1D-Disordered Conductor with Loops Immersed in a Magnetic Field

We investigate the conductance of a 1-D disordered conducting loop with two contacts, immersed in a magnetic flux. We show the appearance in this model of the Al'tshuler-Aronov-Spivak behaviour. We also investigate the case of a chain of loops distributed with finite density: in this case we show that the interference effects due to the presence of the loops can lead to the delocalization of the wave function.Comment: 8 pages; LaTeX; IFUM 463/FT; to appear in Phys. Lett.

Optimality in self-organized molecular sorting

We introduce a simple physical picture to explain the process of molecular sorting, whereby specific proteins are concentrated and distilled into submicrometric lipid vesicles in eukaryotic cells. To this purpose, we formulate a model based on the coupling of spontaneous molecular aggregation with vesicle nucleation. Its implications are studied by means of a phenomenological theory describing the diffusion of molecules towards multiple sorting centers that grow due to molecule absorption and are extracted when they reach a sufficiently large size. The predictions of the theory are compared with numerical simulations of a lattice-gas realization of the model and with experimental observations. The efficiency of the distillation process is found to be optimal for intermediate aggregation rates, where the density of sorted molecules is minimal and the process obeys simple scaling laws. Quantitative measures of endocytic sorting performed in primary endothelial cells are compatible with the hypothesis that these optimal conditions are realized in living cells

Statistics of the One-Electron Current in a One-Dimensional Mesoscopic Ring at Arbitrary Magnetic Fields

The set of moments and the distribution function of the one-electron current in a one-dimensional disordered ring with arbitrary magnetic flux are calculated.Comment: 10 pages; Plain TeX; IFUM 448/FT; to appear in J. Stat. Phy

The Lyapunov Spectrum of a Continuous Product of Random Matrices

We expose a functional integration method for the averaging of continuous products $\hat{P}_t$ of $N\times N$ random matrices. As an application, we compute exactly the statistics of the Lyapunov spectrum of $\hat{P}_t$. This problem is relevant to the study of the statistical properties of various disordered physical systems, and specifically to the computation of the multipoint correlators of a passive scalar advected by a random velocity field. Apart from these applications, our method provides a general setting for computing statistical properties of linear evolutionary systems subjected to a white noise force field.Comment: Latex, 9 page

Long-time dynamics of the infinite-temperature Heisenberg magnet

Infinite-temperature long-time dynamics of Heisenberg model ${\bf\hat{H}}=-\frac{1}{2}\sum_{i,j}J_{ij} \hat{\vec{S}}_{i}\hat{\vec{S}}_{j}$ is investigated. It is shown that the quantum spin pair-correlator is equal to the correlator of classically evaluated vector field averaged over the initial conditions with respect to the gaussian measure. In the continious limit case the scaling estimations allow one to find one-point correlator that turns out to be $C(\vec{r}=0;t)\propto const \times t^{-6/7}$. All results are obtained by straightforward procedure without any assumptions of the phenomenological character.Comment: 11 pages, RevTex 3.0, to be published in PRB Feb. 199

Threshold robustness in discrete facility location problems: a bi-objective approach

The two best studied facility location problems are the p-median problem and the uncapacitated facility location problem (Daskin, Network and discrete location: models, algorithms, and applications. Wiley, New York, 1995; Mirchandani and Francis, Discrete location theory. Wiley, New York, 1990). Both seek the location of the facilities minimizing the total cost, assuming no uncertainty in costs exists, and thus all parameters are known. In most real-world location problems the demand is not certain, because it is a long-term planning decision, and thus, together with the minimization of costs, optimizing some robustness measure is sound. In this paper we address bi-objective versions of such location problems, in which the total cost, as well as the robustness associated with the demand, are optimized. A dominating set is constructed for these bi-objective nonlinear integer problems via the ε-constraint method. Computational results on test instances are presented, showing the feasibility of our approach to approximate the Pareto-optimal set