How beneficial is work-related activity for one’s mental health? A thematic analysis of experiences of conditionality in receiving employment and support allowance among disabled people placed in the work-related activity group.

This research begins with an introduction to the history of welfare and reforms in the U.K., related to political, societal and ideological structures. It highlights the link between work and mental health. This is considered through a psychological lens, by discussing the debate between Waddell and Aylward’s biopsychosocial model versus the social model of disability and how ideas from community and liberation psychology can be applied to the current research. A brief overview of the literature is also discussed. This research aimed to explore the experiences of claiming benefits, conditionality and sanctions for those who had been placed within the Employment and Support Allowance Work-Related Activity Group. It also aimed to explore concepts of employment in this sample. This research took a critical realist ontological position and a contextualist epistemological position. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 15 participants, who were recruited through an organisation which works with deaf and disabled peoples’ organisations. Interviews were analysed using thematic analysis. Eight themes (and 22 sub-themes) were constructed: ESA WRAG: the good, the bad and the ugly; ruled by conditionality; sanctions and suicidality; the importance of relationships; adaptations and defences; power and politics; fighting back; workplace values. Results are discussed in the context of historical, social, ideological and political power structures as it is argued that the individual cannot be separated from their environment. There is further exploration of how participants’ mental health is impacted by their experiences, which is linked to theory and previous research. Strengths and limitations, dissemination and the researchers’ reflections are discussed as well as clinical implications of the findings, which provides specific examples of implications linked to the findings

Uhlenbeck-Donaldson compactification for framed sheaves on projective surfaces

We construct a compactification $M^{\mu ss}$ of the Uhlenbeck-Donaldson type for the moduli space of slope stable framed bundles. This is a kind of a moduli space of slope semistable framed sheaves. We show that there exists a projective morphism $\gamma \colon M^{ss} \to M^{\mu ss}$, where $M^{ss}$ is the moduli space of S-equivalence classes of Gieseker-semistable framed sheaves. The space $M^{\mu ss}$ has a natural set-theoretic stratification which allows one, via a Hitchin-Kobayashi correspondence, to compare it with the moduli spaces of framed ideal instantons.Comment: 18 pages. v2: a few very minor changes. v3: 27 pages. Several proofs have been considerably expanded, and more explanations have been added. v4: 28 pages. A few minor changes. Final version accepted for publication in Math.

Minimizing Higgs Potentials via Numerical Polynomial Homotopy Continuation

The study of models with extended Higgs sectors requires to minimize the corresponding Higgs potentials, which is in general very difficult. Here, we apply a recently developed method, called numerical polynomial homotopy continuation (NPHC), which guarantees to find all the stationary points of the Higgs potentials with polynomial-like nonlinearity. The detection of all stationary points reveals the structure of the potential with maxima, metastable minima, saddle points besides the global minimum. We apply the NPHC method to the most general Higgs potential having two complex Higgs-boson doublets and up to five real Higgs-boson singlets. Moreover the method is applicable to even more involved potentials. Hence the NPHC method allows to go far beyond the limits of the Gr\"obner basis approach.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figure

Fermi Edge Singularities in the Mesoscopic Regime: II. Photo-absorption Spectra

We study Fermi edge singularities in photo-absorption spectra of generic mesoscopic systems such as quantum dots or nanoparticles. We predict deviations from macroscopic-metallic behavior and propose experimental setups for the observation of these effects. The theory is based on the model of a localized, or rank one, perturbation caused by the (core) hole left behind after the photo-excitation of an electron into the conduction band. The photo-absorption spectra result from the competition between two many-body responses, Anderson's orthogonality catastrophe and the Mahan-Nozieres-DeDominicis contribution. Both mechanisms depend on the system size through the number of particles and, more importantly, fluctuations produced by the coherence characteristic of mesoscopic samples. The latter lead to a modification of the dipole matrix element and trigger one of our key results: a rounded K-edge typically found in metals will turn into a (slightly) peaked edge on average in the mesoscopic regime. We consider in detail the effect of the "bound state" produced by the core hole.Comment: 16 page

Global and local relaxation of a spin-chain under exact Schroedinger and master-equation dynamics

We solve the Schroedinger equation for an interacting spin-chain locally coupled to a quantum environment with a specific degeneracy structure. The reduced dynamics of the whole spin-chain as well as of single spins is analyzed. We show, that the total spin-chain relaxes to a thermal equilibrium state independently of the internal interaction strength. In contrast, the asymptotic states of each individual spin are thermal for weak but non-thermal for stronger spin-spin coupling. The transition between both scenarios is found for couplings of the order of $0.1 \times \Delta E$, with $\Delta E$ denoting the Zeeman-splitting. We compare these results with a master equation treatment; when time averaged, both approaches lead to the same asymptotic state and finally with analytical results.Comment: RevTeX, 8 pages, 14 figures, added DOI and forgotten reference

Ballistic Electron Quantum Transport in Presence of a Disordered Background

Effect of a complicated many-body environment is analyzed on the electron random scattering by a 2D mesoscopic open ballistic structure. A new mechanism of decoherence is proposed. The temperature of the environment is supposed to be zero whereas the energy of the incoming particle $E_{in}$ can be close to or somewhat above the Fermi surface in the environment. The single-particle doorway resonance states excited in the structure via external channels are damped not only because of escape through such channels but also due to the ulterior population of the long-lived environmental states. Transmission of an electron with a given incoming $E_{in}$ through the structure turns out to be an incoherent sum of the flow formed by the interfering damped doorway resonances and the retarded flow of the particles re-emitted into the structure by the environment. Though the number of the particles is conserved in each individual event of transmission, there exists a probability that some part of the electron's energy can be absorbed due to environmental many-body effects. In such a case the electron can disappear from the resonance energy interval and elude observation at the fixed transmission energy $E_{in}$ thus resulting in seeming loss of particles, violation of the time reversal symmetry and, as a consequence, suppression of the weak localization. The both decoherence and absorption phenomena are treated within the framework of a unit microscopic model based on the general theory of the resonance scattering. All the effects discussed are controlled by the only parameter: the spreading width of the doorway resonances, that uniquely determines the decoherence rateComment: 7 pages, 1 figure. The published version. A figure has been added; the list of references has been improved. Some explanatory remarks have been include

Induced superconductivity distinguishes chaotic from integrable billiards

Random-matrix theory is used to show that the proximity to a superconductor opens a gap in the excitation spectrum of an electron gas confined to a billiard with a chaotic classical dynamics. In contrast, a gapless spectrum is obtained for a non-chaotic rectangular billiard, and it is argued that this is generic for integrable systems.Comment: 4 pages RevTeX, 2 eps-figures include

Entanglement and chaos in the kicked top

The standard kicked top involves a periodically kicked angular momentum. By considering this angular momentum as a collection of entangled spins, we compute the bipartite entanglement dynamics as a function of the dynamics of the classical counterpart. Our numerical results indicate that the entanglement of the quantum top depends on the specific details of the dynamics of the classical top rather than depending universally on the global properties of the classical regime. These results are grounded on linking the entanglement rate to averages involving the classical angular momentum, thereby explaining why regular dynamics can entangle as efficiently as the classically chaotic regime. The findings are in line with previous results obtained with a 2-particle top model, and we show here that the standard kicked top can be obtained as a limiting case of the 2-particle top