24,510 research outputs found
Observation of Single Transits in Supercooled Monatomic Liquids
A transit is the motion of a system from one many-particle potential energy
valley to another. We report the observation of transits in molecular dynamics
(MD) calculations of supercooled liquid argon and sodium. Each transit is a
correlated simultaneous shift in the equilibrium positions of a small local
group of particles, as revealed in the fluctuating graphs of the particle
coordinates versus time. This is the first reported direct observation of
transit motion in a monatomic liquid in thermal equilibrium. We found transits
involving 2 to 11 particles, having mean shift in equilibrium position on the
order of 0.4 R_1 in argon and 0.25 R_1 in sodium, where R_1 is the nearest
neighbor distance. The time it takes for a transit to occur is approximately
one mean vibrational period, confirming that transits are fast.Comment: 19 pages, 8 figure
Evaporation of ice in planetary atmospheres: Ice-covered rivers on Mars
The evaporation rate of water ice on the surface of a planet with an atmosphere involves an equilibrium between solar heating and radiative and evaporative cooling of the ice layer. The thickness of the ice is governed principally by the solar flux which penetrates the ice layer and then is conducted back to the surface. Evaporation from the surface is governed by wind and free convection. In the absence of wind, eddy diffusion is caused by the lower density of water vapor in comparison to the density of the Martian atmosphere. For mean martian insolations, the evaporation rate above the ice is approximately 10 to the minus 8th power gm/sq cm/s. Evaporation rates are calculated for a wide range of frictional velocities, atmospheric pressures, and insolations and it seems clear that at least some subset of observed Martian channels may have formed as ice-chocked rivers. Typical equilibrium thicknesses of such ice covers are approximately 10m to 30 m; typical surface temperatures are 210 to 235 K
Adiabatic and Non-Adiabatic Contributions to the Free Energy from the Electron-Phonon Interaction for Na, K, Al, and Pb
We calculate the adiabatic contributions to the free energy due to the
electron--phonon interaction at intermediate temperatures, for the elemental metals Na, K, Al, and Pb. Using our
previously published results for the nonadiabatic contributions we show that
the adiabatic contribution, which is proportional to at low
temperatures and goes as at high temperatures, dominates the
nonadiabatic contribution for temperatures above a cross--over temperature,
, which is between 0.5 and 0.8 , where is the melting
temperature of the metal. The nonadiabatic contribution falls as for
temperatures roughly above the average phonon frequency.Comment: Updated versio
An \emph{ab initio} method for locating characteristic potential energy minima of liquids
It is possible in principle to probe the many--atom potential surface using
density functional theory (DFT). This will allow us to apply DFT to the
Hamiltonian formulation of atomic motion in monatomic liquids [\textit{Phys.
Rev. E} {\bf 56}, 4179 (1997)]. For a monatomic system, analysis of the
potential surface is facilitated by the random and symmetric classification of
potential energy valleys. Since the random valleys are numerically dominant and
uniform in their macroscopic potential properties, only a few quenches are
necessary to establish these properties. Here we describe an efficient
technique for doing this. Quenches are done from easily generated "stochastic"
configurations, in which the nuclei are distributed uniformly within a
constraint limiting the closeness of approach. For metallic Na with atomic pair
potential interactions, it is shown that quenches from stochastic
configurations and quenches from equilibrium liquid Molecular Dynamics (MD)
configurations produce statistically identical distributions of the structural
potential energy. Again for metallic Na, it is shown that DFT quenches from
stochastic configurations provide the parameters which calibrate the
Hamiltonian. A statistical mechanical analysis shows how the underlying
potential properties can be extracted from the distributions found in quenches
from stochastic configurations
Quasi-Experimental Evidence on the Effects of Unemployment Insurance from New York State
This paper examines unemployment duration and the incidence of claims following a 36 percent increase in the maximum weekly benefit in New York State. This benefit increase sharply increased benefits for a large group of claimants, while leaving them unchanged for a large share of claimants who provide a natural comparison group. The New York benefit increase has the special features that it was unexpected and applied to in-progress spells. These features allow the effects on duration to be convincingly separated from effects on incidence. The results show a sharp fall in the hazard of leaving UI that coincides with the increase in benefits. The evidence is also consistent with a substantial effect of the benefit level on the incidence of claims and with this change in incidence biasing duration estimates. The evidence further suggests that, at least in this case, standard methods that identify duration effects through nonlinearities in the benefit schedule are not badly biased.
On the accuracy of the melting curves drawn from modelling a solid as an elastic medium
An ongoing problem in the study of a classical many-body system is the
characterization of its equilibrium behaviour by theory or numerical
simulation. For purely repulsive particles, locating the melting line in the
pressure-temperature plane can be especially hard if the interparticle
potential has a softened core or contains some adjustable parameters. A method
is hereby presented that yields reliable melting-curve topologies with
negligible computational effort. It is obtained by combining the Lindemann
melting criterion with a description of the solid phase as an elastic
continuum. A number of examples are given in order to illustrate the scope of
the method and possible shortcomings. For a two-body repulsion of Gaussian
shape, the outcome of the present approach compares favourably with the more
accurate but also more computationally demanding self-consistent harmonic
approximation.Comment: 25 pages, 7 figure
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