Misfits in Skyrme-Hartree-Fock

We address very briefly five critical points in the context of the Skyrme-Hartree-Fock (SHF) scheme: 1) the impossibility to consider it as an interaction, 2) a possible inconsistency of correlation corrections as, e.g., the center-of-mass correction, 3) problems to describe the giant dipole resonance (GDR) simultaneously in light and heavy nuclei, 4) deficiencies in the extrapolation of binding energies to super-heavy elements (SHE), and 5) a yet inappropriate trend in fission life-times when going to the heaviest SHE. While the first two points have more a formal bias, the other three points have practical implications and wait for solution.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figure

Diagonalization- and Numerical Renormalization-Group-Based Methods for Interacting Quantum Systems

In these lecture notes, we present a pedagogical review of a number of related {\it numerically exact} approaches to quantum many-body problems. In particular, we focus on methods based on the exact diagonalization of the Hamiltonian matrix and on methods extending exact diagonalization using renormalization group ideas, i.e., Wilson's Numerical Renormalization Group (NRG) and White's Density Matrix Renormalization Group (DMRG). These methods are standard tools for the investigation of a variety of interacting quantum systems, especially low-dimensional quantum lattice models. We also survey extensions to the methods to calculate properties such as dynamical quantities and behavior at finite temperature, and discuss generalizations of the DMRG method to a wider variety of systems, such as classical models and quantum chemical problems. Finally, we briefly review some recent developments for obtaining a more general formulation of the DMRG in the context of matrix product states as well as recent progress in calculating the time evolution of quantum systems using the DMRG and the relationship of the foundations of the method with quantum information theory.Comment: 51 pages; lecture notes on numerically exact methods. Pedagogical review appearing in the proceedings of the "IX. Training Course in the Physics of Correlated Electron Systems and High-Tc Superconductors", Vietri sul Mare (Salerno, Italy, October 2004

Movements of molecular motors: Ratchets, random walks and traffic phenomena

Processive molecular motors which drive the traffic of organelles in cells move in a directed way along cytoskeletal filaments. On large time scales, they perform motor walks, i.e., peculiar random walks which arise from the repeated unbinding from and rebinding to filaments. Unbound motors perform Brownian motion in the surrounding fluid. In addition, the traffic of molecular motors exhibits many cooperative phenomena. In particular, it faces similar problems as the traffic on streets such as the occurrence of traffic jams and the coordination of (two-way) traffic. These issues are studied here theoretically using lattice models.Comment: latex, uses elsart.cls and phyeauth.cls (included), 10 pages, 6 figures, to appear in the proceedings of FQMT'04, Pragu

Spatial noise correlations of a chain of ultracold fermions - A numerical study

We present a numerical study of noise correlations, i.e., density-density correlations in momentum space, in the extended fermionic Hubbard model in one dimension. In experiments with ultracold atoms, these noise correlations can be extracted from time-of-flight images of the expanding cloud. Using the density-matrix renormalization group method to investigate the Hubbard model at various fillings and interactions, we confirm that the shot noise contains full information on the correlations present in the system. We point out the importance of the sum rules fulfilled by the noise correlations and show that they yield nonsingular structures beyond the predictions of bosonization approaches. Noise correlations can thus serve as a universal probe of order and can be used to characterize the many-body states of cold atoms in optical lattices.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figure