Ettore Vicari, "Classical and quantum critical behaviors in confined particle systems"

Wednesday 16 Jun 2010, 15:00 → 16:00 Europe/Rome

248 (Dip. Fis., Ed. C)

Recent experiments on the Bose-Einstein condensation in dilute atomic vapors and atom systems in optical lattices have provided a great opportunity to investigate the interplay between quantum and statistical behaviors in particle systems. In these systems, phase transitions with their critical behaviors are phenomena of great interest. A common feature of these experimental realizations is the presence of a trapping potential coupled to the particle density. Therefore, a theoretical description of how criticality develops in the presence of the confining enternal field is of great importance for experiments. We have developed a trap-size scaling theory for confined particle systems at thermal and quantum transitions, providing a framework to describe the critical behaviors of confined particle systems.