Wind power research at Oregon State University

There have been two primary thrusts of the research effort to date, along with several supplementary ones. One primary area has been an investigation of the wind fields along coastal areas of the Pacific Northwest, not only at the shoreline but also for a number of miles inland and offshore as well. Estimates have been made of the influence of the wind turbulence as measured at coastal sites in modifying the predicted dependence of power generated on the cube of the wind speed. Wind flow patterns in the Columbia River valley have also been studied. The second primary thrust has been to substantially modify and improve an existing wind tunnel to permit the build up of a boundary layer in which various model studies will be conducted. One of the secondary studies involved estimating the cost of building an aerogenerator

Dynamic response functions for the Holstein-Hubbard model

We present results on the dynamical correlation functions of the particle-hole symmetric Holstein-Hubbard model at zero temperature, calculated using the dynamical mean field theory which is solved by the numerical renormalization group method. We clarify the competing influences of the electron-electron and electron-phonon interactions particularity at the different metal to insulator transitions. The Coulomb repulsion is found to dominate the behaviour in large parts of the metallic regime. By suppressing charge fluctuations, it effectively decouples electrons from phonons. The phonon propagator shows a characteristic softening near the metal to bipolaronic transition but there is very little softening on the approach to the Mott transition.Comment: 13 pages, 19 figure

Magnetic Field Effects on Quasiparticles in Strongly Correlated Local Systems

We show that quasiparticles in a magnetic field of arbitrary strength $H$ can be described by field dependent parameters. We illustrate this approach in the case of an Anderson impurity model and use the numerical renormalization group (NRG) to calculate the renormalized parameters for the levels with spin $\sigma$, $\tilde\epsilon_{\mathrm{d},\sigma}(H)$, resonance width $\tilde\Delta(H)$ and the effective local quasiparticle interaction $\tilde U(H)$. In the Kondo or strong correlation limit of the model the progressive de-renormalization of the quasiparticles can be followed as the magnetic field is increased. The low temperature behaviour, including the conductivity, in arbitrary magnetic field can be calculated in terms of the field dependent parameters using the renormalized perturbation expansion. Using the NRG the field dependence of the spectral density on higher scales is also calculated.Comment: 15 pages, 17 figure

La enseñanza de "Fuerza y Movimiento" como cambio conceptual

Research has shown that many students hold alternative conceptions about motion and the factors which influence it and that an important component of these conceptions are epistemological commitments, one example of which is a cause-effect relationship. The article describes a series of microcomputer programs designed to facilitate conceptual change from an impetus-type view to a Newtonian view. A significant feature of these programs is the explicit focus given to the nature of the relationship between cause and effect and its role in the conceptual change process

First- and Second Order Phase Transitions in the Holstein-Hubbard Model

We investigate metal-insulator transitions in the Holstein-Hubbard model as a function of the on-site electron-electron interaction U and the electron-phonon coupling g. We use several different numerical methods to calculate the phase diagram, the results of which are in excellent agreement. When the electron-electron interaction U is dominant the transition is to a Mott-insulator; when the electron-phonon interaction dominates, the transition is to a localised bipolaronic state. In the former case, the transition is always found to be second order. This is in contrast to the transition to the bipolaronic state, which is clearly first order for larger values of U. We also present results for the quasiparticle weight and the double-occupancy as function of U and g.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figure

Phase diagram and dynamic response functions of the Holstein-Hubbard model

We present the phase diagram and dynamical correlation functions for the Holstein-Hubbard model at half filling and at zero temperature. The calculations are based on the Dynamical Mean Field Theory. The effective impurity model is solved using Exact Diagonalization and the Numerical Renormalization Group. Excluding long-range order, we find three different paramagnetic phases, metallic, bipolaronic and Mott insulating, depending on the Hubbard interaction U and the electron-phonon coupling g. We present the behaviour of the one-electron spectral functions and phonon spectra close to the metal insulator transitions.Comment: contribution to the SCES04 conferenc

