Aging in the Relaxor Ferroelectric PMN/PT

The relaxor ferroelectric (PbMn$_{1/3}$Nb$_{2/3}$O$_3$)$_{1-x}$(PbTiO$_3$)$_{x}$, $x=0.1$, (PMN/PT(90/10)) is found to exhibit several regimes of complicated aging behavior. Just below the susceptibility peak there is a regime exhibiting rejuvenation but little memory. At lower temperature, there is a regime with mainly cumulative aging, expected for simple domain-growth. At still lower temperature, there is a regime with both rejuvenation and memory, reminiscent of spin glasses. PMN/PT (88/12) is also found to exhibit some of these aging regimes. This qualitative aging behavior is reminiscent of that seen in reentrant ferromagnets, which exhibit a crossover from a domain-growth ferromagnetic regime into a reentrant spin glass regime at lower temperatures. These striking parallels suggest a picture of competition in PMN/PT (90/10) between ferroelectric correlations formed in the domain-growth regime with glassy correlations formed in the spin glass regime. PMN/PT (90/10) is also found to exhibit frequency-aging time scaling of the time-dependent part of the out-of-phase susceptibility for temperatures 260 K and below. The stability of aging effects to thermal cycles and field perturbations is also reported.Comment: 8 pages RevTeX4, 11 figures; submitted to Phys. Rev.

An evaluation of the Department of Health’s Health and Social Care Volunteering Fund

The Health and Social Care Volunteering Fund (HSCVF) is an innovative programme that was established in 2009 by the Department of Health (DH) to build organisational and community capacity for volunteering through a national and local grant scheme. The HSCVF has offered both funds and tailored support to health and social care projects delivered by Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise (VCSE) organisations. The HSCVF is managed by a partnership led by Ecorys and with expertise from leading national voluntary sector organisations: Attend, Community Service Volunteers (CSV) and Primetimers. To date the HSCVF has funded a total of 157 local and national projects, of which 114 are currently live. This report presents findings from an evaluation of the HSCVF with a specific focus on the 2010/2011 national and local projects, conducted by a team from the Institute for Health & Wellbeing at Leeds Metropolitan University. It presents evidence on the extent to which, how and in what ways the HSCVF programme has built organisational and community capacity across the national and local HSCVF projects, as well as on the health and social outcomes that resulted

Coexistence and competition of local- and long-range polar orders in a ferroelectric relaxor

We have performed a series of neutron diffuse scattering measurements on a single crystal of the solid solution Pb(Zn$_{1/3}$Nb$_{2/3}$)O$_3$ (PZN) doped with 8% PbTiO$_3$ (PT), a relaxor compound with a Curie temperature T$_C \sim 450$ K, in an effort to study the change in local polar orders from the polar nanoregions (PNR) when the material enters the ferroelectric phase. The diffuse scattering intensity increases monotonically upon cooling in zero field, while the rate of increase varies dramatically around different Bragg peaks. These results can be explained by assuming that corresponding changes occur in the ratio of the optic and acoustic components of the atomic displacements within the PNR. Cooling in the presence of a modest electric field $\vec{E}$ oriented along the [111] direction alters the shape of diffuse scattering in reciprocal space, but does not eliminate the scattering as would be expected in the case of a classic ferroelectric material. This suggests that a field-induced redistribution of the PNR has taken place

Intermediate reading exercises for use with the Durrell Analysis of Reading Difficulty.

Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston Universit

Finite Size Scaling of Domain Chaos

Numerical studies of the domain chaos state in a model of rotating Rayleigh-Benard convection suggest that finite size effects may account for the discrepancy between experimentally measured values of the correlation length and the predicted divergence near onset

Systematic derivation of a rotationally covariant extension of the 2-dimensional Newell-Whitehead-Segel equation

An extension of the Newell-Whitehead-Segel amplitude equation covariant under abritrary rotations is derived systematically by the renormalization group method.Comment: 8 pages, to appear in Phys. Rev. Letters, March 18, 199

Effect of phonon scattering by surface roughness on the universal thermal conductance

The effect of phonon scattering by surface roughness on the thermal conductance in mesoscopic systems at low temperatures is calculated using full elasticity theory. The low frequency behavior of the scattering shows novel power law dependences arising from the unusual properties of the elastic modes. This leads to new predictions for the low temperature depression of the thermal conductance below the ideal universal value. Comparison with the data of Schwab et al. [Nature 404, 974 (2000)] suggests that surface roughness on a scale of the width of the thermal pathway is important in the experiment.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figure

Who Contributes to the Knowledge Sharing Economy?

Information sharing dynamics of social networks rely on a small set of influencers to effectively reach a large audience. Our recent results and observations demonstrate that the shape and identity of this elite, especially those contributing \emph{original} content, is difficult to predict. Information acquisition is often cited as an example of a public good. However, this emerging and powerful theory has yet to provably offer qualitative insights on how specialization of users into active and passive participants occurs. This paper bridges, for the first time, the theory of public goods and the analysis of diffusion in social media. We introduce a non-linear model of \emph{perishable} public goods, leveraging new observations about sharing of media sources. The primary contribution of this work is to show that \emph{shelf time}, which characterizes the rate at which content get renewed, is a critical factor in audience participation. Our model proves a fundamental \emph{dichotomy} in information diffusion: While short-lived content has simple and predictable diffusion, long-lived content has complex specialization. This occurs even when all information seekers are \emph{ex ante} identical and could be a contributing factor to the difficulty of predicting social network participation and evolution.Comment: 15 pages in ACM Conference on Online Social Networks 201

Phase stability and structural temperature dependence in sodium niobate: A high resolution powder neutron diffraction study

We report investigation of structural phase transitions in technologically important material sodium niobate as a function of temperature on heating over 300-1075 K. Our high resolution powder neutron diffraction data show variety of structural phase transitions ranging from non-polar antiferrodistortive to ferroelectric and antiferroelectric in nature. Discontinuous jump in lattice parameters is found only at 633 K that indicates that the transition of orthorhombic antiferroelectric P (space group Pbcm) to R (space group Pbnm) phase is first order in nature, while other successive phase transitions are of second order. New superlattice reflections appear at 680 K (R phase) and 770 K (S phase) that could be indexed using an intermediate long-period modulated orthorhombic structure whose lattice parameter along direction is 3 and 6 times that of the CaTiO3-like Pbnm structure respectively. The correlation of superlattice reflections with the phonon instability is discussed. The critical exponent ({\beta}) for the second order tetragonal to cubic phase transition at 950 K, corresponds to a value {\beta}$\approx 1/3$, as obtained from the temperature variation of order parameters (tilt angle and intensity of superlattice reflections). It is argued that this exponent is due to a second order phase transition close to a tricritical point. Based on our detailed temperature dependent neutron diffraction studies, the phase diagram of sodium niobate is presented that resolves existing ambiguities in the literature.Comment: 21 Pages, 8 Figure