Search NASA⌕ Search

SEARCH · Search NASA

Results for “Quantum mechanics”

Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 181 records · Page 10

Path-integrals in dynamics

Path integrals in dynamics - quantum mechanics and classical wave motion in one dimension

CLASSICAL MECHANICS↗

Modeling and Simulation of Semiconductor Quantum Well Structures and Lasers

In this talk I will cover two aspects of modeling and simulation efforts at NASA Ames Research Center. In the quantum well structure simulation, we typically start from the quantum mechanical calculation of the quantum well structures for the confined/and unconfined eigen states and functions. A bandstructure calculation of the k*p type is then performed for the confined valence states. This information is then used to computer the optical gain and refractive index of the quantum well structures by solving the linearized multiband semiconductor Bloch equations with the many-body interactions included. In our laser simulation, we typically solve the envelope equations for the laser field in space-time domain, coupled with a reduced set of material equations using the microscopic calculation of the first step. Finally I will show some examples of both aspects of simulation and modeling.

Ning, Cun-Zheng↗

Ceramic Interconnects with Low Sintering Temperature

Ceramic interconnects for use in solid oxide he1 cells are expected to operate between 900 to approximately 1000 C, sinter below 1400 C to allow co-firing and meet a number thermal mechanical requirements. The pervoskite type (ABO3) lanthanum chromite based materials have emerged as a leading candidate that will meet these criteria by varying the composition on the A and B sites. A need therefore exists to determine this material's temperature dependent electrical and mechanical properties with respect to these site substitutions. In this investigation oxide powders were prepared by the glycine-nitrate process. Ionic substitutions were carried out on A sites with Ca or Sr, and B sites with Co and Al, respectively. Only stoichiometric compositions were considered for the sake of stability. The powders and their ability to sinter were investigated by XRD, SEM, dilatometry and density measurements. The sintered materials were further examined by SEM, thermal expansion and electric conductivity measurements in order to elucidate the resulting microstructure, electrical and mechanical properties. In addition quantum mechanical calculations were performed to obtain insight into the effects of these dopants on the materials electronic band structure and lattice parameter.

Zhong, Zhi-Min↗

Mechanism of Quantum Speedup in Novel Population Transfer Protocol for Binary Optimization Problems

We consider a novel quantum population transfer protocol to solve binary optimization problems that exploits quantum many-body dynamics in the delocalized regime. Hard optimization problems are characterized by energy landscape with a large number of local minima separated by large Hamming distances which scale with the problem size. This landscape gives rise to an interesting computational primitive: given an initial bit-string, we are to produce other bit-strings within certain narrow range of energies around the initial state. We consider a specific model we call "impurity band": a system of n qubits in a transverse field, where a number of bitstrings $M<<2^n$ selected at random are assigned random energies distributed in a narrow window of width $W<<1$ around the mean energy $-n$. We demonstrate the existence of the many-body delocalized regime in this model when the spectrum of the model splits into many-body minibands, and a typical eigenstate wave function is a superposition of peaks centered at a large number of local minima. The typical width of the minibands in energy determines the efficiency of the population transfer protocol. We demonstrate theoretically that the population transfer protocol achieves Grover type speedup in the unstructured impurity band model.

Kechedzhi, Kostyantyn↗

Bohm's Quantum Potential and the Visualization of Molecular Structure

David Bohm's ontological interpretation of quantum theory can shed light on otherwise counter-intuitive quantum mechanical phenomena including chemical bonding. In the field of quantum chemistry, Richard Bader has shown that the topology of the Laplacian of the electronic charge density characterizes many features of molecular structure and reactivity. Visual and computational examination suggests that the Laplacian of Bader and the quantum potential of Bohm are morphologically equivalent. It appears that Bohmian mechanics and the quantum potential can make chemistry as clear as they makes physics.

Levit, Creon↗