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arXiv:2210.05651

Fractal thermodynamics and ninionic statistics of coherent rotational states: realization via imaginary angular rotation in imaginary time formalism

Maxim Nikolaevich Chernodub

Published Oct 11, 2022• 2 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We suggest the existence of systems in which the statistics of a particle changes with the quantum level it occupies. The occupation numbers in thermal equilibrium depend on a continuous statistical parameter that interpolates between bosonic or fermionic and ghost-like statistical distributions. We call such particle states ``ninions'': they are different from anyons and can exist in 3+1 dimensions. We suggest that ninions can be associated with coherent angular momentum states. In the Euclidean imaginary-time formalism, the ninionic statistics can be implemented via the rotwisted boundary conditions, which are associated with the rigid global rotation of the system with an imaginary angular frequency. The imaginary rotation is characterized by a PT-symmetric non-Hermitian Hamiltonian and possesses a well-defined thermodynamic limit. The physics of ninions in thermal equilibrium is accessible for numerical simulations on Euclidean lattices. We provide a no-go theorem on the absence of analytical continuation between real and imaginary rotations in the thermodynamic limit. The ground state of ninions shares similarity with the $θ$-vacuum in QCD. The ninions can produce negative pressure and energy, similar to the Casimir effect and the cosmological dark energy. In the thermodynamic limit, the dependence of thermal energy of free ninions on the statistical parameter is a fractal.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.2210.05651

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We suggest the existence of systems in which the statistics of a particle changes with the quantum level it occupies. The occupation numbers in thermal equilibrium depend on a continuous statistical parameter that interpolates between bosonic or fermionic and ghost-like statistical distributions. We call such particle states ``ninions'': they are different from anyons and can exist in 3+1 dimensions. We suggest that ninions can be associated with coherent angular momentum states. In the Euclidean imaginary-time formalism, the ninionic statistics can be implemented via the rotwisted boundary conditions, which are associated with the rigid global rotation of the system with an imaginary angular frequency. The imaginary rotation is characterized by a PT-symmetric non-Hermitian Hamiltonian and possesses a well-defined thermodynamic limit. The physics of ninions in thermal equilibrium is accessible for numerical simulations on Euclidean lattices. We provide a no-go theorem on the absence of analytical continuation between real and imaginary rotations in the thermodynamic limit. The ground state of ninions shares similarity with the θθθ-vacuum in QCD. The ninions can produce negative pressure and energy, similar to the Casimir effect and the cosmological dark energy. In the thermodynamic limit, the dependence of thermal energy of free ninions on the statistical parameter is a fractal.
In the present study, we investigate the properties of an ensemble of free Dirac fermions, at finite inverse temperature β and finite chemical potential μ , undergoing rigid rotation with an imaginary angular velocity Ω = i Ω I . Our purpose is to establish the analytical structure of such states, as well as the prospects (and dangers) of extrapolating results obtained under imaginary rotation to the case of real rotation. We show that in the thermodynamic limit, the state of the system is akin to a stationary system with modified inverse temperature β q = q β and the same chemical potential, where q is the denominator of the irreducible fraction ν = β Ω I / 2 π = p / q . The temperature of the system becomes a fractal function of the rotation parameter, as in the case of the scalar field. The chemical potential breaks the fractalization of fermions. We also compute the thermodynamic potential Φ and associated thermodynamic functions, showing that they also exhibit fractal behavior. Finally, we evaluate the axial and helical fluxes through the transverse plane, generated through the vortical effects, and show that they diverge in the thermodynamic limit, in the case when ν = 1 / q and q → ∞ .
The properties of an ideal gas of spinless particles are investigated by using the path integral formalism. It is shown that the quantum paths exhibit a fractal character which remains unchanged in the relativistic domain provided the creation of new particles is avoided, and the Brownian motion remains the stochastic process associated with the quantum paths. These results are obtained by using a special representation of the Klein-Gordon wave equation. On the quantum paths the relation between velocity and momentum is not the usual one. The mean square value of the velocity depends on the time needed to define the velocity and its value shows the interplay between pure quantum effects and thermodynamics. The fractal character is also investigated starting from wave equations by analyzing the evolution of a Gaussian wave packet via the Hausdorff dimension. Both approaches give the same fractal character in the same limit. It is shown that the time that appears in the path integral behaves like an ordinary time, and the key quantity is the time interval needed for the thermostat to give to the particles a thermal action equal to the quantum of action. Thus, the partition function calculated via the path integral formalism also describes the dynamics of the system for short time intervals. For low temperatures, it is shown that a time-energy uncertainty relation is verified at the end of the calculations. The energy involved in this relation has not a thermodynamic meaning but results from the fact that the particles do not follow the equations of motion along the paths. The results suggest that the density matrix obtained by quantification of the classical canonical distribution function via the path integral formalism should not be totally identical to that obtained via the usual route.
The elementary excitations of a fractional quantum Hall liquid are quasiparticles or quasiholes that are neither bosons nor fermions, but are so-called anyons. Here we study impurity particles immersed in a quantum Hall liquid that bind to the quasiholes via repulsive interactions with the liquid. We show that the angular momentum of an impurity is given by the multiple of a fractional "quantum" of angular momentum, and can directly be observed from the impurity density. In a system with several impurities bound to quasiholes, their total angular momentum interpolates between the values for free fermions and for free bosons. This interpolation is characterized by the fractional statistical parameter of the anyons, which is typically defined via their braiding behavior.
Temperature is a fundamental thermodynamic variable for matter. Physical observables are often found to either increase or decrease with it, or show a non-monotonic dependence with peaks signaling underlying phase transitions or anomalies. Statistical field theory has established connection between temperature and time: a quantum ensemble with inverse temperature β is formally equivalent to a dynamic system evolving along an imaginary time from 0 to iβ in the space one dimension higher. Here we report that a gas of hard-core bosons interacting with a thermal bath manifests an unexpected temperature-periodic oscillation of its macroscopic observables, arising from the microscopic origin of space-time locked translational symmetry breaking and crystalline ordering. Such a temperature crystal, supported by quantum Monte Carlo simulation, generalizes the concept of purely spatial density-wave order to the imaginary time axis for Euclidean action.
A possible thermodynamic evolution to equilibrium of a quantum statistical system is discussed. The description is entirely algebraic and it is done by means of complex coherent states built in the Universal Enveloping Algebra of the complex algebra https://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"> A 1 . Finite dimensional representations of https://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"> A 1 give fermion distributions while infinite dimensional ones describe bosons. The scheme is thermodynamic in the sense that fluctuations are not considered and this allows us to resort to an evolution operator that realizes, for t → ∞, a projector on the state of equilibrium. The shrinking of the Hilbert space is related to non unitary evolution that change the normalization of the state vectors. The theory is invariant under time reversal: vectors at t → ±∞ differ only in phases and both correspond to the equilibrium probability distribution. Equilibrium and non-equilibrium thermodynamic quantities can be calculated at microscopic level in a framework that is in between thermodynamic and statistical mechanics. Our approach is a physically founded example of non-linear quantum theory.
For a system strongly coupled to a heat bath, the quantum coherence of the system and the heat bath plays an important role in the system dynamics. This is particularly true in the case of non-Markovian noise. We rigorously investigate the influence of system-bath coherence by deriving the reduced hierarchal equations of motion (HEOM), not only in real time, but also in imaginary time, which represents an inverse temperature. It is shown that the HEOM in real time obtained when we include the system-bath coherence of the initial thermal equilibrium state possess the same form as those obtained from a factorized initial state. We find that the difference in behavior of systems treated in these two manners results from the difference in initial conditions of the HEOM elements, which are defined in path integral form. We also derive HEOM along the imaginary time path to obtain the thermal equilibrium state of a system strongly coupled to a non-Markovian bath. Then, we show that the steady state hierarchy elements calculated from the real-time HEOM can be expressed in terms of the hierarchy elements calculated from the imaginary-time HEOM. Moreover, we find that the imaginary-time HEOM allow us to evaluate a number of thermodynamic variables, including the free energy, entropy, internal energy, heat capacity, and susceptibility. The expectation values of the system energy and system-bath interaction energy in the thermal equilibrium state are also evaluated.