Phase-ordering kinetics and defect dynamics beyond the Landau-Ginzburg description
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Oxford
Department Name: Oxford Physics
Abstract
Understanding how order emerges across a phase transition, and the behaviour of the corresponding defects, have long been of interest in fields as diverse as condensed matter physics and cosmology. Most of the work to date, however, is concerned with phase transitions that allow for a Landau-Ginzburg (LG) description in terms of a local order parameter. Recent years have witnessed the discovery of a wide range of theoretical models and experimental systems that escape the LG paradigm. For example, in quantum Hall systems, topological order appears as an emergent -- rather than broken -- symmetry at low temperatures, and it cannot be detected by local observables. In frustrated magnets, such as rare earth titanates of Holmium and Dysprosium, an extensive entropy survives down to very low temperatures. The system remains disordered, yet not in the same way as at high temperature: the disordered phase at low temperatures is in fact endowed with an emergent (gauge) symmetry, very much akin to the one of a solenoidal magnetic field. As in the case of topological order, this low temperature phase does not allow for an immediate LG description, and new techniques need be developed in order to investigate its properties. Lacking a Landau-Ginzburg description, the very bases of a conventional approach to phase-ordering kinetics no longer apply. The aim of this proposal is to fill in this gap, and investigate how order emerges in these new, exotic phases of matter, and how this reflects in the dynamics of its defects. Starting from specific case studies, encompassing both classical and quantum systems, this project will be first concerned with addressing outstanding questions in the field. For example, understanding the non-conventional relaxation and response properties recently observed in experiments on frustrated magnetic materials; as well as investigating the characteristic time scales in topological quantum computing, where issues of preparation, protection, and braiding operations are closely related to the dynamics of topological defects. Once a sufficient body of system-specific knowledge has been developed, the priority of the project will shift towards developing a comprehensive framework of phase-ordering kinetics for this type of systems, which is currently missing in the literature.
Organisations
People |
ORCID iD |
Claudio Castelnovo (Principal Investigator) |
Publications
Castelnovo C
(2010)
Quantum mechanical and information theoretic view on classical glass transitions
Castelnovo C
(2012)
Topological quantum glassiness
in Philosophical Magazine
Castelnovo C
(2011)
Debye-Hückel theory for spin ice at low temperature
in Physical Review B
Castelnovo C
(2010)
Quantum mechanical and information theoretic view on classical glass transitions
in Physical Review B
Castelnovo C
(2011)
Spin Ice, Fractionalization and Topological Order
Castelnovo C
(2009)
Topological Order and Quantum Criticality
Castelnovo C
(2012)
Spin Ice, Fractionalization, and Topological Order
in Annual Review of Condensed Matter Physics
Castelnovo C
(2010)
Coulomb physics in spin ice: from magnetic monopoles to magnetic currents.
in Chemphyschem : a European journal of chemical physics and physical chemistry
Castelnovo C
(2010)
Thermal quenches in spin ice.
in Physical review letters
Castelnovo C
(2016)
Driven impurity in an ultracold one-dimensional Bose gas with intermediate interaction strength
in Physical Review A
Goldstein G
(2017)
D-wave superconductivity in boson+fermion dimer models
Goldstein G
(2016)
D-wave superconductivity in boson+fermion dimer models
Goldstein G
(2017)
d -wave superconductivity in boson+fermion dimer models
in Physical Review B
Hamp J
(2015)
Emergent Coulombic criticality and Kibble-Zurek scaling in a topological magnet
in Physical Review B
Hart O
(2018)
Entanglement negativity and sudden death in the toric code at finite temperature
in Physical Review B
Kourtis S
(2015)
Two-dimensional topological order of kinetically constrained quantum particles
in Physical Review B
Matthews M
(2012)
High-temperature onset of field-induced transitions in the spin-ice compound Dy 2 Ti 2 O 7
in Physical Review B
Morris D
(2009)
Dirac Strings and Magnetic Monopoles in the Spin Ice Dy 2 Ti 2 O 7
in Science
Mostame S
(2014)
Tunable nonequilibrium dynamics of field quenches in spin ice.
in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Paddison J
(2016)
Emergent order in the kagome Ising magnet Dy$_3$Mg$_2$Sb$_3$O$_{14}$
Paddison J
(2016)
Emergent Order in the Kagome Ising Magnet Dy3Mg2Sb3O14
Description | (see EP/G049394/2, which is the continuation of this grant when I moved from Oxford to RHUL) |
Exploitation Route | (see EP/G049394/2, which is the continuation of this grant when I moved from Oxford to RHUL) |
Sectors | Education Other |