Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• Finite-time bounds on the probabilistic violation of the second law of thermodynamics

  Harry J. D. Miller, Martí Perarnau-Llobet

  SciPost Phys. 14, 072 (2023) · published 17 April 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Jarzynski's equality sets a strong bound on the probability of violating the second law of thermodynamics by extracting work beyond the free energy difference. We derive finite-time refinements to this bound for driven systems in contact with a thermal Markovian environment, which can be expressed in terms of the geometric notion of thermodynamic length. We show that finite-time protocols converge to Jarzynski's bound at a rate slower than $1/\sqrt{\tau}$, where $\tau$ is the total time of the work-extraction protocol. Our result highlights a new application of minimal dissipation processes and demonstrates a connection between thermodynamic geometry and the higher order statistical properties of work.

  4 citations

• The search for the neutron electric dipole moment at PSI

  Guillaume Pignol, Philipp Schmidt-Wellenburg

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 5, 027 (2021) · published 6 September 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The existence of a nonzero permanent electric dipole moment (EDM) of the neutron would reveal a new source of CP violation and shed light on the origin of the matter--antimatter asymmetry of the Universe. The sensitivity of current experiments using stored ultracold neutrons (UCN) probes new physics beyond the TeV scale. Using the UCN source at the Paul Scherrer Institut, the nEDM collaboration has performed the most sensitive measurement of the neutron EDM to date, still compatible with zero ($|d_n|<1.8\times 10^{-26} \, e {\rm cm}$, C.L.90%). A new experiment designed to improve the sensitivity by an order of magnitude, n2EDM, is currently in construction.

  4 citations

• Towards traversable wormholes from force-free plasmas

  Nabil Iqbal, Simon F. Ross

  SciPost Phys. 12, 086 (2022) · published 9 March 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The near-horizon region of magnetically charged black holes can have very strong magnetic fields. A useful low-energy effective theory for fluctuations of the fields, coupled to electrically charged particles, is force-free electrodynamics. The low energy collective excitations include a large number of Alfven wave modes, which have a massless dispersion relation along the field worldlines. We attempt to construct traversable wormhole solutions using the negative Casimir energy of the Alfven wave modes, analogously to the recent construction using charged massless fermions. The behaviour of massless scalars in the near-horizon region implies that the size of the wormholes is strongly restricted and cannot be made large, even though the force free description is valid in a larger regime.

  4 citations

• Asymmetric power dissipation in electronic transport through a quantum point contact

  Carmen Blaas-Anselmi, Félix Helluin, Rodolfo A. Jalabert, Guillaume Weick, Dietmar Weinmann

  SciPost Phys. 12, 105 (2022) · published 25 March 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We investigate the power dissipated by an electronic current flowing through a quantum point contact in a two-dimensional electron gas. Based on the Landauer-B\"uttiker approach to quantum transport, we evaluate the power that is dissipated on the two sides of the constriction as a function of the Fermi energy, temperature, and applied voltage. We demonstrate that an asymmetry appears in the dissipation, which is most pronounced when the quantum point contact is tuned to a conductance step where the transmission strongly depends on energy. At low temperatures, the asymmetry is enhanced when the temperature increases. An estimation for the position of the maximum dissipation is provided.

  4 citations

• The QCD Equation of State in Small Systems

  W. A. Horowitz, Alexander Rothkopf

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 10, 025 (2022) · published 11 August 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We present first results on finite system size corrections to the equation of state, trace anomaly, and speed of sound for two model systems: 1) free, massless scalar theory and 2) quenched QCD with periodic boundary conditions (PBC). We further present work-in-progress results for quenched QCD with Dirichlet boundary conditions.

  4 citations

• Recent results of laser spectroscopy experiments of pionic helium atoms at PSI

  M. Hori, H. Aghai-Khozani, A. S\'ot\'er, A. Dax, D. Barna

  SciPost Phys. Proc. 5, 026 (2021) · published 6 September 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  A review of a recent experiment carried out at PSI involving laser spectroscopy of metastable pionic helium ($\pi{\rm ^4He}^+\equiv\pi^{-}+{\rm ^4He}^{2+}+e^-$) atoms is presented. An infrared transition $(n,\ell)=(17,16)$$\rightarrow$$(17,15)$ at a resonance frequency of $\nu\approx 183760$ GHz was detected.

