • Heating and the emergence of effective temperatures in a Quantum Hall system at fractional filling fraction ν = 2/3 partitioned by a Quantum Point Contact. • Effect of relaxation on shot-noise measurement of the quasi-particle charge in a ν = 2 QH state.
4

Nonequilibrium quantum many-body physics in ultracold atoms subject to dissipation / 冷却原子系における散逸を伴う非平衡量子多体物理

Yamamoto, Kazuki 23 March 2023 (has links)
付記する学位プログラム名: 京都大学卓越大学院プログラム「先端光・電子デバイス創成学」 / 京都大学 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(理学) / 甲第24402号 / 理博第4901号 / 新制||理||1700(附属図書館) / 京都大学大学院理学研究科物理学・宇宙物理学専攻 / (主査)教授 川上 則雄, 教授 佐々 真一, 教授 高橋 義朗 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Science / Kyoto University / DFAM
5

Thermalization and Out-of-Equilibrium Dynamics in Open Quantum Many-Body Systems

Buchhold, Michael 23 October 2015 (has links) (PDF)
Thermalization, the evolution of an interacting many-body system towards a thermal Gibbs ensemble after initialization in an arbitrary non-equilibrium state, is currently a phenomenon of great interest, both in theory and experiment. As the time evolution of a quantum system is unitary, the proposed mechanism of thermalization in quantum many-body systems corresponds to the so-called eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH) and the typicality of eigenstates. Although this formally solves the contradiction of thermalizing but unitary dynamics in a closed quantum many-body system, it does neither make any statement on the dynamical process of thermalization itself nor in which way the coupling of the system to an environment can hinder or modify the relaxation dynamics. In this thesis, we address both the question whether or not a quantum system driven away from equilibrium is able to relax to a thermal state, which fulfills detailed balance, and if one can identify universal behavior in the non-equilibrium relaxation dynamics. As a first realization of driven quantum systems out of equilibrium, we investigate a system of Ising spins, interacting with the quantized radiation field in an optical cavity. For multiple cavity modes, this system forms a highly entangled and frustrated state with infinite correlation times, known as a quantum spin glass. In the presence of drive and dissipation, introduced by coupling the intra-cavity radiation field to the photon vacuum outside the cavity via lossy mirrors, the quantum glass state is modified in a universal manner. For frequencies below the photon loss rate, the dissipation takes over and the system shows the universal behavior of a dissipative spin glass, with a characteristic spectral density $\\mathcal{A}(\\omega)\\sim\\sqrt{\\omega}$. On the other hand, for frequencies above the loss rate, the system retains the universal behavior of a zero temperature, quantum spin glass. Remarkably, at the glass transition, the two subsystems of spins and photons thermalize to a joint effective temperature, even in the presence of photon loss. This thermalization is a consequence of the strong spin-photon interactions, which favor detailed balance in the system and detain photons from escaping the cavity. In the thermalized system, the features of the spin glass are mirrored onto the photon degrees of freedom, leading to an emergent photon glass phase. Exploiting the inherent photon loss of the cavity, we make predictions of possible measurements on the escaping photons, which contain detailed information of the state inside the cavity and allow for a precise, non-destructive measurement of the glass state. As a further set of non-equilibrium systems, we consider one-dimensional quantum fluids driven out of equilibrium, whose universal low energy theory is formed by the so-called Luttinger Liquid description, which, due to its large degree of universality, is of intense theoretical and experimental interest. A set of recent experiments in research groups in Vienna, Innsbruck and Munich have probed the non-equilibrium time-evolution of one-dimensional quantum fluids for different experimental realizations and are pushing into a time regime, where thermalization is expected. From a theoretical point of view, one-dimensional quantum fluids are particular interesting, as Luttinger Liquids are integrable and therefore, due to an infinite number of constants of motion, do not thermalize. The leading order correction to the quadratic theory is irrelevant in the sense of the renormalization group and does therefore not modify static correlation functions, however, it breaks integrability and will therefore, even if irrelevant, induce a completely different non-equilibrium dynamics as the quadratic Luttinger theory alone. In this thesis, we derive for the first time a kinetic equation for interacting Luttinger Liquids, which describes the time evolution of the excitation densities for arbitrary initial states. The resonant character of the interaction makes a straightforward derivation of the kinetic equation, using Fermi\'s golden rule, impossible and we have to develop non-perturbative techniques in the Keldysh framework. We derive a closed expression for the time evolution of the excitation densities in terms of self-energies and vertex corrections. Close to equilibrium, the kinetic equation describes the exponential decay of excitations, with a decay rate $\\sigma^R=\\mbox\\Sigma^R$, determined by the self-energy at equilibrium. However, for long times $\\tau$, it also reveals the presence of dynamical slow modes, which are the consequence of exactly energy conserving dynamics and lead to an algebraic decay $\\sim\\tau^$ with $\\eta_D=0.58$. The presence of these dynamical slow modes is not contained in the equilibrium Matsubara formalism, while they emerge naturally in the non-equilibrium formalism developed in this thesis. In order to initialize a one-dimensional quantum fluid out of equilibrium, we consider an interaction quench in a model of interacting, dispersive fermions in Chap.~\\ref. In this scenario, the fermionic interaction is suddenly changed at time $t=0$, such that for $t>0$ the system is not in an eigenstate and therefore undergoes a non-trivial time evolution. For the quadratic theory, the stationary state in the limit $t\\rightarrow\\infty$ is a non-thermal, or prethermal, state, described by a generalized Gibbs ensemble (GGE). The GGE takes into account for the conservation of all integrals of motion, formed by the eigenmodes of the Hamiltonian. On the other hand, in the presence of non-linearities, the final state for $t\\rightarrow\\infty$ is a thermal state with a finite temperature $T>0$. . The spatio-temporal, dynamical thermalization process can be decomposed into three regimes: A prequench regime on the largest distances, which is determined by the initial state, a prethermal plateau for intermediate distances, which is determined by the metastable fixed point of the quadratic theory and a thermal region on the shortest distances. The latter spreads sub-ballistically $\\sim t^$ in space with $0<\\alpha<1$ depending on the quench. Until complete thermalization (i.e. for times $t<\\infty$), the thermal region contains more energy than the prethermal and prequench region, which is expressed in a larger temperature $T_{t}>T_$, decreasing towards its final value $T_$. As the system has achieved local detailed balance in the thermalized region, energy transport to the non-thermal region can only be performed by the macroscopic dynamical slow modes and the decay of the temperature $T_{t}-T_\\sim t^$ again witnesses the presence of these slow modes. The very slow spreading of thermalization is consistent with recent experiments performed in Vienna, which observe a metastable, prethermal state after a quench and only observe the onset of thermalization on much larger time scales. As an immediate indication of thermalization, we determine the time evolution of the fermionic momentum distribution after a quench from non-interacting to interacting fermions. For this quench scenario, the step in the Fermi distribution at the Fermi momentum $k\\sub$ decays to zero algebraically in the absence of a non-linearity but as a stretched exponential (the exponent being proportional to the non-linearity) in the presence of a finite non-linearity. This can serve as a proof for the presence or absence of the non-linearity even on time-scales for which thermalization can not yet be observed. Finally, we consider a bosonic quantum fluid, which is driven away from equilibrium by permanent heating. The origin of the heating is atomic spontaneous emission of laser photons, which are used to create a coherent lattice potential in optical lattice experiments. This process preserves the system\'s $U(1)$-invariance, i.e. conserves the global particle number, and the corresponding long-wavelength description is a heated, interacting Luttinger Liquid, for which phonon modes are continuously populated with a momentum dependent rate $\\partial_tn_q\\sim\\gamma |q|$. In the dynamics, we identify a quasi-thermal regime for large momenta, featuring an increasing time-dependent effective temperature. In this regime, due to fast phonon-phonon scattering, detailed balance has been achieved and is expressed by a time-local, increasing temperature. The thermal region emerges locally and spreads in space sub-ballistically according to $x_t\\sim t^{4/5}$. For larger distances, the system is described by an non-equilibrium phonon distribution $n_q\\sim |q|$, which leads to a new, non-equilibrium behavior of large distance observables. For instance, the phonon decay rate scales universally as $\\gamma_q\\sim |q|^{5/3}$, with a new non-equilibrium exponent $\\eta=5/3$, which differs from equilibrium. This new, universal behavior is guaranteed by the $U(1)$ invariant dynamics of the system and is insensitive to further subleading perturbations. The non-equilibrium long-distance behavior can be determined experimentally by measuring the static and dynamic structure factor, both of which clearly indicate the exponents for phonon decay, $\\eta=5/3$ and for the spreading of thermalization $\\eta_T=4/5$. Remarkably, even in the presence of this strong external drive, the interactions and their aim to achieve detailed balance are strong enough to establish a locally emerging and spatially spreading thermal region. The physical setups in this thesis do not only reveal interesting and new dynamical features in the out-of-equilibrium time evolution of interacting systems, but they also strongly underline the high degree of universality of thermalization for the classes of models studied here. May it be a system of coupled spins and photons, where the photons are pulled away from a thermal state by Markovian photon decay caused by a leaky cavity, a one-dimensional fermionic quantum fluid, which has been initialized in an out-of-equilibrium state by a quantum quench or a one-dimensional bosonic quantum fluid, which is driven away from equilibrium by continuous, external heating, all of these systems at the end establish a local thermal equilibrium, which spreads in space and leads to global thermalization for $t\\rightarrow\\infty$. This underpins the importance of thermalizing collisions and endorses the standard approach of equilibrium statistical mechanics, describing a physical system in its steady state by a thermal Gibbs ensemble.
6

