De sitter space and perpetuum mobile

The general arguments that any interacting nonconformal classical field theory in de Sitter space leads to the possibility of constructing a perpetuum mobile is given. The arguments are based on the observation that massive free falling particles can radiate other massive particles on the classical level as seen by the free falling observer. The intensity of the radiation process is not zero even for particles with any finite mass, i.e., with a wavelength which is within causal domain. Hence, we conclude that either de Sitter space cannot exist eternally or that one can build a perpetuum mobile.     

Universal magnetic domain wall dynamics in the presence of weak disorder

The motion of elastic interfaces in disordered media is a broad topic relevant to many branches of physics. Field-driven magnetic domain wall motion in ultrathin ferromagnetic Pt/Co/Pt films can be well interpreted within the framework of theories developed to describe elastic interface dynamics in the presence of weak disorder. Indeed, the three theoretically predicted dynamic regimes of creep, depinning, and flow have all been directly evidenced in this model experimental system. We discuss these dynamic regimes and demonstrate how field-driven creep can be controlled not only by temperature and pinning, but also via interactions with magnetic entities located inside or outside the magnetic layer. Consequences of confinement effects in nano-devices are briefly reviewed, as some recent results on domain wall motion driven by an electric current or assisted by an electric field. Finally new theoretical developments and perspectives are discussed.     

Ergodicity and Energy Distributions for Some Boundary Driven Integrable Hamiltonian Chains

We consider systems of moving particles in 1-dimensional space interacting through energy storage sites. The ends of the systems are coupled to heat baths, and resulting steady states are studied. When the two heat baths are equal, an explicit formula for the (unique) equilibrium distribution is given. The bulk of the paper concerns nonequilibrium steady states, i.e., when the chain is coupled to two unequal heat baths. Rigorous results including ergodicity are proved. Numerical studies are carried out for two types of bath distributions. For chains driven by exponential baths, our main finding is that the system does not approach local thermodynamic equilibrium as system size tends to infinity. For bath distributions that are sharply peaked Gaussians, in spite of the near-integrable dynamics, transport properties are found to be more normal than expected.     

PHASE TRANSITION FOR A NOISE-DRIVEN MODEL COUPLED BY A MEAN FIELD

We report a new model for infinite interacting noise driven subsystems which are coupled by a mean field and study its nonequilibrium phase transitions. In this model, under some circumstances the phase transition is between the state with zero mean field and the state with non zero mean field, and has a breaking of symmetry, which is similar to that reported by Van den Broeck, Parrondo, Toral, and Armcro [Phys. Rev. Lett.,73(1994),3395; Phys. Rev., E49(1994),2639], by Pikovsky, Rateitschak, and Kurths [Z.Phys.,B95(1994),541], and by other authors. We style this nonequi librium phase transition the symmetry breaking mean field. However, under other circumstances, the nonequilibrium phase transition of our model is not of the symme try breaking mean field type, which is a new phenomenon that has not been reported before.     

Artificial electric field in fermi liquids

Based on the Keldysh formalism, we derive an effective Boltzmann equation for a quasiparticle constrained within a particular Fermi surface in an interacting Fermi liquid. This provides a many-body derivation of Berry curvatures in electron dynamics with spin-orbit coupling, which has received much attention in recent years in noninteracting models. As is well known, the Berry curvature in momentum space modifies na?ve band dynamics via an "artificial magnetic field" in momentum space. Our Fermi liquid formulation completes the reinvention of modified band dynamics by introducing in addition an artificial electric field, related to Berry curvature in frequency and momentum space. We show explicitly how the artificial electric field affects the renormalization factor and transverse conductivity of interacting U(1) Fermi liquids with nondegenerate bands.     

