686 research outputs found
Response to Comment on “Mycorrhizal association as a primary control of the CO 2 fertilization effect”
Norby et al. center their critique on the design of the data set and the response variable used. We address these criticisms and reinforce the conclusion that plants that associate with ectomycorrhizal fungi exhibit larger biomass and growth responses to elevated CO2 compared with plants that associate with arbuscular mycorrhizae
Quantum field theory of metallic spin glasses
We introduce an effective field theory for the vicinity of a zero temperature
quantum transition between a metallic spin glass (``spin density glass'') and a
metallic quantum paramagnet. Following a mean field analysis, we perform a
perturbative renormalization-group study and find that the critical properties
are dominated by static disorder-induced fluctuations, and that dynamic
quantum-mechanical effects are dangerously irrelevant. A Gaussian fixed point
is stable for a finite range of couplings for spatial dimensionality ,
but disorder effects always lead to runaway flows to strong coupling for . Scaling hypotheses for a {\em static\/} strong-coupling critical field
theory are proposed. The non-linear susceptibility has an anomalously weak
singularity at such a critical point. Although motivated by a perturbative
study of metallic spin glasses, the scaling hypotheses are more general, and
could apply to other quantum spin glass to paramagnet transitions.Comment: 16 pages, REVTEX 3.0, 2 postscript figures; version contains
reference to related work in cond-mat/950412
Onset of Superfluidity in 4He Films Adsorbed on Disordered Substrates
We have studied 4He films adsorbed in two porous glasses, aerogel and Vycor,
using high precision torsional oscillator and DC calorimetry techniques. Our
investigation focused on the onset of superfluidity at low temperatures as the
4He coverage is increased. Torsional oscillator measurements of the 4He-aerogel
system were used to determine the superfluid density of films with transition
temperatures as low as 20 mK. Heat capacity measurements of the 4He-Vycor
system probed the excitation spectrum of both non-superfluid and superfluid
films for temperatures down to 10 mK. Both sets of measurements suggest that
the critical coverage for the onset of superfluidity corresponds to a mobility
edge in the chemical potential, so that the onset transition is the bosonic
analog of a superconductor-insulator transition. The superfluid density
measurements, however, are not in agreement with the scaling theory of an onset
transition from a gapless, Bose glass phase to a superfluid. The heat capacity
measurements show that the non-superfluid phase is better characterized as an
insulator with a gap.Comment: 15 pages (RevTex), 21 figures (postscript
Study of heterogeneous nucleation of eutectic Si in high-purity Al-Si alloys with Sr addition
The official published version can be accessed from the link below - Copyright @ 2010 The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society and ASM InternationalAl-5 wt pct Si master-alloys with controlled Sr and/or P addition/s were produced using super purity Al 99.99 wt pct and Si 99.999 wt pct materials in an arc melter. The master-alloy was melt-spun resulting in the production of thin ribbons. The Al matrix of the ribbons contained entrained Al-Si eutectic droplets that were subsequently investigated. Differential scanning calorimetry, thermodynamic calculations, and transmission electron microscopy techniques were employed to examine the effect of the Sr and P additions on eutectic undercoolings and nucleation phenomenon. Results indicate that, unlike P, Sr does not promote nucleation. Increasing Sr additions depressed the eutectic nucleation temperature. This may be a result of the formation of a Sr phase that could consume or detrimentally affect potent AlP nucleation sites.This work is financially supported by the
Higher Education Commission of Pakistan and managerially supported from the OAD
Two-particle pairing and phase separation in a two-dimensional Bose-gas with one or two sorts of bosons
We present a phase diagram for a dilute two-dimensional Bose-gas on a
lattice. For one sort of boson we consider a realistic case of the van der
Waals interaction between particles with a strong hard-core repulsion and a
van der Waals attractive tail . For , being a hopping
amplitude, the phase diagram of the system contains regions of the usual
one-particle Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC). However for we have total
phase separation on a Mott-Hubbard Bose solid and a dilute Bose gas. For two
sorts of structureless bosons described by the two band Hubbard model an s-wave
pairing of the two bosons of different sort is possible.
The results we obtained should be important for different Bose systems,
including submonolayers of He, excitons in semiconductors, Schwinger bosons
in magnetic systems and holons in HTSC. In the HTSC case a possibility of
two-holon pairing in the slave-bosons theories of superconductivity can restore
a required charge of a Cooper pair.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figure
Formulae for zero-temperature conductance through a region with interaction
The zero-temperature linear response conductance through an interacting
mesoscopic region attached to noninteracting leads is investigated. We present
a set of formulae expressing the conductance in terms of the ground-state
energy or persistent currents in an auxiliary system, namely a ring threaded by
a magnetic flux and containing the correlated electron region. We first derive
the conductance formulae for the noninteracting case and then give arguments
why the formalism is also correct in the interacting case if the ground state
of a system exhibits Fermi liquid properties. We prove that in such systems,
the ground-state energy is a universal function of the magnetic flux, where the
conductance is the only parameter. The method is tested by comparing its
predictions with exact results and results of other methods for problems such
as the transport through single and double quantum dots containing interacting
electrons. The comparisons show an excellent quantitative agreement.Comment: 18 pages, 18 figures; to appear in Phys. Rev.
Velocity-force characteristics of an interface driven through a periodic potential
We study the creep dynamics of a two-dimensional interface driven through a
periodic potential using dynamical renormalization group methods. We find that
the nature of weak-drive transport depends qualitatively on whether the
temperature is above or below the equilibrium roughening transition
temperature . Above , the velocity-force characteristics is Ohmic,
with linear mobility exhibiting a jump discontinuity across the transition. For
, the transport is highly nonlinear, exhibiting an interesting
crossover in temperature and weak external force . For intermediate drive,
, we find near a power-law velocity-force characteristics
, with , and well-below ,
, with . In the limit
of vanishing drive () the velocity-force characteristics crosses over
to , and is controlled by soliton nucleation.Comment: 18 pages, submitted to Phys. Rev.
Avalanches and the Renormalization Group for Pinned Charge-Density Waves
The critical behavior of charge-density waves (CDWs) in the pinned phase is
studied for applied fields increasing toward the threshold field, using
recently developed renormalization group techniques and simulations of
automaton models. Despite the existence of many metastable states in the pinned
state of the CDW, the renormalization group treatment can be used successfully
to find the divergences in the polarization and the correlation length, and, to
first order in an expansion, the diverging time scale. The
automaton models studied are a charge-density wave model and a ``sandpile''
model with periodic boundary conditions; these models are found to have the
same critical behavior, associated with diverging avalanche sizes. The
numerical results for the polarization and the diverging length and time scales
in dimensions are in agreement with the analytical treatment. These
results clarify the connections between the behaviour above and below
threshold: the characteristic correlation lengths on both sides of the
transition diverge with different exponents. The scaling of the distribution of
avalanches on the approach to threshold is found to be different for automaton
and continuous-variable models.Comment: 29 pages, 11 postscript figures included, REVTEX v3.0 (dvi and PS
files also available by anonymous ftp from external.nj.nec.com in directory
/pub/alan/cdwfigs
Reinforcement determines the timing dependence of corticostriatal synaptic plasticity in vivo
Plasticity at synapses between the cortex and striatum is considered critical for learning novel actions. However, investigations of spike-timing-dependent plasticity (STDP) at these synapses have been performed largely in brain slice preparations, without consideration of physiological reinforcement signals. This has led to conflicting findings, and hampered the ability to relate neural plasticity to behavior. Using intracellular striatal recordings in intact rats, we show here that pairing presynaptic and postsynaptic activity induces robust Hebbian bidirectional plasticity, dependent on dopamine and adenosine signaling. Such plasticity, however, requires the arrival of a reward-conditioned sensory reinforcement signal within 2 s of the STDP pairing, thus revealing a timing-dependent eligibility trace on which reinforcement operates. These observations are validated with both computational modeling and behavioral testing. Our results indicate that Hebbian corticostriatal plasticity can be induced by classical reinforcement learning mechanisms, and might be central to the acquisition of novel actions
The types of Mott insulator
There are two classes of Mott insulators in nature, distinguished by their
responses to weak doping. With increasing chemical potential, Type I Mott
insulators undergo a first order phase transition from the undoped to the doped
phase. In the presence of long-range Coulomb interactions, this leads to an
inhomogeneous state exhibiting ``micro-phase separation.'' In contrast, in Type
II Mott insulators charges go in continuously above a critical chemical
potential. We show that if the insulating state has a broken symmetry, this
increases the likelihood that it will be Type I. There exists a close analogy
between these two types of Mott insulators and the familiar Type I and Type II
superconductors
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