Quantum Spin Chains And Luttinger Liquids With Junctions : Analytical And Numerical Studies

Ravi Chandra, V 07 1900 (has links)
We present in this thesis a series of studies on the physical properties of some one dimensional systems. In particular we study the low energy properties of various spin chains and a junction of Luttinger wires. For spin chains we specifically look at the role of perturbations like frustrating interactions and dimerisation in a nearest neighbour chain and the formation of magnetisation plateaus in two kinds of models; one purely theoretical and the other motivated by experiments. In our second subject of interest we study using a renormalisation group analysis the effect of spin dependent scattering at a junction of Luttinger wires. We look at the physical effects caused by the interplay of electronic interactions in the wires and the scattering processes at the junction. The thesis begins with an introductory chapter which gives a brief glimpse of the ideas and techniques used in the specific problems that we have worked on. Our work on these problems is then described in detail in chapters 25. We now present a brief summary of each of those chapters. In the second chapter we look at the ground state phase diagram of the mixed-spin sawtooth chain, i.e a system where the spins along the baseline are allowed to be different from the spins on the vertices. The spins S1 along the baseline interact with a coupling strength J1(> 0). The coupling of the spins on the vertex (S2) to the baseline spins has a strength J2. We study the phase diagram as a function of J2/J1 [1]. The model exhibits a rich variety of phases which we study using spinwave theory, exact diagonalisation and a semi-numerical perturbation theory leading to an effective Hamiltonian. The spinwave theory predicts a transition from a spiral state to a ferrimagnetic state at J2S2/2J1S1 = 1 as J2/J1 is increased. The spectrum has two branches one of which is gapless and dispersionless (at the linear order) in the spiral phase. This arises because of the infinite degeneracy of classical ground states in that phase. Numerically, we study the system using exact diagonalisation of up to 12 unit cells and S1 = 1 and S2 =1/2. We look at the variation of ground state energy, gap to the lowest excitations, and the relevant spin correlation functions in the model. This unearths a richer phase diagram than the spinwave calculation. Apart from revealing a possibility of the presence of more than one kind of spiral phases, numerical results tell us about a very interesting phase for small J2. The spin correlation function (for the spin1/2s) in this region have a property that the nextnearest-neighbour correlations are much larger than the nearest neighbour correlations. We call this phase the NNNAFM (nextnearest neighbour antiferromagnet) phase and provide an understanding of this phase by deriving an effective Hamiltonian between the spin1/2s. We also show the existence of macroscopic magnetisation jumps in the model when one looks at the system close to saturation fields. The third chapter is concerned with the formation of magnetisation plateaus in two different spin models. We show how in one model the plateaus arise because of the competition between two coupling constants, and in the other because of purely geometrical effects. In the first problem we propose [2] a class of spin Hamiltonians which include as special cases several known systems. The class of models is defined on a bipartite lattice in arbitrary dimensions and for any spin. The simplest manifestation of such models in one dimension corresponds to a ladder system with diagonal couplings (which are of the same strength as the leg couplings). The physical properties of the model are determined by the combined effects of the competition between the ”rung” coupling (J’ )and the ”leg/diagonal” coupling (J ) and the magnetic field. We show that our model can be solved exactly in a substantial region of the parameter space (J’ > 2J ) and we demonstrate the existence of magnetisation plateaus in the solvable regime. Also, by making reasonable assumptions about the spectrum in the region where we cannot solve the model exactly, we prove the existence of first order phase transitions on a plateau where the sublattice magnetisations change abruptly. We numerically investigate the ladder system mentioned above (for spin1) to confirm all our analytical predictions and present a phase diagram in the J’/J - B plane, quite a few of whose features we expect to be generically valid for all higher spins. In the second problem concerning plateaus (also discussed in chapter 3) we study the properties of a compound synthesised experimentally [3]. The essential feature of the structure of this compound which gives rise to its physical properties is the presence of two kinds of spin1/2 objects alternating with each other on a helix. One kind has an axis of anisotropy at an inclination to the helical axis (which essentially makes it an Ising spin) whereas the other is an isotropic spin1/2 object. These two spin1/2 objects interact with each other but not with their own kind. Experimentally, it was observed that in a magnetic field this material exhibits magnetisation plateaus one of which is at 1/3rd of the saturation magnetisation value. These plateaus appear when the field is along the direction of the helical axis but disappear when the field is perpendicular to that axis. The model being used for the material prior to our work could not explain the existence of these plateaus. In our work we propose a simple modification in the model Hamiltonian which is able to qualitatively explain the presence of the plateaus. We show that the existence of the plateaus can be explained using a periodic variation of the angles of inclination of the easy axes of the anisotropic spins. The experimental temperature and the fields are much lower than the magnetic coupling strength. Because of this quite a lot of the properties of the system can be studied analytically using transfer matrix methods for an effective theory involving only the anisotropic spins. Apart from the plateaus we study using this modified model other physical quantities like the specific heat, susceptibility and the entropy. We demonstrate the existence of finite entropy per spin at low temperatures for some values of the magnetic field. In chapter 4 we investigate the longstanding problem of locating the gapless points of a dimerised spin chain as the strength of dimerisation is varied. It is known that generalising Haldane’s field theoretic analysis to dimerised spin chains correctly predicts the number of the gapless points but not the exact locations (which have determined numerically for a few low values of spins). We investigate the problem of locating those points using a dimerised spin chain Hamiltonian with a ”twisted” boundary condition [4]. For a periodic chain, this ”twist” consists simply of a local rotation about the zaxis which renders the xx and yy terms on one bond negative. Such a boundary condition has been used earlier for numerical work whereby one can find the gapless points by studying the crossing points of ground states of finite chains (with the above twist) in different parity sectors (parity sectors are defined by the reflection symmetry about the twisted bond). We study the twisted Hamiltonian using two analytical methods. The modified boundary condition reduces the degeneracy of classical ground states of the chain and we get only two N´eel states as classical ground states. We use this property to identify the gapless points as points where the tunneling amplitude between these two ground states goes to zero. While one of our calculations just reproduces the results of previous field theoretic treatments, our second analytical treatment gives a direct expression for the gapless points as roots of a polynomial equation in the dimerisation parameter. This approach is found to be more accurate. We compare the two methods with the numerical method mentioned above and present results for various spin values. In the final chapter we present a study of the physics of a junction of Luttinger wires (quantum wires) with both scalar and spin scattering at the junction ([5],[6]). Earlier studies have investigated special cases of this system. The systems studied were two wire junctions with either a fully transmitting scattering matrix or one corresponding to disconnected wires. We extend the study to a junction of N wires with an arbitrary scattering matrix and a spin impurity at the junction. We study the RG flows of the Kondo coupling of the impurity spin to the electrons treating the electronic interactions and the Kondo coupling perturbatively. We analyse the various fixed points for the specific case of three wires. We find a general tendency to flow towards strong coupling when all the matrix elements of the Kondo coupling are positive at small length scales. We analyse one of the strong coupling fixed points, namely that of the maximally transmitting scattering matrix, using a 1/J perturbation theory and we find at large length scales a fixed point of disconnected wires with a vanishing Kondo coupling. In this way we obtain a picture of the RG at both short and long length scales. Also, we analyse all the fixed points using lattice models to gain an understanding of the RG flows in terms of specific couplings on the lattice. Finally, we use to bosonisation to study one particular case of scattering (the disconnected wires) in the presence of strong interactions and find that sufficiently strong interactions can stabilise a multichannel fixed point which is unstable in the weak interaction limit.
7

