arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Paul Sorba.
The development of Group Theory in Mathematics as well as its impact in Physics has been spectacular during the twentieth century, and more particularly these last fifty years. If its contribution to Particle Physics deserves a special consideration, its usefulness cannot be neglected in other domains like Statistical Physics for example, and might also be of interest in Theoretical Biology. Some of these aspects will be examined.
Analyzing the codon usage frequencies of a specimen of 20 plants, for which the codon-anticodon pattern is known, we have remarked that the hierarchy of the usage frequencies present an almost "universal" behavior. Searching to explain this behavior, we assume that the codon usage probability results from the sum of two contributions: the first dominant term is an almost "universal" one and it depends on the codon-anticodon interaction; the second term is a local one, i.e. depends on the biological species. The codon-anticodon interaction is written as a spin-spin plus a z-spin term in the formalism of the crystal basis model. From general considerations, in particular from the choice of the signs and some constraints on the parameters defining the interaction, we are able to explain most of the observed data.
We investigate the quantum transport of anyons in one space dimension. After establishing some universal features of non-equilibrium systems in contact with two heat reservoirs in a generalised Gibbs state, we focus on the abelian anyon solution of the Tomonaga-Luttinger model possessing axial-vector duality. In this context a non-equilibrium representation of the physical observables is constructed, which is the basic tool for a systematic study of the anyon particle and heat transport. We determine the associated Lorentz number and describe explicitly the deviation from the standard Wiedemann-Franz law induced by the interaction and the anyon statistics. The quantum fluctuations generated by the electric and helical currents are investigated and the dependence of the relative noise power on the statistical parameter is established.
We study the entropy production in non-equilibrium quantum systems without dissipation, which is generated exclusively by the spontaneous breaking of time-reversal invariance. Systems which preserve the total energy and particle number and are in contact with two heat reservoirs are analysed. Focussing on point-like interactions, we derive the probability distribution induced by the entropy production operator. We show that all its moments are positive in the zero frequency limit. The analysis covers both Fermi and Bose statistics.
We investigate the microscopic features of bosonic quantum transport in a non-equilibrium steady state, which breaks time reversal invariance spontaneously. The analysis is based on the probability distributions, generated by the correlation functions of the particle current and the entropy production operator. The general approach is applied to an exactly solvable model with a point-like interaction driving the system away from equilibrium. The quantum fluctuations of the particle current and the entropy production are explicitly evaluated in the zero frequency limit. It is shown that all moments of the entropy production distribution are non-negative, which provides a microscopic version of the second law of thermodynamics. On this basis a concept of efficiency, taking into account all quantum fluctuations, is proposed and analysed. The role of the quantum statistics in this context is also discussed.
The quantum fluctuations of the entropy production for fermionic systems in the Landauer-Buttiker non-equilibrium steady state are investigated. The probability distribution, governing these fluctuations, is explicitly derived by means of quantum field theory methods and analysed in the zero frequency limit. It turns out that microscopic processes with positive, vanishing and negative entropy production occur in the system with non-vanishing probability. In spite of this fact, we show that all odd moments (in particular, the mean value of the entropy production) of the above distribution are non-negative. This result extends the second principle of thermodynamics to the quantum fluctuations of the entropy production in the Landauer-Buttiker state. The impact of the time reversal is also discussed.
The impact of bound states in Landauer-Buttiker scattering approach to non-equilibrium quantum transport is investigated. We show that the noise power at frequency $ν$ is sensitive to all bound states with energies $ω_b$ satisfying $|ω_b| < ν$. We derive the exact expression of the bound state contribution and compare it to the one produced by the scattering states alone. It turns out that the bound states lead to specific modifications of both space and frequency dependence of the total noise power. The theoretical and experimental consequences of this result are discussed.
We derive the exact n-point current expectation values in the Landauer-Buttiker non-equilibrium steady state of a multi terminal system with star graph geometry and a point-like defect localised in the vertex. The current cumulants are extracted from the connected correlation functions and the cumulant generating function is established. We determine the moments, show that the associated moment problem has a unique solution and reconstruct explicitly the corresponding probability distribution. The basic building blocks of this distribution are the probabilities of particle emission and absorption from the heat reservoirs, driving the system away from equilibrium. We derive and analyse in detail these probabilities, showing that they fully describe the quantum transport problem in the system.
We study non-equilibrium steady state transport in scale invariant quantum junctions with focus on the particle and heat fluctuations captured by the two-point current correlation functions. We show that the non-linear behavior of the particle current affects both the particle and heat noise. The existence of domains of enhancement and reduction of the noise power with respect to the linear regime are observed. The impact of the statistics is explored. We demonstrate that in the scale invariant case the bosonic particle noise exceeds the fermionic one in the common domain of heat bath parameters. Multi-lead configurations are also investigated and the effect of probe terminals on the noise is discussed.
We investigate the particle and heat transport in quantum junctions with the geometry of star graphs. The system is in a nonequilibrium steady state, characterized by the different temperatures and chemical potentials of the heat reservoirs connected to the edges of the graph. We explore the Landauer-Buettiker state and its orbit under parity and time reversal transformations. Both particle number and total energy are conserved in these states. However the heat and chemical potential energy are in general not separately conserved, which gives origin to a basic process of energy transmutation among them. We study both directions of this process in detail, introducing appropriate efficiency coefficients. For scale invariant interactions in the junction our results are exact and explicit. They cover the whole parameter space and take into account all nonlinear effects. The energy transmutation depends on the particle statistics.
