Lignite As Contributory Factor to Regional Development of Greece

Lignite (brown coal) is Greece's most important energy mineral raw material. Lignite exploitation has made a highly significant contribution to the development of energy sector of Greece on past 50 years, and will, according to estimations, continue to supply energy for another 40 years. Greece is very rich in Lignite resources. The two main basins - from where Lignite is extracted by opencast mining - are a) in Western Macedonia (northen Greece) where is generated the 70% of the whole electricity of Greece and b) in Central Peloponese (Southern Greece) where is generated the 10% of the whole electricity of Greece. In this respect, Public Power Corporation of Greece cooperates with the local administrative authorities and finances or undertakes social "compensation" projects for life improvement, and social and financial support of the residential areas near mines. Also provides technical services and contributes to the carrying out of small projects in municipalities and communities. Finaly provides thermal energy from the power stations for the district teleheating of the towns of Kozani, Ptolemais and Megalopolis and surrounting settlements. In addition to the works of social regeneration and the duty for the development of industrial areas, for the redevelopment works and environmental protection of the new ground at the lignite mines, more than 500.000 Euros are spent on a yearly basis (350.000 Euros at West Macedonia and 150.000 Euros at Central Peloponese). Moreover, according to data taken from the statement of accounts regarding only the operation of the mines (salaries, commossions, contracts assigned etc) the amount of 367.000.000 Euros is spent in the local societies of Kozani and Florina Prefectures. As a result, Lignite contributes to the regional Development of the country. Lignite mining and the generation of electric power take place in less developed areas, ensuring employment for a large number of scientific and labor personel, reducing unemployment and urban attraction and increasing the per capita local income in these areas.

Decay and fragmentation in an open Bose-Hubbard chain

We analyze the decay of ultracold atoms from an optical lattice with loss form a single lattice site. If the initial state is dynamically stable a suitable amount of dissipation can stabilize a Bose-Einstein condensate, such that it remains coherent even in the presence of strong interactions. A transition between two different dynamical phases is observed if the initial state is dynamically unstable. This transition is analyzed here in detail. For strong interactions, the system relaxes to an entangled quantum state with remarkable statistical properties: The atoms bunch in a few "breathers" forming at random positions. Breathers at different positions are coherent, such that they can be used in precision quantum interferometry and other applications.Comment: 15 pages, 14 figure

Dissipation induced macroscopic entanglement in an open optical lattice

We introduce a method for the dissipative preparation of strongly correlated quantum states of ultracold atoms in an optical lattice via localized particle loss. The interplay of dissipation and interactions enables different types of dynamics. This ushers a new line of experimental methods to maintain the coherence of a Bose-Einstein condensate or to deterministically generate macroscopically entangled quantum states.Comment: 4 figure

Non-hermitian approach to decaying ultracold bosonic systems

A paradigm model of modern atom optics is studied, strongly interacting ultracold bosons in an optical lattice. This many-body system can be artificially opened in a controlled manner by modern experimental techniques. We present results based on a non-hermitian effective Hamiltonian whose quantum spectrum is analyzed. The direct access to the spectrum of the metastable many-body system allows us to easily identify relatively stable quantum states, corresponding to previously predicted solitonic many-body structures

Pessimistic portfolio allocation and Choquet expected utility

Recent developments in the theory of choice under uncertainty and risk yield a pessimistic decision theory that replaces the classical expected utility criterion with a Choquet expectation that accentuates the likelihood of the least favorable outcomes. A parallel theory has recently emerged in the literature on risk assessment. It is shown that a general form of pessimistic portfolio optimization based on the Choquet approach may be formulated as a problem of linear quantile regression.