Séminaire LPMMC

Raphaël Menu (Universität des Saarlandes, Saarbrücken)
Aubry transition in a chain of trapped ions
Lieu : G 421
le mercredi 30 novembre 2022 à 11:00
Personne à contacter : Sergey Skipetrov ()

We theoretically analyse the ground state of the Frenkel-Kontorova model when the particles interact with repulsive power-law interactions. For periodic boundary conditions we show that the classical ground state can be mapped to the one of a long-range Ising model. We then show that the classical ground state has the properties of a complete devil staircase as a function of the discommensuration and determine the parameters for which it is stable. We analyse the low-energy spectrum and discuss the effect of quantum fluctuations, focussing on experimentally relevant regimes. This work sets the stage for a full quantum mechanical description of the Aubry transition.