Dispersive Gap Mode of Phonons in Anisotropic Superconductors

We estimate the effect of the superconducting gap anisotropy in the dispersive gap mode of phonons, which is observed by the neutron scattering on borocarbide superconductors. We numerically analyze the phonon spectrum considering the electron-phonon coupling, and examine contributions coming from the gap suppression and the sign change of the pairing function on the Fermi surface. When the sign of the pairing function is changed by the nesting translation, the gap mode does not appear. We also discuss the suppression of the phonon softening of the Kohn anomaly due to the onset of superconductivity. We demonstrate that observation of the gap dispersive mode is useful for sorting out the underlying superconducting pairing function.Comment: 7 pages, 12 figures, to be published in J. Phys. Soc. Jp

Terminal velocity and drag reduction measurements on superhydrophobic spheres

Super water-repellent surfaces occur naturally on plants and aquatic insects and are created in the laboratory by combining micro- or nanoscale surface topographic features with hydrophobic surface chemistry. When such types of water-repellent surfaces are submerged they can retain a film of air (a plastron). In this work, we report measurements of the terminal velocity of solid acrylic spheres with various surface treatments settling under the action of gravity in water. We observed increases in terminal velocity corresponding to drag reduction of between 5% and 15% for superhydrophobic surfaces that carry plastrons

One-Dimensional Confinement and Enhanced Jahn-Teller Instability in LaVO3_3

Ordering and quantum fluctuations of orbital degrees of freedom are studied theoretically for LaVO$_3$ in spin-C-type antiferromagnetic state. The effective Hamiltonian for the orbital pseudospin shows strong one-dimensional anisotropy due to the negative interference among various exchange processes. This significantly enhances the instability toward lattice distortions for the realistic estimate of the Jahn-Teller coupling by first-principle LDA+$U$ calculations, instead of favoring the orbital singlet formation. This explains well the experimental results on the anisotropic optical spectra as well as the proximity of the two transition temperatures for spin and orbital orderings.Comment: 4 pages including 4 figure

Charge and orbital ordering in underdoped La1-xSrxMnO3

We have explored spin, charge and orbitally ordered states in La1-xSrxMnO3 (0 < x < 1/2) using model Hartree-Fock calculations on d-p-type lattice models. At x=1/8, several charge and orbitally modulated states are found to be stable and almost degenerate in energy with a homogeneous ferromagnetic state. The present calculation indicates that a ferromagnetic state with a charge modulation along the c-axis which is consistent with the experiment by Yamada et al. might be responsible for the anomalous behavior around x = 1/8.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure

The Rewards of Patience: An 822 Day Time Delay in the Gravitational Lens SDSS J1004+4112

We present 107 new epochs of optical monitoring data for the four brightest images of the gravitational lens SDSS J1004+4112 observed between October 2006 and June 2007. Combining this data with the previously obtained light curves, we determine the time delays between images A, B and C. We confirm our previous measurement finding that A leads B by dt_BA=40.6+-1.8 days, and find that image C leads image A by dt_CA=821.6+-2.1 days. The lower limit on the remaining delay is that image D lags image A by dt_AD>1250 days. Based on the microlensing of images A and B we estimate that the accretion disk size at a rest wavelength of 2300 angstrom is 10^{14.8+-0.3} cm for a disk inclination of cos{i}=1/2, which is consistent with the microlensing disk size-black hole mass correlation function given our estimate of the black hole mass from the MgII line width of logM_BH/M_sun=8.44+-0.14. The long delays allow us to fill in the seasonal gaps and assemble a continuous, densely sampled light curve spanning 5.7 years whose variability implies a structure function with a logarithmic slope of gamma = 0.35+-0.02. As C is the leading image, sharp features in the C light curve can be intensively studied 2.3 years later in the A/B pair, potentially allowing detailed reverberation mapping studies of a quasar at minimal cost.Comment: Submitted to ApJ, 12 pages, 3 figure

Numerical Evaluation of Gauge Invariants for aa-gauge Solutions in Open String Field Theory

We evaluate gauge invariants (vacuum energy and gauge invariant overlap) for numerical classical solutions in cubic open string field theory under Asano-Kato's $a$-gauge fixing condition. We propose an efficient iterative procedure for solving the equations of motion so that the BRST invariance of the solutions is numerically ensured. The resulting gauge invariants are numerically stable and almost equal to those of Schnabl's tachyon vacuum solution in the well-defined region of a gauge parameter. These results provide further evidence that the numerical and analytical solutions are gauge equivalent.Comment: 19 pages, 10 figures; v2:typos corrected, version to appear in PT

A natural renormalizable model of metastable SUSY breaking

We propose a model of metastable dynamical supersymmetry breaking in which all scales are generated dynamically. Our construction is a simple variant of the Intriligator-Seiberg-Shih model, with quark masses induced by renormalizable couplings to an auxiliary supersymmetric QCD sector. Since all scales arise from dimensional transmutation, the model has no fundamental dimensionful parameters. It also does not rely on higher-dimensional operators.Comment: 9 pages; v2: typos correcte