PDM creation and annihilation operators of the harmonic oscillators and the emergence of an alternative PDM-Hamiltonian

The exact solvability and impressive pedagogical implementation of the harmonic oscillator's creation and annihilation operators make it a problem of great physical relevance and the most fundamental one in quantum mechanics. So would be the position-dependent mass (PDM) oscillator for the PDM quantum mechanics. We, hereby, construct the PDM creation and annihilation operators for the PDM oscillator via two different approaches. First, via von Roos PDM Hamiltonian and show that the commutation relation between the PDM creation ${\hat{A}}^{+}$ and annihilation $\hat{A}$ operators, $[\hat{A},{\hat{A}}^{+}]=1\iff \hat{A}{\hat{A}}^{+}-1/2={\hat{A}}^{+}\hat{A}+1/2$, not only offers a unique PDM-Hamiltonian ${\hat{H}}_1$ but also suggests a PDM-deformation in the coordinate system. Next, we use a PDM point canonical transformation of the textbook constant mass harmonic oscillator analog and obtain yet another set of PDM creation ${\hat{B}}^{+}$ and annihilation $\hat{B}$ operators, hence an “apparently new” PDM-Hamiltonian ${\hat{H}}_2$ is obtained. The “new” PDM-Hamiltonian ${\hat{H}}_2$ turned out to be not only correlated with ${\hat{H}}_1$ but also represents an alternative and most simplistic user-friendly PDM-Hamiltonian, $\hat{H}={(\hat{p}/\sqrt{2m\left(x\right)})}^2+V\left(x\right)$; $\hat{p}=-iħ{\partial }_x$, that has never been reported before.     

Temperature effects in five-dimensional Kaluza-Klein theory

We examine the combined effectsof thermal and quantum-mechanical fluctuations in a Kaluza-Klein universe with a single compact spatial dimension of length ${\overline{L}}_5$. From the one-loop effective potential for ${\overline{L}}_5$ two types of instability are evident. If initially ${\overline{L}}_5$ is less than a temperature-dependent critical length, ${\overline{L}}_5$ will shrink at least down to a length comparable to the Planck length. This instability has been noted by Appelquist and Chodos in the zero-temperature limit. If, on the other hand, ${\overline{L}}_5$ starts out larger than the critical length, it will tend to increase. This result suggests that temperature effects may play an important role in Kaluza-Klein cosmological models.     

Experimental determination of interfacial energy for solid Al in the Al-Sn-Mg eutectic system with Bridgman-type apparatus

The equilibrated grain boundary groove shape of solid Al in equilibrium with Al-Sn-Mg eutectic liquid was observed by using a Bridgman type directional solidification apparatus. The ratio of the thermal conductivity of the equilibrated liquid to the thermal conductivity of solid Al has been obtained as 0.91. In addition, the average Gibbs-Thomson coefficient, $\bar{\mathrm{\Gamma }}=(4.20\pm 0.35)\times {10}^{-8}\mathrm{Km}$, the solid-liquid interfacial energy, ${\sigma }_{SL}=180.68\pm 23.48\text{mJ}/{\text{m}}^2$ and the grain boundary energy, ${\sigma }_{GB}=309.30\pm 29.47\text{mJ}/{\text{m}}^2$, in the Al/Al-Sn-Mg system have been calculated from the measured grain boundary shapes.     

Asymptotic behavior of two-electron expectation values in two-electron excited states

Singly-excited states of the two-electron atom cease being bound when $Z\to 1$ (from above), the outer orbital becoming infinitely diffuse. The asymptotic relations$\underset{Z\to 1}{\lim }?{(Z?1)}^k〈{(1sns)}^{1,3}S\left|r_{12}^k\right|{(1sns)}^{1,3}S〉=〈(n?1)s^{(0)}\left|r^k\right|(n?1)s^{(0)}〉,$ where $k=?1,1,2,3,?$, are demonstrated to hold. Here, $(n?1)s^{(0)}$ is a hydrogenic s orbital with principal quantum number $(n?1)$. New, more nuanced light is shed on the already challenged dogma that the Pauli principle keeps the electrons further apart in the triplet than in the corresponding singlet.     

Orientation relationship between α-Fe precipitate and α-Al2O3 matrix in iron-implanted sapphire

Fe ions were implanted into α-Al₂O₃ single crystals (sapphire) at room temperature and annealed in a reducing atmosphere. The orientation relationships (ORs) between α-Fe particles and sapphire matrix were investigated using transmission electron microscopy (TEM). All the α-Fe particles have the orientation relationship (OR) of (1 1 1)_α-Fe || (0 0 0 1)_sapphire and ${[1\overline{1}0]}_{\alpha \text{-Fe}}\left|\right|{[11\overline{2}0]}_{\text{sapphire}}$ with sapphire. This OR is predicted precisely by the coincidence of reciprocal lattice points (CRLP) method. The other OR of (1 1 0)_α-Fe || (0 0 0 1)_sapphire and ${[111]}_{\alpha \text{-Fe}}\left|\right|{[5\overline{1}\overline{4}0]}_{\text{sapphire}}$ reported before is confirmed by the same method to be one of the secondary preferred orientation relationships in the α-Fe/sapphire system.     

Time optimal control of two-level quantum systems

The objective of time-optimal control that helps to minimize relaxation losses, is the evolution of a quantum state from a given initial mixed state to a final target mixed state in minimum time. In this paper, we study a time-optimal control problem of the dynamic of a pure two-level system with unbounded control using Pontryagin's minimum principle and obtain the minimal time for some initial and final states. The results will apply to basically all qubit systems that one can consider such as NMR spectroscopy, trapped ions, superconducting qubits, etc. We also show that these results hold for pure states, and only the direction $\hat{n}$ is important in the evolution of a quantum state. In this work, the problem of computing minimum time to produce any unitary transformation $U_f\in SU(2)$ is reduced to finding the minimum time to steer the system from an initial to a final state.     

Time-periodic quantum states of weakly interacting bosons in a harmonic trap

We consider quantum bosons with contact interactions at the Lowest Landau Level (LLL) of a two-dimensional isotropic harmonic trap. At linear order in the coupling parameter g, we construct a large, explicit family of quantum states with energies of the form $E_0+g{E}_1/4+O(g^2)$, where $E_0$ and $E_1$ are integers. Any superposition of these states evolves periodically with a period of $8\pi /g$ until, at much longer time scales of order $1/g^2$, corrections to the energies of order $g^2$ may become relevant. These quantum states provide a counterpart to the known time-periodic behaviors of the corresponding classical (mean field) theory.     

Composition law for the Cole-Cole relaxation and ensuing evolution equations

Physically natural assumption says that any relaxation process taking place in the time interval $[t_0,t_2]$, $t_2>t_0\ge 0$ may be represented as a composition of processes taking place during time intervals $[t_0,t_1]$ and $[t_1,t_2]$ where $t_1$ is an arbitrary instant of time such that $t_0\le t_1\le t_2$. For the Debye relaxation such a composition is realized by usual multiplication which claim is not valid any longer for more advanced models of relaxation processes. We investigate the composition law required to be satisfied by the Cole-Cole relaxation and find its explicit form given by an integro-differential relation playing the role of the time evolution equation. The latter leads to differential equations involving fractional derivatives, either of the Caputo or the Riemann-Liouville senses, which are equivalent to the special case of the fractional Fokker-Planck equation satisfied by the Mittag-Leffler function known to describe the Cole-Cole relaxation in the time domain.     

Resonance studies using the contour deformation method in the complex momentum plane

A contour deformation method (CDM) in the complex momentum plane has been successfully extended and implemented to probe resonances in atomic and molecular systems. Specifically, solution of the Schrödinger equation is performed in momentum space with momentum deformed on a contour in the complex plane. The bound, resonant, and complex continuum states could be directly revealed from the eigenvalues of the Schrödinger equation in the complex momentum plane. The calculations of shape resonances in electron scattering with Na⁺ in Debye plasmas (one channel), and in the charge transfer process ${\mathrm{H}}^{?}(1s^2)+\mathrm{Li}(1s^{2}2s)$ ($1^2{\Sigma }^{+}$) $\to \mathrm{H}(1s)+{\mathrm{Li}}^{?}(1s^{2}2s^2)$ ($2^2{\Sigma }^{+}$) (coupled channels) are given as illustrative examples. It is shown that calculated results from CDM agree very well with those extracted from the eigenphase sum of scattering theories. The effectiveness of CDM is also demonstrated by comparing its results with those obtained by the complex rotation scaling and exterior complex scaling methods. The convergence of CDM results can be obtained by increasing the momentum integration region and the number of integration points. The studied examples demonstrate that CDM could be a powerful tool for studies of resonances in complex atomic and molecular systems.     

Levitation of a rapidly oscillating magnetic dipole above a metallic sheet

We show that such a magnetic dipole suspended at a height h above a conducting sheet experiences a lift force proportional to $1/h^2$. This represents an order of magnitude improvement over the $1/h^4$ lift obtained in the quasistatic limit.     

I–V characteristics and conductance of strained SWCNTs

We present a new procedure to investigate the I–V characteristics and the conductance for strained SWCNTs. These electronic transport properties have been studied theoretically at zero temperature for zig-zag, armchair and chiral SWCNTs under the effect of the uniaxial tension and torsional strain. The analytical expression of the energy spectrum in the tight binding approximation has been used to calculate the induced current and the conductance through Landauer–Büttiker formalism. It is shown that the conductance for unstrained CNTs at initial values of the voltage can take discrete values which are equal to zero and 4 ($e^2/h$) for semiconducting and conducting SWCNTs respectively. The emergence of the kinks in the I–V characteristics is due to the discrete electronic spectrum in the SWCNTs. The location and number of kinks are changeable under the effect of strain process. The conductance in a strained armchair $(5,5)$ CNT decreases to zero under torsional strain, consequently, it will transform the conducting SWCNTs at a threshold value of strain to a semiconducting SWCNT. In contrast, by applying the uniaxial tension on the armchair $(5,5)$ CNT, the conductance does not change absolutely. There is a different behavior can be observed by applying the strain on zig-zag $(10,0)$ CNT, where the conductance decreases rapidly and slightly under the influence of uniaxial tension and torsional strain, respectively. We found that the conductance of chiral $(10,9)$ CNT is not significantly affected by applying the strain under consideration. More interestingly, the band structure of chiral $(10,9)$ CNT under uniaxial tension and torsional strain have been investigated within the tight binding approximation.