Towards experiments with highly charged ions at HESR

The atomic physics collaboration SPARC is a part of the APPA pillar at the future Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research. It aims at atomic-physics research across virtually the full range of atomic matter. An emphasis of this contribution are the atomic physics experiments addressing the collision dynamics in strong electro-magnetic fields as well as the fundamental interactions between electrons and heavy nuclei at the HESR. Here we give a short overview about the central instruments for SPARC experiments at this storage ring.     

Corrigendum to “Orbital stability for the Schrödinger operator involving inverse square potential” [J. Differential Equations 259 (2015) 4989–5016]

There is an corrigendum in the paper “Orbital stability for the Schrödinger operator involving inverse square potential”, Journal of Differential Equations 259 (2015) 4989–5016.     

A Mechanistically and Operationally Simple Route to Metal–N-Heterocyclic Carbene (NHC) Complexes

We have been puzzled by the involvement of weak organic and inorganic bases in the synthesis of metal–N-heterocyclic carbene (NHC) complexes. Such bases are insufficiently strong to permit the presumed required deprotonation of the azolium salt (the carbene precursor) prior to metal binding. Experimental and computational studies provide support for a base-assisted concerted process that does not require free NHC formation. The synthetic protocol was found applicable to a number of transition-metal- and main-group-centered NHC compounds and could become the synthetic route of choice to form M–NHC bonds.     

Phytochemical Differentiation of Saffron (Crocus sativus L.) by High Resolution Mass Spectrometry Metabolomic Studies

The metabolite profiling of saffron (Crocus sativus L.) from several countries was measured by using ultra-performance liquid chromatography combined with high resolution mass spectrometry (UPLC-HR MS). Multivariate statistical analysis was employed to distinguish among the several samples of C. sativus L. from Greece, Italy, Morocco, Iran, India, Afghanistan and Kashmir. The results of this study showed that the phytochemical content in the samples of C. sativus L. were obviously diverse in the different countries of origin. The metabolomics approach was deemed to be the most suitable in order to evaluate the enormous array of putative metabolites among the saffron samples studied, and was able to provide a comparative phytochemical screening of these samples. Several markers have been identified that aided the differentiation of a group from its counterparts. This can be important for the selection of the appropriate saffron sample, in view of its health-promoting effect which occurs through the modulation of various biological and physiological processes.     

Nonhomogeneous Hemivariational Inequalities with Indefinite Potential and Robin Boundary Condition

We consider a nonlinear, nonhomogeneous Robin problem with an indefinite potential and a nonsmooth primitive in the reaction term. In fact, the right-hand side of the problem (reaction term) is the Clarke subdifferential of a locally Lipschitz integrand. We assume that asymptotically this term is resonant with respect the principal eigenvalue (from the left). We prove the existence of three nontrivial smooth solutions, two of constant sign and the third nodal. We also show the existence of extremal constant sign solutions. The tools come from nonsmooth critical point theory and from global optimization (direct method).     

Modules over quantaloids: Applications to the isomorphism problem in algebraic logic and π-institutions

We solve the isomorphism problem in the context of abstract algebraic logic and of π-institutions, namely the problem of when the notions of syntactic and semantic equivalence among logics coincide. The problem is solved in the general setting of categories of modules over quantaloids. We introduce closure operators on modules over quantaloids and their associated morphisms. We show that, up to isomorphism, epis are morphisms associated with closure operators. The notions of (semi-)interpretability and (semi-)representability are introduced and studied. We introduce cyclic modules, and provide a characterization for cyclic projective modules as those having a g-variable. Finally, we explain how every π-institution induces a module over a quantaloid, and thus the theory of modules over quantaloids can be considered as an abstraction of the theory of π-institutions.     

Gluing Eguchi‐Hanson Metrics and a Question of Page

In 1978, Gibbons‐Pope and Page proposed a physical picture for the Ricci flat Kähler metrics on the K3 surface based on a gluing construction. In this construction, one starts from a flat torus with 16 orbifold points and resolves the orbifold singularities by gluing in 16 small Eguchi‐Hanson manifolds that all have the same orientation. This construction was carried out rigorously by Topiwala, LeBrun‐Singer, and Donaldson. In 1981, Page asked whether the above construction can be modified by reversing the orientations of some of the Eguchi‐Hanson manifolds. This is a subtle question: if successful, this construction would produce Einstein metrics that are neither Kähler nor self‐dual. In this paper, we focus on a configuration of maximal symmetry involving eight small Eguchi‐Hanson manifolds of each orientation that are arranged according to a chessboard pattern. By analyzing the interactions between Eguchi‐Hanson manifolds with opposite orientation, we identify a nonvanishing obstruction to the gluing problem, thereby destroying any hope of producing a metric of zero Ricci curvature in this way. Using this obstruction, we are able to understand the dynamics of such metrics under Ricci flow as long as the Eguchi‐Hanson manifolds remain small. In particular, for the configuration described above, we obtain an ancient solution to the Ricci flow with the property that the maximum of the Riemann curvature tensor blows up at a rate of , while the maximum of the Ricci curvature converges to 0.© 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Bounds tightening based on optimality conditions for nonconvex box-constrained optimization

First-order optimality conditions have been extensively studied for the development of algorithms for identifying locally optimal solutions. In this work, we propose two novel methods that directly exploit these conditions to expedite the solution of box-constrained global optimization problems. These methods carry out domain reduction by application of bounds tightening methods on optimality conditions. This scheme is implicit and avoids explicit generation of optimality conditions through symbolic differentation, which can be memory and time intensive. The proposed bounds tightening methods are implemented in the global solver BARON. Computational results on a test library of 327 problems demonstrate the value of our proposed approach in reducing the computational time and number of nodes required to solve these problems to global optimality.     

On p-logistic equations of equidiffusive type

We consider a p-logistic equation with equidiffusive reaction. We study the existence, nonexistence and uniqueness of positive solutions as the parameter \(\lambda >0\) varies. In the case of a unique positive solution \(u_{\lambda }\), we investigate the monotonicity and continuity properties of the map \(\lambda \rightarrow u_{\lambda }\).