When do weak-coupling approaches accurately capture the dynamics of complex quantum systems?

Understanding the dynamics of higher-dimensional quantum systems embedded in a complex environment remains a significant theoretical challenge. While several approaches yielding numerically converged solutions exist, these are computationally expensive and often provide only limited physical insight. Here we address the question when more intuitive and simpler to compute weak-coupling approaches still provide adequate accuracy. We develop a simple analytical criterion and verify its validity for the case of the much-studied FMO dynamics as well as the canonical spin-boson model.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures, comments are very welcome

An Evaluation Model for a Children\u27s Shelter

Millions of children spend time each year in children’s shelters, residential treatment centers, and other noncorrectional placements (Pelton, 1989). There is no record in the literature of a client satisfaction questionnaire measuring satisfaction of children in a shelter or treatment center with program components. This thesis is a proposal for an evaluation for a children’s shelter in Minneapolis called Booth Brown House. The proposal includes a specially designed questionnaire. The research in all stages of the evaluation process. The thesis also includes a discussion of the relative advantages and disadvantages of an oral interview format. The proposal also describes articles which identify qualities of children’s treatment centers that are associated with emotional and behavioral improvement of residents during and after treatment

Chapter Introduction

This chapter outlines the historical and historiographical inaccuracy of privileging definitions of martyrdom that center on death, and situates this argument within the current scholarly conversation. It establishes both the academic consensus that “real” martyrdom requires death and the record of living martyrs in Christian history that proves that consensus wrong: indeed, living martyrs persist as real objects of spiritual devotion and emulation across the span of Christian history, not just in late antiquity. I introduce the main players in the book (Prudentius [c. 348-413], Paulinus of Nola [353-431], and Augustine [354-430]), summarize the subsequent chapters, explicate my methodology (close readings informed by literary-historical context; a heuristic of tripartite witness; multiple means of assessing potential reception), and discuss various objections—including the existence of the category of confessors and the habits of mind and scholarship that have resulted in our failure to recognize living martyrs as martyrs, plain and simple

Quantum dynamics in a tiered non-Markovian environment

We introduce a new analytical method for studying the open quantum systems problem of a discrete system weakly coupled to an environment of harmonic oscillators. Our approach is based on a phase space representation of the density matrix for a system coupled to a two-tiered environment. The dynamics of the system and its immediate environment are resolved in a non-Markovian way, and the environmental modes of the inner environment can themselves be damped by a wider `universe'. Applying our approach to the canonical cases of the Rabi and spin-boson models we obtain new analytical expressions for an effective thermalisation temperature and corrections to the environmental response functions as direct consequences of considering such a tiered environment. A comparison with exact numerical simulations confirms that our approximate expressions are remarkably accurate, while their analytic nature offers the prospect of deeper understanding of the physics which they describe. A unique advantage of our method is that it permits the simultaneous inclusion of a continuous bath as well as discrete environmental modes, leading to wide and versatile applicability.Comment: Video abstract available at http://iopscience.iop.org/1367-2630/17/2/023063. 15 pages, 6 figure