SP Seminar 12.04.2016 @SISSA: Jerome Dubail

[Condensed Matter Section]

JOINT ICTP/SISSA STATISTICAL PHYSICS SEMINAR

Tuesday 12 April - 11:00 a.m.

SISSA, room 128


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Speaker: Jerome Dubail

Title: Inhomogeneous quantum systems in 1d : how does one describe
them with Conformal Field Theory?


Abstract:
"Two-dimensional Conformal Field Theories (CFT) have been very
successful as effective theories for classical statistical models
at a critical point (like the critical 2d Ising model), or for
quantum critical points in one spatial dimension.
The results obtained from the CFT approach include, for instance,
exact scaling exponents, solutions of the Kondo and other
quantum impurity problems, and the many results on entanglement
measures and quantum quenches obtained in the past decade.
Yet, in spite of the many successes of CFT, there is a large class
of one-dimensional systems that seems out of reach: inhomogeneous
systems. For instance, a quantum gas in a trapping potential is
inhomogeneous, because the density usually varies with position. The same is true about
various out-of-equilibrium situations, for example if particles
are released from a trap. I will sketch how the standard CFT framework
can be adapted to accomodate such situations,
by relying on a few elementary, yet illustrative, examples based on
free fermions."

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