Aging process of electrical contacts in granular matter

The electrical resistance decay of a metallic granular packing has been measured as a function of time. This measurement gives information about the size of the conducting cluster formed by the well connected grains. Several regimes have been encountered. Chronologically, the first one concerns the growth of the conducting cluster and is identified to belong to diffusion processes through a stretched exponential behavior. The relaxation time is found to be simply related to the initial injected power. This regime is followed by a reorganisation process due to thermal dilatation. For the long term behavior of the decay, an aging process occurs and enhances the electrical contacts between grains through microsoldering.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figure

Limit current density in 2D metallic granular packings

The electrical properties 2D of packed metallic pentagons have been studied. The characterization of such metallic pentagon heaps (like $i-V$ measurements) has been achieved and has allowed to point out two distinct conduction regimes. They are separated by a transition line along which the system exhibits a memory effect behavior due to the irreversible improvement of electrical contacts between pentagons (hot spots). A limit current density has been found.Comment: 4 pages, 6 figure

Controlling the partial coalescence of a droplet on a vertically vibrated bath

A new method is proposed to stop the cascade of partial coalescences of a droplet laid on a liquid bath. The strategy consists in vibrating the bath in the vertical direction in order to keep small droplets bouncing. Since large droplets are not able to bounce, they partially coalesce until they reach a critical size. The system behaves as a low pass filter : droplets smaller than the critical size are selected. This size has been investigated as a function of the acceleration and the frequency of the bath vibration. Results suggest that the limit size for bouncing is related to the first mode of the droplet deformation.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, accepted in Phys. Rev.

Resonant and antiresonant bouncing droplets

When placed onto a vibrating liquid bath, a droplet may adopt a permanent bouncing behavior, depending on both the forcing frequency and the forcing amplitude. The relationship between the droplet deformations and the bouncing mechanism is studied experimentally and theoretically through an asymmetric and dissipative bouncing spring model. Antiresonance effects are evidenced. Experiments and theoretical predictions show that both resonance at specific frequencies and antiresonance at Rayleigh frequencies play crucial roles in the bouncing mechanism. In particular, we show that they can be exploited for droplet size selection.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures and 1 vide

Influence of a low magnetic field on the thermal diffusivity of Bi-2212

The thermal diffusivity of a Bi-2212 polycrystalline sample has been measured under a 1T magnetic field applied perpendicularly to the heat flux. The magnetic contribution to the heat carrier mean free path has been extracted and is found to behave as a simple power law. This behavior can be attributed to a percolation process of electrons in the vortex lattice created by the magnetic field.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures; to be published in Phys. Rev.

Magnon-polaron and Spin-polaron Signatures in the Specific Heat and Electrical Resistivity of La0.6Y0.1Ca0.3MnO3La_{0.6}Y_{0.1}Ca_{0.3}MnO_3 in Zero Magnetic Field, and the Effect of Mn−O−MnMn-O-Mn Bond Environment

$La_{0.6}Y_{0.1}Ca_{0.3}MnO_{3}$, an $ABO_{3}$ perovskite manganite oxide, exhibits a non trivial behavior in the vicinity of the sharp peak found in the resistivity $\rho$ as a function of temperature $T$ in zero magnetic field. The various features seen on $d\rho/dT$ are discussed in terms of competing phase transitions. They are related to the $Mn-O-Mn$ bond environment depending on the content of the $A$ crystallographic site. A Ginzburg-Landau type theory is presented for incorporating concurrent phase transitions. The specific heat $C$ of such a compound is also examined from 50 till 200 K. A log-log analysis indicates different regimes. In the low temperature conducting ferromagnetic phase, a collective magnon signature ($C \simeq T^{3/2}$) is found as for what are called magnon-polaron excitations. A $C \simeq T^{2/3}$ law is found at high temperature and discussed in terms of the fractal dimension of the conducting network of the weakly conducting (so-called insulating) phase and Orbach estimate of the excitation spectral behaviors. The need of considering both independent spin scattering and collective spin scattering is thus emphasized. The report indicates a remarkable agreement for the Fisher-Langer formula, i.e. $C$ $\sim$ $d\rho/dT$ at second order phase transitions. Within the Attfield model, we find an inverse square root relationship between the critical temperature(s) and the total local $Mn-O-Mn$ strain.Comment: 19 pages, 5 figures; to be published in Phys Rev