2,301 research outputs found
Instability of insulating states in optical lattices due to collective phonon excitations
The role of collective phonon excitations on the properties of cold atoms in
optical lattices is investigated. These phonon excitations are collective
excitations, whose appearance is caused by intersite atomic interactions
correlating the atoms, and they do not arise without such interactions. These
collective excitations should not be confused with lattice vibrations produced
by an external force. No such a force is assumed. But the considered phonons
are purely self-organized collective excitations, characterizing atomic
oscillations around lattice sites, due to intersite atomic interactions. It is
shown that these excitations can essentially influence the possibility of atoms
to be localized. The states that would be insulating in the absence of phonon
excitations can become delocalized when these excitations are taken into
account. This concerns long-range as well as local atomic interactions. To
characterize the region of stability, the Lindemann criterion is used.Comment: Latex file, 27 pages, 1 figur
Fragility and compressibility at the glass transition
Isothermal compressibilities and Brillouin sound velocities from the
literature allow to separate the compressibility at the glass transition into a
high-frequency vibrational and a low-frequency relaxational part. Their ratio
shows the linear fragility relation discovered by x-ray Brillouin scattering
[1], though the data bend away from the line at higher fragilities. Using the
concept of constrained degrees of freedom, one can show that the vibrational
part follows the fragility-independent Lindemann criterion; the fragility
dependence seems to stem from the relaxational part. The physical meaning of
this finding is discussed. [1] T. Scopigno, G. Ruocco, F. Sette and G. Monaco,
Science 302, 849 (2003)Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, 2 tables, 33 references. Slightly changed after
refereein
Mean-Payoff Optimization in Continuous-Time Markov Chains with Parametric Alarms
Continuous-time Markov chains with alarms (ACTMCs) allow for alarm events
that can be non-exponentially distributed. Within parametric ACTMCs, the
parameters of alarm-event distributions are not given explicitly and can be
subject of parameter synthesis. An algorithm solving the -optimal
parameter synthesis problem for parametric ACTMCs with long-run average
optimization objectives is presented. Our approach is based on reduction of the
problem to finding long-run average optimal strategies in semi-Markov decision
processes (semi-MDPs) and sufficient discretization of parameter (i.e., action)
space. Since the set of actions in the discretized semi-MDP can be very large,
a straightforward approach based on explicit action-space construction fails to
solve even simple instances of the problem. The presented algorithm uses an
enhanced policy iteration on symbolic representations of the action space. The
soundness of the algorithm is established for parametric ACTMCs with
alarm-event distributions satisfying four mild assumptions that are shown to
hold for uniform, Dirac and Weibull distributions in particular, but are
satisfied for many other distributions as well. An experimental implementation
shows that the symbolic technique substantially improves the efficiency of the
synthesis algorithm and allows to solve instances of realistic size.Comment: This article is a full version of a paper accepted to the Conference
on Quantitative Evaluation of SysTems (QEST) 201
Analysis of the temperature-dependent quantum point contact conductance in view of the metal-insulator transition in two dimensions
The temperature dependence of the conductance of a quantum point contact has
been measured. The conductance as a function of the Fermi energy shows
temperature-independent fixed points, located at roughly multiple integers of
. Around the first fixed point at e/h, the experimental data for
different temperatures can been scaled onto a single curve. For pure thermal
smearing of the conductance steps, a scaling parameter of one is expected. The
measured scaling parameter, however, is significantly larger than 1. The
deviations are interpreted as a signature of the potential landscape of the
quantum point contact, and of the source-drain bias voltage. We relate our
results phenomenologically to the metal-insulator transition in two dimensions.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure
Optimizing Performance of Continuous-Time Stochastic Systems using Timeout Synthesis
We consider parametric version of fixed-delay continuous-time Markov chains
(or equivalently deterministic and stochastic Petri nets, DSPN) where
fixed-delay transitions are specified by parameters, rather than concrete
values. Our goal is to synthesize values of these parameters that, for a given
cost function, minimise expected total cost incurred before reaching a given
set of target states. We show that under mild assumptions, optimal values of
parameters can be effectively approximated using translation to a Markov
decision process (MDP) whose actions correspond to discretized values of these
parameters
Heterogeneities in Supercooled liquids: A Density Functional Study
A metastable state, characterized by a low degree of mass localization is
identified using Density Functional Theory. This free energy minimum, located
through the proper evaluation of the competing terms in the free energy
functional, is independent of the specific form of the DFT used. Computer
simulation results on particle motion indicate that this heterogeneous state
corresponds to the supercooled state.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figure
Freezing transition of the vortex liquid in anisotropic superconductors
We study the solid-liquid transition of a model of pancake vortices in
laminar superconductors using a density functional theory of freezing. The
physical properties of the system along the melting line are discussed in
detail. We show that there is a very good agreement with experimental data in
the shape and position of the first order transition in the phase diagram and
in the magnitude and temperature dependence of the magnetic induction jump at
the transition. We analyze the validity of the Lindemann melting criterion and
the Hansen-Verlet freezing criterion. Both criteria are shown to be good to
predict the phase diagram in the region where a first order phase transition is
experimentally observed.Comment: 9 pages, 10 figure
Invariants in the Yukawa system’s thermodynamic phase diagram
This paper shows that several known properties of the Yukawa system can be
derived from the isomorph theory, which applies to any system that has strong
correlations between its virial and potential-energy equilibrium fluctuations.
Such "Roskilde-simple" systems have a simplified thermodynamic phase diagram
deriving from the fact that they have curves (isomorphs) along which structure
and dynamics in reduced units are invariant to a good approximation. We show
that the Yukawa system has strong virial potential-energy correlations and
identify its isomorphs by two different methods. One method, the so-called
direct isomorph check, identifies isomorphs numerically from jumps of
relatively small density changes (here 10%). The second method identifies
isomorphs analytically from the pair potential. The curves obtained by the two
methods are close to each other; these curves are confirmed to be isomorphs by
demonstrating the invariance of the radial distribution function, the static
structure factor, the mean-square displacement as a function of time, and the
incoherent intermediate scattering function. Since the melting line is
predicted to be an isomorph, the theory provides a derivation of a known
approximate analytical expression for this line in the temperature-density
phase diagram. The paper's results give the first demonstration that the
isomorph theory can be applied to systems like dense colloidal suspensions and
strongly coupled dusty plasmas.Comment: 12 pages, 12 figure
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