Quantum field theories and critical phenomena on defects

We derive a nonlinear integral equation (NLIE) for some bulk excited states of the sine-Gordon model on a finite interval with general integrable boundary interactions, including boundary terms proportional to the first time derivative of the field. We use this NLIE to compute numerically the dimensions of these states as a function of scale, and check the UV and IR limits analytically. We also find further support for the ground-state NLIE by comparison with boundary conformal perturbation theory (BCPT), boundary truncated conformal space approach (BTCSA) and the boundary analogue of the Lüscher formula.     

The gravitational field of photons

The gravitational field of a photon on an infinite straight path is a single sheet of plane-fronted gravitational wave accompanying the photon and perpendicular to its track. This field cannot arise from a retarded potential generated by the photon, and I suggest that it arises in the process of emission. The near-field depends on the energy of the photon, but the far-field does not. The field of a steady beam of photons is compared with that of a static material rod, and the differences discussed.     

Thomson scattering induced by gravitational waves

We investigate the effects of a weak gravitational wave, modelled as a gaussian wavepacket, on the polarization state of an electromagnetic field enclosed in a cavity. Our approach is semiclassical, in that the electromagnetic field is described as a quantum field, while the gravitational perturbation is treated classically, as a slightly curved background spacetime. Assuming that before the interaction the electromagnetic field has been prepared in a given polarization state, we show that – due to the gravitational scattering with the wave – some photons having different polarization states are found in the cavity at late times. Such polarization scattering has some resemblance with Thomson scattering, well-known in Quantum Electrodynamics: hence the motivation for the title. We give a numerical estimate of the resulting photon polarization spreading in the case of a typical gravitational burst from a final supernova rebound. We also briefly comment about the possible influence of such gravitational scattering on the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) polarization.     

The condensation of ideal Bose gas in a gravitational field

Bose–Einstein condensation of two- and three-dimensional boson gases confined in the one-dimensional gravitational field is investigated. Using the semiclassical approximation method, the expressions for the BEC transition temperature, condensate fraction, heat capacity and the entropy of the system are obtained. The heat capacities of the systems with D  =1, 2, 3 (D$D$ is the dimension) at the critical temperature are discussed. We find that for the 1-D and 2-D boson systems, the heat capacities are continuous, but for the 3-D case there is a gap at the critical temperature T_c$T_c$. The entropies of the systems with D=1, 2, 3 are also studied in detail. It is found that the entropies increase with the increasing of the temperature T.     

Extended gravitational pose estimation

The model-to-image registration problem is a problem of determining the position and orientation (the pose) of a three-dimensional object with respect to a camera coordinate system. When there is no additional information available to constrain the pose of the object and to constrain the correspondence of object features to image features, the problem is also known as simultaneous pose and correspondence problem, or correspondenceless pose estimation problem. In this paper, we present a new algorithm, called extended gravitational pose estimation (EGPE), for determining the pose and correspondence simultaneously. The algorithm is based on gravitational pose estimation (GPE) algorithm. In our algorithm, the original GPE has been revised to deal with the problem with false image points. For problems with both occluded object points and false image points, we firstly applied single-link agglomerative clustering algorithm to pick out occluded object points when a local minimum has been found, then the revised GPE is applied again on the clustering result to update rotation and translation of the object model. EGPE has been verified on both synthetic images and real images. Empirical results show that EGPE is faster, more stable and reliable than most current algorithms, and can be used in real applications.     

Quantum kinetic theory of confined electrons in a strong time dependent field

A gauge-invariant Green’s function approach to the quantum transport of spatially confined electrons in strong electromagnetic fields is presented. The theory includes mean field and exchange effects, as well as collisions and initial correlations. It allows for a self-consistent treatment of spectral properties and collective effects (plasmons), on one hand, and nonlinear field phenomena, such as harmonic generation and multiphoton absorption, on the other. It is equally applicable to electrons in quantum dots, ultracold ions in traps and valence electrons of metal clusters.     

Gravity induced particle production in earth’s gravitational field in TeV region

We discuss the production of particles via interaction with the earth’s gravitational field. Explicit calculations are done for high energy scalars passing through earth’s gravitational field. We show for example, that the width for the scalar processφ→3φ can become comparable with a typical weak decay width at an energy scale of a few TeV. (Similar conclusions can be drawn about particles that ultimately couple to some scalar field.) We speculate that similar processes may be responsible for many of the anomalies in the 10–10⁴ TeV experimental data.     

Estimation of the photon rest-mass from gravitational interaction

An estimation of the photon rest-mass is performed by considering a single photon under the action of a gravitational field. In fact, the wavelength dependence of this mass is expressed in analytical form in connection with the fact that the photon velocity depends upon wavelength.     

Massive gravity as a quantum gauge theory

We present a new point of view on the quantization of the massive gravitational field, namely we use exclusively the quantum framework of the second quantization. The Hilbert space of the many-gravitons system is a Fock space F⁺ (H_graviton) where the one-particle Hilbert space H_graviton carries the direct sum of two unitary irreducible representations of the Poincaré group corresponding to two particles of mass m > 0 and spins 2 and 0, respectively. This Hilbert space is canonically isomorphic to a space of the type Ker(Q)/Im(Q) where Q is a gauge charge defined in an extension of the Hilbert space H_graviton generated by the gravitational field h and some ghosts fields u, (which are vector Fermi fields) and v (which is a vector Bose field).Then we study the self interaction of massive gravity in the causal framework. We obtain a solution which goes smoothly to the zero-mass solution of linear quantum gravity up to a term depending on the bosonic ghost field. This solution depends on two real constants as it should be; these constants are related to the gravitational constant and the cosmological constant. In the second order of the perturbation theory we do not need a Higgs field, in sharp contrast to Yang-Mills theory.     

