Traces of integrability in the relaxation in one-dimensional two-mass mixtures

Note: Pizza served at 11:45 AM
Speaker: Maxim Olchanyi, UMass - Boston

When: April 25, 2014 (Fri), 12:00PM to 01:00PM (add to my calendar)
Location: SCI 352
Hosted by: Sidney Redner

This event is part of the Biophysics/Condensed Matter Seminar Series.

Abstract: We study relaxation in a one-dimensional two-mass mixture of hard-core particles. A special attention is payed to the region of light-to-heavy mass ratios around m/M = sqrt(5)-2. At this mass ratio, each heavy-light-heavy subsystem constitutes a little known non-equal-mass extension of the Newton Cradle, and an anomalously slow relaxation is expected as a result. We further list and classify all other instances of integrability in the one-dimensional three-body hard-core systems; there, integrability is especially prominent at the quantum level, leading to the famous "scattering without diffraction" phenomenon. The principal experimental application of our results is the two-specie mixtures in optical lattices; there the effective masses---that can be controlled at will---are assumed to replace the real ones.