3,021 research outputs found
Field induced multiple order-by-disorder state selection in antiferromagnetic honeycomb bilayer lattice
In this paper we present a detailed study of the antiferromagnetic classical
Heisenberg model on a bilayer honeycomb lattice in a highly frustrated regime
in presence of a magnetic field. This study shows strong evidence of entropic
order-by-disorder selection in different sectors of the magnetization curve.
For antiferromagnetic couplings , we find that at low
temperatures there are two different regions in the magnetization curve
selected by this mechanism with different number of soft and zero modes. These
regions present broken symmetry and are separated by a not fully
collinear classical plateau at . At higher temperatures, there is a
crossover from the conventional paramagnet to a cooperative magnet. Finally, we
also discuss the low temperature behavior of the system for a less frustrated
region, .Comment: revised version - accepted for publication in Physical Review B - 12
pages, 11 figure
The oxygen abundance in the IFU era
Spatially-resolved information of gas-phase emission provided by integral
field units (IFUs) are allowing us to perform a new generation of emission-line
surveys, based on large samples of HII regions and full two-dimensional
coverage. Here we present two highlights of our current studies employing this
technique: 1) A statistical approach to the abundance gradients of spiral
galaxies, which indicates an -universal- radial gradient for oxygen abundance;
and 2) The discovery of a new scaling relation of HII regions in spiral
galaxies, the "local" mass-metallicity relation of star-forming galaxies.Comment: 6 pages, to appear in Highlights of Spanish Astrophysics VII,
Proceedings of the X Scientific Meeting of the Spanish Astronomical Society
held on July 9-13, 2012, in Valencia, Spai
Two repelling random walks on
We consider two interacting random walks on such that the
transition probability of one walk in one direction decreases exponentially
with the number of transitions of the other walk in that direction. The joint
process may thus be seen as two random walks reinforced to repel each other.
The strength of the repulsion is further modulated in our model by a parameter
. When both processes are independent symmetric
random walks on , and hence recurrent. We show that both random
walks are further recurrent if . We also show that these
processes are transient and diverge in opposite directions if . The
case remains widely open. Our results are obtained by
considering the dynamical system approach to stochastic approximations.Comment: 17 pages. Added references and corrected typos. Revised the argument
for the convergence to equilibria of the vector field. Improved the proof for
the recurrence when beta belongs to (0,1); leading to the removal of a
previous conjectur
Magnetization plateaux and jumps in a frustrated four-leg spin tube under a magnetic field
We study the ground state phase diagram of a frustrated spin-1/2 four-leg
spin tube in an external magnetic field. We explore the parameter space of this
model in the regime of all-antiferromagnetic exchange couplings by means of
three different approaches: analysis of low-energy effective Hamiltonian (LEH),
a Hartree variational approach (HVA) and density matrix renormalization group
(DMRG) for finite clusters. We find that in the limit of weakly interacting
plaquettes, low-energy singlet, triplet and quintuplet states play an important
role in the formation of fractional magnetization plateaux. We study the
transition regions numerically and analytically, and find that they are
described, at first order in a strong- coupling expansion, by an XXZ spin-1/2
chain in a magnetic field; the second-order terms give corrections to the XXZ
model. All techniques provide consistent results which allow us to predict the
existence of fractional plateaux in an important region in the space of
parameters of the model.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures. Accepted for publication in Physical Review
Inner and outer star forming regions over the disks of spiral galaxies. I. Sample characterization
Context. The knowledge of abundance distributions is central to understanding
the formation and evolution of galaxies. Most of the relations employed for the
derivation of gas abundances have so far been derived from observations of
outer disk HII regions, despite the known differences between inner and outer
regions. Aims. Using integral field spectroscopy (IFS) observations we aim to
perform a systematic study and comparison of two inner and outer HII regions
samples. The spatial resolution of the IFS, the number of objects and the
homogeneity and coherence of the observations allow a complete characterization
of the main observational properties and differences of the regions. Methods.
We analyzed a sample of 725 inner HII regions and a sample of 671 outer HII
regions, all of them detected and extracted from the observations of a sample
of 263 nearby, isolated, spiral galaxies observed by the CALIFA survey.
