An Underlying Theory for Gravity

A new direction to understand gravity has recently been explored by considering classical gravity to be a derived interaction from an underlying theory. This underlying theory would involve new degrees of freedom at a deeper level and it would be structurally different from classical gravitation. It may conceivably be a quantum theory or a non-quantum theory. The relation between this underlying theory and Einstein's gravity is similar to the connection between statistical mechanics and thermodynamics. We discuss the apparent lack of evidence of any quantum nature of gravity in this context.Comment: Contributed paper to VIIth International Conference on Gravitation and Cosmology, 14 - 19 December, 2011 GOA, INDIA. 4 page

Casimir Dispersion Forces and Orientational Pairwise Additivity

A path integral formulation is used to study the fluctuation-induced interactions between manifolds of arbitrary shape at large separations. It is shown that the form of the interactions crucially depends on the choice of the boundary condition. In particular, whether or not the Casimir interaction is pairwise additive is shown to depend on whether the ``metallic'' boundary condition corresponds to a ``grounded'' or an ``isolated'' manifold.Comment: 6 pages, RevTe

Potential of mean force and the charge reversal of rodlike polyions

A simple model is presented to calculate the potential of mean force between a polyion and a multivalent counterion inside a polyelectrolite solution. We find that under certain conditions the electrostatic interactions can lead to a strong attraction between the polyions and the multivalent counterions, favoring formation of overcharged polyion-counterion complexes. It is found that small concentrations of salt enhance the overcharging, while an excessive amount of salt hinders the charge reversal. The kinetic limitations to overcharging are also examined.Comment: To be published in the special issue of Molecular Physics in honor of Prof. Ben Wido

Electron Addition Spectrum in the Supersymmetric t-J Model with Inverse-Square Interaction

The electron addition spectrum A^+(k,omega) is obtained analytically for the one-dimensional (1D) supersymmetric t-J model with 1/r^2 interaction. The result is obtained first for a small-sized system and its validity is checked against the numerical calculation. Then the general expression is found which is valid for arbitrary size of the system. The thermodynamic limit of A^+(k,omega) has a simple analytic form with contributions from one spinon, one holon and one antiholon all of which obey fractional statistics. The upper edge of A^+(k,omega) in the (k,omega) plane includes a delta-function peak which reduces to that of the single-electron band in the low-density limit.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. Let

Combinatorial interpretation of Haldane-Wu fractional exclusion statistics

Assuming that the maximal allowed number of identical particles in state is an integer parameter, q, we derive the statistical weight and analyze the associated equation which defines the statistical distribution. The derived distribution covers Fermi-Dirac and Bose-Einstein ones in the particular cases q = 1 and q -> infinity (n_i/q -> 1), respectively. We show that the derived statistical weight provides a natural combinatorial interpretation of Haldane-Wu fractional exclusion statistics, and present exact solutions of the distribution equation.Comment: 8 pages, 2 eps-figure

Finite Size Polyelectrolyte Bundles at Thermodynamic Equilibrium

We present the results of extensive computer simulations performed on solutions of monodisperse charged rod-like polyelectrolytes in the presence of trivalent counterions. To overcome energy barriers we used a combination of parallel tempering and hybrid Monte Carlo techniques. Our results show that for small values of the electrostatic interaction the solution mostly consists of dispersed single rods. The potential of mean force between the polyelectrolyte monomers yields an attractive interaction at short distances. For a range of larger values of the Bjerrum length, we find finite size polyelectrolyte bundles at thermodynamic equilibrium. Further increase of the Bjerrum length eventually leads to phase separation and precipitation. We discuss the origin of the observed thermodynamic stability of the finite size aggregates

Exact dynamical structure factor of the degenerate Haldane-Shastry model

The dynamical structure factor $S(q,\omega)$ of the K-component (K = 2,3,4) spin chain with the 1/r^2 exchange is derived exactly at zero temperature for arbitrary size of the system. The result is interpreted in terms of a free quasi-particle picture which is generalization of the spinon picture in the SU(2) case; the excited states consist of K quasi-particles each of which is characterized by a set of K-1 quantum numbers. Divergent singularities of $S(q,\omega)$ at the spectral edges are derived analytically. The analytic result is checked numerically for finite systems.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. Let

Conformational Instability of Rodlike Polyelectrolytes due to Counterion Fluctuations

The effective elasticity of highly charged stiff polyelectrolytes is studied in the presence of counterions, with and without added salt. The rigid polymer conformations may become unstable due to an effective attraction induced by counterion density fluctuations. Instabilities at the longest, or intermediate length scales may signal collapse to globule, or necklace states, respectively. In the presence of added-salt, a generalized electrostatic persistence length is obtained, which has a nontrivial dependence on the Debye screening length. It is also found that the onset of conformational instability is a re-entrant phenomenon as a function of polyelectrolyte length for the unscreened case, and the Debye length or salt concentration for the screened case. This may be relevant in understanding the experimentally observed re-entrant condensation of DNA.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figure

Size dependent line broadening in the emission spectra of single GaAs quantum dots: Impact of surface charges on spectral diffusion

Making use of droplet epitaxy, we systematically controlled the height of self-assembled GaAs quantum dots by more than one order of magnitude. The photoluminescence spectra of single quantum dots revealed the strong dependence of the spectral linewidth on the dot height. Tall dots with a height of ~30 nm showed broad spectral peaks with an average width as large as ~5 meV, but shallow dots with a height of ~2 nm showed resolution-limited spectral lines (<120 micro eV). The measured height dependence of the linewidths is in good agreement with Stark coefficients calculated for the experimental shape variation. We attribute the microscopic source of fluctuating electric fields to the random motion of surface charges at the vacuum-semiconductor interface. Our results offer guidelines for creating frequency-locked photon sources, which will serve as key devices for long-distance quantum key distribution.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figures; updated figs and their description

Observation of molecular vibrations in real time

Journal ArticleIn a recent Letter Rosker, Wise, and Tang1 have reported ultrafast optical measurements on two large dye molecules, malachite green and nile blue 690. Using the transmission-correlation technique with 40-fs light pulses, they measured photoinduced changes in optical transmission and found a response consisting of damped oscillations superimposed on two exponential decays. They tentatively interpreted the oscillations as quantum beats between two eigenstates of the isolated molecule. In this Comment we report Raman and infrared measurements on the same molecules and discuss the implications these measurements have for the interpretation of the data of Rosker, Wise, and Tang