31,711 research outputs found
Contribution of the antibiotic chloramphenicol and its analogues as precursors of dichloroacetamide and other disinfection byproducts in drinking water
Dichloroacetamide (DCAcAm), a disinfection byproduct, has been detected in drinking water. Previous research showed that amino acids may be DCAcAm precursors. However, other precursors may be present. This study explored the contribution of the antibiotic chloramphenicol (CAP) and two of its analogues (thiamphenicol, TAP; florfenicol, FF) (referred to collectively as CAPs), which occur in wastewater-impacted source waters, to the formation of DCAcAm. Their formation yields were compared to free and combined amino acids, and they were investigated in filtered waters from drinking-water-treatment plants, heavily wastewater-impacted natural waters, and secondary effluents from wastewater treatment plants. CAPs had greater DCAcAm formation potential than two representative amino acid precursors. However, in drinking waters with ng/L levels of CAPs, they will not contribute as much to DCAcAm formation as the μg/L levels of amino acids. Also, the effect of advanced oxidation processes (AOPs) on DCAcAm formation from CAPs in real water samples during subsequent chlorination was evaluated. Preoxidation of CAPs with AOPs reduced the formation of DCAcAm during postchlorination. The results of this study suggest that CAPs should be considered as possible precursors of DCAcAm, especially in heavily wastewater-impacted waters
The Role of Crystal Symmetry in the Magnetic Instabilities of -YbAlB and -YbAlB
Density functional theory methods are applied to investigate the properties
of the new superconductor -YbAlB and its polymorph
-YbAlB. We utilize the generalized gradient approximation + Hubbard
U (GGA+U) approach with spin-orbit(SO) coupling to approximate the effects of
the strong correlations due to the open shell of Yb. We examine closely
the differences in crystal bonding and symmetry of -YbAlB and
-YbAlB. The in-plane bonding structure amongst the dominant
itinerant electrons in the boron sheets is shown to differ significantly. Our
calculations indicate that, in both polymorphs, the localized 4 electrons
hybridize strongly with the conduction sea when compared to the related
materials YbRhSi and YbB. Comparing -YbAlB to the
electronic structure of related crystal structures indicates a key role of the
7-member boron coordination of the Yb ion in -YbAlB in producing its
enhanced Kondo scale and superconductivity. The Kondo scale is shown to depend
strongly on the angle between the B neighbors and the Yb ion, relative to the
plane, which relates some of the physical behavior to structural
characteristics.Comment: 9 pages, 9 figures, 2 table
Effective renormalized multi-body interactions of harmonically confined ultracold neutral bosons
We calculate the renormalized effective 2-, 3-, and 4-body interactions for N
neutral ultracold bosons in the ground state of an isotropic harmonic trap,
assuming 2-body interactions modeled with the combination of a zero-range and
energy-dependent pseudopotential. We work to third-order in the scattering
length a defined at zero collision energy, which is necessary to obtain both
the leading-order effective 4-body interaction and consistently include
finite-range corrections for realistic 2-body interactions. The leading-order,
effective 3- and 4-body interaction energies are U3 = -(0.85576...)(a/l)^2 +
2.7921(1)(a/l)^3 + O[(a/l)^4] and U4 = +(2.43317...)(a/l)^3 + O[(a\l)^4], where
w and l are the harmonic oscillator frequency and length, respectively, and
energies are in units of hbar*w. The one-standard deviation error 0.0001 for
the third-order coefficient in U3 is due to numerical uncertainty in estimating
a slowly converging sum; the other two coefficients are either analytically or
numerically exact. The effective 3- and 4-body interactions can play an
important role in the dynamics of tightly confined and strongly correlated
systems. We also performed numerical simulations for a finite-range boson-boson
potential, and it was comparison to the zero-range predictions which revealed
that finite-range effects must be taken into account for a realistic
third-order treatment. In particular, we show that the energy-dependent
pseudopotential accurately captures, through third order, the finite-range
physics, and in combination with the multi-body effective interactions gives
excellent agreement with the numerical simulations, validating our theoretical
analysis and predictions.Comment: Updated introduction, correction of a few typos and sign error
Flavor-twisted boundary condition for simulations of quantum many-body systems
We present an approximative simulation method for quantum many-body systems
based on coarse graining the space of the momentum transferred between
interacting particles, which leads to effective Hamiltonians of reduced size
with the flavor-twisted boundary condition. A rapid, accurate, and fast
convergent computation of the ground-state energy is demonstrated on the
spin-1/2 quantum antiferromagnet of any dimension by employing only two sites.
