231 research outputs found
Limits and opportunities of risk analysis application in railway systems
Risk Analysis is a collection of methods widely used in many industrial sectors. In the transport sector it has been particularly used for air transport applications. The reasons for this wide use are well-known: risk analysis allows to approach the safety theme in a stochastic - rather than deterministic - way, it forces to break down the system in sub-components, last but not least it allows a comparison between solutions with different costs, introducing de facto an element of economic feasibility of the project alternatives in the safety field. Apart from the United Kingdom, in Europe the application of this tool in the railway sector is relatively recent. In particular Directive 2004/49/EC (the "railway safety directive") provides for compulsory risk assessment in relation to the activities of railway Infrastructure Managers (IMs) and of Railway
Undertakings (RUs). Nevertheless the peculiarity of the railway system - in which human, procedural, environmental and technological components have a continuous interchange and in which human responsibilities and technological functions often overlap - induced the EC to allow wide margins of subjectivity in the interpretation of risk assessment. When enacting Commission Regulation (EC) No 352/2009 which further regulates this subject, a risk assessment is considered positive also if the IM or RU declare to take safety measures widely used in normal practice. The paper shows the results of a structured comparative analysis of the rail sector and other industrial sectors, which illustrate the difficulties, but also the opportunities, of a transfer towards the railway system of the risk analysis methods currently in use for the other systems
A Tale of Two Metals: contrasting criticalities in the pnictides and hole-doped cuprates
The iron-based high temperature superconductors share a number of
similarities with their copper-based counterparts, such as reduced
dimensionality, proximity to states of competing order, and a critical role for
3d electron orbitals. Their respective temperature-doping phase diagrams also
contain certain commonalities that have led to claims that the metallic and
superconducting properties of both families are governed by their proximity to
a quantum critical point (QCP) located inside the superconducting dome. In this
review, we critically examine these claims and highlight significant
differences in the bulk physical properties of both systems. While there is now
a large body of evidence supporting the presence of a (magnetic) QCP in the
iron pnictides, the situation in the cuprates is much less apparent, at least
for the end point of the pseudogap phase. We argue that the opening of the
normal state pseudogap in cuprates, so often tied to a putative QCP, arises
from a momentum-dependent breakdown of quasiparticle coherence that sets in at
much higher doping levels but which is driven by the proximity to the Mott
insulating state at half filling. Finally, we present a new scenario for the
cuprates in which this loss of quasiparticle integrity and its evolution with
momentum, temperature and doping plays a key role in shaping the resultant
phase diagram.Comment: This key issues review is dedicated to the memory of Dr. John Loram
whose pioneering measurements, analysis and ideas inspired much of its
conten
Coexistence of orbital and quantum critical magnetoresistance in FeSeS
The recent discovery of a non-magnetic nematic quantum critical point (QCP)
in the iron chalcogenide family FeSeS has raised the prospect of
investigating, in isolation, the role of nematicity on the electronic
properties of correlated metals. Here we report a detailed study of the normal
state transverse magnetoresistance (MR) in FeSeS for a series of
S concentrations spanning the nematic QCP. For all temperatures and
\textit{x}-values studied, the MR can be decomposed into two distinct
components: one that varies quadratically in magnetic field strength
and one that follows precisely the quadrature scaling form
recently reported in metals at or close to a QCP and characterized by a
\textit{H}-linear MR over an extended field range. The two components evolve
systematically with both temperature and S-substitution in a manner that is
determined by their proximity to the nematic QCP. This study thus reveals
unambiguously the coexistence of two independent charge sectors in a quantum
critical system. Moreover, the quantum critical component of the MR is found to
be less sensitive to disorder than the quadratic (orbital) MR, suggesting that
detection of the latter in previous MR studies of metals near a QCP may have
been obscured.Comment: 19 pages (including Supplemental Material), 12 figure
Transitions from the Quantum Hall State to the Anderson Insulator: Fa te of Delocalized States
Transitions between the quantum Hall state and the Anderson insulator are
studied in a two dimensional tight binding model with a uniform magnetic field
and a random potential. By the string (anyon) gauge, the weak magnetic field
regime is explored numerically. The regime is closely related to the continuum
model. The change of the Hall conductance and the trajectoy of the delocalized
states are investigated by the topological arguments and the Thouless number
study.Comment: 10 pages RevTeX, 14 postscript figure
Fermi-surface transformation across the pseudogap critical point of the cuprate superconductor LaNdSrCuO
The electrical resistivity and Hall coefficient R of the
tetragonal single-layer cuprate Nd-LSCO were measured in magnetic fields up to
T, large enough to access the normal state at , for closely
spaced dopings across the pseudogap critical point at .
