Shame-Sensitive Public Health.

In this article, we argue that shaming interventions and messages during Covid-19 have drawn the relationship between public health and shame into a heightened state of contention, offering us a valuable opportunity to reconsider shame as a desired outcome of public health work, and to push back against the logics of individual responsibility and blame for illness and disease on which it sits. We begin by defining shame and demonstrating how it is conceptually and practically distinct from stigma. We then set out evidence on the consequences of shame for social and relational health outcomes and assess the past and present dimensions of shame in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, primarily through a corpus of international news stories on the shaming of people perceived to have transgressed public health directions or advice. Following a brief note on shame (and policymaking) in a cultural context, we turn to the concept and practice of 'shame-sensitivity' in order to theorise a set of practical and adaptable principles that could be used to assist policymakers in short- and medium-term decision-making on urgent, tenacious, and emerging issues within public health. Finally, we consider the longer consequences of pandemic shame, making a wider case for the acknowledgement of the emotion as a key determinant of health.

The application of the "inverse problem" method for constructing confining potentials that make N-soliton waveforms exact solutions in the Gross-Pitaevskii equation.

In this work, we discuss an application of the "inverse problem" method to find the external trapping potential, which has particular N trapped soliton-like solutions of the Gross-Pitaevskii equation (GPE) also known as the cubic nonlinear Schrödinger equation (NLSE). This inverse method assumes particular forms for the trapped soliton wave function, which then determines the (unique) external (confining) potential. The latter renders these assumed waveforms exact solutions of the GPE (NLSE) for both attractive (g<0) and repulsive (g>0) self-interactions. For both signs of g, we discuss the stability with respect to self-similar deformations and translations. For g<0, a critical mass Mc or equivalently the number of particles for instabilities to arise can often be found analytically. On the other hand, for the case with g>0 corresponding to repulsive self-interactions which is often discussed in the atomic physics realm of Bose-Einstein condensates, the bound solutions are found to be always stable. For g<0, we also determine the critical mass numerically by using linear stability or Bogoliubov-de Gennes analysis, and compare these results with our analytic estimates. Various analytic forms for the trapped N-soliton solutions in one, two, and three spatial dimensions are discussed, including sums of Gaussians or higher-order eigenfunctions of the harmonic oscillator Hamiltonian.

Uniform-density Bose-Einstein condensates of the Gross-Pitaevskii equation found by solving the inverse problem for the confining potential.

In this work, we study the existence and stability of constant density (flat-top) solutions to the Gross-Pitaevskii equation (GPE) in confining potentials. These are constructed by using the "inverse problem" approach which corresponds to the identification of confining potentials that make flat-top waveforms exact solutions to the GPE. In the one-dimensional case, the exact solution is the sum of stationary kink and antikink solutions, and in the overlapping region, the density is constant. In higher spatial dimensions, the exact solutions are generalizations of this wave function. In the absence of self-interactions, the confining potential is similar to a smoothed-out finite square well with minima also at the edges. When self-interactions are added, terms proportional to ±gψ^{*}ψ and ±gM with M representing the mass or number of particles in Bose-Einstein condensates get added to the confining potential and total energy, respectively. In the realm of stability analysis, we find (linearly) stable solutions in the case with repulsive self-interactions which also are stable to self-similar deformations. For attractive interactions, however, the minima at the edges of the potential get deeper and a barrier in the center forms as we increase the norm. This leads to instabilities at a critical value of M. Comparing the stability criteria from Derrick's theorem with Bogoliubov-de Gennes (BdG) analysis stability results, we find that both predict stability for repulsive self-interactions and instability at a critical mass M for attractive interactions. However, the numerical analysis gives a much lower critical mass. This is due to the emergence of symmetry-breaking instabilities that were detected by the BdG analysis and violate the symmetry x→-x assumed by Derrick's theorem.

Co-production for or against the university: student loneliness and the commodification of impact in Covid-19.

