6,739 research outputs found
Accurate effective pair potentials for polymer solutions
Dilute or semi-dilute solutions of non-intersecting self-avoiding walk (SAW)
polymer chains are mapped onto a fluid of ``soft'' particles interacting via an
effective pair potential between their centers of mass. This mapping is
achieved by inverting the pair distribution function of the centers of mass of
the original polymer chains, using integral equation techniques from the theory
of simple fluids. The resulting effective pair potential is finite at all
distances, has a range of the order of the radius of gyration, and turns out to
be only moderately concentration-dependent. The dependence of the effective
potential on polymer length is analyzed in an effort to extract the scaling
limit. The effective potential is used to derive the osmotic equation of state,
which is compared to simulation data for the full SAW segment model, and to the
predictions of renormalization group calculations. A similar inversion
procedure is used to derive an effective wall-polymer potential from the center
of mass density profiles near the wall, obtained from simulations of the full
polymer segment model. The resulting wall-polymer potential turns out to depend
strongly on bulk polymer concentration when polymer-polymer correlations are
taken into account, leading to a considerable enhancement of the effective
repulsion with increasing concentration. The effective polymer-polymer and
wall-polymer potentials are combined to calculate the depletion interaction
induced by SAW polymers between two walls. The calculated depletion interaction
agrees well with the ``exact'' results from much more computer-intensive direct
simulation of the full polymer-segment model, and clearly illustrates the
inadequacy -- in the semi-dilute regime -- of the standard Asakura-Oosawa
approximation based on the assumption of non-interacting polymer coils.Comment: 18 pages, 24 figures, ReVTeX, submitted to J. Chem. Phy
Streptavidin-hosted organocatalytic aldol addition
In this report, the streptavidin-biotin technology was applied to enable organocatalytic aldol addition. By attaching pyrrolidine to the valeric motif of biotin and introducing it to streptavidin (Sav), a protein-based organocatalytic system was created, and the aldol addition of acetone with p-nitrobenzaldehyde was tested. The conversion of substrate to product can be as high as 93%. Although the observed enantioselectivity was only moderate (33:67 er), further protein engineering efforts can be included to improve the selectivity. These results have proven the concept that Sav can be used to host stereoselective aldol addition
Dispersion control for matter waves and gap solitons in optical superlattices
We present a numerical study of dispersion manipulation and formation of
matter-wave gap solitons in a Bose-Einstein condensate trapped in an optical
superlattice. We demonstrate a method for controlled generation of matter-wave
gap solitons in a stationary lattice by using an interference pattern of two
condensate wavepackets, which mimics the structure of the gap soliton near the
edge of a spectral band. The efficiency of this method is compared with that of
gap soliton generation in a moving lattice recently demonstrated experimentally
by Eiermann et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 92, 230401 (2004)]. We show that, by
changing the relative depths of the superlattice wells, one can fine-tune the
effective dispersion of the matter waves at the edges of the mini-gaps of the
superlattice Bloch-wave spectrum and therefore effectively control both the
peak density and the spatial width of the emerging gap solitons.Comment: 8 pages, 9 figures; modified references in Section 2; minor content
changes in Sections 1 and 2 and Fig. 9 captio
Rosenfeld functional for non-additive hard spheres
The fundamental measure density functional theory for hard spheres is
generalized to binary mixtures of arbitrary positive and moderate negative
non-additivity between unlike components. In bulk the theory predicts
fluid-fluid phase separation into phases with different chemical compositions.
The location of the accompanying critical point agrees well with previous
results from simulations over a broad range of non-additivities and both for
symmetric and highly asymmetric size ratios. Results for partial pair
correlation functions show good agreement with simulation data.Comment: 8 pages with 4 figure
An integral equation approach to effective interactions between polymers in solution
We use the thread model for linear chains of interacting monomers, and the
``polymer reference interaction site model'' (PRISM) formalism to determine the
monomer-monomer pair correlation function for dilute and
semi-dilute polymer solutions, over a range of temperatures from very high
(where the chains behave as self-avoiding walks) to below the
temperature, where phase separation sets in. An inversion procedure, based on
the HNC integral equation, is used to extract the effective pair potential
between ``average'' monomers on different chains. An accurate relation between
, [the pair correlation function between the polymer
centers of mass (c.m.)], and the intramolecular form factors is then used to
determine , and subsequently extract the effective c.m.-c.m. pair
potential by a similar inversion procedure. depends on
temperature and polymer concentration, and the predicted variations are in
reasonable agreement with recent simulation data, except at very high
temperatures, and below the temperature.Comment: 13 pages, 13 figures, revtex ; revised versio
Fracture driven by a Thermal Gradient
Motivated by recent experiments by Yuse and Sano (Nature, 362, 329 (1993)),
we propose a discrete model of linear springs for studying fracture in thin and
elastically isotropic brittle films. The method enables us to draw a map of the
stresses in the material. Cracks generated by the model, imposing a moving
thermal gradient in the material, can branch or wiggle depending on the driving
parameters. The results may be used to compare with other recent theoretical
work, or to design future experiments.Comment: RevTeX file (9 pages) and 5 postscript figure
Heat Transport in a Strongly Overdoped Cuprate: Fermi Liquid and Pure d-wave BCS Superconductor
The transport of heat and charge in the overdoped cuprate superconductor
Tl_2Ba_2CuO_(6+delta) was measured down to low temperature. In the normal
state, obtained by applying a magnetic field greater than the upper critical
field, the Wiedemann-Franz law is verified to hold perfectly. In the
superconducting state, a large residual linear term is observed in the thermal
conductivity, in quantitative agreement with BCS theory for a d-wave
superconductor. This is compelling evidence that the electrons in overdoped
cuprates form a Fermi liquid, with no indication of spin-charge separation.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, published version, title changed, Phys. Rev.
Lett. 89, 147003 (2002
Low-temperature phonon thermal conductivity of cuprate single crystals
The effect of sample size and surface roughness on the phonon thermal
conductivity of NdCuO single crystals was studied down to 50
mK. At 0.5 K, is proportional to , where is the
cross-sectional area of the sample. This demonstrates that is
dominated by boundary scattering below 0.5 K or so. However, the expected
dependence of is not observed down to 50 mK. Upon roughing the
surfaces, the dependence is restored, showing that departures from
are due to specular reflection of phonons off the mirror-like sample surfaces.
We propose an empirical power law fit, to (where
) in cuprate single crystals. Using this method, we show that
recent thermal conductivity studies of Zn doping in YBaCuO
re-affirm the universal heat conductivity of d-wave quasiparticles at .Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure
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