78,103 research outputs found
Crystallization and phase-separation in non-additive binary hard-sphere mixtures
We calculate for the first time the full phase-diagram of an asymmetric
non-additive hard-sphere mixture. The non-additivity strongly affects the
crystallization and the fluid-fluid phase-separation. The global topology of
the phase-diagram is controlled by an effective size-ratio y_{eff}, while the
fluid-solid coexistence scales with the depth of the effective potential well.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev.
The structure of colloid-polymer mixtures
We investigate the structure of colloid-polymer mixtures by calculating the
structure factors for the Asakura-Oosawa model in the PY approximation. We
discuss the role of potential range, polymer concentration and polymer-polymer
interactions on the colloid-colloid structure. Our results compare reasonably
well with the recent experiments of Moussa\"{i}d et. al. for small wavenumber
, but we find that the Hansen-Verlet freezing criterion is violated when the
liquid phase becomes marginal.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, to appear in EuroPhys. Let
Self-consistent Ornstein-Zernike approximation for molecules with soft cores
The Self-Consistent Ornstein-Zernike Approximation (SCOZA) is an accurate
liquid state theory. So far it has been tied to interactions composed of hard
core repulsion and long-range attraction, whereas real molecules have soft core
repulsion at short distances. In the present work, this is taken into account
through the introduction of an effective hard core with a diameter that depends
upon temperature only. It is found that the contribution to the configurational
internal energy due to the repulsive reference fluid is of prime importance and
must be included in the thermodynamic self-consistency requirement on which
SCOZA is based. An approximate but accurate evaluation of this contribution
relies on the virial theorem to gauge the amplitude of the pair distribution
function close to the molecular surface. Finally, the SCOZA equation is
transformed by which the problem is reformulated in terms of the usual SCOZA
with fixed hard core reference system and temperature-dependent interaction
Relating monomer to centre-of-mass distribution functions in polymer solutions
A relationship between the measurable monomer-monomer structure factor, and
the centre-of-mass (CM) structure factor of dilute or semi-dilute polymer
solutions is derived from Ornstein-Zernike relations within the ``polymer
reference interaction site model'' (PRISM) formalism, by considering the CM of
each polymer as an auxiliary site and neglecting direct correlations between
the latter and the CM and monomers of neighbouring polymers. The predictions
agree well with Monte Carlo data for self-avoiding walk polymers, and are
considerably more accurate than the predictions of simple factorization
approximations.Comment: uses eps.cls, v2 is close to final published versio
Influence of solvent quality on effective pair potentials between polymers in solution
Solutions of interacting linear polymers are mapped onto a system of ``soft''
spherical particles interacting via an effective pair potential. This
coarse-graining reduces the individual monomer-level description to a problem
involving only the centers of mass (CM) of the polymer coils. The effective
pair potentials are derived by inverting the CM pair distribution function,
generated in Monte Carlo simulations, using the hypernetted chain (HNC)
closure. The method, previously devised for the self-avoiding walk model of
polymers in good solvent, is extended to the case of polymers in solvents of
variable quality by adding a finite nearest-neighbor monomer-monomer attraction
to the previous model and varying the temperature. The resulting effective pair
potential is found to depend strongly on temperature and polymer concentration.
At low concentration the effective interaction becomes increasingly attractive
as the temperature decreases, eventually violating thermodynamic stability
criteria. However, as polymer concentration is increased at fixed temperature,
the effective interaction reverts to mostly repulsive behavior. These issues
help illustrate some fundamental difficulties encountered when coarse-graining
complex systems via effective pair potentials.Comment: 15 pages, 12 figures (one added in revised version), revTeX
A density--functional study of interfacial properties of colloid--polymer mixtures
Interfacial properties of colloid--polymer mixtures are examined within an
effective one--component representation, where the polymer degrees of freedom
are traced out, leaving a fluid of colloidal particles interacting via
polymer--induced depletion forces. Restriction is made to zero, one and
two--body effective potentials, and a free energy functional is used which
treats colloid excluded volume correlations within Rosenfeld's Fundamental
Measure Theory, and depletion--induced attraction within first--order
perturbation theory. This functional allows a consistent treatment of both
ideal and interacting polymers. The theory is applied to surface properties
near a hard wall, to the depletion interaction between two walls, and to the
fluid--fluid interface of demixed colloid--polymer mixtures. The results of the
present theory compare well with predictions of a fully two--component
representation of mixtures of colloids and ideal polymers (the Asakura--Oosawa
model), and allow a systematic investigation of the effects of polymer--polymer
interactions on interfacial properties. In particular, the wall surface tension
is found to be significantly larger for interacting than for ideal polymers,
while the opposite trend is predicted for the fluid--fluid interfacial tension.Comment: submitted to J. Phys. Chem. B, special issue in honour of David
Chandle
How many nucleosynthesis processes exist at low metallicity?
Abundances of low-metallicity stars offer a unique opportunity to understand
the contribution and conditions of the different processes that synthesize
heavy elements. Many old, metal-poor stars show a robust abundance pattern for
elements heavier than Ba, and a less robust pattern between Sr and Ag. Here we
probe if two nucleosynthesis processes are sufficient to explain the stellar
abundances at low metallicity, and we carry out a site independent approach to
separate the contribution from these two processes or components to the total
observationally derived abundances. Our approach provides a method to determine
the contribution of each process to the production of elements such as Sr, Zr,
Ba, and Eu. We explore the observed star-to-star abundance scatter as a
function of metallicity that each process leads to. Moreover, we use the
deduced abundance pattern of one of the nucleosynthesis components to constrain
the astrophysical conditions of neutrino-driven winds from core-collapse
supernovae.Comment: 13 pages, published in Ap
Many-body interactions and correlations in coarse-grained descriptions of polymer solutions
We calculate the two, three, four, and five-body (state independent)
effective potentials between the centers of mass (CM) of self avoiding walk
polymers by Monte-Carlo simulations. For full overlap, these coarse-grained
n-body interactions oscillate in sign as (-1)^n, and decrease in absolute
magnitude with increasing n. We find semi-quantitative agreement with a scaling
theory, and use this to discuss how the coarse-grained free energy converges
when expanded to arbitrary order in the many-body potentials. We also derive
effective {\em density dependent} 2-body potentials which exactly reproduce the
pair-correlations between the CM of the self avoiding walk polymers. The
density dependence of these pair potentials can be largely understood from the
effects of the {\em density independent} 3-body potential. Triplet correlations
between the CM of the polymers are surprisingly well, but not exactly,
described by our coarse-grained effective pair potential picture. In fact, we
demonstrate that a pair-potential cannot simultaneously reproduce the two and
three body correlations in a system with many-body interactions. However, the
deviations that do occur in our system are very small, and can be explained by
the direct influence of 3-body potentials.Comment: 11 pages, 1 table, 9 figures, RevTeX (revtex.cls
Wind tunnel measurements in the wake of a simple structure in a simulated atmospheric flow
Measurements of longitudinal mean velocity and turbulence intensity were made in the wake of a rectangular model building in a simulated atmospheric boundary-layer wind. The model building was a 1:50 scale model of a structure used in a wake measurement program at the George C. Marshall Space Flight Center 8-tower boundary-layer facility. The approach wind profile and measurement locations were chosen to match the field site conditions. The wakes of the building in winds from azimuths of 0 and 47 degrees referenced to the normal to the building long axis were examined. The effect of two lines of trees upwind of the building on the wake and the importance of the ratio of the building height to boundary-layer thickness on the extent of the wake were determined
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