At the age of almost three quarters of a century, quantum mechanics is by all accounts a mature theory. There were times when it seemed that it had borne its best fruit already and would give way to investigation of deeper levels of matter. Today this sounds like rash thinking. Modern experimental techniques have led to discoveries of numerous new quantum effects in solid state, optics and elsewhere. Quantum mechanics is thus gradually becoming a basis for many branches of applied physics, in this way entering our everyday life. While the dynamic laws of quantum mechanics are well known, a proper theoretical understanding requires methods which would allow us to de rive the abundance of observed quantum effects from the first principles. In many cases the rich structure hidden in the Schr6dinger equation can be revealed only using sophisticated tools. This constitutes a motivation to investigate rigorous methods which yield mathematically well-founded properties of quantum systems.

Effect of the spin-involved interaction of electrons with impurity atoms or defects to the transport properties of a two-dimensional electron gas is described by using a simplifying two-component model. Components representing spin-up and spin-down states are supposed to be coupled at a discrete set of points within a conduction channel. The used limit of the short-range interaction allows to solve the relevant scattering problem exactly. By varying the model parameters different transport regimes of two-terminal devices with ferromagnetic contacts can be described. In a quasi-ballistic regime the resulting difference between conductances for the parallel and antiparallel orientation of the contact magnetization changes its sign as a function of the length of the conduction channel if appropriate model parameters are chosen. The effect is in agreement with recent experimental observations.

The HFEv- signature scheme is one of the most studied multivariate schemes and one of the major candidates for the upcoming standardization of post-quantum digital signature schemes. In this paper, we propose three new attack strategies against HFEv-, each of them using the idea of projection. Especially our third attack is very effective and is, for some parameter sets, the most efficient known attack against HFEv-. Furthermore, our attack requires much less memory than direct and rank attacks. By our work, we therefore give new insights in the security of the HFEv- signature scheme and restrictions for the parameter choice of a possible future standardized HFEv- instance.

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We prove that an isoparametric hypersurface with four principal curvatures and multiplicity pair (7,8) is either the one constructed by Ozeki and Takeuchi, or one of the two constructed by Ferus, Karcher, and Mu¨nzner. This completes the classification of isoparametric hypersurfaces in spheres that ´E. Cartan initiated in the late 1930s.