Interaction Quenches of Fermi Gases

It is shown that the jump in the momentum distribution of Fermi gases evolves smoothly for small and intermediate times once an interaction between the fermions is suddenly switched on. The jump does not vanish abruptly. The loci in momentum space where the jumps occur are those of the noninteracting Fermi sea. No relaxation of the Fermi surface geometry takes place.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figur

Generalization of short coherent control pulses: extension to arbitrary rotations

We generalize the problem of the coherent control of small quantum systems to the case where the quantum bit (qubit) is subject to a fully general rotation. Following the ideas developed in Pasini et al (2008 Phys. Rev. A 77, 032315), the systematic expansion in the shortness of the pulse is extended to the case where the pulse acts on the qubit as a general rotation around an axis of rotation varying in time. The leading and the next-leading corrections are computed. For certain pulses we prove that the general rotation does not improve on the simpler rotation with fixed axis.Comment: 6 pages, no figures; published versio

Understanding panel conditioning: an examination of social desirability bias in self-reported height and weight in panel surveys using experimental data

Typically reliant on self-reports from panel data, a growing body of literature suggests that relative body weight can have negative effects on labour market outcomes. Given the interest in the effects of relative weight in the social sciences, this paper addresses the question of whether repeated interviewing affects the quality of these data. A theory that focuses on the sensitivity of the questions rather than the survey context is proposed. Examining experimental panel data from Understanding Society using quantile-regression, the findings for women are consistent with the argument that conditioning reduces social desirability effects. The ameliorative effects of panel conditioning on social desirability bias in self-reported height and bodyweight appear to strengthen the association between relative weight and employment for men, but not women, however

Perturbation Theory by Flow Equations: Dimerized and Frustrated S=1/2 Chain

The flow equation method (Wegner 1994) is used as continuous unitary transformation to construct perturbatively effective Hamiltonians. The method is illustrated in detail for dimerized and frustrated antiferromagnetic S=1/2 chains. The effective Hamiltonians conserve the number of elementary excitations which are S=1 magnons for the dimerized chains. The sectors of different number of excitations are clearly separated. Easy-to-use results for the gap, the dispersion and the ground state energies of the chains are provided.Comment: 18 pages, 15 figures included, to appear in Eur. Phys. J. B; Electronic data will be made available on appearance of articl

Spectral Densities from Dynamic Density-Matrix Renormalization

Dynamic density-matrix renormalization provides valuable numerical information on dynamic correlations by computing convolutions of the corresponding spectral densities. Here we discuss and illustrate how and to which extent such data can be deconvolved to retrieve the wanted spectral densities. We advocate a nonlinear deconvolution scheme which minimizes the bias in the ansatz for the spectral density. The procedure is illustrated for the line shape and width of the Kondo peak (low energy feature) and for the line shape of the Hubbard satellites (high energy feature) of the single impurity Anderson model. It is found that the Hubbard satellites are strongly asymmetric.Comment: RevTeX 4, 11 pages, 7 eps figures; published versio