Flussgleichungen zur Beschreibung statischer und dynamischer Eigenschaften des eindimensionalen Kondo-Gitter-Modells

Sommer, Torsten 24 February 2005 (has links) (PDF)
In dieser Arbeit wird das eindimensionale Kondo-Gitter-Modell untersucht, das die Wechselwirkung eines Gitters lokaler magnetischer Momente mit unkorrelierten Leitungselektronen beschreibt. Mit Hilfe der Methode der kontinuierlichen unitären Transformationen (Flussgleichungen) wird das Modell im Parameterbereich schwacher Wechselwirkungsstärke betrachtet. In diesem Bereich zeigt das Modell so genanntes Luttinger-Flüssigkeitsverhalten. Im Rahmen der Flussgleichungsmethode wird der Hamilton-Operator auf ein effektives Modell abgebildet, in dem Elektronen und Spinmomente vollständig entkoppelt sind. Das Resultat dieses Prozesses ist ein Modell, das ein nichtwechselwirkendes Elektronengas und eine Heisenberg-Spinkette beschreibt. Das Eigenwertproblem der Heisenberg-Kette wird im Rahmen einer Schwinger-Boson-Molekularfeld-Theorie beschrieben. Zur Charakterisierung der Grundzustandseigenschaften des eindimensionalen Kondo-Gitter-Modells wurden verschiedene Erwartungswerte und Korrelationsfunktionen betrachtet. Neben statischen Größen, wie der Ladungskorrelationsfunktion der Elektronen oder der Spinkorrelationsfunktion der lokalen Spinmomente, werden dynamische Größen, wie die elektronische Zustandsdichte oder die dynamischen Spinstrukturfaktoren der Elektronen und der lokalen Spinmomente, berechnet. / The one-dimensional Kondo lattice model is investigated. This model describes the interaction between a lattice of local magnetic moments and uncorrelated conduction electrons. It is studied by means of the continuous unitary transformation's method (flow equations) within the parameter regime of weak interaction strength. Here the model shows so called Luttinger liquid behaviour. Within the framework of the flow equation's method the original Hamiltonian is mapped on an effective model, where electrons and local moments are completely decoupled. The result of this process is a model describing a non-interacting electron gas and a Heisenberg spin chain. The eigenvalue problem of the Heisenberg chain is described within a Schwinger bosons molecular field theory. In order to characterise the ground state properties of the one-dimensional Kondo lattice model different expectation values and correlation functions are investigated. Beside static properties like the charge correlation function of the electrons or the local moment's spin correlation function, dynamic properties are determined, like the electronic density of states or the dynamic spin structure factor of both the electrons and the local moments.
8

Transport à travers un canal quantique élémentaire : action du circuit, quantification de la charge et limite quantique du courant de chaleur / Transport across an elementary quantum channel : action of the circuit, charge quantization and quantum limit of heat flow

