3,883 research outputs found
Hydrologic Transport of Dissolved Inorganic Carbon and Its Control on Chemical Weathering
Chemical weathering is one of the major processes interacting with climate and tectonics to form clays, supply nutrients to soil microorganisms and plants, and sequester atmospheric CO2. Hydrology and dissolution kinetics have been emphasized as factors controlling chemical weathering rates. However, the interaction between hydrology and transport of dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) in controlling weathering has received less attention. In this paper, we present an analytical model that couples subsurface water and chemical molar balance equations to analyze the roles of hydrology and DIC transport on chemical weathering. The balance equations form a dynamical system that fully determines the dynamics of the weathering zone chemistry as forced by the transport of DIC. The model is formulated specifically for the silicate mineral albite, but it can be extended to other minerals, and is studied as a function of percolation rate and water transit time. Three weathering regimes are elucidated. For very small or large values of transit time, the weathering is limited by reaction kinetics or transport, respectively. For intermediate values, the system is transport controlled and is sensitive to transit time. We apply the model to a series of watersheds for which we estimate transit times and identify the type of weathering regime. The results suggest that hydrologic transport of DIC may be as important as reaction kinetics and dilution in determining chemical weathering rates
Spin-1/2 J1-J2 model on the body-centered cubic lattice
Using exact diagonalization (ED) and linear spin wave theory (LSWT) we study
the influence of frustration and quantum fluctuations on the magnetic ordering
in the ground state of the spin-1/2 J1-J2 Heisenberg antiferromagnet (J1-J2
model) on the body-centered cubic (bcc) lattice. Contrary to the J1-J2 model on
the square lattice, we find for the bcc lattice that frustration and quantum
fluctuations do not lead to a quantum disordered phase for strong frustration.
The results of both approaches (ED, LSWT) suggest a first order transition at
J2/J1 0.7 from the two-sublattice Neel phase at low J2 to a collinear
phase at large J2.Comment: 6.1 pages 7 figure
Can a frustrated spin-cluster model describe the low-temperature physics of NaV_2O_5 ?
Recent experimental evidence suggest the existence of three distinct
V-valence states (V^{+4}, V^{+4.5} and V^{+5}) in the low-temperature phase of
NaV_2O_5 in apparent discrepancy with the observed spin-gap. We investigate a
novel spin cluster model, consisting of weakly coupled, frustrated four-spin
clusters aligned along the crystallographic b-axis that was recently proposed
to reconcile these experimental observations. We have studied the phase diagram
and the magnon dispersion relation of this model using DMRG, exact
diagonalization and a novel cluster-operator theory. We find a spin-gap for all
parameter values and two distinct phases, a cluster phase and a Haldane phase.
We evaluate the size of the gap and the magnon dispersion and find no parameter
regime which would reproduce the experimental results. We conclude that this
model is inappropriate for the low-temperature regime of NaV_2O_5
TIGRFAMs and Genome Properties: tools for the assignment of molecular function and biological process in prokaryotic genomes
TIGRFAMs is a collection of protein family definitions built to aid in high-throughput annotation of specific protein functions. Each family is based on a hidden Markov model (HMM), where both cutoff scores and membership in the seed alignment are chosen so that the HMMs can classify numerous proteins according to their specific molecular functions. Most TIGRFAMs models describe âequivalogâ families, where both orthology and lateral gene transfer may be part of the evolutionary history, but where a single molecular function has been conserved. The Genome Properties system contains a queriable set of metabolic reconstructions, genome metrics and extractions of information from the scientific literature. Its genome-by-genome assertions of whether or not specific structures, pathways or systems are present provide high-level conceptual descriptions of genomic content. These assertions enable comparative genomics, provide a meaningful biological context to aid in manual annotation, support assignments of Gene Ontology (GO) biological process terms and help validate HMM-based predictions of protein function. The Genome Properties system is particularly useful as a generator of phylogenetic profiles, through which new protein family functions may be discovered. The TIGRFAMs and Genome Properties systems can be accessed at and
