E-government: A comparison of strategies in local authorities in the UK and Norway

In Europe almost all countries have implemented some form of e-government, not to mention the UK and Norway which are now both well into their sixth year of e-government implementation. These six years have seen various strategic plans formulated, implemented and also intermittently postponed in the two countries. Although time may result in the amplification of e-government experience for Norway and the UK, the postponement of implementation deadlines indicates that not only political and social issues, but also strategic and organisational issues need to be addressed when formulating plans for deploying e-government. Using empirical research this paper examines the strategies adopted by the UK and Norway in the context of aligning central and local government plans for implementing e-government services. While technical, political and social issues are considered as key areas to be addressed in any e-government exploitation plan; this paper examines how different perspectives on e-government definition, strategy, awareness and related organisational change influence implementation. The need to align central and local e-government plans, guidelines for local level implementation, user centred solutions, strong leadership and a common understanding of the definition of e-government are highlighted in the paper as some of the key components of good e-government implementation practice

Extending the random-phase approximation for electronic correlation energies: The renormalized adiabatic local density approximation

The adiabatic connection fluctuation-dissipation theorem with the random phase approximation (RPA) has recently been applied with success to obtain correlation energies of a variety of chemical and solid state systems. The main merit of this approach is the improved description of dispersive forces while chemical bond strengths and absolute correlation energies are systematically underestimated. In this work we extend the RPA by including a parameter-free renormalized version of the adiabatic local density (ALDA) exchange-correlation kernel. The renormalization consists of a (local) truncation of the ALDA kernel for wave vectors $q>2k_F$, which is found to yield excellent results for the homogeneous electron gas. In addition, the kernel significantly improves both the absolute correlation energies and atomization energies of small molecules over RPA and ALDA. The renormalization can be straightforwardly applied to other adiabatic local kernels.Comment: 5 page

Static correlation beyond the random phase approximation: Dissociating H2 with the Bethe-Salpeter equation and time-dependent GW

We investigate various approximations to the correlation energy of a H$_2$ molecule in the dissociation limit, where the ground state is poorly described by a single Slater determinant. The correlation energies are derived from the density response function and it is shown that response functions derived from Hedin's equations (Random Phase Approximation (RPA), Time-dependent Hartree-Fock (TDHF), Bethe-Salpeter equation (BSE), and Time-Dependent GW (TDGW)) all reproduce the correct dissociation limit. We also show that the BSE improves the correlation energies obtained within RPA and TDHF significantly for intermediate binding distances. A Hubbard model for the dimer allow us to obtain exact analytical results for the various approximations, which is readily compared with the exact diagonalization of the model. Moreover, the model is shown to reproduce all the qualitative results from the \textit{ab initio} calculations and confirms that BSE greatly improves the RPA and TDHF results despite the fact that the BSE excitation spectrum breaks down in the dissociation limit. In contrast, Second Order Screened Exchange (SOSEX) gives a poor description of the dissociation limit, which can be attributed to the fact that it cannot be derived from an irreducible response function

Bright bichromatic entanglement and quantum dynamics of sum frequency generation

We investigate the quantum properties of the well-known process of sum frequency generation, showing that it is potentially a very useful source of non-classical states of the electromagnetic field, some of which are not possible with the more common techniques. We show that it can produce quadrature squeezed light, bright bichromatic entangled states and symmetric and asymmetric demonstrations of the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox. We also show that the semiclassical equations totally fail to describe the mean-field dynamics when the cavity is strongly pumped

Preferences for and comprehension of original and readability-adapted materials

Running title: Preferences and comprehensionIncludes bibliographical references (leaves 41-42)Performed pursuant to contract no. 400-81-0030 of the National Institute of Educatio

