Kibble-Zurek exponent and chiral transition of the period-4 phase of Rydberg chains

Chains of Rydberg atoms have emerged as an amazing playground to study quantum physics in 1D. Playing with inter-atomic distances and laser detuning, one can in particular explore the commensurate-incommensurate transition out of density waves through the Kibble-Zurek mechanism, and the possible presence of a chiral transition with dynamical exponent z > 1. Here, we address this problem theoretically with effective blockade models where the short-distance repulsions are replaced by a constraint of no double occupancy. For the period-4 phase, we show that there is an Ashkin-Teller transition point with exponent ν = 0.78 surrounded by a direct chiral transition with a dynamical exponent z = 1.11 and a Kibble-Zurek exponent μ = 0.41. For Rydberg atoms with a van der Waals potential, we suggest that the experimental value μ = 0.25 is due to a chiral transition with z ≃ 1.9 and ν ≃ 0.47 surrounding an Ashkin-Teller transition close to the 4-state Potts universality.

The Double Occupancy Problem

Imagine a time machine travels back in time in the same way it persists into the future (i.e. by persisting backwards). For instance, this is how time machines move through time in H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine. Such a machine would have a problem: immediately upon moving back in time it would collide with its earlier self. This is the ‘Double Occupancy Problem’. Using the notions introduced in Chapters 1–3, this chapter explains how to avoid this ‘Double Occupancy Problem’: such time machines can travel back in time just as long as they are both in motion and move back in time bit by bit.

European cinema: Between Mit-sein, Da-sein and Nah-sein

This article expands on some of the polemical theses the author proposes in his book European Cinema and Continental Philosophy (2018), focusing on the idea of European cinema as 'thought experiment', the notion of 'double occupancy', which the author now articulates in terms of a 'cinema of abjection' and the idea of 'mutual interference', which is now re-examined as part of a broader re-assessment of the core Enlightenment values of 'liberty-equality-fraternity' viewed under present-day conditions of asymmetry, but also in light of their 'antagonistic mutuality'. These concepts, taken together, are an attempt to put forward a change of both model and method when studying European cinema, one based neither on the 'Europe-Hollywood' binaries, nor on an ever-elusive identity, but rather on Europe's self-understanding as a 'work-in-progress', as well as on its position in a globalized world, in which it is no longer the central player. Elsaesser proposes to 'enlarge the context' ‐ a phrase coined by the European politician, diplomat and thinker Jean Monnet: if you cannot solve a problem, enlarge the context. Enlarging the context means taking a step back and focusing not on cinema, but on what in this period of intense internal and external crises we mean by 'Europe', before evaluating some of the ways in which certain films and filmmakers have positioned themselves in light of the challenges that are in play today.

Extraterritoriality

This book examines how Hong Kong filmmakers, spectators and critics wrestled with a perturbation: What is Hong Kong cinema? Framed between the Leftist Riots (1967) and the aftermath of the Umbrella Movement (2014), this book scrutinises the interdependent relationship between cinema and politics by rethinking how Hong Kong cinema has been historically in-formed by dispossession and exclusion, rather than identity and belonging. It traces how Hong Kong’s extraterritoriality has been framed: in its position of being doubly occupied and doubly abandoned by contesting juridical, political, linguistic and cultural forces. It argues that filmmakers and spectators actively define and reconfigure Hong Kong cinema and media by fostering them as a public sphere, where contesting affects associated with these political lives’ shifting extraterritorial conditions and positions can be negotiated. Based on a combination of archival research, industrial studies, textual analysis and media and political philosophies, Extraterritoriality studies how creative works in mainstream cinema, independent films, television, video artworks and documentaries – especially those by marginalised artists – actively rewrite and reconfigure the way Hong Kong cinema and media are defined and located. These stylistically and political diverse works and practices seek – in their respective manners – to foster new ways to live with Hong Kongers’ double occupancy and double ostracisation that constantly deindividuate, desubjectivise, and deautonomise them, and how they can survive in their constant state of exception.