Observation of PT phase transition in a simple mechanical system

By C. Bender, B. Berntson, D. Parker, E. Samuel. 2012

303 citations recorded by the source corpus.

If a quantum-mechanical Hamiltonian is PT symmetric, there are two possibilities: either all of the eigenvalues are real, in which case the Hamiltonian is said to be in an unbroken-PT-symmetric phase, or else some of the eigenvalues are real and some are complex, in which case the Hamiltonian is said to be in a broken-PT-symmetric phase. As one varies the parameters of the Hamiltonian, one can pass through the phase transition that separates the unbroken and broken phases. This transition has recently been observed in a variety of laboratory experiments. This paper explains the phase transition in a simple and intuitive fashion and then describes an elementary experiment in which the phase transition is easily observed.

Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/3e4d8c56d2fb9f3baef3f26cc4afc3ff1f4e9448

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In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

In Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

Citations in the corpus

Symmetry and Topology in Non-Hermitian Physics (2018, background): “[76] C.”
Non-Hermitian systems and topology: A transfer-matrix perspective (2018, background): “Similar realizations of non-Hermitian models are also possible in other experimental setups, such as mechanical [23], acoustic [24, 25], electronic [26], and ultracold atomic [27] systems.”
Rational and Semirational Solutions of the Nonlocal Davey–Stewartson Equations (2017, methodology): “This concept has since been applied to optics [6,7], Bose-Einstein condensation [8], electric circuits [9], mechanical systems [10], magnetics [11] and other settings.”
Nonlinear waves in PT -symmetric systems (2016, methodology): “The original KdV equation (171) can be written in a Hamiltonian form as ut = ∂ ∂x δH δu(x) = {u,H}, (173) where H(t) = ∫ ∞ −∞ H(x, t)dx, H(x, t) = 1 2 u2x + u 3.”
Parity–time-symmetric whispering-gallery microcavities (2013, background): “PT symmetry has been studied both experimentally [4-12] and theoretically [13-23] in a variety of physical systems, with experiments performed on electronic circuits [4], nuclear magnetic resonance [5], optics [6-8], metamaterials [9], microwave cavities [10], mechanical oscillators [11], and superc”
Biorthogonal quantum mechanics (2013, background): “or realised [49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55], although it should be added that experiments that have been realised so far involve classical systems, where measured quantities do not correspond to eigenvalues of an observable acting on states of Hilbert space.”