Universal Boundary Entropies in Conformal Field Theory: A Quantum Monte Carlo Study

Recently, entropy corrections on nonorientable manifolds such as the Klein bottle are proposed as a universal characterization of critical systems with an emergent conformal field theory (CFT). We show that entropy correction on the Klein bottle can be interpreted as a boundary effect via transforming the Klein bottle into an orientable manifold with nonlocal boundary interactions. The interpretation reveals the conceptual connection of the Klein bottle entropy with the celebrated Affleck-Ludwig entropy in boundary CFT. We propose a generic scheme to extract these universal boundary entropies from quantum Monte Carlo calculation of partition function ratios in lattice models. Our numerical results on the Affleck-Ludwig entropy and Klein bottle entropy for the $q$-state quantum Potts chains with $q=2,3$ show excellent agreement with the CFT predictions. For the quantum Potts chain with $q=4$, the Klein bottle entropy slightly deviates from the CFT prediction, which is possibly due to marginally irrelevant terms in the low-energy effective theory.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures. Published versio

A Coupled AKNS-Kaup-Newell Soliton Hierarchy

A coupled AKNS-Kaup-Newell hierarchy of systems of soliton equations is proposed in terms of hereditary symmetry operators resulted from Hamiltonian pairs. Zero curvature representations and tri-Hamiltonian structures are established for all coupled AKNS-Kaup-Newell systems in the hierarchy. Therefore all systems have infinitely many commuting symmetries and conservation laws. Two reductions of the systems lead to the AKNS hierarchy and the Kaup-Newell hierarchy, and thus those two soliton hierarchies also possess tri-Hamiltonian structures.Comment: 15 pages, late

Binary Nonlinearization of Lax pairs of Kaup-Newell Soliton Hierarchy

Kaup-Newell soliton hierarchy is derived from a kind of Lax pairs different from the original ones. Binary nonlinearization procedure corresponding to the Bargmann symmetry constraint is carried out for those Lax pairs. The proposed Lax pairs together with adjoint Lax pairs are constrained as a hierarchy of commutative, finite dimensional integrable Hamiltonian systems in the Liouville sense, which also provides us with new examples of finite dimensional integrable Hamiltonian systems. A sort of involutive solutions to the Kaup-Newell hierarchy are exhibited through the obtained finite dimensional integrable systems and the general involutive system engendered by binary nonlinearization is reduced to a specific involutive system generated by mono-nonlinearization.Comment: 15 pages, plain+ams tex, to be published in Il Nuovo Cimento

Observation of an in-plane magnetic-field-driven phase transition in a quantum Hall system with SU(4) symmetry

In condensed matter physics, the study of electronic states with SU(N) symmetry has attracted considerable and growing attention in recent years, as systems with such a symmetry can often have a spontaneous symmetry-breaking effect giving rise to a novel ground state. For example, pseudospin quantum Hall ferromagnet of broken SU(2) symmetry has been realized by bringing two Landau levels close to degeneracy in a bilayer quantum Hall system. In the past several years, the exploration of collective states in other multi-component quantum Hall systems has emerged. Here we show the conventional pseudospin quantum Hall ferromagnetic states with broken SU(2) symmetry collapsed rapidly into an unexpected state with broken SU(4) symmetry, by in-plane magnetic field in a two-subband GaAs/AlGaAs two-dimensional electron system at filling factor around $\nu=4$. Within a narrow tilting range angle of 0.5 degrees, the activation energy increases as much as 12 K. While the origin of this puzzling observation remains to be exploited, we discuss the possibility of a long-sought pairing state of electrons with a four-fold degeneracy.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figure

Deranged calcium signaling and neurodegeneration in spinocerebellar ataxia type 3

