Thermal Operators in Ising Percolation

We discuss a new cluster representation for the internal energy and the specific heat of the d-dimensional Ising model, obtained by studying the percolation mapping of an Ising model with an arbitrary set of antiferromagnetic links. Such a representation relates the thermal operators to the topological properties of the Fortuin-Kasteleyn clusters of Ising percolation and is a powerful tool to get new exact relations on the topological structure of FK clusters of the Ising model defined on an arbitrary graph.Comment: 17 pages, 2 figures. Improved version. Major changes in the text and in the notations. A missing term added in the specific heat representatio

Off equilibrium response function in the one dimensional random field Ising model

A thorough numerical investigation of the slow dynamics in the d=1 random field Ising model in the limit of an infinite ferromagnetic coupling is presented. Crossovers from the preasymptotic pure regime to the asymptotic Sinai regime are investigated for the average domain size, the autocorrelation function and staggered magnetization. By switching on an additional small random field at the time tw the linear off equilibrium response function is obtained, which displays as well the crossover from the nontrivial behavior of the d=1 pure Ising model to the asymptotic behavior where it vanishes identically.Comment: 12 pages, 10 figure

Comment on ``Two Time Scales and Violation of the Fluctuation-Dissipation Theorem in a Finite Dimensional Model for Structural Glasses''

In cond-mat/0002074 Ricci-Tersenghi et al. find two linear regimes in the fluctuation-dissipation relation between density-density correlations and associated responses of the Frustrated Ising Lattice Gas. Here we show that this result does not seem to correspond to the equilibrium quantities of the model, by measuring the overlap distribution P(q) of the density and comparing the FDR expected on the ground of the P(q) with the one measured in the off-equilibrium experiments.Comment: RevTeX, 1 page, 2 eps figures, Comment on F. Ricci-Tersenghi et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 84, 4473 (2000

Irreversible Opinion Spreading on Scale-Free Networks

We study the dynamical and critical behavior of a model for irreversible opinion spreading on Barab\'asi-Albert (BA) scale-free networks by performing extensive Monte Carlo simulations. The opinion spreading within an inhomogeneous society is investigated by means of the magnetic Eden model, a nonequilibrium kinetic model for the growth of binary mixtures in contact with a thermal bath. The deposition dynamics, which is studied as a function of the degree of the occupied sites, shows evidence for the leading role played by hubs in the growth process. Systems of finite size grow either ordered or disordered, depending on the temperature. By means of standard finite-size scaling procedures, the effective order-disorder phase transitions are found to persist in the thermodynamic limit. This critical behavior, however, is absent in related equilibrium spin systems such as the Ising model on BA scale-free networks, which in the thermodynamic limit only displays a ferromagnetic phase. The dependence of these results on the degree exponent is also discussed for the case of uncorrelated scale-free networks.Comment: 9 pages, 10 figures; added results and discussion on uncorrelated scale-free networks; added references. To appear in PR

Two channel model for optical conductivity of high mobility organic crystals

We show that the temperature dependence of conductivity of high mobility organic crystals Pentacene and Rubrene can be quantitatively described in the framework of the model where carriers are scattered by quenched local impurities and interact with phonons by Su-Schrieffer-Hegger (SSH) coupling. Within this model, we present approximation free results for mobility and optical conductivity obtained by world line Monte Carlo, which we generalize to the case of coupling both to phonons and impurities. We find fingerprints of carrier dynamics in these compounds which differ from conventional metals and show that the dynamics of carriers can be described as a superposition of a Drude term representing diffusive mobile particles and a Lorentz term associated with dynamics of localized charges.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figure

Metastable states in the Blume-Emery-Griffiths spin glass model

We study the Blume-Emery-Griffiths spin glass model in presence of an attractive coupling between real replicas, and evaluate the effective potential as a function of the density overlap. We find that there is a region, above the first order transition of the model, where metastable states with a large density overlap exist. The line where these metastable states appear should correspond to a purely dynamical transition, with a breaking of ergodicity. Differently from what happens in p-spin glasses, in this model the dynamical transition would not be the precursor of a 1-step RSB transition, but (probably) of a full RSB transition.Comment: RevTeX, 4 pages, 2 fig

Glass transition in models with controlled frustration

A class of models with self-generated disorder and controlled frustration is studied. Between the trivial case, where frustration is not present at all, and the limit case, where frustration is present over every length scale, a region with local frustration is found where glassy dynamics appears. We suggest that in this region, the mean field model might undergo a p-spin like transition, and increasing the range of frustration, a crossover from a 1-step replica symmetry breaking to a continuous one might be observed.Comment: 4 pages, 6 figure

'I dont' know the anwer to that question': A Corpus-assisted Discourse Analysis of White House Press Briefings

White House Press Briefings, daily meetings with the press held by the White House Press Secretary, are the main information conduit for the White House (Kumar 2007). They are considered a ‘political chess game’ where the Press Secretary and the press face a ‘wrestling match’ (Partington 2006: 16). Our analysis is carried out on a corpus comprising all the Press Briefings across three presidencies from Clinton to Obama. The additional mark-up includes information about individual speakers and their role, allowing us to compare different discourse strategies adopted by the participants in the briefings at different points in time. This leads us to determine the extent of the differences in the patterns found as well as the nature of the variation from one participant to the next one. Starting from a phraseological perspective (Granger and Meunier 2008), our analysis will focus on avoidance strategies enacted by the podium with the main purpose of preserving face and yet ‘doing the job’ (Partington 2003: 80). We will show how the cluster ‘I don’t know’ can be exploited by various podiums, mainly in accordance with strategic communication choices made by the US administrations, highlighting differences in the podium’s attitude towards the press

Static and dynamic heterogeneities in irreversible gels and colloidal gelation

We compare the slow dynamics of irreversible gels, colloidal gels, glasses and spin glasses by analyzing the behavior of the so called non-linear dynamical susceptibility, a quantity usually introduced to quantitatively characterize the dynamical heterogeneities. In glasses this quantity typically grows with the time, reaches a maximum and then decreases at large time, due to the transient nature of dynamical heterogeneities and to the absence of a diverging static correlation length. We have recently shown that in irreversible gels the dynamical susceptibility is instead an increasing function of the time, as in the case of spin glasses, and tends asymptotically to the mean cluster size. On the basis of molecular dynamics simulations, we here show that in colloidal gelation where clusters are not permanent, at very low temperature and volume fractions, i.e. when the lifetime of the bonds is much larger than the structural relaxation time, the non-linear susceptibility has a behavior similar to the one of the irreversible gel, followed, at higher volume fractions, by a crossover towards the behavior of glass forming liquids.Comment: 9 pages, 3 figure