30,590 research outputs found
Quantum transport through single and multilayer icosahedral fullerenes
We use a tight-binding Hamiltonian and Green functions methods to calculate
the quantum transmission through single-wall fullerenes and bilayered and
trilayered onions of icosahedral symmetry attached to metallic leads. The
electronic structure of the onion-like fullerenes takes into account the
curvature and finite size of the fullerenes layers as well as the strength of
the intershell interactions depending on to the number of interacting atom
pairs belonging to adjacent shells. Misalignment of the symmetry axes of the
concentric icosahedral shells produces breaking of the level degeneracies of
the individual shells, giving rise some narrow quasi-continuum bands instead of
the localized discrete peaks of the individual fullerenes. As a result, the
transmission function for non symmetrical onions are rapidly varying functions
of the Fermi energy. Furthermore, we found that most of the features of the
transmission through the onions are due to the electronic structure of the
outer shell with additional Fano-like antiresonances arising from coupling with
or between the inner shells.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figur
Models for gamma-ray production in low-mass microquasars
Unlike high-mass gamma-ray binaries, low-mass microquasars lack external
sources of radiation and matter that could produce high-energy emission through
interactions with relativistic particles. In this work we consider the
synchrotron emission of protons and leptons that populate the jet of a low-mass
microquasar. In our model photohadronic and inverse Compton (IC) interactions
with synchrotron photons produced by both protons and leptons result in a
high-energy tail of the spectrum. We also estimate the contribution from
secondary pairs injected through photopair production. The high-energy emission
is dominated by radiation of hadronic origin, so we can call these objects
proton microquasars.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, accepted for publication in the International
Journal of Modern Physics D, proceedings of HEPRO meeting, held in Dublin, in
September 200
The Kepler problem and non commutativity
We investigate the Kepler problem using a symplectic structure consistent
with the commutation rules of the noncommutative quantum mechanics. We show
that a noncommutative parameter of the order of gives
observable corrections to the movement of the solar system. In this way,
modifications in the physics of smaller scales implies modifications at large
scales, something similar to the UV/IR mixing.Comment: 10 page
Modeling of gas adsorption on graphene nanoribbons
We present a theory to study gas molecules adsorption on armchair graphene
nanoribbons (AGNRs) by applying the results of \emph{ab} \emph{initio}
calculations to the single-band tight-binding approximation. In addition, the
effect of edge states on the electronic properties of AGNR is included in the
calculations. Under the assumption that the gas molecules adsorb on the ribbon
sites with uniform probability distribution, the applicability of the method is
examined for finite concentrations of adsorption of several simple gas
molecules (CO, NO, CO, NH) on 10-AGNR. We show that the states
contributed by the adsorbed CO and NO molecules are quite localized near the
center of original band gap and suggest that the charge transport in such
systems cannot be enhanced considerably, while CO and NH molecules
adsorption acts as acceptor and donor, respectively. The results of this theory
at low gas concentration are in good agreement with those obtained by
density-functional theory calculations.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figure
Dermatitis as a component of the fetal inflammatory response syndrome is associated with activation of Toll-like receptors in epidermal keratinocytes
AIMS: Microbial invasion of the amniotic cavity (MIAC) elicits a fetal inflammatory response such as funisitis and chorionic vasculitis. However, little is known about the changes of fetal skin during MIAC. Toll-like receptors recognize microbial products and initiate an immune response. The aims of this study were to examine histopathological features of fetal skin exposed to MIAC and to assess the changes in Toll-like receptor (TLR)-2 and TLR-4 expression. METHODS AND RESULTS: Skin samples were obtained from fetal autopsies (n = 12). The cases were classified according to the presence (n = 8) or absence (n = 4) of acute chorioamnionitis and analysed by immunohistochemistry using a panel of antibodies. Leucocytic infiltrates into the superficial dermis were observed in cases with chorioamnionitis; the majority of inflammatory cells were neutrophils, lymphocytes and histiocytes. TLR-2 immunoreactivity in the skin was stronger in fetuses with chorioamnionitis than in those without this condition. However, immunoreactivity of TLR-4 in the fetal skin was constitutively expressed, regardless of the presence or absence of chorioamnionitis. CONCLUSIONS: This study demonstrates for the first time that fetal dermatitis can be detected and is part of the fetal inflammatory response syndrome (FIRS). We propose that this ‘FIRS-associated fetal dermatitis’ is a fetal counterpart of chorioamnionitis
