A research report submitted to the Faculty of Science, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in partial fulfilment of the degree of Master of Science / The importance of Pade approximation has been increasingly recognized in ' recent years. The first convergence result of Pade approximants valid for general meromorphic functions was obtained by de Montessus de Ballore in 1902. He proved that when a function f has precisely n poles in I z 1< R, then the (n+ 1)th column in thePade table of f converges to f in I z J< R. (Abbreviation abstract) / Andrew Chakane 2019

A multipoint Padë approximant, R, to a function of Stieltjes1 type is determined.The function R has numerator of degree n-l and denominator of degree n.The 2n interpolation points must belong to the region where f is analytic,and if one non-real point is amongst the interpolation points its complex-conjugated point must too.The problem is to characterize R and to find some convergence results as n tends to infinity. A certain kind of continued fraction expansion of f is used.From a characterization theorem it is shown that in each step of that expansion a new function, g, is produced; a function of the same type as f. The function g is then used,in the second step of the expansion,to show that yet a new function of the same type as f is produced. After a finite number of steps the expansion is truncated,and the last created function is replaced by the zero function.It is then shown,that in each step upwards in the expansion a rational function is created; a function of the same type as f.From this it is clear that the multipoint Padê approximant R is of the same type as f.From this it is obvious that the zeros of R interlace the poles, which belong to the region where f is not analytical.Both the zeros and the poles are simple. Since both f and R are functions of Stieltjes ' type the theory of Hardy spaces can be applied (p less than one ) to show some error formulas.When all the interpolation points coincide ( ordinary Padé approximation) the expected error formula is attained. From the error formula above it is easy to show uniform convergence in compact sets of the region where f is analytical,at least wien the interpolation points belong to a compact set of that region.Convergence is also shown for the case where the interpolation points approach the interval where f is not analytical,as long as the speed qî approach is not too great. / digitalisering@umu

In this work we study the interesting physics of the rare earths, and the microscopic state after ultrafast magnetization dynamics in iron. Moreover, this work covers the development, examination and application of several methods used in solid state physics. The first and the last part are related to strongly correlated electrons. The second part is related to the field of ultrafast magnetization dynamics. In the first part we apply density functional theory plus dynamical mean field theory within the Hubbard I approximation to describe the interesting physics of the rare-earth metals. These elements are characterized by the localized nature of the 4f electrons and the itinerant character of the other valence electrons. We calculate a wide range of properties of the rare-earth metals and find a good correspondence with experimental data. We argue that this theory can be the basis of future investigations addressing rare-earth based materials in general. In the second part of this thesis we develop a model, based on statistical arguments, to predict the microscopic state after ultrafast magnetization dynamics in iron. We predict that the microscopic state after ultrafast demagnetization is qualitatively different from the state after ultrafast increase of magnetization. This prediction is supported by previously published spectra obtained in magneto-optical experiments. Our model makes it possible to compare the measured data to results that are calculated from microscopic properties. We also investigate the relation between the magnetic asymmetry and the magnetization. In the last part of this work we examine several methods of analytic continuation that are used in many-body physics to obtain physical quantities on real energies from either imaginary time or Matsubara frequency data. In particular, we improve the Padé approximant method of analytic continuation. We compare the reliability and performance of this and other methods for both one and two-particle Green's functions. We also investigate the advantages of implementing a method of analytic continuation based on stochastic sampling on a graphics processing unit (GPU).