arXiv subjects

Zohar Nussinov

Publications and source records attributed to Zohar Nussinov.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2023

Reduced probability densities of long-lived metastable states as those of distributed thermal systems: possible experimental implications for supercooled fluids

When liquids are cooled sufficiently rapidly below their melting temperature, they may bypass crystalization and, instead, enter a long-lived metastable supercooled state that has long been the focus of intense research. Although they exhibit strikingly different properties, both the (i) long-lived supercooled liquid state and (ii) truly equilibrated (i.e., conventional equilibrium fluid or crystalline) phases of the same material share an identical Hamiltonian. This suggests a mapping between dynamical and other observables in these two different arenas. We formalize these notions via a simple theorem and illustrate that given a Hamiltonian defining the dynamics: (1) the reduced probability densities of all possible stationary states are linear combinations of reduced probability densities associated with thermal equilibria at different temperatures, chemical potentials, etc. (2) Excusing special cases, amongst all of these stationary states, a clustering of correlations is only consistent with conventional thermal equilibrium states (associated with a sharp distribution of the above state variables). (3) Other stationary states may be modified so as to have local correlations. These deformations concomitantly lead to metastable (yet possibly very long-lived) states. Since the lifetime of the supercooled state is exceptionally long relative to the natural microscopic time scales, their reduced probability densities may be close to those that we find for exact stationary states (i.e., a weighted average of equilibrium probability densities at different state variables). This form suggests several new predictions such as the existence of dynamical heterogeneity stronger than probed for thus far and a relation between the specific heat peak and viscosities. Our theorem may further place constraints on the putative "ideal glass" phase.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2023

Crystal Nucleation in an AlNiZr Metallic Liquid: Within and Beyond Classical Nucleation Theory

The Classical Nucleation Theory (CNT) has played a key role in crystal nucleation studies since the 19th century and has significantly advanced the understanding of nucleation. However, certain key assumptions of CNT, such as a compact and spherical nucleating cluster and the concept of individual diffusive jumps are questionable. The results of molecular dynamics (MD) studies of crystal nucleation in a Al20Ni60Zr20 metallic liquid demonstrate that the nucleating cluster is neither spherical nor compact. The seeding method was employed to determine the critical cluster size and nucleation parameters from CNT, which were then compared to those derived from the Mean First Passage Time (MFPT) method. While the CNT-based nucleation rate aligns well with experimental data from similar metallic liquids, the MFPT rate differs significantly. Further, contrary to the assumption of individual jumps for atoms to join the nucleating cluster, a cooperative mechanism of attachment or detachment is observed. This is accompanied by synchronized changes in the local potential energy. Similar cooperative motion also appeared in a non-classical nucleation process, particularly during the coalescence of nuclei.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2023

Reply to: Deep reinforced learning heuristic tested on spin-glass ground states: The larger picture

We wish to thank Stefan Boettcher for prompting us to further check and highlight the accuracy and scaling of our results. Here we provide a comprehensive response to the Comment written by him. We argue that the Comment did not account for the fairness of the comparison between different methods in searching for the spin-glass ground states. We demonstrate that, with a reasonably larger number of initial spin configurations, our results agree with the asymptotic scaling form assumed by finite-size corrections.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗

arXiv2023

Quantum equilibration and measurements -- bounds on speeds, Lyapunov exponents, and transport coefficients obtained from the uncertainty relations and their comparison with experimental data

We discuss our recent study of local quantum mechanical uncertainty relations in quantum many body systems. These lead to fundamental bounds for quantities such as the speed, acceleration, relaxation times, spatial gradients and the Lyapunov exponents. We additionally obtain bounds on various transport coefficients like the viscosity, the diffusion constant, and the thermal conductivity. Some of these bounds are related to earlier conjectures, such as the bound on chaos by Maldacena, Shenker and Stanford while others are new. Our approach is a direct way of obtaining exact bounds in fairly general settings. We employ uncertainty relations for local quantities from which we strip off irrelevant terms as much as possible, thereby removing non-local terms. To gauge the utility of our bounds, we briefly compare their numerical values with typical values available from experimental data. In various cases, approximate simplified variants of the bounds that we obtain can become fairly tight, i.e., comparable to experimental values. These considerations lead to a minimal time for thermal equilibrium to be achieved. Building on a conjectured relation between quantum measurements and equilibration, our bounds, far more speculatively, suggest a minimal time scale for measurements to stabilize to equilibrium values.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2022

