2,060 research outputs found
Self-Assembly of Monatomic Complex Crystals and Quasicrystals with a Double-Well Interaction Potential
For the study of crystal formation and dynamics we introduce a simple
two-dimensional monatomic model system with a parametrized interaction
potential. We find in molecular dynamics simulations that a surprising variety
of crystals, a decagonal and a dodecagonal quasicrystal are self-assembled. In
the case of the quasicrystals the particles reorder by phason flips at elevated
temperatures. During annealing the entropically stabilized decagonal
quasicrystal undergoes a reversible phase transition at 65% of the melting
temperature into an approximant, which is monitored by the rotation of the de
Bruijn surface in hyperspace.Comment: 4 pages, 6 figures. Physical Review Letters, in Press (April 2007
Quasicrystalline Order in Binary Dipolar Systems
Motivated by recent experimental findings, we investigate the possible
occurrence and characteristics of quasicrystalline order in two-dimensional
mixtures of point dipoles with two sorts of dipole moments. Despite the fact
that the dipolar interaction potential does not exhibit an intrinsic length
scale and cannot be tuned a priori to support the formation of quasicrystalline
order, we find that configurations with long--range quasicrystallinity yield
minima in the potential energy surface of the many particle system. These
configurations emanate from an ideal or perturbed ideal decoration of a binary
tiling by steepest descent relaxation. Ground state energy calculations of
alternative ordered states and parallel tempering Monte-Carlo simulations
reveal that the quasicrystalline configurations do not correspond to a
thermodynamically stable state. On the other hand, steepest descent relaxations
and conventional Monte-Carlo simulations suggest that they are rather robust
against fluctuations. Local quasicrystalline order in the disordered
equilibrium states can be strong.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figure
The magnetic exchange parameters and anisotropy of the quasi-two dimensional antiferromagnet NiPS
Neutron inelastic scattering has been used to measure the magnetic
excitations in powdered NiPS, a quasi-two dimensional antiferromagnet with
spin on a honeycomb lattice. The spectra show clear, dispersive magnons
with a meV gap at the Brillouin zone center. The data were fitted
using a Heisenberg Hamiltonian with a single-ion anisotropy assuming no
magnetic exchange between the honeycomb planes. Magnetic exchange interactions
up to the third intraplanar nearest-neighbour were required. The fits show
robustly that NiPS has an easy axis anisotropy with meV and
that the third nearest-neighbour has a strong antiferromagnetic exchange of
meV. The data can be fitted reasonably well with either
or , however the best quantitative agreement with high-resolution data
indicate that the nearest-neighbour interaction is ferromagnetic with meV and that the second nearest-neighbour exchange is small and
antiferromagnetic with meV. The dispersion has a minimum in the
Brillouin zone corner that is slightly larger than that at the Brillouin zone
center, indicating that the magnetic structure of NiPS is close to being
unstable.Comment: 21 pages, 7 figures, 33 reference
The X-shooter Spectral Library (XSL): I. DR1. Near-ultraviolet through optical spectra from the first year of the survey
We present the first release of XSL, the X-Shooter Spectral Library. This
release contains 237 stars spanning the wavelengths 3000--10200 \AA\ observed
at a resolving power . The spectra
were obtained at ESO's 8-m Very Large Telescope (VLT). The sample contains O --
M, long-period variable (LPV), C and S stars. The spectra are flux-calibrated
and telluric-corrected. We describe a new technique for the telluric
correction. The wavelength coverage, spectral resolution and spectral type of
this library make it well suited to stellar population synthesis of galaxies
and clusters, kinematical investigation of stellar systems and studying the
physics of cool stars.Comment: 41 pages, 38 figures, 5 tables. Accepted for publication in A&A.
