Long-wavelength fluctuations and static correlations in quasi-2D colloidal suspensions

Dimensionality strongly affects thermal fluctuations and critical dynamics of equilibrium systems. These influences persist in amorphous systems going through the nonequilibrium glass transition. Here, we experimentally study the glass transition of quasi-2D suspensions of spherical and ellipsoidal particles under different degrees of circular confinement. We show that the strength of the long-wavelength fluctuations increases logarithmically with system sizes and displays the signature of the Mermin-Wagner fluctuations. Moreover, using confinement as a tool, we also measure static structural correlations and extract a growing static correlation length in 2D supercooled liquids. Finally, we explore the influence of the Mermin-Wagner fluctuations on the translational and orientational relaxations of 2D ellipsoidal suspensions, which leads to a new interpretation of the two-step glass transition and the orientational glass phase of anisotropic particles. Our study reveals the importance of long-wavelength fluctuations in 2D supercooled liquids and provides new insights into the role of dimensionality in the glass transition.Comment: 11 pages, 12 figures, Soft Matter (accepted

Baryon Distribution in Galaxy Clusters as a Result of Sedimentation of Helium Nuclei

Heavy particles in galaxy clusters tend to be more centrally concentrated than light ones according to the Boltzmann distribution. An estimate of the drift velocity suggests that it is possible that the helium nuclei may have entirely or partially sedimented into the cluster core within the Hubble time. We demonstrate the scenario using the NFW profile as the dark matter distribution of clusters and assuming that the intracluster gas is isothermal and in hydrostatic equilibrium. We find that a greater fraction of baryonic matter is distributed at small radii than at large radii, which challenges the prevailing claim that the baryon fraction increases monotonically with cluster radius. It shows that the conventional mass estimate using X-ray measurements of intracluster gas along with a constant mean molecular weight may have underestimated the total cluster mass by $\sim 20$, which in turn leads to an overestimate of the total baryon fraction by the same percentage. Additionally, it is pointed out that the sedimentation of helium nuclei toward cluster cores may at least partially account for the sharp peaks in the central X-ray emissions observed in some clusters.Comment: 4 pages + 3 figures, minor changes, ApJ Lett., 2000, 529, L

Biaxial-stress driven tetragonal symmetry breaking in and high-temperature ferromagnetic semiconductor from half-metallic CrO2

It is highly desirable to combine the full spin polarization of carriers with modern semiconductor technology for spintronic applications. For this purpose, one needs good crystalline ferromagnetic (or ferrimagnetic) semiconductors with high Curie temperatures. Rutile CrO$_2$ is a half-metallic spintronic material with Curie temperature 394 K and can have nearly-full spin polarization at room temperature. Here, we find through first-principles investigation that when a biaxial compressive stress is applied on rutile CrO$_2$, the density of states at the Fermi level decreases with the in-plane compressive strain, there is a structural phase transition to an orthorhombic phase at the strain of -5.6\%, and then appears an electronic phase transition to a semiconductor phase at -6.1\%. Further analysis shows that this structural transition, accompanying the tetragonal symmetry breaking, is induced by the stress-driven distortion and rotation of the oxygen octahedron of Cr, and the half-metal-semiconductor transition originates from the enhancement of the crystal field splitting due to the structural change. Importantly, our systematic total-energy comparison indicates the ferromagnetic Curie temperature remains almost independent of the strain, near 400 K. This biaxial stress can be realized by applying biaxial pressure or growing the CrO$_2$ epitaxially on appropriate substrates. These results should be useful for realizing full (100\%) spin polarization of controllable carriers as one uses in modern semiconductor technology.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figure

Identifying spatial invasion of pandemics on metapopulation networks via anatomizing arrival history

Spatial spread of infectious diseases among populations via the mobility of humans is highly stochastic and heterogeneous. Accurate forecast/mining of the spread process is often hard to be achieved by using statistical or mechanical models. Here we propose a new reverse problem, which aims to identify the stochastically spatial spread process itself from observable information regarding the arrival history of infectious cases in each subpopulation. We solved the problem by developing an efficient optimization algorithm based on dynamical programming, which comprises three procedures: i, anatomizing the whole spread process among all subpopulations into disjoint componential patches; ii, inferring the most probable invasion pathways underlying each patch via maximum likelihood estimation; iii, recovering the whole process by assembling the invasion pathways in each patch iteratively, without burdens in parameter calibrations and computer simulations. Based on the entropy theory, we introduced an identifiability measure to assess the difficulty level that an invasion pathway can be identified. Results on both artificial and empirical metapopulation networks show the robust performance in identifying actual invasion pathways driving pandemic spread.Comment: 14pages, 8 figures; Accepted by IEEE Transactions on Cybernetic

