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We study the fundamental limitations of cooling to absolute zero for a qubit, interacting with a single mode of the electromagnetic field. Our results show that the dynamical Casimir effect, which is unavoidable in any finite-time thermodynamic cycle, forbids the attainability of the absolute zero of temperature, even in the limit of an infinite number of cycles., Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures

The Fermi g_F(x,p) function provides a phase space description of quantum mechanics conceptually different from that based on the the Wigner function W(x,p). In this paper, we show that for a peaked wave packet the g_F(x,p)=0 curve approximately corresponds to a phase space contour level of the Wigner function and provides a satisfactory description of the wave packet's size and shape. Our results show that the Fermi function is an interesting tool to investigate quantum fluctuations in the semiclassical regime., Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, added new data and discussion

We study Landau-Zener macroscopic quantum transitions in ferromagnetic metal nanoparticles containing on the order of 100 atoms. The model that we consider is described by an effective giant-spin Hamiltonian, with a coupling to a random transverse magnetic field mimicking the effect of quasiparticle excitations and structural disorder on the gap structure of the spin collective modes. We find different types of time evolutions depending on the interplay between the disorder in the transverse field and the initial conditions of the system. In the absence of disorder, if the system starts from a low-energy state, there is one main coherent quantum tunneling event where the initial-state amplitude is completely depleted in favor of a few discrete states, with nearby spin quantum numbers; when starting from the highest excited state, we observe complete inversion of the magnetization through a peculiar ``backward cascade evolution''. In the random case, the disorder-averaged transition probability for a low-energy initial state becomes a smooth distribution, which is nevertheless still sharply peaked around one of the transitions present in the disorder-free case. On the other hand, the coherent backward cascade phenomenon turns into a damped cascade with frustrated magnetic inversion., Comment: 21 pages, 7 figures, to be published in Phys.Rev.B

We study the dynamics of a spin coupled to an oscillating magnetic field, in the presence of decoherence and dissipation. In this context we solve the master equation for the Landau-Zener problem, both in the unitary and in the irreversible case. We show that a single spin can be "magnetized" in the direction parallel to the oscillating bias. When decay from upper to lower level is taken into account, hysteretic behavior is obtained., Comment: 26 pages, 12 figures

As the first useful Quantum Computers will be quantum simulators, here the minimum number of qubits necessary for the solution of the Schroedinger equation in simple test problems is evaluated. From the present preliminary results it appears that it is possible to realize a useful quantum simulator with a register of only 10-15 qbits. The intrinsic sensitivity to some errors appears to be moderate without the need of error correcting methods. At present there is at least some indication that the amplitude errors are more dangerous than phase and decoherence errors. So corrections limited to amplitude errors may be very useful., Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures