The creation of massless scalar particles from the quantum vacuum by spherical shell with time varying radius is studied. In the general case of motion the equations are derived for the instantaneous basis expansion coefficients. The examples are considered when the mean number of particles can be explicitly evaluated in the adiabatic approximation.

The creation of massless scalar particles from the quantum vacuum by spherical shell with time varying radius is studied. In the general case of motion the equations are derived for the instantaneous basis expansion coefficients. The examples are considered when the mean number of particles can be explicitly evaluated in the adiabatic approximation.

Dynamical aspects of an adiabatic piston are investigated, based on the mass ratio expansion of the master equation for the piston velocity distribution function. Simple theory for piston motion and relaxation of an ideal gas in a cylinder turns out to reproduce our numerical experiments quantitatively.

In this paper, I consider one-dimensional periodic Schrödinger operators perturbed by a slowly decaying potential. In the adiabatic limit, I give an asymptotic expansion of the eigenvalues in the gaps of the periodic operator. When one slides the perturbation along the periodic potential, these eigenvalues oscillate. I compute the exponentially small amplitude of the oscillations.

The purpose of this note is to see to what extent ideal gas laws can be obtained from simple Newtonian mechanics, specifically elastic collisions. We present simple one-dimensional situations that seem to validate the laws. The first section describes a numerical simulation that demonstrates the second law of thermodynamics. The second section mathematically demonstrates the adiabatic law of ex...