Stationary-action principle | EPFL Graph Search

The stationary-action principle – also known as the principle of least action – is a variational principle that, when applied to the action of a mechanical system, yields the equations of motion for that system. The principle states that the trajectories (i.e. the solutions of the equations of motion) are stationary points of the system's action functional. The principle can be used to derive Newtonian, Lagrangian and Hamiltonian equations of motion, and even general relativity, as well as classical electrodynamics and quantum field theory. In these cases, a different action must be minimized or maximized. For relativity, it is the Einstein–Hilbert action. For quantum field theory, it involves the path integral formulation. The classical mechanics and electromagnetic expressions are a consequence of quantum mechanics. The stationary action method helped in the development of quantum mechanics. In 1933, the physicist Paul Dirac demonstrated how this principle can be used in quantum

A path integral formalism of DNA looping probability

Ludovica Cotta-Ramusino

In this thesis we describe a path integral formalism to evaluate approximations to the probability density function for the location and orientation of one end of a continuum polymer chain at thermodynamic equilibrium with a heat bath. We concentrate on those systems for which the associated energy density is at most quadratic in its variables. Our main motivation is to exploit continuum elastic rod models for the approximate computation of DNA looping probabilities. We first re-derive, for a polymer chain system, an expression for the second order correction term due to quadratic fluctuations about a unique minimal energy configuration. The result, originally stated for a quantum mechanical system by G. Papadopoulos (1975), relies on an elegant algebraic argument that carries over to the real-valued path integrals of interest here. The conclusion is that the appropriate expression can be evaluated in terms of the energy of the minimizer and the inverse square root of the determinant of a matrix satisfying a certain non-linear system of differential equations. We then construct a change of variables, which establishes a mapping between the solutions of the aforementioned non-linear Papadopoulos equations and a matrix satisfying an initial value problem for the classic linear system of Jacobi equations associated with the second variation of the energy functional. This conclusion is trivial if no cross-term is present in the second variation, but ceases to be so otherwise. Cross-terms are always present in the application of rod models to DNA. We therefore can conclude that the second order fluctuation correction term to the probability density function for a chain is always given by the inverse square root of the determinant of a matrix of solutions to the Jacobi equations. We believe this conclusion to be original for the real-valued case when the second-variation involves cross-terms. Similar results are known for quantum mechanical systems, and, in this context, a connection between the so called Van-Hove-Morette determinant, which involves partial derivatives of the classical action with respect to the boundary values of the configuration variable, and the Jacobi determinant have also been established. We next apply the formula described above to the specific context of rods, for which the configuration space is that of framed curves, or curves in R3 × SO(3). An immediate application of our theory is possible if the rod model encompasses bend, twist, stretch and shear. However the constrained case, where the rod is considered to be inextensible and unshearable, is more standard in polymer physics. In this last case, our results are more delicate as the Lagrangian description breaks down, and the Hamiltonian formulation must be invoked. It is known that the unconstrained local minimizers approach constrained minimizers as the coefficients in the shear and extension terms of the energy are sent to infinity. Here we observe that the Hamiltonian form of the unconstrained Jacobi system similarly has a limit, so that the fluctuation correction in the path integral can still be expressed as the square root of the determinant of a matrix solution of a set of Jacobi equations appropriate to the constrained problem. As in reality DNA or biological macromolecules are certainly at least slightly shearable and extensible, the limit of the fluctuation correction is undoubtedly physically appropriate. The above theory provides a computationally highly tractable approach to the estimation of the appropriate probability density functions. For application to sequence-dependent models of DNA the associated systems of equations has non-constant coefficients, which is of little consequence for a numerical treatment, but precludes the possibility of finding closed form expressions. On the other hand the theory also applies to simplified homogeneous models. Accordingly, we conclude by applying our approach in a completely analytic and closed-form way to the computation of the approximate probability density function for a uniform, non-isotropic, intrinsically straight and untwisted rod to form a circular loop.

