1,662 research outputs found
Delays Associated with Elementary Processes in Nuclear Reaction Simulations
Scatterings, particularly those involving resonances, and other elementary
processes do not happen instantaneously. In the context of semiclassical
nuclear reaction simulations, we consider delays associated with an interaction
for incident quantum wave-packets. As a consequence, we express delays
associated with elementary processes in terms of elements of the scattering
matrix and phase shifts for elastic scattering. We show that, to within the
second order in density, the simulation must account for delays in scattering
consistently with the mean field in order to properly model thermodynamic
properties such as pressure and free-energy density. The delays associated with
nucleon-nucleon and pion-nucleon scattering in free space are analysed with
their nontrivial energy dependence. Finally, an example of s-channel scattering
of massless partons is studied, and scattering schemes in nuclear reaction
simulations are investigated in the context of scattering delays.Comment: 45 pages, 5 uuencoded Postscript figure
Isomerization dynamics of a buckled nanobeam
We analyze the dynamics of a model of a nanobeam under compression. The model
is a two mode truncation of the Euler-Bernoulli beam equation subject to
compressive stress. We consider parameter regimes where the first mode is
unstable and the second mode can be either stable or unstable, and the
remaining modes (neglected) are always stable. Material parameters used
correspond to silicon. The two mode model Hamiltonian is the sum of a
(diagonal) kinetic energy term and a potential energy term. The form of the
potential energy function suggests an analogy with isomerisation reactions in
chemistry. We therefore study the dynamics of the buckled beam using the
conceptual framework established for the theory of isomerisation reactions.
When the second mode is stable the potential energy surface has an index one
saddle and when the second mode is unstable the potential energy surface has an
index two saddle and two index one saddles. Symmetry of the system allows us to
construct a phase space dividing surface between the two "isomers" (buckled
states). The energy range is sufficiently wide that we can treat the effects of
the index one and index two saddles in a unified fashion. We have computed
reactive fluxes, mean gap times and reactant phase space volumes for three
stress values at several different energies. In all cases the phase space
volume swept out by isomerizing trajectories is considerably less than the
reactant density of states, proving that the dynamics is highly nonergodic. The
associated gap time distributions consist of one or more `pulses' of
trajectories. Computation of the reactive flux correlation function shows no
sign of a plateau region; rather, the flux exhibits oscillatory decay,
indicating that, for the 2-mode model in the physical regime considered, a rate
constant for isomerization does not exist.Comment: 42 pages, 6 figure
Potential-energy surfaces, unimolecular processes and spectroscopy
The present symposium brings together research in a number of fields: the quantum-chemical calculation of molecular potential-energy surfaces, rotational–vibrational spectroscopy, methods of calculating rotational–vibrational energy levels, unimolecular reactions and intramolecular dynamics. Several aspects of the work are discussed including some recent developments on rates and products' quantum state distributions for unimolecular dissociations having highly flexible transition states. The usefulness of having improved potential-energy surfaces, particularly the bonding and hindered rotational potentials in the dissociations, is noted. In various other studies in this symposium a better knowledge of the surfaces would be particularly helpful. New results on a semiclassical quantization method are also described
Effect of phase relaxation on quantum superpositions in complex collisions
We study the effect of phase relaxation on coherent superpositions of
rotating clockwise and anticlockwise wave packets in the regime of strongly
overlapping resonances of the intermediate complex. Such highly excited
deformed complexes may be created in binary collisions of heavy ions, molecules
and atomic clusters. It is shown that phase relaxation leads to a reduction of
the interference fringes, thus mimicking the effect of decoherence. This
reduction is crucial for the determination of the phase--relaxation width from
the data on the excitation function oscillations in heavy--ion collisions and
bimolecular chemical reactions. The difference between the effects of phase
relaxation and decoherence is discussed.Comment: Extended revised version; 9 pages and 3 colour ps figure
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