The nanoscale phase separation in hole-doped manganites

A macroscopic phase separation, in which ferromagnetic clusters are observed in an insulating matrix, is sometimes observed, and believed to be essential to the colossal magnetoresistive (CMR) properties of manganese oxides. The application of a magnetic field may indeed trigger large magnetoresistance effects due to the percolation between clusters allowing the movement of the charge carriers. However, this macroscopic phase separation is mainly related to extrinsic defects or impurities, which hinder the long-ranged charge-orbital order of the system. We show in the present article that rather than the macroscopic phase separation, an homogeneous short-ranged charge-orbital order accompanied by a spin glass state occurs, as an intrinsic result of the uniformity of the random potential perturbation induced by the solid solution of the cations on the $A$-sites of the structure of these materials. Hence the phase separation does occur, but in a more subtle and interesting nanoscopic form, here referred as ``homogeneous''. Remarkably, this ``nanoscale phase separation'' alone is able to bring forth the colossal magnetoresistance in the perovskite manganites, and is potentially relevant to a wide variety of other magnetic and/or electrical properties of manganites, as well as many other transition metal oxides, in bulk or thin film form as we exemplify throughout the article.Comment: jpsj2 TeX style (J. Phys. Soc. Jpn); 18 pages, 7 figure

Pinning an Ion with an Intracavity Optical Lattice

We report one-dimensional pinning of a single ion by an optical lattice. The lattice potential is produced by a standing-wave cavity along the rf-field-free axis of a linear Paul trap. The ion's localization is detected by measuring its fluorescence when excited by standing-wave fields with the same period, but different spatial phases. The experiments agree with an analytical model of the localization process, which we test against numerical simulations. For the best localization achieved, the ion's average coupling to the cavity field is enhanced from 50% to 81(3)% of its maximum possible value, and we infer that the ion is bound in a lattice well with over 97% probability.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures; Text edited for clarity, results unchange

Depinning transition in type-II superconductors

The surface impedance Z(f) of conventional isotropic materials has been carefully measured for frequencies f ranging from 1 kHz to 3 MHz, allowing a detailed investigation of the depinning transition. Our results exhibit the irrelevance of classical ideas to the dynamics of vortex pinning. We propose a new picture, where the linear ac response is entirely governed by disordered boundary conditions of a rough surface, whereas in the bulk vortices respond freely. The universal law for Z(f) thus predicted is in remarkable agreement with experiment, and tentatively applies to microwave data in YBaCuO films.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, 14 reference

SM(2,4k) fermionic characters and restricted jagged partitions

A derivation of the basis of states for the $SM(2,4k)$ superconformal minimal models is presented. It relies on a general hypothesis concerning the role of the null field of dimension $2k-1/2$. The basis is expressed solely in terms of $G_r$ modes and it takes the form of simple exclusion conditions (being thus a quasi-particle-type basis). Its elements are in correspondence with $(2k-1)$-restricted jagged partitions. The generating functions of the latter provide novel fermionic forms for the characters of the irreducible representations in both Ramond and Neveu-Schwarz sectors.Comment: 12 page

Normal Mode Determination of Perovskite Crystal Structures with Octahedral Rotations: Theory and Applications

Nuclear site analysis methods are used to enumerate the normal modes of $ABX_{3}$ perovskite polymorphs with octahedral rotations. We provide the modes of the fourteen subgroups of the cubic aristotype describing the Glazer octahedral tilt patterns, which are obtained from rotations of the $BX_{6}$ octahedra with different sense and amplitude about high symmetry axes. We tabulate all normal modes of each tilt system and specify the contribution of each atomic species to the mode displacement pattern, elucidating the physical meaning of the symmetry unique modes. We have systematically generated 705 schematic atomic displacement patterns for the normal modes of all 15 (14 rotated + 1 unrotated) Glazer tilt systems. We show through some illustrative examples how to use these tables to identify the octahedral rotations, symmetric breathing, and first-order Jahn-Teller anti-symmetric breathing distortions of the $BX_{6}$ octahedra, and the associated Raman selection rules. We anticipate that these tables and schematics will be useful in understanding the lattice dynamics of bulk perovskites and would serve as reference point in elucidating the atomic origin of a wide range of physical properties in synthetic perovskite thin films and superlattices.Comment: 17 pages, 3 figures, 17 tables. Supporting information accessed through link specified within manuscrip