Below , both coefficients exhibit an upturn at low temperature, which
gets more pronounced with decreasing . Taken together, these upturns show
that the normal-state carrier density at drops upon entering the
pseudogap phase. Quantitatively, it goes from at to at . By contrast, the mobility does not change appreciably, as
revealed by the magneto-resistance. The transition has a width in doping and
some internal structure, whereby R responds more slowly than to the
opening of the pseudogap. We attribute this difference to a Fermi surface that
supports both hole-like and electron-like carriers in the interval , with compensating contributions to R. Our data are in excellent
agreement with recent high-field data on YBCO and LSCO. The quantitative
consistency across three different cuprates shows that a drop in carrier
density from to is a universal signature of the pseudogap
transition at . We discuss the implication of these findings for the
nature of the pseudogap phase.Comment: 11 pages, 12 figure
Simultaneous loss of interlayer coherence and long-range magnetism in quasi-two-dimensional PdCrO\u3csub\u3e2\u3c/sub\u3e
Incoherent transport is an important feature of many anisotropic quantum materials but often its origin is not well understood. Here, the authors show that in a layered quantum magnet, incoherence is driven by the interaction of electrons with spin fluctuations after the
Localization Transition in Multilayered Disordered Systems
The Anderson delocalization-localization transition is studied in
multilayered systems with randomly placed interlayer bonds of density and
strength . In the absence of diagonal disorder (W=0), following an
appropriate perturbation expansion, we estimate the mean free paths in the main
directions and verify by scaling of the conductance that the states remain
extended for any finite , despite the interlayer disorder. In the presence
of additional diagonal disorder () we obtain an Anderson transition with
critical disorder and localization length exponent independently of
the direction. The critical conductance distribution varies,
however, for the parallel and the perpendicular directions. The results are
discussed in connection to disordered anisotropic materials.Comment: 10 pages, Revtex file, 8 postscript files, minor change
Mesoscopic Effects in the Quantum Hall Regime
We report results of a study of (integer) quantum Hall transitions in a
single or multiple Landau levels for non-interacting electrons in disordered
two-dimensional systems, obtained by projecting a tight-binding Hamiltonian to
corresponding magnetic subbands. In finite-size systems, we find that
mesoscopic effects often dominate, leading to apparent non-universal scaling
behaviour in higher Landau levels. This is because localization length, which
grows exponentially with Landau level index, exceeds the system sizes amenable
to numerical study at present. When band mixing between multiple Landau levels
is present, mesoscopic effects cause a crossover from a sequence of quantum
Hall transitions for weak disorder to classical behaviour for strong disorder.
This behaviour may be of relevance to experimentally observed transitions
between quantum Hall states and the insulating phase at low magnetic fields.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figures, Proceedings of the International Meeting on
Mesoscopic and Disordered Systems, Bangalore December 2000, to appear in
Pramana, February 200
Scaling near random criticality in two-dimensional Dirac fermions
Recently the existence of a random critical line in two dimensional Dirac
fermions is confirmed. In this paper, we focus on its scaling properties,
especially in the critical region. We treat Dirac fermions in two dimensions
with two types of randomness, a random site (RS) model and a random hopping
(RH) model. The RS model belongs to the usual orthogonal class and all states
are localized. For the RH model, there is an additional symmetry expressed by
. Therefore, although all non-zero energy states
localize, the localization length diverges at the zero energy. In the weak
localization region, the generalized Ohm's law in fractional dimensions,
, has been observed for the RH model.Comment: RevTeX with 4 postscript figures, To appear in Physical Review
- …