3,645 research outputs found
Specific binding of chloride ions to lipid vesicles and implications at molecular scale
Biological membranes composed of lipids and proteins are in contact with electrolytes like aqueous NaCl solutions. Based on molecular dynamics studies it is widely believed that Na(+) ions specifically bind to 1-palmitoyl-2-oleoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine (POPC) membranes, whereas Cl(â) ions stay in solution. Here, we present a careful comparison of recent data from electrophoresis and isothermal titration calorimetry experiments as well as molecular dynamics simulations suggesting that in fact both ions show very similar affinities. The corresponding binding constants are [Formula: see text] M(â1) for Na(+) and [Formula: see text] M(â1) for Cl(â) ions. This is highlighted by our observation that a widely used simulation setup showing asymmetric affinities of Na(+) and Cl(â) for POPC bilayers overestimates the effect of NaCl on the electrophoretic mobility of a POPC membrane by an order of magnitude. Implications for previous simulation results on the effect of NaCl on polarization of interfacial water, transmembrane potentials, and mechanisms for ion transport through bilayers are discussed. Our findings suggest that a range of published simulations results on the interaction of NaCl with phosphocholine bilayers have to be reconsidered and revised and that force field refinements are necessary for reliable simulation studies of membranes at physiological conditions on a molecular level
Decay of pseudoscalars into lepton pairs and large-Nc QCD
The counterterm combination that describes the decay of pseudoscalar mesons
into charged lepton pairs at lowest order in chiral perturbation theory is
considered within the framework of QCD in the limit of a large number of
colours Nc. When further restricted to the lowest meson dominance approximation
to large-Nc QCD, our results agree well with the available experimental data.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure
An example of resonance saturation at one loop
We argue that the large-Nc expansion of QCD can be used to treat a Lagrangian
of resonances in a perturbative way. As an illustration of this we compute the
L_10 coupling of the Chiral Lagrangian by integrating out resonance fields at
one loop. Given a Lagrangian and a renormalization scheme, this is how in
principle one can answer in a concrete and unambiguous manner questions such as
at what scale resonance saturation takes place.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures. Enlarged discussion, results unchanged. To be
published in Phys. Rev.
Matrix Elements of Electroweak Penguin Operators in the 1/Nc Expansion
It is shown that the K -> pi pi matrix elements of the four-quark operator
Q_7, generated by the electroweak penguin-like diagrams of the Standard Model,
can be calculated to first non-trivial order in the chiral expansion and in the
1/Nc expansion. Although the resulting B factors B_7^(1/2) and B_7^(3/2) are
found to depend only logarithmically on the matching scale, mu, their actual
numerical values turn out to be rather sensitive to the precise choice of mu in
the GeV region. We compare our results to recent numerical evaluations from
lattice-QCD and to other model estimates.Comment: 10 pages, LateX, two figures (inserted). Improved comparison with the
lattice results. Results unchange
The Amplitude in Generalized Chiral Perturbation Theory
The interaction is studied at one loop order in the framework of
Generalized Chiral Perturbation theoryComment: Compressed+ uuencoded Postscript file, 13pages, 6 figures to appear
in the 2nd ed. of the DAFNE Physics Handboo
Contributions of order to form factors and unitarity of the CKM matrix
The form factors for the semileptonic decay are computed to
order in generalized chiral perturbation theory. The main difference
with the standard expressions consists in contributions quadratic in
quark masses, which are described by a single divergence-free low-energy
constant, . A new simultaneous analysis is presented for the CKM matrix
element , the ratio , decay rates and the
scalar form factor slope . This framework easily accommodates the
precise value for deduced from superallowed nuclear -decays
Chiral two-loop pion-pion scattering parameters from crossing-symmetric constraints
Constraints on the parameters in the one- and two-loop pion-pion scattering
amplitudes of standard chiral perturbation theory are obtained from explicitly
crossing-symmetric sum rules. These constraints are based on a matching of the
chiral amplitudes and the physical amplitudes at the symmetry point of the
Mandelstam plane. The integrals over absorptive parts appearing in the sum
rules are decomposed into crossing-symmetric low- and high-energy components
and the chiral parameters are finally related to high-energy absorptive parts.
A first application uses a simple model of these absorptive parts. The
sensitivity of the results to the choice of the energy separating high and low
energies is examined with care. Weak dependence on this energy is obtained as
long as it stays below ~560 MeV. Reliable predictions are obtained for three
two-loop parameters.Comment: 23 pages, 4 figures in .eps files, Latex (RevTex), our version of
RevTex runs under Latex2.09, submitted to Phys. Rev. D,minor typographical
corrections including the number at the end of the abstract, two sentences
added at the end of Section 5 in answer to a referee's remar
Fluctuations of g-factors in metal nanoparticles: Effects of electron-electron interaction and spin-orbit scattering
We investigate the combined effect of spin-orbit scattering and
electron-electron interactions on the probability distribution of -factors
of metal nanoparticles. Using random matrix theory, we find that even a
relatively small interaction strength %(ratio of exchange constant and mean
level %spacing \spacing ) significantly increases -factor
fluctuations for not-too-strong spin-orbit scattering (ratio of spin-orbit rate
and single-electron level spacing 1/\tau_{\rm so} \spacing \lesssim 1), and
leads to the possibility to observe -factors larger than two.Comment: RevTex, 2 figures inserte
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