Quantum walk transport on carbon nanotube structures

We study source-to-sink excitation transport on carbon nanotubes using the concept of quantum walks. In particular, we focus on transport properties of Grover coined quantum walks on ideal and percolation perturbed nanotubes with zig-zag and armchair chiralities. Using analytic and numerical methods we identify how geometric properties of nanotubes and different types of a sink altogether control the structure of trapped states and, as a result, the overall source-to-sink transport efficiency. It is shown that chirality of nanotubes splits behavior of the transport efficiency into a few typically well separated quantitative branches. Based on that we uncover interesting quantum transport phenomena, e.g. increasing the length of the tube can enhance the transport and the highest transport efficiency is achieved for the thinnest tube. We also demonstrate, that the transport efficiency of the quantum walk on ideal nanotubes may exhibit even oscillatory behavior dependent on length and chirality.     

具有广义协变的包含重力场贡献的重力场方程

利用半度规λ^(α)_μ表象的数学工具定义一个对广义坐标具有协变形式的重力场矢势函数ω^(α)_μ≡-cλ^(α)_μ，给出一个具有广义协变的包含重力场贡献的重力场方程R_μν-g_μνR/2+Λg_μν=8πG(T^(Ⅰ)_μν+T^(Ⅱ)_μν) 关键词： 重力场方程 协变形式 能量-动量张量 量子化     

电磁场中衰变二能级原子态的量子相干特性

以衰变二能级原子作为量子位,求解了经典电磁场中有衰变二能级原子系统的密度矩阵方程,得到了系统状态在随时间演化过程中的量子相干特性.     

On the gravitational angular momentum of rotating sources

The gravitational energy–momentum and angular momentum satisfy the algebra of the Poincaré group in the full phase space of the teleparallel equivalent of general relativity. The expression for the gravitational energy–momentum may be written as a surface integral in the three-dimensional spacelike hypersurface, whereas the definition for the angular momentum is given by a volume integral. It turns out that in practical calculations of the angular momentum of the gravitational field generated by localized sources like rotating neutron stars, the volume integral reduces to a surface integral, and the calculations can be easily carried out. Similar to previous investigations in the literature, we show that the total angular momentum is finite provided a certain asymptotic behaviour is verified. We discuss the dependence of the gravitational angular momentum on the frame, and argue that it is a measure of the dragging of inertial frames.     

Directed polymer melts and quantum critical phenomena

The statistical mechanics of directed linelike objects, such as directed polymers in an external field, strands of dipoles in both ferro- and electrorheological fluids, and flux lines in high-T_c superconductors, bears a close resemblance to the quantum mechanics of bosons in 2+1 dimensions. We show that single-component and binary mixture critical phenomena in these systems are in the universality class of three-dimensional uniaxial dipolar ferromagnets and ferroelectrics. Our results also apply to films of two superfluid species undergoing phase separation well below their -points near T=0. In the case of directed polymers and electrorheological fluids we analyze the effects of free ends occurring in the sample as well as a novel directionally-dependent compressibility.     

Quantum gravitational contributions to the beta function of quantum electrodynamics

We show in a diagrammatic and regularization independent analysis that the quadratic contribution to the beta function which has been conjectured to render quantum electrodynamics asymptotically free near the Planck scale has its origin in a surface term. Such surface term is intrinsically arbitrarily valued and it is argued to vanish in a consistent treatment of the model.     

Quantum field theory of optical birefringence phenomena

The inverse Faraday effect, in which a magnetization is induced in a solution through which is passed a polarized light beam of arbitrary ellipticity, is discussed on the basis of the S-matrix formulation of optical birefringence. It is shown that the Faraday effect and the inverse Faraday effect are topologically identical problems of diagrammatic perturbation theory and so it follows automatically that the magnetization should be proportional to the Verdet constant. The optical Faraday effect is the circular birefringence induced by an intense circularly polarized beam of light propagated colinearly with the weak measuring beam: the electric vector of the circularly polarized beam interacts with the molecule in a way that resembles the interaction of a static magnetic field. The interrelations of these two effects and the normal Faraday effect the self-rotation of the polarization ellipse of an intense beam are discussed.     

Quantum phenomena and the zeropoint radiation field

The stationary solutions for a bound electron immersed in the random zeropoint radiation field of stochastic electrodynamics are studied, under the assumption that the characteristic Fourier frequencies of these solutions are not random. Under this assumption, the response of the particle to the field is linear and does not mix frequencies, irrespectively of the form of the binding force; the fluctuations of the random field fix the scale of the response. The effective radiation field that supports the stationary states of motion is no longer the free vacuum field, but a modified form of it with new statistical properties. The theory is expressed naturally in terms of matrices (or operators), and it leads to the Heisenberg equations and the Hilbert space formalism of quantum mechanics in the radiationless approximation. The connection with the poissonian formulation of stochastic electrodynamics is also established. At the end we briefly discuss a few important aspects of quantum mechanics which the present theory helps to clarify.On leave of absence at Mathematics Department, University College London. Gower Street, London WC1, U.K.