IPA-CuCl3_3: a S=1/2 Ladder with Ferromagnetic Rungs

The spin gap material IPA-CuCl3 has been extensively studied as a ferromagnetic-antiferromagnetic bondalternating S = 1/2 chain. This description of the system was derived from structural considerations and bulk measurements. New inelastic neutron scattering experiments reveal a totally different picture: IPA-CuCl3 consists of weakly coupled spin ladders with antiferromagnetic legs and ferromagnetic rungs. The ladders run perpendicular to the originally supposed bondalternating chain direction. The ferromagnetic rungs make this system equivalent to a Haldane S = 1 antiferromagnet. With a gap energy of 1.17(1) meV, a zone-boundary energy of 4.1(1) meV, and almost no magnetic anisotropy, IPA-CuCl3 may the best Haldane-gap material yet, in terms of suitability for neutron scattering studies in high magnetic fields.Comment: 2 pages, 2 figures, submitted to proceedings of LT24, Orlando, FL, August 200

Upper Bounds for the Critical Car Densities in Traffic Flow Problems

In most models of traffic flow, the car density $p$ is the only free parameter in determining the average car velocity $\langle v \rangle$. The critical car density $p_c$, which is defined to be the car density separating the jamming phase (with $\langle v \rangle = 0$) and the moving phase (with $\langle v \rangle > 0$), is an important physical quantity to investigate. By means of simple statistical argument, we show that $p_c < 1$ for the Biham-Middleton-Levine model of traffic flow in two or higher spatial dimensions. In particular, we show that $p_{c} \leq 11/12$ in 2 dimension and $p_{c} \leq 1 - \left( \frac{D-1}{2D} \right)^D$ in $D$ ($D > 2$) dimensions.Comment: REVTEX 3.0, 5 pages with 1 figure appended at the back, Minor revision, to be published in the Sept issue of J.Phys.Soc.Japa

Entanglement scaling in critical two-dimensional fermionic and bosonic systems

We relate the reduced density matrices of quadratic bosonic and fermionic models to their Green's function matrices in a unified way and calculate the scaling of bipartite entanglement of finite systems in an infinite universe exactly. For critical fermionic 2D systems at T=0, two regimes of scaling are identified: generically, we find a logarithmic correction to the area law with a prefactor dependence on the chemical potential that confirms earlier predictions based on the Widom conjecture. If, however, the Fermi surface of the critical system is zero-dimensional, we find an area law with a sublogarithmic correction. For a critical bosonic 2D array of coupled oscillators at T=0, our results show that entanglement follows the area law without corrections.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Analytical and experimental study of two concentric cylinders coupled by a fluid gap

From a structural point of view a liquid coolant type nuclear reactor consists of a heavy steel vessel containing the core and related mechanical components and filled with a hot fluid. This vessel is protected from the severe environment of the core by a shielding structure, the thermal liner, which is usually a relatively thin steel cylinder concentric with the reactor vessel and separated from it by a gap filled with the coolant fluid. This arrangement leads to a potential vibration problem if the fundamental frequency, or one of the higher natural vibration frequencies, of this liner system is close to the frequency of some vibration source present in the reactor vessel. The shell rigidly clamped at its base and free at the top was investigated since it is a better description of the conditions encountered in typical reactor designs

Improved determination of color-singlet nonrelativistic QCD matrix elements for S-wave charmonium

We present a new computation of S-wave color-singlet nonrelativistic QCD matrix elements for the J/psi and the eta_c. We compute the matrix elements of leading order in the heavy-quark velocity v and the matrix elements of relative order v^2. Our computation is based on the electromagnetic decay rates of the J/psi and the eta_c and on a potential model that employs the Cornell potential. We include relativistic corrections to the electromagnetic decay rates, resumming a class of corrections to all orders in v, and find that they significantly increase the values of the matrix elements of leading order in v. This increase could have important implications for theoretical predictions for a number of quarkonium decay and production processes. The values that we find for the matrix elements of relative order v^2 are somewhat smaller than the values that one obtains from estimates that are based on the velocity-scaling rules of nonrelativistic QCD.Comment: 31 pages, minor corrections, version published in Phys. Rev.

Erratum: Dynamics and scaling in a quantum spin chain material with bond randomness

Follow-up neutron measurements, performed on a sample much larger than the one used in the original study, show that in the energy range 0.5-45 meV the magnetic excitations in BaCu2SiGeO7 are indistinguishable from those in conventional (disorder-free) quantum S=1/2 chains. Scrutinizing the previous data, we found that the analysis was affected by a poorly identified structured background and an additional technical mistake in the data reduction.Comment: This is a complete withdrawal of the original paper, also published as in Phys. Rev. Lett 93, 077206 (2004). One page, one figur

Dynamics of composite Haldane spin chains in IPA-CuCl3

Magnetic excitations in the quasi-one-dimensional antiferromagnet IPA-CuCl3 are studied by cold neutron inelastic scattering. Strongly dispersive gap excitations are observed. Contrary to previously proposed models, the system is best described as an asymmetric quantum spin ladder. The observed spectrum is interpreted in terms of ``composite'' Haldane spin chains. The key difference from actual S=1 chains is a sharp cutoff of the single-magnon spectrum at a certain critical wave vector.Comment: 4 pages 4 figure

Do Large-Scale Inhomogeneities Explain Away Dark Energy?

Recently, new arguments (astro-ph/0501152, hep-th/0503117) for how corrections from super-Hubble modes can explain the present-day acceleration of the universe have appeared in the literature. However, in this letter, we argue that, to second order in spatial gradients, these corrections only amount to a renormalization of local spatial curvature, and thus cannot account for the negative deceleration. Moreover, cosmological observations already put severe bounds on such corrections, at the level of a few percent, while in the context of inflationary models, these corrections are typically limited to ~ 10^{-5}. Currently there is no general constraint on the possible correction from higher order gradient terms, but we argue that such corrections are even more constrained in the context of inflationary models.Comment: 4 Pages, no figures. Minor modifications, added reference