Detection of flux emergence, splitting, merging, and cancellation of network field. I Splitting and Merging

Frequencies of magnetic patch processes on supergranule boundary, namely flux emergence, splitting, merging, and cancellation, are investigated through an automatic detection. We use a set of line of sight magnetograms taken by the Solar Optical Telescope (SOT) on board Hinode satellite. We found 1636 positive patches and 1637 negative patches in the data set, whose time duration is 3.5 hours and field of view is 112" \times 112". Total numbers of magnetic processes are followed: 493 positive and 482 negative splittings, 536 positive and 535 negative mergings, 86 cancellations, and 3 emergences. Total numbers of emergence and cancellation are significantly smaller than those of splitting and merging. Further, frequency dependences of merging and splitting processes on flux content are investigated. Merging has a weak dependence on flux content only with a power- law index of 0.28. Timescale for splitting is found to be independent of parent flux content before splitting, which corresponds to \sim 33 minutes. It is also found that patches split into any flux contents with a same probability. This splitting has a power-law distribution of flux content with an index of -2 as a time independent solution. These results support that the frequency distribution of flux content in the analyzed flux range is rapidly maintained by merging and splitting, namely surface processes. We suggest a model for frequency distributions of cancellation and emergence based on this idea.Comment: 32 pages, 10 figures, 1 table, accepted to Ap

Differences in virus receptor for type I and type II feline infectious peritonitis virus.

Feline infectious peritonitis viruses (FIPVs) are classified into type I and type II serogroups. Here, we report that feline aminopeptidase N (APN), a cell-surface metalloprotease on the intestinal, lung and kidney epithelial cells, is a receptor for type II FIPV but not for type I FIPV. A monoclonal antibody (MAb) R-G-4, which blocks infection of Felis catus whole fetus (fcwf-4) cells by type II FIPV, was obtained by immunizing mice with fcwf-4 cells which are highly susceptible to FIPV. This MAb also blocked infection of fcwf-4 cells by type II feline enteric coronavirus (FECV), canine coronavirus (CCV), and transmissible gastroenteritis virus (TGEV). On the other hand, it did not block infection by type I FIPVs. MAb R-G-4 recognized a polypeptide of relative molecular mass 120-130 kDa in feline intestinal brush-border membrane (BBM) proteins. The polypeptide possessed aminopeptidase activity, and the first 15 N-terminal amino acid sequence was identical to that of the feline APN. Feline intestinal BBM proteins and the polypeptide reacted with MAb R-G-4 (feline APN) inhibited the infectivity of type II FIPV, type II FECV, CCV and TGEV to fcwf-4 cells, but did not inhibit the infectivity of type I FIPVs

Influence of magnetic impurities on charge transport in diffusive-normal-metal / superconductor junctions

Charge transport in the diffusive normal metal (DN) / insulator / $s$- and $d$-wave superconductor junctions is studied in the presence of magnetic impurities in DN in the framework of the quasiclassical Usadel equations with the generalized boundary conditions. The cases of $s$- and d-wave superconducting electrodes are considered. The junction conductance is calculated as a function of a bias voltage for various parameters of the DN metal: resistivity, Thouless energy, the magnetic impurity scattering rate and the transparency of the insulating barrier between DN and a superconductor. It is shown that the proximity effect is suppressed by magnetic impurity scattering in DN for any value of the barrier transparency. In low-transparent s-wave junctions this leads to the suppression of the normalized zero-bias conductance. In contrast to that, in high transparent junctions zero-bias conductance is enhanced by magnetic impurity scattering. The physical origin of this effect is discussed. For the d-wave junctions, the dependence on the misorientation angle $\alpha$ between the interface normal and the crystal axis of a superconductor is studied. The zero-bias conductance peak is suppressed by the magnetic impurity scattering only for low transparent junctions with $\alpha \sim 0$. In other cases the conductance of the d-wave junctions does not depend on the magnetic impurity scattering due to strong suppression of the proximity effect by the midgap Andreev resonant states.Comment: 11 pages, 13 figures;d-wave case adde

Stark effect of excitons in individual air-suspended carbon nanotubes

We investigate electric-field induced redshifts of photoluminescence from individual single-walled carbon nanotubes. The shifts scale quadratically with field, while measurements with different excitation powers and energies show that effects from heating and relaxation pathways are small. We attribute the shifts to the Stark effect, and characterize nanotubes with different chiralities. By taking into account exciton binding energies for air-suspended tubes, we find that theoretical predictions are in quantitative agreement.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Specific-heat study for ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic phases in SrRu_{1-x}Mn_xO3

Low-temperature electronic states in SrRu_{1-x}Mn_xO_3 for x <= 0.6 have been investigated by means of specific-heat C_p measurements. We have found that a jump anomaly observed in C_p at the ferromagnetic (FM) transition temperature for SrRuO_3 changes into a broad peak by only 5% substitution of Mn for Ru. With further doping Mn, the low-temperature electronic specific-heat coefficient gamma is markedly reduced from the value at x=0 (33 mJ/K^2 mol), in connection with the suppression of the FM phase as well as the enhancement of the resistivity. For x >= 0.4, gamma approaches to ~ 5 mJ/K^2 mol or less, where the antiferromagnetic order with an insulating feature in resistivity is generated. We suggest from these results that both disorder and reconstruction of the electronic states induced by doping Mn are coupled with the magnetic ground states and transport properties.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, submitted to the proceedings of ICM2009 (Karlsruhe

Spontaneous exciton dissociation in carbon nanotubes

Simultaneous photoluminescence and photocurrent measurements on individual single-walled carbon nanotubes reveal spontaneous dissociation of excitons into free electron-hole pairs. Correlation of luminescence intensity and photocurrent shows that a significant fraction of excitons are dissociating during their relaxation into the lowest exciton state. Furthermore, the combination of optical and electrical signals also allows for extraction of the absorption cross section and the oscillator strength. Our observations explain the reasons for photoconductivity measurements in single-walled carbon nanotubes being straightforward despite the large exciton binding energies.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure