28,438 research outputs found
From thermal to excited-state quantum phase transitions ---the Dicke model
We study the thermodynamics of the full version of the Dicke model, including
all the possible values of the total angular momentum , with both
microcanonical and canonical ensembles. We focus on how the excited-state
quantum phase transition, which only appears in the microcanonical description
of the maximum angular momentum sector, , change to a standard thermal
phase transition when all the sectors are taken into account. We show that both
the thermal and the excited-state quantum phase transitions have the same
origin; in other words, that both are two faces of the same phenomenon. Despite
all the logarithmic singularities which characterize the excited-state quantum
phase transition are ruled out when all the -sectors are considered, the
critical energy (or temperature) still divides the spectrum in two regions: one
in which the parity symmetry can be broken, and another in which this symmetry
is always well defined.Comment: Submitted to PRE. Comments are welcome. V2: Updated to match
published versio
Phase diagram of a polydisperse soft-spheres model for liquids and colloids
The phase diagram of soft spheres with size dispersion has been studied by
means of an optimized Monte Carlo algorithm which allows to equilibrate below
the kinetic glass transition for all sizes distribution. The system
ubiquitously undergoes a first order freezing transition. While for small size
dispersion the frozen phase has a crystalline structure, large density
inhomogeneities appear in the highly disperse systems. Studying the interplay
between the equilibrium phase diagram and the kinetic glass transition, we
argue that the experimentally found terminal polydispersity of colloids is a
purely kinetic phenomenon.Comment: Version to be published in Physical Review Letter
Separation and fractionation of order and disorder in highly polydisperse systems
Microcanonical Monte Carlo simulations of a polydisperse soft-spheres model
for liquids and colloids have been performed for very large polydispersity, in
the region where a phase-separation is known to occur when the system (or part
of it) solidifies. By studying samples of different sizes, from N=256 to N=864,
we focus on the nature of the two distinct coexisting phases. Measurements of
crystalline order in particles of different size reveal that the solid phase
segregates between a crystalline solid with cubic symmetry and a disordered
phase. This phenomenon is termed fractionation.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figure
Tests of Power Corrections to Event Shape Distributions from e+e- Annihilation
A study of differential event shape distributions using e+e- data at
centre-of-mass energies of 35 to 183 GeV is presented. We investigated
non-perturbative power corrections for the thrust, C-parameter, total and wide
jet broadening observables. We observe a good description of the distributions
by the combined resummed QCD calculations plus power corrections from the
dispersive approach. The single non-perturbative parameter \alpha_0 is measured
to be \alpha_0 (2 GeV) = 0.502 +- 0.013 (stat.) ^{+0.046)_{-0.032} (exp. syst.)
^{+0.074}_{-0.053} (theo. syst.) and is found to be universal for the
observables studied within the given systematic uncertainties. Using revised
calculations of the power corrections for the jet broadening variables,
improved consistency of the individual fit results is obtained. Agreement is
also found with results extracted from the mean values of event shape
distributions.Comment: 19 pages, LaTeX2e, 8 .eps-files included, paper contributed to the
EPS-HEP99 conference in Tampere, Finlan
Giant magnetic anisotropy at nanoscale: overcoming the superparamagnetic limit
It has been recently observed for palladium and gold nanoparticles, that the
magnetic moment at constant applied field does not change with temperature over
the range comprised between 5 and 300 K. These samples with size smaller than
2.5 nm exhibit remanence up to room temperature. The permanent magnetism for so
small samples up to so high temperatures has been explained as due to blocking
of local magnetic moment by giant magnetic anisotropies. In this report we
show, by analysing the anisotropy of thiol capped gold films, that the orbital
momentum induced at the surface conduction electrons is crucial to understand
the observed giant anisotropy. The orbital motion is driven by localised charge
and/or spin through spin orbit interaction, that reaches extremely high values
at the surfaces. The induced orbital moment gives rise to an effective field of
the order of 103 T that is responsible of the giant anisotropy.Comment: 15 pages, 2 figures, submitted to PR
Accuracy of MUAC in the detection of severe wasting with the new WHO growth standards.
OBJECTIVES: The objectives of this study were to estimate the accuracy of using mid-upper-arm circumference (MUAC) measurements to diagnose severe wasting by comparing the new standards from the World Health Organization (WHO) with those from the US National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) and to analyze the age independence of the MUAC cutoff values for both curves. METHODS: We used cross-sectional anthropometric data for 34,937 children between the ages of 6 and 59 months, from 39 nutritional surveys conducted by Doctors Without Borders. Receiver operating characteristic curves were used to examine the accuracy of MUAC diagnoses. MUAC age independence was analyzed with logistic regression models. RESULTS: With the new WHO curve, the performance of MUAC measurements, in terms of sensitivity and specificity, deteriorated. With different cutoff values, however, the WHO standards significantly improved the predictive value of MUAC measurements over the NCHS standards. The sensitivity and specificity of MUAC measurements were the most age independent when the WHO curve, rather than the NCHS curve, was used. CONCLUSIONS: This study confirms the need to change the MUAC cutoff value from <110 mm to <115 mm. This increase of 5 mm produces a large change in sensitivity (from 16% to 25%) with little loss in specificity, improves the probability of diagnosing severe wasting, and reduces false-negative results by 12%. This change is needed to maintain the same diagnostic accuracy as the old curve and to identify the children at greatest risk of death resulting from severe wasting
Photonic heterostructures with Levy-type disorder: statistics of coherent transmission
We study the electromagnetic transmission through one-dimensional (1D)
photonic heterostructures whose random layer thicknesses follow a long-tailed
distribution --L\'evy-type distribution. Based on recent predictions made for
1D coherent transport with L\'evy-type disorder, we show numerically that for a
system of length (i) the average for
for , being the
exponent of the power-law decay of the layer-thickness probability
distribution; and (ii) the transmission distribution is independent of
the angle of incidence and frequency of the electromagnetic wave, but it is
fully determined by the values of and .Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure
- …