1,070 research outputs found
Buffering plasmons in nanoparticle waveguides at the virtual-localized transition
We study the plasmonic energy transfer from a locally excited nanoparticle
(LE-NP) to a linear array of small NPs and we obtain the parametric dependence
of the response function. An analytical expression allows us to distinguish the
extended resonant states and the localized ones, as well as an elusive regime
of virtual states. This last appears when the resonance width collapses and
before it becomes a localized state. Contrary to common wisdom, the highest
excitation transfer does not occur when the system has a well defined extended
resonant state but just at the virtual-localized transition, where the main
plasmonic modes have eigenfrequencies at the passband edge. The slow group
velocity at this critical frequency enables the excitation buffering and hence
favors a strong signal inside the chain. A similar situation should appear in
many other physical systems. The extreme sensitivity of this transition to the
waveguide and LE-NP parameters provides new tools for plasmonics.Comment: Regular article: 7 pages and 5 figure
Weak ferromagnetism with very large canting in a chiral lattice: (pyrimidine)2FeCl2
The transition metal coordination compound (pyrimidine)2FeCl2 crystallizes in
a chiral lattice, space group I 4_1 2 2 (or I4_3 2 2). Combined magnetization,
Mossbauer spectroscopy and powder neutron diffraction studies reveal that it is
a canted antiferromagnet below T_N = 6.4 K with an unusually large canting of
the magnetic moments of 14 deg. from their general antiferromagnetic alignment,
one of the largest reported to date. This results in weak ferromagnetism with a
ferromagnetic component of 1 mu_B. The large canting is due to the interplay
between the antiferromagnetic exchange interaction and the local single-ion
anisotropy in the chiral lattice. The magnetically ordered structure of
(pyrimidine)2FeCl2, however, is not chiral. The implications of these findings
for the search of molecule based materials exhibiting chiral magnetic ordering
is discussed.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figure
Strong enhancement of superconductivity at high pressures within the charge-density-wave states of 2H-TaS 2 and 2H-TaSe 2
We present measurements of the superconducting and charge density wave
critical temperatures (Tc and TCDW) as a function of pressure in the transition
metal dichalchogenides 2H-TaSe2 and 2H-TaS2. Resistance and susceptibility
measurements show that Tc increases from temperatures below 1 K up to 8.5 K at
9.5 GPa in 2H-TaS2 and 8.2 K at 23 GPa in 2H-TaSe2. We observe a kink in the
pressure dependence of TCDW at about 4 GPa that we attribute to the lock-in
transition from incommensurate CDW to commensurate CDW. Above this pressure,
the commensurate TCDW slowly decreases coexisting with superconductivity within
our full pressure range.Comment: Published in Phys. Rev B 93, 184512 (2016
Indication for the coexistence of closed orbit and quantum interferometer with the same cross section in the organic metal (ET)4(H3O)[Fe(C2O4)3].C6H4Cl2: Persistence of SdH oscillations above 30 K
Shubnikov-de Haas (SdH) and de Haas-van Alphen (dHvA) oscillations spectra of
the quasi-two dimensional charge transfer salt
"-(ET)(HO)[Fe(CO)]CHCl have been
investigated in pulsed magnetic fields up to 54 T. The data reveal three basic
frequencies F, F and F, which can be interpreted on the basis
of three compensated closed orbits at low temperature. However a very weak
thermal damping of the Fourier component F, with the highest amplitude, is
evidenced for SdH spectra above about 6 K. As a result, magnetoresistance
oscillations are observed at temperatures higher than 30 K. This feature, which
is not observed for dHvA oscillations, is in line with quantum interference,
pointing to a Fermi surface reconstruction in this compound.Comment: published in Eur. Phys. J. B 71 203 (2009
On the similarity of Sturm-Liouville operators with non-Hermitian boundary conditions to self-adjoint and normal operators
We consider one-dimensional Schroedinger-type operators in a bounded interval
with non-self-adjoint Robin-type boundary conditions. It is well known that
such operators are generically conjugate to normal operators via a similarity
transformation. Motivated by recent interests in quasi-Hermitian Hamiltonians
in quantum mechanics, we study properties of the transformations in detail. We
show that they can be expressed as the sum of the identity and an integral
Hilbert-Schmidt operator. In the case of parity and time reversal boundary
conditions, we establish closed integral-type formulae for the similarity
transformations, derive the similar self-adjoint operator and also find the
associated "charge conjugation" operator, which plays the role of fundamental
symmetry in a Krein-space reformulation of the problem.Comment: 27 page
Experimental Verification of the Gapless Point in the =1 Antiferromagnetic Bond Alternating Chain
Susceptibility and high field magnetization measurements have been performed
on powder samples of an =1 bond alternating chain compound
[\{Ni(333-tet)(-N)\}](ClO) (333-tet=tetraamine
N,N'-bis(3-aminopropyl)-1,3-propanediamine). As the temperature is decreased,
the susceptibility exhibits a round maximum at around 120 K and decreases
gradually down to 10 K, and then falls down rapidly with a logarithmic
curvature which is behavior of the susceptibility of a gapless or a nearly
gapless antiferromagnetic chain. Magnetization up to 50 T at 1.4 K shows no or
a very small gap in this compound. We have carried out numerical calculations
for the =1 antiferromagnetic bond alternating chain with various alternating
ratios and obtained a very good agreement between experiments and
calculations for =0.6. We verify experimentally that the gapless point
exists around =0.6.Comment: 12 pages, 4 Postscript figures, uses REVTE
Informing the design of a national screening and treatment programme for chronic viral hepatitis in primary care: qualitative study of at-risk immigrant communities and healthcare professionals
n Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative
Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and
reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain
Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article,
unless otherwise statedThis paper presents independent research funded by the National Institute
for Health Research (NIHR) under the Programme Grants for Applied
Research programme (RP-PG-1209-10038).
