The effect of an electron heat bath on the motion of an electron system is studied using a quantum Langevin equation and deriving the influence functional of the Feynman-Vernon approach. The generating functional for the time-dependent, finite-temperature correlation functions of a disordered electron system with interactions is written down, and some of its symmetry properties are analyzed. Since the disorder only affects the time evolution of the system our formalism avoids the replica trick and provides a natural physical framework for studying a large variety of open problems in the field of disordered systems. As an example, we give an explicit expression for the averaged generating functional for a disordered electron system in the presence of a Coulomb interaction in terms of two complex matrix fields.
The effect of an electron heat bath on the motion of an electron system is studied using a quantum Langevin equation and deriving the influence functional of the Feynman-Vernon approach. The generating functional for the time-dependent, finite-temperature correlation functions of a disordered electron system with interactions is written down, and some of its symmetry properties are analyzed. Since the disorder only affects the time evolution of the system our formalism avoids the replica trick and provides a natural physical framework for studying a large variety of open problems in the field of disordered systems. As an example, we give an explicit expression for the averaged generating functional for a disordered electron system in the presence of a Coulomb interaction in terms of two complex matrix fields.
We treat the quantum transport of an interacting system of electrons, impurities, and phonons, in a time-dependent electric field, by using the quantum generalized Langevin equation (GLE), in which the system is shown to be equivalent to a quantum particle in a heat bath. We follow here the philosophy of Ford, Lewis, and O'Connell, who have demonstrated the usefulness of the GLE approach to heat-bath problems. The center of mass of the electrons acts like a quantum particle, while the relative electrons and phonons play the role of heat bath. They are coupled through the electron-impurity and electron-phonon interactions. After eliminating the heat-bath variables, the equation of motion for the quantum particle is written in a form of a quantum generalized Langevin equation, with a memory term which reflects the retarded effects of the heat bath on the quantum particle. The evaluation of the memory term immediately leads to a result for the susceptibility from which we can calculate the conductivity directly, in contrast to Kubo-type calculations which require the evaluation of correlation functions as an intermediate step. As a demonstration of the directness of our approach, we show that the usual random-phase-approximation conductivity results are easily derived. In addition, we derive an expression for the memory function, which incorporates higher-order electron-impurity scattering.
We treat the quantum transport of an interacting system of electrons, impurities and phonons. The dynamic system is in a time-dependent electric field. We analyzed quantum transport process by using the quantum generalized Langevin equation, in which the system is shown to be equivalent to a quantum particle in a heat bath. After eliminating the heat-bath variables, the equation of motion for the quantum particle is written in a form of quantum generalized Langevin equation, with a memory term which reflects the retarded effects of the heat bath on the quantum particle.
We introduce an approach to characterize the dynamics of disordered quantum networks. Each quantum element (i.e., each node) of the network experiences the other nodes as an effective environment that can be self-consistently represented by a Feynman-Vernon influence functional. For networks having the topology of locally treelike graphs, these Feynman-Vernon (FV) functionals can be determined by a new version of the cavity or belief propagation (BP) method. Here, we find the fixed point solution of this version of BP for a network of uniform quantum harmonic oscillators. Then, we estimate the effects of the disorder in these networks within the replica symmetry ansatz. We show that over a large time interval, at small disorder, the real part of the FV functional induces decoherence and classicality while at sufficiently large disorder the Feynman-Vernon functional tends to zero and the coherence survives, signaling in a time setting, the onset of an Anderson's transition.
A generating functional formalism is developed to facilitate the derivation of coarse-grained dynamics of macroscopically relevant variables in various types of many-body problems. The relevant variables can be found either by using symmetry analysis of the action or experimental data. The outcome of the coarse-graining process is a set of coupled partial differential equations for the expectation values of the relevant observables. The set of the macroscopically important observables consists typically of conserved variables and order operators, which are related to the broken symmetries of the system. Symmetry breaking (spontaneous or explicit) in the formalism can be dynamically induced by coupling the system to a generalized heat bath.\n\nThe nonequilibrium generating functional formalism is applied to coarse-graining of generalized hydrodynamics of macroscopic quantum phenomena such as Bose fluids and superconductors, and finally classical fluids. The method is by no means restricted to fluids, but can be applied to condensed matter problems as well. High density systems are in general more problematic and it remains to be seen if one can come up with more powerful approximation methods within the current formalism in the future.\n\nThe generating functional formalism is shown to reproduce in the specific limits the well-known ground state, finite temperature and time-dependent density functional theories in the quantum regime. We enlarge the set of relevant variables to include also non-conserved order-operators and show how to form generalized density functional theories, which can be by construction linked to the phase-transition behaviour of the system. They are extensions of the traditional density functional theories that were not developed to describe phase changes but only facilitated the expression of the system's (free) energy in terms of the conserved density variable (e.g. number density of electrons).\n\nWe develop a generalized density functional theory (effective action of the generating functional) for superconductors and superfluids. For superconductors it is shown by simple symmetry analysis that the relevant order parameter is the pair field of two electrons. Coarse-graining out the phononic degrees of freedom is shown to lead to a retarded effective interaction between the electrons. In the local static limit (effective interaction between electrons static) the theory reduces to the time-dependent Ginzburg-Landau theory. Similarly, by symmetry arguments, the order parameter of a weakly interacting Bose fluid is identified and its dynamics in the tree level approximation is shown to follow the Gross-Pitaevskii equation. Higher order corrections can be systematically produced.