1,676 research outputs found
Density Waves in a Transverse Electric Field
In a quasi-one-dimensional conductor with an open Fermi surface, a Charge or
a Spin Density Wave phase can be destroyed by an electric field perpendicular
to the direction of high conductivity. This mechanism, due to the breakdown of
electron-hole symmetry, is very similar to the orbital destruction of
superconductivity by a magnetic field, due to time-reversal symmetry.Comment: 3 pages, Latex, 2 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev. B Rapid Com
Dynamics of Alpha-Helix Formation in the CSAW Model
We study the folding dynamics of polyalanine (Ala), a protein fragment
with 20 residues whose native state is a single alpha helix. We use the CSAW
model (conditioned self-avoiding walk), which treats the protein molecule as a
chain in Brownian motion, with interactions that include hydrophobic forces and
internal hydrogen bonding. We find that large scale structures form before
small scale structures, and obtain the relevant relaxation times. We find that
helix nucleation occurs at two separate points on the protein chain. The
evolution of small and large scale structures involve different mechanisms.
While the former can be describe by rate equations governing the growth of
helical content, the latter is akin to the relaxation of an elastic solid.Comment: 18 pages, 10 figure
Inflationary Perturbations: the Cosmological Schwinger Effect
This pedagogical review aims at presenting the fundamental aspects of the
theory of inflationary cosmological perturbations of quantum-mechanical origin.
The analogy with the well-known Schwinger effect is discussed in detail and a
systematic comparison of the two physical phenomena is carried out. In
particular, it is demonstrated that the two underlying formalisms differ only
up to an irrelevant canonical transformation. Hence, the basic physical
mechanisms at play are similar in both cases and can be reduced to the
quantization of a parametric oscillator leading to particle creation due to the
interaction with a classical source: pair production in vacuum is therefore
equivalent to the appearance of a growing mode for the cosmological
fluctuations. The only difference lies in the nature of the source: an electric
field in the case of the Schwinger effect and the gravitational field in the
case of inflationary perturbations. Although, in the laboratory, it is
notoriously difficult to produce an electric field such that pairs extracted
from the vacuum can be detected, the gravitational field in the early universe
can be strong enough to lead to observable effects that ultimately reveal
themselves as temperature fluctuations in the Cosmic Microwave Background.
Finally, the question of how quantum cosmological perturbations can be
considered as classical is discussed at the end of the article.Comment: 49 pages, 6 figures, to appear in a LNP volume "Inflationary
Cosmology
The Liquid-Gas Phase Transitions in a Multicomponent Nuclear System with Coulomb and Surface Effects
The liquid-gas phase transition is studied in a multi-component nuclear
system using a local Skyrme interaction with Coulomb and surface effects. Some
features are qualitatively the same as the results of Muller and Serot which
uses relativistic mean field without Coulomb and surface effects. Surface
tension brings the coexistance binodal surface to lower pressure. The Coulomb
interaction makes the binodal surface smaller and cause another pair of binodal
points at low pressure and large proton fraction with less protons in liquid
phase and more protons in gas phase.Comment: 20 pages including 7 postscript figure
Quasiparticle density of states in dirty high-T_c superconductors
We study the density of quasiparticle states of dirty d-wave superconductors.
