Criticality and Superfluidity in liquid He-4 under Nonequilibrium Conditions

We review a striking array of recent experiments, and their theoretical interpretations, on the superfluid transition in $^4$He in the presence of a heat flux, $Q$. We define and evaluate a new set of critical point exponents. The statics and dynamics of the superfluid-normal interface are discussed, with special attention to the role of gravity. If $Q$ is in the same direction as gravity, a self-organized state can arise, in which the entire sample has a uniform reduced temperature, on either the normal or superfluid side of the transition. Finally, we review recent theory and experiment regarding the heat capacity at constant $Q$. The excitement that surrounds this field arises from the fact that advanced thermometry and the future availability of a microgravity experimental platform aboard the International Space Station will soon open to experimental exploration decades of reduced temperature that were previously inaccessible.Comment: 16 pages, 9 figures, plus harvard.sty style file for references Accepted for publication in Colloquia section of Reviews of Modern Physic

Liquid 4He near the superfluid transition in the presence of a heat current and gravity

The effects of a heat current and gravity in liquid 4He near the superfluid transition are investigated for temperatures above and below T_lambda. We present a renormalization-group calculation based on model F for the Green's function in a self-consistent approximation which in quantum many-particle theory is known as the Hartree approximation. The approach can handle a zero average order parameter above and below T_lambda and includes effects of vortices. We calculate the thermal conductivity and the specific heat for all temperatures T and heat currents Q in the critical regime. Furthermore, we calculate the temperature profile. Below T_lambda we find a second correlation length which describes the dephasing of the order parameter field due to vortices. We find dissipation and mutual friction of the superfluid-normal fluid counterflow and calculate the Gorter-Mellink coefficient A. We compare our theoretical results with recent experiments.Comment: 26 pages, 9 figure

BCS-BEC crossover at finite temperature in the broken-symmetry phase

The BCS-BEC crossover is studied in a systematic way in the broken-symmetry phase between zero temperature and the critical temperature. This study bridges two regimes where quantum and thermal fluctuations are, respectively, important. The theory is implemented on physical grounds, by adopting a fermionic self-energy in the broken-symmetry phase that represents fermions coupled to superconducting fluctuations in weak coupling and to bosons described by the Bogoliubov theory in strong coupling. This extension of the theory beyond mean field proves important at finite temperature, to connect with the results in the normal phase. The order parameter, the chemical potential, and the single-particle spectral function are calculated numerically for a wide range of coupling and temperature. This enables us to assess the quantitative importance of superconducting fluctuations in the broken-symmetry phase over the whole BCS-BEC crossover. Our results are relevant to the possible realizations of this crossover with high-temperature cuprate superconductors and with ultracold fermionic atoms in a trap.Comment: 21 pages, 15 figure

Model-based comparison of organ at risk protection between VMAT and robustly optimised IMPT plans

The comparison between intensity-modulated proton therapy (IMPT) and volume-modulated arc therapy (VMAT) plans, based on models of normal tissue complication probabilities (NTCP), can support the choice of radiation modality. IMPT irradiation plans for 50 patients with head and neck tumours originally treated with photon therapy have been robustly optimised against density and setup uncertainties. The dose distribution has been calculated with a Monte Carlo (MC) algorithm. The comparison of the plans was based on dose-volume parameters in organs at risk (OARs) and NTCP-calculations for xerostomia, sticky saliva, dysphagia and tube feeding using Langendijk's model-based approach. While the dose distribution in the target volumes is similar, the IMPT plans show better protection of OARs. Therefore, it is not the high dose confirmation that constitutes the advantage of protons, but it is the reduction of the mid-to-low dose levels compared to photons. This work investigates to what extent the advantages of proton radiation are beneficial for the patient's post-therapeutic quality of life (QoL). As a result, approximately one third of the patients examined benefit significantly from proton therapy with regard to possible late side effects. Clinical data is needed to confirm the model-based calculations

Effective action for Superconductors and BCS-Bose crossover

A standard perturbative expansion around the mean-field solution is used to derive the low-energy effective action for superconductors at T=0. Taking into account the density fluctuations at the outset we get the effective action where the density $\rho$ is the conjugated momentum to the phase $\theta$ of the order parameter. In the hydrodynamic regime, the dynamics of the superconductor is described by a time dependent non-linear Schr\"odinger equation (TDNLS) for the field $\Psi(x)=\sqrt{\rho/2} e^{i\theta}$. The evolution of the density fluctuations in the crossover from weak-coupling (BCS) to strong-coupling (Bose condensation of localized pairs) superconductivity is discussed for the attractive Hubbard model. In the bosonic limit, the TDNLS equation reduces to the the Gross-Pitaevskii equation for the order parameter, as in the standard description of superfluidity. The conditions under which a phase-only action can be derived in the presence of a long-range interaction to describe the physics of the superconductivity of ``bad metals'' are discussed.Comment: 13 pages, accepted for publication on Phys. Rev.

