Harmonically confined long-ranged interacting gas in the presence of a hard wall

In this paper, we compute exactly the average density of a harmonically confined Riesz gas of $N$ particles for large $N$ in the presence of a hard wall. In this Riesz gas, the particles repel each other via a pairwise interaction that behaves as $|x_i - x_j|^{-k}$ for $k>-2$, with $x_i$ denoting the position of the $i^{rm th}$ particle. This density can be classified into three different regimes of $k$. For $k geq 1$, where the interactions are effectively short-ranged, the appropriately scaled density has a finite support over $[-l_k(w),w]$ where $w$ is the scaled position of the wall. While the density vanishes at the left edge of the support, it approaches a nonzero constant at the right edge $w$. For $-1<k<1$, where the interactions are weakly long-ranged, we find that the scaled density is again supported over $[-l_k(w),w]$. While it still vanishes at the left edge of the support, it diverges at the right edge $w$ algebraically with an exponent $(k-1)/2$. For $-2<k< -1$, the interactions are strongly long-ranged that leads to a rather exotic density profile with an extended bulk part and a delta-peak at the wall, separated by a hole in between. Exactly at $k=-1$ the hole disappears. For $-2<k< -1$, we find an interesting first-order phase transition when the scaled position of the wall decreases through a critical value $w=w^*(k)$. For $w<w^*(k)$, the density is a pure delta-peak located at the wall. The amplitude of the delta-peak plays the role of an order parameter which jumps to the value $1$ as $w$ is decreased through $w^*(k)$. Our analytical results are in very good agreement with our Monte-Carlo simulations.

Dynamical regimes of finite temperature discrete nonlinear Schrodinger chain

We show that the one dimensional discrete nonlinear Schrodinger chain (DNLS) at finite temperature has three different dynamical regimes (ultra-low, low and high temperature regimes). This has been established via (i) one point macroscopic thermodynamic observables (temperature $T$ , energy density $epsilon$ and the relationship between them), (ii) emergence and disappearance of an additional almost conserved quantity (total phase difference) and (iii) classical out-of-time-ordered correlators (OTOC) and related quantities (butterfly speed and Lyapunov exponents). The crossover temperatures $T_{textit{l-ul}}$ (between low and ultra-low temperature regimes) and $T_{textit{h-l}}$ (between high and low temperature regimes) extracted from these three different approaches are consistent with each other. The analysis presented here is an important step forward towards the understanding of DNLS which is ubiquitous in many fields and has a non-separable Hamiltonian form. Our work also shows that the different methods used here can serve as important tools to identify dynamical regimes in other interacting many body systems.

Dynamics of a randomly kicked particle

Levy walk (LW) process has been used as a simple model for describing anomalous diffusion in which the mean squared displacement of the walker grows non-linearly with time in contrast to the diffusive motion described by simple random walks or Brownian motion. In this paper we study a simple extension of the LW model in one dimension by introducing correlation among the velocities of the walker in different (flight) steps. Such correlation is absent in the LW model. The correlations are introduced by making the velocity at a step dependent on the velocity at the previous step in addition to the usual random noise (kick) that the particle gets at random time intervals from the surrounding medium as in the LW model. Consequently the dynamics of the position becomes non-Markovian. We study the statistical properties of velocity and position of the walker at time t, both analytically and numerically. We show how different choices of the distribution of the random time intervals and the degree of correlation, controlled by a parameter r, affect the late time behaviour of these quantities.

Spatio-temporal spread of perturbations in a driven dissipative Duffing chain: an OTOC approach

Out-of-time-ordered correlators (OTOC) have been extensively used as a major tool for exploring quantum chaos and also recently, there has been a classical analogue. Studies have been limited to closed systems. In this work, we probe an open classical many-body system, more specifically, a spatially extended driven dissipative chain of coupled Duffing oscillators using the classical OTOC to investigate the spread and growth (decay) of an initially localized perturbation in the chain. Correspondingly, we find three distinct types of dynamical behavior, namely the sustained chaos, transient chaos and non-chaotic region, as clearly exhibited by different geometrical shapes in the heat map of OTOC. To quantify such differences, we look at instantaneous speed (IS), finite time Lyapunov exponents (FTLE) and velocity dependent Lyapunov exponents (VDLE) extracted from OTOC. Introduction of these quantities turn out to be instrumental in diagnosing and demarcating different regimes of dynamical behavior. To gain control over open nonlinear systems, it is important to look at the variation of these quantities with respect to parameters. As we tune drive, dissipation and coupling, FTLE and IS exhibit transition between sustained chaos and non-chaotic regimeswith intermediate transient chaos regimes and highly intermittent sustained chaos points. In the limit of zero nonlinearity, we present exact analytical results for the driven dissipative harmonic system and we find that our analytical results can very well describe the non-chaotic regime as well as the late time behavior in the transient regime of the Duffing chain. We believe, this analysis is an important step forward towards understanding nonlinear dynamics, chaos and spatio-temporal spread of perturbations in many-particle open systems.

Extreme statistics and index distribution in the classical $1d$ Coulomb gas

We consider a one-dimensional gas of $N$ charged particles confined by an external harmonic potential and interacting via the one-dimensional Coulomb potential. For this system we show that in equilibrium the charges settle, on an average, uniformly and symmetrically on a finite region centred around the origin. We study the statistics of the position of the rightmost particle $x_{max}$ and show that the limiting distribution describing its typical fluctuations is different from the Tracy-Widom distribution found in the one-dimensional log-gas. We also compute the large deviation functions which characterise the atypical fluctuations of $x_{max}$ far away from its mean value. In addition, we study the gap between the two rightmost particles as well as the index $N_+$, i.e., the number of particles on the positive semi-axis. We compute the limiting distributions associated to the typical fluctuations of these observables as well as the corresponding large deviation functions. We provide numerical supports to our analytical predictions. Part of these results were announced in a recent Letter, Phys. Rev. Lett. 119, 060601 (2017).

Unusual equilibration of a particle in a potential with a thermal wall

We consider a particle in a one-dimensional box of length $L$ with a Maxwell bath at one end and a reflecting wall at the other end. Using a renewal approach, as well as directly solving the master equation, we show that the system exhibits a slow power law relaxation with a logarithmic correction towards the final equilibrium state. We extend the renewal approach to a class of confining potentials of the form $U(x) propto x^alpha$, $x>0$, where we find that the relaxation is $sim t^{-(alpha+2)/(alpha-2)}$ for $alpha >2$, with a logarithmic correction when $(alpha+2)/(alpha-2)$ is an integer. For $alpha <2$ the relaxation is exponential. Interestingly for $alpha=2$ (harmonic potential) the localised bath can not equilibrate the particle.