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Eoceneâearly Oligocene climate and vegetation change in southern China: Evidence from the Maoming Basin
Although the Eocene-Oligocene climate transition marks a critical point in the development of the âicehouseâ global climate of the present little is known about this important change in the terrestrial realm at low latitudes. Our palynological study of the Shangcun Formation shows it to be early Oligocene in age: palyno-assemblages in the lower part of the formation indicate a cool interval dominated by conifer pollen in the earliest Oligocene followed by a warmer regime in the second half of the early Oligocene. To quantify middle Eocene to late early Oligocene climate conditions at low (~ 20°N) palaeolatitudes in southern Asia several thousand leaf fossil specimens from the Maoming Basin, southern China, were subjected to a multivariate (CLAMP) analysis of leaf form. For terrestrial palaeoclimate comparisons to be valid the palaeoaltitude at which the proxy data are obtained must be known. We find that leaves preserved in the Youganwo (middle Eocene), Huangniuling (late Eocene) and Shangcun (early Oligocene) formations were likely to have been deposited well above sea level at different palaeoelevations. In the Youganwo Formation fine-grained sediments were deposited at an altitude of ~ 1.5 km, after which the basin dropped to ~ 0.5 km by the time the upper Huangniuling sediments were deposited. The basin floor then rose again by 0.5 km reaching an altitude of approximately 1 km in which the Shangcun Formation fine-grained sediments were accumulated. Within the context of these elevation changes the prevailing climates experienced by the Youganwo, Lower Huangniuling, Upper Huangniuling and Shangcun fossil floras were humid subtropical with hot summers and warm winters, but witnessed a progressive increase in rainfall seasonality. By the early Oligocene rainfall seasonality was similar to that of the modern monsoonal climate of Guangdong Province, southern China. All floras show leaf physiognomic spectra most similar to those growing under the influence of the modern Indonesia-Australia Monsoon, but with no evidence of any adaptation to today's South or East Asia Monsoon regimes. The Upper Huangniuling Flora, rich in dipterocarp plant megafossils, grew in the warmest conditions with the highest cold month mean temperature and at the lowest altitude
Second harmonic generation in suspensions of spherical particles
We study the second harmonic generation (SHG) in a suspension of small
spherical particles confined within a slab, assuming undepleted pump and
applying (i) single scattering approximation and (ii) diffusion approximation.
In the case (i), the angular diagram, the differential and total crossections
of the SHG process, as well as the average cosine of SH scattering angle are
calculated. In the case (ii), the average SH intensity is found to show no
explicit dependence on the linear scattering properties of the suspension. The
average intensity of SH wave scales as I_0 L / \Lambda_2 in both cases (i) and
(ii), where I_0 is the intensity of the incident wave, L is the slab thickness,
and \Lambda_2 is an intensity-dependent "SH scattering" length.Comment: PDF, 20 pages, 4 figure
Finite size effects on the phase diagram of a binary mixture confined between competing walls
A symmetrical binary mixture AB that exhibits a critical temperature T_{cb}
of phase separation into an A-rich and a B-rich phase in the bulk is considered
in a geometry confined between two parallel plates a distance D apart. It is
assumed that one wall preferentially attracts A while the other wall
preferentially attracts B with the same strength (''competing walls''). In the
limit , one then may have a wetting transition of first order at a
temperature T_{w}, from which prewetting lines extend into the one phase region
both of the A-rich and the B-rich phase. It is discussed how this phase diagram
gets distorted due to the finiteness of D% : the phase transition at T_{cb}
immediately disappears for D<\infty due to finite size rounding, and the phase
diagram instead exhibit two two-phase coexistence regions in a temperature
range T_{trip}<T<T_{c1}=T_{c2}. In the limit D\to \infty T_{c1},T_{c2} become
the prewetting critical points and T_{trip}\to T_{w}.
For small enough D it may occur that at a tricritical value D_{t} the
temperatures T_{c1}=T_{c2} and T_{trip} merge, and then for D<D_{t} there is a
single unmixing critical point as in the bulk but with T_{c}(D) near T_{w}. As
an example, for the experimentally relevant case of a polymer mixture a phase
diagram with two unmixing critical points is calculated explicitly from
self-consistent field methods
Shot Noise in Nanoscale Conductors From First Principles
We describe a field-theoretic approach to calculate quantum shot noise in
nanoscale conductors from first principles. Our starting point is the
second-quantization field operator to calculate shot noise in terms of single
quasi-particle wavefunctions obtained self-consistently within density
functional theory. The approach is valid in both linear and nonlinear response
and is particularly suitable in studying shot noise in atomic-scale conductors.
As an example we study shot noise in Si atomic wires between metal electrodes.
