3,294 research outputs found
Transport and Spectra in the Half-filled Hubbard Model: A Dynamical Mean Field Study
We study the issues of scaling and universality in spectral and transport
properties of the infinite dimensional particle--hole symmetric (half-filled)
Hubbard model within dynamical mean field theory. One of the simplest and
extensively used impurity solvers, namely the iterated perturbation theory
approach is reformulated to avoid problems such as analytic continuation of
Matsubara frequency quantities or calculating multi-dimensional integrals,
while taking full account of the very sharp structures in the Green's functions
that arise close to the Mott transitions and in the Mott insulator regime. We
demonstrate its viability for the half-filled Hubbard model. Previous known
results are reproduced within the present approach. The universal behavior of
the spectral functions in the Fermi liquid regime is emphasized, and adiabatic
continuity to the non-interacting limit is demonstrated. The dc resistivity in
the metallic regime is known to be a non-monotonic function of temperature with
a `coherence peak'. This feature is shown to be a universal feature occurring
at a temperature roughly equal to the low energy scale of the system. A
comparison to pressure dependent dc resistivity experiments on Selenium doped
NiS yields qualitatively good agreement. Resistivity hysteresis across the
Mott transition is shown to be described qualitatively within the present
framework. A direct comparison of the thermal hysteresis observed in VO
with our theoretical results yields a value of the hopping integral, which we
find to be in the range estimated through first-principle methods. Finally, a
systematic study of optical conductivity is carried out and the changes in
absorption as a result of varying interaction strength and temperature are
identified.Comment: 19 pages, 12 figure
Coombs Hill: A Late Devonian fossil locality in the Witpoort Formation (Witteberg Group, South Africa)
Coombs Hill, a new fossil locality in the Witpoort Formation (Witteberg Group) of South Africa, preserves a record of Famennian (Late Devonian) life in Gondwana. Fossil plants collected at Coombs Hill are preliminarily assigned to several classes. Shelly invertebrates include a variety of bivalve mollusc forms, some of which appear to be preserved in life position. Biodiversity at Coombs Hill is comparable to that of the well-known Waterloo Farm lagerstätte in ordinal diversity, but exhibits differences in species composition. Ongoing taxonomic analysis will provide a rare window into the ecology of high-latitude environments during this pivotal stage of Earth history, which immediately preceded the end-Devonian extinction. Sandstone dominated sedimentary facies at Coombs Hill suggest a high-energy coastal marine setting, with brackish back-barrier estuarine/lagoonally derived fossiliferous mudstones. Exact stratigraphic placement within the Witpoort Formation is hampered by structural deformation, and precise age comparisons with Waterloo Farm are currently tenuous.Significance:
A new fossil locality at Coombs Hill comprises the second known site with a suite of well preserved continental and marginal marine fossils from the Witpoort Formation, providing an exceptionally rare example of high-latitude life during the critical latest Devonian Famennian age.
Several new plant taxa will be diagnosed from this locality, which also gives important insights into the morphology of Archaeopteris notosaria, South Africa’s earliest known tree.
Discovery of a second palaeontologically significant site in the Witpoort Formation provides impetus for further structural and sedimentary facies analyses to align the unit with datable global eustatic events, and to clarify its internal chronology
Synthetic microplastic abundance and composition along a longitudinal gradient traversing the subtropical gyre in the North Atlantic Ocean.
Plastic pollution has been reported in the North Atlantic Ocean since the 1970s, yet limited data over subsequent decades pose challenges when assessing spatio-temporal trends in relation to global leakages and intervention strategies. This study quantified microplastics within the upper ocean along a longitudinal transect of the North Atlantic and its subtropical gyre. Microplastics were sampled from surface and subsurface (-25Â m) water using a manta trawl and NIKSIN bottle respectively. The surface water polymer community varied significantly between geographic positions ('inshore', 'gyre', 'open ocean'), and was significantly influenced by fragment quantity. Compared to other positions, the North Atlantic gyre was associated with high concentrations of polyethylene, polypropylene, acrylic and polyamide fragments. Subsurface water was dominated by polyamide and polyester fibres. Backtracked 2-year Lagrangian simulations illustrated connectivity patterns. Continued monitoring of microplastics throughout the water column of the North Atlantic Ocean is required to address knowledge gaps and assess spatio-temporal trends
Phenotypically determined resistance of Neisseria gonorrhoeae to normal human serum: environmental factors in subcutaneous chambers in guinea pigs
Some gonococci obtained from human urethral exudate or from subcutaneously implanted chambers in guinea pigs show a resistance to killing by human serum which is lost on subculture in vitro after a few generations. The environmental factors which may influence the phenotypic expression of resistance to serum killing were investigated in guinea pig chambers and in chamber fluid in vitro. The redox potential in chambers before and after infection was lower than that of heart blood but conditions were not anaerobic; H2O2 increased the redox potential but did not decrease gonococcal serum resistance. The chambers were slightly alkaline before and after infection. When the concentration of glucose (depleted in infected chambers by the abundant polymorphonuclear cells) was restored to excess, the serum resistance of the gonococci was unaffected. Concentrations of free amino acids in chambers changed little during infection. Gonococci adapted to growth in chambers and subsequently rendered serum-sensitive by growing once on agar reverted to serum-resistance after 0.5 to 1 h incubation in chamber fluid in vitro at 37°C but not at 25°C or 4°C. After 16 to 24 h growth at 37°C, resistance was again lost. The reversion to serum resistance did not occur in a complex laboratory medium. Examination of the chamber fluid after growth of gonococci in vitro showed depletion of lactate, glutamine and proline
