1,108 research outputs found
Large Horizontal Displacements of Houses in Rotterdam
In 1983 it was established that six blocks of terrace houses in Rotterdam had undergone large horizontal displacements. These displacements were caused by insufficient stability of the adjacent quay and as a result one of the blocks had moved as much as 2.5 m since 1958. The foundation piles of the houses were not designed to resist any horizontal loading. As a result of these large horizontal movements the piles had deflected to such an extent that complete failure was feared. This paper describes the remedial measures that were taken to improve the stability of the quay and foundations of the houses. The present displacement behaviour is compared with the horizontal displacement predicted from creep analysis
Dzyaloshinsky-Moriya interaction in vesignieite: A route to freezing in a quantum kagome antiferromagnet
We report an electron spin resonance investigation of the geometrically
frustrated spin-1/2 kagome antiferromagnet vesignieite,
BaCuVO(OH). Analysis of the line widths and line shifts
indicates the dominance of in-plane Dzyaloshinsky-Moriya anisotropy that is
proposed to suppress strongly quantum spin fluctuations and thus to promote
long-range ordering rather than a spin-liquid state. We also evidence an
enhanced spin-phonon contribution that might originate from a lattice
instability and discuss the origin of a low-temperature mismatch between
intrinsic and bulk susceptibility in terms of local inhomogeneity
Spin dynamics and disorder effects in the S=1/2 kagome Heisenberg spin liquid phase of kapellasite
We report Cl NMR, ESR, SR and specific heat measurements on the
frustrated kagom\'e magnet kapellasite,
CuZn(OH)Cl, where a gapless spin liquid phase is
stabilized by a set of competing exchange interactions. Our measurements
confirm the ferromagnetic character of the nearest-neighbour exchange
interaction and give an energy scale for the competing interactions K. The study of the temperature-dependent ESR lineshift reveals a
moderate symmetric exchange anisotropy term , with %. These
findings validate a posteriori the use of the Heisenberg
model to describe the magnetic properties of kapellasite [Bernu et al., Phys.
Rev. B 87, 155107 (2013)]. We further confirm that the main deviation from this
model is the severe random depletion of the magnetic kagom\'e lattice by 27%,
due to Cu/Zn site mixing, and specifically address the effect of this disorder
by Cl NMR, performed on an oriented polycrystalline sample.
Surprisingly, while being very sensitive to local structural deformations, our
NMR measurements demonstrate that the system remains homogeneous with a unique
spin susceptibility at high temperature, despite a variety of magnetic
environments. Unconventional spin dynamics is further revealed by NMR and
SR in the low-, correlated, spin liquid regime, where a broad
distribution of spin-lattice relaxation times is observed. We ascribe this to
the presence of local low-energy modes.Comment: 15 pages, 11 figures. To appear in Phys. Rev.
Dzyaloshinsky-Moriya Anisotropy in the Spin-1/2 Kagom\'e Compound ZnCu(OH)Cl
We report the determination of the Dzyaloshinsky-Moriya interaction, the
dominant magnetic anisotropy term in the \kagome spin-1/2 compound {\herbert}.
Based on the analysis of the high-temperature electron spin resonance (ESR)
spectra, we find its main component K to be perpendicular to the
\kagome planes. Through the temperature dependent ESR line-width we observe a
building up of nearest-neighbor spin-spin correlations below 150 K.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, minor modification
Rotationally induced Penning ionization of ultracold photoassociated helium dimers
We have studied photoassociation of metastable \tripS helium atoms near the
\tripS-\tripP asymptote by both ion detection in a magneto-optical trap and
trap-loss measurements in a magnetic trap. A detailed comparison between the
results of the two experiments gives insight into the mechanism of the Penning
ionization process. We have identified four series of resonances corresponding
to vibrational molecular levels belonging to different rotational states in two
potentials. The corresponding spin states become quasi-purely quintet at small
interatomic distance, and Penning ionization is inhibited by spin conservation
rules. Only a weak rotational coupling is responsible for the contamination by
singlet spin states leading to a detectable ion signal. However, for one of
these series Bose statistics does not enable the rotational coupling and the
series detected through trap-loss does not give rise to sufficient ionization
for detection.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, submitted to EuroPhysics Letter
On the Role of Penning Ionization in Photoassociation Spectroscopy
We study the role of Penning ionization on the photoassociation spectra of
He(^3S)-He(^3S). The experimental setup is discussed and experimental results
for different intensities of the probe laser are shown. For modelling the
experimental results we consider coupled-channel calculations of the crossing
of the ground state with the excited state at the Condon point. The
coupled-channel calculations are first applied to model systems, where we
consider two coupled channels without ionization, two coupled channels with
ionization, and three coupled channels, for which only one of the excited
states is ionizing. Finally, coupled-channel calculations are applied to
photoassociation of He(^3S)-He(^3S) and good agreement is obtained between the
model and the experimental results.Comment: 14 pages, 18 figures, submitted to the special issue on Cold
Molecules of J. Phys.
- …