Workgroup Report: Indoor Chemistry and Health

Chemicals present in indoor air can react with one another, either in the gas phase or on surfaces, altering the concentrations of both reactants and products. Such chemistry is often the major source of free radicals and other short-lived reactive species in indoor environments. To what extent do the products of indoor chemistry affect human health? To address this question, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health sponsored a workshop titled “Indoor Chemistry and Health” on 12–15 July 2004 at the University of California–Santa Cruz. Approximately 70 experts from eight countries participated. Objectives included enhancing communications between researchers in indoor chemistry and health professionals, as well as defining a list of priority research needs related to the topic of the workshop. The ultimate challenges in this emerging field are defining exposures to the products of indoor chemistry and developing an understanding of the links between these exposures and various health outcomes. The workshop was a step toward meeting these challenges. This summary presents the issues discussed at the workshop and the priority research needs identified by the attendees

Dynamics of the Hubbard model: a general approach by time dependent variational principle

We describe the quantum dynamics of the Hubbard model at semi-classical level, by implementing the Time-Dependent Variational Principle (TDVP) procedure on appropriate macroscopic wavefunctions constructed in terms of su(2)-coherent states. Within the TDVP procedure, such states turn out to include a time-dependent quantum phase, part of which can be recognized as Berry's phase. We derive two new semi-classical model Hamiltonians for describing the dynamics in the paramagnetic, superconducting, antiferromagnetic and charge density wave phases and solve the corresponding canonical equations of motion in various cases. Noticeably, a vortex-like ground state phase dynamics is found to take place for U>0 away from half filling. Moreover, it appears that an oscillatory-like ground state dynamics survives at the Fermi surface at half-filling for any U. The low-energy dynamics is also exactly solved by separating fast and slow variables. The role of the time-dependent phase is shown to be particularly interesting in the ordered phases.Comment: ReVTeX file, 38 pages, to appear on Phys. Rev.

Sintered Hydroxyapatite Ceramic for Wear Studies

A sintered hydroxyapatite (HAP) ceramic for use in wear studies was prepared from a commerical tricalcium phosphate. The sintered HAP had physical properties close to those of human enamel. The coefficient of friction and wear of the sintered HAP ceramic as characterized by tangential force, track width, and surface failure data, approximated those of human enamel.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/67948/2/10.1177_00220345780570070401.pd

Weak and strong electronic correlations in Fe superconductors

In this chapter the strength of electronic correlations in the normal phase of Fe-superconductors is discussed. It will be shown that the agreement between a wealth of experiments and DFT+DMFT or similar approaches supports a scenario in which strongly-correlated and weakly-correlated electrons coexist in the conduction bands of these materials. I will then reverse-engineer the realistic calculations and justify this scenario in terms of simpler behaviors easily interpreted through model results. All pieces come together to show that Hund's coupling, besides being responsible for the electronic correlations even in absence of a strong Coulomb repulsion is also the origin of a subtle emergent behavior: orbital decoupling. Indeed Hund's exchange decouples the charge excitations in the different Iron orbitals involved in the conduction bands thus causing an independent tuning of the degree of electronic correlation in each one of them. The latter becomes sensitive almost only to the offset of the orbital population from half-filling, where a Mott insulating state is invariably realized at these interaction strengths. Depending on the difference in orbital population a different 'Mottness' affects each orbital, and thus reflects in the conduction bands and in the Fermi surfaces depending on the orbital content.Comment: Book Chapte

X-boson cumulant approach to the periodic Anderson model

The Periodic Anderson Model (PAM) can be studied in the infinite U limit by employing the Hubbard X operators to project out the unwanted states. We have already studied this problem employing the cumulant expansion with the hybridization as perturbation, but the probability conservation of the local states (completeness) is not usually satisfied when partial expansions like the Chain Approximation (CHA) are employed. Here we treat the problem by a technique inspired in the mean field approximation of Coleman's slave-bosons method, and we obtain a description that avoids the unwanted phase transition that appears in the mean-field slave-boson method both when the chemical potential is greater than the localized level Ef at low temperatures (T) and for all parameters at intermediate T.Comment: Submited to Physical Review B 14 pages, 17 eps figures inserted in the tex

Possible isotope effect on the resonance peak formation in high-Tc_c cuprates

Starting from the three-band $p-d$ Hubbard Hamiltonian we derive an effective $t-J$ model including electron-phonon interaction of quasiparticles with optical phonons. Within the effective Hamiltonian we analyze the influence of electronic correlations and electron-phonon interaction on the dynamical spin susceptibility in layered cuprates. We find a huge isotope effect on the resonance peak in the magnetic spin susceptibility, ${Im}\chi({\bf q},\omega)$, seen by inelastic neutron scattering. It results from both the electron-phonon coupling and the electronic correlation effects taken into account beyond random phase approximation(RPA) scheme. We find at optimal doping the isotope coeffiecient $\alpha_{res} \approx 0.35$ which can be further tested experimentally.Comment: revised version, new figure is added. Phys. Rev. B 69, 0945XX (2004); in pres

Mapping the Two-Component Atomic Fermi Gas to the Nuclear Shell-Model

The physics of a two-component cold fermi gas is now frequently addressed in laboratories. Usually this is done for large samples of tens to hundreds of thousands of particles. However, it is now possible to produce few-body systems (1-100 particles) in very tight traps where the shell structure of the external potential becomes important. A system of two-species fermionic cold atoms with an attractive zero-range interaction is analogous to a simple model of nucleus in which neutrons and protons interact only through a residual pairing interaction. In this article, we discuss how the problem of a two-component atomic fermi gas in a tight external trap can be mapped to the nuclear shell model so that readily available many-body techniques in nuclear physics, such as the Shell Model Monte Carlo (SMMC) method, can be directly applied to the study of these systems. We demonstrate an application of the SMMC method by estimating the pairing correlations in a small two-component Fermi system with moderate-to-strong short-range two-body interactions in a three-dimensional harmonic external trapping potential.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figures. Final versio