At extremely low temperatures, clouds of bosonic atoms form what is known as a Bose-Einstein condensate. Recently, it has become clear that many different types of condensates -- so called fragmented condensates -- exist. In order to tell whether fragmentation occurs or not, it is necessary to solve the full many-body Schrodinger equation, a task that remained elusive for experimentally relevant conditions for many years. In this thesis the first numerically exact solutions of the time-dependent many-body Schrodinger equation for a bosonic Josephson junction are provided and compared to...
At extremely low temperatures, clouds of bosonic atoms form what is known as a Bose-Einstein condensate. Recently, it has become clear that many di...
Jason Woolford's thesis describes for the first time, a double 3]2] photocycloaddition of alkenes onto aromatic rings. Modern synthetic chemistry relies on the ability of researchers to uncover new and more efficient ways of creating highly complex structures. This work describes a novel, environmentally friendly photochemical step that converts in one pot, trivial starting materials into otherwise difficult to construct fenstrane frameworks. The rigid cores of these frameworks have significant potential in drug design. Moreover, the novelty of this work overtakes many other methods for the...
Jason Woolford's thesis describes for the first time, a double 3]2] photocycloaddition of alkenes onto aromatic rings. Modern synthetic chemistry rel...
With the aim of providing a deeper insight into possible mechanisms of biological self-organization, this thesis presents new approaches to describe the process of self-assembly and the impact of spatial organization on the function of membrane proteins, from a statistical physics point of view. It focuses on three important scenarios: the assembly of membrane proteins, the collective response of mechanosensitive channels and the function of the twin arginine translocation (Tat) system. Using methods from equilibrium and non-equilibrium statistical mechanics, general conclusions were drawn...
With the aim of providing a deeper insight into possible mechanisms of biological self-organization, this thesis presents new approaches to describe t...
The production of heavy quarks in high-energy experiments offers a rich field to study, both experimentally and theoretically. Due to the additional quark mass, the description of these processes in the framework of perturbative QCD is much more demanding than it is for those involving only massless partons. In the last two decades, a large amount of precision data has been collected by the deep inelastic HERA experiment. In order to make full use of these data, a more precise theoretical description of charm quark production in deep inelastic scattering is needed. This work deals with the...
The production of heavy quarks in high-energy experiments offers a rich field to study, both experimentally and theoretically. Due to the additional q...
Density functional theory (DFT) has become the standard workhorse for quantum mechanical simulations as it offers a good compromise between accuracy and computational cost. However, there are many important systems for which DFT performs very poorly, most notably strongly-correlated materials, resulting in a significant recent growth in interest in 'beyond DFT' methods. The widely used DFT+U technique, in particular, involves the addition of explicit Coulomb repulsion terms to reproduce the physics of spatially-localised electronic subspaces. The magnitude of these corrective...
Density functional theory (DFT) has become the standard workhorse for quantum mechanical simulations as it offers a good compromise between accurac...
The common belief is that light is completely reflected by metals. In reality they also exhibit an amazing property that is not so widely known: under some conditions light flows along a metallic surface as if it were glued to it. Physical phenomena related to these light waves, which are called Surface Plasmon Polaritons (SPP), have given rise to the research field of plasmonics. This thesis explores four interesting topics within plasmonics: extraordinary optical transmission, negative refractive index metamaterials, plasmonic devices for controlling SPPs, and field enhancement...
The common belief is that light is completely reflected by metals. In reality they also exhibit an amazing property that is not so widely known: un...
The volume is based on a classical Rutherford scattering experiment adapted to the large hadron collider at CERN, presenting the measurement of scattering angles to search for new physics and substructure.
The volume is based on a classical Rutherford scattering experiment adapted to the large hadron collider at CERN, presenting the measurement of scatte...
This study presents a unique way to utilize the existing literature to explain the success of treaties in managing hydrologic stress. Literature-derived core concepts are summarized as seven treaty mechanisms categories (specificity, uncertainty management, enforcement, communications, flexibility, integrativeness, and scale) and are hypothesized as important for shaping the institutional resiliency of a treaty. Treaty design is shown to have a relevant and important role in shaping basin management so that nations may better achieve their goals in a changing climate.
This study presents a unique way to utilize the existing literature to explain the success of treaties in managing hydrologic stress. Literature-deriv...
Carola Vogel's PhD thesis focuses on the synthesis, and structural and spectroscopic characterization of the first high valent iron nitride complexes. In her interdisciplinary and collaborative research Carola also describes the reactivity studies of a unique iron (V) nitride complex with water. These studies show that quantitative yields of ammonia are given at ambient conditions. High valent iron nitride and oxo species have been proposed as key intermediates in many bio-catalytic transformations, but until now these species have proven exceedingly challenging to isolate and study. Iron...
Carola Vogel's PhD thesis focuses on the synthesis, and structural and spectroscopic characterization of the first high valent iron nitride complexes....
Diffusion in solids at moderate temperatures is a well-known phenomenon. However, direct experimental evidence about the responsible atomic-scale mechanisms has been scarce, due to difficulties in probing the relevant length- and time-scales. The present thesis deals with the application of X-ray Photon Correlation Spectroscopy (XPCS) for answering such questions. This is an established method for the study of slow dynamics on length-scales of a few nanometres. The scattered intensity in the diffuse regime, i.e. corresponding to atomic distances, is very low, however, and so it has so far...
Diffusion in solids at moderate temperatures is a well-known phenomenon. However, direct experimental evidence about the responsible atomic-scale m...