Jezouin, Sebastien 27 November 2014 (has links)
Ce mémoire de thèse présente trois expériences portant sur le transport quantique dans les conducteurs cohérents à l’échelle élémentaire du canal de conduction. La première étudie comment le transport d’électricité dans un canal est affecté lorsque le canal est inséré dans un circuit modélisé par une impédance linéaire. Nous avons observé empiriquement une loi d’échelle à laquelle obéit la conductance du canal et nous avons démontré expérimentalement une analogie entre ce système et les liquides de Tomonaga-Luttinger. La deuxième s’intéresse à la nature de la charge d’un îlot métallique couplé électriquement au monde extérieur par deux canaux de conduction. Dans le régime de couplage faible, il est bien connu que cette charge est quantifiée en unités de la charge de l’électron. Ici, nous avons caractérisé la transition vers le régime de couplage fort, où la quantification de la charge est détruite par les fluctuations quantiques. La troisième concerne le transport de chaleur dans les conducteurs cohérents. Grâce à un système de mesure de bruit implémenté au cours de ce travail de thèse, nous avons pu, pour la première fois, mesurer quantitativement la conductance thermique d’un unique canal de conduction électronique, que nous avons trouvée en accord avec le quantum de conductance thermique à une résolution de quelques pourcents. / This thesis presents three experiments focusing on quantum transport in coherent conductors at the elementary scale of the conduction channel. The first one studies how electrical transport in a channel is modified when the channel is embedded in a linear circuit characterized by an impedance. We observed empirically that the channel conductance obeys a scaling law and we demonstrated experimentally a mapping of this system to the so-Called Tomonaga-Luttinger liquids. The second one is interested in the charge of a metallic island electrically coupled to the outside world through two conduction channels. In the weak coupling regime, it is well-Known that the island charge is quantized in units of the electron charge. Here we characterized the crossover to the strong coupling regime where charge quantization is destroyed by quantum fluctuations. The third one is about heat transport in coherent conductors. Thanks to a noise measurement setup implemented during this thesis, we were able to measure quantitatively for the first time the thermal conductance of a single electronic channel, which we found in agreement with the thermal conductance quantum to a few % accuracy.
9

