skip to main content
Caltech

High Energy Physics Seminar

Monday, March 5, 2018
4:00pm to 5:00pm
Add to Cal
Lauritsen 469
Interaction of a quantum field with a rotating heat bath
Alejandro Jenkins, University of Costa Rica,

The linear coupling of a rotating heat bath to a quantum field is studied in the framework of the Markovian master equation for the field's non-unitary time evolution. The bath's rotation induces population inversion for the field's low-energy modes. For bosons, this leads to superradiance, an irreversible process in which some of the bath's kinetic energy is extracted by spontaneous and stimulated emission. We find the energy and entropy balance for such systems and apply our results to the theory of black hole radiation. We also comment on how this relates to shear-flow instabilities in hydrodynamics and to other classical self-oscillations.

For more information, please visit http://theory.caltech.edu/people/carol/seminar.html.