Electric field assisted nanocolloidal gold deposition

The deposition of nanocolloidal gold particles under the influence of an externally applied electric field is studied in situ by means of spectroscopic ellipsometry. The variation of the relative coverage with time, as a function of applied potential, is determined using a principal component analysis. Calibration of the absolute coverage is done by means of ex situ electron microscopy. The results reveal that the deposition rate is directly related to the electrochemical current. A threshold potential exists for current and therewith also deposition to occur. The spatial distribution of nanoparticles deposited in an applied field exhibits a higher degree of order as compared to the random, irreversibly deposited nanocolloids at chemically functionalized surfaces. The experimental findings are discussed in terms of a simple electrochemical model

R fluids

A theory of collisionless fluids is developed in a unified picture, where nonrotating figures with anisotropic random velocity component distributions and rotating figures with isotropic random velocity component distributions, make adjoints configurations to the same system. R fluids are defined and mean and rms angular velocities and mean and rms tangential velocity components are expressed, by weighting on the moment of inertia and the mass, respectively. The definition of figure rotation is extended to R fluids. The generalized tensor virial equations are formulated for R fluids and further attention is devoted to axisymmetric configurations where, for selected coordinate axes, a variation in figure rotation has to be counterbalanced by a variation in anisotropy excess and vice versa. A microscopical analysis of systematic and random motions is performed under a few general hypotheses, by reversing the sign of tangential or axial velocity components of an assigned fraction of particles, leaving the distribution function and other parameters unchanged (Meza 2002). The application of the reversion process to tangential velocity components, implies the conversion of random motion rotation kinetic energy into systematic motion rotation kinetic energy. The application of the reversion process to axial velocity components, implies the conversion of random motion translation kinetic energy into systematic motion translation kinetic energy, and the loss related to a change of reference frame is expressed in terms of systematic (imaginary) motion rotation kinetic energy. A procedure is sketched for deriving the spin parameter distribution (including imaginary rotation) from a sample of observed or simulated large-scale collisionless fluids i.e. galaxies and galaxy clusters.Comment: 29 pages, 2 figure

Unsupervised machine learning for detection of phase transitions in off-lattice systems II. Applications

We outline how principal component analysis (PCA) can be applied to particle configuration data to detect a variety of phase transitions in off-lattice systems, both in and out of equilibrium. Specifically, we discuss its application to study 1) the nonequilibrium random organization (RandOrg) model that exhibits a phase transition from quiescent to steady-state behavior as a function of density, 2) orientationally and positionally driven equilibrium phase transitions for hard ellipses, and 3) compositionally driven demixing transitions in the non-additive binary Widom-Rowlinson mixture

Halo stochasticity in global clustering analysis

In the present work we study the statistics of haloes, which in the halo model determines the distribution of galaxies. Haloes are known to be biased tracer of dark matter, and at large scales it is usually assumed there is no intrinsic stochasticity between the two fields. Following the work of Seljak & Warren (2004), we explore how correct this assumption is and, moving a step further, we try to qualify the nature of stochasticity. We use Principal Component Analysis applied to the outputs of a cosmological N-body simulation to: (1) explore the behaviour of stochasticity in the correlation between haloes of different masses; (2) explore the behaviour of stochasticity in the correlation between haloes and dark matter. We show results obtained using a catalogue with 2.1 million haloes, from a PMFAST simulation with box size of 1000h^{-1}Mpc. In the relation between different populations of haloes we find that stochasticity is not-negligible even at large scales. In agreement with the conclusions of Tegmark & Bromley (1999) who studied the correlations of different galaxy populations, we found that the shot-noise subtracted stochasticity is qualitatively different from `enhanced' shot noise and, specifically, it is dominated by a single stochastic eigenvalue. We call this the `minimally stochastic' scenario, as opposed to shot noise which is `maximally stochastic'. In the correlation between haloes and dark matter, we find that stochasticity is minimized, as expected, near the dark matter peak (k ~ 0.02 h Mpc^{-1} for a LambdaCDM cosmology) and, even at large scales, it is of the order of 15 per cent above the shot noise. Moreover, we find that the reconstruction of the dark matter distribution is improved when we use eigenvectors as tracers of the bias. [Abridged]Comment: 9 pages, 12 figures. Submitted to MNRA

Correlations within Eigenvectors and Transition Amplitudes in the Two-Body Random Interaction Model

It is shown that the two-body character of the interaction in a many-body system gives rise to specific correlations between the components of compound states, even if this interaction is completely random. Surprisingly, these correlations increase with the increase of the number of active (valence) particles. Statistical theory of transition amplitudes between compound states, which takes into account these correlation is developed and tested within the framework of the Two-Body Random Interaction Model. It is demonstrated that a feature, which can be called ``correlation resonance'', appears in the distribution of the transition matrix amplitudes, since the correlations strongly reduce the transition amplitudes at the tails and increase them near the maximum of the distribution.Comment: 20 pages in Latex and 15 Postscript figures, to appear in Phys. Rev. E (1996

Mapping aerial metal deposition in metropolitan areas from tree bark : a case study in Sheffield, England

We investigated the use of metals accumulated on tree bark for mapping their deposition across metropolitan Sheffield by sampling 642 trees of three common species. Mean concentrations of metals were generally an order of magnitude greater than in samples from a remote uncontaminated site. We found trivially small differences among tree species with respect to metal concentrations on bark, and in subsequent statistical analyses did not discriminate between them. We mapped the concentrations of As, Cd and Ni by lognormal universal kriging using parameters estimated by residual maximum likelihood ({\sc reml}). The concentrations of Ni and Cd were greatest close to a large steel works, their probable source, and declined markedly within 500~metres of it and from there more gradually over several kilometres. Arsenic was much more evenly distributed, probably as a result of locally mined coal burned in domestic fires for many years. Tree bark seems to integrate airborne pollution over time, and our findings show that sampling and analysing it are cost-effective means of mapping and identifying sources