Spectroscopy of drums and quantum billiards: perturbative and non-perturbative results

We develop powerful numerical and analytical techniques for the solution of the Helmholtz equation on general domains. We prove two theorems: the first theorem provides an exact formula for the ground state of an arbirtrary membrane, while the second theorem generalizes this result to any excited state of the membrane. We also develop a systematic perturbative scheme which can be used to study the small deformations of a membrane of circular or square shapes. We discuss several applications, obtaining numerical and analytical results.Comment: 29 pages, 12 figures, 7 tabl

Scoping a public health impact assessment of aquaculture with particular reference to tilapia in the UK

Background. The paper explores shaping public health impact assessment tools for tilapia, a novel emergent aquaculture sector in the UK. This Research Council’s UK Rural Economy and Land Use project embraces technical, public health, and marketing perspectives scoping tools to assess possible impacts of the activity. Globally, aquaculture produced over 65 million tonnes of food in 2008 and will grow significantly requiring apposite global public health impact assessment tools.<p></p> Methods. Quantitative and qualitative methods incorporated data from a tridisciplinary literature. Holistic tools scoped tilapia farming impact assessments. Laboratory-based tilapia production generated data on impacts in UK and Thailand along with 11 UK focus groups involving 90 consumers, 30 interviews and site visits, 9 visits to UK tilapia growers and 2 in The Netherlands.<p></p> Results. The feasibility, challenges, strengths, and weaknesses of creating a tilapia Public Health Impact Assessment are analysed. Occupational and environmental health benefits and risks attached to tilapia production were identified.<p></p> Conclusions. Scoping public health impacts of tilapia production is possible at different levels and forms for producers, retailers, consumers, civil society and governmental bodies that may contribute to complex and interrelated public health assessments of aquaculture projects. Our assessment framework constitutes an innovatory perspective in the field

Zitterbewegung of optical pulses in nonlinear frequency conversion

Pulse walk-off in the process of sum frequency generation in a nonlinear $\chi^{(2)}$ crystal is shown to be responsible for pulse jittering which is reminiscent to the Zitterbewegung (trembling motion) of a relativistic freely moving Dirac particle. An analytical expression for the pulse center of mass trajectory is derived in the no-pump-depletion limit, and numerical examples of Zitterbewegung are presented for sum frequency generation in periodically-poled lithium niobate. The proposed quantum-optical analogy indicates that frequency conversion in nonlinear optics could provide an experimentally accessible simulator of the Dirac equation.Comment: to be published in Journal of Physics B: Atomic, Molecular & Optical Physic

Model-Independent Semileptonic Form Factors Using Dispersion Relations

We present a method for parametrizing heavy meson semileptonic form factors using dispersion relations, and from it produce a two-parameter description of the B -> B elastic form factor. We use heavy quark symmetry to relate this function to B -> D* l nu form factors, and extract |V_cb|=0.0355^{+0.0029}_{-0.0025} from experimental data with a least squares fit. Our method eliminates model-dependent uncertainties inherent in choosing a parametrization for the extrapolation of the differential decay rate to threshold.Comment: uses lanlmac(harvmac) and epsf, 12 pages, 1 eps figure included (Talk by BG at the 6-th International Symposium on Heavy Flavour Physics, Pisa, Italy, 6--10 June, 1995

Plagiarism Pedagogy: Why Teaching Plagiarism Should Be a Fundamental Part of Legal Education

As a practicing lawyer, if you aren’t plagiarizing, you’re committing malpractice. Litigators copy forms and arguments from winning briefs rather than bill their clients for reinventing the wheel. Transactional lawyers copy enforceable agreements to ensure their agreements are enforceable too. Partners routinely present documents prepared by associates (and sometimes even paralegals) as their own work. And judges are the most prolific plagiarists of all, copying briefs, opinions, treatises, and legal and nonlegal scholarship, adopting arguments from lawyers and holdings from other judges as their own and claiming authorship of opinions written primarily by their clerks or the parties to the litigation. Legal writing instruction should include teaching law students how to plagiarize effectively. If practicing lawyers plagiarize, then plagiarism is a skill we should teach our students. At the very least, legal writing professors should explain that plagiarism is an essential part of the practice of law and encourage students to reflect on when and why plagiarism is useful in practice, even though it is prohibited in the academic realm. We owe it to our students to be honest about what the practice of law entails, even if it conflicts with our own academic norms. After all, academic plagiarism norms are just a means to the end of managing the academic gift economy. We should not elevate the interests of our guild over the interests of our students, who plan to join a different one

