422 research outputs found
Monitoring mouse retinal degeneration with high-resolution spectral-domain optical coherence tomography
Progression of retinal degeneration in a mouse model was studied in vivo with high-resolution spectral-domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT). Imaging in 3D with high depth resolution (<3 mu m), SD-OCT resolved all the major layers of the retina of control C57BL/6J mice. Images of transgenic mice having a null mutation of the rhodopsin gene revealed the anatomical consequences of retinal degeneration: thinning of the outer retina, including the outer plexiform layer (OPL), outer nuclear layer (ONL), and inner and outer segments (IS/OS). We monitored the progression of retinal degeneration in rd1 mice (C3H/HeJ) by periodically imaging the same mice from the time the pups opened their eyes on P13 to P34. SD-OCT images showed that the outer retina (OPL, ONL, IS/OS) had already thinned by 73% (100 to 27 mu m) at eye opening. The retina continued to degenerate, and by P20 the outer retina was not resolvable. The thickness of entire retina decreased from 228 mu m (control) to 152 mu m on P13 and to 98 mu m by P34, a 57% reduction with the complete loss in the outer retina. In summary, we show that SD-OCT can monitor the progression of retinal degeneration in transgenic mice.X114367sciescopu
Landau Expansion for the Kugel-Khomskii Hamiltonian
The Kugel-Khomskii (KK) Hamiltonian for the titanates describes spin and
orbital superexchange interactions between ions in an ideal perovskite
structure in which the three orbitals are degenerate in energy and
electron hopping is constrained by cubic site symmetry. In this paper we
implement a variational approach to mean-field theory in which each site, ,
has its own single-site density matrix \rhov(i), where , the
number of allowed single-particle states, is 6 (3 orbital times 2 spin states).
The variational free energy from this 35 parameter density matrix is shown to
exhibit the unusual symmetries noted previously which lead to a
wavevector-dependent susceptibility for spins in orbitals which is
dispersionless in the -direction. Thus, for the cubic KK model
itself, mean-field theory does not provide wavevector `selection', in agreement
with rigorous symmetry arguments. We consider the effect of including various
perturbations. When spin-orbit interactions are introduced, the susceptibility
has dispersion in all directions in -space, but the resulting
antiferromagnetic mean-field state is degenerate with respect to global
rotation of the staggered spin, implying that the spin-wave spectrum is
gapless. This possibly surprising conclusion is also consistent with rigorous
symmetry arguments. When next-nearest-neighbor hopping is included, staggered
moments of all orbitals appear, but the sum of these moments is zero, yielding
an exotic state with long-range order without long-range spin order. The effect
of a Hund's rule coupling of sufficient strength is to produce a state with
orbital order.Comment: 20 pages, 5 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev. B (2003
Electromagnetic properties of graphene junctions
A resonant chiral tunneling (CT) across a graphene junction (GJ) induced by
an external electromagnetic field (EF) is studied. Modulation of the electron
and hole wavefunction phases by the external EF during the CT
processes strongly impacts the CT directional diagram. Therefore the a.c.
transport characteristics of GJs depend on the EF polarization and frequency
considerably. The GJ shows great promises for various nanoelectronic
applications working in the THz diapason.Comment: 4 pages 3 figure
Three dimensional tracking for volumetric spectral-domain optical coherence tomography
We present a three-dimensional (3D) tracker for a clinical ophthalmic spectral domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT) system that combines depth-tracking with lateral tracking, providing a stabilized reference frame for 3D data recording and post acquisition analysis. The depth-tracking system is implemented through a real-time dynamic feedback mechanism to compensate for motion artifact in the axial direction. Active monitoring of the retina and adapting the reference arm of the interferometer allowed the whole thickness of the retina to be stabilized to within +/- 100 mu m. We achieve a relatively constant SNR from image to image by stabilizing the image of the retina with respect to the depth dependent sensitivity of SD-OCT. The depth tracking range of our system is 5.2 mm in air and the depth is adjusted every frame. Enhancement in the stability of the images with the depth-tracking algorithm is demonstrated on a healthy volunteer.X1119sciescopu
Vortex structure in d-density wave scenario of pseudogap
We investigate the vortex structure assuming the d-density wave scenario of
the pseudogap. We discuss the profiles of the order parameters in the vicinity
of the vortex, effective vortex charge and the local density of states. We find
a pronounced modification of these quantities when compared to a purely
superconducting case. Results have been obtained for a clean system as well as
in the presence of a nonmagnetic impurity. We show that the competition between
superconductivity and the density wave may explain some experimental data
recently obtained for high-temperature superconductors. In particular, we show
that the d-density wave scenario explains the asymmetry of the gap observed in
the vicinity of the vortex core.Comment: 8 pages, 10 figure
Geometry and cosmological perturbations in the bulk inflaton model
We consider a braneworld inflation model driven by the dynamics of a scalar
field living in the 5-dimensional bulk, the so-called ``bulk inflaton model'',
and investigate the geometry in the bulk and large scale cosmological
perturbations on the brane. The bulk gravitational effects on the brane are
described by a projection of the 5-dimensional Weyl tensor, which we denote by
. Focusing on a tachionic potential model, we take a perturbative
approach in the anti-de Sitter (AdS) background with a single de Sitter
brane. We first formulate the evolution equations for in the bulk.
