No Arabic abstract
In this work, we analytically derive the exact closed dynamical equations for a liquid with short-ranged interactions in large spatial dimensions using the same statistical mechanics tools employed to analyze Brownian motion. Our derivation greatly simplifies the original path-integral-based route to these equations and provides new insight into the physical features associated with high-dimensional liquids and glass formation. Most importantly, our construction provides a facile route to the exact dynamical analysis of important related dynamical problems, as well as a means to devise cluster generalizations of the exact solution in infinite dimensions. This latter fact opens the door to the construction of increasingly accurate theories of vitrification in three-dimensional liquids.
We obtain analytic expressions for the time correlation functions of a liquid of spherical particles, exact in the limit of high dimensions $d$. The derivation is long but straightforward: a dynamic virial expansion for which only the first two terms survive, followed by a change to generalized spherical coordinates in the dynamic variables leading to saddle-point evaluation of integrals for large $d$. The problem is thus mapped onto a one-dimensional diffusion in a perturbed harmonic potential with colored noise. At high density, an ergodicity-breaking glass transition is found. In this regime, our results agree with thermodynamics, consistently with the general Random First Order Transition scenario. The glass transition density is higher than the best known lower bound for hard sphere packings in large $d$. Because our calculation is, if not rigorous, elementary, an improvement in the bound for sphere packings in large dimensions is at hand.
We study the dynamics of the statistics of the energy transferred across a point along a quantum chain which is prepared in the inhomogeneous initial state obtained by joining two identical semi-infinite parts thermalized at two different temperatures. In particular, we consider the transverse field Ising and harmonic chains as prototypical models of non-interacting fermionic and bosonic excitations, respectively. Within the so-called hydrodynamic limit of large space-time scales we first discuss the mean values of the energy density and current, and then, aiming at the statistics of fluctuations, we calculate exactly the scaled cumulant generating function of the transferred energy. From the latter, the evolution of the associated large deviation function is obtained. A natural interpretation of our results is provided in terms of a semi-classical picture of quasi-particles moving ballistically along classical trajectories. Similarities and differences between the transferred energy scaled cumulant and the large deviation functions in the cases of non-interacting fermions and bosons are discussed.
We study the low temperature quench dynamics of the two-dimensional Potts model in the limit of large number of states, q >> 1. We identify a q-independent crossover temperature (the pseudo spinodal) below which no high-temperature metastability stops the curvature driven coarsening process. At short length scales, the latter is decorated by freezing for some lattice geometries, notably the square one. With simple analytic arguments we evaluate the relevant time-scale in the coarsening regime, which turns out to be of Arrhenius form and independent of q for large q. Once taken into account dynamic scaling is universal.
We numerically study the relaxation dynamics of several glass-forming models to their inherent structures, following quenches from equilibrium configurations sampled across a wide range of temperatures. In a mean-field Mari-Kurchan model, we find that relaxation changes from a power-law to an exponential decay below a well-defined temperature, consistent with recent findings in mean-field $p$-spin models. By contrast, for finite-dimensional systems, the relaxation is always algebraic, with a non-trivial universal exponent at high temperatures crossing over to a harmonic value at low temperatures. We demonstrate that this apparent evolution is controlled by a temperature-dependent population of localised excitations. Our work unifies several recent lines of studies aiming at a detailed characterization of the complex potential energy landscape of glass-formers.
We have studied effects of interspecies attraction in a Fermi-Bose mixture over a large regime of particle numbers in the 40K / 87Rb system. We report on the observation of a mean field driven collapse at critical particle numbers of 1.2 million 87Rb atoms in the condensate and 750,000 40K atoms consistent with mean field theory for an interspecies scattering length of -281(15) Bohr radii [S. Inouye et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 93, 183201 (2004)]. For overcritical particle numbers, we see evidence for revivals of the collapse. Before and after the collapse, the axial expansion profileof the 40K cloud is strongly modified and reflects the in-trap density profile distorted by the mean field interspecies attraction. Part of our detailed study of the decay dynamics and mechanisms is a measurement of the (87Rb - 87Rb- 40K) three-body loss coefficient K3=(2.8+-1.1)*10^-28 cm^6/s, which is an important input parameter for dynamical studies of the system.