Nuclear reactions in hot stellar matter and nuclear surface deformation

Cross-sections for capture reactions of charged particles in hot stellar matter turn out be increased by the quadrupole surface oscillations, if the corresponding phonon energies are of the order of the star temperature. The increase is studied in a model that combines barrier distribution induced by surface oscillations and tunneling. The capture of charged particles by nuclei with well-deformed ground-state is enhanced in stellar matter. It is found that the influence of quadrupole surface deformation on the nuclear reactions in stars grows, when mass and proton numbers in colliding nuclei increase.Comment: 12 pages, 10 figure

ac-driven atomic quantum motor

We invent an ac-driven quantum motor consisting of two different, interacting ultracold atoms placed into a ring-shaped optical lattice and submerged in a pulsating magnetic field. While the first atom carries a current, the second one serves as a quantum starter. For fixed zero-momentum initial conditions the asymptotic carrier velocity converges to a unique non-zero value. We also demonstrate that this quantum motor performs work against a constant load.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Large deviations for random walks under subexponentiality: the big-jump domain

For a given one-dimensional random walk $\{S_n\}$ with a subexponential step-size distribution, we present a unifying theory to study the sequences $\{x_n\}$ for which $\mathsf{P}\{S_n>x\}\sim n\mathsf{P}\{S_1>x\}$ as $n\to\infty$ uniformly for $x\ge x_n$. We also investigate the stronger "local" analogue, $\mathsf{P}\{S_n\in(x,x+T]\}\sim n\mathsf{P}\{S_1\in(x,x+T]\}$. Our theory is self-contained and fits well within classical results on domains of (partial) attraction and local limit theory. When specialized to the most important subclasses of subexponential distributions that have been studied in the literature, we reproduce known theorems and we supplement them with new results.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/07-AOP382 the Annals of Probability (http://www.imstat.org/aop/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Mapping the Arnold web with a GPU-supercomputer

The Arnold diffusion constitutes a dynamical phenomenon which may occur in the phase space of a non-integrable Hamiltonian system whenever the number of the system degrees of freedom is $M \geq 3$. The diffusion is mediated by a web-like structure of resonance channels, which penetrates the phase space and allows the system to explore the whole energy shell. The Arnold diffusion is a slow process; consequently the mapping of the web presents a very time-consuming task. We demonstrate that the exploration of the Arnold web by use of a graphic processing unit (GPU)-supercomputer can result in distinct speedups of two orders of magnitude as compared to standard CPU-based simulations.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, a video supplementary provided at http://www.physik.uni-augsburg.de/~seiberar/arnold/Energy15_HD_frontNback.av

Nuclear collective motion with a coherent coupling interaction between quadrupole and octupole modes

A collective Hamiltonian for the rotation-vibration motion of nuclei is considered, in which the axial quadrupole and octupole degrees of freedom are coupled through the centrifugal interaction. The potential of the system depends on the two deformation variables $\beta_2$ and $\beta_3$. The system is considered to oscillate between positive and negative $\beta_3$-values, by rounding an infinite potential core in the $(\beta_2,\beta_3)$-plane with $\beta_2>0$. By assuming a coherent contribution of the quadrupole and octupole oscillation modes in the collective motion, the energy spectrum is derived in an explicit analytic form, providing specific parity shift effects. On this basis several possible ways in the evolution of quadrupole-octupole collectivity are outlined. A particular application of the model to the energy levels and electric transition probabilities in alternating parity spectra of the nuclei $^{150}$Nd, $^{152}$Sm, $^{154}$Gd and $^{156}$Dy is presented.Comment: 25 pages, 13 figures. Accepted in Phys. Rev.

Large-scale Ferrofluid Simulations on Graphics Processing Units

We present an approach to molecular-dynamics simulations of ferrofluids on graphics processing units (GPUs). Our numerical scheme is based on a GPU-oriented modification of the Barnes-Hut (BH) algorithm designed to increase the parallelism of computations. For an ensemble consisting of one million of ferromagnetic particles, the performance of the proposed algorithm on a Tesla M2050 GPU demonstrated a computational-time speed-up of four order of magnitude compared to the performance of the sequential All-Pairs (AP) algorithm on a single-core CPU, and two order of magnitude compared to the performance of the optimized AP algorithm on the GPU. The accuracy of the scheme is corroborated by comparing the results of numerical simulations with theoretical predictions