5 research outputs found
A universal scaling law for the evolution of granular gases
Dry, freely evolving granular materials in a dilute gaseous state coalesce
into dense clusters only due to dissipative interactions. This clustering
transition is important for a number of problems ranging from geophysics to
cosmology. Here we show that the evolution of a dilute, freely cooling granular
gas is determined in a universal way by the ratio of inertial flow and thermal
velocities, that is, the Mach number. Theoretical calculations and direct
numerical simulations of the granular Navier--Stokes equations show that
irrespective of the coefficient of restitution, density or initial velocity
distribution, the density fluctuations follow a universal quadratic dependence
on the system's Mach number. We find that the clustering exhibits a scale-free
dynamics but the clustered state becomes observable when the Mach number is
approximately of . Our results provide a method to determine
the age of a granular gas and predict the macroscopic appearance of clusters
Enhancement of the Electron Spin Resonance of Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes by Oxygen Removal
We have observed a nearly fourfold increase in the electron spin resonance
(ESR) signal from an ensemble of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) due to
oxygen desorption. By performing temperature-dependent ESR spectroscopy both
before and after thermal annealing, we found that the ESR in SWCNTs can be
reversibly altered via the molecular oxygen content in the samples. Independent
of the presence of adsorbed oxygen, a Curie-law (spin susceptibility ) is seen from 4 K to 300 K, indicating that the probed spins are
finite-level species. For both the pre-annealed and post-annealed sample
conditions, the ESR linewidth decreased as the temperature was increased, a
phenomenon we identify as motional narrowing. From the temperature dependence
of the linewidth, we extracted an estimate of the intertube hopping frequency;
for both sample conditions, we found this hopping frequency to be 100
GHz. Since the spin hopping frequency changes only slightly when oxygen is
desorbed, we conclude that only the spin susceptibility, not spin transport, is
affected by the presence of physisorbed molecular oxygen in SWCNT ensembles.
Surprisingly, no linewidth change is observed when the amount of oxygen in the
SWCNT sample is altered, contrary to other carbonaceous systems and certain 1D
conducting polymers. We hypothesize that physisorbed molecular oxygen acts as
an acceptor (-type), compensating the donor-like (-type) defects that are
responsible for the ESR signal in bulk SWCNTs.Comment: 14 pages, 7 figure