Evolutionary game theory: Theoretical concepts and applications to microbial communities

Ecological systems are complex assemblies of large numbers of individuals, interacting competitively under multifaceted environmental conditions. Recent studies using microbial laboratory communities have revealed some of the self-organization principles underneath the complexity of these systems. A major role of the inherent stochasticity of its dynamics and the spatial segregation of different interacting species into distinct patterns has thereby been established. It ensures the viability of microbial colonies by allowing for species diversity, cooperative behavior and other kinds of “social” behavior.A synthesis of evolutionary game theory, nonlinear dynamics, and the theory of stochastic processes provides the mathematical tools and a conceptual framework for a deeper understanding of these ecological systems. We give an introduction into the modern formulation of these theories and illustrate their effectiveness focussing on selected examples of microbial systems. Intrinsic fluctuations, stemming from the discreteness of individuals, are ubiquitous, and can have an important impact on the stability of ecosystems. In the absence of speciation, extinction of species is unavoidable. It may, however, take very long times. We provide a general concept for defining survival and extinction on ecological time-scales. Spatial degrees of freedom come with a certain mobility of individuals. When the latter is sufficiently high, bacterial community structures can be understood through mapping individual-based models, in a continuum approach, onto stochastic partial differential equations. These allow progress using methods of nonlinear dynamics such as bifurcation analysis and invariant manifolds. We conclude with a perspective on the current challenges in quantifying bacterial pattern formation, and how this might have an impact on fundamental research in non-equilibrium physics.     

An interacting particle model with compact hierarchical structure

We present a model interacting particle system with a population of fixed size in which particles wander randomly in space, and pairs interact at a rate determined by a reaction kernel with finite range. The pairwise interaction randomly selects one of the particles (the victim) and instantly transfers it to the position of the other (the killer), thus maintaining the total number. The special feature of the model is that it possesses a closed hierarchical structure in which the statistical moments of the governing master equation lead to closed equations for the reduced distribution functions (the concentration, pair correlation function, and so on). In one spatial dimension, we show that persistent spatial correlations (clusters) arise in this model and we characterize the dynamics in terms of analytical properties of the pair correlation function. As the range of the reaction kernel is increased, the dynamics varies from an ensemble of largely independent random walkers at small range to tightly bound clusters with longer-range reaction kernels.     

Binary Systems Around a Black Hole

We present a novel method to study interacting orbits in a fixed mean gravitational field associated with a solution of the Einstein field equations. The idea is to consider the Newton gravity among the orbiting particles in a geometry given by the main source. For this purpose, the motion equations are obtained in two different but equivalent ways. The particles can either be considered as a zeroth order (static) perturbation to the given metric or as an external Newtonian force in the geodesic equations. After obtaining the motion equations we perform simulations of two and three interacting particles moving around a black hole, i.e., in a Schwarzschild geometry. We also compare with the equivalent Newtonian problem and note differences in the stability, e.g., binary systems are found only in the general relativistic approach.     

Stationary nonequilibrium states in boundary-driven Hamiltonian systems: Shear flow

We investigate stationary nonequilibrium states of systems of particles moving according to Hamiltonian dynamics with specified potentials. The systems are driven away from equilibrium by Maxwell-demon reflection rules at the walls. These deterministic rules conserve energy but not phase space volume, and the resulting global dynamics may or may not be time reversible (or even invertible). Using rules designed to simulate moving walls, we can obtain a stationary shear flow. Assuming that for macroscopic systems this flow satisfies the Navier-Stokes equations, we compare the hydrodynamic entropy production with the average rate of phase-space volume compression. We find that they are equalwhen the velocity distribution of particles incident on the walls is a local Maxwellian. An argument for a general equality of this kind, based on the assumption of local thermodynamic equilibrium, is given. Molecular dynamic simulations of hard disks in a channel produce a steady shear flow with the predicted behavior.     

