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Quantum versus thermal fluctuations in the harmonic chain and experimental implications

The nonzero ground-state energy of the quantum mechanical harmonic oscillator implies quantum fluctuations around the minimum of the potential with the mean square value proportional to Planck's constant. In classical mechanics thermal fluctuations occur when the oscillator is coupled to a heat bath of temperature $T$. At finite temperature quantum statistical mechanics allows the description of the transition from pure quantum fluctuations at $T=0$ to classical thermal fluctuations in the high temperature limit. It was early pointed out by Peierls that the mean square thermal fluctuations in a {\it harmonic chain} increase {\it linearly} with the distance of the atoms in the chain, destroying long range crystalline order. The corresponding pure quantum fluctuations lead to a much slower {\it logarithmic} increase with the distance from the fixed end of the chain. It is also shown that this implies, for example, the absence of sharp Bragg peaks in x-ray scattering in an infinite chain at zero temperature, which instead show power law behaviour typical for one dimensional quantum liquids (called {\it Luttinger liquids}).