The attitudes, feelings and experiences of online gamers: a qualitative analysis

The playing of massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) is now a highly popular leisure activity. The present study set out to explore the attitudes, experiences, and feelings of online gamers. The study entailed 71 interviews with online gamers (52 males, 19 females) from 11 different countries. Six main themes emerged from the analyses of the interview transcripts: (a) online gaming and integration into day-to-day lives; (b) online gaming, excessive play, and problems; (c) addiction; (d) psychosocial impact of online gaming; (e) online gaming, dissociation, and time loss; and (f) online gaming and the alleviation of negative feelings and mood states. These findings specifically showed how gamers used MMORPGs to alleviate negative feelings and provided detailed descriptions of personal problems that had arisen due to playing MMORPGs. The implications of these findings are discussed in relation to previous qualitative and quantitative research in the area

Lagrangian approach to local symmetries and self-dual model in gauge invariant formulation

Taking the St\"uckelberg Lagrangian associated with the abelian self-dual model of P.K. Townsend et al as a starting point, we embed this mixed first- and second-class system into a pure first-class system by following systematically the generalized Hamiltonian approach of Batalin, Fradkin and Tyutin. The resulting Lagrangian possesses an extended gauge invariance and provides a non-trivial example for a general Lagrangian approach to unravelling the full set of local symmetries of a Lagrangian.Comment: LaTeX, 15 page

Couplings and spectra in modular inflation

We analyze how the spectrum of perturbations produced in a multi-component modular inflation model proposed by Kadota and Stewart depends on couplings between the two moduli. Although some simple direct couplings give essentially the same results as the original model, $dn/d\ln k \propto n-1$, simple indirect couplings produce a power law spectrum, $n-1 = \textrm{constant}$, which can naturally be close to scale invariant.Comment: 11 pages, format changed, some corrections of formula

Generalized quantization condition in topological insulator

The topological magnetoelectric effect (TME) is the fundamental quantization effect for topological insulators in units of the fine structure constant $\alpha$. In [Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 166803(2010)], a topological quantization condition of the TME is given under orthogonal incidence of the optical beam, in which the wave length of the light or the thickness of the TI film must be tuned to some commensurate values. This fine tuning is difficult to realize experimentally. In this article, we give manifestly $SL(2,\mathbb{Z})$ covariant expressions for Kerr and Faraday angles at oblique incidence at a topological insulator thick film. We obtain a generalized quantization condition independent of material details, and propose a more easily realizable optical experiment, in which only the incidence angle is tuned, to directly measure the topological quantization associated with the TME.Comment: 3 figure

Finite Temperature Phase Diagram in Rotating Bosonic Optical Lattice

Finite temperature phase boundary between superfluid phase and normal state is analytically derived by studying the stability of normal state in rotating bosonic optical lattice. We also prove that the oscillation behavior of critical hopping matrix directly follows the upper boundary of Hofstadter butterfly as the function of effective magnetic field.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figure

Fractional quantum Hall states in two-dimensional electron systems with anisotropic interactions

We study the anisotropic effect of the Coulomb interaction on a 1/3-filling fractional quantum Hall system by using an exact diagonalization method on small systems in torus geometry. For weak anisotropy the system remains to be an incompressible quantum liquid, although anisotropy manifests itself in density correlation functions and excitation spectra. When the strength of anisotropy increases, we find the system develops a Hall-smectic-like phase with a one-dimensional charge density wave order and is unstable towards the one-dimensional crystal in the strong anisotropy limit. In all three phases of the Laughlin liquid, Hall-smectic-like, and crystal phases the ground state of the anisotropic Coulomb system can be well described by a family of model wave functions generated by an anisotropic projection Hamiltonian. We discuss the relevance of the results to the geometrical description of fractional quantum Hall states proposed by Haldane [ Phys. Rev. Lett. 107 116801 (2011)].Comment: 8 pages, 8 figure

Dust ion-acoustic shocks in quantum dusty pair-ion plasmas

The formation of dust ion-acoustic shocks (DIASs) in a four-component quantum plasma whose constituents are electrons, both positive and negative ions and immobile charged dust grains, is studied. The effects of both the dissipation due to kinematic viscosity and the dispersion caused by the charge separation as well as the quantum tunneling due to the Bohm potential are taken into account. The propagation of small but finite amplitude dust ion-acoustic waves (DIAWs) is governed by the Korteweg-de Vries-Burger (KdVB) equation which exhibits both oscillatory and monotonic shocks depending not only on the viscosity parameters, but also on the quantum parameter H (the ratio of the electron plasmon to the electron Fermi energy) and the positive to negative ion density ratio. Large amplitude stationary shocks are recovered for a Mach number exceeding its critical value. Unlike the small amplitude shocks, quite a smaller value of the viscosity parameter, H and the density ratio may lead to the large amplitude monotonic shock strucutres. The results could be of importance in astrophysical and laser produced plasmas.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figure