  4 citations

• Electron glass effects in amorphous NbSi films

  Julien Delahaye, Thierry Grenet, Claire A Marrache-Kikuchi, Vincent Humbert, Laurent Bergé, Louis Dumoulin

  SciPost Phys. 8, 056 (2020) · published 9 April 2020 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We report on non equilibrium field effect in insulating amorphous NbSi thin films having different Nb contents and thicknesses. The hallmark of an electron glass, namely the logarithmic growth of a memory dip in conductance versus gate voltage curves, is observed in all the films after a cooling from room temperature to 4.2 K. A very rich phenomenology is demonstrated. While the memory dip width is found to strongly vary with the film parameters, as was also observed in amorphous indium oxide films, screening lengths and temperature dependence of the dynamics are closer to what is observed in granular Al films. Our results demonstrate that the differentiation between continuous and discontinuous systems is not relevant to understand the discrepancies reported between various systems in the electron glass features. We suggest instead that they are not of fundamental nature and stem from differences in the protocols used and in the electrical inhomogeneity length scales within each material.

  4 citations

• Universal geometry of two-neutron halos and Borromean Efimov states close to dissociation

  Pascal Naidon

  SciPost Phys. 15, 123 (2023) · published 29 September 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The geometry of Borromean three-body halos, such as two-neutron halo nuclei or triatomic molecules close to dissociation, is investigated using a three-body model. This model enables to analytically derive the universal geometric properties found recently within an effective-field theory for halos made of a core and two resonantly-interacting particles [Phys. Rev. Lett., 128, 212501 (2022)]. It is shown that these properties not only apply to the ground three-body state, but also to all the excited (Efimov) states where the core-particle interaction is resonant. Furthermore, a universal geometry persists away from the resonant regime between the two particles, for any state close to the three-body threshold. This "halo universality", which applies equally to all states, is different from the Efimov universality, which is only approximate for the ground state. It is explained by the separability of the hyper-radius and hyper-angles close to the three-body dissociation threshold.

  4 citations

• Transient superconductivity in three-dimensional Hubbard systems by combining matrix-product states and self-consistent mean-field theory

  Svenja Marten, Gunnar Bollmark, Thomas Köhler, Salvatore R. Manmana, Adrian Kantian

  SciPost Phys. 15, 236 (2023) · published 12 December 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We combine matrix-product-state (MPS) and mean-field (MF) methods to model the real-time evolution of a three-dimensional (3D) extended Hubbard system formed from one-dimensional (1D) chains arrayed in parallel with weak coupling in-between them. This approach allows us to treat much larger 3D systems of correlated fermions out-of-equilibrium over a much more extended real-time domain than previous numerical approaches. We deploy this technique to study the evolution of the system as its parameters are tuned from a charge-density wave phase into the superconducting regime, which allows us to investigate the formation of transient non-equilibrium superconductivity. In our ansatz, we use MPS solutions for chains as input for a self-consistent time-dependent MF scheme. In this way, the 3D problem is mapped onto an effective 1D Hamiltonian that allows us to use the MPS efficiently to perform the time evolution, and to measure the BCS order parameter as a function of time. Our results confirm previous findings for purely 1D systems that for such a scenario a transient superconducting state can occur.

  4 citations

• Quantum many-body thermal machines enabled by atom-atom correlations

  Raymon S. Watson, Karen V. Kheruntsyan

  SciPost Phys. 18, 190 (2025) · published 16 June 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Particle-particle correlations, characterized by Glauber's second-order correlation function, play an important role in the understanding of various phenomena in radio and optical astronomy, quantum and atom optics, particle physics, condensed matter physics, and quantum many-body theory. However, the relevance of such correlations to quantum thermodynamics has so far remained illusive. Here, we propose and investigate a class of quantum many-body thermal machines whose operation is directly enabled by second-order atom-atom correlations in an ultracold atomic gas. More specifically, we study quantum thermal machines that operate in a sudden interaction-quench Otto cycle and utilize a one-dimensional Lieb-Liniger gas of repulsively interacting bosons as the working fluid. The atom-atom correlations in such a gas are different to those of a classical ideal gas, and are a result of the interplay between interparticle interactions, quantum statistics, and thermal fluctuations. We show that operating these thermal machines in the intended regimes, such as a heat engine, refrigerator, thermal accelerator, or heater, would be impossible without such atom-atom correlations. Our results constitute a step forward in the design of conceptually new quantum thermodynamic devices which take advantage of uniquely quantum resources such as quantum coherence, correlations, and entanglement.

  4 citations