Scale effects for strength, ductility, and toughness in "brittle” materials

Decreasing scales effectively increase nearly all important mechanical properties of at least some "brittle” materials below 100 nm. With an emphasis on silicon nanopillars, nanowires, and nanospheres, it is shown that strength, ductility, and toughness all increase roughly with the inverse radius of the appropriate dimension. This is shown experimentally as well as on a mechanistic basis using a proposed dislocation shielding model. Theoretically, this collects a reasonable array of semiconductors and ceramics onto the same field using fundamental physical parameters. This gives proportionality between fracture toughness and the other mechanical properties. Additionally, this leads to a fundamental concept of work per unit fracture area, which predicts the critical event for brittle fracture. In semibrittle materials such as silicon, this can occur at room temperature when the scale is sufficiently small. When the local stress associated with dislocation nucleation increases to that sufficient to break bonds, an instability occurs resulting in fractur

Operator-Based Truncation Scheme Based on the Many-Body Fermion Density Matrix

In [S. A. Cheong and C. L. Henley, cond-mat/0206196 (2002)], we found that the many-particle eigenvalues and eigenstates of the many-body density matrix $\rho_B$ of a block of $B$ sites cut out from an infinite chain of noninteracting spinless fermions can all be constructed out of the one-particle eigenvalues and one-particle eigenstates respectively. In this paper we developed a statistical-mechanical analogy between the density matrix eigenstates and the many-body states of a system of noninteracting fermions. Each density matrix eigenstate corresponds to a particular set of occupation of single-particle pseudo-energy levels, and the density matrix eigenstate with the largest weight, having the structure of a Fermi sea ground state, unambiguously defines a pseudo-Fermi level. We then outlined the main ideas behind an operator-based truncation of the density matrix eigenstates, where single-particle pseudo-energy levels far away from the pseudo-Fermi level are removed as degrees of freedom. We report numerical evidence for scaling behaviours in the single-particle pseudo-energy spectrum for different block sizes $B$ and different filling fractions \nbar. With the aid of these scaling relations, which tells us that the block size $B$ plays the role of an inverse temperature in the statistical-mechanical description of the density matrix eigenstates and eigenvalues, we looked into the performance of our operator-based truncation scheme in minimizing the discarded density matrix weight and the error in calculating the dispersion relation for elementary excitations. This performance was compared against that of the traditional density matrix-based truncation scheme, as well as against a operator-based plane wave truncation scheme, and found to be very satisfactory.Comment: 22 pages in RevTeX4 format, 22 figures. Uses amsmath, amssymb, graphicx and mathrsfs package

Landau Ginzburg theory of the d-wave Josephson junction

This letter discusses the Landau Ginzburg theory of a Josephson junction composed of on one side a pure d-wave superconductor oriented with the $(110)$ axis normal to the junction and on the other side either s-wave or d-wave oriented with $(100)$ normal to the junction. We use simple symmetry arguments to show that the Josephson current as a function of the phase must have the form $j(\phi) = j_1 \sin(\phi) + j_2 \sin(2 \phi)$. In principle $j_1$ vanishes for a perfect junction of this type, but anisotropy effects, either due to a-b axis asymmetry or junction imperfections can easily cause $j_1 / j_2$ to be quite large even in a high quality junction. If $j_1 / j_2$ is sufficiently small and $j_2$ is negative local time reversal symmetry breaking will appear. Arbitrary values of the flux would then be pinned to corners between such junctions and occasionally on junction faces, which is consistent with experiments by Kirtley et al

Staggered flux and stripes in doped antiferromagnets

We have numerically investigated whether or not a mean-field theory of spin textures generate fictitious flux in the doped two dimensional $t-J$-model. First we consider the properties of uniform systems and then we extend the investigation to include models of striped phases where a fictitious flux is generated in the domain wall providing a possible source for lowering the kinetic energy of the holes. We have compared the energetics of uniform systems with stripes directed along the (10)- and (11)-directions of the lattice, finding that phase-separation generically turns out to be energetically favorable. In addition to the numerical calculations, we present topological arguments relating flux and staggered flux to geometric properties of the spin texture. The calculation is based on a projection of the electron operators of the $t-J$ model into a spin texture with spinless fermions.Comment: RevTex, 19 pages including 20 figure

Product Wave Function Renormalization Group: construction from the matrix product point of view

We present a construction of a matrix product state (MPS) that approximates the largest-eigenvalue eigenvector of a transfer matrix T, for the purpose of rapidly performing the infinite system density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) method applied to two-dimensional classical lattice models. We use the fact that the largest-eigenvalue eigenvector of T can be approximated by a state vector created from the upper or lower half of a finite size cluster. Decomposition of the obtained state vector into the MPS gives a way of extending the MPS, at the system size increment process in the infinite system DMRG algorithm. As a result, we successfully give the physical interpretation of the product wave function renormalization group (PWFRG) method, and obtain its appropriate initial condition.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figure

