Entropy Production in Open Systems: The Predominant Role of Intraenvironment Correlations

in PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS (2019)

Mechanical Resonances of Mobile Impurities in a One-Dimensional Quantum Fluid

in Physical Review Letters (2019), 123

We study a one-dimensional interacting quantum liquid hosting a pair of mobile impurities causing backscattering. We determine the effective retarded interaction between the two impurities mediated by the ... [more ▼]

We study a one-dimensional interacting quantum liquid hosting a pair of mobile impurities causing backscattering. We determine the effective retarded interaction between the two impurities mediated by the liquid. We show that for strong backscattering this interaction gives rise to resonances and antiresonances in the finite-frequency mobility of the impurity pair. At the antiresonances, the two impurities remain at rest even when driven by a (small) external force. At the resonances, their synchronous motion follows the external drive in phase and reaches maximum amplitude. Using a perturbative renormalization group analysis in quantum tunneling across the impurities, we study the range of validity of our model. We predict that these mechanical antiresonances are observable in experiments on ultracold atom gases confined to one dimension. [less ▲]

Photoinduced Phase Transitions in Ferroelectrics

in PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS (2019), 123(8), 087601-6

Ferroic materials naturally exhibit a rich number of functionalities, which often arise from thermally, chemically, or mechanically induced symmetry breakings or phase transitions. Based on density ... [more ▼]

Ferroic materials naturally exhibit a rich number of functionalities, which often arise from thermally, chemically, or mechanically induced symmetry breakings or phase transitions. Based on density functional calculations, we demonstrate here that light can drive phase transitions as well in ferroelectric materials such as the perovskite oxides lead titanate and barium titanate. Phonon analysis and total energy calculations reveal that the polarization tends to vanish under illumination, to favor the emergence of nonpolar phases, potentially antiferroelectric, and exhibiting a tilt of the oxygen octahedra. Strategies to tailor photoinduced phases based on phonon instabilities in the electronic ground state are also discussed. [less ▲]

Information Thermodynamics of Turing Patterns

in Physical Review Letters (2018)

e set up a rigorous thermodynamic description of reaction-diffusion systems driven out of equilibrium by time-dependent space-distributed chemostats. Building on the assumption of local equilibrium ... [more ▼]

e set up a rigorous thermodynamic description of reaction-diffusion systems driven out of equilibrium by time-dependent space-distributed chemostats. Building on the assumption of local equilibrium, nonequilibrium thermodynamic potentials are constructed exploiting the symmetries of the chemical network topology. It is shown that the canonical (resp. semigrand canonical) nonequilibrium free energy works as a Lyapunov function in the relaxation to equilibrium of a closed (resp. open) system and its variation provides the minimum amount of work needed to manipulate the species concentrations. The theory is used to study analytically the Turing pattern formation in a prototypical reaction-diffusion system, the one-dimensional Brusselator model, and to classify it as a genuine thermodynamic nonequilibrium phase transition. [less ▲]

Response functions as quantifiers of non-Markovianity

in Physical Review Letters (2018)

Quantum non-Markovianity is crucially related to the study of dynamical maps, which are usually derived for initially factorized system-bath states. We here demonstrate that linear response theory also ... [more ▼]

Quantum non-Markovianity is crucially related to the study of dynamical maps, which are usually derived for initially factorized system-bath states. We here demonstrate that linear response theory also provides a way to derive dynamical maps, but for initially correlated (and in general entangled) states. Importantly, these maps are always time-translational invariant and allow for a much simpler quantification of non-Markovianity compared to previous approaches. We apply our theory to the Caldeira-Leggett model, for which our quantifier is valid beyond linear response and can be expressed analytically. We find that a classical Brownian particle coupled to an Ohmic bath can already exhibit non-Markovian behaviour, a phenomenon related to the initial state preparation procedure. Furthermore, for a peaked spectral density we demonstrate that there is no monotonic relation between our quantifier and the system-bath coupling strength, the sharpness of the peak or the resonance frequency in the bath. [less ▲]

