12,649 research outputs found
New attempts to understand nanodiamond stardust
We report on a concerted effort aimed at understanding the origin and history
of the pre-solar nanodiamonds in meteorites including the astrophysical sources
of the observed isotopic abundance signatures. This includes measurement of
light elements by secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS), analysis of
additional heavy trace elements by accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) and
dynamic calculations of r-process nucleosynthesis with updated nuclear
properties. Results obtained indicate: a) there is no evidence for the former
presence of now extinct 26Al and 44Ti in our diamond samples other than what
can be attributed to silicon carbide and other "impurities"; this does not
offer support for a supernova (SN) origin but neither does it negate it; b)
analysis by AMS of platinum in "bulk diamond" yields an overabundance of r-only
198Pt that at face value seems more consistent with the neutron burst than with
the separation model for the origin of heavy trace elements in the diamonds,
although this conclusion is not firm given analytical uncertainties; c) if the
Xe-H pattern was established by an unadulterated r-process, it must have been a
strong variant of the main r-process, which possibly could also account for the
new observations in platinum.Comment: Workshop on Astronomy with Radioactvities VII; Publications of the
Astronomical Society of Australia, accepte
Extending holographic LEED to ordered small unit cell superstructures
Following on the success of the recent application of holographic LEED to the
determination of the 3D atomic geometry of Si adatoms on a SiC(111) p(3x3)
surface, which enabled that structure to be solved, we show in this paper that
a similar technique allows the direct recovery of the local geometry of
adsorbates forming superstructures as small as p(2x2), even in the presence of
a local substrate reconstruction.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures postscript included, revtex, Phys. Rev. B in
pres
Universality Class of the Reversible-Irreversible Transition in Sheared Suspensions
Collections of non-Brownian particles suspended in a viscous fluid and
subjected to oscillatory shear at very low Reynolds number have recently been
shown to exhibit a remarkable dynamical phase transition separating reversible
from irreversible behaviour as the strain amplitude or volume fraction are
increased. We present a simple model for this phenomenon, based on which we
argue that this transition lies in the universality class of the conserved DP
models or, equivalently, the Manna model. This leads to predictions for the
scaling behaviour of a large number of experimental observables. Non-Brownian
suspensions under oscillatory shear may thus constitute the first experimental
realization of an inactive-active phase transition which is not in the
universality class of conventional directed percolation.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, final versio
Renormalization of the periodic Anderson model: an alternative analytical approach to heavy Fermion behavior
In this paper a recently developed projector-based renormalization method
(PRM) for many-particle Hamiltonians is applied to the periodic Anderson model
(PAM) with the aim to describe heavy Fermion behavior. In this method
high-energetic excitation operators instead of high energetic states are
eliminated. We arrive at an effective Hamiltonian for a quasi-free system which
consists of two non-interacting heavy-quasiparticle bands. The resulting
renormalization equations for the parameters of the Hamiltonian are valid for
large as well as small degeneracy of the angular momentum. An expansion
in is avoided. Within an additional approximation which adapts the
idea of a fixed renormalized \textit{f} level , we obtain
coupled equations for and the averaged \textit{f}
occupation . These equations resemble to a certain extent those of the
usual slave boson mean-field (SB) treatment. In particular, for large
the results for the PRM and the SB approach agree perfectly whereas
considerable differences are found for small .Comment: 26 pages, 5 figures included, discussion of the DOS added in v2,
accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.
Hyperacceleration in a stochastic Fermi-Ulam model
Fermi acceleration in a Fermi-Ulam model, consisting of an ensemble of
particles bouncing between two, infinitely heavy, stochastically oscillating
hard walls, is investigated. It is shown that the widely used approximation,
neglecting the displacement of the walls (static wall approximation), leads to
a systematic underestimation of particle acceleration. An improved
approximative map is introduced, which takes into account the effect of the
wall displacement, and in addition allows the analytical estimation of the long
term behavior of the particle mean velocity as well as the corresponding
probability distribution, in complete agreement with the numerical results of
the exact dynamics. This effect accounting for the increased particle
acceleration -Fermi hyperacceleration- is also present in higher dimensional
systems, such as the driven Lorentz gas.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures. To be published in Phys. Rev. Let
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