7,792 research outputs found
Stiffness of Contacts Between Rough Surfaces
The effect of self-affine roughness on solid contact is examined with
molecular dynamics and continuum calculations. The contact area and normal and
lateral stiffnesses rise linearly with the applied load, and the load rises
exponentially with decreasing separation between surfaces. Results for a wide
range of roughnesses, system sizes and Poisson ratios can be collapsed using
Persson's contact theory for continuous elastic media. The atomic scale
response at the interface between solids has little affect on the area or
normal stiffness, but can greatly reduce the lateral stiffness. The scaling of
this effect with system size and roughness is discussed.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure
Contact area of rough spheres: Large scale simulations and simple scaling laws
We use molecular simulations to study the nonadhesive and adhesive
atomic-scale contact of rough spheres with radii ranging from nanometers to
micrometers over more than ten orders of magnitude in applied normal load. At
the lowest loads, the interfacial mechanics is governed by the contact
mechanics of the first asperity that touches. The dependence of contact area on
normal force becomes linear at intermediate loads and crosses over to Hertzian
at the largest loads. By combining theories for the limiting cases of nominally
flat rough surfaces and smooth spheres, we provide parameter-free analytical
expressions for contact area over the whole range of loads. Our results
establish a range of validity for common approximations that neglect curvature
or roughness in modeling objects on scales from atomic force microscope tips to
ball bearings.Comment: 2 figures + Supporting Materia
Toward the End of Time
The null-brane space-time provides a simple model of a big crunch/big bang
singularity. A non-perturbative definition of M-theory on this space-time was
recently provided using matrix theory. We derive the fermion couplings for this
matrix model and study the leading quantum effects. These effects include
particle production and a time-dependent potential. Our results suggest that as
the null-brane develops a big crunch singularity, the usual notion of
space-time is replaced by an interacting gluon phase. This gluon phase appears
to constitute the end of our conventional picture of space and time.Comment: 31 pages, reference adde
Spin chains and combinatorics: twisted boundary conditions
The finite XXZ Heisenberg spin chain with twisted boundary conditions was
considered. For the case of even number of sites , anisotropy parameter -1/2
and twisting angle the Hamiltonian of the system possesses an
eigenvalue . The explicit form of the corresponding eigenvector was
found for . Conjecturing that this vector is the ground state of the
system we made and verified several conjectures related to the norm of the
ground state vector, its component with maximal absolute value and some
correlation functions, which have combinatorial nature. In particular, the
squared norm of the ground state vector is probably coincides with the number
of half-turn symmetric alternating sign matrices.Comment: LaTeX file, 7 page
Work-related psychological health and psychological type among lead elders within the Newfrontiers network of churches in the United Kingdom
Building on a series of recent studies concerned with assessing work-related psychological health and psychological type among various groups of church leaders, this study reports new data provided by 134 Lead Elders within the Newfrontiers network of churches in the United Kingdom who completed the Francis Psychological Type Scales (FPTS) together with the two scales of the Francis Burnout Inventory (FBI) concerned with emotional exhaustion and satisfaction in ministry. Compared with other groups of church leaders, Lead Elders within the Newfrontiers network of churches reported lower levels of emotional exhaustion and higher levels of satisfaction in ministry. Compared with other groups of church leaders, there was a higher proportion of extraverts among Lead Elders within the Newfrontiers network of churches. There was only a weak association between psychological type and burnout
Quantum indistinguishability from general representations of SU(2n)
A treatment of the spin-statistics relation in nonrelativistic quantum
mechanics due to Berry and Robbins [Proc. R. Soc. Lond. A (1997) 453,
1771-1790] is generalised within a group-theoretical framework. The
construction of Berry and Robbins is re-formulated in terms of certain locally
flat vector bundles over n-particle configuration space. It is shown how
families of such bundles can be constructed from irreducible representations of
the group SU(2n). The construction of Berry and Robbins, which leads to a
definite connection between spin and statistics (the physically correct
connection), is shown to correspond to the completely symmetric
representations. The spin-statistics connection is typically broken for general
SU(2n) representations, which may admit, for a given value of spin, both bose
and fermi statistics, as well as parastatistics. The determination of the
allowed values of the spin and statistics reduces to the decomposition of
certain zero-weight representations of a (generalised) Weyl group of SU(2n). A
formula for this decomposition is obtained using the Littlewood-Richardson
theorem for the decomposition of representations of U(m+n) into representations
of U(m)*U(n).Comment: 32 pages, added example section 4.
Strain Hardening of Polymer Glasses: Entanglements, Energetics, and Plasticity
Simulations are used to examine the microscopic origins of strain hardening
in polymer glasses. While stress-strain curves for a wide range of temperature
can be fit to the functional form predicted by entropic network models, many
other results are fundamentally inconsistent with the physical picture
underlying these models. Stresses are too large to be entropic and have the
wrong trend with temperature. The most dramatic hardening at large strains
reflects increases in energy as chains are pulled taut between entanglements
rather than a change in entropy. A weak entropic stress is only observed in
shape recovery of deformed samples when heated above the glass transition.
While short chains do not form an entangled network, they exhibit partial shape
recovery, orientation, and strain hardening. Stresses for all chain lengths
collapse when plotted against a microscopic measure of chain stretching rather
than the macroscopic stretch. The thermal contribution to the stress is
directly proportional to the rate of plasticity as measured by breaking and
reforming of interchain bonds. These observations suggest that the correct
microscopic theory of strain hardening should be based on glassy state physics
rather than rubber elasticity.Comment: 15 pages, 12 figures: significant revision
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