\n\nClassical molecular dynamics and stochastic cellular automata types of higher level descriptions can be mapped into the same formalism using commonly known techniques. It is also shown how to connect the static and dynamic density functionals to phase-field models (models of critical dynamics), which are commonly used in materials science modelling. A specific example is provided for a liquid-gas-solid system. The phase-field modelling is then applied to the derivation of dynamics of the liquid-gas phase boundaries and triple lines for which a new projection operator technique is developed. We explain in detail how to go from microscopics to macroscopics and relate the effective parameters on each level to each other. For example, we express the macroscopic surface tensions from the phase-field model in terms of the molecular dynamics simulation parameters. We also discuss how to extract the relevant cross-over time and length scales from the theoretical description and relate them to the experimentally measurable ones. It is shown how the coupling of the triple line and the liquid-gas boundary leads to emergence of memory effects. For confined geometry we also derive a new form for the restoring force acting on the contact line. The phase-field model of the liquid-gas-solid system is first discussed without explicit hydrodynamics from the point of view of diffuse mass transfer and then hydrodynamic effects (momentum conservation) are added.\n\nEvolution equations are derived for the mass, momentum and energy densities representing the proper set of macro variables of simple fluids. The derivation is based on a macroscopic Poisson bracket formulation of phase-field dynamics. Navier-Stokes equations are obtained with extra force terms arising from wall-fluid interactions and capillary stresses. It is also shown how the hydrodynamics boundary conditions for stress tensor can be derived from the bulk fields alone in the sharp interface limit. Some mechanisms for generation of the no-slip boundary condition are also hypothesized. These results are important because they show how in general boundary conditions and corrections to them can be derived and how the numerical implementation can benefit from such a formulation of hydrodynamics, where all boundary conditions are expressed in terms of bulk fields alone. Again, these results have wider applicability than the setting where they have been derived.\n\nThe advantage of a systematic coarse-graining procedure enables us to clarify the role of the order parameter concept in the phase-field description of one and two component fluids. We also consider different ways of including gravitational effects and apply dimensional analysis to obtain a condition for the onset of capillary turbulence.\n\nFinally, we present some new formalism for stochastic processes, where the relevant field variables are embedded in an environment characterized by quenched disorder. Whenever some lower dimensional (e.g. defect) structures are projected out of the bulk field evolution equations containing either frozen of coarse-graining generated noise fields, a more complicated effective stochastic noise component will appear in the projected equation of motion of the defect. In particular, the effective noise can be long-ranged even if the quenched background disorder is not. Several condensed matter and hydrodynamical examples describing dynamics of interfaces and line-like objects such as polymers and domain wall defects are considered.
Correlated, disordered lattice fermion systems out of equilibrium have been understudied, at least in part for lack of tools to study them. The development of a new method, the NE-DMFT+CPA, is explicated, for investigating the properties of these systems. This method combines DMFT and the CPA using the Kadanoff-Baym-Keldysh contour-time formalism to study the dynamics of interacting disordered systems out of equilibrium. The method is detailed, then applied to the case of the Anderson-Hubbard model: first to replicate well-known equilibrium results, then to study the case of the model under the effect of an interaction quench. Here the effect of disorder on the relaxation of the system is studied by the time-dependence of the energies and momentum distribution function, which display the screening of the Coulomb interaction by disorder. It is then used to examine the thermalization of the same system by using the fluctuation-dissipation theorem to extract the distribution function and thereby the effective temperature after relaxation. This allows the characterization of the effect of the interplay of the disorder strength and the Coulomb interaction on the thermalization behavior. It is found that the heating of the system due to the quench is mitigated by stronger disorder. Finally, current progress of the work to apply the method to binary alloy disorder and an interaction ramp is summarized. Binary disorder appears to have the effect of damping the initial transient of the potential energy more strongly than the comparable uniformly-disordered system. The relaxation of the energies under the effect of an interaction ramp suggests that the crossing of the kinetic energies may be affected by the form of the time-dependent interaction.
In Chapter I of this dissertation, we present a pedagogical introduction to the basic concepts of stochastic theory and review the progress made as well as the outstanding unsolved problems in the field. For the rest of this dissertation, we use a generalized quantum Langevin equation (GLE) approach to investigate various properties of quantum dissipative systems. In Chapter II, calculations for the displacement and random force correlation functions for Brownian motion are generalized to the case of an arbitrary heat bath for a damped harmonic quantum oscillator. The mean square displacement of such an oscillator is then evaluated for both Ohmic and blackbody radiation heat baths, to determine the effects of many parameters on the localization of the oscillator. In Chapter III, the formalism is extended to the Brownian motion of a charged particle in an external magnetic field as well as in a potential. The influence of the magnetic field on the memory function and random force is determined, with the blackbody radiation heat bath analyzed as a special case. For a charged harmonic oscillator, the generalized susceptibility is obtained, which enables us to derive the symmetrized position correlation functions using the fluctuation-dissipation theorem. In addition, we obtain the free energy of the system by generalizing the "remarkable formula" of Ford, Lewis, and O'Connell. Explicit calculations are performed for Ohmic and blackbody radiation heat baths. Furthermore, the effect of dissipation on the localization of the oscillator in an Ohmic heat bath at zero temperature is shown to differ qualitatively from that without the magnetic field. Finally, we formulate retarded Green's functions and symmetrized position correlation functions for the oscillator, reach some general conclusions, and make explicit calculations for the Ohmic heat bath. For the special case of Brownian motion at both zero and nonzero temperatures, we prove two general asymptotic relations between the retarded Green's functions and the displacement correlation functions, which we use to evaluate the long-time behaviors of the latter from those of the former, for both the Ohmic heat bath and a rather general class of heat baths discussed extensively in the literature.