2,100 research outputs found
Melting and Pressure-Induced Amorphization of Quartz
It has recently been shown that amorphization and melting of ice were
intimately linked. In this letter, we infer from molecular dynamics simulations
on the SiO2 system that the extension of the quartz melting line in the
metastable pressure-temperature domain is the pressure-induced amorphization
line. It seems therefore likely that melting is the physical phenomenon
responsible for pressure induced amorphization. Moreover, we show that the
structure of a "pressure glass" is similar to that of a very rapidly (1e+13 to
1e+14 kelvins per second) quenched thermal glass.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures, LaTeX2
First principles calculation of vibrational Raman spectra in large systems: signature of small rings in crystalline SiO2
We present an approach for the efficient calculation of vibrational Raman
intensities in periodic systems within density functional theory. The Raman
intensities are computed from the second order derivative of the electronic
density matrix with respect to a uniform electric field. In contrast to
previous approaches, the computational effort required by our method for the
evaluation of the intensities is negligible compared to that required for the
calculation of vibrational frequencies. As a first application, we study the
signature of 3- and 4-membered rings in the the Raman spectra of several
polymorphs of SiO2, including a zeolite having 102 atoms per unit cell.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, revtex4 Minor corrections; accepted in Phys. Rev.
Let
A combined XAS and XRD Study of the High-Pressure Behaviour of GaAsO4 Berlinite
Combined X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) and X-ray diffraction (XRD)
experiments have been carried out on GaAsO4 (berlinite structure) at high
pressure and room temperature. XAS measurements indicate four-fold to six-fold
coordination changes for both cations. The two local coordination
transformations occur at different rates but appear to be coupled. A reversible
transition to a high pressure crystalline form occurs around 8 GPa. At a
pressure of about 12 GPa, the system mainly consists of octahedral gallium
atoms and a mixture of arsenic in four-fold and six-fold coordinations. A
second transition to a highly disordered material with both cations in six-fold
coordination occurs at higher pressures and is irreversible.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, LaTeX2
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The Diderot meteorite: The second chassignite
The Diderot meteorite is a dunite discovered in Sahara. The martian origin is unambiguous and Diderot shares strong petrographical similarities with Chassigny
Vaccination with murid herpesvirus-4 glycoprotein B reduces viral lytic replication but does not induce detectable virion neutralization
Herpesviruses characteristically disseminate from immune hosts. Therefore in the context of natural infection, antibody neutralizes them poorly. Murid herpesvirus-4 (MuHV-4) provides a tractable model with which to understand gammaherpesvirus neutralization. MuHV-4 virions blocked for cell binding by immune sera remain infectious for IgG-Fc receptor+ myeloid cells, so broadly neutralizing antibodies must target the virion fusion complex – glycoprotein B (gB) or gH/gL. While gB-specific neutralizing antibodies are rare, its domains I+II (gB-N) contain at least one potent neutralization epitope. Here, we tested whether immunization with recombinant gB presenting this epitope could induce neutralizing antibodies in naive mice and protect them against MuHV-4 challenge. Immunizing with the full-length gB extracellular domain induced a strong gB-specific antibody response and reduced MuHV-4 lytic replication but did not induce detectable neutralization. gB-N alone, which more selectively displayed pre-fusion epitopes including neutralization epitopes, also failed to induce neutralizing responses, and while viral lytic replication was again reduced this depended completely on IgG Fc receptors. gB and gB-N also boosted neutralizing responses in only a minority of carrier mice. Therefore, it appears that neutralizing epitopes on gB are intrinsically difficult for the immune response to target
Big Line Bundles over Arithmetic Varieties
We prove a Hilbert-Samuel type result of arithmetic big line bundles in
Arakelov geometry, which is an analogue of a classical theorem of Siu. An
application of this result gives equidistribution of small points over
algebraic dynamical systems, following the work of Szpiro-Ullmo-Zhang. We also
generalize Chambert-Loir's non-archimedean equidistribution
Pressure-induced amorphization, crystal-crystal transformations and the memory glass effect in interacting particles in two dimensions
We study a model of interacting particles in two dimensions to address the
relation between crystal-crystal transformations and pressure-induced
amorphization. On increasing pressure at very low temperature, our model
undergoes a martensitic crystal-crystal transformation. The characteristics of
the resulting polycrystalline structure depend on defect density, compression
rate, and nucleation and growth barriers. We find two different limiting cases.
In one of them the martensite crystals, once nucleated, grow easily
perpendicularly to the invariant interface, and the final structure contains
large crystals of the different martensite variants. Upon decompression almost
every atom returns to its original position, and the original crystal is fully
recovered. In the second limiting case, after nucleation the growth of
martensite crystals is inhibited by energetic barriers. The final morphology in
this case is that of a polycrystal with a very small crystal size. This may be
taken to be amorphous if we have only access (as experimentally may be the
case) to the angularly averaged structure factor. However, this `X-ray
amorphous' material is anisotropic, and this shows up upon decompression, when
it recovers the original crystalline structure with an orientation correlated
with the one it had prior to compression. The memory effect of this X-ray
amorphous material is a natural consequence of the memory effect associated to
the underlying martensitic transformation. We suggest that this kind of
mechanism is present in many of the experimental observations of the memory
glass effect, in which a crystal with the original orientation is recovered
from an apparently amorphous sample when pressure is released.Comment: 13 pages, 13 figures, to be published in Phys. Rev.
Studying the Pulsation of Mira Variables in the Ultraviolet
We present results from an empirical study of the Mg II h & k emission lines
of selected Mira variable stars, using spectra from the International
Ultraviolet Explorer (IUE). The stars all exhibit similar Mg II behavior during
the course of their pulsation cycles. The Mg II flux always peaks after optical
maximum near pulsation phase 0.2-0.5, although the Mg II flux can vary greatly
from one cycle to the next. The lines are highly blueshifted, with the
magnitude of the blueshift decreasing with phase. The widths of the Mg II lines
are also phase-dependent, decreasing from about 70 km/s to 40 km/s between
phase 0.2 and 0.6. We also study other UV emission lines apparent in the IUE
spectra, most of them Fe II lines. These lines are much narrower and not nearly
as blueshifted as the Mg II lines. They exhibit the same phase-dependent flux
behavior as Mg II, but they do not show similar velocity or width variations.Comment: 26 pages, 12 figures; AASTEX v5.0 plus EPSF extensions in mkfig.sty;
to appear in Ap
A test for the search for life on extrasolar planets: Looking for the terrestrial vegetation signature in the Earthshine spectrum
We report spectroscopic observations (400 to 800nm, R = approx 100) of
Earthshine in June, July and October 2001 from which normalised Earth albedo
spectra have been derived. The resulting spectra clearly show the blue colour
of the Earth due to Rayleigh diffusion in its atmosphere. They also show the
signatures of oxygen, ozone and water vapour. We tried to extract from these
spectra the signature of Earth vegetation. A variable signal (4 to 10 +/-3%)
around 700nm has been measured in the Earth albedo. It is interpreted as being
due to the vegetation red edge, expected to be between 2 to 10% of the Earth
albedo at 700nm, depending on models. We discuss the primary goal of the
present observations: their application to the detection of vegetation-like
biosignatures on extrasolar planets.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figures. A&A, accepted 6 May 200
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