Pathway to a Compact SASE FEL Device

Newly developed high peak power lasers have opened the possibilities of driving coherent light sources operating with laser plasma accelerated beams and wave undulators. We speculate on the combination of these two concepts and show that the merging of the underlying technologies could lead to new and interesting possibilities to achieve truly compact, coherent radiator devices

Mapping the Schrodinger picture of open quantum dynamics

For systems described by finite matrices, an affine form is developed for the maps that describe evolution of density matrices for a quantum system that interacts with another. This is established directly from the Heisenberg picture. It separates elements that depend only on the dynamics from those that depend on the state of the two systems. While the equivalent linear map is generally not completely positive, the homogeneous part of the affine maps is, and is shown to be composed of multiplication operations that come simply from the Hamiltonian for the larger system. The inhomogeneous part is shown to be zero if and only if the map does not increase the trace of the square of any density matrix. Properties are worked out in detail for two-qubit examples.Comment: 10 pages, 3 Figures, Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.

Alternative Fourier Expansions for Inverse Square Law Forces

Few-body problems involving Coulomb or gravitational interactions between pairs of particles, whether in classical or quantum physics, are generally handled through a standard multipole expansion of the two-body potentials. We discuss an alternative based on a compact, cylindrical Green's function expansion that should have wide applicability throughout physics. Two-electron "direct" and "exchange" integrals in many-electron quantum systems are evaluated to illustrate the procedure which is more compact than the standard one using Wigner coefficients and Slater integrals.Comment: 10 pages, latex/Revtex4, 1 figure

Calculation of quantum discord for qubit-qudit or N qubits

Quantum discord, a kind of quantum correlation, is defined as the difference between quantum mutual information and classical correlation in a bipartite system. It has been discussed so far for small systems with only a few independent parameters. We extend here to a much broader class of states when the second party is of arbitrary dimension d, so long as the first, measured, party is a qubit. We present two formulae to calculate quantum discord, the first relating to the original entropic definition and the second to a recently proposed geometric distance measure which leads to an analytical formulation. The tracing over the qubit in the entropic calculation is reduced to a very simple prescription. And, when the d-dimensional system is a so-called X state, the density matrix having non-zero elements only along the diagonal and anti-diagonal so as to appear visually like the letter X, the entropic calculation can be carried out analytically. Such states of the full bipartite qubit-qudit system may be named "extended X states", whose density matrix is built of four block matrices, each visually appearing as an X. The optimization involved in the entropic calculation is generally over two parameters, reducing to one for many cases, and avoided altogether for an overwhelmingly large set of density matrices as our numerical investigations demonstrate. Our results also apply to states of a N-qubit system, where "extended X states" consist of (2^(N+2) - 1) states, larger in number than the (2^(N+1) - 1) of X states of N qubits. While these are still smaller than the total number (2^(2N) - 1) of states of N qubits, the number of parameters involved is nevertheless large. In the case of N = 2, they encompass the entire 15-dimensional parameter space, that is, the extended X states for N = 2 represent the full qubit-qubit system.Comment: 6 pages, 1 figur

Nonequilibrium perturbation theory for spin-1/2 fields

A partial resummation of perturbation theory is described for field theories containing spin-1/2 particles in states that may be far from thermal equilibrium. This allows the nonequilibrium state to be characterized in terms of quasiparticles that approximate its true elementary excitations. In particular, the quasiparticles have dispersion relations that differ from those of free particles, finite thermal widths and occupation numbers which, in contrast to those of standard perturbation theory evolve with the changing nonequilibrium environment. A description of this kind is essential for estimating the evolution of the system over extended periods of time. In contrast to the corresponding description of scalar particles, the structure of nonequilibrium fermion propagators exhibits features which have no counterpart in the equilibrium theory.Comment: 16 pages; no figures; submitted to Phys. Rev.

Influence of surfactant on dynamics of photoinduced motions and light emission of a dye-doped deoxyribonucleic

Pure deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is known to be soluble in water only and exhibits poor temperature stability. In contrary, it is well known that the complex of DNA - with cetyltrimethyl ammonium (CTMA) is insoluble in water but soluble in alcohols and can be processed into very good optical quality thin films by solution casting or spin deposition. Despite the success of DNA-CTMA, there is still need for new cationic surfactants which would extend the range of available solvents for DNA complex. We test and present experimental results of influence of new surfactants replacing CTMA in the DNA complex and based on benzalkonium chloride (BA) and didecyldimethylammonium chloride (DDCA) on their optical properties. Particularly, we were interested in all optical switching and light generation in amplified spontaneous emission process in these materials

Electron correlation effects and magnetic ordering at the Gd(0001) surface

Effects of electron correlation on the electronic structure and magnetic properties of the Gd(0001) surface are investigated using of the full-potential linearized augmented plane wave implementation of correlated band theory ("LDA+U"). The use of LDA+U instead of LDA (local density approximation) total energy calculations produces the correct ferromagnetic ground state for both bulk Gd and the Gd surface. Surface strain relaxation leads to an 90 % enhancement of the interlayer surface-to-bulk effective exchange coupling. Application of a Landau-Ginzburg type theory yields a 30 % enhancement of the Curie temperature at the surface, in very good agreement with the experiment.Comment: revised version: minor typos correcte

Efficacy of different types of cognitive enhancers for patients with schizophrenia. A meta-analysis

Cognitive impairment is a core feature of schizophrenia, which is predictive for functional outcomes and is, therefore, a treatment target in itself. Yet, literature on efficacy of different pharmaco-therapeutic options is inconsistent. This quantitative review provides an overview of studies that investigated potential cognitive enhancers in schizophrenia. We included pharmacological agents, which target different neurotransmitter systems and evaluated their efficacy on overall cognitive functioning and seven separate cognitive domains. In total, 93 studies with 5630 patients were included. Cognitive enhancers, when combined across all different neurotransmitter systems, which act on a large number of different mechanisms, showed a significant (yet small) positive effect size of 0.10 (k = 51, p = 0.023; 95% CI = 0.01 to 0.18) on overall cognition. Cognitive enhancers were not superior to placebo for separate cognitive domains. When analyzing each neurotransmitter system separately, agents acting predominantly on the glutamatergic system showed a small significant effect on overall cognition (k = 29, Hedges’ g = 0.19, p = 0.01), as well as on working memory (k = 20, Hedges’ g = 0.13, p = 0.04). A sub-analysis of cholinesterase inhibitors (ChEI) showed a small effect on working memory (k = 6, Hedges’ g = 0.26, p = 0.03). Other sub-analyses were positively nonsignificant, which may partly be due to the low number of studies we could include per neurotransmitter system. Overall, this meta-analysis showed few favorable effects of cognitive enhancers for patients with schizophrenia, partly due to lack of power. There is a lack of studies involving agents acting on other than glutamatergic and cholinergic systems, especially of those targeting the dopaminergic system