Thermalization and Out-of-Equilibrium Dynamics in Open Quantum Many-Body Systems

Buchhold, Michael 23 September 2015 (has links)
Thermalization, the evolution of an interacting many-body system towards a thermal Gibbs ensemble after initialization in an arbitrary non-equilibrium state, is currently a phenomenon of great interest, both in theory and experiment. As the time evolution of a quantum system is unitary, the proposed mechanism of thermalization in quantum many-body systems corresponds to the so-called eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH) and the typicality of eigenstates. Although this formally solves the contradiction of thermalizing but unitary dynamics in a closed quantum many-body system, it does neither make any statement on the dynamical process of thermalization itself nor in which way the coupling of the system to an environment can hinder or modify the relaxation dynamics. In this thesis, we address both the question whether or not a quantum system driven away from equilibrium is able to relax to a thermal state, which fulfills detailed balance, and if one can identify universal behavior in the non-equilibrium relaxation dynamics. As a first realization of driven quantum systems out of equilibrium, we investigate a system of Ising spins, interacting with the quantized radiation field in an optical cavity. For multiple cavity modes, this system forms a highly entangled and frustrated state with infinite correlation times, known as a quantum spin glass. In the presence of drive and dissipation, introduced by coupling the intra-cavity radiation field to the photon vacuum outside the cavity via lossy mirrors, the quantum glass state is modified in a universal manner. For frequencies below the photon loss rate, the dissipation takes over and the system shows the universal behavior of a dissipative spin glass, with a characteristic spectral density $\\mathcal{A}(\\omega)\\sim\\sqrt{\\omega}$. On the other hand, for frequencies above the loss rate, the system retains the universal behavior of a zero temperature, quantum spin glass. Remarkably, at the glass transition, the two subsystems of spins and photons thermalize to a joint effective temperature, even in the presence of photon loss. This thermalization is a consequence of the strong spin-photon interactions, which favor detailed balance in the system and detain photons from escaping the cavity. In the thermalized system, the features of the spin glass are mirrored onto the photon degrees of freedom, leading to an emergent photon glass phase. Exploiting the inherent photon loss of the cavity, we make predictions of possible measurements on the escaping photons, which contain detailed information of the state inside the cavity and allow for a precise, non-destructive measurement of the glass state. As a further set of non-equilibrium systems, we consider one-dimensional quantum fluids driven out of equilibrium, whose universal low energy theory is formed by the so-called Luttinger Liquid description, which, due to its large degree of universality, is of intense theoretical and experimental interest. A set of recent experiments in research groups in Vienna, Innsbruck and Munich have probed the non-equilibrium time-evolution of one-dimensional quantum fluids for different experimental realizations and are pushing into a time regime, where thermalization is expected. From a theoretical point of view, one-dimensional quantum fluids are particular interesting, as Luttinger Liquids are integrable and therefore, due to an infinite number of constants of motion, do not thermalize. The leading order correction to the quadratic theory is irrelevant in the sense of the renormalization group and does therefore not modify static correlation functions, however, it breaks integrability and will therefore, even if irrelevant, induce a completely different non-equilibrium dynamics as the quadratic Luttinger theory alone. In this thesis, we derive for the first time a kinetic equation for interacting Luttinger Liquids, which describes the time evolution of the excitation densities for arbitrary initial states. The resonant character of the interaction makes a straightforward derivation of the kinetic equation, using Fermi\'s golden rule, impossible and we have to develop non-perturbative techniques in the Keldysh framework. We derive a closed expression for the time evolution of the excitation densities in terms of self-energies and vertex corrections. Close to equilibrium, the kinetic equation describes the exponential decay of excitations, with a decay rate $\\sigma^R=\\mbox\\Sigma^R$, determined by the self-energy at equilibrium. However, for long times $\\tau$, it also reveals the presence of dynamical slow modes, which are the consequence of exactly energy conserving dynamics and lead to an algebraic decay $\\sim\\tau^$ with $\\eta_D=0.58$. The presence of these dynamical slow modes is not contained in the equilibrium Matsubara formalism, while they emerge naturally in the non-equilibrium formalism developed in this thesis. In order to initialize a one-dimensional quantum fluid out of equilibrium, we consider an interaction quench in a model of interacting, dispersive fermions in Chap.