1,474 research outputs found
Spin-lattice coupling in frustrated antiferromagnets
We review the mechanism of spin-lattice coupling in relieving the geometrical
frustration of pyrochlore antiferromagnets, in particular spinel oxides. The
tetrahedral unit, which is the building block of the pyrochlore lattice,
undergoes a spin-driven Jahn-Teller instability when lattice degrees of freedom
are coupled to the antiferromagnetism. By restricting our considerations to
distortions which preserve the translational symmetries of the lattice, we
present a general theory of the collective spin-Jahn-Teller effect in the
pyrochlore lattice. One of the predicted lattice distortions breaks the
inversion symmetry and gives rise to a chiral pyrochlore lattice, in which
frustrated bonds form helices with a definite handedness. The chirality is
transferred to the spin system through spin-orbit coupling, resulting in a
long-period spiral state, as observed in spinel CdCr2O4. We discuss explicit
models of spin-lattice coupling using local phonon modes, and their
applications in other frustrated magnets.Comment: 23 pages, 6 figures. Lecture notes for Trieste Summer School, August
2007. To appear as a chapter in "Highly Frustrated Magnetism", Eds. C.
Lacroix, P. Mendels, F. Mil
Implementation of the Hierarchical Reference Theory for simple one-component fluids
Combining renormalization group theoretical ideas with the integral equation
approach to fluid structure and thermodynamics, the Hierarchical Reference
Theory is known to be successful even in the vicinity of the critical point and
for sub-critical temperatures. We here present a software package independent
of earlier programs for the application of this theory to simple fluids
composed of particles interacting via spherically symmetrical pair potentials,
restricting ourselves to hard sphere reference systems. Using the hard-core
Yukawa potential with z=1.8/sigma for illustration, we discuss our
implementation and the results it yields, paying special attention to the core
condition and emphasizing the decoupling assumption's role.Comment: RevTeX, 16 pages, 2 figures. Minor changes, published versio
Recent developments of the Hierarchical Reference Theory of Fluids and its relation to the Renormalization Group
The Hierarchical Reference Theory (HRT) of fluids is a general framework for
the description of phase transitions in microscopic models of classical and
quantum statistical physics. The foundations of HRT are briefly reviewed in a
self-consistent formulation which includes both the original sharp cut-off
procedure and the smooth cut-off implementation, which has been recently
investigated. The critical properties of HRT are summarized, together with the
behavior of the theory at first order phase transitions. However, the emphasis
of this presentation is on the close relationship between HRT and non
perturbative renormalization group methods, as well as on recent
generalizations of HRT to microscopic models of interest in soft matter and
quantum many body physics.Comment: 17 pages, 5 figures. Review paper to appear in Molecular Physic
Dynamical arrest and replica symmetry breaking in attractive colloids
Within the Replica Symmetry Breaking (RSB) framework developed by M.Mezard
and G.Parisi we investigate the occurrence of structural glass transitions in a
model of fluid characterized by hard sphere repulsion together with short range
attraction. This model is appropriate for the description of a class of
colloidal suspensions. The transition line in the density-temperature plane
displays a reentrant behavior, in agreement with Mode Coupling Theory (MCT), a
dynamical approach based on the Mori-Zwanzig formalism. Quantitative
differences are however found, together with the absence of the predicted
glass-glass transition at high density. We also perform a systematic study of
the pure hard sphere fluid in order to ascertain the accuracy of the adopted
method and the convergence of the numerical procedure.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figure
Phase transitions in simple and not so simple binary fluids
Compared to pure fluids, binary mixtures display a very diverse phase
behavior, which depends sensitively on the parameters of the microscopic
potential. Here we investigate the phase diagrams of simple model mixtures by
use of a microscopic implementation of the renormalization group technique.
First, we consider a symmetric mixture with attractive interactions, possibly
relevant for describing fluids of molecules with internal degrees of freedom.
Despite the simplicity of the model, slightly tuning the strength of the
interactions between unlike species drastically changes the topology of the
phase boundary, forcing or inhibiting demixing, and brings about several
interesting features such as double critical points, tricritical points, and
coexistence domains enclosing `islands' of homogeneous, mixed fluid.
