A microfluidic device for the study of the orientational dynamics of microrods

We describe a microfluidic device for studying the orientational dynamics of microrods. The device enables us to experimentally investigate the tumbling of microrods immersed in the shear flow in a microfluidic channel with a depth of 400 mu and a width of 2.5 mm. The orientational dynamics was recorded using a 20 X microscopic objective and a CCD camera. The microrods were produced by shearing microdroplets of photocurable epoxy resin. We show different examples of empirically observed tumbling. On the one hand we find that short stretches of the experimentally determined time series are well described by fits to solutions of Jeffery's approximate equation of motion [Jeffery, Proc. R. Soc. London. 102 (1922), 161-179]. On the other hand we find that the empirically observed trajectories drift between different solutions of Jeffery's equation. We discuss possible causes of this orbit drift.Comment: 11 pages, 8 figure

Memory Effect, Rejuvenation and Chaos Effect in the Multi-layer Random Energy Model

We introduce magnetization to the Multi-layer Random Energy Model which has a hierarchical structure, and perform Monte Carlo simulation to observe the behavior of ac-susceptibility. We find that this model is able to reproduce three prominent features of spin glasses, i.e., memory effect, rejuvenation and chaos effect, which were found recently by various experiments on aging phenomena with temperature variations.Comment: 10 pages, 14 figures, to be submitted to J. Phys. Soc. Jp

Gravitational-wave astronomy: the high-frequency window

This contribution is divided in two parts. The first part provides a text-book level introduction to gravitational radiation. The key concepts required for a discussion of gravitational-wave physics are introduced. In particular, the quadrupole formula is applied to the anticipated ``bread-and-butter'' source for detectors like LIGO, GEO600, EGO and TAMA300: inspiralling compact binaries. The second part provides a brief review of high frequency gravitational waves. In the frequency range above (say) 100Hz, gravitational collapse, rotational instabilities and oscillations of the remnant compact objects are potentially important sources of gravitational waves. Significant and unique information concerning the various stages of collapse, the evolution of protoneutron stars and the details of the supranuclear equation of state of such objects can be drawn from careful study of the gravitational-wave signal. As the amount of exciting physics one may be able to study via the detections of gravitational waves from these sources is truly inspiring, there is strong motivation for the development of future generations of ground based detectors sensitive in the range from hundreds of Hz to several kHz.Comment: 21 pages, 5 figures, Lectures presented at the 2nd Aegean Summer School on the Early Universe, Syros, Greece, September 200

Palaeoproterozoic adakite- and TTG-like magmatism in the Svecofennian orogen, SW Finland

The Palaeoproterozoic Svecofennian orogen in the Fennoscandian shield is an arc accretionary orogen that was formed at c. 1.92-1.86Ga. Arc accretion, magmatism and the subsequent continent-continent collision thickened the crust up to c. 70km, forming one of the thickest Palaeoproterozic orogens. At the end stage of accretionary tectonics, voluminous synorogenic magmatism occurred in southwestern Finland leading to the intrusion of intermediate to felsic plutonic rocks. Ion microprobe single zircon dating of one diorite sample yielded an age of 1872±3Ma (εNd=+2.2) and the trondhjemite sample an age of 1867±4Ma (εNd=+2.6). Inherited 2667-1965Ma cores and 1842±5Ma metamorphic rims were also found in zircons from the trondhjemite. The dioritic magmatism is mantle-derived and is slightly enriched by subduction-related processes. The felsic magmatism shows elevated Sr/Y and La/Yb ratios, which are typical for adakite- and TTG-like magmas. Their low Mg#, Ni and Cr contents argue against slab-melting and mantle-wedge contamination. We infer that the felsic magmatism was generated through crustal melting of the lower part of the previously generated volcanic-arc type crust. Based on published melting experiments and the Sr and Y contents of the felsic rocks we suggest that the melts were generated at a minimum pressure of 10kbar, with evidence of a 15kbar pressure for the highest Sr/Y trondhjemites. It is proposed that arc accretion combined with magmatic intrusions thickened the crust so that melting of the lower crust yielded adakite- and TTG-like compositions. The mafic magmatism is considered to be the heat source

Scaling Law and Aging Phenomena in the Random Energy Model

We study the effect of temperature shift on aging phenomena in the Random Energy Model (REM). From calculation on the correlation function and simulation on the Zero-Field-Cooled magnetization, we find that the REM satisfies a scaling relation even if temperature is shifted. Furthermore, this scaling property naturally leads to results obtained in experiment and the droplet theory.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures, to be submitted to J. Phys. Soc. Jp

Spin Torques in Point Contacts to Exchange-Biased Ferromagnetic Films

Hysteretic magneto-resistance of point contacts formed between non-magnetic tips and single ferromagnetic films exchange-pinned by antiferromagnetic films is investigated. The analysis of the measured current driven and field driven hysteresis agrees with the recently proposed model of the surface spin-valve, where the spin orientation at the interface can be different from that in the bulk of the film. The switching in magneto-resistance at low fields is observed to depend significantly on the direction of the exchange pinning, which allows identifying this transition as a reversal of interior spins of the pinned ferromagnetic films. The switching at higher fields is thus due to a spin reversal in the point contact core, at the top surface of the ferromagnet, and does not exhibit any clear field offset when the exchange-pinning direction or the magnetic field direction is varied. This magnitude of the switching field of the surface spins varies substantially from contact to contact and sometimes from sweep to sweep, which suggests that the surface coercivity can change under very high current densities and/or due to the particular microstructure of the point contact. In contrast, no changes in the effect of the exchange biasing on the interior spins are observed at high currents, possibly due to the rapid drop in the current density away from nanometer sized point contact cores.Comment: 3 pages, 3 figs, presented on 11th Joint MMM-Intermag Conference, Jan. 18-22, 2010, Washington, US

Cross-Document Pattern Matching

We study a new variant of the string matching problem called cross-document string matching, which is the problem of indexing a collection of documents to support an efficient search for a pattern in a selected document, where the pattern itself is a substring of another document. Several variants of this problem are considered, and efficient linear-space solutions are proposed with query time bounds that either do not depend at all on the pattern size or depend on it in a very limited way (doubly logarithmic). As a side result, we propose an improved solution to the weighted level ancestor problem