~\\ref. In this scenario, the fermionic interaction is suddenly changed at time $t=0$, such that for $t>0$ the system is not in an eigenstate and therefore undergoes a non-trivial time evolution. For the quadratic theory, the stationary state in the limit $t\\rightarrow\\infty$ is a non-thermal, or prethermal, state, described by a generalized Gibbs ensemble (GGE). The GGE takes into account for the conservation of all integrals of motion, formed by the eigenmodes of the Hamiltonian. On the other hand, in the presence of non-linearities, the final state for $t\\rightarrow\\infty$ is a thermal state with a finite temperature $T>0$. . The spatio-temporal, dynamical thermalization process can be decomposed into three regimes: A prequench regime on the largest distances, which is determined by the initial state, a prethermal plateau for intermediate distances, which is determined by the metastable fixed point of the quadratic theory and a thermal region on the shortest distances. The latter spreads sub-ballistically $\\sim t^$ in space with $0<\\alpha<1$ depending on the quench. Until complete thermalization (i.e. for times $t<\\infty$), the thermal region contains more energy than the prethermal and prequench region, which is expressed in a larger temperature $T_{t}>T_$, decreasing towards its final value $T_$. As the system has achieved local detailed balance in the thermalized region, energy transport to the non-thermal region can only be performed by the macroscopic dynamical slow modes and the decay of the temperature $T_{t}-T_\\sim t^$ again witnesses the presence of these slow modes. The very slow spreading of thermalization is consistent with recent experiments performed in Vienna, which observe a metastable, prethermal state after a quench and only observe the onset of thermalization on much larger time scales. As an immediate indication of thermalization, we determine the time evolution of the fermionic momentum distribution after a quench from non-interacting to interacting fermions. For this quench scenario, the step in the Fermi distribution at the Fermi momentum $k\\sub$ decays to zero algebraically in the absence of a non-linearity but as a stretched exponential (the exponent being proportional to the non-linearity) in the presence of a finite non-linearity. This can serve as a proof for the presence or absence of the non-linearity even on time-scales for which thermalization can not yet be observed. Finally, we consider a bosonic quantum fluid, which is driven away from equilibrium by permanent heating. The origin of the heating is atomic spontaneous emission of laser photons, which are used to create a coherent lattice potential in optical lattice experiments. This process preserves the system\'s $U(1)$-invariance, i.e. conserves the global particle number, and the corresponding long-wavelength description is a heated, interacting Luttinger Liquid, for which phonon modes are continuously populated with a momentum dependent rate $\\partial_tn_q\\sim\\gamma |q|$. In the dynamics, we identify a quasi-thermal regime for large momenta, featuring an increasing time-dependent effective temperature. In this regime, due to fast phonon-phonon scattering, detailed balance has been achieved and is expressed by a time-local, increasing temperature. The thermal region emerges locally and spreads in space sub-ballistically according to $x_t\\sim t^{4/5}$. For larger distances, the system is described by an non-equilibrium phonon distribution $n_q\\sim |q|$, which leads to a new, non-equilibrium behavior of large distance observables. For instance, the phonon decay rate scales universally as $\\gamma_q\\sim |q|^{5/3}$, with a new non-equilibrium exponent $\\eta=5/3$, which differs from equilibrium. This new, universal behavior is guaranteed by the $U(1)$ invariant dynamics of the system and is insensitive to further subleading perturbations. The non-equilibrium long-distance behavior can be determined experimentally by measuring the static and dynamic structure factor, both of which clearly indicate the exponents for phonon decay, $\\eta=5/3$ and for the spreading of thermalization $\\eta_T=4/5$. Remarkably, even in the presence of this strong external drive, the interactions and their aim to achieve detailed balance are strong enough to establish a locally emerging and spatially spreading thermal region. The physical setups in this thesis do not only reveal interesting and new dynamical features in the out-of-equilibrium time evolution of interacting systems, but they also strongly underline the high degree of universality of thermalization for the classes of models studied here. May it be a system of coupled spins and photons, where the photons are pulled away from a thermal state by Markovian photon decay caused by a leaky cavity, a one-dimensional fermionic quantum fluid, which has been initialized in an out-of-equilibrium state by a quantum quench or a one-dimensional bosonic quantum fluid, which is driven away from equilibrium by continuous, external heating, all of these systems at the end establish a local thermal equilibrium, which spreads in space and leads to global thermalization for $t\\rightarrow\\infty$. This underpins the importance of thermalizing collisions and endorses the standard approach of equilibrium statistical mechanics, describing a physical system in its steady state by a thermal Gibbs ensemble.
10

