arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Carlo Presilla.
A quantum measurement model based upon restricted path-integrals allows us to study measurements of generalized position in various one-dimensional systems of phenomenological interest. After a general overview of the method we discuss the cases of a harmonic oscillator, a bistable potential and two coupled systems, briefly illustrating their applications.
We study the photoluminescence from a near-surface quantum well in the regime of ambipolar tunneling to the surface states. Under steady-state excitation an electric field develops self-consistently due to the condition of equal tunneling currents for electrons and holes. The field induces a Stark shift of the photoluminescence signal which compares well with experimental data from near-surface GaAs/AlGaAs single quantum wells.
A model for quantum Zeno effect based upon an effective Schrödinger equation originated by the path-integral approach is developed and applied to a two-level system simultaneously stimulated by a resonant perturbation. It is shown that inhibition of stimulated transitions between the two levels appears as a consequence of the influence of the meter whenever measurements of energy, either continuous or pulsed, are performed at quantum level of sensitivity. The generality of this approach allows to qualitatively understand the inhibition of spontaneous transitions as the decay of unstable particles, originally presented as a paradox of quantum measurement theory.
We present a self-consistent approach to describe ambipolar tunneling in asymmetrical double quantum wells under steady-state excitation and extend the results to the case of tunneling from a near-surface quantum well to surface states. The results of the model compare very well with the behavior observed in photoluminescence experiments in $InGaAs/InP$ asymmetric double quantum wells and in near-surface $AlGaAs/GaAs$ single quantum wells.
We study the dynamics of classical and quantum systems undergoing a continuous measurement of position by schematizing the measurement apparatus with an infinite set of harmonic oscillators at finite temperature linearly coupled to the measured system. Selective and nonselective measurement processes are then introduced according to a selection of or an average over all possible initial configurations of the measurement apparatus. At quantum level, the selective processes are described by a nonlinear stochastic Schrödinger equation whose solutions evolve into properly defined coherent states in the case of linear systems. For arbitrary measured systems, classical behavior is always recovered in the macroscopic limit.
We analyze the dynamical evolution of the resonant tunneling of an ensemble of electrons through a double barrier in the presence of the self-consistent potential created by the charge accumulation in the well. The intrinsic nonlinearity of the transmission process is shown to lead to oscillations of the stored charge and of the transmitted and reflected fluxes. The dependence on the electrostatic feedback induced by the self-consistent potential and on the energy width of the incident distribution is discussed.
An adiabatic approximation in terms of instantaneous resonances is developed to study the steady-state and time-dependent transport of interacting electrons in biased resonant tunneling heterostructures. The resulting model consists of quantum reservoirs coupled to regions where the system is described by nonlinear ordinary differential equations and has a general conceptual interest.
By using numerical simulations, we investigate the dynamics of a quantum system of interacting bosons. We find an increase of properly defined mixing properties when the number of particles increases at constant density or the interaction strength drives the system away from integrability. A correspondence with the dynamical chaoticity of an associated $c$-number system is then used to infer properties of the quantum system in the thermodynamic limit.
We use an adiabatic approximation in terms of instantaneous resonances to study the steady-state and time-dependent transport properties of interacting electrons in biased resonant tunneling heterostructures. This approach leads, in a natural way, to a transport model of large applicability consisting of reservoirs coupled to regions where the system is described by a nonlinear Schrödinger equation. From the mathematical point of view, this work is non-rigorous but may offer some fresh and interesting problems involving semiclassical approximation, adiabatic theory, non-linear Schrödinger equations and dynamical systems.
We present numerical evidence that in a system of interacting bosons there exists a correspondence between the spectral properties of the exact quantum Hamiltonian and the dynamical chaos of the associated mean field evolution. This correspondence, analogous to the usual quantum-classical correspondence, is related to the formal parallel between the second quantization of the mean field, which generates the exact dynamics of the quantum $N$-body system, and the first quantization of classical canonical coordinates. The limit of infinite density and the thermodynamic limit are then briefly discussed.
Measurement quantum mechanics, the theory of a quantum system which undergoes a measurement process, is introduced by a loop of mathematical equivalencies connecting previously proposed approaches. The unique phenomenological parameter of the theory is linked to the physical properties of an informational environment acting as a measurement apparatus which allows for an objective role of the observer. Comparison with a recently reported experiment suggests how to investigate novel interesting regimes for the quantum Zeno effect.
We propose a numerical method for evaluating eigenvalues and eigenfunctions of Schrödinger operators with general confining potentials. The method is selective in the sense that only the eigenvalue closest to a chosen input energy is found through an absolutely-stable relaxation algorithm which has rate of convergence infinite. In the case of bistable potentials the method allows one to evaluate the fundamental energy splitting for a wide range of tunneling rates.
Schrödinger equations with nonlinearities concentrated in some regions of space are good models of various physical situations and have interesting mathematical properties. We show that in the semiclassical limit it is possible to separate the relevant degrees of freedom by noticing that in the regions where the nonlinearities are effective all states are suppressed but the metastable ones (resonances). In this way the description of the nonlinear regions is reduced to ordinary differential equations weakly coupled to standard Schrödinger equations valid in the linear regions. The idea is illustrated through the study of a prototype equation recently proposed for resonant tunneling of electrons through a double barrier heterostructure and for which nonlinear oscillations have been numerically predicted.
The influence of continuous measurements of energy with a finite accuracy is studied in various quantum systems through a restriction of the Feynman path-integrals around the measurement result. The method, which is equivalent to consider an effective Schrödinger equation with a non-Hermitian Hamiltonian, allows one to study the dynamics of the wavefunction collapse. A numerical algorithm for solving the effective Schrödinger equation is developed and checked in the case of a harmonic oscillator. The situations, of physical interest, of a two-level system and of a metastable quantum-well are then discussed. In the first case the Zeno inhibition observed in quantum optics experiments is recovered and extended to nonresonant transitions, in the second one we propose to observe inhibition of spontaneous decay in mesoscopic heterostructures. In all the considered examples the effect of the continuous measurement of energy is a freezing of the evolution of the system proportional to the accuracy of the measurement itself.