Synthesis of stereoregular poly(alkyl malolactonates)

Optically pure methyl, ethyl, isopropyl, and benzyl (R)-malolactonate were prepared from (S)-(-)-malic acid and were polymerized in the bulk with tetraethylammonium benzoate as the initiator to yield high-molecular-weight, crystalline polymers. The optical purity of methyl and benzyl malolactonate was determined by ¹H NMR spectroscopy of the β-lactone complexed with a chiral europium shift reagent. Enantiomeric excesses of 100% were found (the experimental error was 3%). Optically active poly(β-malic acid) was obtained from optically active poly[benzyl (S)-malate] by catalytic hydrogenolysis of the pendent benzyl esters. Ethyl and benzyl (R)-malolactonate were also copolymerized, and the benzyl esters of the resulting copolymer were converted into carboxylic acid units by hydrogenolysis.     

Determination of potential curve parameters of excited electronic states of polyatomic molecules by resonance CARS

Resonance CARS line-shape analysis has been applied to determine the parameters of the excited electronic state potential curves of a cyanine dye and its short-lived photoisomers during the process of photoisomerization. For this very complicated situation other methods for the estimation of these values would fail. The origin shift parameters determined are very small and the homogeneous line width is smaller than the line width of the absorption band.     

Anomalous thermal conductivity of frustrated heisenberg spin chains and ladders

We study the thermal transport properties of several quantum-spin chains and ladders. We find indications for a diverging thermal conductivity at finite temperatures for the models examined. The temperature at which the nondiverging prefactor kappa((th))(T) peaks is, in general, substantially lower than the temperature at which the corresponding specific heat c(V)(T) is maximal. We show that this result of the microscopic approach leads to a substantial reduction for estimates of the magnetic mean-free path lambda extracted by analyzing recent experiments, as compared to similar analyses by phenomenological theories.     

Interaction-induced collapse of a section of the Fermi sea in the zigzag Hubbard ladder

Using the next-nearest-neighbor (zigzag) Hubbard chain as a one-dimensional model, we investigate the influence of interactions on the position of the Fermi wave vectors with the density-matrix renormalization-group technique. For suitable choices of the hopping parameters we observe that electron-electron correlations induce very different renormalizations for the two different Fermi wave vectors, which ultimately lead to a complete destruction of one section of the Fermi sea in a quantum critical point.     

Doorway state approach to optical potential scattering

We extend and apply the doorway state approach in the context of optical potential scattering. This entalls construction of doorway basis states for resolving the transition operator. We focus on analytic solutions to comparatively simple problems in optical potential scattering. Both low and high energy limits are considered, and absorptive interactions are treated; both on- and off-shell partial wave amplitudes are constructed. Further, the full scattering amplitude in the high energy limit is calculated directly in the doorway expansion. With our analytic results, it is possible to identify the physical parameters controlling convergence of the doorway expansion. The same parameters apply over the entire range of cases studied. These parameters are related simply to the target geometry and to the interaction strength. For interactions appropriate to hadron-nucleus scattering, convergence of both on- and off-shell amplitudes is very rapid.     

Eine Erweiterung des Cornu-Diagramms auf den Fall einer teildurchlässigen und phasenschiebenden Halbebene

Cornu's diagram for the graphical evaluation of the intensity distribution in the Fresnel diffraction phenomena behind an opaque half-plane is generalized to the case of diffraction by a half-plane with arbitrary values of transparency and phase-shift.