We consider the critical temperature for superconductivity, defined via the linear BCS equation. We prove that at weak coupling the critical temperature for a sample confined to a quadrant in two dimensions is strictly larger than the one for a half-space, which in turn is strictly larger than the one for $\mathbb {R}^2$. Furthermore, we prove that the relative difference of the critical temperatures vanishes in the weak coupling limit.

We study homotopy groups of spaces of long links in Euclidean space of codimension at least three. With multiple components, they admit split injections from homotopy groups of spheres. We show that, up to knotting, these account for all the homotopy groups in a range which depends on the dimensions of the source manifolds and target manifold and which roughly generalizes the triple-point-free range for isotopy classes. Just beyond this range, joining components sends both a parametrized long Borromean rings class and a Hopf fibration to a generator of the first nontrivial homotopy group of the space of long knots. For spaces of equidimensional long links of most source dimensions, we describe generators for the homotopy group in this degree in terms of these Borromean rings and homotopy groups of spheres. A key ingredient in most of our results is a graphing map which increases source and target dimensions by one.

We study the many-body localization (MBL) properties of the Heisenberg XXZ spin-$\frac 12$ chain in a random magnetic field. We prove that the system exhibits localization in any given energy interval at the bottom of the spectrum in a nontrivial region of the parameter space. This region, which includes weak interaction and strong disorder regimes, is independent of the size of the system and depends only on the energy interval. Our approach is based on the reformulation of the localization problem as an expression of quasi-locality for functions of the random many-body XXZ Hamiltonian. This allows us to extend the fractional moment method for proving localization, previously derived in a single-particle localization context, to the many-body setting.

The spectrum and orthogonal eigenbasis are computed of a tridiagonal matrix encoding a finite-dimensional reduction of the difference Lamé equation at the single-gap integral value of the coupling parameter. This entails the exact solution, in terms of single-gap difference Lamé wave functions, for the spectral problem of a corresponding open inhomogeneous isotropic $XY$ chain with coupling constants built from elliptic integers.

The Choquard equation is a partial differential equation that has gained significant interest and attention in recent decades. It is a nonlinear equation that combines elements of both the Laplace and Schrödinger operators, and it arises frequently in the study of numerous physical phenomena, from condensed matter physics to nonlinear optics.

In particular, the steady states of the Choquard equation were thoroughly investigated using a variational functional acting on the wave functions.

In this article, we introduce a dual formulation for the variational functional in terms of the potential induced by the wave function, and use it to explore the existence of steady states of a multi-state version the Choquard equation in critical and sub-critical cases.

We consider a dilute fully spin-polarized Fermi gas at positive temperature in dimensions $d\in \{1,2,3\}$. We show that the pressure of the interacting gas is bounded from below by that of the free gas plus, to leading order, an explicit term of order $a^d\rho ^{2+2/d}$, where a is the p-wave scattering length of the repulsive interaction and $\rho $ is the particle density. The results are valid for a wide range of repulsive interactions, including that of a hard core, and uniform in temperatures at most of the order of the Fermi temperature. A central ingredient in the proof is a rigorous implementation of the fermionic cluster expansion of Gaudin, Gillespie and Ripka (Nucl. Phys. A, 176.2 (1971), pp. 237–260).

We prove an equality, predicted in the physical literature, between the Jeffrey–Kirwan residues of certain explicit meromorphic forms attached to a quiver without loops or oriented cycles and its Donaldson–Thomas type invariants.

In the special case of complete bipartite quivers we also show independently, using scattering diagrams and theta functions, that the same Jeffrey–Kirwan residues are determined by the the Gross–Hacking–Keel mirror family to a log Calabi–Yau surface.

A semiclassical analysis based on spin-coherent states is used to establish a classification and novel simple formulae for the spectral gap of mean-field spin Hamiltonians. For gapped systems, we provide a full description of the low-energy spectra based on a second-order approximation to the semiclassical Hamiltonian, hence justifying fluctuation theory at zero temperature for this case. We also point out a shift caused by the spherical geometry in these second-order approximations.