We find that shot noise is strongly nonlinear as a function of bias and it is
enhanced for one- and two-Si wires due to the large contribution from the metal
electrodes. For longer wires it shows an oscillatory behavior for even and odd
number of atoms with opposite trend with respect to the conductance, indicating
that current fluctuations persist with increasing wire length.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure
Implications of Recent Measurements of Hadronic Charmless B Decays
Implications of recent CLEO measurements of hadronic charmless B decays are
discussed. (i) Employing the Bauer-Stech-Wirbel (BSW) model for form factors as
a benchmark, the data indicate that the form factor
is smaller than that predicted by the BSW model, whereas the
data of imply that the form factors are greater than the BSW model's values. (ii) The tree-dominated
modes imply that the effective
number of colors N_c(LL) for (V-A)(V-A) operators is preferred to be smaller,
while the current limit on shows that N_c(LR)>3. The data of and clearly indicate that . (iii) In
order to understand the observed suppression of and
non-suppression of modes, both being governed by the form factor
, the unitarity angle is preferred to be greater than
. By contrast, the new measurement of no
longer strongly favors . (iv) The observed pattern K^-\pi^+\sim
\ov K^0\pi^-\sim {2\over 3}K^-\pi^0 is consistent with the theoretical
expectation: The constructive interference between electroweak and QCD penguin
diagrams in the mode explains why {\cal B}(B^-\to K^-\pi^0)>{1\over
2}{\cal B}(\ov B^0\to K^-\pi^+). (v) The observation \nc(LL)<3<\nc(LR) and
our preference for \nc(LL)\sim 2 and \nc(LR)\sim 6 are justified by a
recent perturbative QCD calculation of hadronic rare B decays in the heavy
quark limit.Comment: 21 pages; CLEO measurements of several charmless B decay modes are
updated. Discussion of the unitarity angle gamma in the \rho\pi mode is
revise
Perturbation-induced radiation by the Ablowitz-Ladik soliton
An efficient formalism is elaborated to analytically describe dynamics of the
Ablowitz-Ladik soliton in the presence of perturbations. This formalism is
based on using the Riemann-Hilbert problem and provides the means of
calculating evolution of the discrete soliton parameters, as well as shape
distortion and perturbation-induced radiation effects. As an example, soliton
characteristics are calculated for linear damping and quintic perturbations.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figures, Phys. Rev. E (in press
Edge reconstruction in the fractional quantum Hall regime
The interplay of electron-electron interaction and confining potential can
lead to the reconstruction of fractional quantum Hall edges. We have performed
exact diagonalization studies on microscopic models of fractional quantum Hall
liquids, in finite size systems with disk geometry, and found numerical
evidence of edge reconstruction under rather general conditions. In the present
work we have taken into account effects like layer thickness and Landau level
mixing, which are found to be of quantitative importance in edge physics. Due
to edge reconstruction, additional nonchiral edge modes arise for both
incompressible and compressible states. These additional modes couple to
electromagnetic fields and thus can be detected in microwave conductivity
measurements. They are also expected to affect the exponent of electron Green's
function, which has been measured in tunneling experiments. We have studied in
this work the electric dipole spectral function that is directly related to the
microwave conductivity measurement. Our results are consistent with the
enhanced microwave conductivity observed in experiments performed on samples
with an array of antidots at low temperatures, and its suppression at higher
temperatures. We also discuss the effects of the edge reconstruction on the
single electron spectral function at the edge.Comment: 19 pages, 12 figure
Image resonance in the many-body density of states at a metal surface
The electronic properties of a semi-infinite metal surface without a bulk gap are studied by a formalism that is able to account for the continuous spectrum of the system. The density of states at the surface is calculated within the GW approximation of many-body perturbation theory. We demonstrate the presence of an unoccupied surface resonance peaked at the position of the first image state. The resonance encompasses the whole Rydberg series of image states and cannot be resolved into individual peaks. Its origin is the shift in spectral weight when many-body correlation effects are taken into account
Quantum dots in high magnetic fields: Rotating-Wigner-molecule versus composite-fermion approach
Exact diagonalization results are reported for the lowest rotational band of
N=6 electrons in strong magnetic fields in the range of high angular momenta 70
<= L <= 140 (covering the corresponding range of fractional filling factors 1/5
>= nu >= 1/9). A detailed comparison of energetic, spectral, and transport
properties (specifically, magic angular momenta, radial electron densities,
occupation number distributions, overlaps and total energies, and exponents of
current-voltage power law) shows that the recently discovered
rotating-electron-molecule wave functions [Phys. Rev. B 66, 115315 (2002)]
provide a superior description compared to the
composite-fermion/Jastrow-Laughlin ones.Comment: Extensive clarifications were added (see new footnotes) regarding the
difference between the rotating Wigner molecule and the bulk Wigner crystal;
also regarding the influence of an external confining potential. 12 pages.
Revtex4 with 6 EPS figures and 5 tables . For related papers, see
http://www.prism.gatech.edu/~ph274c
Density-functional embedding using a plane-wave basis
The constrained electron density method of embedding a Kohn-Sham system in a
substrate system (first described by P. Cortona, Phys. Rev. B {\bf 44}, 8454
(1991) and T.A. Wesolowski and A. Warshel, J. Phys. Chem {\bf 97}, 8050 (1993))
is applied with a plane-wave basis and both local and non-local
pseudopotentials. This method divides the electron density of the system into
substrate and embedded electron densities, the sum of which is the electron
density of the system of interest. Coupling between the substrate and embedded
systems is achieved via approximate kinetic energy functionals. Bulk aluminium
is examined as a test case for which there is a strong interaction between the
substrate and embedded systems. A number of approximations to the
kinetic-energy functional, both semi-local and non-local, are investigated. It
is found that Kohn-Sham results can be well reproduced using a non-local
kinetic energy functional, with the total energy accurate to better than 0.1 eV
per atom and good agreement between the electron densities.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figure
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