Scaling limits of a model for selection at two scales

The dynamics of a population undergoing selection is a central topic in evolutionary biology. This question is particularly intriguing in the case where selective forces act in opposing directions at two population scales. For example, a fast-replicating virus strain outcompetes slower-replicating strains at the within-host scale. However, if the fast-replicating strain causes host morbidity and is less frequently transmitted, it can be outcompeted by slower-replicating strains at the between-host scale. Here we consider a stochastic ball-and-urn process which models this type of phenomenon. We prove the weak convergence of this process under two natural scalings. The first scaling leads to a deterministic nonlinear integro-partial differential equation on the interval $[0,1]$ with dependence on a single parameter, $\lambda$. We show that the fixed points of this differential equation are Beta distributions and that their stability depends on $\lambda$ and the behavior of the initial data around $1$. The second scaling leads to a measure-valued Fleming-Viot process, an infinite dimensional stochastic process that is frequently associated with a population genetics.Comment: 23 pages, 1 figur

CsCl-Type Compounds in Binary Alloys of Rare-Earth Metals with Zinc and Copper

The CsCl-type structure has been previously reported in alloys of copper with yttrium, gadolinium, and erbium, [1] and of zinc with lanthanum, cerium, and praesodymium. [2] The present investigation has uncovered five additional phases in copper-rare-earth alloys and nine in zinc-rare-earth alloys

Tuning the magnetism of ordered and disordered strongly-correlated electron nanoclusters

Recently, there has been a resurgence of intense experimental and theoretical interest on the Kondo physics of nanoscopic and mesoscopic systems due to the possibility of making experiments in extremely small samples. We have carried out exact diagonalization calculations to study the effect of energy spacing $\Delta$ in the conduction band states, hybridization, number of electrons, and disorder on the ground-state and thermal properties of strongly-correlated electron nanoclusters. For the ordered systems, the calculations reveal for the first time that $\Delta$ tunes the interplay between the {\it local} Kondo and {\it non local} RKKY interactions, giving rise to a "Doniach phase diagram" for the nanocluster with regions of prevailing Kondo or RKKY correlations. The interplay of $\Delta$ and disorder gives rise to a $\Delta$ versus concentration T=0 phase diagram very rich in structure. The parity of the total number of electrons alters the competition between the Kondo and RKKY correlations. The local Kondo temperatures, $T_K$, and RKKY interactions depend strongly on the local environment and are overall {\it enhanced} by disorder, in contrast to the hypothesis of ``Kondo disorder'' single-impurity models. This interplay may be relevant to experimental realizations of small rings or quantum dots with tunable magnetic properties.Comment: 10 pages, 13 figures, to appear in Physics of Spin in Solids: Materials, Methods, and Applications, (2004

Thermodynamical quantities of lattice full QCD from an efficient method

I extend to QCD an efficient method for lattice gauge theory with dynamical fermions. Once the eigenvalues of the Dirac operator and the density of states of pure gluonic configurations at a set of plaquette energies (proportional to the gauge action) are computed, thermodynamical quantities deriving from the partition function can be obtained for arbitrary flavor number, quark masses and wide range of coupling constants, without additional computational cost. Results for the chiral condensate and gauge action are presented on the $10^4$ lattice at flavor number $N_f=0$, 1, 2, 3, 4 and many quark masses and coupling constants. New results in the chiral limit for the gauge action and its correlation with the chiral condensate, which are useful for analyzing the QCD chiral phase structure, are also provided.Comment: Latex, 11 figures, version accepted for publicatio