Phase transitions in cellular automata models of spatial susceptible--infected--resistant--susceptible epidemics

Spatially explicit models have become widely used in today's mathematical ecology and epidemiology to study the persistence of populations. For simplicity, population dynamics is often analysed by using ordinary differential equations (ODEs) or partial differential equations (PDEs) in the one-dimensional (1D) space. An important question is to predict species extinction or persistence rate by mean of computer simulation based on the spatial model. Recently, it has been reported that stable turbulent and regular waves are persistent based on the spatial susceptible--infected--resistant--susceptible (SIRS) model by using the cellular automata (CA) method in the two-dimensional (2D) space [Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 101, 18246 (2004)]. In this paper, we address other important issues relevant to phase transitions of epidemic persistence. We are interested in assessing the significance of the risk of extinction in 1D space. Our results show that the 2D space can considerably increase the possibility of persistence of spread of epidemics when the degree distribution of the individuals is uniform, i.e. the pattern of 2D spatial persistence corresponding to extinction in a 1D system with the same parameters. The trade-offs of extinction and persistence between the infection period and infection rate are observed in the 1D case. Moreover, near the trade-off (phase transition) line, an independent estimation of the dynamic exponent can be performed, and it is in excellent agreement with the result obtained by using the conjectured relationship of directed percolation. We find that the introduction of a short-range diffusion and a long-range diffusion among the neighbourhoods can enhance the persistence and global disease spread in the space.     

Tunable fermi acceleration in the driven elliptical billiard

We explore the dynamical evolution of an ensemble of noninteracting particles propagating freely in an elliptical billiard with harmonically driven boundaries. The existence of Fermi acceleration is shown thereby refuting the established assumption that smoothly driven billiards whose static counterparts are integrable do not exhibit acceleration dynamics. The underlying mechanism based on intermittent phases of laminar and stochastic behavior of the strongly correlated angular momentum and velocity motion is identified and studied with varying parameters. The diffusion process in velocity space is shown to be anomalous and we find that the corresponding characteristic exponent depends monotonically on the breathing amplitude of the billiard boundaries. Thus it is possible to tune the acceleration law in a straightforwardly controllable manner.     

Interpreting Quantum Particles as Conceptual Entities

We elaborate an interpretation of quantum physics founded on the hypothesis that quantum particles are conceptual entities playing the role of communication vehicles between material entities composed of ordinary matter which function as memory structures for these quantum particles. We show in which way this new interpretation gives rise to a natural explanation for the quantum effects of interference and entanglement by analyzing how interference and entanglement emerge for the case of human concepts. We put forward a scheme to derive a metric based on similarity as a predecessor for the structure of ‘space, time, momentum, energy’ and ‘quantum particles interacting with ordinary matter’ underlying standard quantum physics, within the new interpretation, and making use of aspects of traditional quantum axiomatics. More specifically, we analyze how the effect of non-locality arises as a consequence of the confrontation of such an emerging metric type of structure and the remaining presence of the basic conceptual structure on the fundamental level, with the potential of being revealed in specific situations.     

Self-organization in the spatial battle of the sexes with probabilistic updating

The dynamics of a spatial formulation of the iterated battle of the sexes with probabilistic updating is assessed in this work. The game is played in the cellular automata manner, i.e., with local and synchronous interaction. The effect of memory of past encounters is also taken into account. It is concluded that the spatial structure enables the emergence of clusters of coincident choices, leading to the mean payoff per encounter to values that are accessible only in the cooperative two-person game scenario, which constitutes a notable case of self-organization. With probabilistic updating of choices, both kinds of players reach mean payoffs per encounter that are notably higher than those reached with a deterministic updating mechanism, albeit the evolutionary dynamics does not stabilize, and one of the two possible choices tends to prevail for both kinds of players. Memory of past iterations induces an inertial effect that moderates this tendency, so that intermediate levels of the memory charge tend to favor fairly stable high egalitarian payoffs, without impeding the necessary recovering from their initial plummeting.     

Sudden death of entanglement of two atoms interacting with thermal fields

We investigate the entanglement dynamics of two initially entangled atoms each interacting with a thermal field.We show that the two entangled atoms become completely disentangled in a finite time and that the lost information cannot return to the atomic system when the mean photon number of the thermal field exceeds a critical value (3.3584),even though the whole system is lossless.Then we study how the detuning between the atomic transition frequency and the field frequency and the disparity between two coupling rates would affect the evolution of the entanglement of the atomic system.     

