Controlling the Size of Popcorn

We present a thermo-statistical model of popcorn production and propose a way to control the final size of the popcorn by monitoring only the chamber pressure.Comment: 6 pages; revision (typo and minor content corrections

Density Functional Theory of Hard Sphere Condensation Under Gravity

The onset of condensation of hard spheres in a gravitational field is studied using density functional theory. In particular, we find that the local density approximation yields results identical to those obtained previously using the kinetic theory [Physica A 271, 192, (1999)], and a weighted density functional theory gives qualitatively similar results, namely, that the temperature at which condensation begins at the bottom scales linearly with weight, diameter, and number of layers of particles.Comment: 17 pages, 4 figure

Neutron Removal from the Deformed Halo 31Ne Nucleus

Experimental data on Coulomb breakup and neutron removal indicate that 31Ne is one of the heaviest halo nuclei discovered so far. The possible ground state of 31Ne is either 3/2- coming from p-wave halo or 1/2+ from s-wave halo. In this work, we develop a treatable model to include deformed wave functions and a dynamical knockout formalism which includes the dependence on the nuclear orientation to study the neutron removal from 31Ne projectiles at energies around E=200 MeV/nucleon. A detailed account of the effects of deformation on cross sections and longitudinal momentum distributions is made. Our numerical analysis indicates a preference for the 31Ne ground state with spin parity 3/2-.Comment: 22 pages, 13 figures, accepted for publication in the Physical Review

Electro-optic scanning of light coupled from a corrugated LiNbO3 waveguide

Light diffracted from a grating output coupler in a Ti-diffused LiNbO3 waveguide is scanned electro-optically. Using a coupling length of 2.5 mm in our arrangement we have demonstrated a scanning capability of one resolved spot per 3 V/µm applied field

Broad-band grating filters for thin-film optical waveguides

Broad-band grating filters have been fabricated on glass thin-film waveguides and evaluated with a tunable dye laser. Measured and calculated filter responses were found to be in good agreement. Grating filters with bandwidths of 300 and 150 Å, and reflectivities of 18 and 40%, respectively, are reported

Provable Deterministic Leverage Score Sampling

We explain theoretically a curious empirical phenomenon: "Approximating a matrix by deterministically selecting a subset of its columns with the corresponding largest leverage scores results in a good low-rank matrix surrogate". To obtain provable guarantees, previous work requires randomized sampling of the columns with probabilities proportional to their leverage scores. In this work, we provide a novel theoretical analysis of deterministic leverage score sampling. We show that such deterministic sampling can be provably as accurate as its randomized counterparts, if the leverage scores follow a moderately steep power-law decay. We support this power-law assumption by providing empirical evidence that such decay laws are abundant in real-world data sets. We then demonstrate empirically the performance of deterministic leverage score sampling, which many times matches or outperforms the state-of-the-art techniques.Comment: 20th ACM SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Minin

Localization in an Inhomogeneous Quantum Wire

We study interaction-induced localization of electrons in an inhomogeneous quasi-one-dimensional system--a wire with two regions, one at low density and the other high. Quantum Monte Carlo techniques are used to treat the strong Coulomb interactions in the low density region, where localization of electrons occurs. The nature of the transition from high to low density depends on the density gradient--if it is steep, a barrier develops between the two regions, causing Coulomb blockade effects. Ferromagnetic spin polarization does not appear for any parameters studied. The picture emerging here is in good agreement with measurements of tunneling between two wires.Comment: 4 pages; 2 new figures, substantial revisions and clarification