Webpage: http://xsl.u-strasbg.fr
Fick's law and Fokker-Planck Equation in inhomogeneous environments
In inhomogeneous environments, the correct expression of the diffusive flux
is often not given by the Fick's law . The most general
hydrodynamic equation modelling diffusion is indeed the Fokker-Planck Equation
(FPE). The microscopic dynamics of each specific system may affect the form of
the FPE, either establishing connections between the diffusion and the
convection term, as well as providing supplementary terms. In particular, the
Fick's form for the Diffusion Equation may arise only in consequence of a
specific kind of microscopic dynamics. It is also shown how, in the presence of
sharp inhomogeneities, even the hydrodynamic FPE limit may becomes inaccurate
and mask some features of the true solution, as computed from the Master
Equation.Comment: V2: English amended. V3: final version accepted by Physics Letters
Scaling properties of step bunches induced by sublimation and related mechanisms: A unified perspective
This work provides a ground for a quantitative interpretation of experiments
on step bunching during sublimation of crystals with a pronounced
Ehrlich-Schwoebel (ES) barrier in the regime of weak desorption. A strong step
bunching instability takes place when the kinetic length is larger than the
average distance between the steps on the vicinal surface. In the opposite
limit the instability is weak and step bunching can occur only when the
magnitude of step-step repulsion is small. The central result are power law
relations of the between the width, the height, and the minimum interstep
distance of a bunch. These relations are obtained from a continuum evolution
equation for the surface profile, which is derived from the discrete step
dynamical equations for. The analysis of the continuum equation reveals the
existence of two types of stationary bunch profiles with different scaling
properties. Through a mathematical equivalence on the level of the discrete
step equations as well as on the continuum level, our results carry over to the
problems of step bunching induced by growth with a strong inverse ES effect,
and by electromigration in the attachment/detachment limited regime. Thus our
work provides support for the existence of universality classes of step
bunching instabilities [A. Pimpinelli et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 88, 206103
(2002)], but some aspects of the universality scenario need to be revised.Comment: 21 pages, 8 figure
The FALCON concept: multi-object spectroscopy combined with MCAO in near-IR
A large fraction of the present-day stellar mass was formed between z=0.5 and
z~3 and our understanding of the formation mechanisms at work at these epochs
requires both high spatial and high spectral resolution: one shall
simultaneously} obtain images of objects with typical sizes as small as
1-2kpc(~0''.1), while achieving 20-50 km/s (R >= 5000) spectral resolution. The
obvious instrumental solution to adopt in order to tackle the science goal is
therefore a combination of multi-object 3D spectrograph with multi-conjugate
adaptive optics in large fields. A partial, but still competitive correction
shall be prefered, over a much wider field of view. This can be done by
estimating the turbulent volume from sets of natural guide stars, by optimizing
the correction to several and discrete small areas of few arcsec2 selected in a
large field (Nasmyth field of 25 arcmin) and by correcting up to the 6th, and
eventually, up to the 60th Zernike modes. Simulations on real extragalactic
fields, show that for most sources (>80%), the recovered resolution could reach
0".15-0".25 in the J and H bands. Detection of point-like objects is improved
by factors from 3 to >10, when compared with an instrument without adaptive
correction. The proposed instrument concept, FALCON, is equiped with deployable
mini-integral field units (IFUs), achieving spectral resolutions between R=5000
and 20000. Its multiplex capability, combined with high spatial and spectral
resolution characteristics, is a natural ground based complement to the next
generation of space telescopes.Comment: ESO Workshop Proceedings: Scientific Drivers for ESO Future VLT/VLTI
Instrumentation, 10 pages and 5 figure
Strain and correlation of self-organized Ge_(1-x)Mn_x nanocolumns embedded in Ge (001)
We report on the structural properties of Ge_(1-x)Mn_x layers grown by
molecular beam epitaxy. In these layers, nanocolumns with a high Mn content are
embedded in an almost-pure Ge matrix. We have used grazing-incidence X-ray
scattering, atomic force and transmission electron microscopy to study the
structural properties of the columns. We demonstrate how the elastic
deformation of the matrix (as calculated using atomistic simulations) around
the columns, as well as the average inter-column distance can account for the
shape of the diffusion around Bragg peaks.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figure
Near-IR spectra of ISOGAL sources in the Inner Galactic Bulge
In this work we present near-IR spectra (HK-band) of a sample of 107 sources
with mid-IR excesses at 7 and 15 m detected during the ISOGAL survey.
Making use of the DENIS interstellar extinction map from Schultheis et al.
(1999) we derive luminosities and find that the vs.~
and diagrams are powerful tools for identifying
supergiants, AGB stars, giants and young stellar objects. The majority of our
sample are AGB stars (~ 80%) while we find four good supergiant candidates,
nine young stellar objects and 12 RGB candidates. We have used the most recent
relation by Jeong et al. (2002) based on recent theoretical
modeling of dust formation of AGB stars to determine mass-loss rates. However,
the uncertainties in the mass-loss rates are rather large. The mass-loss rates
of the supergiants are comparable with those in the solar neighbourhood while
the long-period Variables cover a mass-loss range from . The red giant candidateslie at the lower end of the
mass-loss rate range between . We used the
equivalent width of the CO bandhead at 2.3 , the NaI doublet and the
CaI triplet to estimate metallicities using the relation by Ram\'{\i}rez et al.
(\cite{Ramirez2000}). The metallicity distribution of the ISOGAL objects shows
a mean [Fe/H] -0.25 dex with a dispersion of which is
in agreement with the values of Ram\'{i}rez et al. (\cite{Ramirez2000}) for
Galactic Bulge fields between and . A
comparison with the solar neighbourhood sample of Lan\c{c}on & Wood (LW) shows
that our sample is ~ 0.5 dex more metal-rich on average.Comment: 23 pages, 9 figures, 2 appendix with IR spectra. accepted for A&
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