Book Reviews

Unsigned book reviews are by the Book Review Editor.     

An improved process of separation of R- and S-timolol

Diastereomeric timolol tartrates 4 are obtained in a one-pot synthesis from the racemic base 2 and optically active O,O-diacetyl- or O,O-dibenzoyltartaric anhydrides 3 , as only one of the diastereomers precipitates from acetone solution. Acidic hydrolysis as the corresponding 4 leads to timolol in high yield and optical purity.     

A quasiconformal dynamic property of the disk

It is known that every conformai embedding of the disk into the extended complex plane possesses a r²-quasiconformal extension across eachr-level line (the r²-property of a domain). We show here that this is a characteristic property of the disk: any simply connected domain which is not a disk does not admit ther ²-property. Supported by the RiP-program of the Volkswagen-Stiftung in the Mathematisches Forschungsinstitut Oberwolfach.     

Intra-cavity spectroscopy with diode lasers

A multi-mode diode laser with an external cavity is studied experimentally and theoretically for its application to intra-cavity spectroscopy. One facet of a typical Ga_0.89Al_0.11As laser diode was antireflection-coated by deposition of HfO₂ such that 10^–3 residual reflectivity was left over. This diode was placed in an external optical cavity. The emission spectrum of this diode laser is highly sensitive to any frequency-dependent loss in the cavity, and the detectivity of such a loss grows with the pump rate. Even close to threshold, the absorption at 780 nm of Rb atoms with a density of 5×10¹⁰ cm^–3 has been detected. An adequate model for diode lasers based on rate equations and including frequency-dependent gain saturation is developed and applied to the calculations of output spectra. The sensitivity of these spectra to intra-cavity absorption is determined by the overall cavity loss — which is rather high — and the fraction of spontaneous emission in the total emission, in contrast with dye lasers where it is limited by nonlinear mode coupling. Various criteria for the sensitivity are suggested. The smallest detectable absorption with a perfectly antireflection-coated laser is 10^–6 cm^–1. Improvement of the characteristics of the laser diode would increase the sensitivity.     

Multicenter ligand transformations of thioureas on ruthenium clusters

The reaction of trirutheniumdodecacarbonyl with various thioureas was found to give, depending upon the substituents and the reaction conditions, a large variety of tri-, tetra-, penta-, and hexanuclear ruthenium clusters. The ligand systems observed in the products are derived from the thioureas employed; the fragmentation of the thiourea molecules involve N-H, C-S, C-H, and C-N activation processes.     

Stability of translating solutions to mean curvature flow

We prove stability of rotationally symmetric translating solutions to mean curvature flow. For initial data that converge spatially at infinity to such a soliton, we obtain convergence for large times to that soliton without imposing any decay rates. The authors are members of SFB 647/B3 “Raum – Zeit – Materie: Singularity Structure, Long-time Behaviour and Dynamics of Solutions of Non-linear Evolution Equations”.     

Problems, Models and Complexity. Part II: Application to the DLSP

In Part I of this study, we suggest to identify an operations research (OR) problem with the equivalence class of models describing the problem and enhance the standard computer-science theory of computational complexity to be applicable to this situation of an often model-based OR context. The Discrete Lot-sizing and Scheduling Problem (DLSP) is analysed here in detail to demonstrate the difficulties which can arise if these aspects are neglected and to illustrate the new theoretical concept. In addition, a new minimal model is introduced for the DLSP which makes this problem eventually amenable to a rigorous analysis of its computational complexity.