No Arabic abstract
Recent years have seen a fascinating pollination of ideas from quantum theories to elastodynamics---a theory that phenomenologically describes the time-dependent macroscopic response of materials. Here, we open route to transfer additional tools from non-Hermitian quantum mechanics. We begin by identifying the differences and similarities between the one-dimensional elastodynamics equation and the time-independent Schrodinger equation, and finding the condition under which the two are equivalent. Subsequently, we demonstrate the application of the non-Hermitian perturbation theory to determine the response of elastic systems; calculation of leaky modes and energy decay rate in heterogenous solids with open boundaries using a quantum mechanics approach; and construction of degeneracies in the spectrum of these assemblies. The latter result is of technological importance, as it introduces an approach to harness extraordinary wave phenomena associated with non-Hermitian degeneracies for practical devices, by designing them in simple elastic systems. As an example of such application, we demonstrate how an assembly of elastic slabs that is designed with two degenerate shear states according to our scheme, can be used for mass sensing with enhanced sensitivity by exploiting the unique topology near the exceptional point of degeneracy.
We introduce a Ramsey pulse scheme which extracts the non-Hermitian Hamiltonian associated to an arbitrary Lindblad dynamics. We propose a realted protocol to measure via interferometry a generalised Loschmidt echo of a generic state evolving in time with the non-Hermitian Hamiltonian itself, and we apply the scheme to a one-dimensional weakly interacting Bose gas coupled to a stochastic atomic impurity. The Loschmidt echo is mapped into a functional integral from which we calculate the long-time decohering dynamics at arbitrary impurity strengths. For strong dissipation we uncover the phenomenology of a quantum many-body Zeno effect: corrections to the decoherence exponent resulting from the impurity self-energy becomes purely imaginary, in contrast to the regime of small dissipation where they instead enhance the decay of quantum coherences. Our results illustrate the prospects for experiments employing Ramsey interferometry to study dissipative quantum impurities in condensed matter and cold atoms systems.
We study dynamics and thermodynamics of ion channels, considered as effective 1D Coulomb systems. The long range nature of the inter-ion interactions comes about due to the dielectric constants mismatch between the water and lipids, confining the electric filed to stay mostly within the water-filled channel. Statistical mechanics of such Coulomb systems is dominated by entropic effects which may be accurately accounted for by mapping onto an effective quantum mechanics. In presence of multivalent ions the corresponding quantum mechanics appears to be non-Hermitian. In this review we discuss a framework for semiclassical calculations for corresponding non-Hermitian Hamiltonians. Non-Hermiticity elevates WKB action integrals from the real line to closed cycles on a complex Riemann surfaces where direct calculations are not attainable. We circumvent this issue by applying tools from algebraic topology, such as the Picard-Fuchs equation. We discuss how its solutions relate to the thermodynamics and correlation functions of multivalent solutions within long water-filled channels.
We report a global effect induced by the local complex field, associated with the spin-exchange interaction. High-order exceptional point up to ($N+1$)-level coalescence is created at the critical local complex field applied to the $N$-size quantum spin chain. The ($N+1$)-order coalescent level is a saturated ferromagnetic ground state in the isotropic spin system. Remarkably, the final state always approaches the ground state for an arbitrary initial state with any number of spin flips; even if the initial state is orthogonal to the ground state. Furthermore, the switch of macroscopic magnetization is solely driven by the time and forms a hysteresis loop in the time domain. The retentivity and coercivity of the hysteresis loop mainly rely on the non-Hermiticity. Our findings highlight the cooperation of non-Hermiticity and the interaction in quantum spin system, suggest a dynamical framework to realize magnetization, and thus pave the way for the non-Hermitian quantum spin system.
When random walks on a square lattice are biased horizontally to move solely to the right, the probability distribution of their algebraic area can be exactly obtained. We explicitly map this biased classical random system on a non hermitian Hofstadter-like quantum model where a charged particle on a square lattice coupled to a perpendicular magnetic field hopps only to the right. In the commensurate case when the magnetic flux per unit cell is rational, an exact solution of the quantum model is obtained. Periodicity on the lattice allows to relate traces of the Nth power of the Hamiltonian to probability distribution generating functions of biased walks of length N.
A main distinguishing feature of non-Hermitian quantum mechanics is the presence of exceptional points (EPs). They correspond to the coalescence of two energy levels and their respective eigenvectors. Here, we use the Lipkin-Meshkov-Glick (LMG) model as a testbed to explore the strong connection between EPs and the onset of excited state quantum phase transitions (ESQPTs). We show that for finite systems, the exact degeneracies (EPs) obtained with the non-Hermitian LMG Hamiltonian continued into the complex plane are directly linked with the avoided crossings that characterize the ESQPTs for the real (physical) LMG Hamiltonian. The values of the complex control parameter $alpha$ that lead to the EPs approach the real axis as the system size $Nrightarrow infty$. This happens for both, the EPs that are close to the separatrix that marks the ESQPT and also for those that are far away, although in the latter case, the rate the imaginary part of $alpha$ reduces to zero as $N$ increases is smaller. With the method of Pade approximants, we can extract the critical value of $alpha$.