Introduction to Laser Spectroscopy

This book is intended to be used by students of chemistry, chemical engineering, biophysics, biology, materials science, electrical, mechanical, and other engineering fields, and physics. It assumes that the reader has some familiarity with the basic concepts of molecular spectroscopy and quantum theory, e.g., the concept of the uncertainty principle, quantized energy levels, but starts with the most basic concepts of laser physics and develops the advanced topics of modern laser spectroscopy including femtochemistry. The major distinction between this book and the many fine books available on laser physics and time resolved spectroscopy is its emphasis on a general approach that does not focus mainly on an extensive consideration of time resolved spectroscopy. Books at the correct level of presentation for beginners tend to be focused either totally or mainly on the basic fundamentals of lasers and include only a minimal amount of material on modern ultrashort laser spectroscopy and its chemical, physical and biological applications. On the other hand, books that contain the desired material to a significant degree, are too advanced, requiring too much prior knowledge of nonlinear optics, quantum theory, generation of ultrafast pulses, detection methods, and vibrational and electronic dynamics. This book is intended to fill the gap. More advanced problems of modern ultrafast spectroscopy are developed in the later chapters using concepts and methods from earlier chapters [...]

Magnetic-field Induced Screening Effect and Collective Excitations

We explicitly construct the fermion propagator in a magnetic field background B to take the lowest Landau-level approximation. We analyze the energy and momentum dependence in the polarization tensor and discuss the collective excitations. We find there appear two branches of collective modes in one of two transverse gauge particles; one represents a massive and attenuated gauge particle and the other behaves similar to the zero sound at finite density.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures; references on the zero sound added and typos correcte

The Chern-Simons diffusion rate in strongly coupled N=4 SYM plasma in an external magnetic field

We calculate the Chern-Simons diffusion rate in a strongly coupled N=4 SUSY Yang-Mills plasma in the presence of a constant external $U(1)_R$ magnetic flux via the holographic correspondence. Due to the strong interactions between the charged fields and non-Abelian gauge fields, the external Abelian magnetic field affects the thermal Yang-Mills dynamics and increases the diffusion rate, regardless of its strength. We obtain the analytic results for the Chern-Simons diffusion rate both in the weak and strong magnetic field limits. In the latter limit, we show that the diffusion rate scales as $B\times T^2$ and this can be understood as a result of a dynamical dimensional reduction.Comment: 10 pages, 1 figure, typos corrected, comments adde

Chiral magnetic wave at finite baryon density and the electric quadrupole moment of quark-gluon plasma in heavy ion collisions

Chiral Magnetic Wave (CMW) is a gapless collective excitation of quark-gluon plasma in the presence of external magnetic field that stems from the interplay of Chiral Magnetic (CME) and Chiral Separation Effects (CSE); it is composed by the waves of the electric and chiral charge densities coupled by the axial anomaly. We consider CMW at finite baryon density and find that it induces the electric quadrupole moment of the quark-gluon plasma produced in heavy ion collisions: the "poles" of the produced fireball (pointing outside of the reaction plane) acquire additional positive electric charge, and the "equator" acquires additional negative charge. We point out that this electric quadrupole deformation lifts the degeneracy between the elliptic flows of positive and negative pions leading to $v_2(\pi^+) < v_2(\pi^-)$, and estimate the magnitude of the effect.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Dynamics of the Chiral Magnetic Effect in a weak magnetic field

We investigate the real-time dynamics of the chiral magnetic effect in quantum electrodynamics (QED) and quantum chromodynamics (QCD). We consider a field configuration of parallel (chromo)electric and (chromo)magnetic fields with a weak perpendicular electromagnetic magnetic field. The chiral magnetic effect induces an electromagnetic current along this perpendicular magnetic field, which we will compute using linear response theory. We discuss specific results for a homogeneous sudden switch-on and a pulsed (chromo)electric field in a static and homogeneous (chromo)magnetic field. Our methodology can be easily extended to more general situations. The results are useful for investigating the chiral magnetic effect with heavy ion collisions and with lasers that create strong electromagnetic fields. As a side result we obtain the rate of chirality production for massive fermions in parallel electric and magnetic fields that are static and homogeneous.Comment: 13 pages, 7 figures, revte

Framework for Analysing Climate Policy Integration in the EU's Policies. A Case Study of the EU's Energy Efficiency Policy.

