607 research outputs found
Transport in molecular states language: Generalized quantum master equation approach
A simple scheme capable of treating transport in molecular junctions in the
language of many-body states is presented. An ansatz in Liouville space similar
to generalized Kadanoff-Baym approximation is introduced in order to reduce
exact equation-of-motion for Hubbard operator to quantum master equation
(QME)-like expression. A dressing with effective Liouville space propagation
similar to standard diagrammatic dressing approach is proposed. The scheme is
compared to standard QME approach, and its applicability to transport
calculations is discussed within numerical examples.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figure
Thermoelectric effects in a strongly correlated model for NaCoO
Thermal response functions of strongly correlated electron systems are of
appreciable interest to the larger scientific community both theoretically and
technologically. Here we focus on the infinitely correlated t-J model on a
geometrically frustrated two-dimensional triangular lattice.
Using exact diagonalization on a finite sized system we calculate the
dynamical thermal response functions in order to determine the thermopower,
Lorenz number, and dimensionless figure of merit. The dynamical thermal
response functions is compared to the infinite frequency limit and shown to be
very weak functions of frequency, hence, establishing the validity of the high
frequency formalism recently proposed by Shastry for the thermopower, Lorenz
number, and the dimensionless figure of merit. Further, the thermopower is
demonstrated to have a low to mid temperature enhancement when the sign of the
hopping parameter is switched from positive to negative for the
geometrically frustrated lattice considered.Comment: 16 pages, 10 figures, color version available at
http://physics.ucsc.edu/~peterson/mrpeterson-condmat-NCO.pdf. V.2 has fixed
minor typos in Eq. 11, 19, 25, and 26. V.3 is a color versio
Carbon assimilation strategies in ultrabasic groundwater: clues from the integrated study of a serpentinization-influenced aquifer
© The Author(s), 2020. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Seyler, L. M., Brazelton, W. J., McLean, C., Putman, L. I., Hyer, A., Kubo, M. D. Y., Hoehler, T., Cardace, D., & Schrenk, M. O. . Carbon assimilation strategies in ultrabasic groundwater: clues from the integrated study of a serpentinization-influenced aquifer. mSystems, 5(2), (2020): e00607-00619, doi: 10.1128/mSystems.00607-19.Serpentinization is a low-temperature metamorphic process by which ultramafic rock chemically reacts with water. Such reactions provide energy and materials that may be harnessed by chemosynthetic microbial communities at hydrothermal springs and in the subsurface. However, the biogeochemistry mediated by microbial populations that inhabit these environments is understudied and complicated by overlapping biotic and abiotic processes. We applied metagenomics, metatranscriptomics, and untargeted metabolomics techniques to environmental samples taken from the Coast Range Ophiolite Microbial Observatory (CROMO), a subsurface observatory consisting of 12 wells drilled into the ultramafic and serpentinite mélange of the Coast Range Ophiolite in California. Using a combination of DNA and RNA sequence data and mass spectrometry data, we found evidence for several carbon fixation and assimilation strategies, including the Calvin-Benson-Bassham cycle, the reverse tricarboxylic acid cycle, the reductive acetyl coenzyme A (acetyl-CoA) pathway, and methylotrophy, in the microbial communities inhabiting the serpentinite-hosted aquifer. Our data also suggest that the microbial inhabitants of CROMO use products of the serpentinization process, including methane and formate, as carbon sources in a hyperalkaline environment where dissolved inorganic carbon is unavailable.We thank McLaughlin Reserve, in particular Paul Aigner and Cathy Koehler, for hosting sampling at CROMO and providing access to the wells, A. Daniel Jones and Anthony Schilmiller for their advice regarding metabolite extraction and mass spectrometry, Elizabeth Kujawinski for her guidance in metabolomics data analysis and interpretation, and Julia McGonigle, Christopher Thornton, and Katrina Twing for assistance with metagenomic and computational analyses
Magnetoresistance Anisotropy of Polycrystalline Cobalt Films: Geometrical-Size- and Domain-Effects
The magnetoresistance (MR) of 10 nm to 200 nm thin polycrystalline Co-films,
deposited on glass and insulating Si(100), is studied in fields up to 120 kOe,
aligned along the three principal directions with respect to the current:
longitudinal, transverse (in-plane), and polar (out-of-plane). At technical
saturation, the anisotropic MR (AMR) in polar fields turns out to be up to
twice as large as in transverse fields, which resembles the yet unexplained
geometrical size-effect (GSE), previously reported for Ni- and Permalloy films.
