The shooting of an ion through matter is a problem of great interest in many applied contexts, from radiation damage in space exploration to cancer treatment. It also represents a paradigmatic case of strongly non-equilibrium physics at the nanoscale. By “strongly” we mean that the energies involved when the ion moves past a few atoms is millions of times larger than the energies of usual transport effects along similar distances. We have an active research line studying the quantum processes intervening in such events. Within this context we were recently surprised by the observation that our realistic calculations for one of those processes displayed a beating or flapping around the moving ion, instead of the usually expected stationary disruption of the electronic system around the moving projectile. It was a spontaneous breaking of a translational symmetry along a diagonal of space-time, analogous to the recently proposed idea of “time crystals”, where a periodic time patters arises in a system that would otherwise be stationary. For this project we propose to study this dynamical instability with as simple a model as we can devise, in which we can capture the essence and conditions for the described behaviour, so as to establish a paradigm for time crystals in this context. The work will be partly analytical, partly numerical using hopefully simple numerical platforms such as Matlab, Mathematica, SciPy, or Jupyter notebooks.

Application:

If you are a master student and you are interested in this project, please get in touch with the scientist in charge: Emilio Artacho (e.artacho@nanogune.eu)

To apply for a master scholarship fill in the form below and follow the instructions and recommendations of the general call open until 30 June 2020.