3,881 research outputs found
Blue flag with yellow tiger? Flags, authenticity and identity
The Flag of the Formosa Republic in the collection of the National Taiwan Museum is a national icon. It is a copy of one made in 1895 to mark the formation of a new Taiwanese republic; this replica, described in a contemporary newspaper account as an exact copy, was made in Japan in 1909. The painted flag was an intriguing puzzle. Instrumental analysis and a close study of the flag itself and of surviving historic photographs and records were used to try to establish whether what looked like later additions and repairs were actually part of the original construction. An international team of conservators and scientists from Taiwan, the UK, the USA and Germany carried out the investigation and the conservation treatment. Although dye analysis was inconclusive and it has not yet been possible to ascertain the original colour, it was felt that an addition in the upper right corner and some of the repairs could well be part of the original construction and these were left in situ though other repairs were removed. The paper lining was removed, revealing that the flag was painted on both sides. The fabric was cleaned using a vacuum suction table, while the paint surface was cleaned with swabs. The flag was supported using an adhesive treatment with Lascaux acrylic resin
Electroreflectance spectroscopy in self-assembled quantum dots: lens symmetry
Modulated electroreflectance spectroscopy of semiconductor
self-assembled quantum dots is investigated. The structure is modeled as dots
with lens shape geometry and circular cross section. A microscopic description
of the electroreflectance spectrum and optical response in terms of an external
electric field () and lens geometry have been considered. The field
and lens symmetry dependence of all experimental parameters involved in the
spectrum have been considered. Using the effective mass formalism
the energies and the electronic states as a function of and dot
parameters are calculated. Also, in the framework of the strongly confined
regime general expressions for the excitonic binding energies are reported.
Optical selection rules are derived in the cases of the light wave vector
perpendicular and parallel to . Detailed calculation of the Seraphin
coefficients and electroreflectance spectrum are performed for the InAs and
CdSe nanostructures. Calculations show good agreement with measurements
recently performed on CdSe/ZnSe when statistical distribution on size is
considered, explaining the main observed characteristic in the
electroreflectance spectra
Uniform approximation of barrier penetration in phase space
A method to approximate transmission probabilities for a nonseparable
multidimensional barrier is applied to a waveguide model. The method uses
complex barrier-crossing orbits to represent reaction probabilities in phase
space and is uniform in the sense that it applies at and above a threshold
energy at which classical reaction switches on. Above this threshold the
geometry of the classically reacting region of phase space is clearly reflected
in the quantum representation. Two versions of the approximation are applied. A
harmonic version which uses dynamics linearised around an instanton orbit is
valid only near threshold but is easy to use. A more accurate and more widely
applicable version using nonlinear dynamics is also described
The Transition State in a Noisy Environment
Transition State Theory overestimates reaction rates in solution because
conventional dividing surfaces between reagents and products are crossed many
times by the same reactive trajectory. We describe a recipe for constructing a
time-dependent dividing surface free of such recrossings in the presence of
noise. The no-recrossing limit of Transition State Theory thus becomes
generally available for the description of reactions in a fluctuating
environment
Off-equilibrium dynamics of the two-dimensional Coulomb glass
The dynamics of the 2D Coulomb glass model is investigated by kinetic Monte
Carlo simulation. An exponential divergence of the relaxation time signals a
zero-temperature freezing transition. At low temperatures the dynamics of the
system is glassy. The local charge correlations and the response to
perturbations of the local potential show aging. The dynamics of formation of
the Coulomb gap is slow and the density of states at the Fermi level decays in
time as a power law. The relevance of these findings for recent transport
experiments in Anderson-insulating films is pointed out.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figure
Stochastic Transition States: Reaction Geometry amidst Noise
Classical transition state theory (TST) is the cornerstone of reaction rate
theory. It postulates a partition of phase space into reactant and product
regions, which are separated by a dividing surface that reactive trajectories
must cross. In order not to overestimate the reaction rate, the dynamics must
be free of recrossings of the dividing surface. This no-recrossing rule is
difficult (and sometimes impossible) to enforce, however, when a chemical
reaction takes place in a fluctuating environment such as a liquid.
