5,680 research outputs found
Texture transitions in the liquid crystalline alkyloxybenzoic acid 6OBAC
The 4,n-alkyloxybenzoic acid 6OBAC has a very rich variety of crystalline
structures and two nematic sub-phases, characterised by different textures. It
is a material belonging to a family of liquid crystals formed by hydrogen
bonded molecules, the 4,n-alkyloxybenzoic acids indicates the homologue
number). The homologues with n ranging from 7 to 13 display both smectic C and
N phases. In spite of the absence of a smectic phase, 6OBAC exhibits two
sub-phases with different textures, as it happens in other materials of the
homologue series which possess the smectic phase. This is the first material
that exhibits a texture transition in a nematic phase directly originated from
a crystal phase. Here we present the results of an image processing assisted
optical investigation to characterise the textures and the transitions between
textures. This processing is necessary to discriminate between crystal
modifications and nematic sub-phases.Comment: 12 pages, 10 figure
Electronic Phase Separation Transition as the Origin of the Superconductivity and the Pseudogap Phase of Cuprates
We propose a new phase of matter, an electronic phase separation transition
that starts near the upper pseudogap and segregates the holes into high and low
density domains. The Cahn-Hilliard approach is used to follow quantitatively
this second order transition. The resulting grain boundary potential confines
the charge in domains and favors the development of intragrain superconducting
amplitudes. The zero resistivity transition arises only when the intergrain
Josephson coupling is of the order of the thermal energy and phase
locking among the superconducting grains takes place. We show that this
approach explains the pseudogap and superconducting phases in a natural way and
reproduces some recent scanning tunneling microscopy dataComment: 4 pages and 5 eps fig
Probing the eigenfunction fractality with a stop watch
We study numerically the distribution of scattering phases
and of Wigner delay times for the power-law banded random
matrix (PBRM) model at criticality with one channel attached to it. We find
that is insensitive to the position of the channel and
undergoes a transition towards uniformity as the bandwidth of the PBRM
model increases. The inverse moments of Wigner delay times scale as
, where are the multifractal
dimensions of the eigenfunctions of the corresponding closed system and is
the system size. The latter scaling law is sensitive to the position of the
channel.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure
Equivalence of Fokker-Planck approach and non-linear -model for disordered wires in the unitary symmetry class
The exact solution of the Dorokhov-Mello-Pereyra-Kumar-equation for quasi
one-dimensional disordered conductors in the unitary symmetry class is employed
to calculate all -point correlation functions by a generalization of the
method of orthogonal polynomials. We obtain closed expressions for the first
two conductance moments which are valid for the whole range of length scales
from the metallic regime () to the insulating regime () and
for arbitrary channel number. In the limit (with )
our expressions agree exactly with those of the non-linear -model
derived from microscopic Hamiltonians.Comment: 9 pages, Revtex, one postscript figur
Exact Solution for the Distribution of Transmission Eigenvalues in a Disordered Wire and Comparison with Random-Matrix Theory
An exact solution is presented of the Fokker-Planck equation which governs
the evolution of an ensemble of disordered metal wires of increasing length, in
a magnetic field. By a mapping onto a free-fermion problem, the complete
probability distribution function of the transmission eigenvalues is obtained.
The logarithmic eigenvalue repulsion of random-matrix theory is shown to break
down for transmission eigenvalues which are not close to unity. ***Submitted to
Physical Review B.****Comment: 20 pages, REVTeX-3.0, INLO-PUB-931028
Chaotic scattering through coupled cavities
We study the chaotic scattering through an Aharonov-Bohm ring containing two
cavities. One of the cavities has well-separated resonant levels while the
other is chaotic, and is treated by random matrix theory. The conductance
through the ring is calculated analytically using the supersymmetry method and
the quantum fluctuation effects are numerically investigated in detail. We find
that the conductance is determined by the competition between the mean and
fluctuation parts. The dephasing effect acts on the fluctuation part only. The
Breit-Wigner resonant peak is changed to an antiresonance by increasing the
ratio of the level broadening to the mean level spacing of the random cavity,
and the asymmetric Fano form turns into a symmetric one. For the orthogonal and
symplectic ensembles, the period of the Aharonov-Bohm oscillations is half of
that for regular systems. The conductance distribution function becomes
independent of the ensembles at the resonant point, which can be understood by
the mode-locking mechanism. We also discuss the relation of our results to the
random walk problem.Comment: 13 pages, 9 figures; minor change
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