Dynamic response studies on aggregation and breakage dynamics of colloidal dispersions in stirred tanks

Aggregation and breakage of aggregates of fully destabilized polystyrene latex particles in turbulent flow was studied experimentally in both batch and continuous stirred tanks using small-angle static light scattering. It was found that the steady-state values of the root-mean-square radius of gyration are fully reversible upon changes of stirring speed as well as solid volume fraction. Steady-state values of the root-mean-square radius of gyration were decreasing with decreasing solid volume fraction as well as with increasing stirring speed. Moreover, it was found that the steady-state structure and shape of the aggregates is not influenced by the applied stirring speed

Prediction of infrared light emission from pi-conjugated polymers: a diagrammatic exciton basis valence bond theory

There is currently a great need for solid state lasers that emit in the infrared, as this is the operating wavelength regime for applications in telecommunications. Existing $\pi$--conjugated polymers all emit in the visible or ultraviolet, and whether or not $\pi$--conjugated polymers that emit in the infrared can be designed is an interesting challenge. On the one hand, the excited state ordering in trans-polyacetylene, the $\pi$--conjugated polymer with relatively small optical gap, is not conducive to light emission because of electron-electron interaction effects. On the other hand, excited state ordering opposite to that in trans-polyacetylene is usually obtained by chemical modification that increases the effective bond-alternation, which in turn increases the optical gap. We develop a theory of electron correlation effects in a model $\pi$-conjugated polymer that is obtained by replacing the hydrogen atoms of trans-polyacetylene with transverse conjugated groups, and show that the effective on-site correlation in this system is smaller than the bare correlation in the unsubstituted system. An optical gap in the infrared as well as excited state ordering conducive to light emission is thereby predicted upon similar structural modifications.Comment: 15 pages, 15 figures, 1 tabl

Accounting for both electron--lattice and electron--electron coupling in conjugated polymers: minimum total energy calculations on the Hubbard--Peierls hamiltonian

Minimum total energy calculations, which account for both electron--lattice and electron--electron interactions in conjugated polymers are performed for chains with up to eight carbon atoms. These calculations are motivated in part by recent experimental results on the spectroscopy of polyenes and conjugated polymers and shed light on the longstanding question of the relative importance of electron--lattice vs. electron--electron interactions in determining the properties of these systems.Comment: 6 pages, Plain TeX, FRL-PSD-93GR

Electron-electron interaction effects on the photophysics of metallic single-walled carbon nanotubes

Single-walled carbon nanotubes are strongly correlated systems with large Coulomb repulsion between two electrons occupying the same $p_z$ orbital. Within a molecular Hamiltonian appropriate for correlated $\pi$-electron systems, we show that optical excitations polarized parallel to the nanotube axes in the so-called metallic single-walled carbon nanotubes are to excitons. Our calculated absolute exciton energies in twelve different metallic single-walled carbon nanotubes, with diameters in the range 0.8 - 1.4 nm, are in nearly quantitative agreement with experimental results. We have also calculated the absorption spectrum for the (21,21) single-walled carbon nanotube in the E$_{22}$ region. Our calculated spectrum gives an excellent fit to the experimental absorption spectrum. In all cases our calculated exciton binding energies are only slightly smaller than those of semiconducting nanotubes with comparable diameters, in contradiction to results obtained within the {\it ab initio} approach, which predicts much smaller binding energies. We ascribe this difference to the difficulty of determining the behavior of systems with strong on-site Coulomb interactions within theories based on the density functional approach. As in the semiconducting nanotubes we predict in the metallic nanotubes a two-photon exciton above the lowest longitudinally polarized exciton that can be detected by ultrafast pump-probe spectroscopy. We also predict a subgap absorption polarized perpendicular to the nanotube axes below the lowest longitudinal exciton, blueshifted from the exact midgap by electron-electron interactions

On SAT representations of XOR constraints

We study the representation of systems S of linear equations over the two-element field (aka xor- or parity-constraints) via conjunctive normal forms F (boolean clause-sets). First we consider the problem of finding an "arc-consistent" representation ("AC"), meaning that unit-clause propagation will fix all forced assignments for all possible instantiations of the xor-variables. Our main negative result is that there is no polysize AC-representation in general. On the positive side we show that finding such an AC-representation is fixed-parameter tractable (fpt) in the number of equations. Then we turn to a stronger criterion of representation, namely propagation completeness ("PC") --- while AC only covers the variables of S, now all the variables in F (the variables in S plus auxiliary variables) are considered for PC. We show that the standard translation actually yields a PC representation for one equation, but fails so for two equations (in fact arbitrarily badly). We show that with a more intelligent translation we can also easily compute a translation to PC for two equations. We conjecture that computing a representation in PC is fpt in the number of equations.Comment: 39 pages; 2nd v. improved handling of acyclic systems, free-standing proof of the transformation from AC-representations to monotone circuits, improved wording and literature review; 3rd v. updated literature, strengthened treatment of monotonisation, improved discussions; 4th v. update of literature, discussions and formulations, more details and examples; conference v. to appear LATA 201

Giant infrared intensity of the Peierls mode at the neutral-ionic phase transition

We present exact diagonalization results on a modified Peierls-Hubbard model for the neutral-ionic phase transition. The ground state potential energy surface and the infrared intensity of the Peierls mode point to a strong, non-linear electron-phonon coupling, with effects that are dominated by the proximity to the electronic instability rather than by electronic correlations. The huge infrared intensity of the Peierls mode at the ferroelectric transition is related to the temperature dependence of the dielectric constant of mixed-stack organic crystals.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure