12,497 research outputs found
Quantum critical scaling of the geometric tensors
Berry phases and the quantum-information theoretic notion of fidelity have
been recently used to analyze quantum phase transitions from a geometrical
perspective. In this paper we unify these two approaches showing that the
underlying mechanism is the critical singular behavior of a complex tensor over
the Hamiltonian parameter space. This is achieved by performing a scaling
analysis of this quantum geometric tensor in the vicinity of the critical
points. In this way most of the previous results are understood on general
grounds and new ones are found. We show that criticality is not a sufficient
condition to ensure superextensive divergence of the geometric tensor, and
state the conditions under which this is possible. The validity of this
analysis is further checked by exact diagonalization of the spin-1/2 XXZ
Heisenberg chain.Comment: Typos correcte
Metallochaperones Are Needed for Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Escherichia coli Nicotinamidase-Pyrazinamidase Activity.
Mycobacterium tuberculosis nicotinamidase-pyrazinamidase (PZAse) is a metalloenzyme that catalyzes conversion of nicotinamide-pyrazinamide to nicotinic acid-pyrazinoic acid. This study investigated whether a metallochaperone is required for optimal PZAse activity. M. tuberculosis and Escherichia coli PZAses (PZAse-MT and PZAse-EC, respectively) were inactivated by metal depletion (giving PZAse-MT-Apo and PZAse-EC-Apo). Reactivation with the E. coli metallochaperone ZnuA or Rv2059 (the M. tuberculosis analog) was measured. This was repeated following proteolytic and thermal treatment of ZnuA and Rv2059. The CDC1551 M. tuberculosis reference strain had the Rv2059 coding gene knocked out, and PZA susceptibility and the pyrazinoic acid (POA) efflux rate were measured. ZnuA (200 μM) achieved 65% PZAse-EC-Apo reactivation. Rv2059 (1 μM) and ZnuA (1 μM) achieved 69% and 34.3% PZAse-MT-Apo reactivation, respectively. Proteolytic treatment of ZnuA and Rv2059 and application of three (but not one) thermal shocks to ZnuA significantly reduced the capacity to reactivate PZAse-MT-Apo. An M. tuberculosis Rv2059 knockout strain was Wayne positive and susceptible to PZA and did not have a significantly different POA efflux rate than the reference strain, although a trend toward a lower efflux rate was observed after knockout. The metallochaperone Rv2059 restored the activity of metal-depleted PZAse in vitro Although Rv2059 is important in vitro, it seems to have a smaller effect on PZA susceptibility in vivo. It may be important to mechanisms of action and resistance to pyrazinamide in M. tuberculosis Further studies are needed for confirmation.IMPORTANCE Tuberculosis is an infectious disease caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis and remains one of the major causes of disease and death worldwide. Pyrazinamide is a key drug used in the treatment of tuberculosis, yet its mechanism of action is not fully understood, and testing strains of M. tuberculosis for pyrazinamide resistance is not easy with the tools that are presently available. The significance of the present research is that a metallochaperone-like protein may be crucial to pyrazinamide's mechanisms of action and of resistance. This may support the development of improved tools to detect pyrazinamide resistance, which would have significant implications for the clinical management of patients with tuberculosis: drug regimens that are appropriately tailored to the resistance profile of a patient's individual strain lead to better clinical outcomes, reduced onward transmission of infection, and reduction of the development of resistant strains that are more challenging and expensive to treat
Adiabatic decaying vacuum model for the universe
We study a model that the entropy per particle in the universe is constant.
The sources for the entropy are the particle creation and a lambda decaying
term. We find exact solutions for the Einstein field equations and show the
compatibilty of the model with respect to the age and the acceleration of the
universe.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figure
Critical phenomena of thick branes in warped spacetimes
We have investigated the effects of a generic bulk first-order phase
transition on thick Minkowski branes in warped geometries. As occurs in
Euclidean space, when the system is brought near the phase transition an
interface separating two ordered phases splits into two interfaces with a
disordered phase in between. A remarkable and distinctive feature is that the
critical temperature of the phase transition is lowered due to pure geometrical
effects. We have studied a variety of critical exponents and the evolution of
the transverse-traceless sector of the metric fluctuations.Comment: revtex4, 4 pages, 4 figures, some comments added, typos corrected,
published in PR
Reduction of quantum noise in optical interferometers using squeezed light
We study the photon counting noise in optical interferometers used for
gravitational wave detection. In order to reduce quantum noise a squeezed
vacuum state is injected into the usually unused input port. Here, we
specifically investigate the so called `dark port case', when the beam splitter
is oriented close to 90{\deg} to the incoming laser beam, such that nearly all
photons go to one output port of the interferometer, and only a small fraction
of photons is seen in the other port (`dark port'). For this case it had been
suggested that signal amplification is possible without concurrent noise
amplification [R.Barak and Y.Ben-Aryeh, J.Opt.Soc.Am.B25(361)2008]. We show
that by injection of a squeezed vacuum state into the second input port,
counting noise is reduced for large values of the squeezing factor, however the
signal is not amplified. Signal strength only depends on the intensity of the
laser beam.Comment: 8 pages, 1 figur
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