Impact of many-body effects on Landau levels in graphene

in Physical Review Letters (2018), 120(18), 187701

We present magneto-Raman spectroscopy measurements on suspended graphene to investigate the charge carrier density-dependent electron-electron interaction in the presence of Landau levels. Utilizing gate ... [more ▼]

We present magneto-Raman spectroscopy measurements on suspended graphene to investigate the charge carrier density-dependent electron-electron interaction in the presence of Landau levels. Utilizing gate-tunable magnetophonon resonances, we extract the charge carrier density dependence of the Landau level transition energies and the associated effective Fermi velocity vF. In contrast to the logarithmic divergence of vF at zero magnetic field, we find a piecewise linear scaling of vF as a function of the charge carrier density, due to a magnetic-field-induced suppression of the long-range Coulomb interaction. We quantitatively confirm our experimental findings by performing tight-binding calculations on the level of the Hartree-Fock approximation, which also allow us to estimate an excitonic binding energy of ≈6  meV contained in the experimentally extracted Landau level transitions energies. [less ▲]

Sadhukhan and Tkatchenko Reply

in Physical Review Letters (2018), 120

Unifying Microscopic and Continuum Treatments of van der Waals and Casimir Interactions

in Physical Review Letters (2017), 118(1), 266802

We present an approach for computing long-range van der Waals (vdW) interactions between complex molecular systems and arbitrarily shaped macroscopic bodies, melding atomistic treatments of electronic ... [more ▼]

We present an approach for computing long-range van der Waals (vdW) interactions between complex molecular systems and arbitrarily shaped macroscopic bodies, melding atomistic treatments of electronic fluctuations based on density functional theory in the former with continuum descriptions of strongly shape dependent electromagnetic fields in the latter, thus capturing many-body and multiple scattering effects to all orders. Such a theory is especially important when considering vdW interactions at mesoscopic scales, i.e., between molecules and structured surfaces with features on the scale of molecular sizes, in which case the finite sizes, complex shapes, and resulting nonlocal electronic excitations of molecules are strongly influenced by electromagnetic retardation and wave effects that depend crucially on the shapes of surrounding macroscopic bodies. We show that these effects together can modify vdW interaction energies and forces, as well as molecular shapes deformed by vdW interactions, by orders of magnitude compared to previous treatments based on Casimir-Polder, nonretarded, or pairwise approximations, which are valid only at macroscopically large or atomic-scale separations or in dilute insulating media, respectively. [less ▲]

Long-Range Repulsion Between Spatially Confined van der Waals Dimers

in Physical Review Letters (2017), 118

It is an undisputed textbook fact that nonretarded van der Waals (vdW) interactions between isotropic dimers are attractive, regardless of the polarizability of the interacting systems or spatial ... [more ▼]

It is an undisputed textbook fact that nonretarded van der Waals (vdW) interactions between isotropic dimers are attractive, regardless of the polarizability of the interacting systems or spatial dimensionality. The universality of vdW attraction is attributed to the dipolar coupling between fluctuating electron charge densities. Here, we demonstrate that the long-range interaction between spatially confined vdW dimers becomes repulsive when accounting for the full Coulomb interaction between charge fluctuations. Our analytic results are obtained by using the Coulomb potential as a perturbation over dipole-correlated states for two quantum harmonic oscillators embedded in spaces with reduced dimensionality; however, the long-range repulsion is expected to be a general phenomenon for spatially confined quantum systems. We suggest optical experiments to test our predictions, analyze their relevance in the context of intermolecular interactions in nanoscale environments, and rationalize the recent observation of anomalously strong screening of the lateral vdW interactions between aromatic hydrocarbons adsorbed on metal surfaces. [less ▲]

Thermal and electronic fluctuations of flexible adsorbed molecules: Azobenzene on Ag(111)

in Physical Review Letters (2016), 116