Student Seminar | July 22, 16:30
Microscopic mechanisms of false vacuum decay in quantum spin chains
In this work we theoretically investigate the false vacuum decay in the quantum Ising chain. We develop a many-body theory for the nucleation of ground-state bubbles that is analytically tractable and is valid for all parameter regimes up to intermediate times. The theory allows us to highlight the presence of different regimes in the parameter space, featuring qualitatively distinct physical mechanisms responsible for the dynamics. Specifically, we find that in regimes of weak quantum effects, the bubbles are mainly formed in one resonant state making the dynamics susceptible to the discrete nature of the spin chain. However, in the regime of strong quantum effects the dynamics can couple to many states giving rise to a timescale on which the dynamics exhibit features reminiscent of those expected in false vacuum decay of field theories
U Trento
0.03
Contact: Konstantin Weisenberger