Searcharxiv⌕ Search

arXiv subjects

Herbert Spohn

Publications and source records attributed to Herbert Spohn.

At least 145 records · Page 8Linked to original sources

Stationary measures and hydrodynamics of zero range processes with several species of particles

We study general zero range processes with different types of particles on a d-dimensional lattice with periodic boundary conditions. A necessary and sufficient condition on the jump rates for the existence of stationary product measures is established. For translation invariant jump rates we prove the hydrodynamic limit on the Euler scale using Yau's relative entropy method. The limit equation is a system of conservation laws, which are hyperbolic and have a globally convex entropy. We analyze this system in terms of entropy variables. In addition we obtain stationary density profiles for open boundaries.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

Step fluctuations for a faceted crystal

A statistical mechanics model for a faceted crystal is the 3D Ising model at zero temperature. It is assumed that in one octant all sites are occupied by atoms, the remaining ones being empty. Allowed atom configurations are such that they can be obtained from the filled octant through successive removals of atoms with breaking of precisely three bonds. If V denotes the number of atoms removed, then the grand canonical Boltzmann weight is q^V, 0 1 a deterministic shape is attained, which has the three facets (100), (010), (001), and a rounded piece interpolating between them. We analyse the step statistics as q -> 1. In the rounded piece it is given by a determinantal process based on the discrete sine-kernel. Exactly at the facet edge, the steps have more space to meander. Their statistics is again determinantal, but this time based on the Airy-kernel. In particular, the border step is well approximated by the Airy process, which has been obtained previously in the context of growth models. Our results are based on the asymptotic analysis for space-time inhomogeneous transfer matrices.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

Last Branching in Directed Last Passage Percolation

The 1+1 dimensional directed polymers in a Poissonean random environment is studied. For two polymers of maximal length with the same origin and distinct end points we establish that the point of last branching is governed by the exponent for the transversal fluctuations of a single polymer. We also investigate the density of branches.

math-ph↗

Scale Invariance of the PNG Droplet and the Airy Process

We establish that the static height fluctuations of a particular growth model, the PNG droplet, converges upon proper rescaling to a limit process, which we call the Airy process A(y). The Airy process is stationary, it has continuous sample paths, its single "time" (fixed y) distribution is the Tracy-Widom distribution of the largest eigenvalue of a GUE random matrix, and the Airy process has a slow decay of correlations as y^(-2). Roughly the Airy process describes the last line of Dyson's Brownian motion model for random matrices. Our construction uses a multi-layer version of the PNG model, which can be analyzed through fermionic techniques. Specializing our result to a fixed value of y, one reobtains the celebrated result of Baik, Deift, and Johansson on the length of the longest increasing subsequence of a random permutation.

math.PR↗

Space-adiabatic Decoupling to All Orders

A systematic perturbation scheme is developed for approximate solutions to the time-dependent Schroedinger equation with a space-adiabatic Hamiltonian. For a particular isolated energy band, the basic approach is to separate kinematics from dynamics. The kinematics is defined through a subspace of the full Hilbert space for which transitions to other band subspaces are suppressed to all orders and the dynamics operates in that subspace in terms of an effective intraband Hamiltonian. As novel applications we discuss the Born-Oppenheimer theory to second order and derive the nonperturbative definition of the g-factor of the electron within nonrelativistic quantum electrodynamics.

quant-ph↗

Adiabatic Decoupling and Time-Dependent Born-Oppenheimer Theory

We reconsider the time-dependent Born-Oppenheimer theory with the goal to carefully separate between the adiabatic decoupling of a given group of energy bands from their orthogonal subspace and the semiclassics within the energy bands. Band crossings are allowed and our results are local in the sense that they hold up to the first time when a band crossing is encountered. The adiabatic decoupling leads to an effective Schroedinger equation for the nuclei, including contributions from the Berry connection.

math-ph↗

Infrared regular representation of the three dimensional massless Nelson model

We prove that in the Euclidean representation of the three dimensional massless Nelson model the t = 0 projection of the interacting measure is absolutely continuous with respect to a Gaussian measure with suitably adjusted mean. We also determine the Hamiltonian in the Fock space over this Gaussian measure space.

math-ph↗

Porous silicon formation and electropolishing

Electrochemical etching of silicon in hydrofluoride containing electrolytes leads to pore formation for low and to electropolishing for high applied current. The transition between pore formation and polishing is accompanied by a change of the valence of the electrochemical dissolution reaction. The local etching rate at the interface between the semiconductor and the electrolyte is determined by the local current density. We model the transport of reactants and reaction products and thus the current density in both, the semiconductor and the electrolyte. Basic features of the chemical reaction at the interface are summarized in law of mass action type boundary conditions for the transport equations at the interface. We investigate the linear stability of a planar and flat interface. Upon increasing the current density the stability flips either through a change of the valence of the dissolution reaction or by a nonlinear boundary conditions at the interface.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

