534 research outputs found
Further evidence for fungivory in the Lower Devonian (Lochkovian) of the Welsh Borderland, UK
The recent demonstrations that widespread mid-Palaeozoic Prototaxites and other nematophytes had fungal affinities indicate that terrestrial fungi were important elements in carbon cycling in the Early Devonian. Here, we provide evidence for their participation in the recycling of nutrients by early terrestrial invertebrates. Evidence is in the form of coprolites, both those associated with nematophytes or containing their fragmentary remains. Cylindrical coprolites consistently associated with fungal mats are placed in a new ichnospecies, Bacillafaex myceliorum. Their contents are granular to amorphous, suggestive of complete digestion of the ingested hyphae, with the inference of possession of chitinases in the digestive tracts of the consumers. A further single example comprises a cluster of cylindrical bodies attached to the lower surface of a Nematothallus fragment. Here, homogenisation was less complete, with traces of hyphae remaining. Terrestrial animal fossils have not been found at the locality, but scorpions, pseudoscorpions, Opiliones, mites, centipedes (carnivores) and millipedes, and Collembola (detritivores) have been recorded from the slightly younger Rhynie cherts. Studies of fungivory in extant arthropods have concentrated on Collembola and, to a lesser extent, mites, but their faecal pellets are much smaller than the fossil examples. Millipedes, based on body size and faeces of extant forms, are considered more realistic producers, but little is known about fungal feeding in these animals. Regardless of the affinities of the producers, the diversity in morphology, sizes, aggregations, and composition of nematophyte-containing examples suggests that fungivory was an important component of carbon cycling in early terrestrial ecosystems
Inelastic neutron and x-ray scattering as probes of the sign structure of the Fe-pnictide superconducting gap
Neutron spin-flip scattering observations of a resonance in the
superconducting state is often taken as evidence of an unconventional
superconducting state in which the gap changes sign
for momentum transfers which play an important role in the pairing.
Recently questions regarding this identification for the Fe-pnictide
superconductors have been raised and it has been suggested that
. Here we propose that inelastic neutron or x-ray
scattering measurements of the spectral weight of a phonon of momentum can
distinguish between these two pairing scenarios.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure
Soft phonons and structural phase transitions in LaBaCuO
Soft phonon behavior associated with a structural phase transition from the
low-temperature-orthorhombic (LTO) phase ( symmetry) to the
low-temperature-tetragonal (LTT) phase ( symmetry) was investigated
in LaBaCuO using neutron scattering. As temperature
decreases, the TO-mode at -point softens and approaches to zero energy
around K, where the LTO -- LTT transition occurs. Below , the phonon hardens quite rapidly and it's energy almost saturates below
50 K. At , the energy dispersion of the soft phonon along in-plane
direction significantly changes while the dispersion along out-of-plane
direction is almost temperature independent. Coexistence between the LTO phase
and the LTT phase, seen in both the soft phonon spectra and the peak profiles
of Bragg reflection, is discussed in context of the order of structural phase
transitions.Comment: 6 pages, 8 figure
Anatomically preserved Silurian 'nematophytes' from the Welsh Borderland (UK)
Stratified charcoalified fragments of thalloid organisms with tripartite tissue construction have been isolated from the basal member of the Upper Silurian (upper Ludlow) Downton Castle Sandstone Formation, exposed near Ludlow, Shropshire (England) and are considered to have had fungal affinity. They are divided into two major groups. The more novel of these is characterized by a superficial cortex separated from a basal layer of interweaving hyphae by an intermediate zone of compressed indeterminate tissue and members are placed in a new taxon, Tristratothallus ludfordensis. In the second, the intermediate zone comprises hyphae arranged at right angles to the cortex (termed palisade). Some members resemble the tissue construction of Nematothallus described from the Lower Devonian (Lochkovian) of the Welsh Borderland and considered to belong to fungi, some of which were lichenized. A further type, which shows remains of polysporic asci, is thought to represent a fragment of an apothecium (a disc-shaped ascoma of an ascomycete) of a pezizomycete and is the earliest such record. Yet others are characterized by a perforate cortex with occasional protruding hyphae, tissue construction of which was also recorded in the Lower Devonian of the Welsh Borderland and considered to display fungal characteristics. Coalified ‘black patches’ are common on bedding surfaces throughout the latest Silurian and Early Devonian and frequently are associated with basal embryophytes and tracheophytes. Those reported here are the oldest known with three-dimensional organization, studied via scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and attributed to fungi, and include some ascomycetes. Similar encrustations occur in even earlier rocks and may have been important constituents of the cryptogamic ground cover, which is postulated to have preceded higher plant life on land
