Noise-assisted Mound Coarsening in Epitaxial Growth

We propose deposition noise to be an important factor in unstable epitaxial growth of thin films. Our analysis yields a geometrical relation H=(RWL)^2 between the typical mound height W, mound size L, and the film thickness H. Simulations of realistic systems show that the parameter R is a characteristic of the growth conditions, and generally lies in the range 0.2-0.7. The constancy of R in late-stage coarsening yields a scaling relation between the coarsening exponent 1/z and the mound height exponent \beta which, in the case of saturated mound slope, gives \beta = 1/z = 1/4.Comment: 4 pages, RevTex Macros, 3 eps figure

Coordination motifs and large-scale structural organization in atomic clusters

The structure of nanoclusters is complex to describe due to their noncrystallinity, even though bonding and packing constraints limit the local atomic arrangements to only a few types. A computational scheme is presented to extract coordination motifs from sample atomic configurations. The method is based on a clustering analysis of multipole moments for atoms in the first coodination shell. Its power to capture large-scale structural properties is demonstrated by scanning through the ground state of the Lennard-Jones and C$_{60}$ clusters collected at the Cambridge Cluster Database.Comment: 6 pages, 7 figure

Revisiting Bohr's principle of complementarity using a quantum device

Bohr's principle of complementarity lies at the central place of quantum mechanics, according to which the light is chosen to behave as a wave or particles, depending on some exclusive detecting devices. Later, intermediate cases are found, but the total information of the wave-like and particle-like behaviors are limited by some inequalities. One of them is Englert-Greenberger (EG) duality relation. This relation has been demonstrated by many experiments with the classical detecting devices. Here by introducing a quantum detecting device into the experiment, we find the limit of the duality relation is exceeded due to the interference between the photon's wave and particle properties. However, our further results show that this experiment still obey a generalized EG duality relation. The introducing of the quantum device causes the new phenomenon, provides an generalization of the complementarity principle, and opens new insights into our understanding of quantum mechanics.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

Density functional theory of inhomogeneous liquids. I. The liquid-vapor interface in Lennard-Jones fluids

A simple model is proposed for the direct correlation function (DCF) for simple fluids consisting of a hard-core contribution, a simple parametrized core correction, and a mean-field tail. The model requires as input only the free energy of the homogeneous fluid, obtained, e.g., from thermodynamic perturbation theory. Comparison to the DCF obtained from simulation of a Lennard-Jones fluid shows this to be a surprisingly good approximation for a wide range of densities. The model is used to construct a density functional theory for inhomogeneous fluids which is applied to the problem of calculating the surface tension of the liquid-vapor interface. The numerical values found are in good agreement with simulation

Fatty-acid uptake in prostate cancer cells using dynamic microfluidic raman technology

It is known that intake of dietary fatty acid (FA) is strongly correlated with prostate cancer progression but is highly dependent on the type of FAs. High levels of palmitic acid (PA) or arachidonic acid (AA) can stimulate the progression of cancer. In this study, a unique experimental set-up consisting of a Raman microscope, coupled with a commercial shear-flow microfluidic system is used to monitor fatty acid uptake by prostate cancer (PC-3) cells in real-time at the single cell level. Uptake of deuterated PA, deuterated AA, and the omega-3 fatty acids docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) and eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) were monitored using this new system, while complementary flow cytometry experiments using Nile red staining, were also conducted for the validation of the cellular lipid uptake. Using this novel experimental system, we show that DHA and EPA have inhibitory effects on the uptake of PA and AA by PC-3 cells

Discussions on Stability of Diquarks

Since the birth of the quark model, the diquark which is composed of two quarks has been considered as a substantial structure of color anti-triplet. This is not only a mathematical simplification for dealing with baryons, but also provides a physical picture where the diquark would behave as a whole object. It is natural to ask whether such a structure is sufficiently stable against external disturbance. The mass spectra of the ground states of the scalar and axial-vector diquarks which are composed of two-light (L-L), one-light-one-heavy (H-L) and two-heavy quarks (H-H) respectively have been calculated in terms of the QCD sum rules. We suggest a criterion as the quantitative standard for the stability of the diquark. It is the gap between the masses of the diquark and $\sqrt{s_0}$ where $s_0$ is the threshold of the excited states and continuity, namely the larger the gap is, the more stable the diquark would be. In this work, we calculate the masses of the type H-H to complete the series of the spectra of the ground state diquarks. However, as the criterion being taken, we find that all the gaps for the various diquaks are within a small range, especially the gap for the diquark with two heavy quarks which is believed to be a stable structure, is slightly smaller than that for other two types of diquarks, therefore we conclude that because of the large theoretical uncertainty, we cannot use the numerical results obtained with the QCD sum rules to assess the stability of diquarks, but need to invoke other theoretical framework.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figure