1,989 research outputs found
Metal-insulator transitions in cyclotron resonance of periodic nanostructures due to avoided band crossings
A recently found metal-insulator transition in a model for cyclotron
resonance in a two-dimensional periodic potential is investigated by means of
spectral properties of the time evolution operator. The previously found
dynamical signatures of the transition are explained in terms of avoided band
crossings due to the change of the external electric field. The occurrence of a
cross-like transport is predicted and numerically confirmed
X-ray reflectivity measurement of interdiffusion in metallic multilayers during rapid heating
A technique for measuring interdiffusion in multilayer materials during rapid heating using X-ray reflectivity is described. In this technique the sample is bent to achieve a range of incident angles simultaneously, and the scattered intensity is recorded on a fast high-dynamic-range mixed-mode pixel array detector. Heating of the multilayer is achieved by electrical resistive heating of the silicon substrate, monitored by an infrared pyrometer. As an example, reflectivity data from Al/Ni heated at rates up to 200 K s^(−1) are presented. At short times the interdiffusion coefficient can be determined from the rate of decay of the reflectivity peaks, and it is shown that the activation energy for interdiffusion is consistent with a grain boundary diffusion mechanism. At longer times the simple analysis no longer applies because the evolution of the reflectivity pattern is complicated by other processes, such as nucleation and growth of intermetallic phases
Bulk Metallic Glasses Deform via Slip Avalanches
Inelastic deformation of metallic glasses occurs via slip events with
avalanche dynamics similar to those of earthquakes. For the first time in these
materials, measurements have been obtained with sufficiently high temporal
resolution to extract both the exponents and the scaling functions that
describe the nature, statistics and dynamics of the slips according to a simple
mean-field model. These slips originate from localized deformation in shear
bands. The mean-field model describes the slip process as an avalanche of
rearrangements of atoms in shear transformation zones (STZs). Small slips show
the predicted power-law scaling and correspond to limited propagation of a
shear front, while large slips are associated with uniform shear on
unconstrained shear bands. The agreement between the model and data across
multiple independent measures of slip statistics and dynamics provides
compelling evidence for slip avalanches of STZs as the elementary mechanism of
inhomogeneous deformation in metallic glasses.Comment: Article: 11 pages, 4 figures, plus Supplementary Material: 16 pages,
8 figure
Mechanical Stress Inference for Two Dimensional Cell Arrays
Many morphogenetic processes involve mechanical rearrangement of epithelial
tissues that is driven by precisely regulated cytoskeletal forces and cell
adhesion. The mechanical state of the cell and intercellular adhesion are not
only the targets of regulation, but are themselves likely signals that
coordinate developmental process. Yet, because it is difficult to directly
measure mechanical stress {\it in vivo} on sub-cellular scale, little is
understood about the role of mechanics of development. Here we present an
alternative approach which takes advantage of the recent progress in live
imaging of morphogenetic processes and uses computational analysis of high
resolution images of epithelial tissues to infer relative magnitude of forces
acting within and between cells. We model intracellular stress in terms of bulk
pressure and interfacial tension, allowing these parameters to vary from cell
to cell and from interface to interface. Assuming that epithelial cell layers
are close to mechanical equilibrium, we use the observed geometry of the two
dimensional cell array to infer interfacial tensions and intracellular
pressures. Here we present the mathematical formulation of the proposed
Mechanical Inverse method and apply it to the analysis of epithelial cell
layers observed at the onset of ventral furrow formation in the {\it
Drosophila} embryo and in the process of hair-cell determination in the avian
cochlea. The analysis reveals mechanical anisotropy in the former process and
mechanical heterogeneity, correlated with cell differentiation, in the latter
process. The method opens a way for quantitative and detailed experimental
tests of models of cell and tissue mechanics
Universal Slip Dynamics in Metallic Glasses and Granular Matter – Linking Frictional Weakening with Inertial Effects
Slowly strained solids deform via intermittent slips that exhibit a material-independent critical size distribution. Here, by comparing two disparate systems - granular materials and bulk metallic glasses - we show evidence that not only the statistics of slips but also their dynamics are remarkably similar, i.e. independent of the microscopic details of the material. By resolving and comparing the full time evolution of avalanches in bulk metallic glasses and granular materials, we uncover a regime of universal deformation dynamics. We experimentally verify the predicted universal scaling functions for the dynamics of individual avalanches in both systems, and show that both the slip statistics and dynamics are independent of the scale and details of the material structure and interactions, thus settling a long-standing debate as to whether or not the claim of universality includes only the slip statistics or also the slip dynamics. The results imply that the frictional weakening in granular materials and the interplay of damping, weakening and inertial effects in bulk metallic glasses have strikingly similar effects on the slip dynamics. These results are important for transferring experimental results across scales and material structures in a single theory of deformation dynamics
A Closest Point Proposal for MCMC-based Probabilistic Surface Registration
We propose to view non-rigid surface registration as a probabilistic
inference problem. Given a target surface, we estimate the posterior
distribution of surface registrations. We demonstrate how the posterior
distribution can be used to build shape models that generalize better and show
how to visualize the uncertainty in the established correspondence.
Furthermore, in a reconstruction task, we show how to estimate the posterior
distribution of missing data without assuming a fixed point-to-point
correspondence.
We introduce the closest-point proposal for the Metropolis-Hastings
algorithm. Our proposal overcomes the limitation of slow convergence compared
to a random-walk strategy. As the algorithm decouples inference from modeling
the posterior using a propose-and-verify scheme, we show how to choose
different distance measures for the likelihood model.
All presented results are fully reproducible using publicly available data
and our open-source implementation of the registration framework
New Class of Eigenstates in Generic Hamiltonian Systems
In mixed systems, besides regular and chaotic states, there are states
supported by the chaotic region mainly living in the vicinity of the hierarchy
of regular islands. We show that the fraction of these hierarchical states
scales as and relate the exponent to the
decay of the classical staying probability . This is
numerically confirmed for the kicked rotor by studying the influence of
hierarchical states on eigenfunction and level statistics.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, Phys. Rev. Lett., to appea
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