Bosons and Fermions: Indistinguishable Particles with Intrinsic Spin

If we imagine a Hamiltonian, H^(r1,r2), describing two identical particles at positions r1 and r2 and then we interchange the particles, the Hamiltonian will be unaffected, i.e. H^(r1,r2)=H^(r2,r1). If we introduce an exchange operator P^r1,r2 such that P^r1,r2H^(r1,r2)=H^(r2,r1)P^r1,r2=H^(r1,r2)P^r1,r2, we see that they commute, or [P^r1,r2,H^(r1,r2)]=0. We know then that P^r1,r2andH^(r1,r2) have common eigenfunctions. We can then easily show that the eigenfunctions of the exchange operator must be either even or odd. Experiments show that odd exchange symmetry corresponds to half-integer spin particles called fermions, while even exchange symmetry corresponds to integer spin particles called bosons. The notes then discuss the implications of the new postulate and then presents the Heitler–London theory and the Heisenberg exchange Hamiltonian which has been so successful in predicting molecular structure.

Adaptive dating and fast proposals: Revisiting the phylogenetic relaxed clock model

Relaxed clock models enable estimation of molecular substitution rates across lineages and are widely used in phylogenetics for dating evolutionary divergence times. Under the (uncorrelated) relaxed clock model, tree branches are associated with molecular substitution rates which are independently and identically distributed. In this article we delved into the internal complexities of the relaxed clock model in order to develop efficient MCMC operators for Bayesian phylogenetic inference. We compared three substitution rate parameterisations, introduced an adaptive operator which learns the weights of other operators during MCMC, and we explored how relaxed clock model estimation can benefit from two cutting-edge proposal kernels: the AVMVN and Bactrian kernels. This work has produced an operator scheme that is up to 65 times more efficient at exploring continuous relaxed clock parameters compared with previous setups, depending on the dataset. Finally, we explored variants of the standard narrow exchange operator which are specifically designed for the relaxed clock model. In the most extreme case, this new operator traversed tree space 40% more efficiently than narrow exchange. The methodologies introduced are adaptive and highly effective on short as well as long alignments. The results are available via the open source optimised relaxed clock (ORC) package for BEAST 2 under a GNU licence (https://github.com/jordandouglas/ORC).

The concept of a ratio analysis of consolidated financial statements applied to listed capital groups on the example of the Deutsche Börse Group

Purpose: The article concerns the ratio analysis of consolidated financial statements. The aim is to en-courage and conduct a discussion about its specifics and usefulness. Methodology/approach: The concept of ratio analysis of consolidated reporting created by Karmańska in 1999 (and later verified) is presented. The advantages of this analytical method were illustrated on the example of the corporate group of the German stock exchange operator. Findings: The concept has shown its usefulness in identifying aspects of business activity that are specif-ic for capital groups. The authors recommend its usage either fully or to a limited extent, depending on the area of analysis where functioning in a capital group matters and can enrich the reasoning. Research limitations/implications: This article does not present the results of direct empirical studies conducted using the proposed analytical approach but is oriented on a specific aspect of business activity assessment. It is aimed at a wider community of academics and practitioners verifying the proposed analytical concept. Originality/value: The article concentrates on the specifics of consolidated financial statement analysis, which has, until now, been present in the literature only to a limited extent. Moreover, this is the first work where a detailed financial analysis of a stock exchange operator was performed.

Sign patterns of J-orthogonal matrices

This paper builds upon the results in the article “G-matrices, J-orthogonal matrices, and their sign patterns", Czechoslovak Math. J. 66 (2016), 653-670, by Hall and Rozloznik. A number of further general results on the sign patterns of the J-orthogonal matrices are proved. Properties of block diagonal matrices and their sign patterns are examined. It is shown that all 4 × 4 full sign patterns allow J-orthogonality. Important tools in this analysis are Theorem 2.2 on the exchange operator and Theorem 3.2 on the characterization of J-orthogonal matrices in the paper “J-orthogonal matrices: properties and generation", SIAM Review 45 (3) (2003), 504-519, by Higham. As a result, it follows that for n ≤4 all n×n full sign patterns allow a J-orthogonal matrix as well as a G-matrix. In addition, the 3 × 3 sign patterns of the J-orthogonal matrices which have zero entries are characterized.