Effect of Bilayer Thickness on Membrane Bending Rigidity

The bending rigidity $k_c$ of bilayer vesicles self-assembled from amphiphilic diblock copolymers has been measured using single and dual-micropipet techniques. These copolymers are nearly a factor of 5 greater in hydrophobic membrane thickness $d$ than their lipid counterparts, and an order of magnitude larger in molecular weight $\bar{M}_n$. The macromolecular structure of these amphiphiles lends insight into and extends relationships for traditional surfactant behavior. We find the scaling of $k_c$ with thickness to be nearly quadratic, in agreement with existing theories for bilayer membranes. The results here are key to understanding and designing soft interfaces such as biomembrane mimetics

Optimal conditions for the numerical calculation of the largest Lyapunov exponent for systems of ordinary differential equations

A general indicator of the presence of chaos in a dynamical system is the largest Lyapunov exponent. This quantity provides a measure of the mean exponential rate of divergence of nearby orbits. In this paper, we show that the so-called two-particle method introduced by Benettin et al. could lead to spurious estimations of the largest Lyapunov exponent. As a comparator method, the maximum Lyapunov exponent is computed from the solution of the variational equations of the system. We show that the incorrect estimation of the largest Lyapunov exponent is based on the setting of the renormalization time and the initial distance between trajectories. Unlike previously published works, we here present three criteria that could help to determine correctly these parameters so that the maximum Lyapunov exponent is close to the expected value. The results have been tested with four well known dynamical systems: Ueda, Duffing, R\"ossler and Lorenz.Comment: 12 pages, 8 figures. Accepted in the International Journal of Modern Physics

Competing many-body interactions in systems of trapped ions

We propose and theoretically analyse an experimental configuration in which lasers induce 3-spin interactions between trapped ions.By properly choosing the intensities and frequencies of the lasers, 3-spin couplings may be dominant or comparable to 2-spin terms and magnetic fields. In this way, trapped ions can be used to study exotic quantum phases which do not have a counterpart in nature. We study the conditions for the validity of the effective 3-spin Hamiltonian, and predict qualitatively the quantum phase diagram of the system.Comment: RevTex4 file, color figure

Short Range Interactions in the Hydrogen Atom

In calculating the energy corrections to the hydrogen levels we can identify two different types of modifications of the Coulomb potential $V_{C}$, with one of them being the standard quantum electrodynamics corrections, $\delta V$, satisfying $\left|\delta V\right|\ll\left|V_{C}\right|$ over the whole range of the radial variable $r$. The other possible addition to $V_{C}$ is a potential arising due to the finite size of the atomic nucleus and as a matter of fact, can be larger than $V_{C}$ in a very short range. We focus here on the latter and show that the electric potential of the proton displays some undesirable features. Among others, the energy content of the electric field associated with this potential is very close to the threshold of $e^+e^-$ pair production. We contrast this large electric field of the Maxwell theory with one emerging from the non-linear Euler-Heisenberg theory and show how in this theory the short range electric field becomes smaller and is well below the pair production threshold

Topology induced anomalous defect production by crossing a quantum critical point

We study the influence of topology on the quench dynamics of a system driven across a quantum critical point. We show how the appearance of certain edge states, which fully characterise the topology of the system, dramatically modifies the process of defect production during the crossing of the critical point. Interestingly enough, the density of defects is no longer described by the Kibble-Zurek scaling, but determined instead by the non-universal topological features of the system. Edge states are shown to be robust against defect production, which highlights their topological nature.Comment: Phys. Rev. Lett. (to be published

Dynamical properties of a dissipative discontinuous map: A scaling investigation

The effects of dissipation on the scaling properties of nonlinear discontinuous maps are investigated by analyzing the behavior of the average squared action \left as a function of the $n$-th iteration of the map as well as the parameters $K$ and $\gamma$, controlling nonlinearity and dissipation, respectively. We concentrate our efforts to study the case where the nonlinearity is large; i.e., $K\gg 1$. In this regime and for large initial action $I_0\gg K$, we prove that dissipation produces an exponential decay for the average action \left. Also, for $I_0\cong 0$, we describe the behavior of \left using a scaling function and analytically obtain critical exponents which are used to overlap different curves of \left onto an universal plot. We complete our study with the analysis of the scaling properties of the deviation around the average action $\omega$.Comment: 20 pages, 7 figure

Stochastic Behavior Analysis of the Gaussian Kernel Least-Mean-Square Algorithm

The kernel least-mean-square (KLMS) algorithm is a popular algorithm in nonlinear adaptive filtering due to its simplicity and robustness. In kernel adaptive filters, the statistics of the input to the linear filter depends on the parameters of the kernel employed. Moreover, practical implementations require a finite nonlinearity model order. A Gaussian KLMS has two design parameters, the step size and the Gaussian kernel bandwidth. Thus, its design requires analytical models for the algorithm behavior as a function of these two parameters. This paper studies the steady-state behavior and the transient behavior of the Gaussian KLMS algorithm for Gaussian inputs and a finite order nonlinearity model. In particular, we derive recursive expressions for the mean-weight-error vector and the mean-square-error. The model predictions show excellent agreement with Monte Carlo simulations in transient and steady state. This allows the explicit analytical determination of stability limits, and gives opportunity to choose the algorithm parameters a priori in order to achieve prescribed convergence speed and quality of the estimate. Design examples are presented which validate the theoretical analysis and illustrates its application

Topology induced anomalous defect production by crossing a quantum critical point

We study the influence of topology on the quench dynamics of a system driven across a quantum critical point. We show how the appearance of certain edge states, which fully characterise the topology of the system, dramatically modifies the process of defect production during the crossing of the critical point. Interestingly enough, the density of defects is no longer described by the Kibble-Zurek scaling, but determined instead by the non-universal topological features of the system. Edge states are shown to be robust against defect production, which highlights their topological nature.Comment: Phys. Rev. Lett. (to be published