PURPOSE: This paper explores the dissonance between co-production and expectations of impact in a research project on student loneliness over the 2019/2020 academic year. Specific characteristics of the project - the subject matter, interpolation of a global respiratory pandemic, informal systems of care that arose among students, and role of the university in providing the context and funding for the research - brought co-production into heightened tension with the instrumentalisation of project outputs. STUDY DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH: Our project consisted of a series of workshops, research meetings, and mixed-methods online journalling between 2019-2020. This paper is primarily a critical reflection on that research, based on observations by and conversations between the authors, together with discourse analysis of research data. FINDINGS: We argue that co-producing research with students on university contexts elevates existing tensions between co-production and institutional valuations of impact; that co-production with students who had experienced loneliness made necessary space for otherwise absent support and care; that our responsibility to advocate for our evidence and co-researchers came into friction with how the university felt our research could be useful; and that each of these converging considerations are interconnected symptoms of the ongoing marketisation of HE. ORIGINALITY/VALUE: This paper provides a novel analysis of co-production, impact, and higher education in the context of an original research project with specific challenges and constraints. It is a valuable contribution to methodological literatures on co-production, multidisciplinary research into student loneliness, and reflexive work on the difficult uses of evidence in university contexts.

Speed-of-light pulses in the massless nonlinear Dirac equation with a potential.

We consider the massless nonlinear Dirac (NLD) equation in 1+1 dimension with scalar-scalar self-interaction g^{2}/2(Ψ[over ¯]Ψ)^{2} in the presence of three external electromagnetic real potentials V(x), a potential barrier, a constant potential, and a potential well. By solving numerically the NLD equation, we find different scenarios depending on initial conditions, namely, propagation of the initial pulse along one direction, splitting of the initial pulse into two pulses traveling in opposite directions, and focusing of two initial pulses followed by a splitting. For all considered cases, the final waves travel with the speed of light and are solutions of the massless linear Dirac equation. During these processes the charge and the energy are conserved, whereas the momentum is conserved when the solutions possess specific symmetries. For the case of the constant potential, we derive exact analytical solutions of the massless NLD equation that are also solutions of the massless linearized Dirac equation. Decay or growth of the initial pulse is also predicted from the evolution of the charge for the case of a non-zero imaginary part of the potential.

Variational approach to studying solitary waves in the nonlinear Schrödinger equation with complex potentials.

We discuss the behavior of solitary wave solutions of the nonlinear Schrödinger equation (NLSE) as they interact with complex potentials, using a four-parameter variational approximation based on a dissipation functional formulation of the dynamics. We concentrate on spatially periodic potentials with the periods of the real and imaginary part being either the same or different. Our results for the time evolution of the collective coordinates of our variational ansatz are in good agreement with direct numerical simulation of the NLSE. We compare our method with a collective coordinate approach of Kominis and give examples where the two methods give qualitatively different answers. In our variational approach, we are able to give analytic results for the small oscillation frequency of the solitary wave oscillating parameters which agree with the numerical solution of the collective coordinate equations. We also verify that instabilities set in when the slope dp(t)/dv(t) becomes negative when plotted parametrically as a function of time, where p(t) is the momentum of the solitary wave and v(t) the velocity.

Erratum: Nonlinear Dirac equation solitary waves in external fields [Phys. Rev. E 86, 046602 (2012)].

This corrects the article DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevE.86.046602.

Interplay between parity-time symmetry, supersymmetry, and nonlinearity: An analytically tractable case example.

In the present work, we combine the notion of parity-time (PT) symmetry with that of supersymmetry (SUSY) for a prototypical case example with a complex potential that is related by SUSY to the so-called Pöschl-Teller potential which is real. Not only are we able to identify and numerically confirm the eigenvalues of the relevant problem, but we also show that the corresponding nonlinear problem, in the presence of an arbitrary power-law nonlinearity, has an exact bright soliton solution that can be analytically identified and has intriguing stability properties, such as an oscillatory instability, which is absent for the corresponding solution of the regular nonlinear Schrödinger equation with arbitrary power-law nonlinearity. The spectral properties and dynamical implications of this instability are examined. We believe that these findings may pave the way toward initiating a fruitful interplay between the notions of PT symmetry, supersymmetric partner potentials, and nonlinear interactions.

