2,132 research outputs found
Fluctuations and Instabilities of Ferromagnetic Domain Wall pairs in an External Magnetic Field
Soliton excitations and their stability in anisotropic quasi-1D ferromagnets
are analyzed analytically. In the presence of an external magnetic field, the
lowest lying topological excitations are shown to be either soliton-soliton or
soliton-antisoliton pairs. In ferromagnetic samples of macro- or mesoscopic
size, these configurations correspond to twisted or untwisted pairs of Bloch
walls. It is shown that the fluctuations around these configurations are
governed by the same set of operators. The soliton-antisoliton pair has exactly
one unstable mode and thus represents a critical nucleus for thermally
activated magnetization reversal in effectively one-dimensional systems. The
soliton-soliton pair is stable for small external fields but becomes unstable
for large magnetic fields. From the detailed expression of this instability
threshold and an analysis of nonlocal demagnetizing effects it is shown that
the relative chirality of domain walls can be detected experimentally in thin
ferromagnetic films. The static properties of the present model are equivalent
to those of a nonlinear sigma-model with anisotropies. In the limit of large
hard-axis anisotropy the model reduces to a double sine-Gordon model.Comment: 15 pages RevTex 3.0 (twocolumn), 9 figures available on request, to
appear in Phys Rev B, Dec (1994
Macroscopic Quantum Tunneling of Ferromagnetic Domain Walls
Quantum tunneling of domain walls out of an impurity potential in a
mesoscopic ferromagnetic sample is investigated. Using improved expressions for
the domain wall mass and for the pinning potential, we find that the cross-over
temperature between thermal activation and quantum tunneling is of a different
functional form than found previously. In materials like Ni or YIG, the
crossover temperatures are around 5 mK. We also find that the WKB exponent is
typically two orders of magnitude larger than current estimates. The sources
for these discrepancies are discussed, and precise estimates for the transition
from three-dimensional to one-dimensional magnetic behavior of a wire are
given. The cross-over temperatures from thermal to quantum transitions and
tunneling rates are calculated for various materials and sample sizes.Comment: 10 pages, 2 postscript figures, REVTe
A Product Formula for the Normalized Volume of Free Sums of Lattice Polytopes
The free sum is a basic geometric operation among convex polytopes. This note
focuses on the relationship between the normalized volume of the free sum and
that of the summands. In particular, we show that the normalized volume of the
free sum of full dimensional polytopes is precisely the product of the
normalized volumes of the summands.Comment: Published in the proceedings of 2017 Southern Regional Algebra
Conferenc
Statistical Mechanics of Nonuniform Magnetization Reversal
The magnetization reversal rate via thermal creation of soliton pairs in
quasi-1D ferromagnetic systems is calculated. Such a model describes e.g. the
time dependent coercivity of elongated particles as used in magnetic recording
media. The energy barrier that has to be overcome by thermal fluctuations
corresponds to a soliton-antisoliton pair whose size depends on the external
field. In contrast to other models of first order phase transitions such as the
phi^4 model, an analytical expression for this energy barrier is found for all
values of the external field. The magnetization reversal rate is calculated
using a functional Fokker-Planck description of the stochastic magnetization
dynamics. Analytical results are obtained in the limits of small fields and
fields close to the anisotropy field. In the former case the hard-axis
anisotropy becomes effectively strong and the magnetization reversal rate is
shown to reduce to the nucleation rate of soliton-antisoliton pairs in the
overdamped double sine-Gordon model. The present theory therefore includes the
nucleation rate of soliton-antisoliton pairs in the double sine-Gordon chain as
a special case. These results demonstrate that for elongated particles, the
experimentally observed coercivity is significantly lower than the value
predicted by the standard theories of N\'eel and Brown.Comment: 21 pages RevTex 3.0 (twocolumn), 6 figures available on request, to
appear in Phys Rev B, Dec (1994
Berry's phase and Quantum Dynamics of Ferromagnetic Solitons
We study spin parity effects and the quantum propagation of solitons (Bloch
walls) in quasi-one dimensional ferromagnets. Within a coherent state path
integral approach we derive a quantum field theory for nonuniform spin
configurations. The effective action for the soliton position is shown to
contain a gauge potential due to the Berry phase and a damping term caused by
the interaction between soliton and spin waves. For temperatures below the
anisotropy gap this dissipation reduces to a pure soliton mass renormalization.
