Vison gap in the Rokhsar-Kivelson dimer model on the triangular lattice

With the classical Monte Carlo method, I find the energy gap in the Rokhsar-Kivelson dimer model on the triangular lattice. I identify the lowest excitations as visons, and compute their energy as a function of the momentum.Comment: 5 page

Strong Correlations Between Fluctuations and Response in Aging Transport

Once the problem of ensemble averaging is removed, correlations between the response of a single molecule to an external driving field $F$, with the history of fluctuations of the particle, become detectable. Exact analytical theory for the continuous time random walk and numerical simulations for the quenched trap model give the behaviors of the correlation between fluctuations of the displacement in the aging period $(0,t_a)$, and the response to bias switched on at time $t_a$. In particular in the dynamical phase where the models exhibit aging we find finite correlations even in the asymptotic limit $t_a \to \infty$, while in the non-aging phase the correlations are zero in the same limit. Linear response theory gives a simple relation between these correlations and the fractional diffusion coefficient.Comment: 5 page

Finding A Place in College: Re-Examining Residential Learning Communities as Third Places for Student Development

This study investigates Residential Learning Communities (RLCs) as places of union for academic and non-academic student development. Through the lens of a “Third Places” framework, this study examines RLCs’ physically and philosophically established community spaces as fertile grounds for holistic student growth, while considering their limitations and obstacles. This study specifically investigates the University of Vermont’s Sustainability House Residential Learning Community, which is made up of University Heights South (once GreenHouse) and Harris Hall. This study has been carried out with the intent of examining UVM’s expectations and values, alongside the experience of the student body. Through a case study of Sustainability House, triangulation of observational data, semi-structured interviews, and focus groups, with Sustainability House residents and staff, this study shall assess how physically and philosophically structured Third Places within Residential Learning communities facilitate students’ holistic development in a specific university setting. This study shall provide a non-administrative, student-administered analysis, and will serve as a platform through which both student and institutional standards and expectations are synthesized upon common ground

Physics of the Pseudogap State: Spin-Charge Locking

The properties of the pseudogap phase above Tc of the high-Tc cuprate superconductors are described by showing that the Anderson-Nambu SU(2) spinors of an RVB spin gap 'lock' to those of the electron charge system because of the resulting improvement of kinetic energy. This enormously extends the range of the vortex liquid state in these materials. As a result it is not clear that the spinons are ever truly deconfined. A heuristic description of the electrodynamics of this pseudogap-vortex liquid state is proposed.Comment: Submitted to Phys Rev Letter

MCA: Multiresolution Correlation Analysis, a graphical tool for subpopulation identification in single-cell gene expression data

Background: Biological data often originate from samples containing mixtures of subpopulations, corresponding e.g. to distinct cellular phenotypes. However, identification of distinct subpopulations may be difficult if biological measurements yield distributions that are not easily separable. Results: We present Multiresolution Correlation Analysis (MCA), a method for visually identifying subpopulations based on the local pairwise correlation between covariates, without needing to define an a priori interaction scale. We demonstrate that MCA facilitates the identification of differentially regulated subpopulations in simulated data from a small gene regulatory network, followed by application to previously published single-cell qPCR data from mouse embryonic stem cells. We show that MCA recovers previously identified subpopulations, provides additional insight into the underlying correlation structure, reveals potentially spurious compartmentalizations, and provides insight into novel subpopulations. Conclusions: MCA is a useful method for the identification of subpopulations in low-dimensional expression data, as emerging from qPCR or FACS measurements. With MCA it is possible to investigate the robustness of covariate correlations with respect subpopulations, graphically identify outliers, and identify factors contributing to differential regulation between pairs of covariates. MCA thus provides a framework for investigation of expression correlations for genes of interests and biological hypothesis generation.Comment: BioVis 2014 conferenc

Microwave response of an NS ring coupled to a superconducting resonator

A long phase coherent normal (N) wire between superconductors (S) is characterized by a dense phase dependent Andreev spectrum . We probe this spectrum in a high frequency phase biased configuration, by coupling an NS ring to a multimode superconducting resonator. We detect a dc flux and frequency dependent response whose dissipative and non dissipative components are related by a simple Debye relaxation law with a characteristic time of the order of the diffusion time through the N part of the ring. The flux dependence exhibits $h/2e$ periodic oscillations with a large harmonics content at temperatures where the Josephson current is purely sinusoidal. This is explained considering that the populations of the Andreev levels are frozen on the time-scale of the experiments.Comment: 5 pages,4 figure