Se NMR evidence for the Jaccarino-Peter mechanism in the field induced superconductor, (BETS)FeCl}
We have performed Se NMR on a single crystal sample of the field
induced superconductor -(BETS)FeCl. Our results obtained
in the paramagnetic state provide a microscopic insight on the exchange
interaction between the spins \textbf{s} of the BETS conduction
electrons and the Fe localized spins \textbf{S}. The absolute value of the
Knight shift \textbf{K} decreases when the polarization of the Fe spins
increases. This reflects the ``negative'' spin polarization of the
electrons through the exchange interaction . The value of has been
estimated from the temperature and the magnetic field dependence of \textbf{K}
and found in good agreement with that deduced from transport measurements (L.
Balicas \textit{et al}. Phys. Rev. Lett. \textbf{87}, 067002 (2001)). This
provides a direct microscopic evidence that the field induced superconductivity
is due to the compensation effect predicted by Jaccarino and Peter (Phys. Rev.
Lett. \textbf{9}, 290 (1962)). Furthermore, an anomalous broadening of the NMR
line has been observed at low temperature, which suggests the existence of
charge disproportionation in the metallic state neighboring the superconducting
phase
A compilation of field surveys on gaseous elemental mercury (GEM) from contrasting environmental settings in Europe, South America, South Africa and China: separating fads from facts
Mercury is transported globally in the atmosphere
mostly in gaseous elemental form (GEM, Hg0
gas),
but still few worldwide studies taking into account
different and contrasted environmental settings are
available in a single publication. This work presents
and discusses data from Argentina, Bolivia, Bosnia
and Herzegovina, Brazil, Chile, China, Croatia, Finland,
Italy, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Slovenia and
Venezuela. We classified the information in four
groups: (1) mining districts where this contaminant
poses or has posed a risk for human populations and/or
ecosystems; (2) cities, where the concentration ofatmospheric mercury could be higher than normal due
to the burning of fossil fuels and industrial activities;
(3) areas with natural emissions from volcanoes; and
(4) pristine areas where no anthropogenic influence
was apparent. All the surveys were performed using
portable LUMEX RA-915 series atomic absorption
spectrometers. The results for cities fall within a low
GEM concentration range that rarely exceeds 30 ng m-3,
that is, 6.6 times lower than the restrictive ATSDR
threshold (200 ng m-3) for chronic exposure to this
pollutant. We also observed this behavior in the former
mercury mining districts, where few data were above
200 ng m-3.We noted that high concentrations of GEM
are localized phenomena that fade away in short
distances. However, this does not imply that they do not
pose a risk for those working in close proximity to the
source. This is the case of the artisanal gold miners that
heat the Au–Hg amalgam to vaporize mercury. In this
respect, while GEM can be truly regarded as a hazard,
because of possible physical–chemical transformations
into other species, it is only under these localized
conditions, implying exposure to high GEM concentrations,
which it becomes a direct risk for humans.Grants
CGL2009-13171 and CTM2012-33918 from the Spanish
Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and PII1I09-0142-
4389 from theCastilla-LaMancha (Spain)RegionalGovernment.Published713-7346A. Monitoraggio ambientale, sicurezza e territorioJCR Journalrestricte
A novel series of compositionally biased substitution matrices for comparing Plasmodium proteins
<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The most common substitution matrices currently used (BLOSUM and PAM) are based on protein sequences with average amino acid distributions, thus they do not represent a fully accurate substitution model for proteins characterized by a biased amino acid composition. This problem has been addressed recently by adjusting existing matrices, however, to date, no empirical approach has been taken to build matrices which offer a substitution model for comparing proteins sharing an amino acid compositional bias. Here, we present a novel procedure to construct series of symmetrical substitution matrices to align proteins from similarly biased <it>Plasmodium </it>proteomes.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We generated substitution matrices by selecting from the BLOCKS database those multiple alignments with a compositional bias similar to that of <it>P. falciparum </it>and <it>P. yoelii </it>proteins. A novel 'fuzzy' clustering method was adopted to group sequences within these alignments, showing that this method retains more complete information on the amino acid substitutions when compared to hierarchical clustering. We assessed the performance against the BLOSUM62 series and showed that the usage of our matrices results in an improvement in the performance of BLAST database searches, greatly reducing the number of false positive hits. We then demonstrated applications of the use of novel matrices to improve the annotation of homologs between the two <it>Plasmodium </it>species and to classify members of the <it>P. falciparum </it>RIFIN/STEVOR family.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>We confirmed that in the case of compositionally biased proteins, standard BLOSUM matrices are not suited for optimal alignments, and specific substitution matrices are required. In addition, we showed that the usage of these matrices leads to a reduction of false positive hits, facilitating the automatic annotation process.</p
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