Crystal Nucleation and Growth in Liquids: Cooperative Atom Attachment and Detachment

Classical theories of crystal nucleation and growth from the liquid assume activated processes that are interface limited, with the atoms individually joining the growing interface by jumps that occur at a rate that is determined by the diffusion coefficient in the liquid phase. These assumptions are in contradiction with the results of molecular dynamics studies that are presented here for supercooled Ni and Al20Ni60Zr20. Instead of diffusion-based attachment across the interface, atoms join the interface by making small changes so as to match the orientational order parameter of the nucleating crystal. Further, instead of joining individually multiple atoms join cooperatively, with the number of cooperative atoms increasing with decreasing temperature.

physics.atom-ph↗

arXiv2022

A Theorem on Extensive Spectral Degeneracy for Systems with Higher Symmetries in General Dimensions

We establish, in the spirit of the Lieb-Schultz-Mattis theorem, lower bounds on the spectral degeneracy of quantum systems with higher (Gauge Like) symmetries with rather generic physical boundary conditions in an arbitrary number of spatial dimensions. Contrary to applying twists or equivalent adiabatic operations, we exploit the effects of modified boundary conditions. When a general choice of boundary geometry is immaterial in approaching the thermodynamic limit, systems that exhibit non-commuting Gauge Like symmetries, such as the orbital compass model, must have an exponential (in the size of the boundary) degeneracy of each of their spectral levels. We briefly discuss why, in spite of the proven large degeneracy associated with infrared-ultraviolet mixing, some systems may still exhibit conventional physical behaviors, i.e., of those of systems with non-extensive degeneracies, due to entropic "order by disorder" type effects.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2022

Deviations from Arrhenius dynamics in high temperature liquids, a possible collapse, and a viscosity bound

Liquids realize a highly complex state of matter in which strong competing kinetic and interaction effects come to life. As such, liquids are more challenging to understand than either gases or solids generally. In weakly interacting gases, the kinetic effects dominate. By contrast, low temperature solids typically feature far smaller fluctuations about their ground state. Notwithstanding their complexity, with the exception of quantum fluids and supercooled liquids, various aspects of common liquid dynamics such as their dynamic viscosity are often assumed to be given by rather simple, Arrhenius-type, activated forms with nearly constant (i.e., temperature independent) energy barriers. In this work, we analyze experimentally measured viscosities of numerous liquids far above their equilibrium melting temperature to see how well this assumption fares. We find, for the investigated liquids, marked deviations from simple activated dynamics. Even far above their equilibrium melting temperatures, as the temperature drops, the viscosity of these liquids increases more strongly than predicted by activated dynamics dominated by a single uniform energy barrier. For metallic fluids, the scale of the prefactors of the best Arrhenius fits for the viscosity is typically consistent with that given by the product $nh$ with $n$ the number density and $h$ Planck's constant. In various fluids that we examined, $nh$ constitutes a lower bound scale on the viscosity. We find that a scaling of the temperature axis (complementing that of the viscosity) leads to a partial collapse of the temperature dependent viscosities of different fluids; such a scaling allows for a functional dependence of the viscosity on temperature that includes yet is far more general than activated Arrhenius form alone. We speculate on relations between non-Arrhenius dynamics and thermodynamic observables.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2022

Exact Universal Chaos, Speed Limit, Acceleration, Planckian Transport Coefficient, "Collapse" to equilibrium, and Other Bounds in Thermal Quantum Systems

