Author: John F. Lindner

For the last two years, the Nonlinear Artificial Intelligence Lab and I have labored to incorporate diversity in machine learning. Diversity conveys advantages in nature, yet homogeneous neurons typically comprise the layers of artificial neural networks. In software, we constructed neural networks from neurons that learn their own activation functions (relating inputs to outputs), quickly…

A particle confined to an impassable box is a paradigmatic and exactly solvable one-dimensional quantum system modeled by an infinite square well potential. Working with Bill Ditto, Elliott Holliday and I recently explored some of its infinitely many generalizations to two dimensions, including particles confined to regions that exhibit integrable, ergodic, or chaotic classical billiard…

The motion of one of the simplest dynamical systems, a torqued, damped, nonlinear pendulum, can be infinitely complicated. Consider a simple pendulum of length and mass rigidly connected to an axle of radius wrapped by a rope that hangs down one side with a mass climbing up and down it, as in the attached animation.…

Quantum field theory predicts that the temperature of empty space should depend on the observer’s motion, increasing proportionally with acceleration. Here I attempt an accessible introduction to this striking effect, related to Hawking radiation and discovered independently by Fulling, Davies, and Unruh, assuming only sophomore-level physics (including hyperbolic functions) with some assistance from Mathematica. Hyperbolic…