EPFL2008

Scale-Invariant Models of Gravity and Particle Physics and their Cosmological Implications

Daniel Zenhäusern

Currently, the best theoretical description of fundamental matter and its gravitational interaction is given by the Standard Model (SM) of particle physics and Einstein's theory of General Relativity (GR). These theories contain a number of seemingly unrelated scales. While Newton's gravitational constant and the mass of the Higgs boson are parameters in the classical action, the masses of other elementary particles are due to the electroweak symmetry breaking. Yet other scales, like ΛQCD associated to the strong interaction, only appear after the quantization of the theory. We reevaluate the idea that the fundamental theory of nature may contain no fixed scales and that all observed scales could have a common origin in the spontaneous break-down of exact scale invariance. To this end, we consider a few minimal scale-invariant extensions of GR and the SM, focusing especially on their cosmological phenomenology. In the simplest considered model, scale invariance is achieved through the introduction of a dilaton field. We find that for a large class of potentials, scale invariance is spontaneously broken, leading to induced scales at the classical level. The dilaton is exactly massless and practically decouples from all SM fields. The dynamical break-down of scale invariance automatically provides a mechanism for inflation. Despite exact scale invariance, the theory generally contains a cosmological constant, or, put in other words, flat spacetime need not be a solution. We next replace standard gravity by Unimodular Gravity (UG). This results in the appearance of an arbitrary integration constant in the equations of motion, inducing a run-away potential for the dilaton. As a consequence, the dilaton can play the role of a dynamical dark-energy component. The cosmological phenomenology of the model combining scale invariance and unimodular gravity is studied in detail. We find that the equation of state of the dilaton condensate has to be very close to the one of a cosmological constant. If the spacetime symmetry group of the gravitational action is reduced from the group of all diffeomorphisms (Diff) to the subgroup of transverse diffeomorphisms (TDiff), the metric in general contains a propagating scalar degree of freedom. We show that the replacement of Diff by TDiff makes it possible to construct a scale-invariant theory of gravity and particle physics in which the dilaton appears as a part of the metric. We find the conditions under which such a theory is a viable description of particle physics and in particular reproduces the SM phenomenology. The minimal theory with scale invariance and UG is found to be a particular case of a theory with scale and TDiff invariance. Moreover, cosmological solutions in models based on scale and TDiff invariance turn out to generically be similar to the solutions of the model with UG. In usual quantum field theories, scale invariance is anomalous. This might suggest that results based on classical scale invariance are necessarily spoiled by quantum corrections. We show that this conclusion is not true. Namely, we propose a new renormalization scheme which allows to construct a class of quantum field theories that are scale-invariant to all orders of perturbation theory and where the scale symmetry is spontaneously broken. In this type of theory, all scales, including those related to dimensional transmutation, like ΛQCD, appear as a consequence of the spontaneous break-down of the scale symmetry. The proposed theories are not renormalizable. Nonetheless, they are valid effective theories below a field-dependent cut-off scale. If the scale-invariant renormalization scheme is applied to the presented minimal scale-invariant extensions of GR and the SM, the goal of having a common origin of all scales, spontaneous breaking of scale invariance, is achieved.

EPFL2011

PDE constrained optimization and design of frozen mode crystals

Jan Sickmann Hesthaven

We explore the use of PDE constrained nonlinear optimization techniques to optimize and design electromagnetic crystals which exhibit frozen mode behavior. This is characterized by Van Hove singularities in the dispersion relation, e.g., stationary reflection points and degenerate band edge points. Hence, the optimization process modifies the dispersion relation by adjusting the geometries and material parameters. The resulting algorithm is found to be capable of recovering all known crystal configurations as well as many new configurations, some of which display dramatically improved properties over previously used configuration. We investigate both gyrotropic photonic crystals and degenerate band edge crystals as well as the more complex case of the oblique incidence. In this latter case, we extend the investigation to the three-dimensional case to identify the first three-dimensional crystal exhibiting frozen mode behavior.