535 research outputs found
Theory of severe slowdown in the relaxation of rings and clusters with antiferromagnetic interactions
We show that in the severe slowing down temperature regime the relaxation of
antiferromagnetic rings and similar magnetic nanoclusters is governed by the
quasi-continuum portion of their quadrupolar fluctuation spectrum and not by
the lowest excitation lines. This is at the heart of the intriguing
near-universal power-law temperature dependence of the electronic correlation
frequency with an exponent close to 4. The onset of this behavior is
defined by an energy scale which is fixed by the lowest spin gap .
This explains why experimental curves of for different cluster sizes
and spins nearly coincide when is rescaled by .Comment: new slightly extended version (6 pages, 1 fig. added
Continuous families of isospectral Heisenberg spin systems and the limits of inference from measurements
We investigate classes of quantum Heisenberg spin systems which have
different coupling constants but the same energy spectrum and hence the same
thermodynamical properties. To this end we define various types of
isospectrality and establish conditions for their occurence. The triangle and
the tetrahedron whose vertices are occupied by spins 1/2 are investigated in
some detail. The problem is also of practical interest since isospectrality
presents an obstacle to the experimental determination of the coupling
constants of small interacting spin systems such as magnetic molecules
Quantum rotational band model for the Heisenberg molecular magnet Mo72Fe30
We derive the low temperature properties of the molecular magnet Mo72Fe30,
where 30 Fe(3+) paramagnetic ions occupy the sites of an icosidodecahedron and
interact via isotropic nearest-neighbour antiferromagnetic Heisenberg exchange.
The key idea of our model (J.S. & M.L.) is that the low-lying excitations form
a sequence of rotational bands, i.e., for each such band the excitation
energies depend quadratically on the total spin quantum number. For
temperatures below 50 mK we predict that the magnetisation is described by a
staircase with 75 equidistant steps as the magnetic field is increased up to a
critical value and saturated for higher fields. For higher temperatures thermal
broadening effects wash out the staircase and yield a linear ramp below the
critical field, and this has been confirmed by our measurements (R.M.). We
demonstrate that the lowest two rotational bands are separated by an energy gap
of 0.7 meV, and this could be tested by EPR and inelastic neutron scattering
measurements. We also predict the occurrence of resonances at temperatures
below 0.1 K in the proton NMR spin-lattice relaxation rate associated with
level crossings. As rotational bands characterize the spectra of many magnetic
molecules our method opens a new road towards a description of their
low-temperature behaviour which is not otherwise accessible.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures, accepted for Europhysics Letter
Spin dynamics of quantum and classical Heisenberg dimers
Analytical solutions for the time-dependent autocorrelation function of the
classical and quantum mechanical spin dimer with arbitrary spin are presented
and compared. For large spin quantum numbers or high temperature the classical
and the quantum dimer become more and more similar, yet with the major
difference that the quantum autocorrelation function is periodic in time
whereas the classical is not.Comment: 10 pages, 4 postscript figures, uses 'epsfig.sty'. Submitted to
Physica A. More information available at
http://www.physik.uni-osnabrueck.de/makrosysteme
Multiple nearest-neighbor exchange model for the frustrated magnetic molecules Mo72Fe30 and Mo72Cr30
Our measurements of the differential susceptibility dM/dH of the frustrated
magnetic molecules Mo72Fe30 and Mo72Cr30 reveal a pronounced dependence on
magnetic field (H) and temperature (T) in the low H - low T regime, contrary to
the predictions of existing models. Excellent agreement with experiment is
achieved upon formulating a nearest-neighbor classical Heisenberg model where
the 60 nearest-neighbor exchange interactions in each molecule, rather than
being identical as has been assumed heretofore, are described by a
two-parameter probability distribution of values of the exchange constant. We
suggest that the probability distribution provides a convenient
phenomenological platform for summarizing the combined effects of multiple
microscopic mechanisms that disrupt the idealized picture of a Heisenberg model
based on a single value of the nearest-neighbor exchange constant.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figure
Bounding and approximating parabolas for the spectrum of Heisenberg spin systems
We prove that for a wide class of quantum spin systems with isotropic
Heisenberg coupling the energy eigenvalues which belong to a total spin quantum
number S have upper and lower bounds depending at most quadratically on S. The
only assumption adopted is that the mean coupling strength of any spin w.r.t.
its neighbours is constant for all N spins. The coefficients of the bounding
parabolas are given in terms of special eigenvalues of the N times N coupling
matrix which are usually easily evaluated. In addition we show that the
bounding parabolas, if properly shifted, provide very good approximations of
the true boundaries of the spectrum. We present numerical examples of
frustrated rings, a cube, and an icosahedron.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures. Submitted to Europhysics Letter
Time Correlation Functions of Three Classical Heisenberg Spins on an Isosceles Triangle and on a Chain: Strong Effects of Broken Symmetry
At arbitrary temperature , we solve for the dynamics of single molecule
magnets composed of three classical Heisenberg spins either on a chain with two
equal exchange constants , or on an isosceles triangle with a third,
different exchange constant . As T\rightrarrow\infty, the Fourier
transforms and long-time asymptotic behaviors of the two-spin time correlation
functions are evaluated exactly. The lack of translational symmetry on a chain
or an isosceles triangle yields time correlation functions that differ
strikingly from those on an equilateral trinagle with . At low ,
the Fourier transforms of the two autocorrelation functions with
show one and four modes, respectively. For a semi-infinite range, one
mode is a central peak. At the origin of this range, this mode has a novel
scaling form.Comment: 9 pages, 14 figures, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.
Generalization of the Darboux transformation and generalized harmonic oscillators
The Darbroux transformation is generalized for time-dependent Hamiltonian
systems which include a term linear in momentum and a time-dependent mass. The
formalism for the -fold application of the transformation is also
established, and these formalisms are applied for a general quadratic system (a
generalized harmonic oscillator) and a quadratic system with an inverse-square
interaction up to N=2. Among the new features found, it is shown, for the
general quadratic system, that the shape of potential difference between the
original system and the transformed system could oscillate according to a
classical solution, which is related to the existence of coherent states in the
system
Conformational changes in the Ebola virus membrane fusion machine induced by pH, Ca2+, and receptor binding
The Ebola virus (EBOV) envelope glycoprotein (GP) is a membrane fusion machine required for virus entry into cells. Following endocytosis of EBOV, the GP1 domain is cleaved by cellular cathepsins in acidic endosomes, removing the glycan cap and exposing a binding site for the Niemann-Pick C1 (NPC1) receptor. NPC1 binding to cleaved GP1 is required for entry. How this interaction translates to GP2 domain-mediated fusion of viral and endosomal membranes is not known. Here, using a bulk fluorescence dequenching assay and single-molecule Forster resonance energy transfer (smFRET)-imaging, we found that acidic pH, Ca2+, and NPC1 binding synergistically induce conformational changes in GP2 and permit virus-liposome lipid mixing. Acidic pH and Ca2+ shifted the GP2 conformational equilibrium in favor of an intermediate state primed for NPC1 binding. Glycan cap cleavage on GP1 enabled GP2 to transition from a reversible intermediate to an irreversible conformation, suggestive of the postfusion 6-helix bundle; NPC1 binding further promoted transition to the irreversible conformation. Thus, the glycan cap of GP1 may allosterically protect against inactivation of EBOV by premature triggering of GP2
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