Stability of solitary waves in the nonlinear Dirac equation with arbitrary nonlinearity.

We consider the nonlinear Dirac equation in 1 + 1 dimension with scalar-scalar self interaction g(2)/κ+1(̅ΨΨ)(κ+1) and with mass m. Using the exact analytic form for rest frame solitary waves of the form Ψ(x,t)=ψ(x)e(-iωt) for arbitrary κ, we discuss the validity of various approaches to understanding stability that were successful for the nonlinear Schrödinger equation. In particular we study the validity of a version of Derrick's theorem and the criterion of Bogolubsky as well as the Vakhitov-Kolokolov criterion, and find that these criteria yield inconsistent results. Therefore, we study the stability by numerical simulations using a recently developed fourth-order operator splitting integration method. For different ranges of κ we map out the stability regimes in ω. We find that all stable nonlinear Dirac solitary waves have a one-hump profile, but not all one-hump waves are stable, while all waves with two humps are unstable. We also find that the time t(c), it takes for the instability to set in, is an exponentially increasing function of ω and t(c) decreases monotonically with increasing κ.

Effects of intrinsic noise on a cubic autocatalytic reaction-diffusion system.

Starting from our recent chemical master equation derivation of the model of an autocatalytic reaction-diffusion chemical system with reactions U+2V→[over λ_{0}]3V and V→[over µ]P, U→[over ν]Q, we determine the effects of intrinsic noise on the momentum-space behavior of its kinetic parameters and chemical concentrations. We demonstrate that the intrinsic noise induces n→n molecular interaction processes with n≥4, where n is the number of participating molecules of type U or V. The momentum dependences of the reaction rates are driven by the fact that the autocatalytic reaction (inelastic scattering) is renormalized through the existence of an arbitrary number of intermediate elastic scatterings, which can also be interpreted as the creation and subsequent decay of a three body composite state σ=ϕ_{u}ϕ_{v}^{2}, where ϕ_{i} corresponds to the fields representing the densities of U and V. Finally, we discuss the difference between representing σ as a composite or an elementary particle (molecule) with its own kinetic parameters. In one dimension, we find that while they show markedly different behavior in the short spatiotemporal scale, high-momentum (UV) limit, they are formally equivalent in the large spatiotemporal scale, low momentum (IR) regime. On the other hand, in two dimensions and greater, due to the effects of fluctuations, there is no way to experimentally distinguish between a fundamental and composite σ. Thus, in this regime, σ behaves as an entity unto itself, suggesting that it can be effectively treated as an independent chemical species.

Composite bound states and broken U(1) symmetry in the chemical-master-equation derivation of the Gray-Scott model.

We give a first principles derivation of the stochastic partial differential equations that describe the chemical reactions of the Gray-Scott model (GS): U+2V →[λ]3V and V → [µ]P, U → [ν]Q, with a constant feed rate for U. We find that the conservation of probability ensured by the chemical master equation leads to a modification of the usual differential equations for the GS model, which now involves two composite fields and also intrinsic noise terms. One of the composites is ψ(1) = φ(v)(2), where {φ(v)}(η) =v is the concentration of the species V and the averaging is over the internal noise η(u,v,ψ(1)). The second composite field is the product of three fields χ = λφ(u)φ(v)(2) and requires a noise source to ensure probability conservation. A third composite ψ(2) = φ(u)φ(v) can also be identified from the noise-induced reactions. The Hamiltonian that governs the time evolution of the many-body wave function, associated with the master equation, has a broken U(1) symmetry related to particle number conservation. By expanding around the (broken symmetry) zero-energy solution of the Hamiltonian (by performing a Doi shift) one obtains from our path integral formulation the usual reaction diffusion equation, at the classical level. The Langevin equations that are derived from the chemical master equation have multiplicative noise sources for the density fields φ(u), φ(v),χ that induce higher-order processes such as n → n scattering for n>3. The amplitude of the noise acting on φ(v) is itself stochastic in nature.

