1,285 research outputs found
Spectral modeling of type II supernovae. I. Dilution factors
We present substantial extensions to the Monte Carlo radiative transfer code
TARDIS to perform spectral synthesis for type II supernovae. By incorporating a
non-LTE ionization and excitation treatment for hydrogen, a full account of
free-free and bound-free processes, a self-consistent determination of the
thermal state and by improving the handling of relativistic effects, the
improved code version includes the necessary physics to perform spectral
synthesis for type II supernovae to high precision as required for the reliable
inference of supernova properties. We demonstrate the capabilities of the
extended version of TARDIS by calculating synthetic spectra for the
prototypical type II supernova SN1999em and by deriving a new and independent
set of dilution factors for the expanding photosphere method. We have
investigated in detail the dependence of the dilution factors on photospheric
properties and, for the first time, on changes in metallicity. We also compare
our results with two previously published sets of dilution factors by Eastman
et al. (1996) and by Dessart & Hillier (2005), and discuss the potential
sources of the discrepancies between studies.Comment: 16 pages, 12 figures, 2 tables, accepted for publication in A&
Theory of excitons in cubic III-V semiconductor GaAs, InAs and GaN quantum dots: fine structure and spin relaxation
Exciton fine structures in cubic III-V semiconductor GaAs, InAs and GaN
quantum dots are investigated systematically and the exciton spin relaxation in
GaN quantum dots is calculated by first setting up the effective exciton
Hamiltonian. The electron-hole exchange interaction Hamiltonian, which consists
of the long- and short-range parts, is derived within the effective-mass
approximation by taking into account the conduction, heavy- and light-hole
bands, and especially the split-off band. The scheme applied in this work
allows the description of excitons in both the strong and weak confinement
regimes. The importance of treating the direct electron-hole Coulomb
interaction unperturbatively is demonstrated. We show in our calculation that
the light-hole and split-off bands are negligible when considering the exciton
fine structure, even for GaN quantum dots, and the short-range exchange
interaction is irrelevant when considering the optically active doublet
splitting. We point out that the long-range exchange interaction, which is
neglected in many previous works, contributes to the energy splitting between
the bright and dark states, together with the short-range exchange interaction.
Strong dependence of the optically active doublet splitting on the anisotropy
of dot shape is reported. Large doublet splittings up to 600 eV, and even
up to several meV for small dot size with large anisotropy, is shown in GaN
quantum dots. The spin relaxation between the lowest two optically active
exciton states in GaN quantum dots is calculated, showing a strong dependence
on the dot anisotropy. Long exciton spin relaxation time is reported in GaN
quantum dots. These findings are in good agreement with the experimental
results.Comment: 22+ pages, 16 figures, several typos in the published paper are
corrected in re
Spatial structure of Mn-Mn acceptor pairs in GaAs
The local density of states of Mn-Mn pairs in GaAs is mapped with
cross-sectional scanning tunneling microscopy and compared with theoretical
calculations based on envelope-function and tight-binding models. These
measurements and calculations show that the crosslike shape of the Mn-acceptor
wavefunction in GaAs persists even at very short Mn-Mn spatial separations. The
resilience of the Mn-acceptor wave-function to high doping levels suggests that
ferromagnetism in GaMnAs is strongly influenced by impurity-band formation. The
envelope-function and tight-binding models predict similarly anisotropic
overlaps of the Mn wave-functions for Mn-Mn pairs. This anisotropy implies
differing Curie temperatures for Mn -doped layers grown on differently
oriented substrates.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure
Topological susceptibility at zero and finite temperature in the Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model
We consider the three flavor Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model with the 't Hooft
interaction incorporating the U(1)_A anomaly. In order to set the coupling
strength of the 't Hooft term, we employ the topological susceptibility
instead of the eta' meson mass. The value for is taken from lattice
simulations. We also calculate at finite temperature within the model.
Comparing it with the lattice data, we extract information about the behavior
of the U(1)_A anomaly at finite temperature. We conclude that within the
present framework, the effective restoration of the U(1)_A symmetry does not
necessarily take place even at high temperature where the chiral symmetry is
restored.Comment: 9 pages, 14 figures, to be published in Phys.Rev.
