Effects of petroleum resins on asphaltene aggregation and water-in-oil emulsion formation

Asphaltenes from four crude oils were fractionated by precipitation in mixtures of heptane and toluene. Solubility profiles generated in the presence of resins (1:1 mass ratio) indicated the onset of asphaltene precipitation occurred at lower toluene volume fractions (0.1–0.2) than without resins. Small-angle neutron scattering (SANS) was performed on solutions of asphaltene fractions in mixtures of heptane and toluene with added resins to determine aggregate sizes. Water-in-oil emulsions of asphaltene–resin solutions were prepared and separated by a centrifuge method to determine the vol.% water resolved. In general, the addition of resins to asphaltenes reduced the aggregate size by disrupting the π–π and polar bonding interactions between asphaltene monomers. Interaction of resins with asphaltenic aggregates rendered the aggregates less interfacially active and thus reduced emulsion stability. The smallest aggregate sizes observed and the weakest emulsion stability at high resin to asphaltene (R/A) ratios presumably corresponded to asphaltenic monomers or small oligomers strongly interacting with resin molecules. It was often observed that, in the absence of resins, the more polar or higher molecular weight asphaltenes were insoluble in solutions of heptane and toluene. The addition of resins dissolved these insolubles and aggregate size by SANS increased until the solubility limit was reached. This corresponded approximately to the point of maximum emulsion stability. Asphaltene chemistry plays a vital role in dictating emulsion stability. The most polar species typically required significantly higher resin concentrations to disrupt asphaltene interactions and completely destabilize emulsions. Aggregation and film formation are likely driven by polar heteroatom interactions, such as hydrogen bonding, which allow asphaltenes to absorb, consolidate, and form cohesive films at the oil–water interface.     

Smooth relativistic Hartree-Fock pseudopotentials for H to Ba and Lu to Hg

We report smooth relativistic Hartree-Fock pseudopotentials (also known as averaged relativistic effective potentials) and spin-orbit operators for the atoms H to Ba and Lu to Hg. We remove the unphysical extremely nonlocal behavior resulting from the exchange interaction in a controlled manner, and represent the resulting pseudopotentials in an analytic form suitable for use within standard quantum chemistry codes. These pseudopotentials are suitable for use within Hartree-Fock and correlated wave function methods, including diffusion quantum Monte Carlo calculations.     

Strongly enhanced spin squeezing via quantum control

We describe a new approach to spin squeezing based on a double-pass Faraday interaction between an optical probe and an optically dense atomic sample. A quantum eraser is used to remove residual spin-probe entanglement, thereby realizing a single-axis twisting unitary map on the collective spin. This interaction can be phase matched, resulting in exponential enhancement of squeezing as a function of optical density for times short compared to the decoherence time. In practice the scaling and peak squeezing depends on decoherence, technical loss, and noise. Including these imperfections, our model indicates that ～10 dB of squeezing should be achievable with laboratory parameters.     

Spectroscopic data for the LiH molecule from pseudopotential quantum Monte Carlo calculations

Quantum Monte Carlo and quantum chemistry techniques are used to investigate pseudopotential models of the lithium hydride (LiH) molecule. Interatomic potentials are calculated and tested by comparing with the experimental spectroscopic constants and well depth. Two recently developed pseudopotentials are tested, and the effects of introducing a Li core polarization potential are investigated. The calculations are sufficiently accurate to isolate the errors from the pseudopotentials and core polarization potential. Core-valence correlation and core relaxation are found to be important in determining the interatomic potential.     

Energies of the first row atoms from quantum Monte Carlo

All-electron variational and diffusion quantum Monte Carlo calculations of the ground state energies of the first row atoms (from Li to Ne) are reported. The authors use trial wave functions of four types: single-determinant Slater-Jastrow wave functions, multideterminant Slater-Jastrow wave functions, single-determinant Slater-Jastrow wave functions with backflow transformations, and multideterminant Slater-Jastrow wave functions with backflow transformations. At the diffusion quantum Monte Carlo level and using their multideterminant Slater-Jastrow wave functions with backflow transformations, they recover 99% or more of the correlation energies for Li, Be, B, C, N, and Ne, 97% for O, and 98% for F.     

Optimum and efficient sampling for variational quantum Monte Carlo

Quantum mechanics for many-body systems may be reduced to the evaluation of integrals in 3N dimensions using Monte Carlo, providing the Quantum Monte Carlo ab initio methods. Here we limit ourselves to expectation values for trial wave functions, that is to variational quantum Monte Carlo. Almost all previous implementations employ samples distributed as the physical probability density of the trial wave function, and assume the central limit theorem to be valid. In this paper we provide an analysis of random error in estimation and optimization that leads naturally to new sampling strategies with improved computational and statistical properties. A rigorous lower limit to the random error is derived, and an efficient sampling strategy presented that significantly increases computational efficiency. In addition the infinite variance heavy tailed random errors of optimum parameters in conventional methods are replaced with a Normal random error, strengthening the theoretical basis of optimization. The method is applied to a number of first row systems and compared with previously published results.     

Quantum Monte Carlo study of the Ne atom and the Ne+ ion

We report all-electron and pseudopotential calculations of the ground-state energies of the neutral Ne atom and the Ne(+) ion using the variational and diffusion quantum Monte Carlo (DMC) methods. We investigate different levels of Slater-Jastrow trial wave function: (i) using Hartree-Fock orbitals, (ii) using orbitals optimized within a Monte Carlo procedure in the presence of a Jastrow factor, and (iii) including backflow correlations in the wave function. Small reductions in the total energy are obtained by optimizing the orbitals, while more significant reductions are obtained by incorporating backflow correlations. We study the finite-time-step and fixed-node biases in the DMC energy and show that there is a strong tendency for these errors to cancel when the first ionization potential (IP) is calculated. DMC gives highly accurate values for the IP of Ne at all the levels of trial wave function that we have considered.