Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 1996. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [114]-116).

No description available.

No description available.

We discuss the role of symmetries in the dissociative recombinations (DR) of three polyatomic ions, namely the linear HCO+ (formyl) ion and the two highly symmetric H+3 and H3O+ (hydronium) molecular ions. Regarding the HCO+ ion, we apply a quantum mechanical treatment using the Multi-channel Quantum Defect Theory (MQDT) formalism to describe the ion-electron scattering process. Our study takes into account the Renner-Teller effect in order to model the non Born-Oppenheimer vibronic coupling in linear polyatomic ions. The coupling has shown to represent the main mechanism responsible for electronic capturing in highly excited Rydberg states associated with excited vibrational levels of the ionic core. We consider all internal degrees of freedom of HCO+ and obtain the dissociative cross section as a function of the incident electron kinetic energy. We have also improved the theoretical approach by including the large permanent dipole moment of HCO+ using a generalization of the MQDT formalism. To our knowledge, this is the rst time the permanent dipole moment of an ion is included in a DR study. The obtained results are in good agreement with experimental data. We also study the DR of H+3 and H3O+ symmetric ions using a simpli ed theoretical treatment, which focuses on the key ingredient of the DR process, the electron capture in the rst excited degenerate vibrational normal mode of the ions through non Born-Oppenheimer Jahn-Teller coupling. For both ions the obtained cross sections are in very good agreement with the available experimental data. Moreover, in the case of H+3 , the results reproduce previous calculations from two independent theoretical studies. Finally, we investigate the role of symmetries in few body ultra-cold collisions by considering both three and four identical atoms systems. We derive allowed rearrangements of different fragments of the system, satisfying the complete symmetry of the molecular Hamiltonian. For that purpose we establish a correspondence between constants of motion of the system in di erent large-distance con gurations and irreducible representations of the total symmetry group. Selection rules (forbidden transitions) and allowed states, which depend on the fermionic or bosonic nature of the atoms, can be derived from these results.

Symmetry has played a crucial role in our understanding of physical systems. In this thesis, we review several works based on investigating the symmetry properties of theories. We examine and improve the Noether's theorem and the coset construction, both powerful tools when studying the symmetry aspects of a physical system. We manipulate the intrinsic ambiguities in the derivation of the stress-energy tensor using Noether's theorem to systematically compute, without any guesswork, the necessary ``improvement terms'' which make the tensor satisfy certain algebraic properties such as symmetry and tracelessness, even off-shell. We then construct a new type of coset construction, which can accommodate relativistic particles with arbitrary spins. This is the first work we know of to incorporate arbitrary spin degrees of freedom into coset construction. We then present two interesting examples of condensed matter systems described by effective field theories that come from spontaneous symmetry breaking. For the so-called framid, we present the peculiar behavior of its stress-energy tensor that it is Lorentz-invariant even though the system breaks Lorentz boosts spontaneously. An analogy is drawn to the cosmological constant problem since the vacuum energy there and the Lorentz-breaking terms here are all surprisingly zero. Lastly, we describe how the inflation of the universe can be driven by a solid. We focus on the icosahedral inflation model, where the isotropies of background evolution and scalar power spectrum are guaranteed although the system is anisotropic. We discuss some observational signatures of this model.

Thesis (PhD)--Stellenbosch University, 2015. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Please refer to full text for abstract. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Sien asb volteks vir opsomming.

Orientador: Antonio Soares de Castro / Banca: Marcelo Batista Hott / Banca: Pedro Almeida Vieira Alberto / Banca: Luis Rafael Benito Castro / Banca: Edisom de Souza Moreira junior / Resumo: O espalhamento relativístico de bósons de spin 0 e de férmions de spin 1/2 por potenciais coulombianos esfericamente simétricos 'e analisado em detalhes com uma mistura arbitrária de acoplamentos escalar e vetorial. Mostra-se que a série de ondas parciais, seja para bósons ou férmions, se reduz à amplitude de espalhamento de Rutherford exata quando os potenciais escalar e vetorial têm a mesma magnitude. O mesmo acontece na aproximação de potenciais fracos. O comportamento da amplitude de espalhamento próximo das condições que fornecem a forma fechada é também discutido. A partir dos polos complexos da amplitude de onda parcial, soluções exatas de estados ligados para partículas e antipartículas em diferentes circunstâncias são obtidas. A quebra perturbativa da degenerescência acidental aparecendo em um par de casos especiais é relacionado com a não conservação do vetor de Runge-Lenz. No caso de férmions, as amplitudes de ondas parciais têm formas fechadas não apenas para as simetrias de spin e pseudospin mas também quando há uma ligeira quebra das mesmas. Mostra-se que no limite não relativístico, a seção de choque diferencial obtida se reduz para a seção de choque de Rutherford para simetrias de spin e pseudospin exatas e para a seção de choque de Mott quando a simetria é suavemente quebrada / Abstract: The relativistic scattering of spin-0 bosons and spin-1/2 fermions by spherically symmetric Coulomb potentials is analyzed in detail with an arbitrary mixing of vector and scalar couplings. It is shown that the partial wave series for both bosons and fermions reduces the scattering amplitude to that one resulting in the Rutherford formula exactly when the vector and scalar potentials have the same magnitude. The same happen in the approximation for weak potentials. The behavior of the scattering amplitude near the conditions that furnish its closed form is also discussed. From the complex poles of the partial scattering amplitude for bosons the exact closed form of bound-state solutions for both particles and antiparticles with different scenarios for the coupling constants are obtained. Perturbative breaking of the accidental degeneracy appearing in a pair of special cases is related to the nonconservation of the Runge-Lenz vector. In the case of fermions, the closed form for the partial wave series occurs not only for the spin and pseudospin symmetries but also when there is a slight breaking of the same. It is shown that in the non-relativistic limit, the differential cross section obtained reduces to Rutherford's cross section when there are spin and pseudospin symmetries and to Mott differential cross section when the symmetry is slightly broken / Doutor

Abstract not available

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Department of Physics, December 2001. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2001. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 124-127). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.