SilentSense: Silent User Identification via Dynamics of Touch and Movement Behavioral Biometrics

With the increased popularity of smartphones, various security threats and privacy leakages targeting them are discovered and investigated. In this work, we present \ourprotocoltight, a framework to authenticate users silently and transparently by exploiting dynamics mined from the user touch behavior biometrics and the micro-movement of the device caused by user's screen-touch actions. We build a "touch-based biometrics" model of the owner by extracting some principle features, and then verify whether the current user is the owner or guest/attacker. When using the smartphone, the unique operating dynamics of the user is detected and learnt by collecting the sensor data and touch events silently. When users are mobile, the micro-movement of mobile devices caused by touch is suppressed by that due to the large scale user-movement which will render the touch-based biometrics ineffective. To address this, we integrate a movement-based biometrics for each user with previous touch-based biometrics. We conduct extensive evaluations of our approaches on the Android smartphone, we show that the user identification accuracy is over 99%

Long-lived quantum coherence of two-level spontaneous emission models within structured environments

We investigate the long-lived quantum coherence of two-level spontaneous emission models within structured environments. The population of the system under the asymptotic non-Markovian dynamics is linked to the spectral density of the reservoir through a general functional relation between them. We figure out explicitly the preservation of quantum coherence, via notions of entanglement and quantum discord, in connection with the spectral parameters of Ohmic class reservoirs and then show how to achieve them optimally. We expect these results to contribute towards reservoir engineering with the aim of enhancing stationary quantum coherence in noisy environments.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, accepted by Opt. Let

The algebra A_{\hbar,\eta}(\hat{g}) and Infinite Hopf family of algebras

New deformed affine algebras A_{\hbar,\eta}(\hat{g}) are defined for any simply-laced classical Lie algebra g, which are generalizations of the algebra A_{\hbar,\eta}(\hat{sl_2}) recently proposed by Khoroshkin, Lebedev and Pakuliak (KLP). Unlike the work of KLP, we associate to the new algebras the structure of an infinite Hopf family of algebras in contrast to the one containing only finite number of algebras introduced by KLP. Bosonic representation for A_{\hbar,\eta}(\hat{g}) at level 1 is obtained, and it is shown that, by repeated application of Drinfeld-like comultiplications, a realization of A_{\hbar,\eta}(\hat{g}) at any positive integer level can be obtained. For the special case of g=sl_{r+1}, (r+1)-dimensional evaluation representation is given. The corresponding intertwining operators are defined and the intertwining relations are also derived explicitly.Comment: This version has been completely revised. Many corrections are made. In the title we add the word "infinite" to show the difference from Khoroshkin et al. LaTeX, 23 page

q-affine-Yangian double correspondence and free boson representation of Yangian double with arbitrary level

We derive a free boson representation of the Yangian double $DY_\hbar(sl_N)$ with arbitrary level k using the observation that there is a correspondence between the q-affine algebra and Yangian double associated with the same Cartan matrix. Vertex operator and screening currents are not obtained in the same way.Comment: LaTeX file, amssymb and amsart used. 13 pages, no figures. Several misprints corrected, some in important formula

Quantum currents in the Coset Space SU(2)/U(1)

We propose a rational quantum deformed nonlocal currents in the homogenous space $SU(2)_k/U(1)$, and in terms of it and a free boson field a representation for the Drinfeld currents of Yangian double at a general level $k=c$ is obtained. In the classical limit $\hbar \to 0$, the quantum nonlocal currents become $SU(2)_k$ parafermion, and the realization of Yangian double becomes the parafermion realization of $SU(2)_k$ current algebra.Comment: Latex, 9 page

High-spin mesons below 3 GeV

In this work, we study the high-spin states with masses below 3 GeV observed in experiments and we perform analysis of mass spectrum and investigation of strong decay behaviors of the high-spin states. Comparing our results with the experimental data, we can reveal the underlying properties of these high-spin states; more importantly, we also predict their abundant decay features, which can provide valuable information for experimental exploration of these high-spin states.Comment: 17 pages, 15 figures and 4 tables. More discussions added. Accepted by Phys. Rev.