Internal composite bound states in deterministic reaction diffusion models.

By identifying potential composite states that occur in the Sel'kov-Gray-Scott (GS) model, we show that it can be considered as an effective theory at large spatiotemporal scales, arising from a more fundamental theory (which treats these composite states as fundamental chemical species obeying the diffusion equation) relevant at shorter spatiotemporal scales. When simulations in the latter model are performed as a function of a parameter M=λ-1, the generated spatial patterns evolve at late times into those of the GS model at large M, implying that the composites follow their own unique dynamics at short scales. This separation of scales is an example of dynamical decoupling in reaction diffusion systems.

Nonlinear Dirac equation solitary waves in external fields.

We consider nonlinear Dirac equations (NLDE's) in the 1+1 dimension with scalar-scalar self-interaction g2/κ+1(Ψ[over ¯]Ψ)κ+1 in the presence of various external electromagnetic fields. We find exact solutions for special external fields and we study the behavior of solitary-wave solutions to the NLDE in the presence of a wide variety of fields in a variational approximation depending on collective coordinates which allows the position, width, and phase of these waves to vary in time. We find that in this approximation the position q(t) of the center of the solitary wave obeys the usual behavior of a relativistic point particle in an external field. For time-independent external fields, we find that the energy of the solitary wave is conserved but not the momentum, which becomes a function of time. We postulate that, similarly to the nonlinear Schrödinger equation (NLSE), a sufficient dynamical condition for instability to arise is that dP(t)/dq[over ̇](t)<0. Here P(t) is the momentum of the solitary wave, and q[over ̇] is the velocity of the center of the wave in the collective coordinate approximation. We found for our choices of external potentials that we always have dP(t)/dq[over ̇](t)>0, so, when instabilities do occur, they are due to a different source. We investigate the accuracy of our variational approximation using numerical simulations of the NLDE and find that, when the forcing term is small and we are in a regime where the solitary wave is stable, that the behavior of the solutions of the collective coordinate equations agrees very well with the numerical simulations. We found that the time evolution of the collective coordinates of the solitary wave in our numerical simulations, namely the position of the average charge density and the momentum of the solitary wave, provide good indicators for when the solitary wave first becomes unstable. When these variables stop being smooth functions of time (t), then the solitary wave starts to distort in shape.

Forced nonlinear Schrödinger equation with arbitrary nonlinearity.

We consider the nonlinear Schrödinger equation (NLSE) in 1+1 dimension with scalar-scalar self-interaction g(2)/κ+1(ψ*ψ)(κ+1) in the presence of the external forcing terms of the form re(-i(kx+θ))-δψ. We find new exact solutions for this problem and show that the solitary wave momentum is conserved in a moving frame where v(k)=2k. These new exact solutions reduce to the constant phase solutions of the unforced problem when r→0. In particular we study the behavior of solitary wave solutions in the presence of these external forces in a variational approximation which allows the position, momentum, width, and phase of these waves to vary in time. We show that the stationary solutions of the variational equations include a solution close to the exact one and we study small oscillations around all the stationary solutions. We postulate that the dynamical condition for instability is that dp(t)/dq ̇(t)<0, where p(t) is the normalized canonical momentum p(t)=1/M(t)∂L/∂q ̇, and q ̇(t) is the solitary wave velocity. Here M(t)=∫dxψ*(x,t)ψ(x,t). Stability is also studied using a "phase portrait" of the soliton, where its dynamics is represented by two-dimensional projections of its trajectory in the four-dimensional space of collective coordinates. The criterion for stability of a soliton is that its trajectory is a closed single curve with a positive sense of rotation around a fixed point. We investigate the accuracy of our variational approximation and these criteria using numerical simulations of the NLSE. We find that our criteria work quite well when the magnitude of the forcing term is small compared to the amplitude of the unforced solitary wave. In this regime the variational approximation captures quite well the behavior of the solitary wave.