Upon increasing temperature, the polar and transverse AMR's are reduced by
phonon-mediated sd-scattering, but their ratio, i.e. the GSE remains unchanged.
Basing on Potters's theory [Phys.Rev.B 10, 4626(1974)], we associate the GSE
with an anisotropic effect of the spin-orbit interaction on the sd-scattering
of the minority spins due to a film texture. Below magnetic saturation, the
magnitudes and signs of all three MR's depend significantly on the domain
structures depicted by magnetic force microscopy. Based on hysteresis loops and
taking into account the GSE within an effective medium approach, the three MR's
are explained by the different magnetization processes in the domain states.
These reveal the importance of in-plane uniaxial anisotropy and out-of-plane
texture for the thinnest and thickest films, respectively.Comment: 10 pages, 9 figure
Local Versus Global Thermal States: Correlations and the Existence of Local Temperatures
We consider a quantum system consisting of a regular chain of elementary
subsystems with nearest neighbor interactions and assume that the total system
is in a canonical state with temperature . We analyze under what condition
the state factors into a product of canonical density matrices with respect to
groups of subsystems each, and when these groups have the same temperature
. While in classical mechanics the validity of this procedure only depends
on the size of the groups , in quantum mechanics the minimum group size
also depends on the temperature ! As examples, we apply our
analysis to a harmonic chain and different types of Ising spin chains. We
discuss various features that show up due to the characteristics of the models
considered. For the harmonic chain, which successfully describes thermal
properties of insulating solids, our approach gives a first quantitative
estimate of the minimal length scale on which temperature can exist: This
length scale is found to be constant for temperatures above the Debye
temperature and proportional to below.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures, discussion of results extended, accepted for
publication in Phys. Rev.
The rise and fall of quantum and classical correlations in open-system dynamics
Interacting quantum systems evolving from an uncorrelated composite initial
state generically develop quantum correlations -- entanglement. As a
consequence, a local description of interacting quantum system is impossible as
a rule. A unitarily evolving (isolated) quantum system generically develops
extensive entanglement: the magnitude of the generated entanglement will
increase without bounds with the effective Hilbert space dimension of the
system. It is conceivable, that coupling of the interacting subsystems to local
dephasing environments will restrict the generation of entanglement to such
extent, that the evolving composite system may be considered as approximately
disentangled. This conjecture is addressed in the context of some common models
of a bipartite system with linear and nonlinear interactions and local coupling
to dephasing environments. Analytical and numerical results obtained imply that
the conjecture is generally false. Open dynamics of the quantum correlations is
compared to the corresponding evolution of the classical correlations and a
qualitative difference is found.Comment: 35 pages, 10 figures. Revised according to comments of the referees.
Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.
