2,983 research outputs found
Theoretical Study of Friction: A Case of One-Dimensional Clean Surfaces
A new method has been proposed to evaluate the frictional force in the
stationary state. This method is applied to the 1-dimensional model of clean
surfaces. The kinetic frictional force is seen to depend on velocity in
general, but the dependence becomes weaker as the maximum static frictional
force increases and in the limiting case the kinetic friction gets only weakly
dependent on velocity as described by one of the laws of friction. It is also
shown that there is a phase transition between state with vanishing maximum
static frictional force and that with finite one. The role of randomness at the
interface and the relation to the impurity pinning of the sliding
Charge-Density-Wave are discussed. to appear in Phys.Rev.B. abstract only. Full
text is available upon request. E-mail: [email protected]: 2 pages, Plain TEX, OUCMT-94-
Contact and Friction of Nano-Asperities: Effects of Adsorbed Monolayers
Molecular dynamics simulations are used to study contact between a rigid,
nonadhesive, spherical tip with radius of order 30nm and a flat elastic
substrate covered with a fluid monolayer of adsorbed chain molecules. Previous
studies of bare surfaces showed that the atomic scale deviations from a sphere
that are present on any tip constructed from discrete atoms lead to significant
deviations from continuum theory and dramatic variability in friction forces.
Introducing an adsorbed monolayer leads to larger deviations from continuum
theory, but decreases the variations between tips with different atomic
structure. Although the film is fluid, it remains in the contact and behaves
qualitatively like a thin elastic coating except for certain tips at high
loads. Measures of the contact area based on the moments or outer limits of the
pressure distribution and on counting contacting atoms are compared. The number
of tip atoms making contact in a time interval grows as a power of the interval
when the film is present and logarithmically with the interval for bare
surfaces. Friction is measured by displacing the tip at a constant velocity or
pulling the tip with a spring. Both static and kinetic friction rise linearly
with load at small loads. Transitions in the state of the film lead to
nonlinear behavior at large loads. The friction is less clearly correlated with
contact area than load.Comment: RevTex4, 17 pages, 13 figure
1/z-renormalization of the mean-field behavior of the dipole-coupled singlet-singlet system HoF_3
The two main characteristics of the holmium ions in HoF_3 are that their
local electronic properties are dominated by two singlet states lying well
below the remaining 4f-levels, and that the classical dipole-coupling is an
order of magnitude larger than any other two-ion interactions between the
Ho-moments. This combination makes the system particularly suitable for testing
refinements of the mean-field theory. There are four Ho-ions per unit cell and
the hyperfine coupled electronic and nuclear moments on the Ho-ions order in a
ferrimagnetic structure at T_C=0.53 K. The corrections to the mean-field
behavior of holmium triflouride, both in the paramagnetic and ferrimagnetic
phase, have been calculated to first order in the high-density 1/z-expansion.
The effective medium theory, which includes the effects of the single-site
fluctuations, leads to a substantially improved description of the magnetic
properties of HoF_3, in comparison with that based on the mean-field
approximation.Comment: 26pp, plain-TeX, JJ
Emission spectra and intrinsic optical bistability in a two-level medium
Scattering of resonant radiation in a dense two-level medium is studied
theoretically with account for local field effects and renormalization of the
resonance frequency. Intrinsic optical bistability is viewed as switching
between different spectral patterns of fluorescent light controlled by the
incident field strength. Response spectra are calculated analytically for the
entire hysteresis loop of atomic excitation. The equations to describe the
non-linear interaction of an atomic ensemble with light are derived from the
Bogolubov-Born-Green-Kirkwood-Yvon hierarchy for reduced single particle
density matrices of atoms and quantized field modes and their correlation
operators. The spectral power of scattered light with separated coherent and
incoherent constituents is obtained straightforwardly within the hierarchy. The
formula obtained for emission spectra can be used to distinguish between
possible mechanisms suggested to produce intrinsic bistability.Comment: 18 pages, 5 figure
An ordinary differential equation model for full thickness wounds and the effects of diabetes