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

Time-domain modelling of Extreme-Mass-Ratio Inspirals for the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna

When a stellar-mass compact object is captured by a supermassive black hole located in a galactic centre, the system losses energy and angular momentum by the emission of gravitational waves. Subsequently, the stellar compact object evolves inspiraling until plunging onto the massive black hole. These EMRI systems are expected to be one of the main sources of gravitational waves for the future space-based Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA). However, the detection of EMRI signals will require of very accurate theoretical templates taking into account the gravitational self-force, which is the responsible of the stellar-compact object inspiral. Due to its potential applicability on EMRIs, the obtention of an efficient method to compute the scalar self-force acting on a point-like particle orbiting around a massive black hole is being object of increasing interest. We present here a review of our time-domain numerical technique to compute the self-force acting on a point-like particle and we show its suitability to deal with both circular and eccentric orbits.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, JPCS latex style. Submitted to JPCS (special issue for the proceedings of the Spanish Relativity Meeting (ERE2010)

Power dependence of pure spin current injection by quantum interference

We investigate the power dependence of pure spin current injection in GaAs bulk and quantum-well samples by a quantum interference and control technique. Spin separation is measured as a function of the relative strength of the two transition pathways driven by two laser pulses. By keeping the relaxation time of the current unchanged, we are able to relate the spin separation to the injected average velocity. We find that the average velocity is determined by the relative strength of the two transitions in the same way as in classical interference. Based on this, we conclude that the density of injected pure spin current increases monotonically with the excitation laser intensities. The experimental results are consistent with theoretical calculations based on Fermi's golden rule.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figure

Self-aligned 0.12mm T-gate In.53Ga.47As/In.52Al.48As HEMT Technology Utilising a Non Annealed Ohmic Contact Strategy

An InGaAs/InAlAs based HEMT structure, lattice matched to an InP substrate, is presented in which drive current and transconductance has been optimized through a double-delta doping strategy. Together with an increase in channel carrier density, this allows the use of a non-annealed ohmic contact process. HEMT devices with 120 nm standard and self-aligned T-gates were fabricated using the non-annealed ohmic process. At DC, self-aligned and standard devices exhibited transconductances of up to 1480 and 1100 mS/mm respectively, while both demonstrated current densities in the range 800 mA/mm. At RF, a cutoff frequency f/sub T/ of 190 GHz was extracted for the self-aligned device. The DC characteristics of the standard devices were then calibrated and modelled using a compound semiconductor Monte Carlo device simulator. MC simulations provide insight into transport within the channel and illustrate benefits over a single delta doped structure

Gradient expansion, curvature perturbations and magnetized plasmas

The properties of magnetized plasmas are always investigated under the hypothesis that the relativistic inhomogeneities stemming from the fluid sources and from the geometry itself are sufficiently small to allow for a perturbative description prior to photon decoupling. The latter assumption is hereby relaxed and pre-decoupling plasmas are described within a suitable expansion where the inhomogeneities are treated to a given order in the spatial gradients. It is argued that the (general relativistic) gradient expansion shares the same features of the drift approximation, customarily employed in the description of cold plasmas, so that the two schemes are physically complementary in the large-scale limit and for the low-frequency branch of the spectrum of plasma modes. The two-fluid description, as well as the magnetohydrodynamical reduction, are derived and studied in the presence of the spatial gradients of the geometry. Various solutions of the coupled system of evolution equations in the anti-Newtonian regime and in the quasi-isotropic approximation are presented. The relation of this analysis to the so-called separate Universe paradigm is outlined. The evolution of the magnetized curvature perturbations in the nonlinear regime is addressed for the magnetized adiabatic mode in the plasma frame.Comment: 40 pages, no figure