We show the existence of singular corrections to the density of states due to
quantum interference effects. We then argue that the density of states actually
vanishes in the localized phase as or depending on whether time
reversal is a good symmetry or not. We verify this result for systems without
time reversal symmetry in one dimension using supersymmetry techniques. This
simple, instructive calculation also provides the exact universal scaling
function for the density of states for the crossover from ballistic to
localized behaviour in one dimension. Above two dimensions, we argue that in
contrast to the conventional Anderson localization transition, the density of
states has critical singularities which we calculate in a
expansion. We discuss consequences of our results for various experiments on
dirty high- materials
Conformal Mappings and Dispersionless Toda hierarchy
Let be the space consists of pairs , where is a
univalent function on the unit disc with , is a univalent function
on the exterior of the unit disc with and
. In this article, we define the time variables , on which are holomorphic with respect to the natural
complex structure on and can serve as local complex coordinates
for . We show that the evolutions of the pair with
respect to these time coordinates are governed by the dispersionless Toda
hierarchy flows. An explicit tau function is constructed for the dispersionless
Toda hierarchy. By restricting to the subspace consists
of pairs where , we obtain the integrable hierarchy
of conformal mappings considered by Wiegmann and Zabrodin \cite{WZ}. Since
every homeomorphism of the unit circle corresponds uniquely to
an element of under the conformal welding
, the space can be naturally
identified as a subspace of characterized by . We
show that we can naturally define complexified vector fields \pa_n, n\in \Z
on so that the evolutions of on
with respect to \pa_n satisfy the dispersionless Toda
hierarchy. Finally, we show that there is a similar integrable structure for
the Riemann mappings . Moreover, in the latter case, the time
variables are Fourier coefficients of and .Comment: 23 pages. This is to replace the previous preprint arXiv:0808.072
Distribution and density of the partition function zeros for the diamond-decorated Ising model
Exact renormalization map of temperature between two successive decorated
lattices is given, and the distribution of the partition function zeros in the
complex temperature plane is obtained for any decoration-level. The rule
governing the variation of the distribution pattern as the decoration-level
changes is given. The densities of the zeros for the first two
decoration-levels are calculated explicitly, and the qualitative features about
the densities of higher decoration-levels are given by conjecture. The Julia
set associated with the renormalization map is contained in the distribution of
the zeros in the limit of infinite decoration level, and the formation of the
Julia set in the course of increasing the decoration-level is given in terms of
the variations of the zero density.Comment: 8 pages,8figure
Interaction-Induced Magnetization of the Two-Dimensional Electron Gas
We consider the contribution of electron-electron interactions to the orbital
magnetization of a two-dimensional electron gas, focusing on the ballistic
limit in the regime of negligible Landau-level spacing. This regime can be
described by combining diagrammatic perturbation theory with semiclassical
techniques. At sufficiently low temperatures, the interaction-induced
magnetization overwhelms the Landau and Pauli contributions. Curiously, the
interaction-induced magnetization is third-order in the (renormalized) Coulomb
interaction. We give a simple interpretation of this effect in terms of
classical paths using a renormalization argument: a polygon must have at least
three sides in order to enclose area. To leading order in the renormalized
interaction, the renormalization argument gives exactly the same result as the
full treatment.Comment: 11 pages including 4 ps figures; uses revtex and epsf.st
Second-order corrections to mean field evolution for weakly interacting Bosons. I
Inspired by the works of Rodnianski and Schlein and Wu, we derive a new
nonlinear Schr\"odinger equation that describes a second-order correction to
the usual tensor product (mean-field) approximation for the Hamiltonian
evolution of a many-particle system in Bose-Einstein condensation. We show that
our new equation, if it has solutions with appropriate smoothness and decay
properties, implies a new Fock space estimate. We also show that for an
interaction potential , where is
sufficiently small and , our program can be easily
implemented locally in time. We leave global in time issues, more singular
potentials and sophisticated estimates for a subsequent part (part II) of this
paper
Magnetoresistance of Two-Dimensional Fermions in a Random Magnetic Field
We perform a semiclassical calculation of the magnetoresistance of spinless
two-dimensional fermions in a long-range correlated random magnetic field. In
the regime relevant for the problem of the half filled Landau level the
perturbative Born approximation fails and we develop a new method of solving
the Boltzmann equation beyond the relaxation time approximation. In absence of
interactions, electron density modulations, in-plane fields, and Fermi surface
anisotropy we obtain a quadratic negative magnetoresistance in the weak field
limit.Comment: 12 pages, Latex, no figures, Nordita repor
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