We introduce "local uncertainty relations" in thermal many body systems. Using these relations, we derive basic bounds. These results include the demonstration of universal non-relativistic speed limits (regardless of interaction range), bounds on acceleration or force/stress, acceleration or material stress rates, transport coefficients (including the diffusion constant and viscosity), electromagnetic or other gauge field strengths, correlation functions of arbitrary spatio-temporal derivatives, Lyapunov exponents, and thermalization times. We further derive analogs of the Ioffe-Regel limit. These bounds are relatively tight when compared to various experimental data. In the $\hbar \to 0$ limit, all of our bounds either diverge (e.g., the derived speed and acceleration limit) or vanish (as in, e.g., our viscosity and diffusion constant bounds). Our inequalities hold at all temperatures and, as corollaries, imply general power law bounds on response functions at both asymptotically high and low temperatures. Our results shed light on how apparent nearly instantaneous effective "collapse" to energy eigenstates may arise in macroscopic interacting many body quantum systems. We comment on how random off-diagonal matrix elements of local operators (in the eigenbasis of the Hamiltonian) may inhibit their dynamics.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2022

Mechanism for particle fractionalization and universal edge physics in quantum Hall fluids

Advancing a microscopic framework that rigorously unveils the underlying topological hallmarks of fractional quantum Hall (FQH) fluids is a prerequisite for making progress in the classification of strongly-coupled topological matter. Here we advance a second-quantization framework that helps reveal an exact fusion mechanism for particle fractionalization in FQH fluids, and uncover the fundamental structure behind the condensation of non-local operators characterizing topological order in the lowest-Landau-level (LLL). We show the first exact analytic computation of the quasielectron Berry connections leading to its fractional charge and exchange statistics, and perform Monte Carlo simulations that numerically confirm the fusion mechanism for quasiparticles. Thus, for instance, two quasiholes plus one electron of charge $e$ lead to an exact quasielectron of fractional charge $e/3$, and exchange statistics $1/3$, in a $ν=1/3$ Laughlin fluid. We express, in a compact manner, the sequence of (both bosonic and fermionic) Laughlin second-quantized states highlighting the lack of local condensation. Furthermore, we present a rigorous constructive subspace bosonization dictionary for the bulk fluid and establish universal long-distance behavior of edge excitations by formulating a conjecture based on the DNA, or root state, of the FQH fluid.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2021

Finding spin glass ground states through deep reinforcement learning

Spin glasses are disordered magnets with random interactions that are, generally, in conflict with each other. Finding the ground states of spin glasses is not only essential for the understanding of the nature of disordered magnetic and other physical systems, but also useful to solve a broad array of hard combinatorial optimization problems across multiple disciplines. Despite decades-long efforts, an algorithm with both high accuracy and high efficiency is still lacking. Here we introduce DIRAC - a deep reinforcement learning framework, which can be trained purely on small-scale spin glass instances and then applied to arbitrarily large ones. DIRAC displays better scalability than other methods and can be leveraged to enhance any thermal annealing method. Extensive calculations on 2D, 3D and 4D Edwards-Anderson spin glass instances demonstrate the superior performance of DIRAC over existing methods. As many hard combinatorial optimization problems have Ising spin glass formulations, our results suggest a promising tool in solving these hard problems. Moreover, the presented algorithm will help us better understand the nature of the low-temperature spin-glass phase, which is a fundamental challenge in statistical physics.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗

