Small dimensionless interaction couplings in low-temperature amorphous solids and quantum electrodynamics

Author(s): Mihail Turlakov*

At low temperatures, phonons and localized Low-Energy Excitations (LEEs) in Quantum Strongly-Noncrystalline Solids (QSNS) and glasses are weakly coupled, long-lived quasi particles. This weak coupling, typically modeled as an interaction between phonons and two-level systems representing LEEs, is characterized by a small dimensionless coupling constant αQSNS ≈ 1/150. In the distinct field of Quantum Electrodynamics (QED), the weak coupling between photons and electrons is described by small fine structure constant αQED ≈ 1/137. Despite significant differences between QSNS and QED, I propose that the problem of calculating small dimensionless coupling constants in both fields from first principles belongs to a common universality class.

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