The AFGL absolute gravity program

A brief discussion of the AFGL's (Air Force Geophysics Laboratory) program in absolute gravity is presented. Support of outside work and in-house studies relating to gravity instrumentation are discussed. A description of the current transportable system is included and the latest results are presented. These results show good agreement with measurements at the AFGL site by an Italian system. The accuracy obtained by the transportable apparatus is better than 0.1 microns sq sec 10 microgal and agreement with previous measurements is within the combined uncertainties of the measurements

Generation and measurement of nonstationary random processes technical note no. 3

Generation and measurement of nonstationary stochastic processes related to Monte Carlo studies with analog compute

Superconducting niobium thin film slow-wave structures

A superconducting comb structure as a slow-wave element in a traveling-wave maser will significantly improve maser noise temperature and gain by reducing the insertion loss. The results of the insertion loss measurements of superconducting niobium slow-wave structures subjected to maser operating conditions at X-Band frequencies are presented

Effects of a torsion field on Big Bang nucleosynthesis

In this paper it is investigated whether torsion, which arises naturally in most theories of quantum gravity, has observable implications for the Big Bang nucleosynthesis. Torsion can lead to spin flips amongst neutrinos thus turning them into sterile neutrinos. In the early Universe they can alter the helium abundance which is tightly constrained by observations. Here I calculate to what extent torsion of the string theory type leads to a disagreement with the Big Bang nucleosynthesis predictions.Comment: accepted by General Relativity and Gravitatio

Pressure-induced diamond to beta-tin transition in bulk silicon: a near-exact quantum Monte Carlo study

The pressure-induced structural phase transition from diamond to beta-tin in silicon is an excellent test for theoretical total energy methods. The transition pressure provides a sensitive measure of small relative energy changes between the two phases (one a semiconductor and the other a semimetal). Experimentally, the transition pressure is well characterized. Density-functional results have been unsatisfactory. Even the generally much more accurate diffusion Monte Carlo method has shown a noticeable fixed-node error. We use the recently developed phaseless auxiliary-field quantum Monte Carlo (AFQMC) method to calculate the relative energy differences in the two phases. In this method, all but the error due to the phaseless constraint can be controlled systematically and driven to zero. In both structural phases we were able to benchmark the error of the phaseless constraint by carrying out exact unconstrained AFQMC calculations for small supercells. Comparison between the two shows that the systematic error in the absolute total energies due to the phaseless constraint is well within 0.5 mHa/atom. Consistent with these internal benchmarks, the transition pressure obtained by the phaseless AFQMC from large supercells is in very good agreement with experiment.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figure

Two-dimensional molecular para-hydrogen and ortho-deuterium at zero temperature

We study molecular para-hydrogen (p-${\rm H_{2}}$) and ortho-deuterium (o-${\rm D_{2}}$) in two dimensions and in the limit of zero temperature by means of the diffusion Monte Carlo method. We report energetic and structural properties of both systems like the total and kinetic energy per particle, radial pair distribution function, and Lindemann's ratio in the low pressure regime. By comparing the total energy per particle as a function of the density in liquid and solid p-${\rm H_{2}}$, we show that molecular para-hydrogen, and also ortho-deuterium, remain solid at zero temperature. Interestingly, we assess the quality of three different symmetrized trial wave functions, based on the Nosanow-Jastrow model, in the p-${\rm H_{2}}$ solid film at the variational level. In particular, we analyze a new type of symmetrized trial wave function which has been used very recently to describe solid $^{4}$He and found that also characterizes hydrogen satisfactorily. With this wave function, we show that the one-body density matrix $\varrho_{1} (r)$ of solid p-${\rm H_{2}}$ possesses off-diagonal long range order, with a condensate fraction that increases sizably in the negative pressure regime.Comment: 11 pages, 9 figure

Dilute Bose gases interacting via power-law potentials

Neutral atoms interact through a van der Waals potential which asymptotically falls off as r^{-6}. In ultracold gases, this interaction can be described to a good approximation by the atom-atom scattering length. However, corrections arise that depend on the characteristic length of the van der Waals potential. We parameterize these corrections by analyzing the energies of two- and few-atom systems under external harmonic confinement, obtained by numerically and analytically solving the Schrodinger equation. We generalize our results to particles interacting through a longer-ranged potential which asymptotically falls off as r^{-4}.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figure

The Development of the Head of the Imago of Chironomus

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Diffusion Quantum Monte Carlo Calculations of Excited States of Silicon

The band structure of silicon is calculated at the Gamma, X, and L wave vectors using diffusion quantum Monte Carlo methods. Excited states are formed by promoting an electron from the valence band into the conduction band. We obtain good agreement with experiment for states around the gap region and demonstrate that the method works equally well for direct and indirect excitations, and that one can calculate many excited states at each wave vector. This work establishes the fixed-node DMC approach as an accurate method for calculating the energies of low lying excitations in solids.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figur