Climate change represents one of the most serious threats to international environmental, social and economic security. The growing energy consumption is producing enormous amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, which are fastening climate change and polluting the environment. For this reason, the European Union (EU) desires to act as a global leader in combating climate change and is therefore, since 1980's gradually introducing climate objectives into its energy policy. However, the question remains how efficient the EU has been in its climate policy integration (CPI). Based on the concept of environmental and climate policy integration, this thesis identifies important explanatory factors that can explain CPI into the European policies. The literature analysis resulted in thirteen explanatory factors for CPI as a policy process and fourteen factors explaining CPI from a policy output perspective. These factors were comprised in a new analytical framework. Furthermore, this framework was applied in order to evaluate the degree of CPI in the field of the EU's energy efficiency policy. Based on an extensive analysis of EU's official documents and other literature, the analysis indicates a rather high degree of CPI in the EU's energy efficiency policy

Monitoring Protein Kinases in Cellular Media with Highly Selective Chimeric Reporters

Protein kinases are important regulators of cellular function, and the dynamics of their activities are critical indicators of the health or pathology of living systems.[1, 2] In particular, extracellular-signal regulated kinases 1 and 2 (ERK1/2) play a pivotal role in the mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) signaling pathway responsible for regulated cell survival and proliferation.[3] The centrality of these enzymes in normal and diseased cell states underscores the need for high throughput, selective, and sensitive methods that accurately and directly diagnose kinase activities. The benchmark phosphorylation assays for ERK1/2 rely on transfer of radioactive γ-phosphate of [γ-32P]ATP to peptide or protein substrates.[4] While broadly employed, this approach has limitations, including the discontinuous nature of the radioactive assay and the non-native ATP concentrations that are utilized. Alternatively, for cellular imaging, genetically-encoded sensors that rely on phosphorylation-based changes in fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) between fluorescent protein pairs[5, 6] have been constructed for several kinases, including ERK1/2.[7-10] These sensors are powerful because they can be expressed in cells, however, they cannot be used for high throuput screening of recombinant enzymes and unfractionated cell lysates due to the very limited fluorescence changes that accompany phosphorylation. As a complementary approach, probes based on small, organic fluorophores with direct readouts[6, 11] can give sensitive and robust signals under physiogical conditions and are thus amenable to high throughput applications. For example, we have incorporated a sulfonamido-oxine (Sox) chromophore into peptides[12, 13] to report phosphorylation via chelation-enhanced fluorescence (CHEF) (Figure 1a). The weak binding affinity of the unphosphorylated substrate for Mg2+ increases significantly upon phosphorylation, resulting in robust (2- to 12-fold) fluorescence enhancements. This versatile peptide-based sensor design has been applied to monitor the activity of numerous Ser/Thr and Tyr kinases both in vitro[13] and in cell lysates.National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (NIH Cell Migration Consortium (GM064346)

Electromagnetic field evolution in relativistic heavy-ion collisions

The hadron string dynamics (HSD) model is generalized to include the creation and evolution of retarded electromagnetic fields as well as the influence of the magnetic and electric fields on the quasiparticle propagation. The time-space structure of the fields is analyzed in detail for non-central Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=$200 GeV. It is shown that the created magnetic field is highly inhomogeneous but in the central region of the overlapping nuclei it changes relatively weakly in the transverse direction. For the impact parameter $b=$10 fm the maximal magnetic field - perpendicularly to the reaction plane - is obtained of order $eB_y/m_\pi^2\sim$5 for a very short time $\sim$ 0.2 fm/c, which roughly corresponds to the time of a maximal overlap of the colliding nuclei. We find that at any time the location of the maximum in the $eB_y$ distribution correlates with that of the energy density of the created particles. In contrast, the electric field distribution, being also highly inhomogeneous, has a minimum in the center of the overlap region. Furthermore, the field characteristics are presented as a function of the collision energy and the centrality of the collisions. To explore the effect of the back reaction of the fields on hadronic observables a comparison of HSD results with and without fields is exemplified. Our actual calculations show no noticeable influence of the electromagnetic fields - created in heavy-ion collisions - on the effect of the electric charge separation with respect to the reaction plane.Comment: 17 pages, 22 figures, title changed by editor, accepted for PR

Leadership and Knowledge Management: Systematic Literature Review

Purpose: The aim of the paper is to identify and explore the leading topics in research on relationship between leadership and knowledge management in order to contribute to mapping the research field. The study makes an attempt to provide response to the following research questions: (1) what are the leading topics of scientific research on relationship between leadership and knowledge management; (2) what is the status of research within the identified thematic areas? Design/methodology/approach: Systematic literature review is the research methodology applied to achieve the aim of the study. The study is based on the data retrieved from the Scopus database. Findings: The study has identified the three following lines of research focused on intersections between leadership and knowledge management: (1) the impact of knowledge management and leadership on employee behaviours, (2) impact of knowledge management and leadership on innovations, (3) the relationship between leadership and knowledge management. Research and practical implications: Identifying and exploring the  aforementioned lines of research contributes to mapping the research landscape and may be useful for researchers planning further studies combining leadership and knowledge management as variables.  Originality/value: Due to the theoretical character of the study, it generates added value mainly for development of theory. Revising and categorising the amassing scientific production into thematic areas is important for better understanding of the conceptual structure of the research field. Paper type: Literature review