Homogeneous phase separation in mixtures can be driven also by purely repulsive
interactions. As an example, we consider a model of soft particles which has
been adopted to describe binary polymer solutions. This is shown to display
demixing (fluid-fluid) transition at sufficiently high density. The nature and
the physical properties of the corresponding phase transition are investigated.Comment: 6 pages + 3 figures, presented at the 5th EPS Liquid Matter
Conference, Konstanz, 14-18 September 200
Compton-thick AGN in the NuSTAR era II: A deep NuSTAR and XMM-Newton view of the candidate Compton thick AGN in NGC 1358
We present the combined NuSTATR and XMM-Newton 0.6-79 keV spectral analysis
of a Seyfert 2 galaxy, NGC 1358, which we selected as a candidate Compton thick
(CT-) active galactic nucleus (AGN) on the basis of previous Swift/BAT and
Chandra studies. According to our analysis, NGC 1358 is confirmed to be a
CT-AGN using physical motivated models, at >3 confidence level. Our
best-fit shows that the column density along the 'line-of-sight' of the
obscuring material surrounding the accreting super-massive black hole is N = [1.96--2.80] 10 cm. The high-quality data from
NuSTAR gives the best constraints on the spectral shape above 10 keV to
date on NGC 1358. Moreover, by combining NuSTAR and XMM-Newton data, we find
that the obscuring torus has a low covering factor ( <0.17), and the
obscuring material is distributed in clumps, rather than uniformly. We also
derive an estimate of NGC 1358's Eddington ratio, finding it to be
10, which is in
acceptable agreement with previous measurements. Finally, we find no evidence
of short-term variability, over a 100 ks time-span, in terms of both
'line-of-sight' column density and flux.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figure
Providing Telco-oriented Network Services with eBPF: The Case for a 5G Mobile Gateway
Although several technologies exist for high-speed data plane processing, such as DPDK, the above technologies require a rigid partitioning of the resources of the system, such as dedicated CPU cores and network interfaces. Unfortunately, this is not always possible when running at the edge of the network, in which a few servers are available in each cluster and a mixture of data and control plane services must coexist on the same hardware. In this respect, eBPF can become a better alternative thanks to its integration in the vanilla Linux kernel, which enables contemporary support for data and control plane services, hence enabling a more efficient usage of the (scarce) computing resources. This paper proposes the first proof-of-concept open-source implementation of a 5G Mobile Gateway based on eBPF/XDP, highlighting the possible challenges (e.g., to create traffic policers, as buffering is not available in eBPF) and the resulting architecture. The result is characterized in terms of performance and scalability and compared with alternative technologies, showing that it outperforms other in-kernel solutions (e.g., Open vSwitch) and is comparable with DPDK-based platforms
A proof-of-concept 5G mobile gateway with eBPF
In this poster we propose the first proof-of-concept open-source implementation of a 5G Mobile Gateway based on eBPF/XDP and present benchmarks that compare its performance with alternative technologies.
We show how it outperforms other in-kernel solutions (e.g., OvS) and is comparable with DPDK-based platforms
The Swift-BAT survey reveals the orbital period of three high-mass X-ray binaries
A growing number of previously hidden Galactic X-ray sources are now detected
with recent surveys performed by the Integral and Swift satellites. Most of
these new sources eluded past surveys due to their large local X-ray extinction
and consequent low soft X-ray flux. The Swift-BAT performs daily monitoring of
the sky in an energy band (15-150 keV) which is only marginally affected by
X-ray extinction, thus allowing for the search of long periodicities in the
light curve and identification of the nature of the X-ray sources. We performed
a period search using the folding technique in the Swift-BAT light curves of
three Integral sources: IGR J05007-7047, IGR J13186-6257 and IGR J17354-3255.
Their periodograms show significant peaks at 30.770.01 d, 19.9940.01
d and 8.4480.002 d, respectively. We estimate the significance of these
features from the chi squared distribution of all the trials, finding a
probability less than 1.5 that the detections occurred due to
chance. We complement our analysis with the study of their broadband X-ray
emission. We identify the periodicities with the orbital periods of the
sources. The periods are typical for the wind accretors X-ray binaries and we
support this identification showing that also their energy spectra are
compatible with an X-ray spectral emission characteristic of high-mass X-ray
binaries. The spectrum of IGR J05007-704 that resides in the Large Magellanic
Cloud, does not show any intrinsic local absorption, whereas the spectra of the
Galactic sources IGR J17354-3255 and IGR J13186-6257 may be affected by a local
absorber. The folded light curve for IGR J13186-6257 suggests a possible Be
companion star.Comment: 10 pages, 14 figures. Accepted for publication in A&
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