Constrained structure of ancient Chinese poetry facilitates speech content grouping

Ancient Chinese poetry is constituted by structured language that deviates from ordinary language usage [1, 2]; its poetic genres impose unique combinatory constraints on linguistic elements [3]. How does the constrained poetic structure facilitate speech segmentation when common linguistic [4, 5, 6, 7, 8] and statistical cues [5, 9] are unreliable to listeners in poems? We generated artificial Jueju, which arguably has the most constrained structure in ancient Chinese poetry, and presented each poem twice as an isochronous sequence of syllables to native Mandarin speakers while conducting magnetoencephalography (MEG) recording. We found that listeners deployed their prior knowledge of Jueju to build the line structure and to establish the conceptual flow of Jueju. Unprecedentedly, we found a phase precession phenomenon indicating predictive processes of speech segmentation—the neural phase advanced faster after listeners acquired knowledge of incoming speech. The statistical co-occurrence of monosyllabic words in Jueju negatively correlated with speech segmentation, which provides an alternative perspective on how statistical cues facilitate speech segmentation. Our findings suggest that constrained poetic structures serve as a temporal map for listeners to group speech contents and to predict incoming speech signals. Listeners can parse speech streams by using not only grammatical and statistical cues but also their prior knowledge of the form of language

Superconducting correlations in ultra-small metallic grains

To describe the crossover from the bulk BCS superconductivity to a fluctuation-dominated regime in ultrasmall metallic grains, new order parameters and correlation functions, such as ``parity gap'' and ``pair-mixing correlation function'', have been recently introduced. In this paper, we discuss the small-grain behaviour of the Penrose-Onsager-Yang off-diagonal long-range order (ODLRO) parameter in a pseudo-spin representation. Relations between the ODLRO parameter and those mentioned above are established through analytical and numerical calculations.Comment: 7 pages, 1 figur

An enhanced fluorescent ZIF-8 film by capturing guest molecules for light-emitting applications

Metal organic frameworks (MOFs) constructed from metal ions/clusters and organic linkers have led to new porous luminescent materials and, thus, have attracted much attention. But their photoluminescence quantum yields (PLQYs) are not high and the photoluminescence mechanism is still unclear. In order to solve this problem, in this work, zeolitic imidazolate framework-8 (ZIF-8, a kind of MOF) composite films containing small molecules of acetic acid were successfully prepared on a glass substrate via a sol–gel method, and they exhibited a high PLQY of 54.42%. Compared with pure ZIF-8 film, the obtained ZIF-8 composite film presented a significant enhancement in blue light emission. Moreover, the PLQY of the ZIF-8 composite film can be controlled to a certain extent via adjusting the molar ratio of the ligands to the zinc source. Among them, ZIF-8 film prepared at a molar ratio of 2.5 : 1 showed higher transmittance, and the fluorescence quantum efficiency reached 54.42%, which may be attributed to electron transfer between acetic acid as an electron-donor and the ZIF-8 structure caused by their relatively strong hydrogen bonding interactions. This work may provide new insights into the enhanced fluorescence of MOF materials for light-emitting applications

The ground state entanglement in the XXZXXZ model

In this paper, we investigate spin entanglement in the $XXZ$ model defined on a $d$-dimensional bipartite lattice. The concurrence, a measure of the entanglement between two spins, is analyzed. We prove rigorously that the ground state concurrence reaches maximum at the isotropic point. For dimensionality $d \ge 2$, the concurrence develops a cusp at the isotropic point and we attribute it to the existence of magnetic long-range order.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure

Isospin effect in the statistical sequential decay

Isospin effect of the statistical emission fragments from the equilibrated source is investigated in the frame of statistical binary decay implemented into GEMINI code, isoscaling behavior is observed and the dependences of isoscaling parameters $\alpha$ and $\beta$ on emission fragment size, source size, source isospin asymmetry and excitation energies are studied. Results show that $\alpha$ and $\beta$ neither depends on light fragment size nor on source size. A good linear dependence of $\alpha$ and $\beta$ on the inverse of temperature $T$ is manifested and the relationship of $\alpha=4C_{sym}[(Z_{s}/A_{s})_{1}^{2}-(Z_{s}/A_{s})_{2}^{2}]/T$ and $\beta=4C_{sym}[(N_{s}/A_{s})_{1}^{2}-(N_{s}/A_{s})_{2}^{2}]/T$ from different isospin asymmetry sources are satisfied. The symmetry energy coefficient $C_{sym}$ extracted from simulation results is $\sim$ 23 MeV which includes both the volume and surface term contributions, of which the surface effect seems to play a significant role in the symmetry energy.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figures; A new substantially modified version which has been accepted by the Physical Review

Phase transitions and iron-ordered moment form factor in LaFeAsO

Elastic neutron scattering studies of an optimized LaFeAsO single crystal reveal that upon cooling, an onset of the tetragonal (T)-to-orthorhombic (O) structural transition occurs at $T_\texttt{S} \approx 156$ K, and it exhibits a sharp transition at $T_\texttt{P} \approx 148$ K. We argue that in the temperature range $T_\texttt{S}$ to $T_\texttt{P}$, T and O structures may dynamically coexist possibly due to nematic spin correlations recently proposed for the iron pnictides, and we attribute $T_\texttt{P}$ to the formation of long-range O domains from the finite local precursors. The antiferromagnetic structure emerges at $T_\texttt{N} \approx 140$ K, with the iron moment direction along the O \emph{a} axis. We extract the iron magnetic form factor and use the tabulated $\langle j_0\rangle$ of Fe, Fe$^{2+}$ and Fe$^{3+}$ to obtain a magnetic moment size of $\sim$0.8 $\mu_\texttt{B}$ at 9.5 K.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures, 3 table

Dynamical and sequential decay effects on isoscaling and density dependence of the symmetry energy

The isoscaling properties of the primary and final products are studied via isospin dependent quantum molecular dynamics (IQMD) model and the followed sequential decay model GEMINI, respectively. It is found that the isoscaling parameters $\alpha$ of both primary and final products keep no significant change for light fragments, but increases with the mass for intermediate and heavy products. The dynamical effects on isoscaling are exhibited by that $\alpha$ value decreases a little with the evolution time of the system, and opposite trend for the heavy products. The secondary decay effects on isoscaling are reflected in the increasing of the $\alpha$ value for the final products which experiences secondary decay process. Furthermore the density dependence of the symmetry energy has also been explored, it is observed that in the low densities the symmetry energy coefficient has the form of $C_{sym}(\rho)\sim C_{0}(\rho/\rho_{0})^{\gamma}$, where $\gamma = 0.7 \sim 1.3$ for both primary and final products, but $C_{0}$ have different values for primary and final products. It is also suggested that it might be more reasonable to describe the density dependence of the symmetry energy coefficient by the $C_{sym}(\rho/\rho_{0})\approx C_{1}(\rho/\rho_{0})^{\gamma_{soft}} + C_{2}(\rho/\rho_{0})^{\gamma_{stiff}}$ with $\gamma_{soft}\leq 1$, $\gamma_{stiff}\geq 1$ and $C_{1}, C_{2}$ constant parameters.Comment: 10 pages, 10 figure