arXiv2021

Quantum Induced Broadening- A Challenge For Cosmic Neutrino Background Discovery

A recent preprint by Cheipesh {\it et al.} pointed out that the zero-point motion of Tritium atoms bound to Graphene may blur the measured energies of $β$ electrons. Smearing due to zero point motion is well known. Such an effect features in studies of the $β$ spectrum expected in experiments like KATRIN using diatomic Tritium. The recent preprint may, however, challenge new planned experiments seeking to discover the Cosmic Neutrino Background (CNB) neutrinos (and/or other neutrinos of masses smaller than $0.1$ eV) which plan to use Tritium adsorbed onto Graphene or other materials. Our paper clarifies these issues and examines the more general problem of smearing induced by quantum uncertainty. We find that the effect of Cheipesh {\it et al.} is reduced considerably. The importance of the chemical evolution of the $^{3}$H atom hosting the Tritium nucleus into a tightly bound neutral $^{3}$He atom is emphasized. We estimate the excess blurring caused by the dense spectrum near the lowest state of the Graphene or other hosts of the Tritium atom, generated by the electronic response to the "sudden" escape of the $β$ electron. Our analysis suggests yet larger effects and difficulties facing many experiments searching for small mass neutrinos. We speculate on a possible experimental setup which could minimize quantum broadening.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2020

A new nature inspired modularity function adapted for unsupervised learning involving spatially embedded networks: A comparative analysis

Unsupervised machine learning methods can be of great help in many traditional engineering disciplines, where huge amount of labeled data is not readily available or is extremely difficult or costly to generate. Two specific examples include the structure of granular materials and atomic structure of metallic glasses. While the former is critically important for several hundreds of billion dollars global industries, the latter is still a big puzzle in fundamental science. One thing is common in both the examples is that the particles are the elements of the ensembles that are embedded in Euclidean space and one can create a spatially embedded network to represent their key features. Some recent studies show that clustering, which generically refers to unsupervised learning, holds great promise in partitioning these networks. In many complex networks, the spatial information of nodes play very important role in determining the network properties. So understanding the structure of such networks is very crucial. We have compared the performance of our newly developed modularity function with some of the well-known modularity functions. We performed this comparison by finding the best partition in 2D and 3D granular assemblies. We show that for the class of networks considered in this article, our method produce much better results than the competing methods.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2020

Local two-body parent Hamiltonians for the entire Jain sequence

Using an algebra of second quantized operators, we develop local two-body parent Hamiltonians for all unprojected Jain states at filling factor $n/(2n{\sf p}+1)$, with integer $n$, and (half-)integer ${\sf p}$. We rigorously establish that these states are uniquely stabilized and that zero mode counting reproduces mode counting in the associated edge conformal field theory. We further establish an associated "entangled Pauli principle" describing these states and associated zero mode spaces, as well as an emergent SU($n$) symmetry.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2020

Exact Solution and Correlations of a Quantum Dimer Model on the Checkerboard Lattice

We present analytic results for a special dimer model on the {\em non-bipartite} and {\em non-planar} checkerboard lattice that does not allow for parallel dimers surrounding diagonal links. We {\em exactly} calculate the number of closed packed dimer coverings on finite checkerboard lattices under periodic boundary conditions, and determine all dimer-dimer correlations. The latter are found to vanish beyond a certain distance. We find that this solvable model, despite being non-planar, is in close kinship with well-known paradigm-setting planar counterparts that allow exact mappings to $\mathbb{Z}_2$ lattice gauge theory.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2020

Unsupervised Community Detection with a Potts Model Hamiltonian, an Efficient Algorithmic Solution, and Applications in Digital Pathology

Unsupervised segmentation of large images using a Potts model Hamiltonian is unique in that segmentation is governed by a resolution parameter which scales the sensitivity to small clusters. Here, the input image is first modeled as a graph, which is then segmented by minimizing a Hamiltonian cost function defined on the graph and the respective segments. However, there exists no closed form solution of this optimization, and using previous iterative algorithmic solution techniques, the problem scales quadratically in the Input Length. Therefore, while Potts model segmentation gives accurate segmentation, it is grossly underutilized as an unsupervised learning technique. We propose a fast statistical down-sampling of input image pixels based on the respective color features, and a new iterative method to minimize the Potts model energy considering pixel to segment relationship. This method is generalizable and can be extended for image pixel texture features as well as spatial features. We demonstrate that this new method is highly efficient, and outperforms existing methods for Potts model based image segmentation. We demonstrate the application of our method in medical microscopy image segmentation; particularly, in segmenting renal glomerular micro-environment in renal pathology. Our method is not limited to image segmentation, and can be extended to any image/data segmentation/clustering task for arbitrary datasets with discrete features.

