Toward a Formalism for Conservative Claims about the Dependability of Software-Based Systems

In recent work, we have argued for a formal treatment of confidence about the claims made in dependability cases for software-based systems. The key idea underlying this work is "the inevitability of uncertainty": It is rarely possible to assert that a claim about safety or reliability is true with certainty. Much of this uncertainty is epistemic in nature, so it seems inevitable that expert judgment will continue to play an important role in dependability cases. Here, we consider a simple case where an expert makes a claim about the probability of failure on demand (pfd) of a subsystem of a wider system and is able to express his confidence about that claim probabilistically. An important, but difficult, problem then is how such subsystem (claim, confidence) pairs can be propagated through a dependability case for a wider system, of which the subsystems are components. An informal way forward is to justify, at high confidence, a strong claim, and then, conservatively, only claim something much weaker: "I'm 99 percent confident that the pfd is less than 10-5, so it's reasonable to be 100 percent confident that it is less than 10-3." These conservative pfds of subsystems can then be propagated simply through the dependability case of the wider system. In this paper, we provide formal support for such reasoning

Continuum coupled cluster expansion

We review the basics of the coupled-cluster expansion formalism for numerical solutions of the many-body problem, and we outline the principles of an approach directed towards an adequate inclusion of continuum effects in the associated single-energy spectrum. We illustrate our findings by considering the simple case of a single-particle quantum mechanics problem.Comment: 16 pages, 1 figur

Influence of quantum fluctuations on zero-temperature phase transitions between collinear and noncollinear states in frustrated spin systems

We study a square-lattice spin-half Heisenberg model where frustration is introduced by competing nearest-neighbor bonds of different signs. We discuss the influence of quantum fluctuations on the nature of the zero-temperature phase transitions from phases with collinear magnetic order at small frustration to phases with noncollinear spiral order at large frustration. We use the coupled cluster method (CCM) for high orders of approximation (up to LSUB6) and the exact diagonalization of finite systems (up to 32 sites) to calculate ground-state properties. The role of quantum fluctuations is examined by comparing the ferromagnetic-spiral and the antiferromagnetic-spiral transition within the same model. We find clear evidence that quantum fluctuations prefer collinear order and that they may favour a first order transition instead of a second order transition in case of no quantum fluctuations.Comment: 6 pages, 6 Postscipt figures; Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.

Literature Survey of Radiochemical Cross-section Data Below 425 Mev

Literature survey of radiochemical cross sections below 425 Me

General relativistic null-cone evolutions with a high-order scheme

We present a high-order scheme for solving the full non-linear Einstein equations on characteristic null hypersurfaces using the framework established by Bondi and Sachs. This formalism allows asymptotically flat spaces to be represented on a finite, compactified grid, and is thus ideal for far-field studies of gravitational radiation. We have designed an algorithm based on 4th-order radial integration and finite differencing, and a spectral representation of angular components. The scheme can offer significantly more accuracy with relatively low computational cost compared to previous methods as a result of the higher-order discretization. Based on a newly implemented code, we show that the new numerical scheme remains stable and is convergent at the expected order of accuracy.Comment: 24 pages, 3 figure

High-Order Coupled Cluster Method Calculations for the Ground- and Excited-State Properties of the Spin-Half XXZ Model

In this article, we present new results of high-order coupled cluster method (CCM) calculations, based on a N\'eel model state with spins aligned in the $z$-direction, for both the ground- and excited-state properties of the spin-half {\it XXZ} model on the linear chain, the square lattice, and the simple cubic lattice. In particular, the high-order CCM formalism is extended to treat the excited states of lattice quantum spin systems for the first time. Completely new results for the excitation energy gap of the spin-half {\it XXZ} model for these lattices are thus determined. These high-order calculations are based on a localised approximation scheme called the LSUB$m$ scheme in which we retain all $k$-body correlations defined on all possible locales of $m$ adjacent lattice sites ($k \le m$). The ``raw'' CCM LSUB$m$ results are seen to provide very good results for the ground-state energy, sublattice magnetisation, and the value of the lowest-lying excitation energy for each of these systems. However, in order to obtain even better results, two types of extrapolation scheme of the LSUB$m$ results to the limit $m \to \infty$ (i.e., the exact solution in the thermodynamic limit) are presented. The extrapolated results provide extremely accurate results for the ground- and excited-state properties of these systems across a wide range of values of the anisotropy parameter.Comment: 31 Pages, 5 Figure