47 research outputs found
The generalized Fenyes-Nelson model for free scalar field theory
The generalized Fenyes--Nelson model of quantum mechanics is applied to the
free scalar field. The resulting Markov field is equivalent to the Euclidean
Markov field with the times scaled by a common factor which depends on the
diffusion parameter. This result is consistent between Guerra's earlier work on
stochastic quantization of scalar fields. It suggests a deep connection between
Euclidean field theory and the stochastic interpretation of quantum mechanics.
The question of Lorentz covariance is also discussed.Comment: 6 page
Classical kinetic energy, quantum fluctuation terms and kinetic-energy functionals
We employ a recently formulated dequantization procedure to obtain an exact
expression for the kinetic energy which is applicable to all kinetic-energy
functionals. We express the kinetic energy of an N-electron system as the sum
of an N-electron classical kinetic energy and an N-electron purely quantum
kinetic energy arising from the quantum fluctuations that turn the classical
momentum into the quantum momentum. This leads to an interesting analogy with
Nelson's stochastic approach to quantum mechanics, which we use to conceptually
clarify the physical nature of part of the kinetic-energy functional in terms
of statistical fluctuations and in direct correspondence with Fisher
Information Theory. We show that the N-electron purely quantum kinetic energy
can be written as the sum of the (one-electron) Weizsacker term and an
(N-1)-electron kinetic correlation term. We further show that the Weizsacker
term results from local fluctuations while the kinetic correlation term results
from the nonlocal fluctuations. For one-electron orbitals (where kinetic
correlation is neglected) we obtain an exact (albeit impractical) expression
for the noninteracting kinetic energy as the sum of the classical kinetic
energy and the Weizsacker term. The classical kinetic energy is seen to be
explicitly dependent on the electron phase and this has implications for the
development of accurate orbital-free kinetic-energy functionals. Also, there is
a direct connection between the classical kinetic energy and the angular
momentum and, across a row of the periodic table, the classical kinetic energy
component of the noninteracting kinetic energy generally increases as Z
increases.Comment: 10 pages, 1 figure. To appear in Theor Chem Ac
Perturbations of Noise: The origins of Isothermal Flows
We make a detailed analysis of both phenomenological and analytic background
for the "Brownian recoil principle" hypothesis (Phys. Rev. A 46, (1992), 4634).
A corresponding theory of the isothermal Brownian motion of particle ensembles
(Smoluchowski diffusion process approximation), gives account of the
environmental recoil effects due to locally induced tiny heat flows. By means
of local expectation values we elevate the individually negligible phenomena to
a non-negligible (accumulated) recoil effect on the ensemble average. The main
technical input is a consequent exploitation of the Hamilton-Jacobi equation as
a natural substitute for the local momentum conservation law. Together with the
continuity equation (alternatively, Fokker-Planck), it forms a closed system of
partial differential equations which uniquely determines an associated
Markovian diffusion process. The third Newton law in the mean is utilised to
generate diffusion-type processes which are either anomalous (enhanced), or
generically non-dispersive.Comment: Latex fil
A systematic genome-wide analysis of zebrafish protein-coding gene function
Since the publication of the human reference genome, the identities of specific genes associated with human diseases are being discovered at a rapid rate. A central problem is that the biological activity of these genes is often unclear. Detailed investigations in model vertebrate organisms, typically mice, have been essential for understanding the activities of many orthologues of these disease-associated genes. Although gene-targeting approaches1, 2, 3 and phenotype analysis have led to a detailed understanding of nearly 6,000 protein-coding genes3, 4, this number falls considerably short of the more than 22,000 mouse protein-coding genes5. Similarly, in zebrafish genetics, one-by-one gene studies using positional cloning6, insertional mutagenesis7, 8, 9, antisense morpholino oligonucleotides10, targeted re-sequencing11, 12, 13, and zinc finger and TAL endonucleases14, 15, 16, 17 have made substantial contributions to our understanding of the biological activity of vertebrate genes, but again the number of genes studied falls well short of the more than 26,000 zebrafish protein-coding genes18. Importantly, for both mice and zebrafish, none of these strategies are particularly suited to the rapid generation of knockouts in thousands of genes and the assessment of their biological activity. Here we describe an active project that aims to identify and phenotype the disruptive mutations in every zebrafish protein-coding gene, using a well-annotated zebrafish reference genome sequence18, 19, high-throughput sequencing and efficient chemical mutagenesis. So far we have identified potentially disruptive mutations in more than 38% of all known zebrafish protein-coding genes. We have developed a multi-allelic phenotyping scheme to efficiently assess the effects of each allele during embryogenesis and have analysed the phenotypic consequences of over 1,000 alleles. All mutant alleles and data are available to the community and our phenotyping scheme is adaptable to phenotypic analysis beyond embryogenesis