Spinocerebellar ataxia type 3 (SCA3), also known as Machado-Joseph disease (MJD), is an autosomal-dominant neurodegenerative disorder caused by a polyglutamine expansion in ataxin-3 (SCA3, MJD1) protein. In biochemical experiments we demonstrate that mutant SCA3exp specifically associated with the type 1 inositol 1,4,5-trisphosphate receptor (InsP3R1), an intracellular calcium (Ca2+) release channel. In electrophysiological and Ca2+ imaging experiments we show that InsP3R1 are sensitized to activation by InsP3 in the presence of mutant SCA3exp. We found that feeding SCA3-YAC-84Q transgenic mice with dantrolene, a clinically relevant stabilizer of intracellular Ca2+ signaling, improved their motor performance and prevented neuronal cells loss in pontine nuclei and substantia nigra regions. Our results indicate that deranged Ca2+ signaling may play an important role in SCA3 pathology and that Ca2+ signaling stabilizers such as dantrolene may be considered as potential therapeutic drugs for treatment of SCA3 patients

Antiviral treatment alters the frequency of activating and inhibitory receptor-expressing natural killer cells in chronic Hepatitis B virus infected patients

Natural killer (NK) cells play a critical role in innate antiviral immunity, but little is known about the impact of antiviral therapy on the frequency of NK cell subsets. To this aim, we performed this longitudinal study to examine the dynamic changes of the frequency of different subsets of NK cells in CHB patients after initiation of tenofovir or adefovir therapy. We found that NK cell numbers and subset distribution differ between CHB patients and normal subjects; furthermore, the association was found between ALT level and CD158b+ NK cell in HBV patients. In tenofovir group, the frequency of NK cells increased during the treatment accompanied by downregulated expression of NKG2A and KIR2DL3. In adefovir group, NK cell numbers did not differ during the treatment, but also accompanied by downregulated expression of NKG2A and KIR2DL3. Our results demonstrate that treatment with tenofovir leads to viral load reduction, and correlated with NK cell frequencies in peripheral blood of chronic hepatitis B virus infection. In addition, treatments with both tenofovir and adefovir in chronic HBV infected patients induce a decrease of the frequency of inhibitory receptor+ NK cells, which may account for the partial restoration of the function of NK cells in peripheral blood following treatment

Multispace and Multilevel BDDC

BDDC method is the most advanced method from the Balancing family of iterative substructuring methods for the solution of large systems of linear algebraic equations arising from discretization of elliptic boundary value problems. In the case of many substructures, solving the coarse problem exactly becomes a bottleneck. Since the coarse problem in BDDC has the same structure as the original problem, it is straightforward to apply the BDDC method recursively to solve the coarse problem only approximately. In this paper, we formulate a new family of abstract Multispace BDDC methods and give condition number bounds from the abstract additive Schwarz preconditioning theory. The Multilevel BDDC is then treated as a special case of the Multispace BDDC and abstract multilevel condition number bounds are given. The abstract bounds yield polylogarithmic condition number bounds for an arbitrary fixed number of levels and scalar elliptic problems discretized by finite elements in two and three spatial dimensions. Numerical experiments confirm the theory.Comment: 26 pages, 3 figures, 2 tables, 20 references. Formal changes onl

Bounds of Efficiency at Maximum Power for Normal-, Sub- and Super-Dissipative Carnot-Like Heat Engines

The Carnot-like heat engines are classified into three types (normal-, sub- and super-dissipative) according to relations between the minimum irreversible entropy production in the "isothermal" processes and the time for completing those processes. The efficiencies at maximum power of normal-, sub- and super-dissipative Carnot-like heat engines are proved to be bounded between $\eta_C/2$ and $\eta_C/(2-\eta_C)$, $\eta_C /2$ and $\eta_C$, 0 and $\eta_C/(2-\eta_C)$, respectively. These bounds are also shared by linear, sub- and super-linear irreversible Carnot-like engines [Tu and Wang, Europhys. Lett. 98, 40001 (2012)] although the dissipative engines and the irreversible ones are inequivalent to each other.Comment: 1 figur