Explaining the Policy Constraints of Anti-democratic Regimes by Means of Sequential OLS-Regressions

One of the key problems of many sociological regression models is their modest explanatory power. This has not only to do with the insufficient development of the underlying theories but also with the free will of the concerned social actors, which manifests itself in irrational, spontaneous, and sometimes even arbitrary decisions. The foreign and economic policy of the US government under Donald Trump is an excellent example of this source of indeterminacy. An alternative and more promising approach is an explanation of the constraints of social behaviour by the unequal distribution of power resources and the competing interests of the actors concerned. This approach requires, on the one hand, enough observational data which include cases that reached the analysed constraints. On the other hand, there is a need for statistical procedures which estimate and explain these constraints. Assuming that sufficient amounts of data are available, this paper proposes the use of sequential OLS regressions, which eliminate step by step non-critical observations in order to identify the cases that reached the mentioned constraints. For illustrative purposes, the author analyses the policy space of anti-democratic regimes with regard to their possibilities of curbing democracy. On the basis of the democracy scores of Freedom House, the author explores the governmental constraints set by (i) national civil societies and (ii) international NGOs for the promotion of political/civil rights. The related sequential regressions allow for an assessment of how effective the different constraints are and how far democracy may deteriorate in the worst case under given structural conditions

Correlating thermal machines and the second law at the nanoscale

Thermodynamics at the nanoscale is known to differ significantly from its familiar macroscopic counterpart: the possibility of state transitions is not determined by free energy alone, but by an infinite family of free-energy-like quantities; strong fluctuations (possibly of quantum origin) allow to extract less work reliably than what is expected from computing the free energy difference. However, these known results rely crucially on the assumption that the thermal machine is not only exactly preserved in every cycle, but also kept uncorrelated from the quantum systems on which it acts. Here we lift this restriction: we allow the machine to become correlated with the microscopic systems on which it acts, while still exactly preserving its own state. Surprisingly, we show that this restores the second law in its original form: free energy alone determines the possible state transitions, and the corresponding amount of work can be invested or extracted from single systems exactly and without any fluctuations. At the same time, the work reservoir remains uncorrelated from all other systems and parts of the machine. Thus, microscopic machines can increase their efficiency via clever "correlation engineering" in a perfectly cyclic manner, which is achieved by a catalytic system that can sometimes be as small as a single qubit (though some setups require very large catalysts). Our results also solve some open mathematical problems on majorization which may lead to further applications in entanglement theory.Comment: 11+13 pages, 5 figures. Added some clarifications and corrections; results unchanged. Close to published versio

Spectroscopic parameters and rest frequencies of isotopic methylidynium, CH+

Astronomical observations toward Sagittarius B2(M) as well as other sources with APEX have recently suggested that the rest frequency of the J = 1 - 0 transitions of 13CH+ is too low by about 80 MHz. Improved rest frequencies of isotopologs of methylidynium should be derived to support analyses of spectral recording obtained with the ongoing Herschel mission or the upcoming SOFIA. Laboratory electronic spectra of four isotopologs of CH+ have been subjected to one global least-squares fit. Laboratory data for the J = 1 - 0 ground state rotational transitions of CH+, 13CH+, and CD+, which became available during the refereeing process, have been included in the fit as well. An accurate set of spectroscopic parameters has been obtained together with equilibrium bond lengths and accurate rest frequencies for six CH+ isotopologs: CH+, 13CH+, 13CD+, CD+, 14CH+, and CT+. The present data will be useful for the analyses of $Herschel$ or SOFIA observations of methylidynium isotopic species.Comment: Astronomy and Astrophysics, accepted as Letter; 4 (here 5) page

Quantum Horn's lemma, finite heat baths, and the third law of thermodynamics

Interactions of quantum systems with their environment play a crucial role in resource-theoretic approaches to thermodynamics in the microscopic regime. Here, we analyze the possible state transitions in the presence of "small" heat baths of bounded dimension and energy. We show that for operations on quantum systems with fully degenerate Hamiltonian (noisy operations), all possible state transitions can be realized exactly with a bath that is of the same size as the system or smaller, which proves a quantum version of Horn's lemma as conjectured by Bengtsson and Zyczkowski. On the other hand, if the system's Hamiltonian is not fully degenerate (thermal operations), we show that some possible transitions can only be performed with a heat bath that is unbounded in size and energy, which is an instance of the third law of thermodynamics. In both cases, we prove that quantum operations yield an advantage over classical ones for any given finite heat bath, by allowing a larger and more physically realistic set of state transitions.Comment: 15+4 pages, 6 figures. Version accepted for publication in Quantu