Ex-nihilo: Obstacles Surrounding Teaching the Standard Model

The model of the Big Bang is an integral part of the national curriculum for England. Previous work (e.g. Baxter 1989) has shown that pupils often come into education with many and varied prior misconceptions emanating from both internal and external sources. Whilst virtually all of these misconceptions can be remedied, there will remain (by its very nature) the obstacle of ex-nihilo, as characterised by the question `how do you get something from nothing?' There are two origins of this obstacle: conceptual (i.e. knowledge-based) and cultural (e.g. deeply held religious viewpoints). The article shows how the citizenship section of the national curriculum, coming `online' in England from September 2002, presents a new opportunity for exploiting these.Comment: 6 pages. Accepted for publication in Physics E

Gaudin Hypothesis for the XYZ Spin Chain

The XYZ spin chain is considered in the framework of the generalized algebraic Bethe ansatz developed by Takhtajan and Faddeev. The sum of norms of the Bethe vectors is computed and expressed in the form of a Jacobian. This result corresponds to the Gaudin hypothesis for the XYZ spin chain.Comment: 12 pages, LaTeX2e (+ amssymb, amsthm); to appear in J. Phys.

Tetromino tilings and the Tutte polynomial

We consider tiling rectangles of size 4m x 4n by T-shaped tetrominoes. Each tile is assigned a weight that depends on its orientation and position on the lattice. For a particular choice of the weights, the generating function of tilings is shown to be the evaluation of the multivariate Tutte polynomial Z\_G(Q,v) (known also to physicists as the partition function of the Q-state Potts model) on an (m-1) x (n-1) rectangle G, where the parameter Q and the edge weights v can take arbitrary values depending on the tile weights.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figure

Exact Solution of the Multi-Allelic Diffusion Model

We give an exact solution to the Kolmogorov equation describing genetic drift for an arbitrary number of alleles at a given locus. This is achieved by finding a change of variable which makes the equation separable, and therefore reduces the problem with an arbitrary number of alleles to the solution of a set of equations that are essentially no more complicated than that found in the two-allele case. The same change of variable also renders the Kolmogorov equation with the effect of mutations added separable, as long as the mutation matrix has equal entries in each row. Thus this case can also be solved exactly for an arbitrary number of alleles. The general solution, which is in the form of a probability distribution, is in agreement with the previously known results--which were for the cases of two and three alleles only. Results are also given for a wide range of other quantities of interest, such as the probabilities of extinction of various numbers of alleles, mean times to these extinctions, and the means and variances of the allele frequencies. To aid dissemination, these results are presented in two stages: first of all they are given without derivations and too much mathematical detail, and then subsequently derivations and a more technical discussion are provided.Comment: 56 pages. 15 figures. Requires Elsevier document clas

Comment on `Series expansions from the corner transfer matrix renormalization group method: the hard-squares model'

Earlier this year Chan extended the low-density series for the hard-squares partition function $\kappa(z)$ to 92 terms. Here we analyse this extended series focusing on the behaviour at the dominant singularity $z_d$ which lies on on the negative fugacity axis. We find that the series has a confluent singularity of order 2 at $z_d$ with exponents $\theta=0.83333(2)$ and $\theta'= 1.6676(3)$. We thus confirm that the exponent $\theta$ has the exact value $\frac56$ as observed by Dhar.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure, IoP macros. Expanded second and final versio

Bethe Ansatz Equations for the Broken ZNZ_{N}-Symmetric Model

We obtain the Bethe Ansatz equations for the broken ${\bf Z}_{N}$-symmetric model by constructing a functional relation of the transfer matrix of $L$-operators. This model is an elliptic off-critical extension of the Fateev-Zamolodchikov model. We calculate the free energy of this model on the basis of the string hypothesis.Comment: 43 pages, latex, 11 figure

Analyticity and Integrabiity in the Chiral Potts Model

We study the perturbation theory for the general non-integrable chiral Potts model depending on two chiral angles and a strength parameter and show how the analyticity of the ground state energy and correlation functions dramatically increases when the angles and the strength parameter satisfy the integrability condition. We further specialize to the superintegrable case and verify that a sum rule is obeyed.Comment: 31 pages in harvmac including 9 tables, several misprints eliminate

General scalar products in the arbitrary six-vertex model

In this work we use the algebraic Bethe ansatz to derive the general scalar product in the six-vertex model for generic Boltzmann weights. We performed this calculation using only the unitarity property, the Yang-Baxter algebra and the Yang-Baxter equation. We have derived a recurrence relation for the scalar product. The solution of this relation was written in terms of the domain wall partition functions. By its turn, these partition functions were also obtained for generic Boltzmann weights, which provided us with an explicit expression for the general scalar product.Comment: 24 page

Buoyant Venus Station feasibility study. Volume III - Instrumentation study Final report

Scientific instrumentation for inflatable buoyant Venus statio

Buoyant Venus station feasibility study. Volume IV - Communications and power Final report

Telecommunication and power supply requirements for inflatable buoyant Venus statio