Post-Coulombian Dynamics at Order 1.5

We study the dynamics of N charges interacting with the Maxwell field. If their initial velocities are small compared to the velocity of light, c, then in lowest order their motion is governed by the static Coulomb Lagrangian. We investigate higher order corrections with an explicit control on the error terms. The Darwin correction, order (v/c)^2, has been proved previously. In this contribution we obtain the dissipative corrections due to radiation damping, which are of order (v/c)^3 relative to the Coulomb dynamics. If all particles have the same charge-to-mass ratio, the dissipation would vanish at that order.

math-ph↗

The infrared behaviour in Nelson's model of a quantum particle coupled to a massless scalar field

We prove that Nelson's massless scalar field model is infrared divergent in three dimensions. In particular, the Nelson Hamiltonian and the Hamiltonian obtained from Euclidean quantization are not unitarily equivalent. In contrast, for dimensions higher than three the Nelson Hamiltonian has a unique ground state in Fock space and the two Hamiltonians are unitarily equivalent. We also show that the Euclidean Hamiltonian has no spectral gap.

math-ph↗

Semi-classical motion of dressed electrons

We consider an electron coupled to the quantized radiation field and subject to a slowly varying electrostatic potential. We establish that over sufficiently long times radiation effects are negligible and the dressed electron is governed by an effective one-particle Hamiltonian. In the proof only a few generic properties of the full Pauli-Fierz Hamiltonian H_PF enter. Most importantly, H_PF must have an isolated ground state band for |p| < p_c <= \infty with p the total momentum and p_c indicating that the ground state band may terminate. This structure demands a local approximation theorem, in the sense that the one- particle approximation holds until the semi-classical dynamics violates |p|<p_c. Within this framework we prove an abstract Hilbert space theorem which uses no additional information on the Hamiltonian away from the band of interest. Our result is applicable to other time-dependent semi-classical problems. We discuss semi-classical distributions for the effective one-particle dynamics and show how they can be translated to the full dynamics by our results.

math-ph↗

Universal Distributions for Growth Processes in 1+1 Dimensions and Random Matrices

We develop a scaling theory for KPZ growth in one dimension by a detailed study of the polynuclear growth (PNG) model. In particular, we identify three universal distributions for shape fluctuations and their dependence on the macroscopic shape. These distribution functions are computed using the partition function of Gaussian random matrices in a cosine potential.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

Slow Motion of Charges Interacting Through the Maxwell Field

We study the Abraham model for $N$ charges interacting with the Maxwell field. On the scale of the charge diameter, $R_ϕ$, the charges are a distance $\eps^{-1}R_ϕ$ apart and have a velocity $\sqrt{\eps} c$ with $\eps$ a small dimensionless parameter. We follow the motion of the charges over times of the order $\eps^{-3/2}R_ϕ/c$ and prove that on this time scale their motion is well approximated by the Darwin Lagrangian. The mass is renormalized. The interaction is dominated by the instantaneous Coulomb forces, which are of the order $\eps^{2}$. The magnetic fields and first order retardation generate the Darwin correction of the order $\eps^{3}$. Radiation damping would be of the order $\eps^{7/2}$.

math-ph↗

Semiclassical limit of the Dirac equation and spin precession

We study the Dirac equation with slowly varying external potentials. Using matrix-valued Wigner functions we prove that the electron follows with high precision the classical orbit and that the spin precesses according to the BMT equation with gyromagnetic ratio g=2.

quant-ph↗

The critical manifold of the Lorentz-Dirac equation

We investigate the solutions to the Lorentz-Dirac equation and show that its solution flow has a structure identical to the one of renormalization group flows in critical phenomena. The physical solutions of the Lorentz-Dirac equation lie on the critical surface. The critical surface is repelling, i.e. any slight deviation from it is amplified and as a result the solution runs away to infinity. On the other hand, Dirac's asymptotic condition (acceleration vanishes for long times) forces the solution to be on the critical manifold. The critical surface can be determined perturbatively. Thereby one obtains an effective second order equation, which we apply to various cases, in particular to the motion of an electron in a Penning trap.

physics.acc-ph↗

Statistical Self-Similarity of One-Dimensional Growth Processes

For one-dimensional growth processes we consider the distribution of the height above a given point of the substrate and study its scale invariance in the limit of large times. We argue that for self-similar growth from a single seed the universal distribution is the Tracy-Widom distribution from the theory of random matrices and that for growth from a flat substrate it is some other, only numerically determined distribution. In particular, for the polynuclear growth model in the droplet geometry the height maps onto the longest increasing subsequence of a random permutation, from which the height distribution is identified as the Tracy-Widom distribution.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