3 ms·
Not the author but it seems like a thermal transition, given that they’re analyzing how the potential well evolves over time. Another interesting thought your
by tnecniv 3y ago
Not the author but it seems like a thermal transition, given that they’re analyzing how the potential well evolves over time.
Another interesting thought your second paragraph gave me is if you could do any RG stuff, which has had a lot of success in physics analyzing phase transitions and critical phenomena
- evanb 3y agoA quantum phase transition is also like a change in a potential well; it's just that the control parameter is not temperature but some other parameter of the Hamiltonian. There is a lot known about universal critical phenomena, hence my question about the critical exponents. If they could show "oh yes this is in the such-and-such universality class" then suddenly I have a much greater understanding of what's up.
- tnecniv 3y agoDo you have any recommended reading on critical phenomena? I’ve become quite interested in statistical mechanics lately, but my background is engineering / applied math. Thus, I learned information theory first and am interested in how physicists analyze statistical mechanics because it’s quite different from the rate-distortion theory I learned originally.
- evanb 3y agoI don't have a good introductory reference, to be honest. I was first exposed to it (and RG) in my 2nd year in physics grad school, and to be frank did not understand it at all then (partly due to crap teaching).