Abstract

I will present exact results on the dynamics of an impurity injected at a supersonic velocity into a one-dimensional quantum liquid [1]. Two main surprising results are revealed in the analysis. Firstly, the momentum of the impurity does not decay to zero, instead it forms a strongly correlated state that propagates at a reduced velocity. Secondly, the system undergoes coherent oscillations in which the impurity vibrates with respect to its correlation hole. These oscillations, which we call quantumflutter, have their origin in a long-lived coherent quantum superposition of two families of quasi-equilibrium states in the system. These results provide the first example of new physics due to supersonic propagation in a strongly coupled non-relativistic many-body system. Furthermore, the main features are robust to changes in parameters of the system, suggesting that they may be a generic feature of one-dimensional quantum systems.

References: [1] C.J.M. Mathy, M.B. Zvonarev and E. Demler. Quantum flutter of supersonic particles in one-dimensional quantum liquids. arXiv:1203.4819 [cond-mat.quant-gas]