840 research outputs found
Surface plasmon modes and the Casimir energy
We show the influence of surface plasmons on the Casimir effect between two
plane parallel metallic mirrors at arbitrary distances. Using the plasma model
to describe the optical response of the metal, we express the Casimir energy as
a sum of contributions associated with evanescent surface plasmon modes and
propagative cavity modes. In contrast to naive expectations, the plasmonic
modes contribution is essential at all distances in order to ensure the correct
result for the Casimir energy. One of the two plasmonic modes gives rise to a
repulsive contribution, balancing out the attractive contributions from
propagating cavity modes, while both contributions taken separately are much
larger than the actual value of the Casimir energy. This also suggests
possibilities to tailor the sign of the Casimir force via surface plasmons.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, revtex
Verifying Temporal Regular Properties of Abstractions of Term Rewriting Systems
The tree automaton completion is an algorithm used for proving safety
properties of systems that can be modeled by a term rewriting system. This
representation and verification technique works well for proving properties of
infinite systems like cryptographic protocols or more recently on Java Bytecode
programs. This algorithm computes a tree automaton which represents a (regular)
over approximation of the set of reachable terms by rewriting initial terms.
This approach is limited by the lack of information about rewriting relation
between terms. Actually, terms in relation by rewriting are in the same
equivalence class: there are recognized by the same state in the tree
automaton.
Our objective is to produce an automaton embedding an abstraction of the
rewriting relation sufficient to prove temporal properties of the term
rewriting system.
We propose to extend the algorithm to produce an automaton having more
equivalence classes to distinguish a term or a subterm from its successors
w.r.t. rewriting. While ground transitions are used to recognize equivalence
classes of terms, epsilon-transitions represent the rewriting relation between
terms. From the completed automaton, it is possible to automatically build a
Kripke structure abstracting the rewriting sequence. States of the Kripke
structure are states of the tree automaton and the transition relation is given
by the set of epsilon-transitions. States of the Kripke structure are labelled
by the set of terms recognized using ground transitions. On this Kripke
structure, we define the Regular Linear Temporal Logic (R-LTL) for expressing
properties. Such properties can then be checked using standard model checking
algorithms. The only difference between LTL and R-LTL is that predicates are
replaced by regular sets of acceptable terms
Indoor Air Bacterial Load and Antibiotic Susceptibility Pattern of Isolates in Operating Rooms and Surgical Wards at Jimma University Specialized Hospital, Southwest Ethiopia
BACKGROUND: Surgical site infection is the second most common health care associated infection. One of the risk factors for such infection is bacterial contamination of operating rooms’ and surgical wards’ indoor air. In view of that, the microbiological quality of air can be considered as a mirror of the hygienic condition of these rooms. Thus, the objective of this study was to determine the bacterial load and antibiotic susceptibility pattern of isolates in operating rooms’ and surgical wards’ indoor air of Jimma University Specialized Hospital.
METHODS: A cross sectional study was conducted to measure indoor air microbial quality of operating rooms and surgical wards from October to January 2009/2010 on 108 indoor air samples collected in twelve rounds using purposive sampling technique by Settle Plate Method (Passive Air Sampling following 1/1/1 Schedule). Sample processing and antimicrobial susceptibility testing were done following standard bacteriological techniques. The data was analyzed using SPSS version 16 and interpreted according to scientifically determined baseline values initially suggested by Fisher.
RESULTS: The mean aerobic colony counts obtained in OR-1(46cfu/hr) and OR-2(28cfu/hr) was far beyond the set 5-8cfu/hr acceptable standards for passive room. Similarly the highest mean aerobic colony counts of 465cfu/hr and 461cfu/hr were observed in Female room-1 and room-2 respectively when compared to the acceptable range of 250-450cfu/hr. In this study only 3 isolates of S. pyogenes and 48 isolates of S. aureus were identified. Over 66% of S. aureus was identified in Critical Zone of Operating rooms. All isolates of S .aureus showed 100% and 82.8% resistance to methicillin and ampicillin respectively.
CONCLUSION: Higher degree of aerobic bacterial load was measured from operating rooms’ and surgical wards’ indoor air. Reducing foot trafficking, improving the ventilation system and routine cleaning has to be made to maintain the aerobic bacteria load with in optimal level.
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KEYWORDS: Indoor air, hospital environment, surgical site infection, Southwest Ethiopi
Electromagnetic vacuum energy for two parallel slabs in terms of surface, wave guide and photonic modes
The formulation of the Lifshitz formula in terms of real frequencies is
reconsidered for half spaces described by the plasma model. It is shown that
besides the surface modes (for the TM polarization), and the photonic modes,
also waveguide modes must be considered.Comment: some references adde
The role of Surface Plasmon modes in the Casimir Effect
In this paper we study the role of surface plasmon modes in the Casimir
effect. First we write the Casimir energy as a sum over the modes of a real
cavity. We may identify two sorts of modes, two evanescent surface plasmon
modes and propagative modes. As one of the surface plasmon modes becomes
propagative for some choice of parameters we adopt an adiabatic mode definition
where we follow this mode into the propagative sector and count it together
with the surface plasmon contribution, calling this contribution "plasmonic".
