Clocking Koufax

In lieu of an abstract, below is the essay\u27s first paragraph. Walking out of the tunnels of Baltimore’s Memorial Stadium, even after the roaring crowds had departed in compressed streams of red taillights, was the best part of the evening, John Angelina had decided early in the baseball season. Especially now that the Orioles were headed for a pennant and possibly the World Series, the line of groupies would wait for the pitchers. Not that the other players or positions were any less attractive, it was just something about the pitchers. Particularly that battery of pitchers that year that would in fact find heroes in all unlikely places and circumstances; that year that would deliver a resounding win at the World Series against the legendary Los Angeles Dodgers and the brilliant Sandy Koufax

Alamogordo

In lieu of an abstract, below is the essay\u27s first paragraph. The road into Clovis had been tortuous but tinted with the colors of the New Mexico desert subtly touched by the incipient autumn. Driving a military Jeep with a comrade from their former B-17 squadrons in Europe, Joseph Angelina thought how different it would be to fly in this clear, dry air, so remarkably pure after his recent years of trying to locate enemy targets in cloudy and moody Europe

Multiplicity results for some nonlinear Schroedinger equations with potentials

We prove some multiplicity results for a nonlinear equation of Schroedinger type with potential function

Quantum Monte Carlo study of circular quantum dots in presence of Rashba interaction

We present the numerical Quantum Monte Carlo results for the ground state energy of circular quantum dots in which Rashba spin-orbit iteraction is present. Diffusion Monte Carlo with spin propagation is applied in order to treat the spin-orbit interaction correctly, following previous work done in the fieldof the two-dimensional electron gas. Together with ground state energies, also numerical results for density and spin-density profiles are given

Interatomic Methods for the Dispersion Energy Derived from the Adiabatic Connection Fluctuation-Dissipation Theorem

Interatomic pairwise methods are currently among the most popular and accurate ways to include dispersion energy in density functional theory (DFT) calculations. However, when applied to more than two atoms, these methods are still frequently perceived to be based on \textit{ad hoc} assumptions, rather than a rigorous derivation from quantum mechanics. Starting from the adiabatic connection fluctuation-dissipation (ACFD) theorem, an exact expression for the electronic exchange-correlation energy, we demonstrate that the pairwise interatomic dispersion energy for an arbitrary collection of isotropic polarizable dipoles emerges from the second-order expansion of the ACFD formula. Moreover, for a system of quantum harmonic oscillators coupled through a dipole--dipole potential, we prove the equivalence between the full interaction energy obtained from the Hamiltonian diagonalization and the ACFD correlation energy in the random-phase approximation. This property makes the Hamiltonian diagonalization an efficient method for the calculation of the many-body dispersion energy. In addition, we show that the switching function used to damp the dispersion interaction at short distances arises from a short-range screened Coulomb potential, whose role is to account for the spatial spread of the individual atomic dipole moments. By using the ACFD formula we gain a deeper understanding of the approximations made in the interatomic pairwise approaches, providing a powerful formalism for further development of accurate and efficient methods for the calculation of the dispersion energy

Gauge approach to the specific heat in the normal state of cuprates

Many experimental features of the electronic specific heat and entropy of high Tc cuprates in the normal state, including the nontrivial temperature dependence of the specific heat coefficient and negative intercept of the extrapolated entropy to T=0 for underdoped cuprates, are reproduced using the spin-charge gauge approach to the t-J model. The entropy turns out to be basically due to fermionic excitations, but with a temperature dependence of the specific heat coefficient controlled by fluctuations of a gauge field coupling them to gapful bosonic excitations. In particular the negative intercept of the extrapolated entropy at T=0 in the pseudogap ``phase'' is attributed to the scalar component of the gauge field, which implements the local no-double occupancy constraint.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure

Long-range correlation energy calculated from coupled atomic response functions

An accurate determination of the electron correlation energy is essential for describing the structure, stability, and function in a wide variety of systems, ranging from gas-phase molecular assemblies to condensed matter and organic/inorganic interfaces. Even small errors in the correlation energy can have a large impact on the description of chemical and physical properties in the systems of interest. In this context, the development of efficient approaches for the accurate calculation of the long-range correlation energy (and hence dispersion) is the main challenge. In the last years a number of methods have been developed to augment density functional approximations via dispersion energy corrections, but most of these approaches ignore the intrinsic many-body nature of correlation effects, leading to inconsistent and sometimes even qualitatively incorrect predictions. Here we build upon the recent many-body dispersion (MBD) framework, which is intimately linked to the random-phase approximation for the correlation energy. We separate the correlation energy into short-range contributions that are modeled by semi-local functionals and long-range contributions that are calculated by mapping the complex all-electron problem onto a set of atomic response functions coupled in the dipole approximation. We propose an effective range-separation of the coupling between the atomic response functions that extends the already broad applicability of the MBD method to non-metallic materials with highly anisotropic responses, such as layered nanostructures. Application to a variety of high-quality benchmark datasets illustrates the accuracy and applicability of the improved MBD approach, which offers the prospect of first-principles modeling of large structurally complex systems with an accurate description of the long-range correlation energy.Comment: 15 pages, 3 figure

Spin-orbit excitations of quantum wells

Confinement asymmetry effects on the photoabsorption of a quantum well are discussed by means of a sum-rules approach using a Hamiltonian including a Rashba spin-orbt coupling. We show that while the strength of the excitation is zero when the spin-orbit coupling is neglected, the inclusion of the spin-orbit interaction gives rise to a non zero strength and mean excitation energy in the far-infrared region. A simple expression for these quantities up to the second order in the Rashba parameter was derived. The effect of two-body Coulomb interaction is then studied by means of a Quantum Monte Carlo calculation, showing that electron-electron correlations induce only a small deviation from the independent particle model result

The Conformal Willmore Functional: a Perturbative Approach

The conformal Willmore functional (which is conformal invariant in general Riemannian manifold $(M,g)$) is studied with a perturbative method: the Lyapunov-Schmidt reduction. Existence of critical points is shown in ambient manifolds $(\mathbb{R}^3, g_\epsilon)$ -where $g_\epsilon$ is a metric close and asymptotic to the euclidean one. With the same technique a non existence result is proved in general Riemannian manifolds $(M,g)$ of dimension three.Comment: 34 pages; Journal of Geometric Analysis, on line first 23 September 201

Singularly perturbed elliptic problems with nonautonomous asymptotically linear nonlinearities

We consider a class of singularly perturbed elliptic problems with nonautonomous asymptotically linear nonlinearities. The dependence on the spatial coordinates comes from the presence of a potential and of a function representing a saturation effect. We investigate the existence of nontrivial nonnegative solutions concentrating around local minima of both the potential and of the saturation function. Necessary conditions to locate the possible concentration points are also given