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The costs and benefits of secured creditor control in bankruptcy: evidence from the UK
From Mathematical Fictionalism to TruthâTheoretic Fictionalism
We argue that if Stephen Yablo (2005) is right that philosophers of mathematics ought to endorse a fictionalist view of number-talk, then there is a compelling reason for deflationists about truth to endorse a fictionalist view of truth-talk. More specifically, our claim will be that, for deflationists about truth, Yabloâs argument for mathematical fictionalism can be employed and mounted as an argument for truth-theoretic fictionalism
Propagating and evanescent waves in absorbing media
We compare the behavior of propagating and evanescent light waves in
absorbing media with that of electrons in the presence of inelastic scattering.
The imaginary part of the dielectric constant results primarily in an
exponential decay of a propagating wave, but a phase shift for an evanescent
wave. We then describe how the scattering of quantum particles out of a
particular coherent channel can be modeled by introducing an imaginary part to
the potential in analogy with the optical case. The imaginary part of the
potential causes additional scattering which can dominate and actually prevent
absorption of the wave for large enough values of the imaginary part. We also
discuss the problem of maximizing the absorption of a wave and point out that
the existence of a bound state greatly aids absorption. We illustrate this
point by considering the absorption of light at the surface of a metal.Comment: Brief Review, to appear in the American Journal of Physics,
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