Quantum ultra-cold atomtronics

It is known that a semi-classical analysis is not always adequate for atomtronics devices, but that a fully quantum analysis is often necessary to make reliable predictions. While small numbers of atoms at a small number of sites are tractable using the density matrix, a fully quantum analysis is often not straightforward as the system becomes larger. We show that the fully quantum positive-P representation is then a viable calculational tool. We postulate an atomtronic phase-gate consisting of four wells in a Bose-Hubbard configuration, for which the semi-classical dynamics are controllable using the phase of the atomic mode in one of the wells. We show that the quantum predictions of the positive-P representation for the performance of this device have little relation to those found semi-classically, and that the performance depends markedly on the actual quantum states of the initially occupied modes. We find that initial coherent states lead to closest to classical dynamics, but that initial Fock states give results that are quite different. A fully quantum analysis also opens the door for deeply quantum atomtronics, in which properties such as entanglement and EPR (Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen) steering become valuable technical properties of a device.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev

A quantum correlated twin atom laser from a Bose-Hubbard system

We propose and evaluate a method to construct a quantum correlated twin atom laser using a pumped and damped Bose-Hubbard inline trimer which can operate in a stationary regime. With pumping via a source condensate filling the middle well and damping using either an electron beam or optical means at the two end wells, we show that bipartite quantum correlations build up between the ends of the chain, and that these can be measured either in situ or in the outcoupled beams. While nothing similar to our system has yet been achieved experimentally, recent advances mean that it should be practically realisable in the near future.Comment: 15 pages, 8 figures, theory. Typos fixed and material added to introductio

Excitons in van der Waals heterostructures: The important role of dielectric screening

The existence of strongly bound excitons is one of the hallmarks of the newly discovered atomically thin semi-conductors. While it is understood that the large binding energy is mainly due to the weak dielectric screening in two dimensions (2D), a systematic investigation of the role of screening on 2D excitons is still lacking. Here we provide a critical assessment of a widely used 2D hydrogenic exciton model which assumes a dielectric function of the form {\epsilon}(q) = 1 + 2{\pi}{\alpha}q, and we develop a quasi-2D model with a much broader applicability. Within the quasi-2D picture, electrons and holes are described as in-plane point charges with a finite extension in the perpendicular direction and their interaction is screened by a dielectric function with a non-linear q-dependence which is computed ab-initio. The screened interaction is used in a generalized Mott-Wannier model to calculate exciton binding energies in both isolated and supported 2D materials. For isolated 2D materials, the quasi-2D treatment yields results almost identical to those of the strict 2D model and both are in good agreement with ab-initio many-body calculations. On the other hand, for more complex structures such as supported layers or layers embedded in a van der Waals heterostructure, the size of the exciton in reciprocal space extends well beyond the linear regime of the dielectric function and a quasi-2D description has to replace the 2D one. Our methodology has the merit of providing a seamless connection between the strict 2D limit of isolated monolayer materials and the more bulk-like screening characteristics of supported 2D materials or van der Waals heterostructures.Comment: 14 pages, 13 figure

Multiquark Hadrons

A number of candidate multiquark hadrons, i.e., particle resonances with substructures that are more complex than the quark-antiquark mesons and three-quark baryons that are prescribed in the textbooks, have recently been observed. In this talk I present: some recent preliminary BESIII results on the near-threshold behavior of sigma(e+e- --> Lambda Lambda-bar) that may or may not be related to multiquark mesons in the light- and strange-quark sectors; results from Belle and LHCb on the electrically charged, charmoniumlike Z(4430)^+ --> pi^+ psi ' resonance that necessarily has a four-quark substructure; and the recent LHCb discovery of the P_c(4380) and P_c(4450) hidden-charm resonances seen as a complex structure in the J/psi p invariant mass distribution for Lambda_b --> K^-J/psi p decays and necessarily have a five-quark substructure and are, therefore, prominent candidates for pentaquark baryons.Comment: 12 pages, 9 figures, summary of a talk presented at the 12th Conference on Hypernuclear and Strange Particle Physics (HYP2015), September 7-12, 2015 Sendai, JAPAN. To appear in the JPS Conference proceeding