Next, applying them to the case of a spatially homogeneous brane, we obtain two
different integral expressions for . One of them reduces to the
expression obtained previously when evaluated on the brane. The other is a new
expression that may be useful for analyzing the bulk geometry. Then we consider
superhorizon scale cosmological perturbations and evaluate the bulk effects
onto the brane. In the limit , where is the Hubble parameter
on the brane and is the bulk curvature radius, we find that the
effective theory on the brane is identical to the 4-dimensional Einstein-scalar
theory with a simple rescaling of the potential even under the presence of
inhomogeneities. % atleast on super-Hubble horizon scales. In particular, it is
found that the anticipated non-trivial bulk effect due to the spatially
anisotropic part of may appear only at %second order in the low
energy expansion, i.e., at .Comment: 21 pages including 6 pages for several appendixes, no figure
Dynamical mean-field approach to materials with strong electronic correlations
We review recent results on the properties of materials with correlated
electrons obtained within the LDA+DMFT approach, a combination of a
conventional band structure approach based on the local density approximation
(LDA) and the dynamical mean-field theory (DMFT). The application to four
outstanding problems in this field is discussed: (i) we compute the full
valence band structure of the charge-transfer insulator NiO by explicitly
including the p-d hybridization, (ii) we explain the origin for the
simultaneously occuring metal-insulator transition and collapse of the magnetic
moment in MnO and Fe2O3, (iii) we describe a novel GGA+DMFT scheme in terms of
plane-wave pseudopotentials which allows us to compute the orbital order and
cooperative Jahn-Teller distortion in KCuF3 and LaMnO3, and (iv) we provide a
general explanation for the appearance of kinks in the effective dispersion of
correlated electrons in systems with a pronounced three-peak spectral function
without having to resort to the coupling of electrons to bosonic excitations.
These results provide a considerable progress in the fully microscopic
investigations of correlated electron materials.Comment: 24 pages, 14 figures, final version, submitted to Eur. Phys. J. for
publication in the Special Topics volume "Cooperative Phenomena in Solids:
Metal-Insulator Transitions and Ordering of Microscopic Degrees of Freedom
Stable, Time-Dependent, Exact Solutions for Brane Models with a Bulk Scalar Field
We derive two classes of brane-world solutions arising in the presence of a
bulk scalar field. For static field configurations, we adopt a time-dependent,
factorizable metric ansatz that allows for radion stabilization. The solutions
are characterized by a non-trivial warping along the extra dimension, even in
the case of a vanishing bulk cosmological constant, and lead to a variety of
inflationary, time-dependent solutions of the 3D scale factor on the brane. We
also derive the constraints necessary for the stability of these solutions
under time-dependent perturbations of the radion field, and we demonstrate the
existence of phenomenologically interesting, stable solutions with a positive
cosmological constant on the brane.Comment: 24 pages, latex, 4 eps figur
Caustic avoidance in Horava-Lifshitz gravity
There are at least four versions of Horava-Lishitz gravity in the literature.
We consider the version without the detailed balance condition with the
projectability condition and address one aspect of the theory: avoidance of
caustics for constant time hypersurfaces. We show that there is no caustic with
plane symmetry in the absence of matter source if \lambda\ne 1. If \lambda=1 is
a stable IR fixed point of the renormalization group flow then \lambda is
expected to deviate from 1 near would-be caustics, where the extrinsic
curvature increases and high-energy corrections become important. Therefore,
the absence of caustics with \lambda\ne 1 implies that caustics cannot form
with this symmetry in the absence of matter source. We argue that inclusion of
matter source will not change the conclusion. We also argue that caustics with
codimension higher than one will not form because of repulsive gravity
generated by nonlinear higher curvature terms. These arguments support our
conjecture that there is no caustic for constant time hypersurfaces. Finally,
we discuss implications to the recently proposed scenario of ``dark matter as
integration constant''.Comment: 19 pages; extended to general z \geq 3, typos corrected (v2); version
accepted for publication in JCAP (v3
Exclusive electroproduction of K+ Lambda and K+ Sigma^0 final states at Q^2 = 0.030-0.055 (GeV/c)^2
Cross section measurements of the exclusive p(e,e'K+)Lambda,Sigma^0
electroproduction reactions have been performed at the Mainz Microtron MAMI in
the A1 spectrometer facility using for the first time the Kaos spectrometer for
kaon detection. These processes were studied in a kinematical region not
covered by any previous experiment. The nucleon was probed in its third
resonance region with virtual photons of low four-momenta, Q^2= 0.030-0.055
(GeV/c)^2. The MAMI data indicate a smooth transition in Q^2 from
photoproduction to electroproduction cross sections. Comparison with
predictions of effective Lagrangian models based on the isobar approach reveal
that strong longitudinal couplings of the virtual photon to the N* resonances
can be excluded from these models.Comment: 16 pages, 7 figure
- …