Quantum statistical correlations in thermal field theories: boundary effective theory

We show that the one-loop effective action at finite temperature for a scalar field with quartic interaction has the same renormalized expression as at zero temperature if written in terms of a certain classical field $\phi_c$, and if we trade free propagators at zero temperature for their finite-temperature counterparts. The result follows if we write the partition function as an integral over field eigenstates (boundary fields) of the density matrix element in the functional Schr\"{o}dinger field-representation, and perform a semiclassical expansion in two steps: first, we integrate around the saddle-point for fixed boundary fields, which is the classical field $\phi_c$, a functional of the boundary fields; then, we perform a saddle-point integration over the boundary fields, whose correlations characterize the thermal properties of the system. This procedure provides a dimensionally-reduced effective theory for the thermal system. We calculate the two-point correlation as an example.Comment: 13 pages, 1 figur

Asteroseismological study of massive ZZ Ceti stars with fully evolutionary models

We present the first asteroseismological study for 42 massive ZZ Ceti stars based on a large set of fully evolutionary carbon$-$oxygen core DA white dwarf models characterized by a detailed and consistent chemical inner profile for the core and the envelope. Our sample comprise all the ZZ Ceti stars with spectroscopic stellar masses between 0.72 and $1.05M_{\odot}$ known to date. The asteroseismological analysis of a set of 42 stars gives the possibility to study the ensemble properties of the massive pulsating white dwarf stars with carbon$-$oxygen cores, in particular the thickness of the hydrogen envelope and the stellar mass. A significant fraction of stars in our sample have stellar mass high enough as to crystallize at the effective temperatures of the ZZ Ceti instability strip, which enables us to study the effects of crystallization on the pulsation properties of these stars. Our results show that the phase diagram presented in Horowitz et al. (2010) seems to be a good representation of the crystallization process inside white dwarf stars, in agreement with the results from white dwarf luminosity function in globular clusters.Comment: 58 pages, 11 figures, accepted in Ap

Audience Emotion & Experience as a Source for the Development of New Marketing Strategies for Concert Dance

Traditional concert dance marketing strategies tend to rely exclusively on the use of abstracted body language to transmit meaning from digital and stage presentations to the eyes of viewers. These images can be highly attractive to dance audience and fellow artists who follow and relate to this genre of performance, but are typically beyond the reach and interest of most non-dance spectators. This research investigates how the study of sports and music marketing strategies, in relation to how they connect to their respective audiences, may give new insights and directions in how concert dance advertising plans can incorporate more emotional and relatable content to non-dance spectators who do not have the same sensibility and history with abstract physical language. By embracing more well-rounded and balanced approaches to promotion such as those currently being put forth by the sport and music sectors, the concert dance industry can help infuse their dance marketing efforts with a fresh jolt of personal engagement, encouraging the general public to see concert dance as a viable form of entertainment and art that can have relevance and value to their lives

Uniform semiclassical approximation in quantum statistical mechanics

We present a simple method to deal with caustics in the semiclassical approximation to the partition function of a one-dimensional quantum system. The procedure, which makes use of complex trajectories, is applied to the quartic double-well potential.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure, Latex. Contribution to the Proceedings of the XXI Brazilian National Meeting on Particles and Fields (Sao Lourenco, October 23-27, 2000

Information Technology, Regime Stability and Democratic Meaningfulness: A Normative Evaluation of Present and Potential Trends

This inquiry explores the normative impact that the rise of Information Technology is having on society as viewed through the lenses of Social Choice and Democratic Theory. Information technology has drastically increased the amount of available information by increasing information about users, the flow of information to users and the flow of information between users through digital connectivity. This has resulted in a socially fragmenting “long tail” of media, a subversion of top-down institutions and has made for easier identification and mobilization of small and geographically dispersed groups. As understood through the Social Choice construct of multidimensionality, these trends have had both positive and negative normative implications for regime stability and democratic meaningfulness. The two negative normative effects of the rise of Information Technology are Rikerian meaninglessness and connectivity-driven regime instability. However, since these negative effects can be qualified or compensated for by the two positive impacts of democratic meaningfulness and stability-inducing pluralistic disequilibrium, this examination concludes that information technology has a positive net normative impact on society. If this is to continue to be the case, users and policy makers must be mindful of issues that could affect this balance, such as the digital divide and issues of diminishing digital privacy

An LP-Based Approach for Goal Recognition as Planning

Goal recognition aims to recognize the set of candidate goals that are compatible with the observed behavior of an agent. In this paper, we develop a method based on the operator-counting framework that efficiently computes solutions that satisfy the observations and uses the information generated to solve goal recognition tasks. Our method reasons explicitly about both partial and noisy observations: estimating uncertainty for the former, and satisfying observations given the unreliability of the sensor for the latter. We evaluate our approach empirically over a large data set, analyzing its components on how each can impact the quality of the solutions. In general, our approach is superior to previous methods in terms of agreement ratio, accuracy, and spread. Finally, our approach paves the way for new research on combinatorial optimization to solve goal recognition tasks.Comment: 8 pages, 4 tables, 3 figures. Published in AAAI 2021. Updated final authorship and tex