Complex temperature: correlation functions and quantum critical points

Add to your list(s) Download to your calendar using vCal

• Dr Chris Hooley, University of St Andrews
• Thursday 05 May 2011, 14:15-15:45
• TCM Seminar Room, Cavendish Laboratory.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Joe Bhaseen.

I shall briefly review previous work (due to Yang, Lee, Fisher, and others) that uses the analytic properties of the partition function at complex temperature as a way of categorising and interpreting the behaviour of many-body systems. Such work has traditionally concentrated on calculating the free energies of various classical systems, with a view to analysing their phase transitions. I shall instead ask two questions that do not appear to have been posed before. First, how do the correlation functions of simple magnetic models behave when the temperature becomes complex? Second, how does the analytic structure of the partition function in the complex temperature plane change as a quantum critical point is approached, and what can we learn from those changes? This is very much work in progress (in collaboration with Dr Vadim Oganesyan and Ms Felicitas Beichert), but I shall present a couple of intriguing interim results.

This talk is part of the TCM Blackboard Series series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• All Cavendish Laboratory Seminars
• Centre for Health Leadership and Enterprise
• Combined TCM Seminars and TCM blackboard seminar listing
• Featured lists
• ME Seminar
• Neurons, Fake News, DNA and your iPhone: The Mathematics of Information
• PMRFPS's
• School of Physical Sciences
• TCM Blackboard Series
• TCM Seminar Room, Cavendish Laboratory
• Thin Film Magnetic Talks

Note that ex-directory lists are not shown.