920 research outputs found
Chirality induced anomalous-Hall effect in helical spin crystals
Under pressure, the itinerant helimagnet MnSi displays unusual magnetic
properties. We have previously discussed a BCC helical spin crystal as a
promising starting point for describing the high pressure phenomenology. This
state has topologically nontrivial configurations of the magnetization field.
Here we note the consequences for magneto-transport that arise generally from
such spin textures. In particular a skyrmion density induced `topological' Hall
effect, with unusual field dependence, is described.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, to appear in the proceedings of SCES 07 (the
international conference on strongly correlated electron systems 2007 in
Houston, USA
Skyrmion Lattice in a Chiral Magnet
Skyrmions represent topologically stable field configurations with
particle-like properties. We used neutron scattering to observe the spontaneous
formation of a two-dimensional lattice of skyrmion lines, a type of magnetic
vortices, in the chiral itinerant-electron magnet MnSi. The skyrmion lattice
stabilizes at the border between paramagnetism and long-range helimagnetic
order perpendicular to a small applied magnetic field regardless of the
direction of the magnetic field relative to the atomic lattice. Our study
experimentally establishes magnetic materials lacking inversion symmetry as an
arena for new forms of crystalline order composed of topologically stable spin
states
Magnetic domain formation in itinerant metamagnets
We examine the effects of long-range dipolar forces on metamagnetic
transitions and generalize the theory of Condon domains to the case of an
itinerant electron system undergoing a first-order metamagnetic transition. We
demonstrate that within a finite range of the applied field, dipolar
interactions induce a spatial modulation of the magnetization in the form of
stripes or bubbles. Our findings are consistent with recent observations in the
bilayer ruthenate SrRuO.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, minor changes, references adde
Phonon-mediated tuning of instabilities in the Hubbard model at half-filling
We obtain the phase diagram of the half-filled two-dimensional Hubbard model
on a square lattice in the presence of Einstein phonons. We find that the
interplay between the instantaneous electron-electron repulsion and
electron-phonon interaction leads to new phases. In particular, a
d-wave superconducting phase emerges when both anisotropic phonons
and repulsive Hubbard interaction are present. For large electron-phonon
couplings, charge-density-wave and s-wave superconducting regions also appear
in the phase diagram, and the widths of these regions are strongly dependent on
the phonon frequency, indicating that retardation effects play an important
role. Since at half-filling the Fermi surface is nested, spin-density-wave is
recovered when the repulsive interaction dominates. We employ a functional
multiscale renormalization-group method that includes both electron-electron
and electron-phonon interactions, and take retardation effects fully into
account.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figure
The Most Severe Test for Hydrophobicity Scales: Two Proteins with 88% Sequence Identity but Different Structure and Function
Protein-protein interactions (protein functionalities) are mediated by water,
which compacts individual proteins and promotes close and temporarily stable
large-area protein-protein interfaces. In their classic paper Kyte and
Doolittle (KD) concluded that the "simplicity and graphic nature of
hydrophobicity scales make them very useful tools for the evaluation of protein
structures". In practice, however, attempts to develop hydrophobicity scales
(for example, compatible with classical force fields (CFF) in calculating the
energetics of protein folding) have encountered many difficulties. Here we
suggest an entirely different approach, based on the idea that proteins are
self-organized networks, subject to finite-scale criticality (like some network
glasses). We test this proposal against two small proteins that are delicately
balanced between alpha and alpha/beta structures, with different functions
encoded with only 12% of their amino acids. This example explains why protein
structure prediction is so challenging, and it provides a severe test for the
accuracy and content of hydrophobicity scales. The new method confirms KD's
evaluation, and at the same time suggests that protein structure, dynamics and
function can be best discussed without using CFF
Solution of the infinite range t-J model
The t-J model with constant t and J between any pair of sites is studied by
exploiting the symmetry of the Hamiltonian with respect to site permutations.
For a given number of electrons and a given total spin the exchange term simply
yields an additive constant. Therefore the real problem is to diagonalize the
"t- model", or equivalently the infinite U Hubbard Hamiltonian. Using
extensively the properties of the permutation group, we are able to find
explicitly both the energy eigenvalues and eigenstates, labeled according to
spin quantum numbers and Young diagrams. As a corollary we also obtain the
degenerate ground states of the finite Hubbard model with infinite range
hopping -t>0.Comment: 15 pages, 2 figure
Topological Hall effect in the A-phase of MnSi
Recent small angle neutron scattering suggests, that the spin structure in
the A-phase of MnSi is a so-called triple- state, i.e., a superposition of
three helices under 120 degrees. Model calculations suggest that this structure
in fact is a lattice of so-called skyrmions, i.e., a lattice of topologically
stable knots in the spin structure. We report a distinct additional
contribution to the Hall effect in the temperature and magnetic field range of
the proposed skyrmion lattice, where such a contribution is neither seen nor
expected for a normal helical state. Our Hall effect measurements constitute a
direct observation of a topologically quantized Berry phase that identifies the
spin structure seen in neutron scattering as the proposed skyrmion lattice
spl(2,1) dynamical supersymmetry and suppression of ferromagnetism in flat band double-exchange models
The low energy spectrum of the ferromagnetic Kondo lattice model on a N-site
complete graph extended with on-site repulsion is obtained from the underlying
spl(2,1) algebra properties in the strong coupling limit. The ferromagnetic
ground state is realized for 1 and N+1 electrons only. We identify the large
density of states to be responsible for the suppression of the ferromagnetic
state and argue that a similar situation is encountered in the Kagome,
pyrochlore, and other lattices with flat bands in their one-particle density of
states.Comment: 7 pages, 1 figur
Botulinum neurotoxin type C protease induces apoptosis in differentiated human neuroblastoma cells
Neuroblastomas constitute a major cause of cancer-related deaths in young children. In recent years, a number of translation-inhibiting enzymes have been evaluated for killing neuroblastoma cells. Here we investigated the potential vulnerability of human neuroblastoma cells to protease activity derived from botulinum neurotoxin type C. We show that following retinoic acid treatment, human neuroblastoma cells, SiMa and SH-SY5Y, acquire a neuronal phenotype evidenced by axonal growth and expression of neuronal markers. Botulinum neurotoxin type C which cleaves neuron-specific SNAP25 and syntaxin1 caused apoptotic death only in differentiated neuroblastoma cells. Direct comparison of translation-inhibiting enzymes and the type C botulinum protease revealed one order higher cytotoxic potency of the latter suggesting a novel neuroblastoma-targeting pathway. Our mechanistic insights revealed that loss of ubiquitous SNAP23 due to differentiation coupled to SNAP25 cleavage due to botulinum activity may underlie the apoptotic death of human neuroblastoma cells
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