Symmetry breaking and clustering in a vibrated granular gas with several macroscopically connected compartments

The spontaneous symmetry breaking in a vibro-fluidized low-density granular gas in three connected compartments is investigated. When the total number of particles in the system becomes large enough, particles distribute themselves unequally among the three compartments. Particles tend to concentrate in one of the compartments, the other two having the (relatively small) same average number of particles. A hydrodynamical model that accurately predicts the bifurcation diagram of the system is presented. The theory can be easily extended to the case of an arbitrary number of connected compartments

Chiral Symmetry and s-wave Low-Lying Meson-Baryon Resonances

The $s-$wave meson-baryon scattering is analyzed for the isospin-strangeness $I=1/2, S=0$ and $I=0,S=-1$ sectors, in a Bethe-Salpeter coupled channel formalism incorporating Chiral Symmetry. For both sectors, four channels have been considered: $\pi N$, $\eta N$, $K \Lambda$, $K \Sigma$ and $\pi \Sigma$, $\bar K N$, $\eta \Lambda$, $K \Xi$, respectively. The needed two particle irreducible matrix amplitudes are taken from lowest order Chiral Perturbation Theory in a relativistic formalism. There appear undetermined low energy constants, as a consequence of the renormalization of the amplitudes, which are obtained from fits to the available data: elastic $\pi N$ phase-shifts, $\pi^- p \to \eta n$ and $\pi^- p \to K^0 \Lambda$ cross sections and to $\pi\Sigma\to\pi\Sigma$ mass-spectrum, the elastic $\bar K N \to \bar K N$ and $\bar K N\to \pi \Sigma$ $t$--matrices and to the $K^- p \to \eta \Lambda$ cross section data. The position and residues of the complex poles in the second Riemann sheet of the scattering amplitude determine masses, widths and branching ratios of the $S_{11}-$ $N$(1535) and $-N$(1650) and $S_{01}-$ $\Lambda$(1405) and $-\Lambda$(1670) resonances, in reasonable agreement with experiment. A good overall description of data, from threshold up to around 2 GeV is achieved despite the fact that three-body channels have not been explicitly included.Comment: 5 Pages, 2 figures, invited contribution to Focus Session on Nature of Threshold N*, to be published in Proceedings of Nstar 2002, Pittsburgh, USA, October 9-12, 2002 (World Scientific

Electronic Raman Scattering in Twistronic Few-Layer Graphene

We study electronic contribution to the Raman scattering signals of two-, three- and four-layer graphene with layers at one of the interfaces twisted by a small angle with respect to each other. We find that the Raman spectra of these systems feature two peaks produced by van Hove singularities in moir\'{e} minibands of twistronic graphene, one related to direct hybridization of Dirac states, and the other resulting from band folding caused by moir\'{e} superlattice. The positions of both peaks strongly depend on the twist angle, so that their detection can be used for non-invasive characterization of the twist, even in hBN-encapsulated structures.Comment: 7 pages (including 4 figures) + 10 pages (3 figures) supplemen

A Cholinergic Synaptically Triggered Event Participates in the Generation of Persistent Activity Necessary for Eye Fixation

An exciting topic regarding integrative properties of the nervous system is how transient motor commands or brief sensory stimuli are able to evoke persistent neuronal changes, mainly as a sustained, tonic action potential firing. A persisting firing seems to be necessary for postural maintenance after a previous movement. We have studied in vitro and in vivo the generation of the persistent neuronal activity responsible for eye fixation after spontaneous eye movements. Rat sagittal brainstem slices were used for the intracellular recording of prepositus hypoglossi (PH) neurons and their synaptic activation from nearby paramedian pontine reticular formation (PPRF) neurons. Single electrical pulses applied to the PPRF showed a monosynaptic glutamatergic projection on PH neurons, acting on AMPA-kainate receptors. Train stimulation of the PPRF area evoked a sustained depolarization of PH neurons exceeding (by hundreds of milliseconds) stimulus duration. Both duration and amplitude of this sustained depolarization were linearly related to train frequency. The train-evoked sustained depolarization was the result of interaction between glutamatergic excitatory burst neurons and cholinergic mesopontine reticular fibers projecting onto PH neurons, because it was prevented by slice superfusion with cholinergic antagonists and mimicked by cholinergic agonists. As expected, microinjections of cholinergic antagonists in the PH nucleus of alert behaving cats evoked a gaze-holding deficit consisting of a re-centering drift of the eye after each saccade. These findings suggest that a slow, cholinergic, synaptically triggered event participates in the generation of persistent activity characteristic of PH neurons carrying eye position signals