Quantum creep and quantum creep transitions in 1D sine-Gordan chains

Abstract

Discrete sine-Gordon (SG) chains are studied with path-integral molecular dynamics. Chains commensurate with the substrate show the transition from collective quantum creep to pinning at bead masses slightly larger than those predicted from the continuous SG model. Within the creep regime, a field-driven transition from creep to complete depinning is identified. The effects of disorder in the external potential on the chain's dynamics depend on the potential's roughness exponent $H$, i.e., quantum and classical fluctuations affect the current self-correlation functions differently for $H = 1/2$.