303 research outputs found
Deep retrofit approaches: managing risks to minimise the energy performance gap
Energy use in buildings remains a significant part of overall energy demand. Deep renovation projects, delivered at scale, remain a challenging task to achieve a lower carbon building stock.The complexity of building renovation beyond standards and building specifications is related to inherent characteristics of buildings which require distinct project management techniques. While there are now more projects focusing on achieving operational performance, there is still very little research on the management of the renovation and retrofit process itself.
Recognising that each project working on an existing building is unique in type, timing, energy goals and the roles/characteristics of people involved, the aim of this paper is to add to the current debate of how intervention approaches (one-off or over-time, whole-house, fabric-first room-by-room, measure-by-measure) are promoted by different policies, and with what impact.
The paper discusses the complexity of a deep renovation project in terms of planning and management and the ways current policies can lead to unintended consequences in the short and long term, as well in lock-in effects that contribute to energy performance, and to the gap between designed and actual energy performance.
Using a typology of risks, the issues associated with renovation processes and technologies were explored in a sample of cases studies from deep retrofits across the EU. The evidence from these shows that despite holistic planning for renovation, interventions tend to be carried out in phases. These contrasting time dimensions and the different retrofit approaches are discussed with risk profiles for each retrofit project, suggesting how risks emerge throughout a project. A series of risk mitigation strategies are suggested which, taken in combination to suit a specific projectâs risk profile, may serve to reduce and potentially eliminate the building renovation energy performance gap
Irreversible quantum graphs
Irreversibility is introduced to quantum graphs by coupling the graphs to a
bath of harmonic oscillators. The interaction which is linear in the harmonic
oscillator amplitudes is localized at the vertices. It is shown that for
sufficiently strong coupling, the spectrum of the system admits a new continuum
mode which exists even if the graph is compact, and a {\it single} harmonic
oscillator is coupled to it. This mechanism is shown to imply that the quantum
dynamics is irreversible. Moreover, it demonstrates the surprising result that
irreversibility can be introduced by a "bath" which consists of a {\it single}
harmonic oscillator
The dynamics of the 3D radial NLS with the combined terms
In this paper, we show the scattering and blow-up result of the radial
solution with the energy below the threshold for the nonlinear Schr\"{o}dinger
equation (NLS) with the combined terms iu_t + \Delta u = -|u|^4u + |u|^2u
\tag{CNLS} in the energy space . The threshold is given by the
ground state for the energy-critical NLS: . This
problem was proposed by Tao, Visan and Zhang in \cite{TaoVZ:NLS:combined}. The
main difficulty is the lack of the scaling invariance. Illuminated by
\cite{IbrMN:f:NLKG}, we need give the new radial profile decomposition with the
scaling parameter, then apply it into the scattering theory. Our result shows
that the defocusing, -subcritical perturbation does not
affect the determination of the threshold of the scattering solution of (CNLS)
in the energy space.Comment: 46page
Zeta function regularization in Casimir effect calculations and J.S. Dowker's contribution
A summary of relevant contributions, ordered in time, to the subject of
operator zeta functions and their application to physical issues is provided.
The description ends with the seminal contributions of Stephen Hawking and
Stuart Dowker and collaborators, considered by many authors as the actual
starting point of the introduction of zeta function regularization methods in
theoretical physics, in particular, for quantum vacuum fluctuation and Casimir
effect calculations. After recalling a number of the strengths of this powerful
and elegant method, some of its limitations are discussed. Finally, recent
results of the so called operator regularization procedure are presented.Comment: 16 pages, dedicated to J.S. Dowker, version to appear in
International Journal of Modern Physics
Asymptotic behavior of small solutions for the discrete nonlinear Schr\"odinger and Klein-Gordon equations
We show decay estimates for the propagator of the discrete Schr\"odinger and
Klein-Gordon equations in the form \norm{U(t)f}{l^\infty}\leq C
(1+|t|)^{-d/3}\norm{f}{l^1}. This implies a corresponding (restricted) set of
Strichartz estimates. Applications of the latter include the existence of
excitation thresholds for certain regimes of the parameters and the decay of
small initial data for relevant norms. The analytical decay estimates are
corroborated with numerical results.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figure
CMV matrices in random matrix theory and integrable systems: a survey
We present a survey of recent results concerning a remarkable class of
unitary matrices, the CMV matrices. We are particularly interested in the role
they play in the theory of random matrices and integrable systems. Throughout
the paper we also emphasize the analogies and connections to Jacobi matrices.Comment: Based on a talk given at the Short Program on Random Matrices, Random
Processes and Integrable Systems, CRM, Universite de Montreal, 200
Adaptive single-shot phase measurements: The full quantum theory
The phase of a single-mode field can be measured in a single-shot measurement
by interfering the field with an effectively classical local oscillator of
known phase. The standard technique is to have the local oscillator detuned
from the system (heterodyne detection) so that it is sometimes in phase and
sometimes in quadrature with the system over the course of the measurement.
This enables both quadratures of the system to be measured, from which the
phase can be estimated. One of us [H.M. Wiseman, Phys. Rev. Lett. 75, 4587
(1995)] has shown recently that it is possible to make a much better estimate
of the phase by using an adaptive technique in which a resonant local
oscillator has its phase adjusted by a feedback loop during the single-shot
measurement. In Ref.~[H.M. Wiseman and R.B. Killip, Phys. Rev. A 56, 944] we
presented a semiclassical analysis of a particular adaptive scheme, which
yielded asymptotic results for the phase variance of strong fields. In this
paper we present an exact quantum mechanical treatment. This is necessary for
calculating the phase variance for fields with small photon numbers, and also
for considering figures of merit other than the phase variance. Our results
show that an adaptive scheme is always superior to heterodyne detection as far
as the variance is concerned. However the tails of the probability distribution
are surprisingly high for this adaptive measurement, so that it does not always
result in a smaller probability of error in phase-based optical communication.Comment: 17 pages, LaTeX, 8 figures (concatenated), Submitted to Phys. Rev.
Linear Statistics of Point Processes via Orthogonal Polynomials
For arbitrary , we use the orthogonal polynomials techniques
developed by R. Killip and I. Nenciu to study certain linear statistics
associated with the circular and Jacobi ensembles. We identify the
distribution of these statistics then prove a joint central limit theorem. In
the circular case, similar statements have been proved using different methods
by a number of authors. In the Jacobi case these results are new.Comment: Added references, corrected typos. To appear, J. Stat. Phy
Local and Global Well-Posedness for Aggregation Equations and Patlak-Keller-Segel Models with Degenerate Diffusion
Recently, there has been a wide interest in the study of aggregation
equations and Patlak-Keller-Segel (PKS) models for chemotaxis with degenerate
diffusion. The focus of this paper is the unification and generalization of the
well-posedness theory of these models. We prove local well-posedness on bounded
domains for dimensions and in all of space for , the
uniqueness being a result previously not known for PKS with degenerate
diffusion. We generalize the notion of criticality for PKS and show that
subcritical problems are globally well-posed. For a fairly general class of
problems, we prove the existence of a critical mass which sharply divides the
possibility of finite time blow up and global existence. Moreover, we compute
the critical mass for fully general problems and show that solutions with
smaller mass exists globally. For a class of supercritical problems we prove
finite time blow up is possible for initial data of arbitrary mass.Comment: 31 page
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