Results. We find that inner HII regions show smaller equivalent widths, greater
extinction and luminosities, along with greater values of
[NII]{\lambda}6583/H{\alpha} and [OII]{\lambda}3727/[OIII]{\lambda}5007
emission-line ratios, indicating higher metallicites and lower ionization
parameters. Inner regions have also redder colors and higher photometric and
ionizing masses, although Mion/Mphot is slighty higher for the outer regions.
Conclusions. This work shows important observational differences between inner
and outer HII regions in star forming galaxies not previously studied in
detail. These differences indicate that inner regions have more evolved stellar
populations and are in a later evolution state with respect to outer regions,
which goes in line with the inside-out galaxy formation paradigm.Comment: 16 page
PPAK Wide-field Integral Field Spectroscopy of NGC 628: II. Emission line abundance analysis
In this second paper of the series, we present the 2-dimensional (2D)
emission line abundance analysis of NGC 628, the largest object within the PPAK
Integral Field Spectroscopy (IFS) Nearby Galaxies Survey: PINGS. We introduce
the methodology applied to the 2D IFS data in order to extract and deal with
large spectral samples, from which a 2D abundance analysis can be later
performed. We obtain the most complete and reliable abundance gradient of the
galaxy up-to-date, by using the largest number of spectroscopic points sampled
in the galaxy, and by comparing the statistical significance of different
strong-line metallicity indicators. We find features not previously reported
for this galaxy that imply a multi-modality of the abundance gradient
consistent with a nearly flat-distribution in the innermost regions of the
galaxy, a steep negative gradient along the disc and a shallow gradient or
nearly-constant metallicity beyond the optical edge of the galaxy. The N/O
ratio seems to follow the same radial behaviour. We demonstrate that the
observed dispersion in metallicity shows no systematic dependence with the
spatial position, signal-to-noise or ionization conditions, implying that the
scatter in abundance for a given radius is reflecting a true spatial physical
variation of the oxygen content. Furthermore, by exploiting the 2D IFS data, we
were able to construct the 2D metallicity structure of the galaxy, detecting
regions of metal enhancement, and showing that they vary depending on the
choice of the metallicity estimator. The analysis of axisymmetric variations in
the disc of NGC 628 suggest that the physical conditions and the star formation
history of different-symmetric regions of the galaxy have evolved in a
different manner.Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRAS, 40 pages, 22 figures, online data:
http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/ioa/research/ping
Metastable and scaling regimes of a one-dimensional Kawasaki dynamics
We investigate the large-time scaling regimes arising from a variety of
metastable structures in a chain of Ising spins with both first- and
second-neighbor couplings while subject to a Kawasaki dynamics. Depending on
the ratio and sign of these former, different dynamic exponents are suggested
by finite-size scaling analyses of relaxation times. At low but
nonzero-temperatures these are calculated via exact diagonalizations of the
evolution operator in finite chains under several activation barriers. In the
absence of metastability the dynamics is always diffusive.Comment: 18 pages, 8 figures. Brief additions. To appear in Phys. Rev.
Flux-cutting and flux-transport effects in type-II superconductor slabs in a parallel rotating magnetic field
The magnetic response of irreversible type-II superconductor slabs subjected
to in-plane rotating magnetic field is investigated by applying the circular,
elliptic, extended-elliptic, and rectangular flux-line-cutting critical-state
models. Specifically, the models have been applied to explain experiments on a
PbBi rotating disk in a fixed magnetic field , parallel to the flat
surfaces. Here, we have exploited the equivalency of the experimental situation
with that of a fixed disk under the action of a parallel magnetic field,
rotating in the opposite sense. The effect of both the magnitude of the
applied magnetic field and its angle of rotation upon the
magnetization of the superconductor sample is analyzed. When is smaller
than the penetration field , the magnetization components, parallel and
perpendicular to , oscillate with increasing the rotation angle. On
the other hand, if the magnitude of the applied field, , is larger than
, both magnetization components become constant functions of at
large rotation angles. The evolution of the magnetic induction profiles inside
the superconductor is also studied.Comment: 12 pages, 29 figure
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