Bouncing universe models in an extended gravity theory

Some bouncing models are investigated in the framework of an extended theory of gravity. The extended gravity model is a simple extension of the General Relativity where an additional matter geometry coupling is introduced to account for the late time cosmic speed up phenomena. The dynamics of the models are discussed in the background of a flat FRW universe. Some viable models are reconstructed for specifically assumed bouncing scale factors. The behavior of the models are found to be decided mostly by the parameters of the respective models. The extended gravity based minimal matter-geometry coupling parameter has a role to remove the omega singularity occurring at the bouncing epoch. It is noted that the constructed models violate the energy conditions, however, in some cases this violation leads to the evolution of the models in phantom phase. The stability of the models are analyzed under linear homogeneous perturbations and it is found that, near the bounce, the models show instability but the perturbations decay out smoothly to provide stable models at late times.     

Fully asynchronous stochastic coordinate descent: a tight lower bound on the parallelism achieving linear speedup

Mathematical Programming - We seek tight bounds on the viable parallelism in asynchronous implementations of coordinate descent that achieves linear speedup. We focus on asynchronous coordinate...     

Quantized-states-based adaptive control against unknown slippage effects of uncertain mobile robots with input and state quantization

An adaptive tracking design strategy based on quantized state feedback is developed for uncertain nonholonomic mobile robots with unknown wheel slippage effects. All state variables and control torques are assumed to be quantized by the state and input quantizers, respectively, in a network control environment. Thus, the quantized state feedback information is only available for the tracking control design. An approximation-based adaptive controller using quantized states is recursively designed to ensure the robust adaptive tracking against unknown wheel slippage effects where the quantized-states-based adaptive mechanism is derived to compensate for unknown wheel slippage effects, system nonlinearities, and quantization errors. The boundedness of the quantization errors and estimated parameters in the closed-loop system is analyzed by presenting some theoretical lemmas. Based on these lemmas, we prove the uniform ultimate boundedness of closed-loop signals and the convergence of the trajectory tracking error in the presence of wheel slippage effects. Simulations verify the effectiveness of the resulting tracking scheme.     

The Role of Radical Bridges in Polynuclear Single-Molecule Magnets

Employing radical bridges between anisotropic metal ions has been a viable route to achieve high-performance single-molecule magnets (SMMs). While the bridges have been mainly considered for their ability to promote exchange interactions, the crystal-field effect arising from them has not been taken into account explicitly. This lack of consideration may distort the understanding and limit the development of the entire family. To shed light on this aspect, herein we report a theoretical investigation of a series of N -radical-bridged diterbium complexes. It is found that while promoting strong exchange coupling between the terbium ions, the N -radical induces a crystal field that interferes destructively with that of the outer ligands, and thus reduces the overall SMM behavior. Based on the theoretical results, we conclude that the SMM behavior in this series could be further maximized if the crystal field of the outer ligands is designed to be collinear with that of the radical bridge. This conclusion can be generalized to all exchange-coupled SMMs.     

On lower iteration complexity bounds for the convex concave saddle point problems

Mathematical Programming - In this paper, we study the lower iteration complexity bounds for finding the saddle point of a strongly convex and strongly concave saddle point problem: $$\min _x\max...     

Moderate Deviations for Extreme Eigenvalues of Real-Valued Sample Covariance Matrices

Journal of Theoretical Probability - Consider the sample covariance matrices of form $$W=n^{-1}C C^{\top }$$ , where C is a $$k\times n$$ matrix with real-valued, independent and identically...     

Ultrahigh Loading Copper Single Atom Catalyst for Palladium-free Wacker Oxidation

Wacker oxidation is an industry-adopted process to transform olefins into value-added epoxides and carbonyls. However, traditional Wacker oxidation involves the use of homogeneous palladium and copper catalysts for the olefin addition and reductive elimination. Here, we demonstrated an ultrahigh loading Cu single atom catalyst(14% Cu, mass fraction) for the palladium-free Wacker oxidation of 4-vinylanisole into the corresponding ketone with N-methylhydroxylamine hydrochloride as an additive under mild conditions. Mechanistic studies by ¹⁸O and deuterium isotope labelling revealed a hydrogen shift mechanism in this palladium-free process using N-methylhydroxylamine hydrochloride as the oxygen source. The reaction scope can be further extended to Kucherov oxidation. Our study paves the way to replace noble metal catalysts in the traditional homogeneous processes with single atom catalysts.     

Spectroscopic properties of the low-lying electronic states and laser cooling feasibility for the SrI molecule

Laser cooling of a molecule with heavy nuclei is often complicated because of the density distribution of the electronic states. Here, we evaluate the feasibility of the laser cooling of the SrI molecule by calculating the potential energy curves and transition dipole moments of the ground and low-lying excited states using the multi-reference configuration interaction plus Davidson corrections (MRCI + Q) and the all-electron basis sets of ANO-RCC. The relativistic effect and the spin-orbit coupling splits are included, because both Sr and I are heavy atoms. Based on the obtained potential energy curves, we solve the Schrödinger equation of nuclear motion to determine the rovibrational energy levels and the Franck-Condon factors. The spectroscopic parameters are obtained by fitting the rovibrational energy levels with the Dunham expression. The radiation lifetimes, the Doppler and recoil temperatures between the X²Σ⁺ and the ²Π_1/2/²Π_3/2/B²Σ⁺ states are calculated. 5-color laser cooling schemes for the molecule are proposed, which can lead to the total effective Franck-Condon factors being 0.99983, 0.99979, and 0.99941 for the three transitions, respectively. All the obtained results suggest that the SrI molecule is a feasible candidate for laser cooling.