Habermas on democracy and human rights

Habermas"s approach to democracy and human rights is a procedural one. In this interview, the connections between deliberative democracy, human rights and the international order are brought forward, as well as the specific traits of a procedural approach to legal, moral and political concerns. Here, the differences between different types of discourses are brought forward as well, since democratic procedures rely upon a majority-principle which cannot be applied to purely moral questions. The interview with Habermas was carried out during his stay in Bergen, Norway 09.11.2005, in connection to the Holberg Prize Award. Interviewer is Simen Øyen, editor of the journal Replikk, University of Bergen, Norway

Approximate dispersion relations for waves on arbitrary shear flows

An approximate dispersion relation is derived and presented for linear surface waves atop a shear current whose magnitude and direction can vary arbitrarily with depth. The approximation, derived to first order of deviation from potential flow, is shown to produce good approximations at all wavelengths for a wide range of naturally occuring shear flows as well as widely used model flows. The relation reduces in many cases to a 3D generalization of the much used approximation by Skop [1987], developed further by Kirby & Chen [1989], but is shown to be more robust, succeeding in situations where the Kirby & Chen model fails. The two approximations incur the same numerical cost and difficulty. While the Kirby & Chen approximation is excellent for a wide range of currents, the exact criteria for its applicability have not been known. We explain the apparently serendipitous success of the latter and derive proper conditions of applicability for both approximate dispersion relations. Our new model has a greater range of applicability. A second order approximation is also derived. It greatly improves accuracy, which is shown to be important in difficult cases. It has an advantage over the corresponding 2nd order expression proposed by Kirby \& Chen that its criterion of accuracy is explicitly known, which is not currently the case for the latter to our knowledge. Our 2nd order term is also arguably significantly simpler to implement, and more physically transparent, than its sibling due to Kirby & Chen.Comment: 22 pages, 5 figure

Symplectic integration and physical interpretation of time-dependent coupled-cluster theory

The formulation of the time-dependent Schrodinger equation in terms of coupled-cluster theory is outlined, with emphasis on the bivariational framework and its classical Hamiltonian structure. An indefinite inner product is introduced, inducing physical interpretation of coupled-cluster states in the form of transition probabilities, autocorrelation functions, and explicitly real values for observables, solving interpretation issues which are present in time-dependent coupled-cluster theory and in ground-state calculations of molecular systems under influence of external magnetic fields. The problem of the numerical integration of the equations of motion is considered, and a critial evaluation of the standard fourth-order Runge--Kutta scheme and the symplectic Gauss integrator of variable order is given, including several illustrative numerical experiments. While the Gauss integrator is stable even for laser pulses well above the perturbation limit, our experiments indicate that a system-dependent upper limit exists for the external field strengths. Above this limit, time-dependent coupled-cluster calculations become very challenging numerically, even in the full configuration interaction limit. The source of these numerical instabilities is shown to be rapid increases of the amplitudes as ultrashort high-intensity laser pulses pump the system out of the ground state into states that are virtually orthogonal to the static Hartree-Fock reference determinant.Comment: 14 pages, 13 figure

Coloring Operads for Algebraic Field Theory

In these proceedings we summarize previous work where we formalize a general concept of algebraic field theories using operads. After giving a gentle reminder of algebraic quantum field theory, operads and their algebras, we construct field theory operads, whose algebras are exactly algebraic field theories. Specifically, they satisfy a suitable version of the Einstein causality axiom. From this construction we get adjunctions between different types of field theories, including adjunctions related to local-to-global extensions and the time-slice axiom, and a quantization functor for linear field theories that is compatible with these structures. We also take first steps towards a derived linear quantization functor.Comment: 13 pages, Contribution to Proceedings of LMS/EPSRC Durham Symposium Higher Structures in M-Theory, August 201