Kondo Insulator: p-wave Bose Condensate of Excitons
In the Anderson lattice model for a mixed-valent system, the
hybridization can possess a -wave symmetry. The strongly-correlated
insulating phase in the mean-field approximation is shown to be a -wave Bose
condensate of excitons with a spontaneous lattice deformation. We study the
equilibrium and linear response properties across the insulator-metal
transition. Our theory supports the empirical correlation between the lattice
deformation and the magnetic susceptibility and predicts measurable ultrasonic
and high-frequency phonon behavior in mixed-valent semiconductors.Comment: 5 pages, 3 encapsulated PostScript figure
Image of the Energy Gap Anisotropy in the Vibrational Spectum of a High Temperature Superconductor
We present a new method of determining the anisotropy of the gap function in
layered high-Tc superconductors. Careful inelastic neutron scattering
measurements at low temperature of the phonon dispersion curves in the (100)
direction in La_(1.85)Sr_(.15)CuO_4 would determine whether the gap is
predominately s-wave or d-wave. We also propose an experiment to determine the
gap at each point on a quasi-two-dimensional Fermi surface.Comment: 12 pages + 2 figures (included
Application of elastostatic Green function tensor technique to electrostriction in cubic, hexagonal and orthorhombic crystals
The elastostatic Green function tensor approach, which was recently used to
treat electrostriction in numerical simulation of domain structure formation in
cubic ferroelectrics, is reviewed and extended to the crystals of hexagonal and
orthorhombic symmetry. The tensorial kernels appearing in the expressions for
effective nonlocal interaction of electrostrictive origin are derived
explicitly and their physical meaning is illustrated on simple examples. It is
argued that the bilinear coupling between the polarization gradients and
elastic strain should be systematically included in the Ginzburg-Landau free
energy expansion of electrostrictive materials.Comment: 4 page
Coexistence of Band Jahn Teller Distortion and superconductivity in correlated systems
The co-existence of band Jahn-Teller (BJT) effect with superconductivity (SC)
is studied for correlated systems, with orbitally degenerate bands using a
simple model. The Hubbard model for a doubly degenerate orbital with the
on-site intraorbital Coulomb repulsion treated in the slave boson formalism and
the interorbital Coulomb repulsion treated in the Hartree-Fock mean field
approximation, describes the correlated system. The model further incorporates
the BJT interaction and a pairing term to account for the lattice distortion
and superconductivity respectively. It is found that structural distortion
tends to suppress superconductivity and when SC sets in at low temperatures,
the growth of the lattice distortion is arrested. The phase diagram comprising
of the SC and structural transition temperatures and versus the
dopant concentration reveals that the highest obtainable for an
optimum doping is limited by structural transition. The dependence of the
occupation probabilities of the different bands as well as the density of
states (DOS) in the distorted-superconducting phase, on electron correlation
has been discussed.Comment: RevTex, 4 pages, 4 figuers (postscript files attached) Journal
Reference : Phys. Rev. B (accepted for publication
Structural instability associated with the tilting of CuO6 octahedra in La2-xSrxCuO4
Comprehensive inelastic neutron-scattering measurements were performed to
study the soft optical phonons in La2-xSrxCuO4 at x=0.10, 0.12 and 0.18. We
found at x=0.18 that the softening of Z-point phonon, suggesting incipient
structural transition from the low-temperature orthorhombic (LTO) to
low-temperature tetragonal (LTT) phase, breaks at Tc, which is consistent with
the previous report by Lee et al. for the optimally doped x=0.15 sample. As for
x=0.10 and 0.12, on the other hand, the softening continues even below Tc. It
is thus clarified that the breaking of soft phonon is characteristic of
La2-xSrxCuO4 in the optimally and overdoped regions. In the course of studying
the soft phonons, we discovered that a central peak remains above the LTO to
high-temperature tetragonal (HTT) phase transition at Ts1 and splits into
incommensurate components along the (1 1 0)HTT direction at higher
temperatures. This is a common feature for both x=0.12 and 0.18 and their
temperature dependences of the splitting 2d can be scaled by using a
renormalized temperature T/Ts1. In the high temperature limit, d saturates
around d ~ 0.12 r.l.u., which value is close to the splitting of incommensurate
magnetic signals. This implies that the incipient lattice modulation starts
appearing at very high temperature. Details of this modulation and its
relations with other properties are, however, not yet clarified.Comment: 7 pages, 5 eps figure
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