Neutral Kapitza-Dirac effect

A theory of diffraction of neutral atoms by a standing light wave is developed and compared with the well-known case of electrons.     

Photoluminescence and thermoluminescence properties of SnO2 nanoparticles embedded in Li20-K20-B203 with Cu-doping

Cu-doped borate glass co-doped with SnO2 nanoparticles is fabricated by melt quenching. The structure and morphology of the samples are examined by X-ray diffraction and field emission scanning electron microscopy. Up-conversion enhancement is observed in the photoluminescence （PL） and thermolumines- cence （TL） intensities of the glass. PL emission spectra are identified in the blue and green regions, and a fourfold increase in emission intensity may be observed in the presence of embedded SnO2 nanoparticles. The glow curve is recorded at 215℃, and fourfold increases in TL intensity are obtained by addition of 0.1 mol% SnO2 nanoparticles to the glass. Higher TL responses of the samples are observed in the energy range of 15-100 KeV. At energy levels greater than -0.1 MeV, however, flat responses are obtained. The activation energy and frequency factor of the second-order kinetic reaction are calculated by the peak shape method.     

Two-photon revival-collapse phenomenon in the evolution of the quadrature squeezing of the four-photon Jaynes-Cummings model

We prove that the revival-collapse phenomenon occurring in the atomic inversion of the two-photon Jaynes-Cummings model, when the mode is initially prepared in the coherent state and the atom is in the excited state, can be obtained from the evolution of the quadrature squeezing of the four-photon Jaynes-Cummings model.     

Two methods for semi-automated quantification of changes in ventricular volume and their use in schizophrenia

Two semi-automated methods for quantification of ventricular volume change from baseline and follow-up magnetic resonance imaging scans have been developed. Technique 1 employs direct segmentation of the ventricles from both the scans using thresholding and contour extraction. Technique 2 operates on difference images produced by voxel based intensity subtraction of the baseline from the registered follow-up images. Here, all voxels with intensities above a noise threshold and in a restricted area are monitored to compute volumetric changes. In phantom measurements the first technique was accurate to 0.0046%, the second to 0.167% of the phantom volume. Results from normal volunteers was that the average ventricular volume changed by 1.52% and 1.54% for images acquired within 9 months using techniques 1 and 2, respectively. With schizophrenic patients mean change of 10.78% and 9.43% were found employing the first and second procedures, respectively. All measurements agreed with a radiologist’s visual grading of the changes. Robust, objective, fast, easy-to-use, and fairly accurate procedures have been developed and validated to quantify volumetric changes.     

Dynamics of Cubic Siegel Polynomials

We study the one-dimensional parameter space of cubic polynomials in the complex plane which have a fixed Siegel disk of rotation number θ, where θ is a given irrational number of Brjuno type. The main result of this work is that when θ is of bounded type, the boundary of the Siegel disk is a quasicircle which contains one or both critical points of the cubic polynomial. We also show that these boundaries vary continuously as one moves in the parameter space. This is most nontrivial near the set of cubics with both critical points on the boundary of their Siegel disk. We prove that this locus is a Jordan curve in the parameter space. Most of the techniques and results can be generalized to polynomials of higher degrees. Received: 29 August 1998 / Accepted: 19 March 1999     

Systematic Study of Two-Quasi-Particle Structure of Odd–Odd Thulium Nuclei

Physics of Atomic Nuclei - In this study, the nuclear structure properties of $${}^{160{-}166}$$ Tm isotopes with neutron numbers 91, 93, 95, and 97 were investigated using the projected shell...     

Transient spike adding in the presence of equilibria

Many models of neuronal activity exhibit complex oscillations in response to an input from other neurons in a network or to an input from a stimulus. We consider the effect of a single short stimulus on a simple model designed to mimic some features of neuronal dynamics. We focus on the transient response induced by the stimulus, particularly on the spike-adding behaviour of the response. Our main goal is to explain how the transient response is affected by the presence of unstable equilibria. We also investigate the dependence of the number of spikes on the amplitude and duration of the stimulus. In our analysis, we use numerical continuation methods and exploit the presence of different time scales in the model.     

Monte Carlo simulation of the property of a scintillation bar in the multi-neutron correlation spectrometer

To perform a kinematically complete measurement of the dissociation reaction for neutron-rich nuclei, a multi-neutron correlation spectrometer is proposed at Peking University.A Monte Carlo simulation code based on GEANT4 is developed for a single scintillation bar which processes not only the energy deposition but also the light propagation in the scintillator and the light collection and conversion to signal at the end of the bar in a realistic way. The simulating method is described in detail in this paper, and the timing and position resolutions and detector efficiency are studied based on the simulation and compared with the experimental results.A new method of crosstalk rejection has been demonstrated to be important for the design of the whole spectrometer.     

Quantum scalar field in quantum gravity: the propagator and Lorentz invariance in the spherically symmetric case

We recently studied gravity coupled to a scalar field in spherical symmetry using loop quantum gravity techniques. Since there are local degrees of freedom one faces the “problem of dynamics”. We attack it using the “uniform discretization technique”. We find the quantum state that minimizes the value of the master constraint for the case of weak fields and curvatures. The state has the form of a direct product of Gaussians for the gravitational variables times a modified Fock state for the scalar field. In this paper we do three things. First, we verify that the previous state also yields a small value of the master constraint when one polymerizes the scalar field in addition to the gravitational variables. We then study the propagators for the polymerized scalar field in flat space-time using the previously considered ground state in the low energy limit. We discuss the issue of the Lorentz invariance of the whole approach. We note that if one uses real clocks to describe the system, Lorentz invariance violations are small. We discuss the implications of these results in the light of Hořava’s Gravity at the Lifshitz point and of the argument about potential large Lorentz violations in interacting field theories of Collins et al.