The gauge potential strongly affects the quantum dynamics of the soliton in a
periodic lattice or pinning potential. For half-integer spin, destructive
interference between soliton states of opposite chirality suppresses nearest
neighbor hopping. Thus the Brillouin zone is halved, and for small mixing of
the chiralities the dispersion reveals a surprising dynamical correlation: Two
subsequent band minima belong to different chirality states of the soliton. For
integer spin, the Berry phase is inoperative and a simple tight-binding
dispersion is obtained. Finally it is shown that external fields can be used to
interpolate continuously between the Bloch wall dispersions for half-integer
and integer spin.Comment: 20 pages, RevTex 3.0 (twocolumn), to appear in Phys. Rev. B 53, 3237
(1996), 4 PS figures available upon reques
Do High-Velocity Clouds trace the Dark Matter subhalo population?
Within the cosmological concordance model, Cold Dark Matter (CDM) subhalos
form the building blocks which merge hierarchically to more massive galaxies.
Since intergalactic gas is accreted by massive galaxies, observable e.g. as
high- velocity clouds (HVCs) around the Milky Way, with extremely low
metallicities, these can be suggested to represent the baryonic content of
primordial Dark Matter (DM) subhalos. Another possibility of their origin is
that they stem from disrupted satellite galaxies, but in this case, these gas
clouds move unaccompanied by a bound DM structure. Since HVCs are observed with
long gas tails and with irregular substructures, numerical models are performed
aiming at exploring their structure and compare them with observations. If HVCs
are engulfed by DM subhalos, their gas must leave the DM gravitational
potential and reflect this in their dynamics. On the other hand, the evolution
and survival of pure gas models must be tested to distinguish between
DM-dominated and DM-free clouds and to allow conclusions on their origin. The
models demonstrate that purely baryonic HVCs with low masses are disrupted by
ram-pressure stripping and Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities, while more massive
ones survive, losing their initially spherical shape and develop significant
substructures including cometary elongations in the column density distribution
("head-tail structure"). On the contrary, HVCs with DM subhalos survive with
more than 90% of their gas mass still bound and spherically shaped, approaching
the Galactic disk like bullets. In addition, we find that velocity gradients
along the cometary head-tail structures does not necessarily offer a
possibility to distinguish between DM-dominated and purely gaseous HVCs.
Comparison of models with observations let us conclude that HVCs are not
embedded in a DM substructure and do not trace the cosmological subhalo
population.Comment: Accepted for publication in A&
Two New X-ray/Optical/Radio Supernova Remnants in M31
We compare a deep (37 ks) Chandra ACIS-S image of the M31 bulge to Local
Group Survey narrow-band optical data and Very Large Array (VLA) radio data of
the same region. Our precisely registered images reveal two new optical shells
with X-ray counterparts. These shells have sizes, [S II]/H-alpha flux ratios,
and X-ray spectral properties typical of supernova remnants (SNRs) with ages of
9 and 17 kyr. Analysis of complementary VLA data
reveals the radio counterparts, further confirming that they are SNRs. We
discuss and compare the properties and morphologies of these SNRs at the
different wavelengths.Comment: 18 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in Ap
A Collaborative Model for Accelerating the Discovery and Translation of Cancer Therapies
Preclinical studies using genetically engineered mouse models (GEMM) have the potential to expedite the development of effective new therapies; however, they are not routinely integrated into drug development pipelines. GEMMs may be particularly valuable for investigating treatments for less common cancers, which frequently lack alternative faithful models. Here, we describe a multicenter cooperative group that has successfully leveraged the expertise and resources from philanthropic foundations, academia, and industry to advance therapeutic discovery and translation using GEMMs as a preclinical platform. This effort, known as the Neurofibromatosis Preclinical Consortium (NFPC), was established to accelerate new treatments for tumors associated with neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1). At its inception, there were no effective treatments for NF1 and few promising approaches on the horizon. Since 2008, participating laboratories have conducted 95 preclinical trials of 38 drugs or combinations through collaborations with 18 pharmaceutical companies. Importantly, these studies have identified 13 therapeutic targets, which have inspired 16 clinical trials. This review outlines the opportunities and challenges of building this type of consortium and highlights how it can accelerate clinical translation. We believe that this strategy of foundation-academic-industry partnering is generally applicable to many diseases and has the potential to markedly improve the success of therapeutic development
On positivity of Ehrhart polynomials
Ehrhart discovered that the function that counts the number of lattice points
in dilations of an integral polytope is a polynomial. We call the coefficients
of this polynomial Ehrhart coefficients, and say a polytope is Ehrhart positive
if all Ehrhart coefficients are positive (which is not true for all integral
polytopes). The main purpose of this article is to survey interesting families
of polytopes that are known to be Ehrhart positive and discuss the reasons from
which their Ehrhart positivity follows. We also include examples of polytopes
that have negative Ehrhart coefficients and polytopes that are conjectured to
be Ehrhart positive, as well as pose a few relevant questions.Comment: 40 pages, 7 figures. To appear in in Recent Trends in Algebraic
Combinatorics, a volume of the Association for Women in Mathematics Series,
Springer International Publishin
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