1,302 research outputs found
Long-lived Giant Number Fluctuations in a Swarming Granular Nematic
Coherently moving flocks of birds, beasts or bacteria are examples of living
matter with spontaneous orientational order. How do these systems differ from
thermal equilibrium systems with such liquid-crystalline order? Working with a
fluidized monolayer of macroscopic rods in the nematic liquid crystalline
phase, we find giant number fluctuations consistent with a standard deviation
growing linearly with the mean, in contrast to any situation where the Central
Limit Theorem applies. These fluctuations are long-lived, decaying only as a
logarithmic function of time. This shows that flocking, coherent motion and
large-scale inhomogeneity can appear in a system in which particles do not
communicate except by contact.Comment: This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by
permission of the AAAS. The definitive version is to appear in SCIENC
Crucial role of sidewalls in velocity distributions in quasi-2D granular gases
Our experiments and three-dimensional molecular dynamics simulations of
particles confined to a vertical monolayer by closely spaced frictional walls
(sidewalls) yield velocity distributions with non-Gaussian tails and a peak
near zero velocity. Simulations with frictionless sidewalls are not peaked.
Thus interactions between particles and their container are an important
determinant of the shape of the distribution and should be considered when
evaluating experiments on a tightly constrained monolayer of particles.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, Added reference, model explanation charified,
other minor change
Non-equilibrium two-phase coexistence in a confined granular layer
We report the observation of the homogenous nucleation of crystals in a dense
layer of steel spheres confined between two horizontal plates vibrated
vertically. Above a critical vibration amplitude, two-layer crystals with
square symmetry were found to coexist in steady state with a surrounding
granular liquid. By analogy to equilibrium hard sphere systems, the phase
behavior can be explained through entropy maximization. However, dramatic
non-equilibrium effects are present, including a significant difference in the
granular temperatures of the two phases.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, RevTex4 forma
Wilson ratio in Yb-substituted CeCoIn5
We have investigated the effect of Yb substitution on the Pauli limited,
heavy fermion superconductor, CeCoIn. Yb acts as a non-magnetic divalent
substituent for Ce throughout the entire doping range, equivalent to hole
doping on the rare earth site. We found that the upper critical field in
(Ce,Yb)CoIn is Pauli limited, yet the reduced (H,T) phase diagram is
insensitive to disorder, as expected in the purely orbitally limited case. We
use the Pauli limiting field, the superconducting condensation energy and the
electronic specific heat coefficient to determine the Wilson ratio (),
the ratio of the specific heat coefficient to the Pauli susceptibility in
CeCoIn. The method is applicable to any Pauli limited superconductor in the
clean limit.Comment: 5 pages, 1 table, 4 figure
Finite-dimensional representations of twisted hyper loop algebras
We investigate the category of finite-dimensional representations of twisted
hyper loop algebras, i.e., the hyperalgebras associated to twisted loop
algebras over finite-dimensional simple Lie algebras. The main results are the
classification of the irreducible modules, the definition of the universal
highest-weight modules, called the Weyl modules, and, under a certain mild
restriction on the characteristic of the ground field, a proof that the simple
modules and the Weyl modules for the twisted hyper loop algebras are isomorphic
to appropriate simple and Weyl modules for the non-twisted hyper loop algebras,
respectively, via restriction of the action
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