Lucid dreams: their advantage and disadvantage in the frame of search activity concept

Search activity (SA) is the behavioral and mental activity that is oriented to changes of the environment or of the subject’s view and approach to the environment according to personal needs without the definite probability forecast of the outcomes of such activity, but with a regular consideration of the outcomes in the process of active behavior. Dream’s lucidity (the subject’s realization that he/she is dreaming) protects dreamer from awakenings during emotionally disturbing or frustrating dreams, because lucid dreams allow subject to feel separated from the dream events that may cause a feeling of helplessness. Due to such a protection from awakenings that can bring subject back to the frustration in wakefulness, subject can turn in the further sleep to normal non-lucid dreams that are restoring subject’s SA in the subsequent wakefulness (activity in the uncertain situation with the feedback between behavior and its outcome). It is the advantage of lucid dreams. Their disadvantage is that due to the separation from the dream events that are in lucid dreams accepted as rationalized dreams, not as real stories where the dreamer acts like in wakefulness, their ability to restore SA is decreased until they are not displaced by the normal non-lucid dreams accepted as real stories

Polarization control at the microscopic and electronic structure observatory

The new Microscopic and Electronic Structure Observatory (MAESTRO) at the Advanced Light Source (ALS) in Berkeley provides X-rays of variable polarization, produced by an elliptically polarized undulator (EPU), for angle resolved photoemission (ARPES) and photoemission electron microscopy (PEEM) experiments. The interpretation of photoemission data, in particular of dichroism effects in ARPES, requires the precise knowledge of the exact polarization state. Numerical simulations show that the first harmonics of the EPU at MAESTRO provides soft X-rays of almost 100% on axis polarization. However, the higher harmonics as well as the downstream optical elements of the beamline, have a considerable impact on the polarization of the light delivered to the experimental end-station. Employing a simple reflective polarimeter, the polarization is characterized for variable EPU and beamline settings and the overall degree of polarization in the MAESTRO end-stations is estimated to be on the order of 83%

Diffusion coefficient and shear viscosity of rigid water models

We report the diffusion coefficient and viscosity of popular rigid water models: Two non polarizable ones (SPC/E with 3 sites, and TIP4P/2005 with 4 sites) and a polarizable one (Dang-Chang, 4 sites). We exploit the dependence of the diffusion coefficient on the system size [Yeh and Hummer, J. Phys. Chem. B 108, 15873 (2004)] to obtain the size-independent value. This also provides an estimate of the viscosity of all water models, which we compare to the Green-Kubo result. In all cases, a good agreement is found. The TIP4P/2005 model is in better agreement with the experimental data for both diffusion and viscosity. The SPC/E and Dang-Chang water overestimate the diffusion coefficient and underestimate the viscosity.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures. To be published in J. Phys.: Condens. Matte

Strictly One-Dimensional Electron System in Au Chains on Ge(001) Revealed By Photoelectron K-Space Mapping

Atomic nanowires formed by Au on Ge(001) are scrutinized for the band topology of the conduction electron system by k-resolved photoemission. Two metallic electron pockets are observed. Their Fermi surface sheets form straight lines without undulations perpendicular to the chains within experimental uncertainty. The electrons hence emerge as strictly confined to one dimension. Moreover, the system is stable against a Peierls distortion down to 10 K, lending itself for studies of the spectral function. Indications for unusually low spectral weight at the chemical potential are discussed.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures - revised version with added Fig. 2e) and additional reference

Reduced variance analysis of molecular dynamics simulations by linear combination of estimators

International audienceBuilding upon recent developments of force-based estimators with a reduced variance for the computation of densities, radial distribution functions or local transport properties from molecular simulations, we show that the variance can be further reduced by considering optimal linear combinations of such estimators. This control variates approach, well known in Statistics and already used in other branches of computational Physics, has been comparatively much less exploited in molecular simulations. We illustrate this idea on the radial distribution function and the one-dimensional density of a bulk and confined Lennard-Jones fluid, where the optimal combination of estimators is determined for each distance or position, respectively. In addition to reducing the variance everywhere at virtually no additional cost, this approach cures an artefact of the initial force-based estimators, namely small but non-zero values of the quantities in regions where they should vanish. Beyond the examples considered here, the present work highlights more generally the underexplored potential of control variates to estimate observables from molecular simulations

Cluster sum rules for three-body systems with angular-momentum dependent interactions

We derive general expressions for non-energy weighted and energy-weighted cluster sum rules for systems of three charged particles. The interferences between pairs of particles are found to play a substantial role. The energy-weighted sum rule is usually determined by the kinetic energy operator, but we demonstrate that it has similar additional contributions from the angular momentum and parity dependence of two- and three-body potentials frequently used in three-body calculations. The importance of the different contributions is illustrated with the dipole excitations in $^6$He. The results are compared with the available experimental data.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figures, 2 table

Anderson Transition in Disordered Graphene

We use the regularized kernel polynomial method (RKPM) to numerically study the effect disorder on a single layer of graphene. This accurate numerical method enables us to study very large lattices with millions of sites, and hence is almost free of finite size errors. Within this approach, both weak and strong disorder regimes are handled on the same footing. We study the tight-binding model with on-site disorder, on the honeycomb lattice. We find that in the weak disorder regime, the Dirac fermions remain extended and their velocities decrease as the disorder strength is increased. However, if the disorder is strong enough, there will be a {\em mobility edge} separating {\em localized states around the Fermi point}, from the remaining extended states. This is in contrast to the scaling theory of localization which predicts that all states are localized in two-dimensions (2D).Comment: 4 page