Brillouin Scattering Studies of La_{0.77}Ca_{0.23}MnO_3 Across Metal-Insulator Transition

Temperature-dependent Brillouin scattering studies have been carried out on La_{0.77}Ca_{0.23}MnO_3 across the paramagnetic insulator - ferromagnetic metal (I-M) transition. The spectra show a surface Rayleigh wave (SRW) and a high velocity pseudo surface acoustic wave (HVPSAW) besides bulk acoustic waves (BAW). The Brillouin shifts associated with SRW and HVPSAW show blue-shifts, where as the frequencies of the BAW decrease below the I-M transition temperature (T_C) of 230 K. These results can be understood based on the temperature dependence of the elastic constants. We also observe a central peak whose width is maximum at T_C.Comment: 7 pages, 8 figure

High temperature behavior of Sr-doped layered cobaltites Y(Ba1-xSrx)Co2O5.5: phase stability and structural properties

In this article we present a neutron diffraction in-situ study of the thermal evolution and high-temperature structure of layered cobaltites Y(Ba, Sr)Co2 O5+{\delta}. Neutron thermodiffractograms and magnetic susceptibility measurements are reported in the temperature range 20 K <= T <= 570 K, as well as high resolution neutron diffraction experiments at selected temperatures. Starting from the as-synthesized samples with {\delta} ~ 0.5, we show that the room temperature phases remain stable up to 550 K, where they start loosing oxygen and transform to a vacancy-disordered "112" structure with tetragonal symmetry. Our results also show how the so-called "122" structure can be stabilized at high temperature (around 450 K) in a sample in which the addition of Sr at the Ba site had suppressed its formation. In addition, we present the structural and magnetic properties of the resulting samples with a new oxygen content {\delta} ~ 0.25 in the temperature range 20 K <= T <= 300 K

Incoherent Effect of Fe and Ni Substitutions in the Ferromagnetic-Insulator La0.6Bi0.4MnO3+d

A comparative study of the effect of Fe and Ni doping on the bismuth based perovskite La0.6Bi0.4MnO3.1, a projected spintronics magnetic semiconductor has been carried out. The doped systems show an expressive change in magnetic ordering temperature. However, the shifts in ferromagnetic transition (TC) of these doped phases are in opposite direction with respect to the parent phase TC of 115 K. The Ni-doped phase shows an increase in TC ~200 K, whereas the Fe-doped phase exhibits a downward shift to TC~95 K. Moreover, the Fe-doped is hard-type whereas the Ni-doped compound is soft-type ferromagnet. It is observed that the materials are semiconducting in the ferromagnetic phase with activation energies of 77 & 82 meV for Fe & Ni-doped phases respectively. In the presence of external magnetic field of 7 Tesla, they exhibit minor changes in the resistivity behaviours and the maximum isothermal magnetoresistance is around -20 % at 125 K for the Ni-phase. The results are explained on the basis of electronic phase separation and competing ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic interactions between the various mixed valence cations.Comment: 18 pages including figure

Bi-local Fields in Noncommutative Field Theory

We propose a bi-local representation in noncommutative field theory. It provides a simple description for high momentum degrees of freedom. It also shows that the low momentum modes can be well approximated by ordinary local fields. Long range interactions are generated in the effective action for the lower momentum modes after integrating out the high momentum bi-local fields. The low momentum modes can be represented by diagonal blocks in the matrix model picture and the high momentum bi-local fields correspond to off-diagonal blocks. This block-block interaction picture simply reproduces the infrared singular behaviors of nonplanar diagrams in noncommutative field theory.Comment: 27 pages, 2 figure

Brillouin scattering studies in Fe3_3O4_4 across the Verwey transition

Brillouin scattering studies have been carried out on high quality single crystals of Fe$_3$O$_4$ with [100] and [110] faces in the temperature range of 300 to 30 K. The room temperature spectrum shows a surface Rayleigh wave (SRW) mode at 8 GHz and a longitudinal acoustic (LA) mode at 60 GHz. The SRW mode frequency shows a minimum at the Verwey transition temperature $T_V$ of 123 K. The softening of the SRW mode frequency from about 250 K to $T_V$ can be quantitatively understood as a result of a decrease in the shear elastic constant C$_{44}$, arising from the coupling of shear strain to charge fluctuations. On the other hand, the LA mode frequency does not show any significant change around $T_V$, but shows a large change in its intensity. The latter shows a maximum at around 120 K in the cooling run and at 165 K in the heating run, exhibiting a large hysteresis of 45 K. This significant change in intensity may be related to the presence of stress-induced ordering of Fe$^{3+}$ and Fe$^{2+}$ at the octahedral sites, as well as to stress-induced domain wall motion.Comment: 14 pages, 3 figures, accepted in Physical Review B 200

Noncommutative Geometry Framework and The Feynman's Proof of Maxwell Equations

The main focus of the present work is to study the Feynman's proof of the Maxwell equations using the NC geometry framework. To accomplish this task, we consider two kinds of noncommutativity formulations going along the same lines as Feynman's approach. This allows us to go beyond the standard case and discover non-trivial results. In fact, while the first formulation gives rise to the static Maxwell equations, the second formulation is based on the following assumption $m[x_{j},\dot{x_{k}}]=i\hbar \delta_{jk}+im\theta_{jk}f.$ The results extracted from the second formulation are more significant since they are associated to a non trivial $\theta$-extension of the Bianchi-set of Maxwell equations. We find $div_{\theta}B=\eta_{\theta}$ and $\frac{\partial B_{s}}{\partial t}+\epsilon_{kjs}\frac{\partial E_{j}}{\partial x_{k}}=A_{1}\frac{d^{2}f}{dt^{2}}+A_{2}\frac{df}{dt}+A_{3},$ where $\eta_{\theta}$, $A_{1}$, $A_{2}$ and $A_{3}$ are local functions depending on the NC $\theta$-parameter. The novelty of this proof in the NC space is revealed notably at the level of the corrections brought to the previous Maxwell equations. These corrections correspond essentially to the possibility of existence of magnetic charges sources that we can associate to the magnetic monopole since $div_{\theta}B=\eta_{\theta}$ is not vanishing in general.Comment: LaTeX file, 16 page

Influence of Heat Treatment on the Corrosion of Microalloyed Steel in Sodium Chloride Solution

Microalloyed Steels find wide application in car bodies and other engineering parts because of its high strength as well as high ductility. Very fine grained microstructure is the reason behind the combination of strength and ductility. It has been reported that repeated quenching leads to further refining of microstructure. In the present investigation, corrosion resistance property of E34 microalloy steel has been studied in 3.5% NaCl solution in different microstructural conditions such as the as rolled one and three repeated quenched conditions. Weight loss, potentiodynamic polarization method, and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) techniques have been used. To reveal the corrosion resistance of different treated steels, some significant characterization parameters such as Ecorr, Icorr, Rp, and Rct in linear polarization and EIS curves were analyzed and compared. It is found that with repeated recrystallization grains become finer, and corrosion rate increases suggesting that a compromise has to strike between high mechanical property and corrosion rate