70 research outputs found
Keijsers, Shklyarevskii and van Kempen Reply
Answer to the Comment on ``Point-Contact Study of Fast and Slow Two-Level
Fluctuators in Metallic Glasses'' by Jan von Delft et al.Comment: 3 pages, no figures, accepted Phys. Rev. Letter
Zero-bias anomalies of point contact resistance due to adiabatic electron renormalization of dynamical defects
We study effect of the adiabatic electron renormalization on the parameters
of the dynamical defects in the ballistic metallic point contact. The upper
energy states of the ``dressed'' defect are shown to give a smaller
contribution to a resistance of the contact than the lower energy ones. This
holds both for the "classical" renormalization related to defect coupling with
average local electron density and for the "mesoscopic" renormalization caused
by the mesoscopic fluctuations of electronic density the dynamical defects are
coupled with. In the case of mesoscopic renormalization one may treat the
dynamical defect as coupled with Friedel oscillations originated by the other
defects, both static and mobile. Such coupling lifts the energy degeneracy of
the states of the dynamical defects giving different mesoscopic contribution to
resistance, and provides a new model for the fluctuator as for the object
originated by the electronic mesoscopic disorder rather than by the structural
one. The correlation between the defect energy and the defect contribution to
the resistance leads to zero-temperature and zero-bias anomalies of the point
contact resistance.
A comparison of these anomalies with those predicted by the Two Channel Kondo
Model (TCKM) is made. It is shown, that although the proposed model is based on
a completely different from TCKM physical background, it leads to a zero-bias
anomalies of the point contact resistance, which are qualitatively similar to
TCKM predictions.Comment: 6 pages, to be published in Phys. Rev.
Transport properties and point contact spectra of Ni_xNb_{1-x} metallic glasses
Bulk resistivity and point contact spectra of Ni_xNb_{1-x} metallic glasses
have been investigated as functions of temperature (0.3-300K) and magnetic
field (0-12T). Metallic glasses in this family undergo a superconducting phase
transition determined by the Nb concentration. When superconductivity was
suppressed by a strong magnetic field, both the bulk sample R(T) and the point
contact differential resistance curves of Ni_xNb_{1-x} showed logarithmic
behavior at low energies, which is explained by a strong electron - "two level
system" coupling. We studied the temperature, magnetic field and contact
resistance dependence of Ni_{44}Nb_{56} point-contact spectra in the
superconducting state and found telegraph-like fluctuations superimposed on
superconducting characteristics. These R(V) characteristics are extremely
sensitive detectors for slow relaxing "two level system" motion.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure
Overscreened Single Channel Kondo Problem
We consider the single channel Kondo problem with the Kondo coupling between
a spin impurity and conduction electrons with spin . These problems
arise as multicritical points in the parameter spaces of two- and higher-level
tunneling systems, and some impurity models of heavy fermion compounds. In
contrast to the previous Bethe-anstaz conjectures, it turns out that the
dynamics of the spin sector is the same as that of a spin impurity coupled
to channels of spin electrons with . As a
result, for , the system shows non-Fermi liquid behavior with the
same exponents for the thermodynamic quantities as those of channel
Kondo problem. However, both the finite-size spectrum and the operator content
are different due to the presence of the other sectors and can be obtained by
conformal field theory techniques.Comment: 4 pages, revtex, no figures. Revised Versio
Size Dependence In The Disordered Kondo Problem
We study here the role randomly-placed non-magnetic scatterers play on the
Kondo effect. We show that spin relaxation effects (with time )in the
vertex corrections to the Kondo self-energy lead to an exact cancellation of
the singular temperature dependence arising from the diffusion poles. For a
thin film of thickness and a mean-free path , disorder provides a
correction to the Kondo resistivity of the form
that explains both the disorder and sample-size depression of the Kondo effect
observed by Blachly and Giordano (PRB {\bf 51}, 12537 (1995)).Comment: 11 pages, LaTeX, 2 Postscript figure
Inverse Geometric Approach to the Simulation of the Circular Growth. The Case of Multicellular Tumor Spheroids
We demonstrate the power of the genetic algorithms to construct the cellular
automata model simulating the growth of 2-dimensional close-to-circular
clusters revealing the desired properties, such as the growth rate and, at the
same time, the fractal behavior of their contours. The possible application of
the approach in the field of tumor modeling is outlined
Linear Kondo conductance in a quantum dot
In a tunneling experiment across a quantum dot it is possible to change the
coupling between the dot and the contacts at will, by properly tuning the
trasparency of the barriers and the temperature. Gate voltages allow for
changes of the relative position of the dot addition energies and the Fermi
level of the leads. Here we discuss the two limiting cases: weak and strong
coupling in the tunneling Hamiltonian. In the latter case Kondo resonant
conductance can emerge at low temperature in a Coulomb blockade valley. We give
a pedagogical approach to the single-channel Kondo physics at equilibrium and
review the Nozieres scattering picture of the correlated fixed point. We
emphasize the effect of an applied magnetic field and show how an orbital Kondo
effect can take place in vertical quantum dots tuned both to an even and to an
odd number of electrons at a level crossing. We extend the approach to the
two-channel overscreened Kondo case and discuss recent proposals for detecting
the non-Fermi liquid fixed point which could be reached at strong coupling.Comment: 31 pages, invited review articl
Thermodynamics of the dissipative two-state system: a Bethe Ansatz study
The thermodynamics of the dissipative two-state system is calculated exactly
for all temperatures and level asymmetries for the case of Ohmic dissipation.