The isovector partners of the X(3872), recently found at BES III, Belle and CLEO-c were predicted in a simple model based on the chromomagnetic interaction among quarks (H. Hogaasen, J-M. Richard and P. Sorba, Phys. Rev. D73, 054013, 2006). The extension to the hidden-beauty sector is discussed.
We derive the efficiency at maximal power of a scale-invariant (critical) quantum junction in exact form. Both Fermi and Bose statistics are considered. We show that time-reversal invariance is spontaneously broken. For fermions we implement a new mechanism for efficiency enhancement above the Curzon-Ahlborn bound, based on a shift of the particle energy in each heat reservoir, proportional to its temperature. In this setting fermionic junctions can even reach at maximal power the Carnot efficiency. The bosonic junctions at maximal power turn out to be less efficient then the fermionic ones.
We propose and investigate an exactly solvable model of non-equilibrium Luttinger liquid on a star graph, modeling a multi-terminal quantum wire junction. The boundary condition at the junction is fixed by an orthogonal matrix S, which describes the splitting of the electric current among the leads. The system is driven away from equilibrium by connecting the leads to heat baths at different temperatures and chemical potentials. The associated non-equilibrium steady state depends on S and is explicitly constructed. In this context we develop a non-equilibrium bosonization procedure and compute some basic correlation functions. Luttinger liquids with general anyon statistics are considered. The relative momentum distribution away from equilibrium turns out to be the convolution of equilibrium anyon distributions at different temperatures. Both the charge and heat transport are studied. The exact current-current correlation function is derived and the zero-frequency noise power is determined.
The property of the conformal algebra to contain the Schrödinger algebra in one less space dimension is extended to the supersymmetric case. More precisely, we determine the counterpart of any field theory admissible super conformal algebra. Even if each type of superalgebra provides a different solution, its basis decomposition into two copies of the super Schrödinger algebra, differing only by their super Heisenberg part, remains valid in all the cases, so generalizing a feature already observed in the non supersymmetric conformal case.
We investigate Luttinger junctions of quantum wires away from criticality. The one-body scattering matrix, corresponding to the off-critical boundary conditions at the junction, admits in general antibound and/or bound states. Their contribution to the theory is fixed by causality. The presence/absence of bound states determines the existence of two different regimes with inequivalent physical properties. A scattering matrix without bound states defines an isolated equilibrium system. Bound states instead drive the system away from equilibrium, giving raise to non-trivial incoming or outgoing energy flows in the junction. We derive in both regimes and in explicit form the electromagnetic conductance tensor, pointing out the different impact of bound and antibound states.
We explore the possibility to break time reversal invariance at the junction of quantum wires. The universal features in the bulk of the wires are described by the anyon Luttinger liquid. A simple necessary and sufficient condition for the breaking of time reversal invariance is formulated in terms of the scattering matrix at the junction. The phase diagram of a junction with generic number of wires is investigated in this framework. We give an explicit classification of those critical points which can be reached by bosonization and study the interplay between their stability and symmetry content.
The quantum mechanics of two-electron systems is reviewed, starting with the ground state of the helium atom and helium-like ions, with central charge $Z\ge 2$. For Z=1, demonstrating the stability of the negative hydrogen ion, H$^-$, cannot be achieved using a mere product of individual electron wave functions, and requires instead an explicit account for the anticorrelation among the two electrons. The wave function proposed by Chandrasekhar is revisited, where the permutation symmetry is first broken and then restored by a counter-term. More delicate problems can be studied using the same strategy: the stability of hydrogen-like ions $(M^+,m^-,m^-)$ for any value of the proton-to-electron mass ratio $M/m$; the energy of the lowest spin-triplet state of helium and helium-like ions; the stability of the doubly-excited hydrogen ion with unnatural parity. The positronium molecule $(e^+,e^+,e^-,e^-)$, which has been predicted years ago and discovered recently, can also be shown to be stable against spontaneous dissociation, though the calculation is a little more involved. Emphasis is put on symmetry breaking which can either spoil or improve the stability of systems.
We establish a correspondence between certain Lie superalgebras with 16 fermionic generators, and half-BPS solutions to supergravities with 32 supersymmetries. Three cases are discussed. For Type IIB supergravity, we relate semi-simple Lie superalgebras H with 16 fermionic generators which are subalgebras of PSU(2,2|4), to families of half-BPS solutions which are invariant under H, and locally asymptotic to AdS_5 x S^5. Similarly, for M-theory, we relate semi-simple Lie superalgebras H with 16 fermionic generators which are subalgebras of OSp(8^*|4) or OSp(8|4,R) to families of half-BPS solutions which are invariant under H, and locally asymptotic to AdS_7 x S^4 or AdS_4 x S^7 respectively. Possible enhancements to more than 16 supersymmetries, such as 24, are also analyzed. The classification of semi-simple subalgebras of PSU(2,2|4), OSp(8^*|4), and OSp(8|4,R) derived in this paper, leads us to conjecture the existence of various new families of half-BPS solutions to Type IIB supergravity and M-theory.