Properties of compacton-anticompacton collisions.

We study the properties of compacton-anticompacton collision processes. We compare and contrast results for the case of compacton-anticompacton solutions of the K(l,p) Rosenau-Hyman (RH) equation for l = p = 2, with compacton-anticompacton solutions of the L(l,p) Cooper-Shepard-Sodano (CSS) equation for p = 1 and l = 3. This study is performed using a Padé discretization of the RH and CSS equations. We find a significant difference in the behavior of compacton-anticompacton scattering. For the CSS equation, the scattering can be interpreted as "annihilation" as the wake left behind dissolves over time. In the RH equation, the numerical evidence is that multiple shocks form after the collision, which eventually lead to "blowup" of the resulting wave form.

Stability and dynamical properties of Rosenau-Hyman compactons using Padé approximants.

We present a systematic approach for calculating higher-order derivatives of smooth functions on a uniform grid using Padé approximants. We illustrate our findings by deriving higher-order approximations using traditional second-order finite-difference formulas as our starting point. We employ these schemes to study the stability and dynamical properties of K(2,2) Rosenau-Hyman compactons including the collision of two compactons and resultant shock formation. Our approach uses a differencing scheme involving only nearest and next-to-nearest neighbors on a uniform spatial grid. The partial differential equation for the compactons involves first, second, and third partial derivatives in the spatial coordinate and we concentrate on four different fourth-order methods which differ in the possibility of increasing the degree of accuracy (or not) of one of the spatial derivatives to sixth order. A method designed to reduce round-off errors was found to be the most accurate approximation in stability studies of single solitary waves even though all derivates are accurate only to fourth order. Simulating compacton scattering requires the addition of fourth derivatives related to artificial viscosity. For those problems the different choices lead to different amounts of "spurious" radiation and we compare the virtues of the different choices.

Solitary waves in the nonlinear Dirac equation with arbitrary nonlinearity.

We consider the nonlinear Dirac equations (NLDE's) in 1+1 dimension with scalar-scalar self interaction g{2}/k+1(ΨΨ){k+1} , as well as a vector-vector self interaction g{2}/k+1(Ψγ{µ}ΨΨγ{µ}Ψ){1/2(k+1)} . We find the exact analytic form for solitary waves for arbitrary k and find that they are a generalization of the exact solutions for the nonlinear Schrödinger equation (NLSE) and reduce to these solutions in a well defined nonrelativistic limit. We perform the nonrelativistic reduction and find the 1/2m correction to the NLSE, valid when |ω-m|<<2m , where ω is the frequency of the solitary wave in the rest frame. We discuss the stability and blowup of solitary waves assuming the modified NLSE is valid and find that they should be stable for k<2 .

Stability and dynamical properties of Cooper-Shepard-Sodano compactons.

Extending a Padé approximant method used for studying compactons in the Rosenau-Hyman (RH) equation, we study the numerical stability of single compactons of the Cooper-Shepard-Sodano (CSS) equation and their pairwise interactions. The CSS equation has a conserved Hamiltonian which has allowed various approaches for studying analytically the nonlinear stability of the solutions. We study three different compacton solutions and find they are numerically stable. Similar to the collisions between RH compactons, the CSS compactons re-emerge with same coherent shape when scattered. The time evolution of the small-amplitude ripple resulting after scattering depends on the values of the parameters l and p characterizing the corresponding CSS equation. The simulation of the CSS compacton scattering requires a much smaller artificial viscosity to obtain numerical stability than in the case of RH compacton propagation.