Ground state

Summary

The ground state of a quantum-mechanical system is its stationary state of lowest energy; the energy of the ground state is known as the zero-point energy of the system. An excited state is any state with energy greater than the ground state. In quantum field theory, the ground state is usually called the vacuum state or the vacuum. If more than one ground state exists, they are said to be degenerate. Many systems have degenerate ground states. Degeneracy occurs whenever there exists a unitary operator that acts non-trivially on a ground state and commutes with the Hamiltonian of the system. According to the third law of thermodynamics, a system at absolute zero temperature exists in its ground state; thus, its entropy is determined by the degeneracy of the ground state. Many systems, such as a perfect crystal lattice, have a unique ground state and therefore have zero entropy at absolute zero. It is also possible for the highest excited state to have absolute zero temperature for

Official source

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_state

About this result

This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.

Related publications (100)

Related publications

Related people (30)

Related people

Related units (18)

Related units

Related concepts (68)

Related concepts

Related courses (71)

Related courses

Related lectures (243)

Related lectures

We consider high-dimensional random optimization problems where the dynamical variables are subjected to nonconvex excluded volume constraints. We focus on the case in which the cost function is a simple quadratic cost and the excluded volume constraints are modeled by a perceptron constraint satisfaction problem. We show that depending on the density of constraints, one can have different situations. If the number of constraints is small, one typically has a phase where the ground state of the cost function is unique and sits on the boundary of the island of configurations allowed by the constraints. In this case, there is a hypostatic number of marginally satisfied constraints. If the number of constraints is increased one enters a glassy phase where the cost function has many local minima sitting again on the boundary of the regions of allowed configurations. At the phase transition point, the total number of marginally satisfied constraints becomes equal to the number of degrees of freedom in the problem and therefore we say that these minima are isostatic. We conjecture that by increasing further the constraints the system stays isostatic up to the point where the volume of available phase space shrinks to zero. We derive our results using the replica method and we also analyze a dynamical algorithm, the Karush-Kuhn-Tucker algorithm, through dynamical mean-field theory and we show how to recover the results of the replica approach in the replica symmetric phase.

AMER PHYSICAL SOC2022

The S-matrix Bootstrap Reloaded

Aditya Hebbar

Quantum field theories (QFTs) are the backbone upon which the edifice of modern physics is built. In this thesis we explore the S-matrix bootstrap which is a non-perturbative method that constrains the vast space of QFTs by using consistency conditions that they must satisfy. The thesis is divided into two parts.In part I of the thesis we study the S-matrix bootstrap for particles with spin in 4 spacetime dimensions and apply the formalism to scattering of identical Majorana fermions to estimate bounds on their quartic couplings and their cubic (Yukawa) coupling to scalar particles. In part II of the thesis, we consider the scattering of massless (Goldstone) excitations on a long flux tube. We use the S-matrix bootstrap to constrain Wilson coefficients of higher dimension operators in the low energy flux tube effective field theory. These constraints naturally translate to bounds on the ground state and excited state energy levels of long flux tubes. The techniques used in this thesis should be extendable to many other systems, both massive and massless. We conclude by discussing some of these possibilities.

EPFL2021

Unconventional quantum ordered and disordered states in the highly frustrated spin-1/2 Ising-Heisenberg model on triangles-in-triangles lattices

Jana Cisárová

The spin-1/2 Ising-Heisenberg model on two geometrically related triangles-in-triangles lattices is exactly solved through the generalized star-triangle transformation, which establishes a rigorous mapping correspondence with the effective spin-1/2 Ising model on a triangular lattice. Basic thermodynamic quantities were exactly calculated within this rigorous mapping method along with the ground-state and finite-temperature phase diagrams. Apart from the classical ferromagnetic phase, both investigated models exhibit several unconventional quantum ordered and disordered ground states. A mutual competition between two ferromagnetic interactions of basically different character generically leads to the emergence of a quantum ferromagnetic phase, in which a symmetric quantum superposition of three up-up-down states of the Heisenberg trimers accompanies a perfect alignment of all Ising spins. In the highly frustrated regime, we have either found the disordered quantum paramagnetic phase with a substantial residual entropy or a similar but spontaneously ordered phase with a nontrivial criticality at finite temperatures. The latter quantum ground state exhibits a striking coexistence of imperfect spontaneous order with partial disorder, which is evidenced by a quantum reduction of the spontaneous magnetization of Heisenberg spins that indirectly causes a small reduction of the spontaneous magnetization of otherwise classical Ising spins. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevB.87.024421

Amer Physical Soc2013