The remaining modes are propagative cavity modes, which we call "photonic". The
Casimir energy contains two main contributions, one coming from the plasmonic,
the other from the photonic modes. Surprisingly we find that the plasmonic
contribution to the Casimir energy becomes repulsive for intermediate and large
mirror separations. Alternatively, we discuss the common surface plasmon
defintion, which includes only evanescent waves, where this effect is not
found. We show that, in contrast to an intuitive expectation, for both
definitions the Casimir energy is the sum of two very large contributions which
nearly cancel each other. The contribution of surface plasmons to the Casimir
energy plays a fundamental role not only at short but also at large distances.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures. TQMFA200
Schur elements for the Ariki-Koike algebra and applications
We study the Schur elements associated to the simple modules of the
Ariki-Koike algebra. We first give a cancellation-free formula for them so that
their factors can be easily read and programmed. We then study direct
applications of this result. We also complete the determination of the
canonical basic sets for cyclotomic Hecke algebras of type in
characteristic 0.Comment: The paper contains the results of arXiv:1101.146
Influence of water adsorbed on gold on van der Waals/Casimir forces
In this paper we investigate the influence of ultra thin water layer (1-1.5
nm) on the van der Waals/Casimir force between gold surfaces. Adsorbed water is
inevitably present on gold surfaces at ambient conditions as jump-up-to contact
during adhesion experiments demonstrate. Calculations based on the Lifshitz
theory give very good agreement with the experiment in absence of any water
layer for surface separations d>10 nm. However, a layer of thickness h<1.5 nm
is allowed by the error margin in force measurements. At shorter separations,
d<10 nm, the water layer can have a strong influence as calculations show for
flat surfaces. Nonetheless, in reality the influence of surface roughness must
also be considered, and it can overshadow any water layer influence at
separations comparable to the total sphere-plate rms roughness w_{shp}+w.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figure, to be published in Phys. Rev.
Conductivity in organic semiconductors hybridized with the vacuum field
Organic semiconductors have generated considerable interest for their
potential for creating inexpensive and flexible devices easily processed on a
large scale [1-11]. However technological applications are currently limited by
the low mobility of the charge carriers associated with the disorder in these
materials [5-8]. Much effort over the past decades has therefore been focused
on optimizing the organisation of the material or the devices to improve
carrier mobility. Here we take a radically different path to solving this
problem, namely by injecting carriers into states that are hybridized to the
vacuum electromagnetic field. These are coherent states that can extend over as
many as 10^5 molecules and should thereby favour conductivity in such
materials. To test this idea, organic semiconductors were strongly coupled to
the vacuum electromagnetic field on plasmonic structures to form polaritonic
states with large Rabi splittings ca. 0.7 eV. Conductivity experiments show
that indeed the current does increase by an order of magnitude at resonance in
the coupled state, reflecting mostly a change in field-effect mobility as
revealed when the structure is gated in a transistor configuration. A
theoretical quantum model is presented that confirms the delocalization of the
wave-functions of the hybridized states and the consequences on the
conductivity. While this is a proof-of-principle study, in practice
conductivity mediated by light-matter hybridized states is easy to implement
and we therefore expect that it will be used to improve organic devices. More
broadly our findings illustrate the potential of engineering the vacuum
electromagnetic environment to modify and to improve properties of materials.Comment: 16 pages, 13 figure
Transition from Casimir to van der Waals force between macroscopic bodies
The transition of van der Waals to Casimir forces between macroscopic gold
surfaces is investigated by Atomic Force Microscopy in the plane-sphere
geometry. It was found that the transition appears to take place at separations
about 10 % the plasma wavelength for evaporated gold surfaces, which compares
to theoretical predictions by incorporation of experimental optical data and
roughness corrections. Moreover, the force data allow estimation of the Hamaker
constant AH in the van der Waals regime, which is in good agreement with the
Lifshitz theory predictions (even if roughness corrections are taken into
account) and former surface force apparatus measurements.Comment: 12 pages, 3 figure
Coupled surface polaritons and the Casimir force
The Casimir force between metallic plates made of realistic materials is
evaluated for distances in the nanometer range. A spectrum over real
frequencies is introduced and shows narrow peaks due to surface resonances
(plasmon polaritons or phonon polaritons) that are coupled across the vacuum
gap. We demonstrate that the Casimir force originates from the attraction
(repulsion) due to the corresponding symmetric (antisymmetric) eigenmodes,
respectively. This picture is used to derive a simple analytical estimate of
the Casimir force at short distances. We recover the result known for Drude
metals without absorption and compute the correction for weakly absorbing
materials.Comment: revised version submitted to Phys. Rev. A, 06 November 200
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