Poly(acrylic acid)-coated iron oxide nanoparticles : quantitative evaluation of the coating properties and applications for the removal of a pollutant dye

In this work, 6 to 12 nm iron oxide nanoparticles were synthesized and coated with poly(acrylic acid) chains of molecular weight 2100 g/mol. Based on a quantitative evaluation of the dispersions, the bare and coated particles were thoroughly characterized. The number densities of polymers adsorbed at the particle surface and of available chargeable groups were found to be 1.9 +/- 0.3 nm-2 and 26 +/- 4 nm-2, respectively. Occurring via a multi-site binding mechanism, the electrostatic coupling leads to a solid and resilient anchoring of the chains. To assess the efficacy of the particles for pollutant remediation, the adsorption isotherm of methylene blue molecules, a model of pollutant, was determined. The excellent agreement between the predicted and measured amounts of adsorbed dyes suggests that most carboxylates participate to the complexation and adsorption mechanisms. An adsorption of 830 mg/g was obtained. This quantity compares well with the highest values available for this dye.Comment: 14 pages 5 figures, accepted 06-Dec-2012; Journal of Colloid and Interface Science (2013

Controlling Condensate Collapse and Expansion with an Optical Feshbach Resonance

We demonstrate control of the collapse and expansion of an 88Sr Bose-Einstein condensate using an optical Feshbach resonance (OFR) near the 1S0-3P1 intercombination transition at 689 nm. Significant changes in dynamics are caused by modifications of scattering length by up to +- ?10a_bg, where the background scattering length of 88Sr is a_bg = -2a0 (1a0 = 0.053 nm). Changes in scattering length are monitored through changes in the size of the condensate after a time-of-flight measurement. Because the background scattering length is close to zero, blue detuning of the OFR laser with respect to a photoassociative resonance leads to increased interaction energy and a faster condensate expansion, whereas red detuning triggers a collapse of the condensate. The results are modeled with the time-dependent nonlinear Gross-Pitaevskii equation.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

Strong eigenfunction correlations near the Anderson localization transition

We study overlap of two different eigenfunctions as compared with self-overlap in the framework of an infinite-dimensional version of the disordered tight-binding model. Despite a very sparse structure of the eigenstates in the vicinity of Anderson transition their mutual overlap is still found to be of the same order as self-overlap as long as energy separation is smaller than a critical value. The latter fact explains robustness of the Wigner-Dyson level statistics everywhere in the phase of extended states. The same picture is expected to hold for usual d-dimensional conductors, ensuring the $s^{\beta}$ form of the level repulsion at critical point.Comment: 4 pages, RevTe

Rotational Symmetry Breaking in Sodium Doped Cuprates

For reasonable parameters a hole bound to a Na^{+} acceptor in Ca_{2-x}Na_{x}CuO_{2}Cl_{2} has a doubly degenerate ground state whose components can be represented as states with even (odd) reflection symmetry around the x(y) -axes. The conductance pattern for one state is anisotropic as the tip of a tunneling microscope scans above the Cu-O-Cu bonds along the x(y)-axes. This anisotropy is pronounced at lower voltages but is reduced at higher voltages. Qualitative agreement with recent experiments leads us to propose this effect as an explanation of the broken local rotational symmetry.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figure

Microflow valve control system design

A design synthesis for a microflow control system is presented based on the interrogation of an analytical model, testing, and observation. The key issues relating to controlling a microflow using a variable geometry flow channel are explored through the implementation and testing of open and closed-loop control systems. The reliance of closed-loop systems on accurate flow measurement and the need for an open-loop strategy are covered. A valve and control system capable of accurately controlling flowrates between 0.09 and 400 ml/h and with a range of 900:1 is demonstrated

Efficient kk-separability criteria for mixed multipartite quantum states

We investigate classification and detection of entanglement of multipartite quantum states in a very general setting, and obtain efficient $k$-separability criteria for mixed multipartite states in arbitrary dimensional quantum systems. These criteria can be used to distinguish $n-1$ different classes of multipartite inseparable states and can detect many important multipartite entangled states such as GHZ states, W states, anti W states, and mixtures thereof. They detect $k$-nonseparable $n$-partite quantum states which have previously not been identified. Here $k=2,3,\cdots,n$. No optimization or eigenvalue evaluation is needed, and our criteria can be evaluated by simple computations involving components of the density matrix. Most importantly, they can be implemented in today's experiments by using at most $\mathcal{O}(n^2)$ local measurements.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figure