High-bias stability of monatomic chains

For the metals Au, Pt and Ir it is possible to form freely suspended monatomic chains between bulk electrodes. The atomic chains sustain very large current densities, but finally fail at high bias. We investigate the breaking mechanism, that involves current-induced heating of the atomic wires and electromigration forces. We find good agreement of the observations for Au based on models due to Todorov and coworkers. The high-bias breaking of atomic chains for Pt can also be described by the models, although here the parameters have not been obtained independently. In the limit of long chains the breaking voltage decreases inversely proportional to the length.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figure

Strength distribution of repeatedly broken chains

We determine the probability distribution of the breaking strength for chains of N links, which have been produced by repeatedly breaking a very long chain.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figur

Probing SO(10) symmetry breaking patterns through sfermion mass relations

We consider supersymmetric SO(10) grand unification where the unified gauge group can break to the Standard Model gauge group through different chains. The breaking of SO(10) necessarily involves the reduction of the rank, and consequent generation of non-universal supersymmetry breaking scalar mass terms. We derive squark and slepton mass relations, taking into account these non-universal contributions to the sfermion masses, which can help distinguish between the different chains through which the SO(10) gauge group breaks to the Standard Model gauge group. We then study some implications of these non-universal supersymmetry breaking scalar masses for the low energy phenomenology.Comment: 13 pages, latex using revtex4, contains 2 figures, replaced with version accepted for publicatio

Hopf algebras and Markov chains: Two examples and a theory

The operation of squaring (coproduct followed by product) in a combinatorial Hopf algebra is shown to induce a Markov chain in natural bases. Chains constructed in this way include widely studied methods of card shuffling, a natural "rock-breaking" process, and Markov chains on simplicial complexes. Many of these chains can be explictly diagonalized using the primitive elements of the algebra and the combinatorics of the free Lie algebra. For card shuffling, this gives an explicit description of the eigenvectors. For rock-breaking, an explicit description of the quasi-stationary distribution and sharp rates to absorption follow.Comment: 51 pages, 17 figures. (Typographical errors corrected. Further fixes will only appear on the version on Amy Pang's website, the arXiv version will not be updated.

Non-Universal Gaugino Masses in Supersymmetric SO(10)

We consider SUSY SO(10) models in which SUSY breaking occurs via an F-term which does not transform as an SO(10) singlet. This results in non-universal GUT-scale gaugino masses leading to a different pattern of sparticle masses from what is expected in the minimal supergravity model (mSUGRA). We study three breaking chains of SO(10) down to the standard model through SU(4)\timesSU(2)\timesSU(2), SU(2)$\times$SO(7) and `flipped' SU(5) achieved by the representations 54 and 210 which appear in the symmetric product of two SO(10) adjoints. We examine the phenomenological implications of the different boundary conditions corresponding to the different breaking chains and present the sparticle spectrum.Comment: 23 pages, 3 figures, 2 tables, corrected typos, discussion and references added, final version accepted for publication on NP

Ground-State Phase Diagram of Frustrated Anisotropic Quantum Spin Chains

Recent studies on the frustrated quantum spin chains with easy-plane anisotropy are reviewed. We are particularly interested in novel "chiral" phases characterized by the spontaneous breaking of the parity symmetry. The ground-state phase diagrams of the chains are discussed.Comment: 6 pages (ptptex.sty), 3 figures, to appear in Prog. Theor. Phys. Suppl. (Proc. of the 16th Nishinomiya-Yukawa Symposium and YITP International Workshop, Nov. 2001