375 research outputs found
Thermodynamics of micellization of oppositely charged polymers
The complexation of oppositely charged colloidal objects is considered in
this paper as a thermodynamic micellization process where each kind of object
needs the others to micellize. This requirement gives rise to quantitatively
different behaviors than the so-called mixed-micellization where each specie
can micellize separately. A simple model of the grand potential for micelles is
proposed to corroborate the predictions of this general approach.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures. Accepted for publication in Europhysics Letter
Binding effects in multivalent Gibbs-Donnan equilibrium
The classical Gibbs-Donnan equilibrium describes excess osmotic pressure
associated with confined colloidal charges embedded in an electrolyte solution.
In this work, we extend this approach to describe the influence of multivalent
ion binding on the equilibrium force acting on a charged rod translocating
between two compartments, thereby mimicking ionic effects on force balance
during in vitro DNA ejection from bacteriophage. The subtle interplay between
Gibbs-Donnan equilibrium and adsorption equilibrium leads to a non-monotonic
variation of the ejection force as multivalent salt concentration is increased,
in qualitative agreement with experimental observations
High temperature onset of field-induced transitions in the spin-ice compound Dy2Ti2O7
We have studied the field-dependent ac magnetic susceptibility of single
crystals of Dy2Ti2O7 spin ice along the [111] direction in the temperature
range 1.8 K - 7 K. Our data reflect the onset of local spin ice order in the
appearance of different field regimes. In particular, we observe a prominent
feature at approximately 1.0 T that is a precursor of the low-temperature
metamagnetic transition out of field-induced kagome ice, below which the
kinetic constraints imposed by the ice rules manifest themselves in a
substantial frequency-dependence of the susceptibility. Despite the relatively
high temperatures, our results are consistent with a monopole picture, and they
demonstrate that such a picture can give physical insight to the spin ice
systems even outside the low-temperature, low-density limit where monopole
excitations are well-defined quasiparticles
Toric-boson model: Toward a topological quantum memory at finite temperature
We discuss the existence of stable topological quantum memory at finite temperature. At stake here is the fundamental question of whether it is, in principle, possible to store quantum information for macroscopic times without the intervention from the external world, that is, without error correction. We study the toric code in two dimensions with an additional bosonic field that couples to the defects, in the presence of a generic environment at finite temperature: the toric-boson model. Although the coupling constants for the bare model are not finite in the thermodynamic limit, the model has a finite spectrum. We show that in the topological phase, there is a finite temperature below which open strings are confined and therefore the lifetime of the memory can be made arbitrarily (polynomially) long in system size. The interaction with the bosonic field yields a long-range attractive force between the end points of open strings but leaves closed strings and topological order intact
Emergent Coulombic criticality and Kibble-Zurek scaling in a topological magnet
When a classical system is driven through a continuous phase transition, its
nonequilibrium response is universal and exhibits Kibble-Zurek scaling. We
explore this dynamical scaling in the novel context of a three-dimensional
topological magnet with fractionalized excitations, namely the liquid-gas
transition of the emergent mobile magnetic monopoles in dipolar spin ice. Using
field-mixing and finite-size scaling techniques, we place the critical point of
the liquid-gas line in the three-dimensional Ising universality class. We then
demonstrate Kibble-Zurek scaling for sweeps of the magnetic field through the
critical point. Unusually slow microscopic time scales in spin ice offer a
unique opportunity to detect this universal nonequilibrium physics in current
experimental setups.This work was supported in part by Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Grant No. EP/G049394/1 (C.C.), the Helmholtz Virtual Institute “New States of Matter and Their Excitations,” and the EPSRC NetworkPlus on “Emergence and Physics far from Equilibrium.” Research at Perimeter Institute is supported by the Government of Canada through Industry Canada and by the Province of Ontario through the Ministry of Economic Development and Innovation. The calculations were performed using the Darwin Supercomputer of the University of Cambridge High Performance Computing Service (http://www.hpc.cam.ac.uk/) and the ARCHER UK National Supercomputing Service (http://www.archer.ac.uk/, for which access was provided by the ARCHER Driving Test scheme). The authors are grateful to A. Sandvik for useful discussions and to S. L. Sondhi for advice and collaboration on several pieces of related work. J.O.H. is grateful to the EPSRC for funding, and to Michael Rutter for computing support.This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from the American Physical Society via http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.92.07514
Molecular random tilings as glasses
We have recently shown [Blunt et al., Science 322, 1077 (2008)] that
