Influence of Coulomb interaction on the Aharonov-Bohm effect in an electronic Fabry-Perot interferometer

We study the role of Coulomb interaction in an electronic Fabry-Perot interferometer (FPI) realized with chiral edge states in the integer quantum Hall regime in the limit of weak backscattering. Assuming that a compressible Coulomb island in a bulk region of the FPI is formed, we develop a capacitance model which explains the plethora of experimental data on the flux and gate periodicity of conductance oscillations. It is also shown that a suppression of finite-bias visibility stems from a combination of weak Coulomb blockade and a nonequilibrium dephasing by the quantum shot noise

Simple Combined Model for Nonlinear Excitations in DNA

We propose a new simple model for DNA denaturation bases on the pendulum model of Englander\cite{A1} and the microscopic model of Peyrard {\it et al.},\cite{A3} so called "combined model". The main parameters of our model are: the coupling constant $k$ along each strand, the mean stretching $y^\ast$ of the hydrogen bonds, the ratio of the damping constant and driven force $\gamma/F$. We show that both the length $L$ of unpaired bases and the velocity $v$ of kinks depend on not only the coupling constant $k$ but also the temperature $T$. Our results are in good agreement with previous works.Comment: 6 pages, 10 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.

Frustration Effects in Antiferromagnetic FCC Heisenberg Films

We study the effects of frustration in an antiferromagnetic film of FCC lattice with Heisenberg spin model including an Ising-like anisotropy. Monte Carlo (MC) simulations have been used to study thermodynamic properties of the film. We show that the presence of the surface reduces the ground state (GS) degeneracy found in the bulk. The GS is shown to depend on the surface in-plane interaction $J_s$ with a critical value at which ordering of type I coexists with ordering of type II. Near this value a reentrant phase is found. Various physical quantities such as layer magnetizations and layer susceptibilities are shown and discussed. The nature of the phase transition is also studied by histogram technique. We have also used the Green's function (GF) method for the quantum counterpart model. The results at low-$T$ show interesting effects of quantum fluctuations. Results obtained by the GF method at high $T$ are compared to those of MC simulations. A good agreement is observed.Comment: 11 pages, 19 figures, submitted to J. Phys.: Condensed Matte

Triggering up states in all-to-all coupled neurons

Slow-wave sleep in mammalians is characterized by a change of large-scale cortical activity currently paraphrased as cortical Up/Down states. A recent experiment demonstrated a bistable collective behaviour in ferret slices, with the remarkable property that the Up states can be switched on and off with pulses, or excitations, of same polarity; whereby the effect of the second pulse significantly depends on the time interval between the pulses. Here we present a simple time discrete model of a neural network that exhibits this type of behaviour, as well as quantitatively reproduces the time-dependence found in the experiments.Comment: epl Europhysics Letters, accepted (2010

Monte Carlo studies of the Ising square lattice with competing interactions

We use improved Monte-Carlo algorithms to study the antiferromagnetic 2D-Ising model with competing interactions $J_1$ on nearest neighbour and $J_2$ on next-nearest neighbour bonds. The finite-temperature phase diagram is divided by a critical point at $J_2 = J_1/2$ where the groundstate is highly degenerate. To analyse the phase boundaries we look at the specific heat and the energy distribution for various ratios of $J_2/J_1$. We find a first order transition for small $J_2 > J_1/2$ and the transition temperature suppressed to $T_C=0$ at the critical point.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in the proceedings of the conference on Highly Frustrated Magnets 2008 in Braunschwei

Arabidopsis GLAUCE promotes fertilization-independent endosperm development and expression of paternally inherited alleles

Early seed development of sexually reproducing plants requires both maternal and paternal genomes but is prominently maternally influenced. A novel gametophytic maternal-effect mutant defective in early embryo and endosperm development, glauce ( glc), has been isolated from a population of Arabidopsis Ds transposon insertion lines. The glc mutation results from a deletion at the Ds insertion site, and the molecular identity of GLC is not known. glc embryos can develop up to the globular stage in the absence of endosperm and glc central cells appear to be unfertilized. glc suppresses autonomous endosperm development observed in the fertilization-independent seed ( fis) class mutants. glc is also epistatic to mea, one of the fis class mutants, in fertilized seeds, and is essential for the biparental embryonic expression of PHE1, a repressed downstream target of MEA. In addition, maternal GLC function is required for the paternal embryonic expression of the ribosome protein gene RPS5a and the AMP deaminase gene FAC1, both of which are essential for early embryo and endosperm development. These results indicate that factors derived from the female gametophyte activate a subset of the paternal genome of fertilized seeds

Effects of Frustrated Surface in Heisenberg Thin Films

We study by extensive Monte Carlo (MC) simulations and analytical Green function (GF) method effects of frustrated surfaces on the properties of thin films made of stacked triangular layers of atoms bearing Heisenberg spins with an Ising-like interaction anisotropy. We suppose that the in-plane surface interaction $J_s$ can be antiferromagnetic or ferromagnetic while all other interactions are ferromagnetic. We show that the ground-state spin configuration is non linear when $J_s$ is lower than a critical value $J_s^c$. The film surfaces are then frustrated. In the frustrated case, there are two phase transitions related to disorderings of surface and interior layers. There is a good agreement between MC and GF results. In addition, we show from MC histogram calculation that the value of the ratio of critical exponents $\gamma/\nu$ of the observed transitions is deviated from the values of two and three Ising universality classes. The origin of this deviation is discussed with general physical arguments.Comment: 9 pages, 16 figure