Palladin Compensates for the Arp2/3 Complex and Supports Actin Structures during Listeria Infections
Palladin is an important component of motile actin-rich structures and nucleates branched actin filament arrays in vitro. Here we examine the role of palladin during Listeria monocytogenes infections in order to tease out novel functions of palladin. We show that palladin is co-opted by L. monocytogenes during its cellular entry and intracellular motility. Depletion of palladin resulted in shorter and misshapen comet tails, and when actin- or VASP-binding mutants of palladin were overexpressed in cells, comet tails disintegrated or became thinner. Comet tail thinning resulted in parallel actin bundles within the structures. To determine whether palladin could compensate for the Arp2/3 complex, we overexpressed palladin in cells treated with the Arp2/3 inhibitor CK-666. In treated cells, bacterial motility could be initiated and maintained when levels of palladin were increased. To confirm these findings, we utilized a cell line depleted of multiple Arp2/3 complex subunits. Within these cells, L. monocytogenes failed to generate comet tails. When palladin was overexpressed in this Arp2/3 functionally null cell line, the ability of L. monocytogenes to generate comet tails was restored. Using purified protein components, we demonstrate that L. monocytogenes actin clouds and comet tails can be generated (in a cell-free system) by palladin in the absence of the Arp2/3 complex. Collectively, our results demonstrate that palladin can functionally replace the Arp2/3 complex during bacterial actin-based motility
Silicon-based molecular electronics
Molecular electronics on silicon has distinct advantages over its metallic
counterpart. We describe a theoretical formalism for transport through
semiconductor-molecule heterostructures, combining a semi-empirical treatment
of the bulk silicon bandstructure with a first-principles description of the
molecular chemistry and its bonding with silicon. Using this method, we
demonstrate that the presence of a semiconducting band-edge can lead to a novel
molecular resonant tunneling diode (RTD) that shows negative differential
resistance (NDR) when the molecular levels are driven by an STM potential into
the semiconducting band-gap. The peaks appear for positive bias on a p-doped
and negative for an n-doped substrate. Charging in these devices is compromised
by the RTD action, allowing possible identification of several molecular
highest occupied (HOMO) and lowest unoccupied (LUMO) levels. Recent experiments
by Hersam et al. [1] support our theoretical predictions.Comment: Author list is reverse alphabetical. All authors contributed equally.
Email: rakshit/liangg/ ghosha/[email protected]
1/N_c- expansion of the quark condensate at finite temperature
Previously the quark and meson properties in a many quark system at finite
temperature have been studied within effective QCD approaches in the Hartree
approximation. In the present paper we consider the influence of the mesonic
correlations on the quark self-energy and on the quark propagator within a
systematic - expansion. Using a general separable ansatz for the
nonlocal interaction, we derive a selfconsistent equation for the
correction to the quark propagator. For a separable model with cut-off
formfactor, we obtain a decrease of the condensate of the order of 20\% at zero
temperature. A lowering the critical temperature for the onset of the chiral
restoration transition due to the inclusion of mesonic correlations is obtained
what seems to be closer to the results from lattice calculations.Comment: 19 pages, REVTeX, 5 figure
A Mean Field Approach To The Instanton-Induced Effect Close To The QCD Phase Transition
In the instanton models the chiral phase transition is driven by a transition
from random instanton-antiinstanton liquid and correlated
instanton-antiinstanton molecules. So far this phenomenon was studied by
numerical simulations, while we develop alternative semi-analytic approach. For
two massless quark flavors, both instantons and ``molecules" generate specific
4-fermion effective interactions. After those are derived, we determine the
temperature dependence of the thermodynamic quantities, the quark condensate
and the fraction of molecules using standard mean field method. Using
Bethe-Salpeter equation, we calculate T-dependence of mesonic correlation
functions.Comment: 26 pages, LaTeX, 6 postscript files of 6 figures in additio
Atomistic modelling of large-scale metal film growth fronts
We present simulations of metallization morphologies under ionized sputter
deposition conditions, obtained by a new theoretical approach. By means of
molecular dynamics simulations using a carefully designed interaction
potential, we analyze the surface adsorption, reflection, and etching reactions
taking place during Al physical vapor deposition, and calculate their relative
probability. These probabilities are then employed in a feature-scale
cellular-automaton simulator, which produces calculated film morphologies in
excellent agreement with scanning-electron-microscopy data on ionized sputter
deposition.Comment: RevTeX 4 pages, 2 figure
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