Self-Consistent Approximations for Superconductivity beyond the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer Theory

We develop a concise self-consistent perturbation expansion for superconductivity where all the pair processes are naturally incorporated without drawing "anomalous" Feynman diagrams. This simplification results from introducing an interaction vertex that is symmetric in the particle-hole indices besides the ordinary space-spin coordinates. The formalism automatically satisfies conservation laws, includes the Luttinger-Ward theory as the normal-state limit, and reproduces the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer theory as the lowest-order approximation. It enables us to study the thermodynamic, single-particle, two-particle, and dynamical properties of superconductors with competing fluctuations based on a single functional $\Phi[\hat{G}]$ of Green's function $\hat{G}$ in the Nambu space. Specifically, we derive closed equations in the FLEX-S approximation, i.e., the fluctuation exchange approximation for superconductivity with all the pair processes, which contains extra terms besides those in the standard FLEX approximation.Comment: 14 pages, 6 figure

Itinerant Electron Ferromagnetism in the Quantum Hall Regime

We report on a study of the temperature and Zeeman-coupling-strength dependence of the one-particle Green's function of a two-dimensional (2D) electron gas at Landau level filling factor $\nu =1$ where the ground state is a strong ferromagnet. Our work places emphasis on the role played by the itinerancy of the electrons, which carry the spin magnetization and on analogies between this system and conventional itinerant electron ferromagnets. We discuss the application to this system of the self-consistent Hartree-Fock approximation, which is analogous to the band theory description of metallic ferromagnetism and fails badly at finite temperatures because it does not account for spin-wave excitations. We go beyond this level by evaluating the one-particle Green's function using a self-energy, which accounts for quasiparticle spin-wave interactions. We report results for the temperature dependence of the spin magnetization, the nuclear spin relaxation rate, and 2D-2D tunneling conductances. Our calculations predict a sharp peak in the tunneling conductance at large bias voltages with strength proportional to temperature. We compare with experiment, where available, and with predictions based on numerical exact diagonalization and other theoretical approaches.Comment: 29 pages, 20 figure

Superconductivity with hard-core repulsion: BCS-Bose crossover and s-/d-wave competition

We consider fermions on a 2D lattice interacting repulsively on the same site and attractively on the nearest neighbor sites. The model is relevant, for instance, to study the competition between antiferromagnetism and superconductivity in a Kondo lattice. We first solve the two-body problem to show that in the dilute and strong coupling limit the s-wave Bose condensed state is always the ground state. We then consider the many-body problem and treat it at mean-field level by solving exactly the usual gap equation. This guarantees that the superconducting wave-function correctly vanishes when the two fermions (with antiparallel spin) sit on the same site. This fact has important consequences on the superconducting state that are somewhat unusual. In particular this implies a radial node-line for the gap function. When a next neighbor hopping t' is present we find that the s-wave state may develop nodes on the Fermi surface.Comment: 10 pages, 9 fig

Burgers velocity fields and dynamical transport processes

We explore a connection of the forced Burgers equation with the Schr\"{o}dinger (diffusive) interpolating dynamics in the presence of deterministic external forces. This entails an exploration of the consistency conditions that allow to interpret dispersion of passive contaminants in the Burgers flow as a Markovian diffusion process. In general, the usage of a continuity equation $\partial_t\rho =-\nabla (\vec{v}\rho)$, where $\vec{v}=\vec{v}(\vec{x},t)$ stands for the Burgers field and $\rho$ is the density of transported matter, is at variance with the explicit diffusion scenario. Under these circumstances, we give a complete characterisation of the diffusive matter transport that is governed by Burgers velocity fields. The result extends both to the approximate description of the transport driven by an incompressible fluid and to motions in an infinitely compressible medium.Comment: Latex fil

CMTr mediated 2`-O-ribose methylation status of cap adjacent-nucleotides across animals

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We thank Mark Carrington and Nancy Standard for T. brucei total RNA, Jane Nimmo for honeybees, Caroline Chadwick for mouse tissue, Pawel Grzechnik for HEK293T cells, Roland Arnold for HCT116 cells, Rupert Fray for plasmids, and the National BioResource Project, Tokyo, Japan for the C. elegans CMTr2 strain. M.S. acknowledges funding from the Leverhulme Trust and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) (BB/R002932/1), J.P. and B.M. from BBSRC (BB/T002859/1), and F.M. from the Wellcome Trust (106955/Z/15/Z).Peer reviewedPublisher PD