Symmetry breaking in a mechanical resonator made from a carbon nanotube

Nanotubes behave as semi-flexible polymers in that they can bend by a sizeable amount. When integrating a nanotube in a mechanical resonator, the bending is expected to break the symmetry of the restoring potential. Here we report on a new detection method that allows us to demonstrate such symmetry breaking. The method probes the motion of the nanotube resonator at nearly zero-frequency; this motion is the low-frequency counterpart of the second overtone of resonantly excited vibrations. We find that symmetry breaking leads to the spectral broadening of mechanical resonances, and to an apparent quality factor that drops below 100 at room temperature. The low quality factor at room temperature is a striking feature of nanotube resonators whose origin has remained elusive for many years. Our results shed light on the role played by symmetry breaking in the mechanics of nanotube resonators.Comment: manuscript and supplementary material, 7 figure

A few things I learnt from Jurgen Moser

A few remarks on integrable dynamical systems inspired by discussions with Jurgen Moser and by his work.Comment: An article for the special issue of "Regular and Chaotic Dynamics" dedicated to 80-th anniversary of Jurgen Mose

Field theory of bi- and tetracritical points: Relaxational dynamics

We calculate the relaxational dynamical critical behavior of systems of $O(n_\|)\oplus O(n_\perp)$ symmetry by renormalization group method within the minimal subtraction scheme in two loop order. The three different bicritical static universality classes previously found for such systems correspond to three different dynamical universality classes within the static borderlines. The Heisenberg and the biconical fixed point lead to strong dynamic scaling whereas in the region of stability of the decoupled fixed point weak dynamic scaling holds. Due to the neighborhood of the stability border between the strong and the weak scaling dynamic fixed point corresponding to the static biconical and the decoupled fixed point a very small dynamic transient exponent, of $\omega_v^{{\cal B}}=0.0044$, is present in the dynamics for the physically important case $n_\|=1$ and $n_\perp=2$ in $d=3$.Comment: 8 figure

Ionization signals from electrons and alpha-particles in mixtures of liquid Argon and Nitrogen - perspectives on protons for Gamma Resonant Nuclear Absorption applications

In this paper we report on a detailed study of ionization signals produced by Compton electrons and alpha-particles in a Time Projection Chamber (TPC) flled with different mixtures of liquid Argon and Nitrogen. The measurements were carried out with Nitrogen concentrations up to 15% and a drift electric feld in the range 0-50 kV/cm. A prediction for proton ionization signals is made by means of interpolation. This study has been conducted in view of the possible use of liquid Ar-N2 TPCs for the detection of gamma-rays in the resonant band of the Nitrogen absorption spectrum, a promising technology for security and medical applications

30 kV coaxial vacuum-tight feedthrough for operation at cryogenic temperatures

In this paper we describe the technology of building a vacuum-tight high voltage feedthrough which is able to operate at voltages up to 30 kV. The feedthrough has a coaxial structure with a grounded sheath which makes it capable to lead high voltage potentials into cryogenic liquids, without risk of surface discharges in the gas phase above the liquid level. The feedthrough is designed to be used in ionization detectors, based on liquefied noble gases, such as Argon or Xenon

Leech Parasitism of the Gulf Coast Box Turtle, Terrapene carolina major (Testudines:Emydidae) in Mississippi, USA

Ten leeches were collected from a Gulf Coast box turtle, Terrapene carolina major, found crossing a road in Gulfport, Harrison County, Mississippi, USA. Eight of the leeches were identified as Placobdella multilineata and 2 were identified as Helobdella europaea. This represents the second vouchered report of leeches from a box turtle. Helobdella europaea is reported for the first time associated with a turtle and for the second time from the New World

Preheating after N-flation

We study preheating in N-flation, assuming the Mar\v{c}enko-Pastur mass distribution, equal energy initial conditions at the beginning of inflation and equal axion-matter couplings, where matter is taken to be a single, massless bosonic field. By numerical analysis we find that preheating via parametric resonance is suppressed, indicating that the old theory of perturbative preheating is applicable. While the tensor-to-scalar ratio, the non-Gaussianity parameters and the scalar spectral index computed for N-flation are similar to those in single field inflation (at least within an observationally viable parameter region), our results suggest that the physics of preheating can differ significantly from the single field case.Comment: 14 pages, 14 figures, references added, fixed typo