Description
Abstract:
Amorphous solids are prototypes of disordered non-equilibrium quantum systems. At low
temperatures, the physics of such glassy materials is governed by atomic tunneling systems
and their interaction with other degrees of freedom such as phonons, nuclear moments, or
conduction electrons. The detailed understanding of such systems is not only of general
interest from a fundamental point of view, but also has implications for many novel applications
such as solid-state qubits, nanomechanical oscillators, or superconducting amplifiers
operating at the quantum limit, where atomic tunneling systems are a source of dissipation,
decoherence, and 1/f noise. We will give a general introduction to the physics of atomic
tunneling systems in disordered solids, focusing on dissipative processes, low-frequency
noise, and recent insights into the role of nuclear spin.