Recommended from our members
Nanometre-scale thermometry in a living cell
Sensitive probing of temperature variations on nanometre scales is an outstanding challenge in many areas of modern science and technology. In particular, a thermometer capable of subdegree temperature resolution over a large range of temperatures as well as integration within a living system could provide a powerful new tool in many areas of biological, physical and chemical research. Possibilities range from the temperature-induced control of gene expression and tumour metabolism to the cell-selective treatment of disease and the study of heat dissipation in integrated circuits. By combining local light-induced heat sources with sensitive nanoscale thermometry, it may also be possible to engineer biological processes at the subcellular level. Here we demonstrate a new approach to nanoscale thermometry that uses coherent manipulation of the electronic spin associated with nitrogen–vacancy colour centres in diamond. Our technique makes it possible to detect temperature variations as small as 1.8 mK (a sensitivity of in an ultrapure bulk diamond sample. Using nitrogen–vacancy centres in diamond nanocrystals (nanodiamonds), we directly measure the local thermal environment on length scales as short as 200 nanometres. Finally, by introducing both nanodiamonds and gold nanoparticles into a single human embryonic fibroblast, we demonstrate temperature-gradient control and mapping at the subcellular level, enabling unique potential applications in life sciences.Physic
Do interactions increase or reduce the conductance of disordered electrons? It depends!
We investigate the influence of electron-electron interactions on the
conductance of two-dimensional disordered spinless electrons. By using an
efficient numerical method which is based on exact diagonalization in a
truncated basis of Hartree-Fock states we are able to determine the exact
low-energy properties of comparatively large systems in the diffusive as well
as in the localized regimes. We find that weak interactions increase the d.c.
conductance in the localized regime while they decrease the d.c. conductance in
the diffusive regime. Strong interactions always decrease the conductance. We
also study the localization of single-particle excitations close to the Fermi
energy which turns out to be only weakly influenced by the interactions.Comment: final version as publsihed, 4 pages REVTEX, 6 EPS figures include
Free Meixner states
Free Meixner states are a class of functionals on non-commutative polynomials
introduced in math.CO/0410482. They are characterized by a resolvent-type form
for the generating function of their orthogonal polynomials, by a recursion
relation for those polynomials, or by a second-order non-commutative
differential equation satisfied by their free cumulant functional. In this
paper, we construct an operator model for free Meixner states. By combinatorial
methods, we also derive an operator model for their free cumulant functionals.
This, in turn, allows us to construct a number of examples. Many of these
examples are shown to be trivial, in the sense of being free products of
functionals which depend on only a single variable, or rotations of such free
products. On the other hand, the multinomial distribution is a free Meixner
state and is not a product. Neither is a large class of tracial free Meixner
states which are analogous to the simple quadratic exponential families in
statistics.Comment: 30 page
Mouse hepatitis virus neurovirulence: evidence of a linkage between S glycoprotein expression and immunopathology.
Differences in disease outcome between the highly neurovirulent MHV-JHM and mildly neurovirulent MHV-A59 have been attributed to variations within the spike (S) glycoprotein. Previously, we found that MHV-JHM neurovirulence was marked by diminished expression of interferon-gamma (IFN-gamma) mRNA and a reduced presence of CD8 T cells in the CNS concomitant with heightened macrophage inflammatory protein (MIP)-1 transcript levels and greater macrophage infiltration relative to MHV-A59 infection. Here, the ability of the S and non-spike genes to regulate these immune responses was evaluated using chimeric viruses. Chimeric viruses WTR13 and S4R22 were made on MHV-A59 variant backgrounds and, respectively, contained the S gene of MHV-A59 and MHV-JHM. Unexpectedly, genes other than S appeared to modulate events critical to viral replication and survival. Unlike unresolving MHV-JHM infections, the clearance of WTR13 and S4R22 infections coincided with strong IFN-gamma transcription and an increase in the number of CD8 T cells infiltrating into the CNS. However, despite the absence of detectable viral titers, approximately 40% of S4R22-infected mice succumbed within 3 weeks, indicating that the enhanced mortality following S4R22 infection was not associated with high viral titers. Instead, similar to the MHV-JHM infection, reduced survival following S4R22 infection was observed in the presence of elevated MIP-1alpha and MIP-1beta mRNA accumulation and enhanced macrophage numbers within infected brains. These observations suggest that the S protein of MHV-JHM influences neurovirulence through the induction of MIP-1alpha- and MIP-1beta-driven macrophage immunopathology
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