Transient currents in a molecular photo-diode

Light-induced charge transmission through a molecular junction (molecular diode) is studied in the framework of a HOMO-LUMO model and in using a kinetic description. Expressions are presented for the sequential (hopping) and direct (tunneling) transient current components together with kinetic equations governing the time-dependent populations of the neutral and charged molecular states which participate in the current formation. Resonant and off-resonant charge transmission processes are analyzed in detail. It is demonstrated that the transient currents are associated with a molecular charging process which is initiated by photo excitation of the molecule. If the coupling of the molecule to the electrodes is strongly asymmetric the transient currents can significantly exceed the steady state current.Comment: 17 pages, 12 figures, accepted for publication in Chemical Physic

Semileptonic B→D∗∗B \to D^{**} decays in Lattice QCD : a feasibility study and first results

We compute the decays ${B\to D^\ast_0}$ and ${B\to D^\ast_2}$ with finite masses for the $b$ and $c$ quarks. We first discuss the spectral properties of both the $B$ meson as a function of its momentum and of the $D^\ast_0$ and $D^\ast_2$ at rest. We compute the theoretical formulae leading to the decay amplitudes from the three-point and two-point correlators. We then compute the amplitudes at zero recoil of ${B\to D^\ast_0}$ which turns out not to be vanishing contrary to what happens in the heavy quark limit. This opens a possibility to get a better agreement with experiment. To improve the continuum limit we have added a set of data with smaller lattice spacing. The ${B\to D^\ast_2}$ vanishes at zero recoil and we show a convincing signal but only slightly more than 1 sigma from 0. In order to reach quantitatively significant results, we plan to fully exploit smaller lattice spacings as well as another lattice regularization.Comment: 31 pages with 15 figures ; sections 5 and 6 revised and update

Novel mechanism for temperature-independent transitions in flexible molecules: role of thermodynamic fluctuations

Novel physical mechanism is proposed for explanation of temperature-independent transition reactions in molecular systems. The mechanism becomes effective in the case of conformation transitions between quasi-isoenergetic molecular states. It is shown that at room temperatures, stochastic broadening of molecular energy levels predominates the energy of low frequency vibrations accompanying the transition. This leads to a cancellation of temperature dependence in the stochastically averaged rate constants. As an example, physical interpretation of temperature-independent onset of P2X_3 receptor desensitization in neuronal membranes is provided.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figur

Phase structure and confinement properties of noncompact gauge theories I

In the context of reviewing noncompact lattice gauge models at zero and finite temperature we study in detail a contribution of the invariant measure and the time-like plaquette configurations to correlation functions, analyze the problem of the compactness of the potentials in respect to the confinement and indicate the essential features to deal with the Wilson gauge theory in the weak coupling region. A method for calculating an effective confining noncompact model is also proposed.Comment: Latex file, 24 pages, no figure

Oxidative dehydrogenation of 2,3,5-trimethyl-1,4-hydroquinone in the presence of titanium dioxide hydrogel

Liquid-phase oxidative dehydrogenation of 2,3,5-trimethyl-1,4-hydroquinone in the presence of titanium dioxide hydrogel was studied by a kinetic method. Associative interactions between the substrate, oxidant, and gel were detected by voltammetry and ESR and IR spectroscopy.Russian Foundation for Basic Researc