Topology induced anomalous defect production by crossing a quantum critical point

We study the influence of topology on the quench dynamics of a system driven across a quantum critical point. We show how the appearance of certain edge states, which fully characterise the topology of the system, dramatically modifies the process of defect production during the crossing of the critical point. Interestingly enough, the density of defects is no longer described by the Kibble-Zurek scaling, but determined instead by the non-universal topological features of the system. Edge states are shown to be robust against defect production, which highlights their topological nature.Comment: Phys. Rev. Lett. (to be published

Upper body balance control strategy during continuous 3D postural perturbation in young adults

We explored how changes in vision and perturbation frequency impacted upright postural control in healthy adults exposed to continuous multiaxial support-surface perturbation. Ten subjects were asked to maintain equilibrium in standing stance with eyes open (EO) and eyes closed (EC) during sinusoidal 3D rotations at 0.25 (L) and 0.50 Hz (H). We measured upper-body kinematics – head, trunk, and pelvis – and analyzed differences in horizontal displacements and roll, pitch, and yaw sways. The presence of vision significantly decreased upper-body displacements in the horizontal plane, especially at the head level, while in EC the head was the most unstable segment. H trials produced a greater segment stabilization compared to L ones in EO and EC. Analysis of sways showed that in EO participants stabilized their posture by reducing the variability of trunk angles; in H trials a sway decrease for the examined segments was observed in the yaw plane and, for the pelvis only, in the pitch plane. Our results suggest that, during continuous multiaxial perturbations, visual information induced: (i) in L condition, a continuous reconfiguration of multi-body-segments orientation to follow the perturbation; (ii) in H condition, a compensation for the ongoing perturbation. These findings were not confirmed in EC where the same strategy – that is, the use of the pelvis as a reference frame for the body balance was adopted both in L and H

Comment on "Multidisciplinary investigation on a lava fountain preceding a flank eruption: The 10 May 2008 Etna case" by A. Bonaccorso et al.

The paper "Multidisciplinary investigation on a lava fountain preceding a flank eruption: The 10 May 2008 Etna case", by Bonaccorso et al. (2011), presents a multi-parameter dataset encompassing the eruptive episode featured in the title. Through the dataset at their disposal, the authors tried to set constraints on the coupled phenomena which governed the paroxysmal event and subsequent flank eruption. Even though the joint analysis of different data offers considerable potential to extract additional information on the dynamics behind the observed phenomena, the most obvious implication is the risk of not treating all the available information with due care, which may lead to misinterpretation of the data. In the following, we discuss issues concerning the analysis and interpretation of gravity and tilt data in Bonaccorso et al. (2011) and show why, in our opinion, the conclusion that "all the data concur in indicating that the 10 May lava fountain was generated by the fragmentation of a foam layer trapped at the top of a shallow reservoir" is not soundly based