Walking with the atoms in a chemical bond : A perspective using quantum phase transition

Abstract

Classical phase transitions, like solid-liquid-gas or order-disorder spin magnetic phases, are all driven by thermal energy fluctuations by varying the temperature. On the other hand, quantum phase transitions happen at absolute zero temperature with quantum fluctuations causing the ground state energy to show abrupt changes as one varies the system parameters like electron density, pressure, disorder, or external magnetic field. Phase transitions happen at critical values of the controlling parameters, such as the critical temperature in classical phase transitions, and system critical parameters in the quantum case. However, true criticality happens only at the thermodynamic limit, when the number of particles goes to infinity with constant density. To perform the calculations for the critical parameters, finite size scaling approach was developed to extrapolate information from a finite system to the thermodynamic limit. With the advancement in the experimental and theoretical work in the field of ultra-cold systems, particularly trapping and controlling single atomic and molecular systems, one can ask: do finite systems exhibit quantum phase transition? To address this question, finite size scaling for finite system was developed to calculate the quantum critical parameters. Recent observation of a quantum phase transition in a single trapped 171 Yb ion in the Paul trap indicates the possibility of quantum phase transition in finite systems. This perspective focuses on examining chemical processes at ultracold temperature as quantum phase transitions, particularly the formation and dissociation of chemical bonds, which is the basic process for understanding the whole of chemistry