2,442 research outputs found
Thermal effects on lattice strain in hcp Fe under pressure
We compute the c/a lattice strain versus temperature for nonmagnetic hcp iron
at high pressures using both first-principles linear response quasiharmonic
calculations based on the full potential linear-muffin-tin-orbital (LMTO)
method and the particle-in-cell (PIC) model for the vibrational partition
function using a tight-binding total-energy method. The tight-binding model
shows excellent agreement with the all-electron LMTO method. When hcp structure
is stable, the calculated geometric mean frequency and Helmholtz free energy of
hcp Fe from PIC and linear response lattice dynamics agree very well, as does
the axial ratio as a function of temperature and pressure. On-site
anharmonicity proves to be small up to the melting temperature, and PIC gives a
good estimate of its sign and magnitude. At low pressures, hcp Fe becomes
dynamically unstable at large c/a ratios, and the PIC model might fail where
the structure approaches lattice instability. The PIC approximation describes
well the vibrational behavior away from the instability, and thus is a
reasonable approach to compute high temperature properties of materials. Our
results show significant differences from earlier PIC studies, which gave much
larger axial ratio increases with increasing temperature, or reported large
differences between PIC and lattice dynamics results.Comment: 9 figure
First-principles thermoelasticity of bcc iron under pressure
We investigate the elastic and isotropic aggregate properties of
ferromagnetic bcc iron as a function of temperature and pressure by computing
the Helmholtz free energies for the volume-conserving strained structures using
the first-principles linear response linear-muffin-tin-orbital method and the
generalized-gradient approximation. We include the electronic excitation
contributions to the free energy from the band structures, and phonon
contributions from quasi-harmonic lattice dynamics. We make detailed
comparisons between our calculated elastic moduli and their temperature and
pressure dependences with available experimental and theoretical data.Comment: 5 figures, 2 table
Casimir Force for Arbitrary Objects Using the Argument Principle and Boundary Element Methods
Recent progress in the simulation of Casimir forces between various objects
has allowed traditional computational electromagnetic solvers to be used to
find Casimir forces in arbitrary three-dimensional objects. The underlying
theory to these approaches requires knowledge and manipulation of quantum field
theory and statistical physics. We present a calculation of the Casimir force
using the method of moments via the argument principle. This simplified
derivation allows greater freedom in the moment matrix where the argument
principle can be used to calculate Casimir forces for arbitrary geometries and
materials with the use of various computational electromagnetic techniques.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figure
First-principles thermal equation of state and thermoelasticity of hcp Fe at high pressures
We investigate the equation of state and elastic properties of hcp iron at
high pressures and high temperatures using first principles linear response
linear-muffin-tin-orbital method in the generalized-gradient approximation. We
calculate the Helmholtz free energy as a function of volume, temperature, and
volume-conserving strains, including the electronic excitation contributions
from band structures and lattice vibrational contributions from quasi-harmonic
lattice dynamics. We perform detailed investigations on the behavior of elastic
moduli and equation of state properties as functions of temperature and
pressure, including the pressure-volume equation of state, bulk modulus, the
thermal expansion coefficient, the Gruneisen ratio, and the shock Hugoniot.
Detailed comparison has been made with available experimental measurements and
theoretical predictions.Comment: 33 pages, 12 figure
Metabolic network analysis reveals microbial community interactions in anammox granules.
Microbial communities mediating anaerobic ammonium oxidation (anammox) represent one of the most energy-efficient environmental biotechnologies for nitrogen removal from wastewater. However, little is known about the functional role heterotrophic bacteria play in anammox granules. Here, we use genome-centric metagenomics to recover 17 draft genomes of anammox and heterotrophic bacteria from a laboratory-scale anammox bioreactor. We combine metabolic network reconstruction with metatranscriptomics to examine the gene expression of anammox and heterotrophic bacteria and to identify their potential interactions. We find that Chlorobi-affiliated bacteria may be highly active protein degraders, catabolizing extracellular peptides while recycling nitrate to nitrite. Other heterotrophs may also contribute to scavenging of detritus and peptides produced by anammox bacteria, and potentially use alternative electron donors, such as H2, acetate and formate. Our findings improve the understanding of metabolic activities and interactions between anammox and heterotrophic bacteria and offer the first transcriptional insights on ecosystem function in anammox granules
Flexible Invariants Through Semantic Collaboration
Modular reasoning about class invariants is challenging in the presence of
dependencies among collaborating objects that need to maintain global
consistency. This paper presents semantic collaboration: a novel methodology to
specify and reason about class invariants of sequential object-oriented
programs, which models dependencies between collaborating objects by semantic
means. Combined with a simple ownership mechanism and useful default schemes,
semantic collaboration achieves the flexibility necessary to reason about
complicated inter-object dependencies but requires limited annotation burden
when applied to standard specification patterns. The methodology is implemented
in AutoProof, our program verifier for the Eiffel programming language (but it
is applicable to any language supporting some form of representation
invariants). An evaluation on several challenge problems proposed in the
literature demonstrates that it can handle a variety of idiomatic collaboration
patterns, and is more widely applicable than the existing invariant
methodologies.Comment: 22 page
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