Approximating the ground state of fermion system by multiple determinant states: matching pursuit approach

We present a simple and stable numerical method to approximate the ground state of a quantum many-body system by multiple determinant states. This method searches these determinant states one by one according to the matching pursuit algorithm. The first determinant state is identical to that of the Hartree-Fock theory. Calculations for two-dimensional Hubbard model serve as a demonstration.Comment: 5 Pages, 1 figur

Implementation of the Hierarchical Reference Theory for simple one-component fluids

Combining renormalization group theoretical ideas with the integral equation approach to fluid structure and thermodynamics, the Hierarchical Reference Theory is known to be successful even in the vicinity of the critical point and for sub-critical temperatures. We here present a software package independent of earlier programs for the application of this theory to simple fluids composed of particles interacting via spherically symmetrical pair potentials, restricting ourselves to hard sphere reference systems. Using the hard-core Yukawa potential with z=1.8/sigma for illustration, we discuss our implementation and the results it yields, paying special attention to the core condition and emphasizing the decoupling assumption's role.Comment: RevTeX, 16 pages, 2 figures. Minor changes, published versio

Quantum Phases of Attractive Matter Waves in a Toroidal Trap

Investigating the quantum phase transition in a ring from a uniform attractive Bose-Einstein condensate to a localized bright soliton we find that the soliton undergoes transverse collapse at a critical interaction strength, which depends on the ring dimensions. In addition, we predict the existence of other soliton configurations with many peaks, showing that they have a limited stability domain. Finally, we show that the phase diagram displays several new features when the toroidal trap is set in rotation.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures. To be published in Phys. Rev.

Spin-liquid and magnetic phases in the anisotropic triangular lattice: the case of κ\kappa-(ET)2_2X

The two-dimensional Hubbard model on the anisotropic triangular lattice, with two different hopping amplitudes $t$ and $t^\prime$, is relevant to describe the low-energy physics of $\kappa$-(ET)$_2$X, a family of organic salts. The ground-state properties of this model are studied by using Monte Carlo techniques, on the basis of a recent definition of backflow correlations for strongly-correlated lattice systems. The results show that there is no magnetic order for reasonably large values of the electron-electron interaction $U$ and frustrating ratio $t^\prime/t = 0.85$, suitable to describe the non-magnetic compound with X=Cu$_2$(CN)$_3$. On the contrary, N\'eel order takes place for weaker frustrations, i.e., $t^\prime/t \sim 0.4 \div 0.6$, suitable for materials with X=Cu$_2$(SCN)$_2$, Cu[N(CN)$_2$]Cl, or Cu[N(CN)$_2$]Br.Comment: 7 pages, Physical Review B 80, 064419 (2009

New flaring of an ultraluminous X-ray source in NGC 1365

We have studied a highly variable ultraluminous X-ray source (ULX) in the Fornax galaxy NGC 1365, with a series of 12 Chandra and XMM-Newton observations between 2002 and 2006. In 2006 April, the source peaked at a luminosity ~ 3 x 10^{40} erg/s in the 0.3-10 keV band (similar to the maximum luminosity found by ASCA in 1995), and declined on an e-folding timescale ~ 3 days. The X-ray spectrum is always dominated by a broad power-law-like component. When the source is seen at X-ray luminosities ~ 10^{40} erg/s, an additional soft thermal component (which we interpret as emission from the accretion disk) contributes ~ 1/4 of the X-ray flux; when the luminosity is higher, ~ 3 x 10^{40} erg/s, the thermal component is not detected and must contribute < 10% of the flux. At the beginning of the decline, ionized absorption is detected around 0.5-2 keV; it is a possible signature of a massive outflow. The power-law is always hard, with a photon index Gamma ~ 1.7 (and even flatter at times), as is generally the case with bright ULXs. We speculate that this source and perhaps most other bright ULXs are in a high/hard state: as the accretion rate increases well above the Eddington limit, more and more power is extracted from the inner region of the inflow through non-radiative channels, and is used to power a Comptonizing corona, jet or wind. The observed thermal component comes from the standard outer disk; the transition radius between outer standard disk and Comptonizing inner region moves further out and to lower disk temperatures as the accretion rate increases. This produces the observed appearance of a large, cool disk. Based on X-ray luminosity and spectral arguments, we suggest that this accreting black hole has a likely mass ~ 50-150 Msun (even without accounting for possible beaming).Comment: 14 pages, to appear in MNRA

