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Wytse van Dijk  Adjunct Professor Department of Physics and Astronomy  McMaster University  Hamilton, ON  L8S 4M1  Office:  ABB-148  Phone:  (905) 525-9140 x27457 FAX:    (905) 546-1252  E-mail: vandijk@physics.mcmaster.ca  Research Area: Theory

 

Research Interests

Wytse van Dijk completed his undergraduate and graduate studies at McMaster University, receiving in 1968 the Ph.D in nuclear theory. He spent two years as a postdoctoral fellow at the Theoretical Physics Department of the University of Oxford, England. After a one-year faculty appointment at Mount Allison University, New Brunswick, he joined the faculty of Dordt College, Sioux Center, Iowa. During the 1977-78 academic year he was on leave at the Theoretical Physics Institute of the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta. In 1982 he was appointed Professor of Mathematics and Physics at Redeemer University College, Ancaster, Ontario and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at McMaster University. Although emeritus at Redeemer since 2007, he continues as Adjunct Professor at McMaster.

Dr. van Dijk's earlier research focused on the nuclear force problem and its application to low-energy nuclear systems. This research was motivated by the desire to understand the effect of quark or elementary-particle degrees of freedom in nuclear structure or scattering. The most recent work has dealt with sensitivity of the mixing parameter associated with the ³S₁ - ³D₁ coupling in the nuclear force to the one-pion exchange.

Recently van Dijk has become interested in decaying quantum systems which simulate the nuclear alpha decay. In particular the theoretical determination of the ionization and bremsstrahlung probabilities due to an alpha particle being emitted from its nucleus is found to shed light on fundamental issues in quantum mechanics as well as mechanisms responsible for nuclear structure. The Bohm trajectory method is also being studied in connection with decaying and scattering systems.

Dr. van Dijk is also interested in theoretical and numerical analyses of quantum mechanical scattering phenomena such as time delay and advance in (un)coupled one-dimensional systems. Aspects of this study have been applied to semiconductor superlattices and quantum computing. This is part of a program of studying time-dependent quantum mechanical systems.

Selected Publications

• "Novel expression for the wave function of a decaying quantum system", W. van Dijk and Y. Nogami, Phys. Rev. Lett. 83, 2867-2871 (1999).

• "Analytical approach to the wave function of a decaying quantum system", W. van Dijk and Y. Nogami, Phys. Rev. C 65, 024608 (14 pages) (2002).

• "Quantum mechanical and semi-classical treatment of quantum excitations due to the passage of a particle", W. van Dijk, K.A. Kiers, Y. Nogami, A. Platt and K. Spyksma, J. Phys. A: Math. Gen. 36, 5625 (2003).

• "Model study of bremsstrahlung in alpha decay", W. van Dijk and Y. Nogami, Few-Body Systems Suppl. 14, 229-232 (2003).

• "Approximations of time-dependent phenomena in quantum mechanics: Adiabatic versus sudden Approximations", S.V. Melnichuk, W. van Dijk, and Y. Nogami, Eur. J. Phys. 26121-136 (2005).

• "Accurate numerical solutions of the time-dependent Schroedinger equation", W. van Dijk and F.M. Toyama, Phys. Rev. E 75, 036707 (2007) (10 pages).

• "Nonthreshold anomalous time advance in multichannel scattering", W. van Dijk, K. Spyksma, and M. West, Phys. Rev. A 78, 022108 (2008) (12 pages).

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