p-terphenyl-3,5,3',5'-tetracarboxylic acid adsorbed on graphite self-assembles
into a two-dimensional rhombus random tiling. This tiling is close to ideal,
displaying long range correlations punctuated by sparse localised tiling
defects. In this paper we explore the analogy between dynamic arrest in this
type of random tilings and that of structural glasses. We show that the
structural relaxation of these systems is via the propagation--reaction of
tiling defects, giving rise to dynamic heterogeneity. We study the scaling
properties of the dynamics, and discuss connections with kinetically
constrained models of glasses.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure
Phases of quantum dimers from ensembles of classical stochastic trajectories
We study the connection between the phase behavior of quantum dimers and the dynamics of classical stochastic dimers. At the so-called Rokhsar-Kivelson (RK) point a quantum dimer Hamiltonian is equivalent to the Markov generator of the dynamics of classical dimers. A less well understood fact is that away from the RK point the quantum-classical connection persists: in this case the Hamiltonian corresponds to a nonstochastic "tilted" operator that encodes the statistics of time-integrated observables of the classical stochastic problem. This implies a direct relation between the phase behavior of quantum dimers and properties of ensembles of stochastic trajectories of classical dimers. We make these ideas concrete by studying fully packed dimers on the square lattice. Using transition path sampling - supplemented by trajectory umbrella sampling - we obtain the large deviation statistics of dynamical activity in the classical problem, and show the correspondence between the phase behavior of the classical and quantum systems. The transition at the RK point between quantum phases of distinct order corresponds, in the classical case, to a trajectory phase transition between active and inactive dynamical phases. Furthermore, from the structure of stochastic trajectories in the active dynamical phase we infer that the ground state of quantum dimers has columnar order to one side of the RK point. We discuss how these results relate to those from quantum Monte Carlo, and how our approach may generalize to other problems.This work was supported by Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Grants No. EP/M019691/1 (S.P.), No. EP/P034616/1 (C.C. and A.L.), No. EP/K028960/1 (C.C.), and No. EP/M014266/1 (J.P.G.)
AB0901 PREVALENCE OF OSTEOPOROSIS IN ITALIAN POSTMENOPAUSAL WOMEN ACCORDING TO DEFRA ALGORITHM
Background:Osteoporosis is a recognized health problem and the burden of the disease is mostly associated with the occurrence of hip and vertebral fracture.Objectives:This study was aimed at evaluating the prevalence of osteoporosis in Italian postmenopausal women, defined by DeFRA calculation as a 10 years fracture risk equal or higher than 20%.Methods:This is a monocenter cohort study evaluating 1850 post-menopausal women aged 50 years and older. All the participants were evaluated as far as anthropometrics. Defra questionnaire was administered and calculated with bone mineral density (DXA) measured at lumbar spine and femoral neck.Results:The prevalence of osteoporosis as assessed by DeFRA was 29.8% in the whole population, according to literature. The frequency of a risk fracture equal or higher than 20% varied from 7.9% in the group aged 50-59 years to 35% in subjects aged >80. Among clinical risk factors for fracture, the presence of a previous fracture (spine primarily) was the most commonly observed.Conclusion:Our data showed that about one third of post-menopausal women aged 50 and older in Italy has osteoporosis on the basis of DeFRA algorithm, with a high 10 years fracture risk. A previous fracture is the most common risk factor. The data should be considered in relation to the need to increase prevention strategies and therapeutic intervention.Disclosure of Interests:None declare
Topological Quantum Glassiness
Quantum tunneling often allows pathways to relaxation past energy barriers
which are otherwise hard to overcome classically at low temperatures. However,
this is not always the case. In this paper we provide simple exactly solvable
examples where the barriers each system encounters on its approach to lower and
lower energy states become increasingly large and eventually scale with the
system size. If the environment couples locally to the physical degrees of
freedom in the system, tunnelling under large barriers requires processes whose
order in perturbation theory is proportional to the width of the barrier. This
results in quantum relaxation rates that are exponentially suppressed in system
size: For these quantum systems, no physical bath can provide a mechanism for
relaxation that is not dynamically arrested at low temperatures. The examples
discussed here are drawn from three dimensional generalizations of Kitaev's
toric code, originally devised in the context of topological quantum computing.
They are devoid of any local order parameters or symmetry breaking and are thus
examples of topological quantum glasses. We construct systems that have slow
dynamics similar to either strong or fragile glasses. The example with
fragile-like relaxation is interesting in that the topological defects are
neither open strings or regular open membranes, but fractal objects with
dimension .Comment: (18 pages, 4 figures, v2: typos and updated figure); Philosophical
Magazine (2011
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