Flussgleichungen zur Beschreibung statischer und dynamischer Eigenschaften des eindimensionalen Kondo-Gitter-Modells

Sommer, Torsten 15 March 2005 (has links)
In dieser Arbeit wird das eindimensionale Kondo-Gitter-Modell untersucht, das die Wechselwirkung eines Gitters lokaler magnetischer Momente mit unkorrelierten Leitungselektronen beschreibt. Mit Hilfe der Methode der kontinuierlichen unitären Transformationen (Flussgleichungen) wird das Modell im Parameterbereich schwacher Wechselwirkungsstärke betrachtet. In diesem Bereich zeigt das Modell so genanntes Luttinger-Flüssigkeitsverhalten. Im Rahmen der Flussgleichungsmethode wird der Hamilton-Operator auf ein effektives Modell abgebildet, in dem Elektronen und Spinmomente vollständig entkoppelt sind. Das Resultat dieses Prozesses ist ein Modell, das ein nichtwechselwirkendes Elektronengas und eine Heisenberg-Spinkette beschreibt. Das Eigenwertproblem der Heisenberg-Kette wird im Rahmen einer Schwinger-Boson-Molekularfeld-Theorie beschrieben. Zur Charakterisierung der Grundzustandseigenschaften des eindimensionalen Kondo-Gitter-Modells wurden verschiedene Erwartungswerte und Korrelationsfunktionen betrachtet. Neben statischen Größen, wie der Ladungskorrelationsfunktion der Elektronen oder der Spinkorrelationsfunktion der lokalen Spinmomente, werden dynamische Größen, wie die elektronische Zustandsdichte oder die dynamischen Spinstrukturfaktoren der Elektronen und der lokalen Spinmomente, berechnet. / The one-dimensional Kondo lattice model is investigated. This model describes the interaction between a lattice of local magnetic moments and uncorrelated conduction electrons. It is studied by means of the continuous unitary transformation's method (flow equations) within the parameter regime of weak interaction strength. Here the model shows so called Luttinger liquid behaviour. Within the framework of the flow equation's method the original Hamiltonian is mapped on an effective model, where electrons and local moments are completely decoupled. The result of this process is a model describing a non-interacting electron gas and a Heisenberg spin chain. The eigenvalue problem of the Heisenberg chain is described within a Schwinger bosons molecular field theory. In order to characterise the ground state properties of the one-dimensional Kondo lattice model different expectation values and correlation functions are investigated. Beside static properties like the charge correlation function of the electrons or the local moment's spin correlation function, dynamic properties are determined, like the electronic density of states or the dynamic spin structure factor of both the electrons and the local moments.

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