Quantum and Thermal Depinning of a String from a Linear Defect

Abstract

The problem of a massive elastic string depinning from a linear defect under the action of a small driving force is considered. To exponential accuracy the decay rate is calculated with the help of the instanton method; then, fluctuations of the quasiclassical solution are taken into account to determine the preexponential factor. The decay rate exhibits a kind of first order transition from quantum tunneling to thermal activation with vanishing crossover region. The model may be applied to describe nucleation in 2-dimensional first order quantum phase transitions.

Revtex. 11 pages + 4 PS figures. Accepted for publication in PRB

References in corpus (1)

• Quantum Breaking of Elastic String

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