Numerical implementation of generalized Coddington equations for ophthalmic lens design

Postprint (author's final draft

Segregation and symmetry breaking of strongly coupled two-component Bose-Einstein condensates in a harmonic trap

We study ground states of two-component condensates in a harmonic trap. We prove that in the strongly coupled and weakly interacting regime, the two components segregate while a symmetry breaking occurs. More precisely, we show that when the intercomponent coupling strength is very large and both intracomponent coupling strengths are small, each component is close to the positive or the negative part of a second eigenfunction of the harmonic oscillator in $\R^2$. As a result, the supports of the components approach complementary half-spaces, and they are not radially symmetric

Classicism, post-classicism and Ranjabati Sircar’s work: re-defining the terms of Indian contemporary dance discourses

This essay discusses contemporary dance in India foregrounding the link between dance and politics. The author proposes that contemporary dance in today’s India can be seen as a continuum, under which is tension and rupture. It embraces on one hand, ‘classicism’- strictly speaking ‘neo-classicism’ - on the other, an ideological move away from this ‘classicism’, which constitutes itself into an heterogeneous movement motivated by a search for new dance languages. These new languages, growing out of ‘traditional roots’ (variously defined), claim to be sustained by the ‘classicism ’ of Indian dance. This movement can be referred to, for convenience, as ‘post-classicism’; this ‘post-classicism’is otherwise known as ‘Contemporary’ dance – with a capital c , in accordance with a western model. Dance in today’s India, whether ‘classical’ or ‘post-classical’ is wholly entangled with the issue of an Indian religious and secular identity, increasingly dominated by a Hinduising discourse, and this informs the artistic choices of dance artists. The essay will discuss the work of Ranjabati Sircar, here seen as ‘post-classical’, against this scenario, and will begin to reflect on the impact Ranjabati Sircar’s choreography and her cosmopolitanism has had on dance in contexts other than India, such as the British South Asian diaspora

Dance in ninth century Java. A methodology for the analysis and reconstitution of the dance

This short essay presents a case study – that of the dance reliefs of the Prambanan complex in Central Java, aiming to steer the discussion around an important aspect of any archaeological investigation of dance. Rather than focusing solely on contextual issues, such as the nature and function of dance at a particular point in time and in a specific socio-cultural context, the Prambanan case study questions how to engage with the archaeological dance record from a dancer’s point of view, in other words in terms of movement reconstitution and its re-embodiment. It is almost tautological to say that dance is practice based and performance oriented. However it is often the case that it is precisely this aspect of dance which is neglected in archaeological accounts and no methodologies are being developed to deal with such issues. My work on the Prambanan dance reliefs attempts to bridge this gap

Dance in the British South Asian diaspora: redefining classicism

This paper discusses South Asian dance forms and genres in Britain, one of the major locations of the South Asian diaspora. It addresses issues of "classicism," "neoclassicism" and "contemporaneity" in South Asian dancing, particularly important as in the British context availability of public funding depends on the artists demonstrating an innovative engagement with their own practice. The author focuses, as a specific case study, on the work, Moham, choreographed and danced as a solo by bharatanatyam artist Chitra Sundaram in 2002 and argues for the need to address issues of difference and cultural specificity, questioning the underlying assumptions of western notions of classicism, as these impinge on South Asian dance praxes in the British context

Reconsidering Economic Relations and Political Citizenship in the New Iberia of the New Europe: Some Lessons from the Fifteenth Anniversary of the Accession of Portugal and Spain to the European Union. CES Working Paper, no. 94, 2003

The purpose of this paper is to use the fifteenth anniversary of the accession of Portugal and Spain to the European Union as an opportunity to reflect on what has happened to both countries since 1986. It examines the integration process and how it has affected political, economic and social developments in Portugal and in Spain over the last fifteen years. In our view, and on balance, Spain and Portugal have benefited from accession. Since the last century, the obsession of Spanish and Portuguese reformists has been to make up the lost ground with modernized Europe. EU membership has been a critical step in this direction. The record of the past fifteen years is that this dream is becoming an economic reality. Despite impressive achievements, however, namely, since 1986, Portugal’s average per capita income has grown from 56 percent of the EU average to about 74 percent, whereas Spain’s has grown to 83 percent—both Iberian countries still have a long way to go to reach the EU average wealth. In addition, the question of Iberian and/or European citizenship, and its impact on the Portuguese and Spanish, remains open

Landau levels, edge states and magneto-conductance in GaAs/AlGaAs core-shell nanowires

Magnetic states of the electron gas confined in modulation-doped core-shell nanowires are calculated for a transverse field of arbitrary strength and orientation. Magneto-conductance is predicted within the Landauer approach. The modeling takes fully into account the radial material modulation, the prismatic symmetry and the doping profile of realistic GaAs/AlGaAs devices within an envelope-function approach, and electron-electron interaction is included in a mean-field self-consistent approach. Calculations show that in the low free-carrier density regime, magnetic states can be described in terms of Landau levels and edge states, similar to planar two-dimensional electron gases in a Hall bar. However, at higher carrier density the dominating electron-electron interaction leads to a strongly inhomogeneous localization at the prismatic heterointerface. This gives rise to a complex band dispersion, with local minima at finite values of the longitudinal wave vector, and a region of negative magneto-resistance. The predicted marked anisotropy of the magneto-conductance with field direction is a direct probe of the inhomogeneous electron gas localization of the conductive channel induced by the prismatic geometry

Choreographing heritage, performing the site

The paper reflects on the different types of performance which take place at archaeological sites, as a global phenomenon, and more broadly on the archaeology/ performance interface