High-temperature electrical and thermal transport properties of fully filled skutterudites RFe_(4)Sb_(12) (R = Ca, Sr, Ba, La, Ce, Pr, Nd, Eu, and Yb)

Fully filled skutterudites RFe_(4)Sb_(12) (R = Ca, Sr, Ba, La, Ce, Pr, Nd, Eu, and Yb) have been prepared and the high-temperature electrical and thermal transport properties are investigated systematically. Lattice constants of RFe_(4)Sb_(12) increase almost linearly with increasing the ionic radii of the fillers, while the lattice expansion in filled structure is weakly influenced by the filler valence charge states. Using simple charge counting, the hole concentration in RFe_(4)Sb_(12) with divalent fillers (R = Ca, Sr, Ba, Eu, and Yb) is much higher than that in RFe4Sb12 with trivalent fillers (R = La, Ce, Pr, and Nd), resulting in relatively high electrical conductivity and low Seebeck coefficient. It is also found that RFe_(4)Sb_(12) filled skutterudites having similar filler valence charge states exhibit comparable electrical conductivity and Seebeck coefficient, and the behavior of the temperature dependence, thereby leading to comparable power factor values in the temperature range from 300 to 800 K. All RFe_(4)Sb_(12) samples possess low lattice thermal conductivity. The correlation between the lattice thermal resistivity WL and ionic radii of the fillers is discussed and a good relationship of W_L ~ (r_(cage)−r_(ion))^3 is observed in lanthanide metal filled skutterudites. CeFe_(4)Sb_(12), PrFe_(4)Sb_(12), and NdFe_(4)Sb_(12) show the highest thermoelectric figure of merit around 0.87 at 750 K among all the filled skutterudites studied in this work

Vorticity cutoff in nonlinear photonic crystals

Using group theory arguments, we demonstrate that, unlike in homogeneous media, no symmetric vortices of arbitrary order can be generated in two-dimensional (2D) nonlinear systems possessing a discrete-point symmetry. The only condition needed is that the non-linearity term exclusively depends on the modulus of the field. In the particular case of 2D periodic systems, such as nonlinear photonic crystals or Bose-Einstein condensates in periodic potentials, it is shown that the realization of discrete symmetry forbids the existence of symmetric vortex solutions with vorticity higher than two.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures; minor changes in address and reference

Magnetic-Dipole Spin Effects in Noncommutative Quantum Mechanics

A general three-dimensional noncommutative quantum mechanical system mixing spatial and spin degrees of freedom is proposed. The analogous of the harmonic oscillator in this description contains a magnetic dipole interaction and the ground state is explicitly computed and we show that it is infinitely degenerated and implying a spontaneous symmetry breaking. The model can be straightforwardly extended to many particles and the main above properties are retained. Possible applications to the Bose-Einstein condensation with dipole-dipole interactions are briefly discussed.Comment: New references added, implications with Bose-Einstein condensationare discussed and some portions of the manuscript rewritte

1-D Harmonic Oscillator in Snyder Space, the Classic and the Quantum

The 1-D dimension harmonic oscillator in Snyder space is investigated in its classical and quantum versions. The classical trajectory is obtained and the semiclassical quantization from the phase space trajectories is discussed. In the meanwhile, an effective cutoff to high frequencies is found. The quantum version is developed and an equivalent usual harmonic oscillator is obtained through an effective mass and an effective frequency introduced in the model. This modified parameters give us an also modified energy spectra.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figure

Noncommutative D-Brane in Non-Constant NS-NS B Field Background

We show that when the field strength H of the NS-NS B field does not vanish, the coordinates X and momenta P of an open string endpoints satisfy a set of mixed commutation relations among themselves. Identifying X and P with the coordinates and derivatives of the D-brane world volume, we find a new type of noncommutative spaces which is very different from those associated with a constant B field background.Comment: 11 pages, Latex, minor modification

Random-key cuckoo search for the travelling salesman problem

Combinatorial optimization problems are typically NP-hard, and thus very challenging to solve. In this paper, we present the random key cuckoo search (RKCS) algorithm for solving the famous Travelling Salesman Problem (TSP). We used a simplified random-key encoding scheme to pass from a continuous space (real numbers) to a combinatorial space. We also consider the displacement of a solution in both spaces using L\'evy flights. The performance of the proposed RKCS is tested against a set of benchmarks of symmetric TSP from the well-known TSPLIB library. The results of the tests show that RKCS is superior to some other metaheuristic algorithms

Development of a Tuned Interfacial Force Field Parameter Set for the Simulation of Protein Adsorption to Silica Glass

Adsorption free energies for eight host–guest peptides (TGTG-X-GTGT, with X = N, D, G, K, F, T, W, and V) on two different silica surfaces [quartz (100) and silica glass] were calculated using umbrella sampling and replica exchange molecular dynamics and compared with experimental values determined by atomic force microscopy. Using the CHARMM force field, adsorption free energies were found to be overestimated (i.e., too strongly adsorbing) by about 5–9 kcal/mol compared to the experimental data for both types of silica surfaces. Peptide adsorption behavior for the silica glass surface was then adjusted using a modified version of the CHARMM program, which we call dual force-field CHARMM, which allows separate sets of nonbonded parameters (i.e., partial charge and Lennard-Jones parameters) to be used to represent intra-phase and inter-phase interactions within a given molecular system. Using this program, interfacial force field (IFF) parameters for the peptide-silica glass systems were corrected to obtain adsorption free energies within about 0.5 kcal/mol of their respective experimental values, while IFF tuning for the quartz (100) surface remains for future work. The tuned IFF parameter set for silica glass will subsequently be used for simulations of protein adsorption behavior on silica glass with greater confidence in the balance between relative adsorption affinities of amino acid residues and the aqueous solution for the silica glass surface

Stable ring vortex solitons in Bessel optical lattices

Stable ring vortex solitons, featuring a bright-shape, appear to be very rare in nature. However, here we show that they exist and can be made dynamically stable in defocusing cubic nonlinear media with an imprinted Bessel optical lattice. We find the families of vortex lattice solitons and reveal their salient properties, including the conditions required for their stability. We show that the higher the soliton topological charge, the deeper the lattice modulation necessary for stabilization.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figures, submitted to Physical Review Letter