Home equity release for long term care financing: an improved market structure and pricing approach

Home equity release products have been promoted as a potential solution to residential long term care costs for the elderly. Unexpectedly low utilization of home equity release loans has prompted efforts to better model and price the No-Negative-Equity-Guarantee (NNEG) built into the contracts, but loan rates are still widely perceived by homeowners as being unattractive.. We propose the introduction of a new adjustable rate loan based on a regional house price index, with the NNEG being borne by a specially created intermediary. The proposed approach allows us to directly address and separately price the basis risk between individual house price returns and index returns. Additionally, it offers the opportunity to create securities based on residential real estate that would be attractive to a wider class of investors. The alternative risk-sharing mechanism creates a more transparent and simple pricing structure for the loans. We then use house sales data to demonstrate the approach. We find in our sample that it would be possible to make higher loans than seen in previous literature using standard roll-up contracts. In the most favourable scenario for our simulations, the maximum loan is 89 per cent of the appraised home value if the loan is advanced as a lump sum and 95 per cent if the loan is advanced in instalments

Summary of XB-70 airplane cockpit environmental data

Thermal, acoustical, and acceleration environments of XB-70 airplane crew compartment in airworthiness test

Quantum channels in nonlinear optical processes

Quantum electrodynamics furnishes a new type of representation for the characterisation of nonlinear optical processes. The treatment elicits the detailed role and interplay of specific quantum channels, information that is not afforded by other methods. Following an illustrative application to the case of Rayleigh scattering, the method is applied to second and third harmonic generation. Derivations are given of parameters that quantify the various quantum channels and their interferences; the results are illustrated graphically. With given examples, it is shown in some systems that optical nonlinearity owes its origin to an isolated channel, or a small group of channels. © 2009 World Scientific Publishing Company

qq-Trinomial identities

We obtain connection coefficients between $q$-binomial and $q$-trinomial coefficients. Using these, one can transform $q$-binomial identities into a $q$-trinomial identities and back again. To demonstrate the usefulness of this procedure we rederive some known trinomial identities related to partition theory and prove many of the conjectures of Berkovich, McCoy and Pearce, which have recently arisen in their study of the $\phi_{2,1}$ and $\phi_{1,5}$ perturbations of minimal conformal field theory.Comment: 21 pages, AMSLate

Tunable coupling to a mechanical oscillator circuit using a coherent feedback network

We demonstrate a fully cryogenic microwave feedback network composed of modular superconducting devices connected by transmission lines and designed to control a mechanical oscillator coupled to one of the devices. The network features an electromechanical device and a tunable controller that coherently receives, processes and feeds back continuous microwave signals that modify the dynamics and readout of the mechanical state. While previous electromechanical systems represent some compromise between efficient control and efficient readout of the mechanical state, as set by the electromagnetic decay rate, the tunable controller produces a closed-loop network that can be dynamically and continuously tuned between both extremes much faster than the mechanical response time. We demonstrate that the microwave decay rate may be modulated by at least a factor of 10 at a rate greater than $10^4$ times the mechanical response rate. The system is easy to build and suggests that some useful functions may arise most naturally at the network-level of modular, quantum electromagnetic devices.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures, final published versio

D3-D7 Holographic dual of a perturbed 3D CFT

An appropriately oriented D3-D7-brane system is the holographic dual of relativistic Fermions occupying a 2+1-dimensional defect embedded in 3+1-dimensional spacetime. The Fermions interact via fields of ${\mathcal N}=4$ Yang-Mills theory in the 3+1-dimensional bulk. Recently, using internal flux to stabilize the system in the probe $N_7<<N_3$ limit, a number of solutions which are dual to conformal field theories with Fermion content have been found. We use holographic techniques to study perturbations of a particular one of the conformal field theories by relevant operators. Generally, the response of a conformal field theory to such a perturbation grows and becomes nonperturbative at low energy scales. We shall find that a perturbation which switches on a background magnetic field $B$ and Fermion mass $m$ induces a renormalization group flow that can be studied perturbatively in the limit of small $m^2/B$. We solve the leading order explicitly. We find that, for one particular value of internal flux, the system exhibits magnetic catalysis, the spontaneous breaking of chiral symmetry enhanced by the presence of the magnetic field. In the process, we derive formulae predicting the Debye screening length of the Fermion-antiFermion plasma at finite density and the diamagnetic moment of the ground state of the Fermion system in the presence of a magnetic field.Comment: 23 pages, two figures; typos corrected, some comments adde

Laser-controlled fluorescence in two-level systems

The ability to modify the character of fluorescent emission by a laser-controlled, optically nonlinear process has recently been shown theoretically feasible, and several possible applications have already been identified. In operation, a pulse of off-resonant probe laser beam, of sufficient intensity, is applied to a system exhibiting fluorescence, during the interval of excited- state decay following the initial excitation. The result is a rate of decay that can be controllably modified, the associated changes in fluorescence behavior affording new, chemically specific information. In this paper, a two-level emission model is employed in the further analysis of this all-optical process; the results should prove especially relevant to the analysis and imaging of physical systems employing fluorescent markers, these ranging from quantum dots to green fluorescence protein. Expressions are presented for the laser-controlled fluorescence anisotropy exhibited by samples in which the fluorophores are randomly oriented. It is also shown that, in systems with suitably configured electronic levels and symmetry properties, fluorescence emission can be produced from energy levels that would normally decay nonradiatively. © 2010 American Chemical Society