Surgeries on periodic links and homology of periodic 3-manifolds

We show that a closed orientable 3-manifold M admits an action of Z_p with fixed point set S^1 iff M can be obtained as the result of surgery on a p-periodic framed link L and Z_p acts freely on the components of L. We prove a similar theorem for free Z_p-actions. As an interesting application, we prove the following, rather unexpected result: for any M as above and for any odd prime p, H_1(M, Z_p)\ne Z_p. We also prove a similar criterion of 2-periodicity for rational homology 3-spheres.Comment: 3 figure

Helicoidal ordering in iron perovskites

We consider magnetic ordering in materials with negative charge transfer energy, such as iron perovskite oxides. We show that for a large weight of oxygen holes in conduction bands, the double exchange mechanism favors a helicoidal rather than ferromagnetic spin ordering both in metals, e.g. SrFeO_3 and insulators with a small gap, e.g. CaFeO_3. We discuss the magnetic excitation spectrum and effects of pressure on magnetic ordering in these materials.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure

Monte-Carlo calculation of the lateral Casimir forces between rectangular gratings within the formalism of lattice quantum field theory

We propose a new Monte-Carlo method for calculation of the Casimir forces. Our method is based on the formalism of noncompact lattice quantum electrodynamics. This approach has been tested in the simplest case of two ideal conducting planes. After this the method has been applied to the calculation of the lateral Casimir forces between two ideal conducting rectangular gratings. We compare our calculations with the results of PFA and "Optimal" PFA methods.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figures, accepted in Int. J. Mod. Phys.

Ligand-biased ensemble receptor docking (LigBEnD): a hybrid ligand/receptor structure-based approach.

Ligand docking to flexible protein molecules can be efficiently carried out through ensemble docking to multiple protein conformations, either from experimental X-ray structures or from in silico simulations. The success of ensemble docking often requires the careful selection of complementary protein conformations, through docking and scoring of known co-crystallized ligands. False positives, in which a ligand in a wrong pose achieves a better docking score than that of native pose, arise as additional protein conformations are added. In the current study, we developed a new ligand-biased ensemble receptor docking method and composite scoring function which combine the use of ligand-based atomic property field (APF) method with receptor structure-based docking. This method helps us to correctly dock 30 out of 36 ligands presented by the D3R docking challenge. For the six mis-docked ligands, the cognate receptor structures prove to be too different from the 40 available experimental Pocketome conformations used for docking and could be identified only by receptor sampling beyond experimentally explored conformational subspace

Finite Conductivity Minimum in Bilayer Graphene without Charge Inhomogeneities

Boltzmann transport theory fails near the linear band-crossing of single-layer graphene and near the quadratic band-crossing of bilayer graphene. We report on a numerical study which assesses the role of inter-band coherence in transport when the Fermi level lies near the band-crossing energy of bilayer graphene. We find that interband coherence enhances conduction, and that it plays an essential role in graphene's minimum conductivity phenomena. This behavior is qualitatively captured by an approximate theory which treats inter-band coherence in a relaxation-time approximation. On the basis of this short-range-disorder model study, we conclude that electron-hole puddle formation is not a necessary condition for finite conductivity in graphene at zero average carrier density.Comment: revised version as published in Phys. Rev.