Thursday, April 4, 2013

Where the buffalo chips roam

There are few things more satisfying than finally getting a project to work. Eating the unborn is one of them, unless they're raw, then that's just gross and wrong.

And now for something completely the same, but different:

Apparently when you solve a non-Hermitian eigenvalue problem, and especially when there are degeneracies in the eigenvalues, it turns into a really ugly mess. I don't really understand too much of it yet, but I'm starting to look at locating conical intersections and the seams that are defined by the g- and h-vectors using coupled cluster theory. You would think that because coupled cluster methods do such an amazing job at describing the many-electron wave function that they would also do a kick butt job for finding conical intersections/seams, more particularly, those methods that are able to handle quasi- and near degeneracies of electronic states. In some cases it seems to be true, and they work really well, but in others, not so much. This is a new area for me, so I'm looking forward to digging into this a little more and learning something new.

I learned something else that was new to me today. The stairs next to my office will not take me to the sub-basement floor, but rather to a mysterious floor beneath the sub-basement that is locked up tighter than a nunnery on valentines day, but looks very interesting (mostly because I can't go in there). If curiosity killed the cat, I'm in trouble, but then so are most scientists and elementary school kids (amazing what we have in common with them).

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