A rapid stress-corrosion test for aluminum alloys

Stressed alloy specimens are immersed in a salt-dichromate solution at 60 degrees C. Because of the minimal general corrosion of these alloys in this solution, stress corrosion failures are detected by low-power microscopic examination

"Water-free" computer model for fluid bilayer membranes

We use a simple and efficient computer model to investigate the physical properties of bilayer membranes. The amphiphilic molecules are modeled as short rigid trimers with finite range pair interactions between them. The pair potentials have been designed to mimic the hydrophobic interactions, and to allow the simulation of the membranes without the embedding solvent as if the membrane is in vacuum. We find that upon decreasing the area density of the molecules the membrane undergoes a solid-fluid phase transition, where in the fluid phase the molecules can diffuse within the membrane plane. The surface tension and the bending modulus of the fluid membranes are extracted from the analysis of the spectrum of thermal undulations. At low area densities we observe the formation of pores in the membrane through which molecules can diffuse from one layer to the other. The appearance of the pores is explained using a simple model relating it to the area dependence of the free energy.Comment: 12 pages, 8 figures, to appear in J. Chem. Phy

Decrumpling membranes by quantum effects

The phase diagram of an incompressible fluid membrane subject to quantum and thermal fluctuations is calculated exactly in a large number of dimensions of configuration space. At zero temperature, a crumpling transition is found at a critical bending rigidity $1/\alpha_{\rm c}$. For membranes of fixed lateral size, a crumpling transition occurs at nonzero temperatures in an auxiliary mean field approximation. As the lateral size L of the membrane becomes large, the flat regime shrinks with $1/\ln L$.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figure

Effect of Thermal Undulations on the Bending Elasticity and Spontaneous Curvature of Fluid Membranes

We amplify previous arguments why mean curvature should be used as measure of integration in calculating the effective bending rigidity of fluid membranes subjected to a weak background curvature. The stiffening of the membrane by its fluctuations, recently derived for spherical shapes, is recovered for cylindrical curvature. Employing curvilinear coordinates, we then discuss stiffening for arbitrary shapes, confirm that the elastic modulus of Gaussian curvature is not renormalized in the presence of fluctuations, and show for the first time that any spontaneous curvature also remains unchanged.Comment: 26 pages, 2 figures, to appear in EPJ

Resonant three-body physics in two spatial dimensions

We discuss the three-body properties of identical bosons exhibiting large scattering length in two spatial dimensions. Within an effective field theory for resonant interactions, we calculate the leading non-universal corrections from the two-body effective range to bound-state and scattering observables. In particular, we compute the three-body binding energies, the boson-dimer scattering properties, and the three-body recombination rate for finite energies. We find significant effective range effects in the vicinity of the unitary limit. The implications of this result for future experiments are briefly discussed.Comment: 15 pages, 8 figures, published versio

Dynamics of Vesicle Formation from Lipid Droplet: Mechanism and Controllability

A coarse-grained model developed by Marrink et al. [J. Phys. Chem. B 111, 7812 (2007)] is applied to investigate vesiculation of lipid [dipalmitoylphosphatidylcholine (DPPC)] droplets in water. Three kinds of morphologies of micelles are found with increasing lipid droplet size. When the initial lipid droplet is smaller, the equilibrium structure of the droplet is a spherical micelle. When the initial lipid droplet is larger, the lipid ball starts to transform into a disk micelle or vesicle. The mechanism of vesicle formation from a lipid ball is analyzed from the self-assembly of DPPC on the molecular level, and the morphological transition from disk to vesicle with increasing droplet size is demonstrated. Importantly, we discover that the transition point is not very sharp, and for a fixed-size lipid ball, the disk and vesicle appear with certain probabilities. The splitting phenomenon, i.e., the formation of a disk/vesicle structure from a lipid droplet, is explained by applying a hybrid model of the Helfrich membrane theory. The elastic module of the DPPC bilayer and the smallest size of a lipid droplet for certain formation of a vesicle are successfully predicted.Comment: 22 pages, 11 figures Submitted to J. Chem. Phy

The unbinding transition of mixed fluid membranes

A phenomenological model for the unbinding transition of multi-component fluid membranes is proposed, where the unbinding transition is described using a theory analogous to Flory-Huggins theory for polymers. The coupling between the lateral phase separation of inclusion molecules and the membrane-substrate distance explains the phase coexistence between two unbound phases as observed in recent experiments by Marx et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 88, 138102 (2002)]. Bellow a critical end-point temperature, we find that the unbinding transition becomes first-order for multi-component membranes.Comment: 7 pages, 3 eps figure

Bulk and wetting phenomena in a colloidal mixture of hard spheres and platelets

Density functional theory is used to study binary colloidal fluids consisting of hard spheres and thin platelets in their bulk and near a planar hard wall. This system exhibits liquid-liquid coexistence of a phase that is rich in spheres (poor in platelets) and a phase that is poor in spheres (rich in platelets). For the mixture near a planar hard wall, we find that the phase rich in spheres wets the wall completely upon approaching the liquid demixing binodal from the sphere-poor phase, provided the concentration of the platelets is smaller than a threshold value which marks a first-order wetting transition at coexistence. No layering transitions are found in contrast to recent studies on binary mixtures of spheres and non-adsorbing polymers or thin hard rods.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figure

Interaction of Conical Membrane Inclusions: Effect of Lateral Tension

Considering two rigid conical inclusions embedded in a membrane subject to lateral tension, we study the membrane-mediated interaction between these inclusions that originates from the hat-shaped membrane deformations associated with the cones. At non-vanishing lateral tensions, the interaction is found to depend on the orientation of the cones with respect to the membrane plane. The interaction of inclusions of equal orientation is repulsive at all distances between them, while the inclusions of opposite orientation repel each other at small separations, but attract each other at larger ones. Both the repulsive and attractive forces become stronger with increasing lateral tension. This is different from what has been predicted on the basis of the same static model for the case of vanishing lateral tension. Without tension, the inclusions repel each other at all distances independently of their relative orientation. We conclude that lateral tension may induce the aggregation of conical membrane inclusions.Comment: 10 pages (revtech), 5 figures (postscript

Three-body problem in heteronuclear mixtures with resonant interspecies interaction

We use the zero-range approximation to study a system of two identical bosons interacting resonantly with a third particle. The method is derived from effective field theory. It reduces the three-body problem to an integral equation which we then solve numerically. We also develop an alternative approach which gives analytic solutions of the integral equation in coordinate representation in the limit of vanishing total energy. The atom-dimer scattering length, the rates of atom-dimer relaxation and three-body recombination to shallow and to deep molecular states are calculated either analytically or numerically with a well controlled accuracy for various energies as functions of the mass ratio, scattering length, and three-body parameter. We discuss in detail the relative positions of the recombination loss peaks, which in the universal limit depend only on the mass ratio. Our results have implications for ongoing and future experiments on Bose-Bose and Bose-Fermi atomic mixtures.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figures, minor changes, published versio