Stacking Entropy of Hard Sphere Crystals

Classical hard spheres crystallize at equilibrium at high enough density. Crystals made up of stackings of 2-dimensional hexagonal close-packed layers (e.g. fcc, hcp, etc.) differ in entropy by only about $10^{-3}k_B$ per sphere (all configurations are degenerate in energy). To readily resolve and study these small entropy differences, we have implemented two different multicanonical Monte Carlo algorithms that allow direct equilibration between crystals with different stacking sequences. Recent work had demonstrated that the fcc stacking has higher entropy than the hcp stacking. We have studied other stackings to demonstrate that the fcc stacking does indeed have the highest entropy of ALL possible stackings. The entropic interactions we could detect involve three, four and (although with less statistical certainty) five consecutive layers of spheres. These interlayer entropic interactions fall off in strength with increasing distance, as expected; this fall-off appears to be much slower near the melting density than at the maximum (close-packing) density. At maximum density the entropy difference between fcc and hcp stackings is $0.00115 +/- 0.00004 k_B$ per sphere, which is roughly 30% higher than the same quantity measured near the melting transition.Comment: 15 page

Coulomb Excitation of Multi-Phonon Levels of the Giant Dipole Resonance

A closed expression is obtained for the cross-section for Coulomb excitation of levels of the giant dipole resonance of given angular momentum and phonon number. Applications are made to the Goldhaber-Teller and Steinwedel-Jensen descriptions of the resonance, at non-relativistic and relativistic bombarding energies.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figure

The Effect of Immune Serum on the Infectivity of Sonically Damaged Plasmodium berghei Infected Erythrocytes

Author Institution: Department of Microbiology, The Ohio State UniversityThe reduction in the infectivity of those Plasmodium berghei containing erythrocytes which remained unlysed following exposure to sonic energy and treatment with immune serum was shown to be far greater than that caused by the sum of the separate actions of immune serum and sonic energy applied separately. This indicates that, after exposure to sonic energy, plasmodia in surviving, parasitized erythrocytes are more susceptible to neutralization by immune serum than are plasmodia in unsonicated, parasitized erythrocytes. The membranes of parasitized erythrocytes that survive sonication thus appear to be permeable so that intracellular parasites are accessible to antibodies in immune serum

The Semiclassical Coulomb Interaction

The semiclassical Coulomb excitation interaction is at times expressed in the Lorentz gauge in terms of the electromagnetic fields and a contribution from the scalar electric potential. We point out that the potential term can make spurious contributions to excitation cross sections, especially when the the decay of excited states is taken into account. We show that, through an appropriate gauge transformation, the excitation interaction can be expressed in terms of the electromagnetic fields alone.Comment: 12 pages. Phys. Rev. C, Rapid Communication, in pres

Quantal Brownian Motion - Dephasing and Dissipation

We analyze quantal Brownian motion in $d$ dimensions using the unified model for diffusion localization and dissipation, and Feynman-Vernon formalism. At high temperatures the propagator possess a Markovian property and we can write down an equivalent Master equation. Unlike the case of the Zwanzig-Caldeira-Leggett model, genuine quantum mechanical effects manifest themselves due to the disordered nature of the environment. Using Wigner picture of the dynamics we distinguish between two different mechanisms for destruction of coherence. The analysis of dephasing is extended to the low temperature regime by using a semiclassical strategy. Various results are derived for ballistic, chaotic, diffusive, both ergodic and non-ergodic motion. We also analyze loss of coherence at the limit of zero temperature and clarify the limitations of the semiclassical approach. The condition for having coherent effect due to scattering by low-frequency fluctuations is also pointed out. It is interesting that the dephasing rate can be either larger or smaller than the dissipation rate, depending on the physical circumstances.Comment: LaTex, 23 pages, 4 figures, published vesio