Magnetic dipole excitations in nuclei: elementary modes of nucleonic motion

The nucleus is one of the most multi-faceted many-body systems in the universe. It exhibits a multitude of responses depending on the way one 'probes' it. With increasing technical advancements of beams at the various accelerators and of detection systems the nucleus has, over and over again, surprised us by expressing always new ways of 'organized' structures and layers of complexity. Nuclear magnetism is one of those fascinating faces of the atomic nucleus we discuss in the present review. We shall not just limit ourselves to presenting the by now very large data set that has been obtained in the last two decades using various probes, electromagnetic and hadronic alike and that presents ample evidence for a low-lying orbital scissors mode around 3 MeV, albeit fragmented over an energy interval of the order of 1.5 MeV, and higher-lying spin-flip strength in the energy region 5 - 9 MeV in deformed nuclei, nor to the presently discovered evidence for low-lying proton-neutron isovector quadrupole excitations in spherical nuclei. To the contrary, we put the experimental evidence in the perspectives of understanding the atomic nucleus and its various structures of well-organized modes of motion and thus enlarge our discussion to more general fermion and bosonic many-body systems.Comment: 59 pages, 59 figures, accepted for publication in Rev. Mod. Phys

Avoided level crossing statistics in open chaotic billiards

We investigate a two-level model with a large number of open decay channels in order to describe avoided level crossing statistics in open chaotic billiards. This model allows us to describe the fundamental changes of the probability distribution of the avoided level crossings compared with the closed case. Explicit expressions are derived for systems with preserved and broken Time Reversal Symmetry (TRS). We find that the decay process induces a modification at small spacings of the probability distribution of the avoided level crossings due to an attraction of the resonances. The theoretical predictions are in complete agreement with the recent experimental results of Dietz \textit{et al.} (Phys. Rev. E {\bf 73} (2006) 035201)

Gross, intermediate and fine structure of nuclear giant resonances: Evidence for doorway states

We review the phenomenon of fine structure of nuclear giant resonances and its relation to different resonance decay mechanisms. Wavelet analysis of the experimental spectra provides quantitative information on the fine structure in terms of characteristic scales. A comparable analysis of resonance strength distributions from microscopic approaches incorporating one or several of the resonance decay mechanisms allows conclusions on the source of the fine structure. For the isoscalar giant quadrupole resonance (ISGQR), spreading through the first step of the doorway mechanism, i.e.\ coupling between one particle-one hole ($1p1h$) and two particle-two hole ($2p2h$) states is identified as the relevant mechanism. In heavy nuclei it is dominated by coupling to low-lying surface vibrations, while in lighter nuclei stochastic coupling becomes increasingly important. The fine structure observed for the isovector giant dipole resonance (IVGDR) arises mainly from the fragmentation of the $1p1h$ strength (Landau damping), although some indications for the relevance of the spreading width are also found.Comment: 15 pages, 16 figures. Submitted to Eur. Phys. J A, special issue "Giant, pygmy, pairing resonances and related topics

Distribution of Scattering Matrix Elements in Quantum Chaotic Scattering

Scattering is an important phenomenon which is observed in systems ranging from the micro- to macroscale. In the context of nuclear reaction theory the Heidelberg approach was proposed and later demonstrated to be applicable to many chaotic scattering systems. To model the universal properties, stochasticity is introduced to the scattering matrix on the level of the Hamiltonian by using random matrices. A long-standing problem was the computation of the distribution of the off-diagonal scattering-matrix elements. We report here an exact solution to this problem and present analytical results for systems with preserved and with violated time-reversal invariance. Our derivation is based on a new variant of the supersymmetry method. We also validate our results with scattering data obtained from experiments with microwave billiards.Comment: Published versio

Towards World of Warcraft as an Experiment Platform for Teams

We are interested in how virtual, synchronous teams organize to cope with tasks of different complexity. We follow an explorative approach to validate World of Warcraft as experiment platform for virtual teams. We explore which parts of the game are suitable for experiments, which phenomena can be studied in teams fighting in World of Warcraft and how data can be collected. We prototypically evaluate data from games to demonstrate the validity of our approach

Long-Term Stability of Polymer-Coated Surface Transverse Wave Sensors for the Detection of Organic Solvent Vapors

Arrays with polymer-coated acoustic sensors, such as surface acoustic wave (SAW) and surface transverse wave (STW) sensors, have successfully been applied for a variety of gas sensing applications. However, the stability of the sensors’ polymer coatings over a longer period of use has hardly been investigated. We used an array of eight STW resonator sensors coated with different polymers. This sensor array was used at semi-annual intervals for a three-year period to detect organic solvent vapors of three different chemical classes: a halogenated hydrocarbon (chloroform), an aliphatic hydrocarbon (octane), and an aromatic hydrocarbon (xylene). The sensor signals were evaluated with regard to absolute signal shifts and normalized signal shifts leading to signal patterns characteristic of the respective solvent vapors. No significant time-related changes of sensor signals or signal patterns were observed, i.e., the polymer coatings kept their performance during the course of the study. Therefore, the polymer-coated STW sensors proved to be robust devices which can be used for detecting organic solvent vapors both qualitatively and quantitatively for several years

Pair decay width of the Hoyle state and carbon production in stars

The pair decay width of the first excited 0⁺ state in ¹²C (the Hoyle state) is deduced from a novel analysis of the world data on inelastic electron scattering covering a wide momentum transfer range, thereby resolving previous discrepancies. The extracted value Γπ = (62.3 ± 2.0) μeV is independently confirmed by new data at low momentum transfers measured at the S-DALINAC and reduces the uncertainty of the literature values by more than a factor of three. A precise knowledge of Γπ is mandatory for quantitative studies of some key issues in the modeling of supernovae and of asymptotic giant branch stars, the most likely site of the slow-neutron nucleosynthesis process

CRETA (Centrum fürreflektierte Textanalyse)– FachübergreifendeMethodenentwicklung in denDigital Humanities

This paper will present the concept of the newly established Stuttgart DH Center CRETA, which unites very different text-oriented disciplines such as literature, linguistics, history, political science, and philosophy, and which, on the other hand, not only applies methods and modeling techniques from machine learning, computational linguistics, and computer graphic visualization, but has begun to integrate them into a common DH methodology of deep reflective text analysis. Such a further development of the method inventory of the Digital Humanities is a long way and needs many participants. However, we can already illustrate aspects of the conception with case studies of scenarios from ongoing digital humanities projects, and it seems important to us to put the approach up for broad discussion