The decoherence and interference of cosmological arrows of time for a de Sitter universe with quantum fluctuations

We consider the superposition of two semiclassical solutions of the Wheeler-DeWitt equation for a de Sitter universe, describing a quantized scalar vacuum propagating in a universe that is contracting in one case and expanding in the other, each identifying a opposite cosmological arrow of time. We discuss the suppression of the interference terms between the two arrows of time due to environment-induced decoherence caused by modes of the scalar vacuum crossing the Hubble horizon. Furthermore, we quantify the effect of the interference on the expectation value of the observable field mode correlations, with respect to an observer that we identify with the spatial geometry

Quantum Cramer-Rao bound for a Massless Scalar Field in de Sitter Space

How precisely can we estimate cosmological parameters by performing a quantum measurement on a cosmological quantum state? In quantum estimation theory the variance of an unbiased parameter estimator is bounded from below by the inverse of measurement-dependent Fisher information and ultimately by quantum Fisher information, which is the maximization of the former over all positive operator valued measurements. Such bound is known as the quantum Cramer-Rao bound. We consider the evolution of a massless scalar field with Bunch-Davies vacuum in a spatially flat FLRW spacetime, which results in a two-mode squeezed vacuum out-state for each field wave number mode. We obtain the expressions of the quantum Fisher information as well as the Fisher informations associated to occupation number measurement and power spectrum measurement, and show the specific results of their evoluation for pure de Sitter expansion and de Sitter expansion followed by a radiation-dominated phase as examples. We will discuss these results from the point of view of the quantum-to-classical transition of cosmological perturbations and show quantitatively how this transition and the residual quantum correlations affect the bound on the precision.Comment: 16 pages, published versio

The recurrence function of a random Sturmian word

This paper describes the probabilistic behaviour of a random Sturmian word. It performs the probabilistic analysis of the recurrence function which can be viewed as a waiting time to discover all the factors of length $n$ of the Sturmian word. This parameter is central to combinatorics of words. Having fixed a possible length $n$ for the factors, we let $\alpha$ to be drawn uniformly from the unit interval $[0,1]$, thus defining a random Sturmian word of slope $\alpha$. Thus the waiting time for these factors becomes a random variable, for which we study the limit distribution and the limit density.Comment: Submitted to ANALCO 201

Analysis and design of quadratically bounded QPV control systems

© 2019. ElsevierA nonlinear system is said to be quadratically bounded (QB) if all its solutions are bounded and this is guaranteed using a quadratic Lyapunov function. This paper considers the QB analysis and state-feedback controller design problems for quadratic parameter varying (QPV) systems. The developed approach, which relies on a linear matrix inequality (LMIs) feasibility problem, ensures that the QB property holds for an invariant ellipsoid which contains a predefined polytopic region of the state space. An example is used to illustrate the main characteristics of the proposed approach and to confirm the validity of the theoretical results.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

A Toy Model of Discretized Gravity in Two Dimensions and its Extentions

We propose a toy model of quantum gravity in two dimensions with Euclidean signature. The model is given by a kind of discretization which is different from the dynamical triangulation. We show that there exists a continuum limit and we can calculate some physical quantities such as the expectation value of the area, that is, the volume of the two dimensional euclidean space-time. We also consider the extensions of the model to higher dimensions.Comment: LaTeX 7 pages, version to appear in MPL

Replica Symmetry Breaking in Cold Atoms and Spin Glasses

We consider a system composed by N atoms trapped within a multimode cavity, whose theoretical description is captured by a disordered multimode Dicke model. We show that in the resonant, zero field limit the system exactly realizes the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick model. Upon a redefinition of the temperature, the same dynamics is realized in the dispersive, strong field limit. This regime also gives access to spin-glass observables which can be used to detect Replica Symmetry Breaking.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figure

Dicke simulators with emergent collective quantum computational abilities

Using an approach inspired from Spin Glasses, we show that the multimode disordered Dicke model is equivalent to a quantum Hopfield network. We propose variational ground states for the system at zero temperature, which we conjecture to be exact in the thermodynamic limit. These ground states contain the information on the disordered qubit-photon couplings. These results lead to two intriguing physical implications. First, once the qubit-photon couplings can be engineered, it should be possible to build scalable pattern-storing systems whose dynamics is governed by quantum laws. Second, we argue with an example how such Dicke quantum simulators might be used as a solver of "hard" combinatorial optimization problems.Comment: 5+2 pages, 2 figures. revisited in the exposition and supplementary added. Comments are welcom