The Hamiltonian of a conventional quantum system is Hermitian, which ensures real spectra of the Hamiltonian and unitary evolution of the system. However, real spectra are just the necessary conditions for a Hamiltonian to be Hermitian. In this paper, we discuss the metric operators for pseudo-Hermitian Hamiltonian which is similar to its adjoint. We first present some properties of the metric operators for pseudo-Hermitian Hamiltonians and obtain a sufficient and necessary condition for an invertible operator to be a metric operator for a given pseudo-Hermitian Hamiltonian. When the pseudo-Hermitian Hamiltonian has real spectra, we provide a new method such that any given metric operator can be transformed into the same positive-definite one and the new inner product with respect to the positive-definite metric operator is well defined. Finally, we illustrate the results obtained with an example.

One of the crucial properties of a quantum system is the existence of bound states. While the existence of eigenvalues below zero, that is, below the essential spectrum, is well understood, the situation of zero energy bound states at the edge of the essential spectrum is far less understood. We present complementary sharp criteria for the existence and nonexistence of zero energy ground states. Our criteria give a straightforward explanation for the folklore that there is a spectral phase transition with critical dimension four, concerning the existence versus nonexistence of zero energy ground states.

We consider the large polaron described by the Fröhlich Hamiltonian and study its energy-momentum relation defined as the lowest possible energy as a function of the total momentum. Using a suitable family of trial states, we derive an optimal parabolic upper bound for the energy-momentum relation in the limit of strong coupling. The upper bound consists of a momentum independent term that agrees with the predicted two-term expansion for the ground state energy of the strongly coupled polaron at rest and a term that is quadratic in the momentum with coefficient given by the inverse of twice the classical effective mass introduced by Landau and Pekar.

We consider momentum push-forwards of measures arising as quantum limits (semiclassical measures) of eigenfunctions of a point scatterer on the standard flat torus ${\mathbb T}^2 = {\mathbb R}^2/{\mathbb Z}^{2}$ . Given any probability measure arising by placing delta masses, with equal weights, on ${\mathbb Z}^2$ -lattice points on circles and projecting to the unit circle, we show that the mass of certain subsequences of eigenfunctions, in momentum space, completely localizes on that measure and are completely delocalized in position (i.e., concentration on Lagrangian states). We also show that the mass, in momentum, can fully localize on more exotic measures, for example, singular continuous ones with support on Cantor sets. Further, we can give examples of quantum limits that are certain convex combinations of such measures, in particular showing that the set of quantum limits is richer than the ones arising only from weak limits of lattice points on circles. The proofs exploit features of the half-dimensional sieve and behavior of multiplicative functions in short intervals, enabling precise control of the location of perturbed eigenvalues.

Stein’s method is used to study discrete representations of multidimensional distributions that arise as approximations of states of quantum harmonic oscillators. These representations model how quantum effects result from the interaction of finitely many classical ‘worlds’, with the role of sample size played by the number of worlds. Each approximation arises as the ground state of a Hamiltonian involving a particular interworld potential function. Our approach, framed in terms of spherical coordinates, provides the rate of convergence of the discrete approximation to the ground state in terms of Wasserstein distance. Applying a novel Stein’s method technique to the radial component of the ground state solution, the fastest rate of convergence to the ground state is found to occur in three dimensions.

We consider the Dirichlet Laplacian with uniform magnetic field on a curved strip in two dimensions. We give a sufficient condition on the width and the curvature of the strip ensuring the existence of the discrete spectrum in the strong magnetic field limit, answering (negatively) a conjecture made by Duclos and Exner.