Gapless Phases in an s=1/2 Quantum Spin Chain with Bond Alternation

The $S=1/2$ XXZ spin chain with the staggered XY anisotropy $$H = J \sum_{n}^{N} (S^{x}_{n} S^{x}_{n+1} + S^{y}_{n} S^{y}_{n+1} + \Delta S^{z}_{n} S^{z}_{n+1}) - \delta \sum_{n}^{N} (-1)^{n} (S^{x}_{n} S^{x}_{n+1} - S^{y}_{n} S^{y}_{n+1})$$ is shown to possess gapless, Luttinger-liquid-like phases in a wide range of its parameters: the XY-like phase and spin nematic phases, the latter characterized by a two-spin order parameter breaking translational and spin rotation symmetries. In the simplest, exactly solvable case $\Delta = 0$, the spectrum remains gapless at arbitrary $J$ and $\delta$ and is described by two massless Majorana (real) fermions with different velocities $v_{\pm} = |J \pm \delta|$. At $|\delta| < J$ the staggered XY anisotropy does not influence the ground state of the system (XY phase). At $|\delta| > J$, due to level crossing, a spin nematic state is realized, with $\uparrow \uparrow \downarrow \downarrow$ and $\uparrow \downarrow \downarrow \uparrow$ local symmetry of the $xx$ and $yy$ spin correlations. The spin correlation functions are calculated and the effect of thermally induced spin nematic ordering in the XY phase ("order from disorder") is discussed. The role of a finite $\Delta$ is studied in the limiting cases $|\delta| \ll J$Comment: 25 pages, REVTEX; (to appear in Phys.Rev.B), ITP-CTH 9437

Incommensurate structures studied by a modified Density Matrix Renormalization Group Method

A modified density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) method is introduced and applied to classical two-dimensional models: the anisotropic triangular nearest- neighbor Ising (ATNNI) model and the anisotropic triangular next-nearest-neighbor Ising (ANNNI) model. Phase diagrams of both models have complex structures and exhibit incommensurate phases. It was found that the incommensurate phase completely separates the disordered phase from one of the commensurate phases, i. e. the non-existence of the Lifshitz point in phase diagrams of both models was confirmed.Comment: 14 pages, 14 figures included in text, LaTeX2e, submitted to PRB, presented at MECO'24 1999 (Wittenberg, Germany

Conformations of Linear DNA

We examine the conformations of a model for under- and overwound DNA. The molecule is represented as a cylindrically symmetric elastic string subjected to a stretching force and to constraints corresponding to a specification of the link number. We derive a fundamental relation between the Euler angles that describe the curve and the topological linking number. Analytical expressions for the spatial configurations of the molecule in the infinite- length limit were obtained. A unique configuraion minimizes the energy for a given set of physical conditions. An elastic model incorporating thermal fluctuations provides excellent agreement with experimental results on the plectonemic transition.Comment: 5 pages, RevTeX; 6 postscript figure

Partial Homology Relations - Satisfiability in terms of Di-Cographs

Directed cographs (di-cographs) play a crucial role in the reconstruction of evolutionary histories of genes based on homology relations which are binary relations between genes. A variety of methods based on pairwise sequence comparisons can be used to infer such homology relations (e.g.\ orthology, paralogy, xenology). They are \emph{satisfiable} if the relations can be explained by an event-labeled gene tree, i.e., they can simultaneously co-exist in an evolutionary history of the underlying genes. Every gene tree is equivalently interpreted as a so-called cotree that entirely encodes the structure of a di-cograph. Thus, satisfiable homology relations must necessarily form a di-cograph. The inferred homology relations might not cover each pair of genes and thus, provide only partial knowledge on the full set of homology relations. Moreover, for particular pairs of genes, it might be known with a high degree of certainty that they are not orthologs (resp.\ paralogs, xenologs) which yields forbidden pairs of genes. Motivated by this observation, we characterize (partial) satisfiable homology relations with or without forbidden gene pairs, provide a quadratic-time algorithm for their recognition and for the computation of a cotree that explains the given relations

Continuous Matrix Product Ansatz for the One-Dimensional Bose Gas with Point Interaction

We study a matrix product representation of the Bethe ansatz state for the Lieb-Linger model describing the one-dimensional Bose gas with delta-function interaction. We first construct eigenstates of the discretized model in the form of matrix product states using the algebraic Bethe ansatz. Continuous matrix product states are then exactly obtained in the continuum limit with a finite number of particles. The factorizing $F$-matrices in the lattice model are indispensable for the continuous matrix product states and lead to a marked reduction from the original bosonic system with infinite degrees of freedom to the five-vertex model.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figur