3,252 research outputs found
Thermoelectric properties of AgGaTe and related chalcopyrite structure materials
We present an analysis of the potential thermoelectric performance of p-type
AgGaTe, which has already shown a of 0.8 with partial optimization,
and observe that the same band structure features, such as a mixture of light
and heavy bands and isotropic transport, that lead to this good performance are
present in certain other ternary chalcopyrite structure semiconductors. We find
that optimal performance of AgGaTe will be found for hole concentrations
between 4 and 2 cm at 900 K, and 2
and 10 cm at 700 K, and that certain other
chalcopyrite semiconductors might show good thermoelectric performance at
similar doping ranges and temperatures if not for higher lattice thermal
conductivity
The actions of Pasteurella multocida toxin on neuronal cells
Pasteurella multocida toxin (PMT) activates the G-proteins Gα, Gα, Gα Gα and Gα by deamidation of specific glutamine residues. A number of these alpha subunits have signalling roles in neurones. Hence we studied the action of this toxin on rat superior cervical ganglion (SCG) neurones and NG108-15 neuronal cells. Both Gα and Gα could be identified in SCGs with immunocytochemistry. PMT had no direct action on Kv7 or Cav2 channels in SCGs. However PMT treatment enhanced muscarinic receptor mediated inhibition of M-current (Kv7.2 + 7. 3) as measured by a 19-fold leftward shift in the oxotremorine-M concentration-inhibition curve. Agonists of other receptors, such as bradykinin or angiotensin, that inhibit M-current did not produce this effect. However the amount of PIP hydrolysis could be enhanced by PMT for all three agonists. In a transduction system in SCGs that is unlikely to be affected by PMT, Go mediated inhibition of calcium current, PMT was ineffective whereas the response was blocked by pertussis toxin as expected. M1 muscarinic receptor evoked calcium mobilisation in transformed NG108-15 cells was enhanced by PMT. The calcium rises evoked by uridine triphosphate acting on endogenous P2Y receptors in NG108-15 cells were enhanced by PMT. The time and concentration dependence of the PMT effect was different for the resting calcium compared to the calcium rise produced by activation of P2Y receptors. PMT's action on these neuronal cells would suggest that if it got into the brain, symptoms of a hyperexcitable nature would be seen, such as seizures. © 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved
``Good Propagation'' Constraints on Dual Invariant Actions in Electrodynamics and on Massless Fields
We present some consequences of non-anomalous propagation requirements on
various massless fields. Among the models of nonlinear electrodynamics we show
that only Maxwell and Born-Infeld also obey duality invariance. Separately we
show that, for actions depending only on the F_\mn^2 invariant, the permitted
models have . We also characterize acceptable
vector-scalar systems. Finally we find that wide classes of gravity models
share with Einstein the null nature of their characteristic surfaces.Comment: 11 pages, LaTeX, no figure
How to detect level crossings without looking at the spectrum
We remind the reader that it is possible to tell if two or more eigenvalues
of a matrix are equal, without calculating the eigenvalues. We then use this
property to detect (avoided) crossings in the spectra of quantum Hamiltonians
representable by matrices. This approach provides a pedagogical introduction to
(avoided) crossings, is capable of handling realistic Hamiltonians
analytically, and offers a way to visualize crossings which is sometimes
superior to that provided by the spectrum. We illustrate the method using the
Breit-Rabi Hamiltonian to describe the hyperfine-Zeeman structure of the ground
state hydrogen atom in a uniform magnetic field.Comment: Accepted for publication in the American Journal of Physic
First-order symmetric-hyperbolic Einstein equations with arbitrary fixed gauge
We find a one-parameter family of variables which recast the 3+1 Einstein
equations into first-order symmetric-hyperbolic form for any fixed choice of
gauge. Hyperbolicity considerations lead us to a redefinition of the lapse in
terms of an arbitrary factor times a power of the determinant of the 3-metric;
under certain assumptions, the exponent can be chosen arbitrarily, but
positive, with no implication of gauge-fixing.Comment: 5 pages; Latex with Revtex v3.0 macro package and style; to appear in
Phys. Rev. Let
Odd Parity and Line Nodes in Non-Symmorphic Superconductors
Group theory arguments have been invoked to argue that odd parity order
parameters cannot have line nodes in the presence of spin-orbit coupling. In
this paper we show that these arguments do not hold for certain non-symmorphic
superconductors. Specifically, we demonstrate that when the underlying crystal
has a twofold screw axis, half of the odd parity representations vanish on the
Brillouin zone face perpendicular to this axis. Many unconventional
superconductors have non-symmorphic space groups, and we discuss implications
for several materials, including UPt3, UBe13, Li2Pt3B and Na4Ir3O8.Comment: 4 page
Displacement Echoes: Classical Decay and Quantum Freeze
Motivated by neutron scattering experiments, we investigate the decay of the
fidelity with which a wave packet is reconstructed by a perfect time-reversal
operation performed after a phase space displacement. In the semiclassical
limit, we show that the decay rate is generically given by the Lyapunov
exponent of the classical dynamics. For small displacements, we additionally
show that, following a short-time Lyapunov decay, the decay freezes well above
the ergodic value because of quantum effects. Our analytical results are
corroborated by numerical simulations
Time evolution and squeezing of the field amplitude in cavity QED
We present the conditional time evolution of the electromagnetic field
produced by a cavity QED system in the strongly coupled regime. We obtain the
conditional evolution through a wave-particle correlation function that
measures the time evolution of the field after the detection of a photon. A
connection exists between this correlation function and the spectrum of
squeezing which permits the study of squeezed states in the time domain. We
calculate the spectrum of squeezing from the master equation for the reduced
density matrix using both the quantum regression theorem and quantum
trajectories. Our calculations not only show that spontaneous emission degrades
the squeezing signal, but they also point to the dynamical processes that cause
this degradation.Comment: 12 pages. Submitted to JOSA
Conservation laws in the continuum systems
We study the conservation laws of both the classical and the quantum
mechanical continuum type systems. For the classical case, we introduce
new integrals of motion along the recent ideas of Shastry and Sutherland (SS),
supplementing the usual integrals of motion constructed much earlier by Moser.
We show by explicit construction that one set of integrals can be related
algebraically to the other. The difference of these two sets of integrals then
gives rise to yet another complete set of integrals of motion. For the quantum
case, we first need to resum the integrals proposed by Calogero, Marchioro and
Ragnisco. We give a diagrammatic construction scheme for these new integrals,
which are the quantum analogues of the classical traces. Again we show that
there is a relationship between these new integrals and the quantum integrals
of SS by explicit construction.Comment: 19 RevTeX 3.0 pages with 2 PS-figures include
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