High-accuracy approximations to the rate are well known when the solvent forces
are treated using stochastic representations, though again, exact no-recrossing
surfaces have not been available. To generalize the exact limit of TST to
reactive systems driven by noise, we introduce a time-dependent dividing
surface that is stochastically moving in phase space such that it is crossed
once and only once by each transition path
Monte-Carlo Simulations of the Dynamical Behavior of the Coulomb Glass
We study the dynamical behavior of disordered many-particle systems with
long-range Coulomb interactions by means of damage-spreading simulations. In
this type of Monte-Carlo simulations one investigates the time evolution of the
damage, i.e. the difference of the occupation numbers of two systems, subjected
to the same thermal noise. We analyze the dependence of the damage on
temperature and disorder strength. For zero disorder the spreading transition
coincides with the equilibrium phase transition, whereas for finite disorder,
we find evidence for a dynamical phase transition well below the transition
temperature of the pure system.Comment: 10 pages RevTeX, 8 Postscript figure
Coherent State Path Integrals in the Weyl Representation
We construct a representation of the coherent state path integral using the
Weyl symbol of the Hamiltonian operator. This representation is very different
from the usual path integral forms suggested by Klauder and Skagerstan in
\cite{Klau85}, which involve the normal or the antinormal ordering of the
Hamiltonian. These different representations, although equivalent quantum
mechanically, lead to different semiclassical limits. We show that the
semiclassical limit of the coherent state propagator in Weyl representation is
involves classical trajectories that are independent on the coherent states
width. This propagator is also free from the phase corrections found in
\cite{Bar01} for the two Klauder forms and provides an explicit connection
between the Wigner and the Husimi representations of the evolution operator.Comment: 23 page
Cross-link governed dynamics of biopolymer networks
Cytoskeletal networks of biopolymers are cross-linked by a variety of
proteins. Experiments have shown that dynamic cross-linking with physiological
linker proteins leads to complex stress relaxation and enables network flow at
long times. We present a model for the mechanical properties of transient
networks. By a combination of simulations and analytical techniques we show
that a single microscopic timescale for cross-linker unbinding leads to a broad
spectrum of macroscopic relaxation times, resulting in a weak power-law
dependence of the shear modulus on frequency. By performing rheological
experiments, we demonstrate that our model quantitatively describes the
frequency behavior of actin network cross-linked with -Actinin- over
four decades in frequency.Comment: 4 page
Geometrical Models of the Phase Space Structures Governing Reaction Dynamics
Hamiltonian dynamical systems possessing equilibria of stability type display \emph{reaction-type
dynamics} for energies close to the energy of such equilibria; entrance and
exit from certain regions of the phase space is only possible via narrow
\emph{bottlenecks} created by the influence of the equilibrium points. In this
paper we provide a thorough pedagogical description of the phase space
structures that are responsible for controlling transport in these problems. Of
central importance is the existence of a \emph{Normally Hyperbolic Invariant
Manifold (NHIM)}, whose \emph{stable and unstable manifolds} have sufficient
dimensionality to act as separatrices, partitioning energy surfaces into
regions of qualitatively distinct behavior. This NHIM forms the natural
(dynamical) equator of a (spherical) \emph{dividing surface} which locally
divides an energy surface into two components (`reactants' and `products'), one
on either side of the bottleneck. This dividing surface has all the desired
properties sought for in \emph{transition state theory} where reaction rates
are computed from the flux through a dividing surface. In fact, the dividing
surface that we construct is crossed exactly once by reactive trajectories, and
not crossed by nonreactive trajectories, and related to these properties,
minimizes the flux upon variation of the dividing surface.
We discuss three presentations of the energy surface and the phase space
structures contained in it for 2-degree-of-freedom (DoF) systems in the
threedimensional space , and two schematic models which capture many of
the essential features of the dynamics for -DoF systems. In addition, we
elucidate the structure of the NHIM.Comment: 44 pages, 38 figures, PDFLaTe
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