Accuracy of the Time-Dependent Hartree–Fock Approximation for Uncorrelated Initial States

This article concerns the time-dependent Hartree–Fock (TDHF) approximation of single-particle dynamics in systems of interacting fermions. We find that the TDHF approximation is accurate when there are sufficiently many particles and the initial many-particle state is any Gibbs equilibrium state for noninteracting fermions (with Slater determinants as a special example). Assuming a bounded two-particle interaction, we obtain a bound on the error of the TDHF approximation, valid for short times. We further show that the error of the TDHF approximation vanishes at all times in the mean field limit.     

Spin squeezing in a bimodal condensate: spatial dynamics and particle losses

We propose an analytical method to study the entangled spatial and spin dynamics of interacting bimodal Bose-Einstein condensates. We show that at particular times during the evolution spatial and spin dynamics disentangle and the spin squeezing can be predicted by a simple two-mode model. We calculate the maximum spin squeezing achievable in experimentally relevant situations with Sodium or Rubidium bimodal condensates, including the effect of the dynamics and of one, two and three-body losses.     

Proximity networks and epidemics

Disease spread in most biological populations requires the proximity of agents. In populations where the individuals have spatial mobility, the contact graph is generated by the “collision dynamics” of the agents, and thus the evolution of epidemics couples directly to the spatial dynamics of the population. We first briefly review the properties and the methodology of an agent-based simulation (EPISIMS) to model disease spread in realistic urban dynamic contact networks. Using the data generated by this simulation, we introduce the notion of dynamic proximity networks which takes into account the relevant time-scales for disease spread: contact duration, infectivity period, and rate of contact creation. This approach promises to be a good candidate for a unified treatment of epidemic types that are driven by agent collision dynamics. In particular, using a simple model, we show that it can account for the observed qualitative differences between the degree distributions of contact graphs of diseases with short infectivity period (such as air-transmitted diseases) or long infectivity periods (such as HIV).     

Relative Energy Shift of a Two-Level Atom in a Cylindrical Spacetime

We investigate the evolution dynamics of a two-level atom system interacting with the massless scalar field in a Cylindrical spacetime. We find that both the energy shifts of ground state and excited state can be separated into two parts due to the vacuum fluctuations. One is the corresponding energy shift for a rest atom in four-dimensional Minkowski space without spatial compactification, the other is just the modification of the spatial compactified periodic length. It will reveal that the influence of the presence of one spatial compactified dimension can not be neglected in Lamb shift as the relative energy level shift of an atom.     

Phenomenology and theory of horizontally oscillated granular mixtures

We overview the physics of a granular mixture subject to horizontal oscillations, recently investigated via experiments and molecular dynamics simulations. First we discuss the rich phenomenology exhibited by this system, which encompasses both segregation and dynamical instabilities. Then we show that the phenomenology can be explained via an effective interaction approach, by which the driven, non-thermal, granular mixture in mapped into a monodispersed thermal system of particles interacting via an effective potential. After determining the effective interaction we discuss its microscopic origin and investigate how it induces the observed phenomenology. Finally, as much as in thermal fluids, from the effective interaction we derive a Cahn-Hilliard dynamics equation, which appears to capture the essential characteristics of the dynamics of the granular mixture.     

Equilibrium Fluctuations for Interacting Ornstein-Uhlenbeck Particles

 We study the hydrodynamic density fluctuations of an infinite system of interacting particles on ℝ ^d . The particles interact between them through a two body superstable potential, and with a surrounding fluid in equilibrium through a random viscous force of Ornstein-Uhlenbeck type. The stationary initial distribution is the Gibbs measure associated with the potential and with a given temperature and fugacity. We prove that the time-dependent density fluctuation field converges in law, under diffusive scaling of space and time, to the solution of a linear stochastic partial differential equation driven by white noise. Received: 10 July 2001 / Accepted: 9 September 2002 Published online: 8 January 2003 RID="*" ID="*" We thank J. Fritz for fruitful discussions, in particular about the existence of the infinite dynamics. A special thanks to L. Bertini for help in the proof of the spectral gap estimate (cf. Appendix B). Communicated by H. Spohn