Enhanced Conductance Through Side-Coupled Double Quantum Dots

Conductance, on-site and inter-site charge fluctuations and spin correlations in the system of two side-coupled quantum dots are calculated using the Wilson's numerical renormalization group (NRG) technique. We also show spectral density calculated using the density-matrix NRG, which for some parameter ranges remedies inconsistencies of the conventional approach. By changing the gate voltage and the inter-dot tunneling rate, the system can be tuned to a non-conducting spin-singlet state, the usual Kondo regime with odd number of electrons occupying the dots, the two-stage Kondo regime with two electrons, or a valence-fluctuating state associated with a Fano resonance. Analytical expressions for the width of the Kondo regime and the Kondo temperature are given. We also study the effect of unequal gate voltages and the stability of the two-stage Kondo effect with respect to such perturbations.Comment: 11 pages, 12 figure

Comment on "Fano Resonance for Anderson Impurity Systems"

In a recent Letter, Luo et al. (Phys. Rev. Lett. 92, 256602 (2004)) analyze the Fano line shapes obtained from scanning tunneling spectroscopy (STS) of transition metal impurities on a simple metal surface, in particular of the Ti/Au(111) and Ti/Ag(100) systems. As the key point of their analysis, they claim that there is not only a Fano interference effect between the impurity d-orbital and the conduction electron continuum, as derived in Ujsaghy et al. (Phys. Rev. Lett. 85, 2557 (2000)), but that the Kondo resonance in the d-electron spectral density has by itself a second Fano line shape, leading to the experimentally observed spectra. In the present note we point out that this analysis is conceptually incorrect. Therefore, the quantitative agreement of the fitted theoretical spectra with the experimental results is meaningless.Comment: 1 page, no figures. Accepted for publication in PRL; revised version uploaded on November 18th, 200

A topological classification of interaction-driven spin pumps

When adiabatically varied in time, certain one-dimensional band insulators allow for the quantized noiseless pumping of spin even in the presence of strong spin orbit scattering. These spin pumps are closely related to the quantum spin Hall system, and their properties are protected by a time-reversal restriction on the pumping cycle. In this paper we study pumps formed of one-dimensional insulators with a time-reversal restriction on the pumping cycle and a bulk energy gap which arises due to interactions. We find that the correlated gapped phase can lead to novel pumping properties. In particular, systems with $d$ different ground states can give rise to $d+1$ different classes of spin pumps, including a trivial class which does not pump quantized spin and $d$ non-trivial classes allowing for the pumping of quantized spin $\hbar/n$ on average per cycle, where $1\leq n\leq d$. We discuss an example of a spin pump that transfers on average spin $\hbar/2$ without transferring charge.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure

Non-Fermi liquid signatures in the Hubbard Model due to van Hove singularities

When a van-Hove singularity is located in the vicinity of the Fermi level, the electronic scattering rate acquires a non-analytic contribution. This invalidates basic assumptions of Fermi liquid theory and within perturbative treatments leads to a non-Fermi liquid self-energy and transport properties.Such anomalies are shown to also occur in the strongly correlated metallic state. We consider the Hubbard model on a two-dimensional square lattice with nearest and next-nearest neighbor hopping within the single-site dynamical mean-field theory. At temperatures on the order of the low-energy scale $T_0$ an unusual maximum emerges in the imaginary part of the self-energy which is renormalized towards the Fermi level for finite doping. At zero temperature this double-well structure is suppressed, but an anomalous energy dependence of the self-energy remains. For the frustrated Hubbard model on the square lattice with next-nearest neighbor hopping, the presence of the van Hove singularity changes the asymptotic low temperature behavior of the resistivity from a Fermi liquid to non-Fermi liquid dependency as function of doping. The results of this work are discussed regarding their relevance for high-temperature cuprate superconductors.Comment: revised version, accepted in Phys.Rev.