Survival of classical and quantum particles in the presence of traps

We present a detailed comparison of the motion of a classical and of a quantum particle in the presence of trapping sites, within the framework of continuous-time classical and quantum random walk. The main emphasis is on the qualitative differences in the temporal behavior of the survival probabilities of both kinds of particles. As a general rule, static traps are far less efficient to absorb quantum particles than classical ones. Several lattice geometries are successively considered: an infinite chain with a single trap, a finite ring with a single trap, a finite ring with several traps, and an infinite chain and a higher-dimensional lattice with a random distribution of traps with a given density. For the latter disordered systems, the classical and the quantum survival probabilities obey a stretched exponential asymptotic decay, albeit with different exponents. These results confirm earlier predictions, and the corresponding amplitudes are evaluated. In the one-dimensional geometry of the infinite chain, we obtain a full analytical prediction for the amplitude of the quantum problem, including its dependence on the trap density and strength.Comment: 35 pages, 10 figures, 2 tables. Minor update

Computing Algebraic Matroids

An affine variety induces the structure of an algebraic matroid on the set of coordinates of the ambient space. The matroid has two natural decorations: a circuit polynomial attached to each circuit, and the degree of the projection map to each base, called the base degree. Decorated algebraic matroids can be computed via symbolic computation using Groebner bases, or through linear algebra in the space of differentials (with decorations calculated using numerical algebraic geometry). Both algorithms are developed here. Failure of the second algorithm occurs on a subvariety called the non-matroidal or NM- locus. Decorated algebraic matroids have widespread relevance anywhere that coordinates have combinatorial significance. Examples are computed from applied algebra, in algebraic statistics and chemical reaction network theory, as well as more theoretical examples from algebraic geometry and matroid theory.Comment: 15 pages; added link to references, note on page 1, and small formatting fixe

Rich Words and Balanced Words

This thesis is mostly focused on palindromes. Palindromes have been studied extensively, in recent years, in the field of combinatorics on words.Our main focus is on rich words, also known as full words. These are words which have maximum number of distinct palindromes as factors.We shed some more light on these words and investigate certain restricted problems. Finite rich words are known to be extendable to infinite rich words. We study more closely how many different ways, and in which situations, rich words can be extended so that they remain rich.The defect of a ord is defined to be the number of palindromes the word is lacking.We will generalize the definition of defect with respect to extending the word to be infinite.The number of rich words, on an alphabet of size $n$, is given an upper and a lower bound. Hof, Knill and Simon presented (Commun. Math. Phys. 174, 1995) a well-known question whether all palindromic subshifts which are enerated by primitive substitutions arise from substitutions which are in class P. Over the years, this question has transformed a bit and is nowadays called the class P conjecture. The main point of the conjecture is to attempt to explain how an infinite word can contain infinitely many palindromes.We will prove a partial result of the conjecture. Rich square-free words are known to be finite (Pelantov\'a and Sarosta, Discrete Math. 313, 2013). We will give another proof for that result. Since they are finite, there exists a longest such word on an $n$-ary alphabet.We give an upper and a lower bound for the length of that word. We study also balanced words. Oliver Jenkinson proved (Discrete Math., Alg. and Appl. 1(4), 2009) that if we take the partial sum of the lexicographically ordered orbit of a binary word, then the balanced word gives the least partial sum. The balanced word also gives the largest product. We will show that, at the other extreme, there are the words of the form $0^{q-p}1^p$ ($p$ and $q$ are integers with $1\leq p<q$), which we call the most unbalanced words. They give the greatest partial sum and the smallest product.Tässä väitöskirjassa käsitellään pääasiassa palindromeja. Palindromeja on tutkittu viime vuosina runsaasti sanojen kombinatoriikassa.Suurin kiinnostuksen kohde tässä tutkielmassa on rikkaissa sanoissa. Nämä ovat sanoja joissa on maksimaalinen määrä erilaisia palindromeja tekijöinä.Näitä sanoja tutkitaan monesta eri näkökulmasta. Äärellisiä rikkaita sanoja voidaan tunnetusti jatkaa äärettömiksi rikkaiksi sanoiksi.Työssä tutkitaan tarkemmin sitä, miten monella tavalla ja missä eri tilanteissa rikkaita sanoja voidaan jatkaa siten, että ne pysyvät rikkaina.Sanan vajauksella tarkoitetaan puuttuvien palindromien lukumäärää.Vajauksen käsite yleistetään tapaukseen, jossa sanaa on jatkettava äärettömäksi sanaksi.Rikkaiden sanojen lukumäärälle annetaan myös ylä- ja alaraja. Hof, Knill ja Simon esittivät kysymyksen (Commun. Math. Phys. 174, 1995), saadaanko kaikki äärettömät sanat joissa on ääretön määrä palindromeja tekijöinä ja jotka ovat primitiivisen morfismin generoimia, morfismeista jotka kuuluvat luokkaan P. Nykyään tätä ongelmaa kutsutaan luokan P konjektuuriksi ja sen tarkoitus on saada selitys sille,millä tavalla äärettömässä sanassa voi olla tekijöinä äärettömän monta palindromia. Osittainen tulos tästä konjektuurista todistetaan. Rikkaiden neliövapaiden sanojen tiedetään olevan äärellisiä (Pelantov\'a ja Starosta, Discrete Math. 313, 2013). Tälle tulokselle annetaan uudenlainen todistus.Koska kyseiset sanat ovat äärellisiä, voidaan selvittää mikä niistä on pisin.Ylä- ja alaraja annetaan tällaisen pisimmän sanan pituudelle. Työssä tutkitaan myös tasapainotettuja sanoja.Tasapainotetut sanat antavat pienimmän osittaissumman binäärisille sanoille (Jenkinson, Discrete Math., Alg. and Appl. 1(4), 2009).Lisäksi ne antavat suurimman tulon.Muotoa $0^{q-p}1^p$ ($p$ ja $q$ ovat kokonaislukuja joille $1\leq p<q$) olevien sanojen todistetaan vastaavasti antavan suurimman osittaissumman ja pienimmän tulon.Ne muodostavat täten toisen ääripään tasapainotetuille sanoille, ja asettavat kaikki muut sanat näiden väliin.Siirretty Doriast

Unicyclic Components in Random Graphs

The distribution of unicyclic components in a random graph is obtained analytically. The number of unicyclic components of a given size approaches a self-similar form in the vicinity of the gelation transition. At the gelation point, this distribution decays algebraically, U_k ~ 1/(4k) for k>>1. As a result, the total number of unicyclic components grows logarithmically with the system size.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure

Phenomenology of minority games in efficient regime

We present a comprehensive study of utility function of the minority game in its efficient regime. We develop an effective description of state of the game. For the payoff function g(x)=\sgn (x) we explicitly represent the game as the Markov process and prove the finitness of number of states. We also demonstrate boundedness of the utility function. Using these facts we can explain all interesting observable features of the aggregated demand: appearance of strong fluctuations, their periodicity and existence of prefered levels. For another payoff, $g(x)=x$, the number of states is still finite and utility remains bounded but the number of states cannot be reduced and probabilities of states are not calculated. However, using properties of the utility and analysing the game in terms of de Bruijn graphs, we can also explain distinct peaks of demand and their frequencies