1,151 research outputs found
Sine-Gordon Field Theory for the Kosterlitz-Thouless Transitions on Fluctuating Membranes
In the preceding paper, we derived Coulomb-gas and sine-Gordon Hamiltonians
to describe the Kosterlitz-Thouless transition on a fluctuating surface. These
Hamiltonians contain couplings to Gaussian curvature not found in a rigid flat
surface. In this paper, we derive renormalization-group recursion relations for
the sine-Gordon model using field-theoretic techniques developed to study flat
space problems.Comment: REVTEX, 14 pages with 6 postscript figures compressed using uufiles.
Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.
Experimental Tools to Study Molecular Recognition within the Nanoparticle Corona
Advancements in optical nanosensor development have enabled the design of sensors using synthetic molecular recognition elements through a recently developed method called Corona Phase Molecular Recognition (CoPhMoRe). The synthetic sensors resulting from these design principles are highly selective for specific analytes, and demonstrate remarkable stability for use under a variety of conditions. An essential element of nanosensor development hinges on the ability to understand the interface between nanoparticles and the associated corona phase surrounding the nanosensor, an environment outside of the range of traditional characterization tools, such as NMR. This review discusses the need for new strategies and instrumentation to study the nanoparticle corona, operating in both in vitro and in vivo environments. Approaches to instrumentation must have the capacity to concurrently monitor nanosensor operation and the molecular changes in the corona phase. A detailed overview of new tools for the understanding of CoPhMoRe mechanisms is provided for future applications
Conformally invariant bending energy for hypersurfaces
The most general conformally invariant bending energy of a closed
four-dimensional surface, polynomial in the extrinsic curvature and its
derivatives, is constructed. This invariance manifests itself as a set of
constraints on the corresponding stress tensor. If the topology is fixed, there
are three independent polynomial invariants: two of these are the
straighforward quartic analogues of the quadratic Willmore energy for a
two-dimensional surface; one is intrinsic (the Weyl invariant), the other
extrinsic; the third invariant involves a sum of a quadratic in gradients of
the extrinsic curvature -- which is not itself invariant -- and a quartic in
the curvature. The four-dimensional energy quadratic in extrinsic curvature
plays a central role in this construction.Comment: 16 page
Protein-targeted corona phase molecular recognition
Corona phase molecular recognition (CoPhMoRe) uses a heteropolymer adsorbed onto and templated by a nanoparticle surface to recognize a specific target analyte. This method has not yet been extended to macromolecular analytes, including proteins. Herein we develop a variant of a CoPhMoRe screening procedure of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNT) and use it against a panel of human blood proteins, revealing a specific corona phase that recognizes fibrinogen with high selectivity. In response to fibrinogen binding, SWCNT fluorescence decreases by \u3e80% at saturation. Sequential binding of the three fibrinogen nodules is suggested by selective fluorescence quenching by isolated sub-domains and validated by the quenching kinetics. The fibrinogen recognition also occurs in serum environment, at the clinically relevant fibrinogen concentrations in the human blood. These results open new avenues for synthetic, non-biological antibody analogues that recognize biological macromolecules, and hold great promise for medical and clinical applications
Protein-targeted corona phase molecular recognition
Corona phase molecular recognition (CoPhMoRe) uses a heteropolymer adsorbed onto and templated by a nanoparticle surface to recognize a specific target analyte. This method has not yet been extended to macromolecular analytes, including proteins. Herein we develop a variant of a CoPhMoRe screening procedure of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNT) and use it against a panel of human blood proteins, revealing a specific corona phase that recognizes fibrinogen with high selectivity. In response to fibrinogen binding, SWCNT fluorescence decreases by \u3e80% at saturation. Sequential binding of the three fibrinogen nodules is suggested by selective fluorescence quenching by isolated sub-domains and validated by the quenching kinetics. The fibrinogen recognition also occurs in serum environment, at the clinically relevant fibrinogen concentrations in the human blood. These results open new avenues for synthetic, non-biological antibody analogues that recognize biological macromolecules, and hold great promise for medical and clinical applications
Marginal Pinning of Quenched Random Polymers
An elastic string embedded in 3D space and subject to a short-range
correlated random potential exhibits marginal pinning at high temperatures,
with the pinning length becoming exponentially sensitive to
temperature. Using a functional renormalization group (FRG) approach we find
, with the
depinning temperature. A slow decay of disorder correlations as it appears in
the problem of flux line pinning in superconductors modifies this result, .Comment: 4 pages, RevTeX, 1 figure inserte
Path Integral Approach to 't Hooft's Derivation of Quantum from Classical Physics
We present a path-integral formulation of 't Hooft's derivation of quantum
from classical physics. The crucial ingredient of this formulation is Gozzi et
al.'s supersymmetric path integral of classical mechanics. We quantize
explicitly two simple classical systems: the planar mathematical pendulum and
the Roessler dynamical system.Comment: 29 pages, RevTeX, revised version with minor changes, accepted to
Phys. Rev.
Membrane geometry with auxiliary variables and quadratic constraints
Consider a surface described by a Hamiltonian which depends only on the
metric and extrinsic curvature induced on the surface. The metric and the
curvature, along with the basis vectors which connect them to the embedding
functions defining the surface, are introduced as auxiliary variables by adding
appropriate constraints, all of them quadratic. The response of the Hamiltonian
to a deformation in each of the variables is examined and the relationship
between the multipliers implementing the constraints and the conserved stress
tensor of the theory established.Comment: 8 page
Energy representation for out-of-equilibrium Brownian-like systems: steady states and fluctuation relations
Stochastic dynamics in the energy representation is employed as a method to
study non-equilibrium Brownian-like systems. It is shown that the equation of
motion for the energy of such systems can be taken in the form of the Langevin
equation with multiplicative noise. Properties of the steady states are
examined by solving the Fokker-Planck equation for the energy distribution
functions. The generalized integral fluctuation theorem is deduced for the
systems characterized by the shifted probability flux operator. There are a
number of entropy and fluctuation relations such as the Hatano-Sasa identity
and the Jarzynski's equality that follow from this theorem.Comment: revtex4-1, 18 pages, extended discussion, references adde
Two-Loop Renormalization Group Analysis of the Burgers-Kardar-Parisi-Zhang Equation
A systematic analysis of the Burgers--Kardar--Parisi--Zhang equation in
dimensions by dynamic renormalization group theory is described. The fixed
points and exponents are calculated to two--loop order. We use the dimensional
regularization scheme, carefully keeping the full dependence originating
from the angular parts of the loop integrals. For dimensions less than
we find a strong--coupling fixed point, which diverges at , indicating
that there is non--perturbative strong--coupling behavior for all .
At our method yields the identical fixed point as in the one--loop
approximation, and the two--loop contributions to the scaling functions are
non--singular. For dimensions, there is no finite strong--coupling fixed
point. In the framework of a expansion, we find the dynamic
exponent corresponding to the unstable fixed point, which describes the
non--equilibrium roughening transition, to be ,
in agreement with a recent scaling argument by Doty and Kosterlitz. Similarly,
our result for the correlation length exponent at the transition is . For the smooth phase, some aspects of the
crossover from Gaussian to critical behavior are discussed.Comment: 24 pages, written in LaTeX, 8 figures appended as postscript,
EF/UCT--94/3, to be published in Phys. Rev. E
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