Home Sweet Home? What Massachusetts Can Tell Us about the Prospects for the Illinois Affordable Housing Planning and Appeal Act

By most accounts, it is apparent that the United States lacks sufficient affordable housing to satisfy its needs. In an effort to remedy its own affordability gap, Illinois enacted the Affordable Housing Planning and Appeals Act, a largely market-driven measure that will provide frustrated developers with a new appeals mechanism from unfavorable local land use decisions. This new mechanism will empower a statewide appeals board to override local zoning decisions, under certain circumstances, in an effort to remove roadblocks to affordable housing construction. In taking this approach, Illinois follows the example of Massachusetts, which has had a similar measure in effect for over three decades. As the Illinois Act has already generated some controversy among local officials, including claims that it does not apply to home rule communities, it is instructive to consider the challenges brought against the Massachusetts Act and the probable outcome of similar challenges to the Illinois Act. This Note undertakes that analysis and concludes that while such challenges are unlikely to invalidate the Illinois Act, they are likely to drastically limit its effectiveness in prompting affordable housing construction. Therefore, this Note concludes with several recommendations for strengthening and clarifying the Illinois Act in order to preserve its intended effect

Lattice dynamics of mixed semiconductors (Be,Zn)Se from first-principles calculations

Vibration properties of Zn(1-x)Be(x)Se, a mixed II-VI semiconductor haracterized by a high contrast in elastic properties of its pure constituents, ZnSe and BeSe, are simulated by first-principles calculations of electronic structure, lattice relaxation and frozen phonons. The calculations within the local density approximation has been done with the Siesta method, using norm-conserving pseudopotentials and localized basis functions; the benchmark calculations for pure endsystems were moreover done also by all-electron WIEN2k code. An immediate motivation for the study was to analyze, at the microscopic level, the appearance of anomalous phonon modes early detected in Raman spectra in the intermediate region (20 to 80%) of ZnBe concentration. This was early discussed on the basis of a percolation phenomenon, i.e., the result of the formation of wall-to-wall --Be--Se-- chains throughout the crystal. The presence of such chains was explicitly allowed in our simulation and indeed brought about a softening and splitting off of particular modes, in accordance with experimental observation, due to a relative elongation of Be--Se bonds along the chain as compared to those involving isolated Be atoms. The variation of force constants with interatomic distances shows common trends in relative independence on the short-range order.Comment: 11 pages, 10 figures, to be published in Phys. Rev.

Convergence to stable laws for multidimensional stochastic recursions: the case of regular matrices

Given a sequence $(M_{n},Q_{n})_{n\ge 1}$ of i.i.d.\ random variables with generic copy $(M,Q) \in GL(d, \R) \times \R^d$, we consider the random difference equation (RDE) $$R_{n}=M_{n}R_{n-1}+Q_{n},$$ $n\ge 1$, and assume the existence of $\kappa >0$ such that \lim_{n \to \infty}(\E{\norm{M_1 ... M_n}^\kappa})^{\frac{1}{n}} = 1 . We prove, under suitable assumptions, that the sequence $S_n = R_1 + ... + R_n$, appropriately normalized, converges in law to a multidimensional stable distribution with index $\kappa$. As a by-product, we show that the unique stationary solution $R$ of the RDE is regularly varying with index $\kappa$, and give a precise description of its tail measure. This extends the prior work http://arxiv.org/abs/1009.1728v3 .Comment: 15 page

Higher Kac-Moody algebras and moduli spaces of GG-bundles

We provide a generalization to the higher dimensional case of the construction of the current algebra g((z)), of its Kac-Moody extension and of the classical results relating them to the theory of G-bundles over a curve. For a reductive algebraic group G with Lie algebra g, we define a dg-Lie algebra g_n of n-dimensional currents in g. We show that any symmetric G-invariant polynomial P on g of degree n+1 determines a central extension of g_n by the base field k that we call higher Kac-Moody algebra g_{n,P} associated to P. Further, for a smooth, projective variety X of dimension n>1, we show that g_n acts infinitesimally on the derived moduli space RBun_G(X,x) of G-bundles over X trivialized at the formal neighborhood of a point x of X. Finally, for a representation \phi: G-->GL_r, we construct an associated determinantal line bundle on RBun_G(X,x) and prove that the action of g_n extends to an action of g_{n,P_\phi} on such bundle for P_\phi the (n+1)-st Chern character of \phi

High-field AFMR in single-crystalline La_{0.95}Sr_{0.05}MnO_3: Experimental evidence for the existence of a canted magnetic structure

High-field antiferromagnetic-resonance (AFMR) spectra were obtained in the frequency range 60 GHz < \nu < 700 GHz and for magnetic fields up to 8 T in twin-free single crystals of La_{0.95}Sr_{0.05}MnO_3. At low temperatures two antiferromagnetic modes were detected, which reveal different excitation conditions and magnetic field dependencies. No splitting of these modes was observed for any orientation of the static magnetic field excluding the phase-separation scenario for this composition. Instead, the full data set including the anisotropic magnetization can be well described using a two-sublattice model of a canted antiferromagnetic structure.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Higher Kac-Moody algebras and moduli spaces of GG-bundles

We provide a generalization to the higher dimensional case of the construction of the current algebra g((z)), of its Kac-Moody extension and of the classical results relating them to the theory of G-bundles over a curve. For a reductive algebraic group G with Lie algebra g, we define a dg-Lie algebra g_n of n-dimensional currents in g. We show that any symmetric G-invariant polynomial P on g of degree n+1 determines a central extension of g_n by the base field k that we call higher Kac-Moody algebra g_{n,P} associated to P. Further, for a smooth, projective variety X of dimension n>1, we show that g_n acts infinitesimally on the derived moduli space RBun_G(X,x) of G-bundles over X trivialized at the formal neighborhood of a point x of X. Finally, for a representation \phi: G-->GL_r, we construct an associated determinantal line bundle on RBun_G(X,x) and prove that the action of g_n extends to an action of g_{n,P_\phi} on such bundle for P_\phi the (n+1)-st Chern character of \phi

Phason modes in spin-density wave in the presence of long-range Coulomb interaction

We study the effect of long-range Coulomb interaction on the phason in spin-density wave (SDW) within mean field theory. In the longitudinal limit and in the absence of SDW pinning the phason is completely absorbed by the plasmon due to the Anderson-Higgs mechanism. In the presence of SDW pinning or when the wave vector {\bf q} is tilted from the chain direction, though the plasmon still almost exhausts the optical sum rule, another optical mode appears at $\omega < 2\Delta(T)$, with small optical weight. This low frequency mode below the SDW gap may be accessible to electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS).Comment: 7 pages, Revtex 2.1, SZFKI 102/9

Exchange couplings in the magnetic molecular cluster Mn12Ac

The magnetic properties of the molecular cluster Mn12Ac are due to the four Mn3+ ions which have spins S=3/2 and the eight Mn4+ ions with spins S=2. These spins are coupled by superexchange mechanism. We determine the four exchange couplings assuming a Heisenberg-type interaction between the ions. We use exact diagonalization of the spin Hamiltonian by a Lanczos algorithm and we adjust the couplings to reproduce the magnetization curve of Mn12Ac. We also impose the constraint of reproducing a gap of 35K between a S=10 ground state and a first excited state with S=9. We predict that there is an excited level with S=8 at 37K above the ground state, only slightly above the S=9 excited state which lies at 35K and the next excited state is a S=9 multiplet at 67K above the S=10 ground state.Comment: 15 pages, 6 figures, submitted to Phys Rev B, corrected a misTeX: values of J1, J2 have changed, refs update