We exploit the equivalence of the two-state system to the anisotropic Kondo
model and extract the thermodynamics of the former by solving the thermodynamic
Bethe Ansatz equations of the latter. The universal scaling functions for the
specific heat and static dielectric susceptibility
are extracted for all dissipation strengths for
both symmetric and asymmetric two-state systems. The logarithmic corrections to
these quantities at high temperatures are found in the Kondo limit , whereas for we find the expected power law temperature
dependences with the powers being functions of the dissipative coupling
. The low temperature behaviour is always that of a Fermi liquid.Comment: 24 pages, 32 PS figures. Typos corrected, final versio
The evolution of the urinary bladder as a storage organ: scent trails and selective pressure of the first land animals in a computational simulation
The function of waste control in all living organisms is one of the vital importance. Almost universally, terrestrial tetrapods have a urinary bladder with a storage function. It is well documented that many marine and aerial species do not have an organ of such a function, or have one with very depressed storage functionality. Bladder morphology indicates it has evolved from a thin-walled structure used for osmoregulatory purposes, as it is currently used in many marine animals. It is hypothesised that the storage function of the urinary bladder allows for an evolutionary selective advantage in reducing the likelihood of successful predation. Random walks simulating predator and prey movements with simplified scent trails were utilised to represent various stages of the hunt: Detection and pursuit. A final evolutionary model is proposed in order to display the advantages over inter-generational time scales and illustrates how a bladder may evolve from an osmoregulatory organ to one of the storage. Data sets were generated for each case and analysed indicating the viability of such advantages. From the highly consistent results, three distinct characteristics of having a storage function in the urinary bladder are suggested: reduced scent trail detection rate; increased prey–predator separation (upon scent trail detection); and a reduced probability of successful capture upon scent detection by the predator. Furthered by the evolutionary model indicating such characteristics are conserved and augmented over many generations, it is concluded that prey–predator interactions provide a large selective pressure in the evolution of the urinary bladder and its storage function
Stochastic dynamics and mean field approach in a system of three interacting species
The spatio-temporal dynamics of three interacting species, two preys and one
predator, in the presence of two different kinds of noise sources is studied.
To describe the spatial distributions of the species we use a model based on
Lotka-Volterra equations. A correlated dichotomous noise acts on \beta, the
interaction parameter between the two preys, and a multiplicative white noise
affects directly the dynamics of each one of the three species. We study the
time behaviour of the three species in single site for different values of the
multiplicative noise intensity, finding noise-induced oscillations of the three
species densities with an anticorrelated behaviour of the two preys.
Afterwards, by considering a spatially extended system formed by a
two-dimensional lattice with N sites and applying a mean field approach, we get
the corresponding moment equations in Gaussian approximation. Within this
formalism we obtain the time behaviour of the first and second order moments
for different values of multiplicative noise intensity, with \beta(t) subject
to the same dichotomous noise source. Finally, we compare our results with
those obtained by using a coupled map lattice model, consisting of a time
discrete version of the Lotka-Volterra equations.Comment: 21 pages, 7 figures. Submitted to Centr. Eur. J. Phy
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