cs.CV↗

arXiv2020

Visual Machine Learning: Insight through Eigenvectors, Chladni patterns and community detection in 2D particulate structures

Machine learning (ML) is quickly emerging as a powerful tool with diverse applications across an extremely broad spectrum of disciplines and commercial endeavors. Typically, ML is used as a black box that provides little illuminating rationalization of its output. In the current work, we aim to better understand the generic intuition underlying unsupervised ML with a focus on physical systems. The systems that are studied here as test cases comprise of six different 2-dimensional (2-D) particulate systems of different complexities. It is noted that the findings of this study are generic to any unsupervised ML problem and are not restricted to materials systems alone. Three rudimentary unsupervised ML techniques are employed on the adjacency (connectivity) matrix of the six studied systems: (i) using principal eigenvalue and eigenvectors of the adjacency matrix, (ii) spectral decomposition, and (iii) a Potts model based community detection technique in which a modularity function is maximized. We demonstrate that, while solving a completely classical problem, ML technique produces features that are distinctly connected to quantum mechanical solutions. Dissecting these features help us to understand the deep connection between the classical non-linear world and the quantum mechanical linear world through the kaleidoscope of ML technique, which might have far reaching consequences both in the arena of physical sciences and ML.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2020

Macroscopic Length Correlations in Non-Equilibrium Systems and Their Possible Realizatons

We consider general systems that start from and/or end in thermodynamic equilibrium while experiencing a finite rate of change of their energy density or other intensive quantities $q$ at intermediate times. We demonstrate that at these times, during which $q$ varies at a finite rate, the associated covariance, the connected pair correlator $G_{ij} = \langle q_{i} q_{j} \rangle - \langle q_{i} \rangle \langle q_{j} \rangle$, between any two (far separated) sites $i$ and $j$ in a macroscopic system may, on average, become finite. Once the global mean $q$ no longer changes, the average of $G_{ij}$ over all site pairs $i$ and $j$ may tend to zero. However, when the equilibration times are significant (e.g., as in a glass that is not in true thermodynamic equilibrium yet in which the energy density (or temperature) reaches a final steady state value), these long range correlations may persist also long after $q$ ceases to change. We explore viable experimental implications of our findings and speculate on their potential realization in glasses (where a prediction of a theory based on the effect that we describe here suggests a universal collapse of the viscosity that agrees with all published viscosity measurements over sixteen decades) and non-Fermi liquids. We discuss effective equilibrium in driven systems and derive uncertainty relation based inequalities that connect the heat capacity to the dynamics in general open thermal systems. These rigorous thermalization inequalities suggest the shortest possible fluctuation times scales in open equilibrated systems at a temperature $T$ are typically "Planckian" (i.e., ${\cal{O}}(\hbar/(k_{B} T))$). We briefly comment on parallels between quantum measurements, unitary quantum evolution, and thermalization and on how Gaussian distributions may generically emerge.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2019

Pairing and non-Fermi liquid behavior in partially flat-band systems

While multiband systems are usually considered for flat-band physics, here we study one-band models that have flat portions in the dispersion to explore correlation effects in the 2D repulsive Hubbard model in an intermediate coupling regime. The FLEX+DMFT~(the dynamical mean-field theory combined with the fluctuation exchange approximation) is used to show that we have a crossover from ferromagnetic to antiferromagnetic spin fluctuations as the band filling is varied, which triggers a crossover from triplet to singlet pairings with a peculiar filling dependence that is dominated by the size of the flat region in the dispersion. A curious manifestation of the flat part appears as larger numbers of nodal lines associated with pairs extended in real space. We further detect non-Fermi liquid behavior in the momentum distribution function, frequency dependence of the self-energy and spectral function. These indicate correlation physics peculiar to flat-band systems.

cond-mat.supr-con↗