The method is expected to be useful for future simulations and quick estimates
on other strongly correlated systems.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figure
High-energy kink in high-temperature superconductors
In conventional metals, electron-phonon coupling, or the phonon-mediated
interaction between electrons, has long been known to be the pairing
interaction responsible for the superconductivity. The strength of this
interaction essentially determines the superconducting transition temperature
TC. One manifestation of electron-phonon coupling is a mass renormalization of
the electronic dispersion at the energy scale associated with the phonons. This
renormalization is directly observable in photoemission experiments. In
contrast, there remains little consensus on the pairing mechanism in cuprate
high temperature superconductors. The recent observation of similar
renormalization effects in cuprates has raised the hope that the mechanism of
high temperature superconductivity may finally be resolved. The focus has been
on the low energy renormalization and associated "kink" in the dispersion at
around 50 meV. However at that energy scale, there are multiple candidates
including phonon branches, structure in the spin-fluctuation spectrum, and the
superconducting gap itself, making the unique identification of the excitation
responsible for the kink difficult. Here we show that the low-energy
renormalization at ~50 meV is only a small component of the total
renormalization, the majority of which occurs at an order of magnitude higher
energy (~350 meV). This high energy kink poses a new challenge for the physics
of the cuprates. Its role in superconductivity and relation to the low-energy
kink remains to be determined.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figure
Efficient Phase-Encoding Quantum Key Generation with Narrow-Band Single Photons
We propose an efficient phase-encoding quantum secret key generation scheme
with heralded narrow-band single photons. The key information is carried by the
phase modulation directly on the single-photon temporal waveform without using
any passive beam splitters or optical switches. We show that, when the
technique is applied to the conventional fiber-based phase-encoding BB84 and
differential phase shift (DPS) quantum key distribution schemes, the key
generation efficiencies can be improved by a factor of 2 and 3, respectively.
For N(>3)-period DPS systems, the key generation efficiency can be improved by
a factor of N. The technique is suitable for quantum memory-based long-distance
fiber communication system.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure
Applications of Pseudospark produced electron beams in millimetre wave radiation sources
Pseudospark (PS) electron beams of outstanding performance have been studied recently with their application to a demanding field of millimeter-wave and terahertz radiation generation. To this end, the PS discharge process itself has been studied and millimeter wave sources which utilize a PS sourced electron beam in different beam-wave interaction structures have been designed and modelled using the particle-in-cell code MAGIC. The experimental demonstration of the PS-sourced electron beams of sub-millimeter diameter and the coherent millimeter wave radiation generated from PS sourced electron beams in different beam-wave interaction structures will be presented
UNSWIRF: A Tunable Imaging Spectrometer for the Near-Infrared
We describe the specifications, characteristics, calibration, and analysis of
data from the University of New South Wales Infrared Fabry-Perot (UNSWIRF)
etalon. UNSWIRF is a near-infrared tunable imaging spectrometer, used primarily
in conjunction with IRIS on the AAT, but suitable for use as a visitor
instrument at other telescopes. The etalon delivers a resolving power in excess
of 4000 (corresponding to a velocity resolution ~75 km/s), and allows imaging
of fields up to 100" in diameter on the AAT at any wavelength between 1.5 and
2.4 microns for which suitable blocking filters are available.Comment: 16 pages, 10 figures, uses psfig.sty and html.sty (included). To
appear in Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australi
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