Effect of ion hydration on the first-order transition in the sequential wetting of hexane on brine

In recent experiments, a sequence of changes in the wetting state (`wetting transitions') has been observed upon increasing the temperature in systems consisting of pentane on pure water and of hexane on brine. This sequence of two transitions is brought about by an interplay of short-range and long-range interactions between substrate and adsorbate. In this work, we argue that the short-range interaction (contact energy) between hexane and pure water remains unchanged due to the formation of a depletion layer (a thin `layer' of pure water which is completely devoid of ions) at the surface of the electrolyte and that the presence of the salt manifests itself only in a modification of the long-range interaction between substrate and adsorbate. In a five-layer calculation considering brine, water, the first layer of adsorbed hexane molecules, liquid hexane, and vapor, we determine the new long-range interaction of brine with the adsorbate {\em across} the water `layer'. According to the recent theory of the excess surface tension of an electrolyte by Levin and Flores-Mena, this water `layer' is of constant, i.e.\ salt-concentration independent, thickness $\delta$, with $\delta$ being the hydrodynamic radius of the ions in water. Our results are in good agreement with the experimental ones.Comment: 27 pages, 2 tables, 4 figure

Spatial Resonator Solitons

Spatial solitons can exist in various kinds of nonlinear optical resonators with and without amplification. In the past years different types of these localized structures such as vortices, bright, dark solitons and phase solitons have been experimentally shown to exist. Many links appear to exist to fields different from optics, such as fluids, phase transitions or particle physics. These spatial resonator solitons are bistable and due to their mobility suggest schemes of information processing not possible with the fixed bistable elements forming the basic ingredient of traditional electronic processing. The recent demonstration of existence and manipulation of spatial solitons in emiconductor microresonators represents a step in the direction of such optical parallel processing applications. We review pattern formation and solitons in a general context, show some proof of principle soliton experiments on slow systems, and describe in more detail the experiments on semiconductor resonator solitons which are aimed at applications.Comment: 15 pages, 32 figure

The twist-2 Compton operator and its hidden Wandzura-Wilczek and Callan-Gross relations

Power corrections for virtual Compton scattering at leading twist are etermined at operator level. From the complete off-cone representation of the twist-2 Compton operator integral representations for the trace, antisymmetric and symmetric part of that operator are derived. The operator valued invariant functions are written in terms of iterated operators and may lead to interrelations. For matrix elements they go over into relations for generalized parton distributions. -- Reducing to the s-channel relevant part one gets operator pre-forms of the Wandzura-Wilczek and the (target mass corrected) Callan-Gross relations whose structure is exactly the same as known from the case of deep inelastic scattering; taking non-forward matrix elements one reproduces earlier results [B. Geyer, D. Robaschik and J. Eilers, Nucl. Phys. B 704 (2005) 279] for the absorptive part of the virtual Compton amplitude. -- All these relations, obtained without any approximation or using equations of motion, are determined solely by the twist-2 structure of the underlying operator and, therefore, are purely of geometric origin.Comment: 13 pages, Latex 2e, Introduction shortend, Section Prerequisites added, more obvious formulations used, some formulas rewritten as well as added, conclusions extended, references added. Final version as appearing in PR

Scaling and data collapse for the mean exit time of asset prices

We study theoretical and empirical aspects of the mean exit time of financial time series. The theoretical modeling is done within the framework of continuous time random walk. We empirically verify that the mean exit time follows a quadratic scaling law and it has associated a pre-factor which is specific to the analyzed stock. We perform a series of statistical tests to determine which kind of correlation are responsible for this specificity. The main contribution is associated with the autocorrelation property of stock returns. We introduce and solve analytically both a two-state and a three-state Markov chain models. The analytical results obtained with the two-state Markov chain model allows us to obtain a data collapse of the 20 measured MET profiles in a single master curve.Comment: REVTeX 4, 11 pages, 8 figures, 1 table, submitted for publicatio

Dissipation in Compressible MHD Turbulence

We report results of a three dimensional, high resolution (up to 512^3) numerical investigation of supersonic compressible magnetohydrodynamic turbulence. We consider both forced and decaying turbulence. The model parameters are appropriate to conditions found in Galactic molecular clouds. We find that the dissipation time of turbulence is of order the flow crossing time or smaller, even in the presence of strong magnetic fields. About half the dissipation occurs in shocks. Weak magnetic fields are amplified and tangled by the turbulence, while strong fields remain well ordered.Comment: 5 pages, 3 Postscript figures, LaTeX, accepted by Ap.J.Let

Influences of an impurity on the transport properties of one-dimensional antisymmetric spin filter

The influences of an impurity on the spin and the charge transport of one-dimensional antisymmetric spin filter are investigated using bosonization and Keldysh formulation and the results are highlighted against those of spinful Luttinger liquids. Due to the dependence of the electron spin orientation on wave number the spin transport is not affected by the impurity, while the charge transport is essentially identical with that of spinless one-dimensional Luttinger liquid.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures. To appear in Physical Review