Effect of heat treatment on mechanical dissipation in TaO coatings
Thermal noise arising from mechanical dissipation in dielectric reflective
coatings is expected to critically limit the sensitivity of precision
measurement systems such as high-resolution optical spectroscopy, optical
frequency standards and future generations of interferometric gravitational
wave detectors. We present measurements of the effect of post-deposition heat
treatment on the temperature dependence of the mechanical dissipation in
ion-beam sputtered tantalum pentoxide between 11\,K and 300\,K. We find the
temperature dependence of the dissipation is strongly dependent on the
temperature at which the heat treatment was carried out, and we have identified
three dissipation peaks occurring at different heat treatment temperatures. At
temperatures below 200\,K, the magnitude of the loss was found to increase with
higher heat treatment temperatures, indicating that heat treatment is a
significant factor in determining the level of coating thermal noise.Comment: accepted Classical and Quantum Gravity 201
On Metal-Insulator Transitions due to Self-Doping
We investigate the influence of an unoccupied band on the transport
properties of a strongly correlated electron system. For that purpose,
additional orbitals are coupled to a Hubbard model via hybridization. The
filling is one electron per site. Depending on the position of the additional
band, both, a metal--to--insulator and an insulator--to--metal transition occur
with increasing hybridization. The latter transition from a Mott insulator into
a metal via ``self--doping'' was recently proposed to explain the low carrier
concentration in . We suggest a restrictive parameter regime for
this transition making use of exact results in various limits. The predicted
absence of the self--doping transition for nested Fermi surfaces is confirmed
by means of an unrestricted Hartree--Fock approximation and an exact
diagonalization study in one dimension. In the general case metal--insulator
phase diagrams are obtained within the slave--boson mean--field and the
alloy--analog approximation.Comment: 9 pages, Revtex, 6 postscript figure
Thermoelastic dissipation in inhomogeneous media: loss measurements and displacement noise in coated test masses for interferometric gravitational wave detectors
The displacement noise in the test mass mirrors of interferometric
gravitational wave detectors is proportional to their elastic dissipation at
the observation frequencies. In this paper, we analyze one fundamental source
of dissipation in thin coatings, thermoelastic damping associated with the
dissimilar thermal and elastic properties of the film and the substrate. We
obtain expressions for the thermoelastic dissipation factor necessary to
interpret resonant loss measurements, and for the spectral density of
displacement noise imposed on a Gaussian beam reflected from the face of a
coated mass. The predicted size of these effects is large enough to affect the
interpretation of loss measurements, and to influence design choices in
advanced gravitational wave detectors.Comment: 42 pages, 7 figures, uses REVTeX
Spin- and charge-density waves in the Hartree-Fock ground state of the two-dimensional Hubbard model
The ground states of the two-dimensional repulsive Hubbard model are studied
within the unrestricted Hartree-Fock (UHF) theory. Magnetic and charge
properties are determined by systematic, large-scale, exact numerical
calculations, and quantified as a function of electron doping . In the
solution of the self-consistent UHF equations, multiple initial configurations
and simulated annealing are used to facilitate convergence to the global
minimum. New approaches are employed to minimize finite-size effects in order
to reach the thermodynamic limit. At low to moderate interacting strengths and
low doping, the UHF ground state is a linear spin-density wave (l-SDW), with
antiferromagnetic order and a modulating wave. The wavelength of the modulating
wave is . Corresponding charge order exists but is substantially weaker
than the spin order, hence holes are mobile. As the interaction is increased,
the l-SDW states evolves into several different phases, with the holes
eventually becoming localized. A simple pairing model is presented with
analytic calculations for low interaction strength and small doping, to help
understand the numerical results and provide a physical picture for the
properties of the SDW ground state. By comparison with recent many-body
calculations, it is shown that, for intermediate interactions, the UHF solution
provides a good description of the magnetic correlations in the true ground
state of the Hubbard model.Comment: 13 pages, 17 figure, 0 table
Nonequilibrium Magnetization Dynamics of Nickel
Ultrafast magnetization dynamics of nickel has been studied for different
degrees of electronic excitation, using pump-probe second-harmonic generation
with 150 fs/800 nm laser pulses of various fluences. Information about the
electronic and magnetic response to laser irradiation is obtained from sums and
differences of the SHG intensity for opposite magnetization directions. The
classical M(T)-curve can be reproduced for delay times larger than the electron
thermalization time of about 280 fs, even when electrons and lattice have not
reached thermal equilibrium. Further we show that the transient magnetization
reaches its minimum approx. 50 fs before electron thermalization is completed.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, revte
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