Fermions in Odd Space-Time Dimensions: Back to Basics

It is a well-known feature of odd space-time dimensions d that there exist two inequivalent fundamental representations A and B of the Dirac gamma matrices. Moreover, the parity transformation swaps the fermion fields living in A and B. As a consequence, a parity-invariant Lagrangian can only be constructed by incorporating both the representations. Based upon these ideas and contrary to long-held belief, we show that in addition to a discrete exchange symmetry for the massless case, we can also define chiral symmetry provided the Lagrangian contains fields corresponding to both the inequivalent representations. We also study the transformation properties of the corresponding chiral currents under parity and charge-conjugation operations. We work explicitly in 2 + 1 dimensions and later show how some of these ideas generalize to an arbitrary number of odd dimensions.     

Fischer--Tropsch, hydrotreating and superClaus catalysts

In modern society the application of catalysts, and hence, research in the field of catalysis, is becoming more and more important. In the strongly increasing chemical industry most reaction processes are performed with the aid of catalysts. Knowledge about the structure of the active sites present at the surface of catalysts will facilitate the design of new catalysts with better performances. Such knowledge can be obtained by Mössbauer spectroscopy, which is an excellent in-situ characterization technique due to the high penetrating power of the γ-radiation used and the sensitivity of the spectral parameters for the chemical state and local environment of the Mössbauer atoms.     

Compact Matrix Expressions for Generalized Wald Tests of Equality of Moment Vectors

Asymptotic chi-squared test statistics for testing the equality of moment vectors are developed. The test statistics proposed are generalized Wald test statistics that specialize for different settings by inserting an appropriate asymptotic variance matrix of sample moments. Scaled test statistics are also considered for dealing with nonstandard conditions. The specialization will be carried out for testing the equality of multinomial populations, and the equality of variance and correlation matrices for both normal and nonnormal data. When testing the equality of correlation matrices, a scaled version of the normal theory chi-squared statistic is proven to be an asymptotically exact chi-squared statistic in the case of elliptical data.     

The multiple-scale wave equation

An analytic and numerical study of the behavior of the linear nonhomogeneous wave equation of the form ε²u_tt = Δu + tf with high wave speed (ε 1) is carried out. This study was initially motivated by meteorological observations which have indicated the presence of large spatial scale gravity waves in the neighborhood of a number of summer and winter storms, mainly from visible images of ripples in clouds in satellite photos. There is a question as to whether the presence of these waves is caused by the nearby storms. Since the linear wave equation is an approximation to the full system describing pressure waves in the atmosphere, yet is considerably more tractable, we have chosen to analyze the behavior of the linear nonhomogeneous wave equation with high wave speed. The analysis is shown to be valid in one, two, and three space dimensions. Partly because of the high wave speed, the solution is known to consist of behavior which changes on two different time scales, one rapid and one slow. Additionally, because of the presence of the nonhomogeneous forcing term tf, we show that there is a component of the solution which will vary only on a very large spatial scale. Since even the linearized wave equation can give rise to persistent large spatial scale waves under the right conditions, the implication is that certain storms could be responsible for the generation of large-scale waves. Numerical simulations in one and two dimensions confirm analytic results.     

Picosecond control of coherent magnetisation dynamics in permalloy thin films by picosecond magnetic field pulse shaping

We have measured the response of a 20×10 μm, 8 nm thin NiFe (80:20) permalloy film due to excitation by short in-plane magnetic field pulses. We will show that using a two-pulse-technique a complete control of the precessional motion of the magnetisation can be achieved on picosecond timescales. Furthermore, we will present numerical calculations which show that a complete suppression of magnetisation ringing after switching can only be realised by a cascade of short field pulses.     

The spin-S Blume-Capel RG flow diagram

Using the finite-size scaling renormalization group, we obtain the two-dimensional flow diagram of the Blume-Capel model forS=1 andS=3/2. In the first case our results are similar to those of mean-field theory, which predicts the existence of first- and second-order transitions with a tricritical point. In the second case, however, our results are different. While we obtain in theS=1 case a phase diagram presenting a multicritical point, the mean-field approach predicts only a second-order transition and a critical endpoint.     

Dirac-Hestenes spinor fields on Riemann-Cartan manifolds

In this paper we study Dirac-Hestenes spinor fields (DHSF) on a four-dimensional Riemann-Cartan spacetime (RCST). We prove that these fields must be defined as certain equivalence classes of even sections of the Clifford bundle (over the RCST), thereby being certain particular sections of a new bundle named the spin-Clifford bundle (SCB). The conditions for the existence of the SCB are studied and are shown to be equivalent to Geroch's theorem concerning the existence of spinor structures in a Lorentzian spacetime. We introduce also the covariant and algebraic Dirac spinor fields and compare these with DHSF, showing that all three kinds of spinor fields contain the same mathematical and physical information. We clarify also the notion of (Crumeyrolle's) amorphous spinors (Dirac-Kähler spinor fields are of this type), showing that they cannot be used to describe fermionic fields. We develop a rigorous theory for the covariant derivatives of Clifford fields (sections of the Clifford bundle, CB) and of Dirac-Hestenes spinor fields. We show how to generalize the original Dirac-Hestenes equation in Minkowski spacetime for the case of RCST. Our results are obtained from a variational principle formulated through the multiform derivative approach to Lagrangian field theory in the Clifford bundle.     

Using dynamic data exchange to exchange information between Visual Basic and Matlab : Application to a diode array spectrophotometer

Photodiode array spectrometers are increasingly being coupled to flow analysis and separation techniques. Computer programs are needed to control the data acquisition from each photodiode and to handle the data. The Microsoft Visual Basic programming language is used along with a DLL library and dynamic data exchange (DDE) to allow communication with the MATLAB computational environment.     

Polling systems in heavy traffic: Exhaustiveness of service policies

We study the expected delay in cyclic polling models with general ‘branching-type’ service disciplines. For this class of models, which contains models with exhaustive and gated service as special cases, we obtain closed-form expressions for the expected delay under standard heavy-traffic scalings. We identify a single parameter associated with the service discipline at each queue, which we call the ‘exhaustiveness’. We show that the scaled expected delay figures depend on the service policies at the queues only through the exhaustiveness of each of the service disciplines. This implies that the influence of different service disciplines, but with the same exhaustiveness, on the expected delays at the queues becomes the same when the system reaches saturation. This observation leads to a new classification of the service disciplines. In addition, we show monotonicity of the scaled expected delays with respect to the exhaustiveness of the service disciplines. This induces a complete ordering in terms of efficiency of the service disciplines. The results also lead to new rules for optimization of the system performance with respect to the service disciplines at the queues. Further, the exact asymptotic results suggest simple expected waiting-time approximations for polling models in heavy traffic. Numerical experiments show that the accuracy of the approximations is excellent for practical heavy-traffic scenarios. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.