Acute ankle and knee injuries: To x-ray or not?

The Ottawa ankle and knee rules are validated clinical decision tools that guide clinicians in targeting radiology to those patients who are likely to have an ankle or knee fracture, thus minimizing x-ray exposure of patients and reducing costs

Spectral functions and optical conductivity of spinless fermions on a checkerboard lattice

We study the dynamical properties of spinless fermions on the checkerboard lattice. Our main interest is the limit of large nearest-neighbor repulsion $V$ as compared with hopping $|t|$. The spectral functions show broad low-energy excitation which are due to the dynamics of fractionally charged excitations. Furthermore, it is shown that the fractional charges contribute to the electrical current density.Comment: 9 Pages, 9 Figure

Meningitis or septicaemia in a backpacker?

Negative blood test results for meningitis but positive for Staphylococcus aureus in a young patient with suspected meningitis and a recent joint injury led to a diagnosis of staphylococcal septicaemia with septic arthritis as the source of the infection

Quasiclassical Hamiltonians for large-spin systems

We propose a method for obtaining effective classical Hamiltonians \cal H for many-body quantum spin systems with large spins. This method uses the coherent-state representation of the partition function Z and the cumulant expansion in powers of 1/S. For the quantum Hamiltonian \hat H of a Heisenberg form, the 1/S corrections in \cal H have a non-Heisenberg many-spin form. The effective Hamiltonian \cal H can be treated by methods familiar for classical systems. The non-Heisenberg terms in \cal H may be responsible for such effects as spin-Peierls transition and uplifting of the classical degeneracy by quantum fluctuations.Comment: 8 Pages, 2 Figures, submitted to EPJ

Marginal Fermi Liquid Theory in the Hubbard Model

We find Marginal Fermi Liquid (MFL) like behavior in the Hubbard model on a square lattice for a range of hole doping and on-site interaction parameter U. Thereby we use a self-consistent projection operator method. It enables us to compute the momentum and frequency dependence of the single-particle excitations with high resolution. The Fermi surface is found to be hole-like in the underdoped and electron-like in the overdoped regime. When a comparison is possible we find consistency with finite temperature quantum Monte Carlo results. We also find a discontinuous change with doping concentration from a MFL to Fermi liquid behavior resulting from a collapse of the lower Hubbard band. This renders Luttinger's theorem inapplicable in the underdoped regime.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figure

Charge carrier correlation in the electron-doped t-J model

We study the t-t'-t''-J model with parameters chosen to model an electron-doped high temperature superconductor. The model with one, two and four charge carriers is solved on a 32-site lattice using exact diagonalization. Our results demonstrate that at doping levels up to x=0.125 the model possesses robust antiferromagnetic correlation. When doped with one charge carrier, the ground state has momenta (\pm\pi,0) and (0,\pm\pi). On further doping, charge carriers are unbound and the momentum distribution function can be constructed from that of the single-carrier ground state. The Fermi surface resembles that of small pockets at single charge carrier ground state momenta, which is the expected result in a lightly doped antiferromagnet. This feature persists upon doping up to the largest doping level we achieved. We therefore do not observe the Fermi surface changing shape at doping levels up to 0.125

Dealing with the exponential wall in electronic structure calculations

An alternative to Density Functional Theory are wavefunction based electronic structure calculations for solids. In order to perform them the Exponential Wall (EW) problem has to be resolved. It is caused by an exponential increase of the number of configurations with increasing electron number N. There are different routes one may follow. One is to characterize a many-electron wavefunction by a vector in Liouville space with a cumulant metric rather than in Hilbert space. This removes the EW problem. Another is to model the solid by an {\it impurity} or {\it fragment} embedded in a {\it bath} which is treated at a much lower level than the former. This is the case in Density Matrix Embedding Theory (DMET) or Density Embedding Theory (DET). The latter are closely related to a Schmidt decomposition of a system and to the determination of the associated entanglement. We show here the connection between the two approaches. It turns out that the DMET (or DET) has an identical active space as a previously used Local Ansatz, based on a projection and partitioning approach. Yet, the EW problem is resolved differently in the two cases. By studying a $H_{10}$ ring these differences are analyzed with the help of the method of increments.Comment: 19 pages, 5 figure