@article{8587, abstract = {Inspired by the possibility to experimentally manipulate and enhance chemical reactivity in helium nanodroplets, we investigate the effective interaction and the resulting correlations between two diatomic molecules immersed in a bath of bosons. By analogy with the bipolaron, we introduce the biangulon quasiparticle describing two rotating molecules that align with respect to each other due to the effective attractive interaction mediated by the excitations of the bath. We study this system in different parameter regimes and apply several theoretical approaches to describe its properties. Using a Born–Oppenheimer approximation, we investigate the dependence of the effective intermolecular interaction on the rotational state of the two molecules. In the strong-coupling regime, a product-state ansatz shows that the molecules tend to have a strong alignment in the ground state. To investigate the system in the weak-coupling regime, we apply a one-phonon excitation variational ansatz, which allows us to access the energy spectrum. In comparison to the angulon quasiparticle, the biangulon shows shifted angulon instabilities and an additional spectral instability, where resonant angular momentum transfer between the molecules and the bath takes place. These features are proposed as an experimentally observable signature for the formation of the biangulon quasiparticle. Finally, by using products of single angulon and bare impurity wave functions as basis states, we introduce a diagonalization scheme that allows us to describe the transition from two separated angulons to a biangulon as a function of the distance between the two molecules.}, author = {Li, Xiang and Yakaboylu, Enderalp and Bighin, Giacomo and Schmidt, Richard and Lemeshko, Mikhail and Deuchert, Andreas}, issn = {1089-7690}, journal = {The Journal of Chemical Physics}, keywords = {Physical and Theoretical Chemistry, General Physics and Astronomy}, number = {16}, publisher = {AIP Publishing}, title = {{Intermolecular forces and correlations mediated by a phonon bath}}, doi = {10.1063/1.5144759}, volume = {152}, year = {2020}, } @phdthesis{8958, abstract = {The oft-quoted dictum by Arthur Schawlow: ``A diatomic molecule has one atom too many'' has been disavowed. Inspired by the possibility to experimentally manipulate and enhance chemical reactivity in helium nanodroplets, we investigate the rotation of coupled cold molecules in the presence of a many-body environment. In this thesis, we introduce new variational approaches to quantum impurities and apply them to the Fröhlich polaron - a quasiparticle formed out of an electron (or other point-like impurity) in a polar medium, and to the angulon - a quasiparticle formed out of a rotating molecule in a bosonic bath. With this theoretical toolbox, we reveal the self-localization transition for the angulon quasiparticle. We show that, unlike for polarons, self-localization of angulons occurs at finite impurity-bath coupling already at the mean-field level. The transition is accompanied by the spherical-symmetry breaking of the angulon ground state and a discontinuity in the first derivative of the ground-state energy. Moreover, the type of symmetry breaking is dictated by the symmetry of the microscopic impurity-bath interaction, which leads to a number of distinct self-localized states. For the system containing multiple impurities, by analogy with the bipolaron, we introduce the biangulon quasiparticle describing two rotating molecules that align with respect to each other due to the effective attractive interaction mediated by the excitations of the bath. We study this system from the strong-coupling regime to the weak molecule-bath interaction regime. We show that the molecules tend to have a strong alignment in the ground state, the biangulon shows shifted angulon instabilities and an additional spectral instability, where resonant angular momentum transfer between the molecules and the bath takes place. Finally, we introduce a diagonalization scheme that allows us to describe the transition from two separated angulons to a biangulon as a function of the distance between the two molecules.}, author = {Li, Xiang}, issn = {2663-337X}, pages = {125}, publisher = {Institute of Science and Technology Austria}, title = {{Rotation of coupled cold molecules in the presence of a many-body environment}}, doi = {10.15479/AT:ISTA:8958}, year = {2020}, } @article{5886, abstract = {Problems involving quantum impurities, in which one or a few particles are interacting with a macroscopic environment, represent a pervasive paradigm, spanning across atomic, molecular, and condensed-matter physics. In this paper we introduce new variational approaches to quantum impurities and apply them to the Fröhlich polaron–a quasiparticle formed out of an electron (or other point-like impurity) in a polar medium, and to the angulon–a quasiparticle formed out of a rotating molecule in a bosonic bath. We benchmark these approaches against established theories, evaluating their accuracy as a function of the impurity-bath coupling.}, author = {Li, Xiang and Bighin, Giacomo and Yakaboylu, Enderalp and Lemeshko, Mikhail}, issn = {00268976}, journal = {Molecular Physics}, publisher = {Taylor and Francis}, title = {{Variational approaches to quantum impurities: from the Fröhlich polaron to the angulon}}, doi = {10.1080/00268976.2019.1567852}, year = {2019}, } @article{1120, abstract = {The existence of a self-localization transition in the polaron problem has been under an active debate ever since Landau suggested it 83 years ago. Here we reveal the self-localization transition for the rotational analogue of the polaron -- the angulon quasiparticle. We show that, unlike for the polarons, self-localization of angulons occurs at finite impurity-bath coupling already at the mean-field level. The transition is accompanied by the spherical-symmetry breaking of the angulon ground state and a discontinuity in the first derivative of the ground-state energy. Moreover, the type of the symmetry breaking is dictated by the symmetry of the microscopic impurity-bath interaction, which leads to a number of distinct self-localized states. The predicted effects can potentially be addressed in experiments on cold molecules trapped in superfluid helium droplets and ultracold quantum gases, as well as on electronic excitations in solids and Bose-Einstein condensates. }, author = {Li, Xiang and Seiringer, Robert and Lemeshko, Mikhail}, issn = {24699926}, journal = {Physical Review A}, number = {3}, publisher = {American Physical Society}, title = {{Angular self-localization of impurities rotating in a bosonic bath}}, doi = {10.1103/PhysRevA.95.033608}, volume = {95}, year = {2017}, } @inproceedings{3555, abstract = {A sliver is a tetrahedron whose four vertices lie close to a plane and whose perpendicular projection to that plane is a convex quadrilateral with no short edge. Slivers are both undesirable and ubiquitous in 3-dimensional Delaunay triangulations. Even when the point-set is well-spaced, slivers may result. This paper shows that such a point set permits a small perturbation whose Delaunay triangulation contains no slivers. It also gives deterministic algorithms that compute the perturbation of n points in time O(n log n) with one processor and in time O(log n) with O(n) processors.}, author = {Edelsbrunner, Herbert and Li, Xiang and Miller, Gary and Stathopoulos, Andreas and Talmor, Dafna and Teng, Shang and Üngör, Alper and Walkington, Noel}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the 32nd annual ACM symposium on Theory of computing}, isbn = {9781581131840}, location = {Portland, OR, USA}, pages = {273 -- 277}, publisher = {ACM}, title = {{Smoothing and cleaning up slivers}}, doi = {10.1145/335305.335338}, year = {2000}, }