A unified treatment of Schwinger parametrised Feynman amplitudes is suggested which addresses vertices of arbitrary order on the same footing as propagators. Contributions from distinct diagrams are organised collectively. The scheme is based on the continuous graph Laplacian. The analogy to a classical statistical diffusion system of vector charges on the graph is explored.

There are two ways to turn a categorical model for pure quantum theory into one for mixed quantum theory, both resulting in a category of completely positive maps. One has quantum systems as objects, whereas the other also allows classical systems on an equal footing. The former has been axiomatized using environment structures. We extend this axiomatization to the latter by introducing decoher...

The fundamental lower bounds on the thermodynamic energy cost of measurement and information erasure are determined. The lower bound on the erasure validates Landauer's principle for a symmetric memory; for other cases, the bound indicates the breakdown of the principle. Our results constitute the second law of "information thermodynamics," in which information content and thermodynamic variabl...

BACKGROUND The method of characteristics (also called as the slip-line method) is used to calculate the bearing capacity of strip footings on ponderable soil. The soil is assumed to be a rigid plastic that conforms to the Mohr-Coulomb criterion. The solution procedures proposed in this paper is implemented using a finite difference method and suitable for both smooth and rough footings. By acco...