1,416 research outputs found
Monte Carlo Simulations with Indefinite and Complex-Valued Measures
A method is presented to tackle the sign problem in the simulations of
systems having indefinite or complex-valued measures. In general, this new
approach is shown to yield statistical errors smaller than the crude Monte
Carlo using absolute values of the original measures. Exactly solvable,
one-dimensional Ising models with complex temperature and complex activity
illustrate the considerable improvements and the workability of the new method
even when the crude one fails.Comment: 10 A4 pages, postscript (140K), UM-P-93-7
Stable isotope evidence of meat eating and hunting specialization in adult male chimpanzees
Observations of hunting and meat eating in our closest living relatives, chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), suggest that among primates, regular inclusion of meat in the diet is not a characteristic unique to Homo. Wild chimpanzees are known to consume vertebrate meat, but its actual dietary contribution is, depending on the study population, often either unknown or minimal. Constraints on continual direct observation throughout the entire hunting season mean that behavioral observations are limited in their ability to accurately quantify meat consumption. Here we present direct stable isotope evidence supporting behavioral observations of frequent meat eating among wild adult male chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus) in Taï National Park, Côte d’Ivoire. Meat eating among some of the male chimpanzees is significant enough to result in a marked isotope signal detectable on a short-term basis in their hair keratin and long-term in their bone collagen. Although both adult males and females and juveniles derive their dietary protein largely from daily fruit and seasonal nut consumption, our data indicate that some adult males also derive a large amount of dietary protein from hunted meat. Our results reinforce behavioral observations of male-dominated hunting and meat eating in adult Taï chimpanzees, suggesting that sex differences in food acquisition and consumption may have persisted throughout hominin evolution, rather than being a recent development in the human lineage
Measuring scattering distributions in scanning helium microscopy
A scanning helium microscope typically utilises a thermal energy helium atom
beam, with an energy and wavelength (<100 meV, ~0.05 nm) particularly sensitive
to surface structure. An angular detector stage for a scanning helium
microscope is presented that facilitates the in-situ measurement of scattering
distributions from a sample. We begin by demonstrating typical elastic and
inelastic scattering from ordered surfaces. We then go on to show the role of
topography in diffuse scattering from disordered surfaces, observing deviations
from simple cosine scattering. In total, these studies demonstrate the wealth
of information that is encoded into the scattering distributions obtained with
the technique.Comment: 10 pages, 9 figure
Adaptive Sampling Approach to the Negative Sign Problem in the Auxiliary Field Quantum Monte Carlo Method
We propose a new sampling method to calculate the ground state of interacting
quantum systems. This method, which we call the adaptive sampling quantum monte
carlo (ASQMC) method utilises information from the high temperature density
matrix derived from the monte carlo steps. With the ASQMC method, the negative
sign ratio is greatly reduced and it becomes zero in the limit
goes to zero even without imposing any constraint such like the constraint path
(CP) condition. Comparisons with numerical results obtained by using other
methods are made and we find the ASQMC method gives accurate results over wide
regions of physical parameters values.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figure
A Constrained Path Quantum Monte Carlo Method for Fermion Ground States
We propose a new quantum Monte Carlo algorithm to compute fermion
ground-state properties. The ground state is projected from an initial
wavefunction by a branching random walk in an over-complete basis space of
Slater determinants. By constraining the determinants according to a trial
wavefunction , we remove the exponential decay of
signal-to-noise ratio characteristic of the sign problem. The method is
variational and is exact if is exact. We report results on the
two-dimensional Hubbard model up to size , for various electron
fillings and interaction strengths.Comment: uuencoded compressed postscript file. 5 pages with 1 figure. accepted
by PRL
Roundoff-induced Coalescence of Chaotic Trajectories
Numerical experiments recently discussed in the literature show that
identical nonlinear chaotic systems linked by a common noise term (or signal)
may synchronize after a finite time. We study the process of synchronization as
function of precision of calculations. Two generic behaviors of the average
coalescence time are identified: exponential or linear. In both cases no
synchronization occurs if iterations are done with {\em infinite} precision.Comment: 6 pages, 3 postscript figures, to be published in Phys. Rev.
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