Probing Resonances of the Dirac Equation with Complex Momentum Representation.

Resonance plays critical roles in the formation of many physical phenomena, and several methods have been developed for the exploration of resonance. In this work, we propose a new scheme for resonance by solving the Dirac equation in the complex momentum representation, in which the resonant states are exposed clearly in the complex momentum plane and the resonance parameters can be determined precisely without imposing unphysical parameters. Combined with the relativistic mean-field theory, this method is applied to probe the resonances in ^{120}Sn with the energies, widths, and wave functions being obtained. Compared to other methods, this method is not only very effective for narrow resonances, but also can be reliably applied to broad resonances.

The effect of random virus failure following cell entry on infection outcome and the success of antiviral therapy.

A virus infection can be initiated with very few or even a single infectious virion, and as such can become extinct, i.e. stochastically fail to take hold or spread significantly. There are many ways that a fully competent infectious virion, having successfully entered a cell, can fail to cause a productive infection, i.e. one that yields infectious virus progeny. Though many stochastic models (SMs) have been developed and used to estimate a virus infection's establishment probability, these typically neglect infection failure post virus entry. The SM presented herein introduces parameter [Formula: see text] which corresponds to the probability that a virion's entry into a cell will result in a productive cell infection. We derive an expression for the likelihood of infection establishment in this new SM, and find that prophylactic therapy with an antiviral reducing [Formula: see text] is at least as good or better at decreasing the establishment probability, compared to antivirals reducing the rates of virus production or virus entry into cells, irrespective of the SM parameters. We investigate the difference in the fraction of cells consumed by so-called extinct versus established virus infections, and find that this distinction becomes biologically meaningless as the probability of establishment approaches zero. We explain why the release of virions continuously over an infectious cell's lifespan, rather than as a single burst at the end of the cell's lifespan, does not result in an increased risk of infection extinction. We show, instead, that the number of virus released, not the timing of the release, affects infection establishment and associated critical antiviral efficacy.

Hybrid quantum annealing via molecular dynamics.

A novel quantum-classical hybrid scheme is proposed to efficiently solve large-scale combinatorial optimization problems. The key concept is to introduce a Hamiltonian dynamics of the classical flux variables associated with the quantum spins of the transverse-field Ising model. Molecular dynamics of the classical fluxes can be used as a powerful preconditioner to sort out the frozen and ambivalent spins for quantum annealers. The performance and accuracy of our smooth hybridization in comparison to the standard classical algorithms (the tabu search and the simulated annealing) are demonstrated by employing the MAX-CUT and Ising spin-glass problems.

High precision nuclear mass predictions towards a hundred kilo-electron-volt accuracy.

Mass is a fundamental property and an important fingerprint of atomic nucleus. It provides an extremely useful test ground for nuclear models and is crucial to understand energy generation in stars as well as the heavy elements synthesized in stellar explosions. Nuclear physicists have been attempting at developing a precise, reliable, and predictive nuclear model that is suitable for the whole nuclear chart, while this still remains a great challenge even in recent days. Here we employ the Fourier spectral analysis to examine the deviations of nuclear mass predictions to the experimental data and to present a novel way for accurate nuclear mass predictions. In this analysis, we map the mass deviations from the space of nucleon number to its conjugate space of frequency, and are able to pin down the main contributions to the model deficiencies. By using the radial basis function approach we can further isolate and quantify the sources. Taking a pedagogical mass model as an example, we examine explicitly the correlation between nuclear effective interactions and the distributions of mass deviations in the frequency domain. The method presented in this work, therefore, opens up a new way for improving the nuclear mass predictions towards a hundred kilo-electron-volt accuracy, which is argued to be the chaos-related limit for the nuclear mass predictions.

Spin-isospin resonances: a self-consistent covariant description.

For the first time a fully self-consistent charge-exchange relativistic RPA based on the relativistic Hartree-Fock (RHF) approach is established. The self-consistency is verified by the so-called isobaric analog state (IAS) check. The excitation properties and the nonenergy weighted sum rules of two important charge-exchange excitation modes, the Gamow-Teller resonance (GTR) and the spin-dipole resonance (SDR), are well reproduced in the doubly magic nuclei 48Ca, 90Zr and 208Pb without readjustment of the particle-hole residual interaction. The dominant contribution of the exchange diagrams is demonstrated.