Quantum tunneling and zero-point motion limit of noise fluctuations

It is shown that interpreting the zero-point noise of a resistor as dynamical noise capable of driving a Josephson phase across a potential barrier delivers qualitatively identical results with quantum mechanical tunneling calculation in the overdamped limit.     

分子磁体中的量子隧穿及宏观量子效应

文章介绍了分子磁体中的量子隧穿和宏观量子效应理论和实验研究的新进展．分子磁体既有宏观磁体特性也呈现纯量子行为，例如磁化矢量的量子隧穿．文章作者解释了如何通过量子隧穿实现宏观量子相干(即薛定谔猫态的相干叠加)和量子态位相干涉．对隧穿率计算的瞬子方法，特别是有限温度隧穿理论及其在分子磁体量子隧穿中的应用也做了简要的阐述．     

Quantum coherent effects and Zener tunneling in superconducting tunnel junctions

We calculate the current-voltage characteristics of a small capacitance underdamped superconducting tunnel junction and find the value of the critical current which corresponds to switching between coherent voltage oscillations and uncorrelated single electron tunneling. Both Zener tunneling and dissipative relaxation are important in this context.     

Quantum confinement effects and source-to-drain tunneling in ultra-scaled double-gate silicon n-MOSFETs

By using the linear combination of bulk band (LCBB) method incorporated with the top of the barrier splitting (TBS) model, we present a comprehensive study on the quantum confinement effects and the source-to-drain tunneling in the ultra-scaled double-gate (DG) metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs). A critical body thickness value of 5 nm is found, below which severe valley splittings among different X valleys for the occupied charge density and the current contributions occur in ultra-thin silicon body structures. It is also found that the tunneling current could be nearly 100% with an ultra-scaled channel length. Different from the previous simulation results, it is found that the source-to-drain tunneling could be effectively suppressed in the ultra-thin body thickness (2.0 nm and below) by the quantum confinement and the tunneling could be suppressed down to below 5% when the channel length approaches 16 nm regardless of the body thickness.     

Quantum fluctuations, temperature, and detuning effects in solid-light systems

The superfluid to Mott insulator transition in cavity polariton arrays is analyzed using the variational cluster approach, taking into account quantum fluctuations exactly on finite length scales. Phase diagrams in one and two dimensions exhibit important non-mean-field features. Single-particle excitation spectra in the Mott phase are dominated by particle and hole bands separated by a Mott gap. In contrast to Bose-Hubbard models, detuning allows for changing the nature of the bosonic particles from quasilocalized excitons to polaritons to weakly interacting photons. The Mott state with density one exists up to temperatures T/g > or = 0.03, implying experimentally accessible temperatures for realistic cavity couplings g.     

Quantum fluctuations and inertia

One of the three key assumptions involved in the stochastic formulation of quantum mechanics, the inverse proportionality of the quantum diffusion constant to the inertial mass, is shown to be amenable to experimental test. By relaxing this assumption, a non-linear generalization of the Schrödinger equation is found. The present experimental uncertainty in the measurement of the Lamb shift is then used to bound the deviation from the aforementioned inverse proportionality to be less than 4 × 10⁻¹³.     

Quantum RLC circuits: Charge discreteness and resonance

In a recent article [C.A. Utreras-Díaz, Phys. Lett. A 372 (2008) 5059], we have advanced a semiclassical theory of quantum circuits with discrete charge and electrical resistance. In this work, we present a few elementary applications of this theory. For the zero resistance inductive circuit, we obtain the Stark ladder energies in yet another way; for the circuit driven by a combination d.c. plus a.c. electromotive force (emf) we generalize earlier results by Chandía et al. [K. Chandía, J.C. Flores, E. Lazo, Phys. Lett. A 359 (2006) 693]. As a second application, we investigate the effect of electrical resistance and charge discreteness, in the resonance conditions of a series RLC quantum circuit.     

Quantum tunneling and negative eigenvalues

In the path-integral approach to the decay of a metastable state by quantum tunneling, the tunneling process is dominated by a solution to the imaginary-time equations of motion, called the bounce. In all known cases, the second variational derivative of the euclidean action at the bounce has one and only one negative eigenvalue. This note explains this phenomenon by showing it is an inevitable feature of the bounce for a wide class of systems. This class includes a set of particles interacting through potentials obeying some mild technical restrictions, and also theories of interacting scalar and gauge fields. There may exist solutions in other ways like bounces and which have more than one negative eigenvalue, but, even if they do exist, they have nothing to do with tunneling.     

Quantum vacuum fluctuations

The existence of irreducible field fluctuations in vacuum is an important prediction of quantum theory. These fluctuations have many observable consequences, like the Casimir effect, which is now measured with good accuracy and agreement with theory, provided that the latter accounts for differences between real experiments and the ideal situation considered by Casimir. But the vacuum energy density calculated by adding field mode energies is much larger than the density observed around us through gravitational phenomena. This ‘vacuum catastrophe’ is one of the unsolved problems at the interface between quantum theory on one hand, inertial and gravitational phenomena on the other hand. It is however possible to put properly formulated questions in the vicinity of this paradox. These questions are directly connected to observable effects bearing upon the principle of relativity of motion in quantum vacuum.     

Quantum tunneling and trace anomaly

We compute the corrections, using the tunneling formalism based on a quantum WKB approach, to the Hawking temperature and Bekenstein–Hawking entropy for the Schwarzschild black hole. The results are related to the trace anomaly and are shown to be equivalent to findings inferred from Hawking's original calculation based on path integrals using zeta function regularization. Finally, exploiting the corrected temperature and periodicity arguments we also find the modification to the original Schwarzschild metric which captures the effect of quantum corrections.     

Quantum tunneling and back reaction

We give a correction to the tunneling probability by taking into account the back reaction effect to the metric of the black hole spacetime. We then show how this gives rise to the modifications in the semiclassical black hole entropy and Hawking temperature. Finally, we reproduce the familiar logarithmic correction to the Bekenstein–Hawking area law.     

Quantum fluctuations in nonlinear optics

We consider nonlinear optical devices which are excited by coherent light from a laser and in which several other waves are generated by nonlinear processes. We develop a general theory to treat the noise properties of the generated waves. In particular a probability distribution function is found which in principle can be measured experimentally. This formulation allows a thermodynamic study of phase transitions.