Promoting a meaningful learning of double integrals through routes of digital tasks

Within a wider project aimed at innovating the teaching of mathematics for freshmen, in this study we describe the design and the implementation of two routes of digital tasks aimed at fostering students’ approach to double integrals. The tasks are built on a formative assessment frame and classical works on problem solving. They provide facilitative and response-specific feedback and the possibility to request differ- ent hints. In this way, students may be guided to the development of well-connected knowledge, operative and decision-making skills. We investigated the effects of the inter- action with the digital tasks on the learning of engineering freshmen, by comparing the behaviours of students who worked with the digital tasks (experimental group, N=19) and students who did not (control group, N=19). We detected that students in the ex- perimental group showed more flexibility of thinking and obtained better results in the final exam than students in the control group. The results confirmed the effectiveness of the experimental educational path and offered us interesting indications for further studies

A multiband envelope function model for quantum transport in a tunneling diode

We present a simple model for electron transport in semiconductor devices that exhibit tunneling between the conduction and valence bands. The model is derived within the usual Bloch-Wannier formalism by a k-expansion, and is formulated in terms of a set of coupled equations for the electron envelope functions. Its connection with other models present in literature is discussed. As an application we consider the case of a Resonant Interband Tunneling Diode, demonstrating the ability of the model to reproduce the expected behaviour of the current as a function of the applied voltageComment: 8 pages, 4 figure

Small BGK waves and nonlinear Landau damping

Consider 1D Vlasov-poisson system with a fixed ion background and periodic condition on the space variable. First, we show that for general homogeneous equilibria, within any small neighborhood in the Sobolev space W^{s,p} (p>1,s<1+(1/p)) of the steady distribution function, there exist nontrivial travelling wave solutions (BGK waves) with arbitrary minimal period and traveling speed. This implies that nonlinear Landau damping is not true in W^{s,p}(s<1+(1/p)) space for any homogeneous equilibria and any spatial period. Indeed, in W^{s,p} (s<1+(1/p)) neighborhood of any homogeneous state, the long time dynamics is very rich, including travelling BGK waves, unstable homogeneous states and their possible invariant manifolds. Second, it is shown that for homogeneous equilibria satisfying Penrose's linear stability condition, there exist no nontrivial travelling BGK waves and unstable homogeneous states in some W^{s,p} (p>1,s>1+(1/p)) neighborhood. Furthermore, when p=2,we prove that there exist no nontrivial invariant structures in the H^{s} (s>(3/2)) neighborhood of stable homogeneous states. These results suggest the long time dynamics in the W^{s,p} (s>1+(1/p)) and particularly, in the H^{s} (s>(3/2)) neighborhoods of a stable homogeneous state might be relatively simple. We also demonstrate that linear damping holds for initial perturbations in very rough spaces, for linearly stable homogeneous state. This suggests that the contrasting dynamics in W^{s,p} spaces with the critical power s=1+(1/p) is a trully nonlinear phenomena which can not be traced back to the linear level

Bounded Generation by semi-simple elements: quantitative results

We prove that for a number field $F$, the distribution of the points of a set $\Sigma \subset \mathbb{A}_F^n$ with a purely exponential parametrization, for example a set of matrices boundedly generated by semi-simple (diagonalizable) elements, is of at most logarithmic size when ordered by height. As a consequence, one obtains that a linear group $\Gamma \subset \mathrm{GL}_n(K)$ over a field $K$ of characteristic zero admits a purely exponential parametrization if and only if it is finitely generated and the connected component of its Zariski closure is a torus. Our results are obtained via a key inequality about the heights of minimal $m$-tuples for purely exponential parametrizations. One main ingredient of our proof is Evertse’s strengthening of the $S$-Unit Equation Theorem