10,775 research outputs found
Measurement induced quantum-classical transition
A model of an electrical point contact coupled to a mechanical system
(oscillator) is studied to simulate the dephasing effect of measurement on a
quantum system. The problem is solved at zero temperature under conditions of
strong non-equilibrium in the measurement apparatus. For linear coupling
between the oscillator and tunneling electrons, it is found that the oscillator
dynamics becomes damped, with the effective temperature determined by the
voltage drop across the junction. It is demonstrated that both the quantum
heating and the quantum damping of the oscillator manifest themselves in the
current-voltage characteristic of the point contact.Comment: in RevTex, 1 figure, corrected notatio
Ionoluminescence: A New Tool for Nuclear Microprobes in Geology
When an ion beam in the energy range of a few MeV/amu impacts on a mineral, visible light can often be observed. This light, induced by energetic ions, is termed ionoluminescence (IL). The intensity and wavelength of the ionoluminescent light provide information concerning the nature of luminescence centers, such as trace substituents and structural defects, found in the mineral. This makes IL a useful complement to other methods of ion beam analysis (IBA), such as particle induced X-ray emission (PIXE) and Rutherford backscattering (RBS), in characterizing geological samples. In the present study, a proton or alpha particle beam was used for the IL excitation and IBA with a nuclear microprobe. The results obtained with IL were compared with those of cathodoluminescence (CL) and photoluminescence (PL)
Eta Carinae -- Physics of the Inner Ejecta
Eta Carinae's inner ejecta are dominated observationally by the bright
Weigelt blobs and their famously rich spectra of nebular emission and
absorption lines. They are dense (n_e ~ 10^7 to 10^8 cm^-3), warm (T_e ~ 6000
to 7000 K) and slow moving (~40 km/s) condensations of mostly neutral (H^0)
gas. Located within 1000 AU of the central star, they contain heavily
CNO-processed material that was ejected from the star about a century ago.
Outside the blobs, the inner ejecta include absorption-line clouds with similar
conditions, plus emission-line gas that has generally lower densities and a
wider range of speeds (reaching a few hundred km/s) compared to the blobs. The
blobs appear to contain a negligible amount of dust and have a nearly dust-free
view of the central source, but our view across the inner ejecta is severely
affected by uncertain amounts of dust having a patchy distribution in the
foreground. Emission lines from the inner ejecta are powered by photoionization
and fluorescent processes. The variable nature of this emission, occurring in a
5.54 yr event cycle, requires specific changes to the incident flux that hold
important clues to the nature of the central object.Comment: This is Chapter 5 in a book entitled: Eta Carinae and the Supernova
Impostors, Kris Davidson and Roberta M. Humphreys, editors Springe
Concurrent adaptation to opposing visual displacements during an alternating movement.
It has been suggested that, during tasks in which subjects are exposed to a visual rotation of cursor feedback, alternating bimanual adaptation to opposing rotations is as rapid as unimanual adaptation to a single rotation (Bock et al. in Exp Brain Res 162:513â519, 2005). However, that experiment did not test strict alternation of the limbs but short alternate blocks of trials. We have therefore tested adaptation under alternate left/right hand movement with opposing rotations. It was clear that the left and right hand, within the alternating conditions, learnt to adapt to the opposing displacements at a similar rate suggesting that two adaptive states were formed concurrently. We suggest that the separate limbs are used as contextual cues to switch between the relevant adaptive states. However, we found that during online correction the alternating conditions had a significantly slower rate of adaptation in comparison to the unimanual conditions. Control conditions indicate that the results are not directly due the alternation between limbs or to the constant switching of vision between the two eyes. The negative interference may originate from the requirement to dissociate the visual information of these two alternating displacements to allow online control of the two arms
Electronic polymers in lipid membranes
Electrical interfaces between biological cells and man-made electrical devices exist in many forms, but it remains a challenge to bridge the different mechanical and chemical environments of electronic conductors (metals, semiconductors) and biosystems. Here we demonstrate soft electrical interfaces, by integrating the metallic polymer PEDOT-S into lipid membranes. By preparing complexes between alkyl-ammonium salts and PEDOT-S we were able to integrate PEDOT-S into both liposomes and in lipid bilayers on solid surfaces. This is a step towards efficient electronic conduction within lipid membranes. We also demonstrate that the PEDOT-S@alkyl-ammonium:lipid hybrid structures created in this work affect ion channels in the membrane of Xenopus oocytes, which shows the possibility to access and control cell membrane structures with conductive polyelectrolytes
Powers of Hamilton cycles in pseudorandom graphs
We study the appearance of powers of Hamilton cycles in pseudorandom graphs,
using the following comparatively weak pseudorandomness notion. A graph is
-pseudorandom if for all disjoint and with and we have
. We prove that for all there is an
such that an -pseudorandom graph on
vertices with minimum degree at least contains the square of a
Hamilton cycle. In particular, this implies that -graphs with
contain the square of a Hamilton cycle, and thus
a triangle factor if is a multiple of . This improves on a result of
Krivelevich, Sudakov and Szab\'o [Triangle factors in sparse pseudo-random
graphs, Combinatorica 24 (2004), no. 3, 403--426].
We also extend our result to higher powers of Hamilton cycles and establish
corresponding counting versions.Comment: 30 pages, 1 figur
The General Supersymmetric Solution of Topologically Massive Supergravity
We find the general fully non-linear solution of topologically massive
supergravity admitting a Killing spinor. It is of plane-wave type, with a null
Killing vector field. Conversely, we show that all solutions with a null
Killing vector are supersymmetric for one or the other choice of sign for the
Chern-Simons coupling constant \mu. If \mu does not take the critical value
\mu=\pm 1, these solutions are asymptotically regular on a Poincar\'e patch,
but do not admit a smooth global compactification with boundary S^1\times\R. In
the critical case, the solutions have a logarithmic singularity on the boundary
of the Poincar\'e patch. We derive a Nester-Witten identity, which allows us to
identify the associated charges, but we conclude that the presence of the
Chern-Simons term prevents us from making a statement about their positivity.
The Nester-Witten procedure is applied to the BTZ black hole.Comment: Minor correction
The Cerium volume collapse: Results from the LDA+DMFT approach
The merger of density-functional theory in the local density approximation
(LDA) and many-body dynamical mean field theory (DMFT) allows for an ab initio
calculation of Ce including the inherent 4f electronic correlations. We solve
the DMFT equations by the quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) technique and calculate the
Ce energy, spectrum, and double occupancy as a function of volume. At low
temperatures, the correlation energy exhibits an anomalous region of negative
curvature which drives the system towards a thermodynamic instability, i.e.,
the -to- volume collapse, consistent with experiment. The
connection of the energetic with the spectral evolution shows that the physical
origin of the energy anomaly and, thus, the volume collapse is the appearance
of a quasiparticle resonance in the 4f-spectrum which is accompanied by a rapid
growth in the double occupancy.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure
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