15,093 research outputs found
Tuning the Mott transition in a Bose-Einstein condensate by multi-photon absorption
We study the time-dependent dynamics of a Bose-Einstein condensate trapped in
an optical lattice. Modeling the system as a Bose-Hubbard model, we show how
applying a periodic driving field can induce coherent destruction of tunneling.
In the low-frequency regime, we obtain the novel result that the destruction of
tunneling displays extremely sharp peaks when the driving frequency is resonant
with the depth of the trapping potential (``multi-photon resonances''), which
allows the quantum phase transition between the Mott insulator and the
superfluid state to be controlled with high precision. We further show how the
waveform of the field can be chosen to maximize this effect.Comment: Minor changes, this version to be published in Phys. Rev. Let
Synthesis and properties of Co-doped titanate nanotubes and their optical sensitization with methylene blue
Here we report on a novel chemical route to synthesize homogenous cobalt
doped titanate nanotubes (CoTNT), using an amorphous Co-doped precursor. The
influence of the synthesis temperature, autoclave dwell time and metal doping
on the structural and microstructural as well as on the optical properties of
the synthesized titanate nanotubes is studied and discussed. The optical band
gaps of the CoTNT samples are red shifted in comparison with the values
determined for the undoped samples, such red shifts bringing the absorption
edge of the CoTNT samples into the visible region. CoTNT materials also
demonstrate particular high adsorption ability for methylene blue, the amount
of the adsorbed dye being higher than the one predictable for a monolayer
formation. This suggests the possibility of intercalation of the dye molecule
between the TiO6 layers of the TNT structure. It is also shown that the
methylene blue sensitized Co-doped nanostructures are highly stable under UV
radiation and present a strong and broad absorption in the visible region.Comment: 31 pages, 3 tables, 7 figure
Convex Optimization Methods for Dimension Reduction and Coefficient Estimation in Multivariate Linear Regression
In this paper, we study convex optimization methods for computing the trace
norm regularized least squares estimate in multivariate linear regression. The
so-called factor estimation and selection (FES) method, recently proposed by
Yuan et al. [22], conducts parameter estimation and factor selection
simultaneously and have been shown to enjoy nice properties in both large and
finite samples. To compute the estimates, however, can be very challenging in
practice because of the high dimensionality and the trace norm constraint. In
this paper, we explore a variant of Nesterov's smooth method [20] and interior
point methods for computing the penalized least squares estimate. The
performance of these methods is then compared using a set of randomly generated
instances. We show that the variant of Nesterov's smooth method [20] generally
outperforms the interior point method implemented in SDPT3 version 4.0 (beta)
[19] substantially . Moreover, the former method is much more memory efficient.Comment: 27 page
The expectations hypothesis of the term structure: some empirical evidence for Portugal
The purpose of this paper is to test the (rational) expectations hypothesis of the term structure of interest rates using Portuguese data for the interbank money market. The results obtained support only a very weak, long-run or "asymptotic" version of the hypothesis, and broadly agree with previous evidence for other countries.
The empirical evidence supports the cointegration of Portuguese rates and the "puzzle" well known in the literature: although its forecasts of future short-term rates are in the correct direction, the spread between longer and shorter rates fails to forecast future longer rates. In the single equation framework, the implications of the hypothesis in terms of the predictive ability of the spread are also clearly rejected
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