Wound healing is a complex process in which a sequence of interrelated phases contributes to a reduction in wound size. For diabetic patients, many of these processes are compromised, so that wound healing slows down. In this paper we present a simple ordinary differential equation model for wound healing in which attention focusses on the dominant processes that contribute to closure of a full thickness wound. Asymptotic analysis of the resulting model reveals that normal healing occurs in stages: the initial and rapid elastic recoil of the wound is followed by a longer proliferative phase during which growth in the dermis dominates healing. At longer times, fibroblasts exert contractile forces on the dermal tissue, the resulting tension stimulating further dermal tissue growth and enhancing wound closure. By fitting the model to experimental data we find that the major difference between normal and diabetic healing is a marked reduction in the rate of dermal tissue growth for diabetic patients. The model is used to estimate the breakdown of dermal healing into two processes: tissue growth and contraction, the proportions of which provide information about the quality of the healed wound. We show further that increasing dermal tissue growth in the diabetic wound produces closure times similar to those associated with normal healing and we discuss the clinical implications of this hypothesised treatment
Quantum Dynamics without the Wave Function
When suitably generalized and interpreted, the path-integral offers an
alternative to the more familiar quantal formalism based on state-vectors,
selfadjoint operators, and external observers. Mathematically one generalizes
the path-integral-as-propagator to a {\it quantal measure} on the space
of all ``conceivable worlds'', and this generalized measure expresses
the dynamics or law of motion of the theory, much as Wiener measure expresses
the dynamics of Brownian motion. Within such ``histories-based'' schemes new,
and more ``realistic'' possibilities open up for resolving the philosophical
problems of the state-vector formalism. In particular, one can dispense with
the need for external agents by locating the predictive content of in its
sets of measure zero: such sets are to be ``precluded''. But unrestricted
application of this rule engenders contradictions. One possible response would
remove the contradictions by circumscribing the application of the preclusion
concept. Another response, more in the tradition of ``quantum logic'', would
accommodate the contradictions by dualizing to a space of
``co-events'' and effectively identifying reality with an element of this dual
space.Comment: plainTeX, 24 pages, no figures. To appear in a special volume of {\it
Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and General} entitled ``The Quantum
Universe'' and dedicated to Giancarlo Ghirardi on the occasion of his 70th
birthday. Most current version is available at
http://www.physics.syr.edu/~sorkin/some.papers/ (or wherever my home-page may
be
Very High-Energy Gamma-Ray Observations of PSR B1509-58 with the CANGAROO 3.8m Telescope
The gamma-ray pulsar PSR B1509-58 and its surrounding nebulae have been
observed with the CANGAROO 3.8m imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescope. The
observations were performed from 1996 to 1998 in Woomera, South Australia,
under different instrumental conditions with estimated threshold energies of
4.5 TeV (1996), 1.9 TeV (1997) and 2.5 TeV (1998) at zenith angles of ~30 deg.
Although no strong evidence of the gamma-ray emission was found, the lowest
energy threshold data of 1997 showed a marginal excess of gamma-ray--like
events at the 4.1 sigma significance level. The corresponding gamma-ray flux is
calculated to be (2.9 +/- 0.7) * 10^{-12}cm^{-2}s^{-1} above 1.9 TeV. The
observations of 1996 and 1998 yielded only upper limits (99.5% confidence
level) of 1.9 * 10^{-12}cm^{-2}s^{-1} above 4.5 TeV and 2.0 *
10^{-12}cm^{-2}s^{-1} above 2.5 TeV, respectively. Assuming that the 1997
excess is due to Very High-Energy (VHE) gamma-ray emission from the pulsar
nebula, our result, when combined with the X-ray observations, leads to a value
of the magnetic field strength ~5 micro G. This is consistent with the
equipartition value previously estimated in the X-ray nebula surrounding the
pulsar. No significant periodicity at the 150ms pulsar period has been found in
any of the three years' data. The flux upper limits set from our observations
are one order of magnitude below previously reported detections of pulsed TeV
emission.Comment: Accepted to publication in Astrophys. Journal, 25 pages, 2 figure
Static and dynamic properties of frictional phenomena in a one-dimensional system with randomness
Static and dynamic frictional phenomena at the interface with random
impurities are investigated in a two-chain model with incommensurate structure.
Static frictional force is caused by the impurity pinning and/or by the pinning
due to the regular potential, which is responsible for the breaking of
analyticity transition for impurity-free cases. It is confirmed that the static
frictional force is always finite in the presence of impurities, in contrast to
the impurity-free system. The nature of impurity pinning is discussed in
connection with that in density waves. The kinetic frictional force of a steady
sliding state is also investigated numerically. The relationship between the
sliding velocity dependence of the kinetic frictional force and the strength of
impurity potential is discussed.Comment: RevTex, 14 pages, 6 PostScript figures, to appear in Phys. Rev.
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