Speaker
Description
Thermally-fluctuating membranes have been the subject of extensive investigations, from biological systems to graphene and other atomically-thin 2D materials. This presentation
introduces a field theoretical analysis of the effects of quantum and thermal fluctuations on the statistical mechanics of free-standing solid membranes. For zero temperature the interplay between phonon-phonon interactions and quantum fluctuations drives logarithmic renormalizations of elastic parameters. For small but nonzero temperatures, we use arguments of finite-size field theory to derive relations between the zero-point renormalizations and the low-temperature behavior of thermodynamic quantities such as the thermal expansion coefficient and the entropy. The analysis allows to revisit results obtained by different methods in earlier investigations.