Recent developments of the Hierarchical Reference Theory of Fluids and its relation to the Renormalization Group

The Hierarchical Reference Theory (HRT) of fluids is a general framework for the description of phase transitions in microscopic models of classical and quantum statistical physics. The foundations of HRT are briefly reviewed in a self-consistent formulation which includes both the original sharp cut-off procedure and the smooth cut-off implementation, which has been recently investigated. The critical properties of HRT are summarized, together with the behavior of the theory at first order phase transitions. However, the emphasis of this presentation is on the close relationship between HRT and non perturbative renormalization group methods, as well as on recent generalizations of HRT to microscopic models of interest in soft matter and quantum many body physics.Comment: 17 pages, 5 figures. Review paper to appear in Molecular Physic

Evidence for a resonant cyclotron line in IGR J16493-4348 from the Swift-BAT hard X-ray survey

Resonant absorption cyclotron features are a key diagnostic tool to directly measure the strength of the magnetic field of accreting neutron stars. However, typical values for cyclotron features lie in the high-energy part of the spectrum between 20 keV and 50 keV, where detection is often damped by the low statistics from single pointed observations. We show that long-term monitoring campaign performed with Swift-BAT of persistently, but faint, accreting high-mass X-ray binaries is able to reveal in their spectra the presence of cyclotron features. We extracted the average Swift-BAT 15-150 keV spectrum from the 54 months long Swift-BAT survey of the high-mass X-ray source IGR J16493-4348. To constrain the broadband spectrum we used soft X-ray spectra from Swift-XRT and Suzaku pointed observations. We model the spectra using a set of phenomenological models usually adopted to describe the energy spectrum of accreting high-mass X-ray binaries; irrespective of the models we used, we found significant improvements in the spectral fits adding to the models a broad (10 keV width) absorption feature, with best-fitting energy estimate between 30 and 33 keV, that we interpret as evidence for a resonant cyclotron absorption feature. We also discuss instrumental issues related to the use of Swift-BAT for this kind of studies and the statistical method to weight the confidence level of this detection. Correcting for the gravitational redshift of a 1.4 M_{\sun} neutron star, the inferred surface magnetic field is Bsurf 3.7 x 10^{12} Gauss. The spectral parameters of IGR J16493-4348 fit well with empirical correlations observed when the whole sample of high-mass binaries with detected cyclotron features is considered.Comment: Published in Astronomy & Astrophysics, 2011, 532, A7

Phase transitions in simple and not so simple binary fluids

Compared to pure fluids, binary mixtures display a very diverse phase behavior, which depends sensitively on the parameters of the microscopic potential. Here we investigate the phase diagrams of simple model mixtures by use of a microscopic implementation of the renormalization group technique. First, we consider a symmetric mixture with attractive interactions, possibly relevant for describing fluids of molecules with internal degrees of freedom. Despite the simplicity of the model, slightly tuning the strength of the interactions between unlike species drastically changes the topology of the phase boundary, forcing or inhibiting demixing, and brings about several interesting features such as double critical points, tricritical points, and coexistence domains enclosing `islands' of homogeneous, mixed fluid. Homogeneous phase separation in mixtures can be driven also by purely repulsive interactions. As an example, we consider a model of soft particles which has been adopted to describe binary polymer solutions. This is shown to display demixing (fluid-fluid) transition at sufficiently high density. The nature and the physical properties of the corresponding phase transition are investigated.Comment: 6 pages + 3 figures, presented at the 5th EPS Liquid Matter Conference, Konstanz, 14-18 September 200

Assessing the performance of XDP and AF-XDP based NFs in edge data center scenarios

While servers in traditional data centers can be specialized to run either CPU-intensive or network-intensive workloads, edge data centers need to consolidate both on the same machine(s) due to the reduced number of servers. This paper presents some preliminary experiments to determine how to improve the overall throughput of the above servers, being XDP and AF_XDP the two main technologies into play