Un modèle d'interaction réaliste pour la simulation de marchés financiers

Dans les modèles de marché multi-agents utilisés habituellement, la structure du marché est presque toujours réduite à une équation qui aggrège les décisions des agents de façon synchrone pour mettre à jour le prix de l'action à chaque pas de temps. Sur les marchés réels, ce processus est totalement différent : le prix de l'action émerge d'interactions survenant de manière asynchrone entre les acheteurs et les vendeurs. Dans cet article, nous introduisons un modèle de marché artificiel conçu pour être le plus proche possible de la structure des marchés réels. Ce modèle est basé sur un carnet d'ordres à travers lequel les agents échangent des actions de manière asynchrone. Nous montrons que, sans émettre d'hypothèses particulières sur le comportement des agents, ce modèle exhibe de nombreuses propriétés statistiques des marchés réels. Nous soutenons que la plupart de ces propriétés proviennent de la manière dont les agents interagissent plutôt que de leurs comportements. Ce résutat expérimental est validé et renforcé grâce à l'utilisation de nombreux tests statistiques utilisés par les économistes pour caractériser les propriétés des marchés réels. Nous finissons par quelques perspectives ouvertes par les avantages de l'utilisation de tels modèles pour le développement, le test et la validation d'automates d'investissement. In usual multi-agent stock market models, market structure is mostly reduced to an equation matching supply and demand, which synchronously aggregates agents decisions to update stock price at each time steps. On real markets, the process is however very different: stock price emerges from one-to one asynchronous interactions between buyers and sellers at various time step. In this article, we introduce an artificial stock market model designed to be close to real market structure. The model is based on a centralized orderbook through which agents exchange stocks asynchronously.We show that, without making any strong assumption on agents behaviors, this model exhibits many statistical properties of real stock markets. We argue that most of market features are implied by the exchange process more than by agents behaviors. This experimental result is validated and strengthen using several tests used by economists to characterize real market. We finally put in perspective the advantages of such a realistic model to develop, test and validate behavior of automated trading agents

Differential Dynamic Microscopy to characterize Brownian motion and bacteria motility

We have developed a lab work module where we teach undergraduate students how to quantify the dynamics of a suspension of microscopic particles, measuring and analyzing the motion of those particles at the individual level or as a group. Differential Dynamic Microscopy (DDM) is a relatively recent technique that precisely does that and constitutes an alternative method to more classical techniques such as dynamics light scattering (DLS) or video particle tracking (VPT). DDM consists in imaging a particle dispersion with a standard light microscope and a camera. The image analysis requires the students to code and relies on digital Fourier transform to obtain the intermediate scattering function, an autocorrelation function that characterizes the dynamics of the dispersion. We first illustrate DDM on the textbook case of colloids where we measure the diffusion coefficient. Then we show that DDM is a pertinent tool to characterize biologic systems such as motile bacteria i.e.bacteria that can self propel, where we not only determine the diffusion coefficient but also the velocity and the fraction of motile bacteria. Finally, so that our paper can be used as a tutorial to the DDM technique, we have joined to this article movies of the colloidal and bacterial suspensions and the DDM algorithm in both Matlab and Python to analyze the movies

Multicomponent bi-superHamiltonian KdV systems

It is shown that a new class of classical multicomponent super KdV equations is bi-superHamiltonian by extending the method for the verification of graded Jacobi identity. The multicomponent extension of super mKdV equations is obtained by using the super Miura transformation