11,416 research outputs found
Trains, tails and loops of partially adsorbed semi-flexible filaments
Polymer adsorption is a fundamental problem in statistical mechanics that has
direct relevance to diverse disciplines ranging from biological lubrication to
stability of colloidal suspensions. We combine experiments with computer
simulations to investigate depletion induced adsorption of semi-flexible
polymers onto a hard-wall. Three dimensional filament configurations of
partially adsorbed F-actin polymers are visualized with total internal
reflection fluorescence microscopy. This information is used to determine the
location of the adsorption/desorption transition and extract the statistics of
trains, tails and loops of partially adsorbed filament configurations. In
contrast to long flexible filaments which primarily desorb by the formation of
loops, the desorption of stiff, finite-sized filaments is largely driven by
fluctuating filament tails. Simulations quantitatively reproduce our
experimental data and allow us to extract universal laws that explain scaling
of the adsorption-desorption transition with relevant microscopic parameters.
Our results demonstrate how the adhesion strength, filament stiffness, length,
as well as the configurational space accessible to the desorbed filament can be
used to design the characteristics of filament adsorption and thus engineer
properties of composite biopolymeric materials
Radiation trapping in coherent media
We show that the effective decay rate of Zeeman coherence, generated in a
Rb87 vapor by linearly polarized laser light, increases significantly with the
atomic density. We explain this phenomenon as the result of radiation trapping.
Our study shows that radiation trapping must be taken into account to fully
understand many electromagnetically induced transparency experiments with
optically thick media
NMR study of a bimesogenic liquid crystal with two nematic phases
Recent interest in bimesogenic liquid crystals showing two nematic phases has led us to investigate the nematic mean-field interactions in these nematic phases by using rigid solutes as probes. The nematic potential that is modelled by two independent Maier-Saupe terms is successful in fitting the observed dipolar couplings (order parameters) of para-, meta- and ortho-dichlorobenzene solutes in both the nematic phases of 39 wt% of 4-n-pentyl-4′-cyanobiphenyl (5CB) in α,ω-bis(4-4′-cyanobiphenyl)nonane (CB_C9_CB) to better than the 5% level. The derived liquid-crystal potential parameters G₁ and G₂ for each solute in the N and Ntb phases will be discussed. The most interesting observation is that G1 (associated with size and shape interactions) is almost constant in the Ntb phase, whereas G₂ (associated with longer-range electrostatic interactions) has large variation, even changing sign
Anomalous increase in nematic-isotropic transition temperature in dimer molecules induced by magnetic field
We have determined the nematic-isotropic transition temperature as a function of applied magnetic field in three different thermotropic liquid crystalline dimers. These molecules are comprised of two rigid calamitic moieties joined end to end by flexible spacers with odd numbers of methylene groups. They show an unprecedented magnetic field enhancement of nematic order in that the transition temperature is increased by up to 15K when subjected to 22T magnetic field. The increase is conjectured to be caused by a magnetic field-induced decrease of the average bend angle in the aliphatic spacers connecting the rigid mesogenic units of the dimers
Hall-Effect for Neutral Atoms
It is shown that polarizable neutral systems can drift in crossed magnetic
and electric fileds. The drift velocity is perpendicular to both fields, but
contrary to the drif t velocity of a charged particle, it exists only, if
fields vary in space or in time. We develop an adiabatic theory of this
phenomenon and analyze conditions of its experimental observation. The most
proper objects for the observation of this effect are Rydberg atoms. It can be
applied for the separation of excited atoms.Comment: RevTex, 4 pages; to be published in Pis'ma v ZhET
On the Interpretation of Supernova Light Echo Profiles and Spectra
The light echo systems of historical supernovae in the Milky Way and local
group galaxies provide an unprecedented opportunity to reveal the effects of
asymmetry on observables, particularly optical spectra. Scattering dust at
different locations on the light echo ellipsoid witnesses the supernova from
different perspectives and the light consequently scattered towards Earth
preserves the shape of line profile variations introduced by asymmetries in the
supernova photosphere. However, the interpretation of supernova light echo
spectra to date has not involved a detailed consideration of the effects of
outburst duration and geometrical scattering modifications due to finite
scattering dust filament dimension, inclination, and image point-spread
function and spectrograph slit width. In this paper, we explore the
implications of these factors and present a framework for future resolved
supernova light echo spectra interpretation, and test it against Cas A and SN
1987A light echo spectra. We conclude that the full modeling of the dimensions
and orientation of the scattering dust using the observed light echoes at two
or more epochs is critical for the correct interpretation of light echo
spectra. Indeed, without doing so one might falsely conclude that differences
exist when none are actually present.Comment: 18 pages, 22 figures, accepted for publication in Ap
A Pre-Protostellar Core in L1551
Large field surveys of NH3, C2S, 13CO and C18O in the L1551 dark cloud have
revealed a prolate, pre-protostellar molecular core (L1551-MC) in a relatively
quiescent region to the northwest of the well-known IRS 5 source. The kinetic
temperature is measured to be 9K, the total mass is ~2Msun, and the average
particle density is 10^4-10^5 cm^(-3). L1551-MC is 2.25' x 1.11' in projection
oriented at a position angle of 133deg. The turbulent motions are on the order
of the sound speed in the medium and contain 4% of the gravitational energy,
E_{grav}, of the core. The angular momentum vector is projected along the major
axis of L1551-MC corresponding to a rotational energy of 2.5E-3(sin
i)^(-2)|E_{grav}|. The thermal energy constitutes about a third of |E_{grav}|
and the virial mass is approximately equal to the total mass. L1551-MC is
gravitationally bound and in the absence of strong, ~160 microgauss, magnetic
fields will likely contract on a ~0.3 Myr time scale. The line profiles of many
molecular species suggest that the cold quiescent interior is surrounded by a
dynamic, perhaps infalling envelope which is embedded within the ambient
molecular gas of L1551.Comment: 27 pages, 7 figures, ApJ accepte
Improved Approximate String Matching and Regular Expression Matching on Ziv-Lempel Compressed Texts
We study the approximate string matching and regular expression matching
problem for the case when the text to be searched is compressed with the
Ziv-Lempel adaptive dictionary compression schemes. We present a time-space
trade-off that leads to algorithms improving the previously known complexities
for both problems. In particular, we significantly improve the space bounds,
which in practical applications are likely to be a bottleneck
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