Relativistic quantum mechanics of a Dirac oscillator
The Dirac oscillator is an exactly soluble model recently introduced in the
context of many particle models in relativistic quantum mechanics. The model
has been also considered as an interaction term for modelling quark confinement
in quantum chromodynamics. These considerations should be enough for
demonstrating that the Dirac oscillator can be an excellent example in
relativistic quantum mechanics. In this paper we offer a solution to the
problem and discuss some of its properties. We also discuss a physical picture
for the Dirac oscillator's non-standard interaction, showing how it arises on
describing the behaviour of a neutral particle carrying an anomalous magnetic
moment and moving inside an uniformly charged sphere.Comment: 19 pages, 1 figur
Cascades: A view from Audience
Cascades on online networks have been a popular subject of study in the past
decade, and there is a considerable literature on phenomena such as diffusion
mechanisms, virality, cascade prediction, and peer network effects. However, a
basic question has received comparatively little attention: how desirable are
cascades on a social media platform from the point of view of users? While
versions of this question have been considered from the perspective of the
producers of cascades, any answer to this question must also take into account
the effect of cascades on their audience. In this work, we seek to fill this
gap by providing a consumer perspective of cascade.
Users on online networks play the dual role of producers and consumers.
First, we perform an empirical study of the interaction of Twitter users with
retweet cascades. We measure how often users observe retweets in their home
timeline, and observe a phenomenon that we term the "Impressions Paradox": the
share of impressions for cascades of size k decays much slower than frequency
of cascades of size k. Thus, the audience for cascades can be quite large even
for rare large cascades. We also measure audience engagement with retweet
cascades in comparison to non-retweeted content. Our results show that cascades
often rival or exceed organic content in engagement received per impression.
This result is perhaps surprising in that consumers didn't opt in to see tweets
from these authors. Furthermore, although cascading content is widely popular,
one would expect it to eventually reach parts of the audience that may not be
interested in the content. Motivated by our findings, we posit a theoretical
model that focuses on the effect of cascades on the audience. Our results on
this model highlight the balance between retweeting as a high-quality content
selection mechanism and the role of network users in filtering irrelevant
content
Beyond mean-field bistability in driven-dissipative lattices: bunching-antibunching transition and quantum simulation
In the present work we investigate the existence of multiple nonequilibrium
steady states in a coherently driven XY lattice of dissipative two-level
systems. A commonly used mean-field ansatz, in which spatial correlations are
neglected, predicts a bistable behavior with a sharp shift between low- and
high-density states. In contrast one-dimensional matrix product methods reveal
these effects to be artifacts of the mean-field approach, with both
disappearing once correlations are taken fully into account. Instead, a
bunching-antibunching transition emerges. This indicates that alternative
approaches should be considered for higher spatial dimensions, where classical
simulations are currently infeasible. Thus we propose a circuit QED quantum
simulator implementable with current technology to enable an experimental
investigation of the model considered
Gamma-ray variability from wind clumping in HMXBs with jets
In the subclass of high-mass X-ray binaries known as "microquasars",
relativistic hadrons in the jets launched by the compact object can interact
with cold protons from the star's radiatively driven wind, producing pions that
then quickly decay into gamma rays. Since the resulting gamma-ray emissivity
depends on the target density, the detection of rapid variability in
microquasars with GLAST and the new generation of Cherenkov imaging arrays
could be used to probe the clumped structure of the stellar wind. We show here
that the fluctuation in gamma rays can be modeled using a "porosity length"
formalism, usually applied to characterize clumping effects. In particular, for
a porosity length defined by h=l/f, i.e. as the ratio of the characteristic
size l of clumps to their volume filling factor f, we find that the relative
fluctuation in gamma-ray emission in a binary with orbital separation a scales
as sqrt(h/pi a) in the "thin-jet" limit, and is reduced by a factor 1/sqrt(1 +
phi a/(2 l)) for a jet with a finite opening angle phi. For a thin jet and
quite moderate porosity length h ~ 0.03 a, this implies a ca. 10 % variation in
the gamma-ray emission. Moreover, the illumination of individual large clumps
might result in isolated flares, as has been recently observed in some massive
gamma-ray binaries.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ; 5 pages, 1 figur
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