We construct families of translationally invariant, nearest-neighbour Hamiltonians on a 2D square lattice of d-level quantum systems (d constant), for which determining whether the system is gapped or gapless is an undecidable problem. This is true even with the promise that each Hamiltonian is either gapped or gapless in the strongest sense: it is promised to either have continuous spectrum above the ground state in the thermodynamic limit, or its spectral gap is lower-bounded by a constant. Moreover, this constant can be taken equal to the operator norm of the local operator that generates the Hamiltonian (the local interaction strength). The result still holds true if one restricts to arbitrarily small quantum perturbations of classical Hamiltonians. The proof combines a robustness analysis of Robinson’s aperiodic tiling, together with tools from quantum information theory: the quantum phase estimation algorithm and the history state technique mapping Quantum Turing Machines to Hamiltonians.

In this paper, we establish a new fractional interpolation inequality for radially symmetric measurable functions on the whole space $R^{N}$ and a new compact imbedding result about radially symmetric measurable functions. We show that the best constant in the new interpolation inequality can be achieved by a radially symmetric function. As applications of this compactness result, we study the existence of ground states of the nonlinear fractional Schrödinger equation on the whole space $R^{N}$. We also prove an existence result of standing waves and prove their orbital stability.

We prove a generalised super-adiabatic theorem for extended fermionic systems assuming a spectral gap only in the bulk. More precisely, we assume that the infinite system has a unique ground state and that the corresponding Gelfand–Naimark–Segal Hamiltonian has a spectral gap above its eigenvalue zero. Moreover, we show that a similar adiabatic theorem also holds in the bulk of finite systems up to errors that vanish faster than any inverse power of the system size, although the corresponding finite-volume Hamiltonians need not have a spectral gap.

We consider the $\mathbb {T}^{4}$ cubic nonlinear Schrödinger equation (NLS), which is energy-critical. We study the unconditional uniqueness of solutions to the NLS via the cubic Gross–Pitaevskii hierarchy, an uncommon method for NLS analysis which is being explored [24, 35] and does not require the existence of a solution in Strichartz-type spaces. We prove U-V multilinear estimates to replace the previously used Sobolev multilinear estimates. To incorporate the weaker estimates, we work out new combinatorics from scratch and compute, for the first time, the time integration limits, in the recombined Duhamel–Born expansion. The new combinatorics and the U-V estimates then seamlessly conclude the $H^{1}$ unconditional uniqueness for the NLS under the infinite-hierarchy framework. This work establishes a unified scheme to prove $H^{1}$ uniqueness for the $ \mathbb {R}^{3}/\mathbb {R}^{4}/\mathbb {T}^{3}/\mathbb {T}^{4}$ energy-critical Gross–Pitaevskii hierarchies and thus the corresponding NLS.

We compute the deficiency spaces of operators of the form $H_A{\hat {\otimes }} I + I{\hat {\otimes }} H_B$, for symmetric $H_A$ and self-adjoint $H_B$. This enables us to construct self-adjoint extensions (if they exist) by means of von Neumann's theory. The structure of the deficiency spaces for this case was asserted already in Ibort et al. [Boundary dynamics driven entanglement, J. Phys. A: Math. Theor.47(38) (2014) 385301], but only proven under the restriction of $H_B$ having discrete, non-degenerate spectrum.

In this article, we study the observability (or equivalently, the controllability) of some subelliptic evolution equations depending on their step. This sheds light on the speed of propagation of these equations, notably in the ‘degenerated directions’ of the subelliptic structure.

First, for any $\gamma \geq 1$ , we establish a resolvent estimate for the Baouendi–Grushin-type operator $\Delta _{\gamma }=\partial _x^2+\left \lvert x\right \rvert ^{2\gamma }\partial _y^2$ , which has step $\gamma +1$ . We then derive consequences for the observability of the Schrödinger-type equation $i\partial _tu-\left (-\Delta _{\gamma }\right )^{s}u=0$ , where $s\in \mathbb N$ . We identify three different cases: depending on the value of the ratio $(\gamma +1)/s$ , observability may hold in arbitrarily small time or only for sufficiently large times or may even fail for any time.

As a corollary of our resolvent estimate, we also obtain observability for heat-type equations $\partial _tu+\left (-\Delta _{\gamma }\right )^su=0$ and establish a decay rate for the damped wave equation associated with $\Delta _{\gamma }$ .