Experimental Determination of Thermal Entanglement in Spin Clusters using Magnetic Susceptibility Measurements

The present work reports an experimental observation of thermal entanglement in a clusterized spin chain formed in the compound Na$_2$Cu$_5$Si$_4$O$_{14}$. The presence of entanglement was investigated through two measured quantities, an Entanglement Witness and the Entanglement of Formation, both derived from the magnetic susceptibility. It was found that pairwise entanglement exists below $\sim 200$ K. Tripartite entanglement was also observed below $\sim 240$ K. A theoretical study of entanglement evolution as a function of applied field and temperature is also presented.Comment: Submited to Phys. Rev.

Reflectance of Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) for Xenon Scintillation Light

Gaseous and liquid xenon particle detectors are being used in a number of applications including dark matter search and neutrino-less double beta decay experiments. Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) is often used in these detectors both as electrical insulator and as a light reflector to improve the efficiency of detection of scintillation photons. However, xenon emits in the vacuum ultraviolet wavelength region (175 nm) where the reflecting properties of PTFE are not sufficiently known. In this work we report on measurements of PTFE reflectance, including its angular distribution, for the xenon scintillation light. Various samples of PTFE, manufactured by different processes (extruded, expanded, skived and pressed) have been studied. The data were interpreted with a physical model comprising both specular and diffuse reflections. The reflectance obtained for these samples ranges from about 47% to 66% for VUV light. Fluoropolymers, namely ETFE, FEP and PFA were also measured

Schwinger's Method for the Massive Casimir Effect

We apply to the massive scalar field a method recently proposed by Schwinger to calculate the Casimir effect. The method is applied with two different regularization schemes: the Schwinger original one by means of Poisson formula and another one by means of analytical continuation.Comment: plain TeX, 6 pages, DFTUZ-93-2

A new method for the solution of the Schrodinger equation

We present a new method for the solution of the Schrodinger equation applicable to problems of non-perturbative nature. The method works by identifying three different scales in the problem, which then are treated independently: An asymptotic scale, which depends uniquely on the form of the potential at large distances; an intermediate scale, still characterized by an exponential decay of the wave function and, finally, a short distance scale, in which the wave function is sizable. The key feature of our method is the introduction of an arbitrary parameter in the last two scales, which is then used to optimize a perturbative expansion in a suitable parameter. We apply the method to the quantum anharmonic oscillator and find excellent results.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, RevTex

Chemical Evolution of the Galaxy Based on the Oscillatory Star Formation History

We model the star formation history (SFH) and the chemical evolution of the Galactic disk by combining an infall model and a limit-cycle model of the interstellar medium (ISM). Recent observations have shown that the SFH of the Galactic disk violently variates or oscillates. We model the oscillatory SFH based on the limit-cycle behavior of the fractional masses of three components of the ISM. The observed period of the oscillation ($\sim 1$ Gyr) is reproduced within the natural parameter range. This means that we can interpret the oscillatory SFH as the limit-cycle behavior of the ISM. We then test the chemical evolution of stars and gas in the framework of the limit-cycle model, since the oscillatory behavior of the SFH may cause an oscillatory evolution of the metallicity. We find however that the oscillatory behavior of metallicity is not prominent because the metallicity reflects the past integrated SFH. This indicates that the metallicity cannot be used to distinguish an oscillatory SFH from one without oscillations.Comment: 21 pages LaTeX, to appear in Ap

Development of membranes with regions with different characteristics by phase inversion technique

Separation membrane cells comprising membrane sections with different characteristics can be thebase for new separation processes. Hybrid membrane cells require new membranes with regions withdifferent characteristics. In this paper we present numerical and experimental approaches to developsuch membranes by the phase inversion technique. The two main steps of the phase inversiontechnique, the evaporation step and the immersion precipitation step, are studied by numericalmethods. The numerical approach is based on the solution of the mass transport equation to predict thefilm composition after the evaporation step and in the solution of the CahnHilliard equations topredict the structure of the membrane after the immersion precipitation step. The equations are solvedby finite difference methods. The numerical simulations are used to predict the influence of severalexperimental parameters (temperature, composition of the initial polymeric solution, evaporation time,precipitation time, immersion bath composition) in the structure of the membrane. The experimentalapproach is based on the manipulation of the experimental conditions to produce regions of differentcharacteristics in the same membrane. An experimental method to create different regions from twodifferent initial polymeric solutions is presented

Critical and Tricritical Points for the Massless 2d Gross-Neveu Model Beyond Large N

Using optimized perturbation theory, we evaluate the effective potential for the massless two dimensional Gross-Neveu model at finite temperature and density containing corrections beyond the leading large-N contribution. For large-N, our results exactly reproduce the well known 1/N leading order results for the critical temperature, chemical potential and tricritical points. For finite N, our critical values are smaller than the ones predicted by the large-N approximation and seem to observe Landau's theorem for phase transitions in one space dimension. New analytical results are presented for the tricritical points that include 1/N corrections. The easiness with which the calculations and renormalization are carried out allied to the seemingly convergent optimized results displayed, in this particular application, show the robustness of this method and allows us to obtain neat analytical expressions for the critical as well as tricritical values beyond the results currently known.Comment: 29 pages, 14 figure

How Many Templates for GW Chirp Detection? The Minimal-Match Issue Revisited

In a recent paper dealing with maximum likelihood detection of gravitational wave chirps from coalescing binaries with unknown parameters we introduced an accurate representation of the no-signal cumulative distribution of the supremum of the whole correlator bank. This result can be used to derive a refined estimate of the number of templates yielding the best tradeoff between detector's performance (in terms of lost signals among those potentially detectable) and computational burden.Comment: submitted to Class. Quantum Grav. Typing error in eq. (4.8) fixed; figure replaced in version