5,723 research outputs found
Simulating anthropogenic impacts to bird communities in tropical rain forests
We used an aggregated modelling approach to simulate the impacts ofanthropogenic disturbances on the long-term dynamics of faunal diversityin tropical rain forests. We restricted our study to bird communities eventhough the approach is more general. We developed a model calledBIODIV which simulated the establishment of hypothetical bird speciesin a forest. Our model was based on the results of a simple matrix modelwhich calculated the spatio-temporal dynamics of a tropical rain forest inMalaysia. We analysed the establishment of bird species in a secondaryforest succession and the impacts of 60 different logging scenarios on thediversity of the bird community. Of the three logging parameters(cycle length, method, intensity), logging intensity had the most servereimpact on the bird community. In the worst case the number of bird specieswas reduced to 23% of the species richness found in a primary forest
Collectivity in the optical response of small metal clusters
The question whether the linear absorption spectra of metal clusters can be
interpreted as density oscillations (collective ``plasmons'') or can only be
understood as transitions between distinct molecular states is still a matter
of debate for clusters with only a few electrons. We calculate the
photoabsorption spectra of Na2 and Na5+ comparing two different methods:
quantum fluid-dynamics and time-dependent density functional theory. The
changes in the electronic structure associated with particular excitations are
visualized in ``snapshots'' via transition densities. Our analysis shows that
even for the smallest clusters, the observed excitations can be interpreted as
intuitively understandable density oscillations. For Na5+, the importance of
self-interaction corrections to the adiabatic local density approximation is
demonstrated.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures. To appear in special issue of Applied Physics B,
"Optical properties of Nanoparticles
Fission barriers and asymmetric ground states in the relativistic mean field theory
The symmetric and asymmetric fission path for 240Pu, 232Th, and 226Ra is
investigated within the relativistic mean field model. Standard
parametrizations which are well fitted to nuclear ground state properties are
found to deliver reasonable qualitative and quantitative features of fission,
comparable to similar nonrelativstic calculations. Furthermore, stable octupole
deformations in the ground states of Radium isotopes are investigated. They are
found in a series of isotopes, qualitatively in agreement with nonrelativistic
models. But the quantitative details differ amongst the models and between the
various relativsitic parametrizations.Comment: 30 pages RevTeX, 7 tables, 12 low resolution Gif figures (high
resolution PostScript versions are available at
http://www.th.physik.uni-frankfurt.de/~bender/nucl_struct_publications.html
or at ftp://th.physik.uni-frankfurt.de/pub/bender
Pairing gaps from nuclear mean-field models
We discuss the pairing gap, a measure for nuclear pairing correlations, in
chains of spherical, semi-magic nuclei in the framework of self-consistent
nuclear mean-field models. The equations for the conventional BCS model and the
approximate projection-before-variation Lipkin-Nogami method are formulated in
terms of local density functionals for the effective interaction. We calculate
the Lipkin-Nogami corrections of both the mean-field energy and the pairing
energy. Various definitions of the pairing gap are discussed as three-point,
four-point and five-point mass-difference formulae, averaged matrix elements of
the pairing potential, and single-quasiparticle energies. Experimental values
for the pairing gap are compared with calculations employing both a delta
pairing force and a density-dependent delta interaction in the BCS and
Lipkin-Nogami model. Odd-mass nuclei are calculated in the spherical blocking
approximation which neglects part of the the core polarization in the odd
nucleus. We find that the five-point mass difference formula gives a very
robust description of the odd-even staggering, other approximations for the gap
may differ from that up to 30% for certain nuclei.Comment: 17 pages, 8 figures. Accepted for publication in EPJ
Consequences of the center-of-mass correction in nuclear mean-field models
We study the influence of the scheme for the correction for spurious
center-of-mass motion on the fit of effective interactions for self-consistent
nuclear mean-field calculations. We find that interactions with very simple
center-of-mass correction have significantly larger surface coefficients than
interactions for which the center-of-mass correction was calculated for the
actual many-body state during the fit. The reason for that is that the
effective interaction has to counteract the wrong trends with nucleon number of
all simplified schemes for center-of-mass correction which puts a wrong trend
with mass number into the effective interaction itself. The effect becomes
clearly visible when looking at the deformation energy of largely deformed
systems, e.g. superdeformed states or fission barriers of heavy nuclei.Comment: 12 pages LATeX, needs EPJ style files, 5 eps figures, accepted for
publication in Eur. Phys. J.
Consequences of self-consistency violations in Hartree-Fock random-phase approximation calculations of the nuclear breathing mode energy
We provide for the first time accurate assessments of the consequences of
violations of self-consistency in the Hartree-Fock based random phase
approximation (RPA) as commonly used to calculate the energy of the
nuclear breathing mode. Using several Skyrme interactions we find that the
self-consistency violated by ignoring the spin-orbit interaction in the RPA
calculation causes a spurious enhancement of the breathing mode energy for spin
unsaturated systems. Contrarily, neglecting the Coulomb interaction in the RPA
or performing the RPA calculations in the TJ scheme underestimates the
breathing mode energy. Surprisingly, our results for the Zr and
Pb nuclei for several Skyrme type effective nucleon-nucleon
interactions having a wide range of nuclear matter incompressibility ( MeV) and symmetry energy ( MeV) indicate that
the net uncertainty ( MeV) is comparable to the
experimental one.Comment: Revtex file (11 pages), Accepted for the publication in Phys. Rev.
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