Collective excitations in ferrimagnetic Heisenberg ladders
We study ground-state properties and the low-lying excitations of Heisenberg
spin ladders composed of two ferrimagnetic chains with alternating site spins
by using the bosonic Dyson-Maleev formalism and Lanczos numerical
techniques. The emphasis is on properties of the ferrimagnetic phase which is
stable for antiferromagnetic interchain couplings . There are
two basic implications of the underlying lattice structure: (i) the spin-wave
excitations form folded acoustic and optical branches in the extended Brillouin
zone and (ii) the ground state parameters (such as the on-site magnetizations
and spin-stiffness constant) show a crossover behavior in the weak-coupling
region . The above peculiarities of the ladder ferrimagnetic
state are studied up to second order in the quasiparticle interaction and by a
numerical diagonalization of ladders containing up to N=12 rungs. The presented
results for the ground-state parameters and the excitation spectrum can be used
in studies on the low-temperature thermodynamics of ferrimagnetic ladders.Comment: 9 pages, 9 figure
First-order quantum phase transition in the orthogonal-dimer spin chain
We investigate the low-energy properties of the orthogonal-dimer spin chain
characterized by a frustrated dimer-plaquette structure. When the competing
antiferromagnetic couplings are varied, the first-order quantum phase
transition occurs between the dimer and the plaquette phases, which is
accompanied by nontrivial features due to frustration: besides the
discontinuity in the lowest excitation gap at the transition point, a sharp
level-crossing occurs for the spectrum in the plaquette phase. We further
reveal that the plateau in the magnetization curve at 1/4 of the full moment
dramatically changes its character in the vicinity of the critical point. It is
argued that the first-order phase transition in this system captures some
essential properties found in the two-dimensional orthogonal-dimer model
proposed for .Comment: 7 pages, submitted to Phys. Rev.
Frustrated quantum Heisenberg ferrimagnetic chains
We study the ground-state properties of weakly frustrated Heisenberg
ferrimagnetic chains with nearest and next-nearest neighbor antiferromagnetic
exchange interactions and two types of alternating sublattice spins S_1 > S_2,
using 1/S spin-wave expansions, density-matrix renormalization group, and
exact- diagonalization techniques. It is argued that the zero-point spin
fluctuations completely destroy the classical commensurate- incommensurate
continuous transition. Instead, the long-range ferrimagnetic state disappears
through a discontinuous transition to a singlet state at a larger value of the
frustration parameter. In the ferrimagnetic phase we find a disorder point
marking the onset of incommensurate real-space short-range spin-spin
correlations.Comment: 16 pages (LaTex 2.09), 6 eps figure
Practical solution to the Monte Carlo sign problem: Realistic calculations of 54Fe
We present a practical solution to the "sign problem" in the auxiliary field
Monte Carlo approach to the nuclear shell model. The method is based on
extrapolation from a continuous family of problem-free Hamiltonians. To
demonstrate the resultant ability to treat large shell-model problems, we
present results for 54Fe in the full fp-shell basis using the Brown-Richter
interaction. We find the Gamow-Teller beta^+ strength to be quenched by 58%
relative to the single-particle estimate, in better agreement with experiment
than previous estimates based on truncated bases.Comment: 11 pages + 2 figures (not included
Phase diagram of an asymmetric spin ladder
We investigate an asymmetric zig-zag spin ladder with different exchange
integrals on both legs using bosonization and renormalization group. When the
leg exchange integrals and frustration both are sufficiently small,
renormalization group analysis shows that the Heisenberg critical point flows
to an intermediate-coupling fixed point with gapless excitations and a
vanishing spin velocity. When they are large, a spin gap opens and a dimer
liquid is realized. Here, we find a continuous manifold of Hamiltonians with
dimer product ground states, interpolating between the Majumdar-Ghosh and
sawtooth spin-chain model.Comment: 4 pages, 2 EPS figures, to be published in PR
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