The geometric mean of two matrices from a computational viewpoint

The geometric mean of two matrices is considered and analyzed from a computational viewpoint. Some useful theoretical properties are derived and an analysis of the conditioning is performed. Several numerical algorithms based on different properties and representation of the geometric mean are discussed and analyzed and it is shown that most of them can be classified in terms of the rational approximations of the inverse square root functions. A review of the relevant applications is given

Continued Fractions and Linear Fractional Transformations

Rational approximations to a square root $\sqrt{k}$ can be produced by iterating the transformation $f(x) = (dx+k)/(x+d)$ starting from $\infty$ for any positive integer $d$. We show that these approximations coincide infinitely often with continued fraction convergents if and only if $4d^2/(k-d^2)$ is an integer, in which case the continued fraction has a rich structure. It consists of the concatenation of the continued fractions of certain explicitly definable rational numbers, and it belongs to one of infinitely many families of continued fractions whose terms vary linearly in two parameters. We also give conditions under which the orbit $\{f^n(\infty)\}$ consists exclusively of convergents or semiconvergents and prove that with few exceptions it includes all solutions $p/q$ to the Pell equation $p^2 - k q^2 = \pm 1$.Comment: 18 page

Fisher waves in the strong noise limit

We investigate the effects of strong number fluctuations on traveling waves in the Fisher-Kolmogorov reaction-diffusion system. Our findings are in stark contrast to the commonly used deterministic and weak-noise approximations. We compute the wave velocity in one and two spatial dimensions, for which we find a linear and a square-root dependence of the speed on the particle density. Instead of smooth sigmoidal wave profiles, we observe fronts composed of a few rugged kinks that diffuse, annihilate, and rarely branch; this dynamics leads to power-law tails in the distribution of the front sizes.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, updat

Boundary effect of a partition in a quantum well

The paper wishes to demonstrate that, in quantum systems with boundaries, different boundary conditions can lead to remarkably different physical behaviour. Our seemingly innocent setting is a one dimensional potential well that is divided into two halves by a thin separating wall. The two half wells are populated by the same type and number of particles and are kept at the same temperature. The only difference is in the boundary condition imposed at the two sides of the separating wall, which is the Dirichlet condition from the left and the Neumann condition from the right. The resulting different energy spectra cause a difference in the quantum statistically emerging pressure on the two sides. The net force acting on the separating wall proves to be nonzero at any temperature and, after a weak decrease in the low temperature domain, to increase and diverge with a square-root-of-temperature asymptotics for high temperatures. These observations hold for both bosonic and fermionic type particles, but with quantitative differences. We work out several analytic approximations to explain these differences and the various aspects of the found unexpectedly complex picture.Comment: LaTeX (with iopart.cls, iopart10.clo and iopart12.clo), 28 pages, 17 figure