1,009 research outputs found
Easy collective polarization switching in ferroelectrics
The actual mechanism of polarization switching in ferroelectrics remains a
puzzle for many decades, since the usually estimated barrier for nucleation and
growth is insurmountable ("paradox of the coercive field"). To analyze the
mechanisms of the nucleation we consider the exactly solvable case of a
ferroelectric film with a "dead" layer at the interface with electrodes. The
classical nucleation is easier in this case but still impossible, since the
calculated barrier is huge. We have found that the {\em interaction} between
the nuclei is, however, long range, hence one has to study an {\em ensemble} of
the nuclei. We show that there are the ensembles of small (embryonic) nuclei
that grow {\em without the barrier}. We submit that the interaction between
nuclei is the key point for solving the paradox.Comment: 5 pages, REVTeX 3.1 with one eps-figure. Corrected discussion of
single stripe and cylindrical nuclei, and their interaction. The estimate for
equilibrium density of embryonic nuclei is added. To appear in Phys. Rev.
Letter
Simulations of metastable decay in two- and three-dimensional models with microscopic dynamics
We present a brief analysis of the crossover phase diagram for the decay of a
metastable phase in a simple dynamic lattice-gas model of a two-phase system.
We illustrate the nucleation-theoretical analysis with dynamic Monte Carlo
simulations of a kinetic Ising lattice gas on square and cubic lattices. We
predict several regimes in which the metastable lifetime has different
functional forms, and provide estimates for the crossovers between the
different regimes. In the multidroplet regime, the
Kolmogorov-Johnson-Mehl-Avrami theory for the time dependence of the
order-parameter decay and the two-point density correlation function allows
extraction of both the order parameter in the metastable phase and the
interfacial velocity from the simulation data.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figures, submitted to J. Non-Crystalline Solids,
conference proceeding for IXth International Conference on the Physics of
Non-Crystalline Solids, October, 199
Mean Field Theory of Polynuclear Surface Growth
We study statistical properties of a continuum model of polynuclear surface
growth on an infinite substrate. We develop a self-consistent mean-field theory
which is solved to deduce the growth velocity and the extremal behavior of the
coverage. Numerical simulations show that this theory gives an improved
approximation for the coverage compare to the previous linear recursion
relations approach. Furthermore, these two approximations provide useful upper
and lower bounds for a number of characteristics including the coverage, growth
velocity, and the roughness exponent.Comment: revtex, 7 pages, 4 fig
Exact results for nucleation-and-growth in one dimension
We study statistical properties of the Kolmogorov-Avrami-Johnson-Mehl
nucleation-and-growth model in one dimension. We obtain exact results for the
gap density as well as the island distribution. When all nucleation events
occur simultaneously, the island distribution has discontinuous derivatives on
the rays x_n(t)=nt, n=1,2,3... We introduce an accelerated growth mechanism
where the velocity increases linearly with the island size. We solve for the
inter-island gap density and show that the system reaches complete coverage in
a finite time and that the near-critical behavior of the system is robust,
i.e., it is insensitive to details such as the nucleation mechanism.Comment: 9 pages, revtex, also available from http://arnold.uchicago.edu/~ebn
Tumor immunosurveillance in human cancers
Until now, the anatomic extent of tumor (TNM classification) has been by far the most important factor to predict the prognosis of colorectal cancer patients. However, in recent years, data collected from large cohorts of human cancers demonstrated that the immune contexture of the primary tumors is an essential prognostic factor for patients’ disease-free and overall survival. Tumoral and immunological markers predicted by systems biology methods are involved in the shaping of an efficient immune reaction and can serve as targets for novel therapeutic approaches. Global analysis of tumor microenvironment showed that the nature, the functional orientation, the density, and the location of adaptive immune cells within distinct tumor regions influence the risk of relapse events. The density and the immune cell location within the tumor have a prognostic value that is superior to the TNM classification, and tumor invasion is statistically dependent on the host-immune reaction. Thus, the strength of the immune reaction could advance our understanding of cancer evolution and have important consequences in clinical practice
Aging process of electrical contacts in granular matter
The electrical resistance decay of a metallic granular packing has been
measured as a function of time. This measurement gives information about the
size of the conducting cluster formed by the well connected grains. Several
regimes have been encountered. Chronologically, the first one concerns the
growth of the conducting cluster and is identified to belong to diffusion
processes through a stretched exponential behavior. The relaxation time is
found to be simply related to the initial injected power. This regime is
followed by a reorganisation process due to thermal dilatation. For the long
term behavior of the decay, an aging process occurs and enhances the electrical
contacts between grains through microsoldering.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figure
Co-firing of biomass with coals Part 1. Thermogravimetric kinetic analysis of combustion of fir (abies bornmulleriana) wood
The chemical composition and reactivity of fir (Abies bornmulleriana) wood under non-isothermal thermogravimetric (TG) conditions were studied. Oxidation of the wood sample at temperatures near 600 A degrees C caused the loss of aliphatics from the structure of the wood and created a char heavily containing C-O functionalities and of highly aromatic character. On-line FTIR recordings of the combustion of wood indicated the oxidation of carbonaceous and hydrogen content of the wood and release of some hydrocarbons due to pyrolysis reactions that occurred during combustion of the wood. TG analysis was used to study combustion of fir wood. Non-isothermal TG data were used to evaluate the kinetics of the combustion of this carbonaceous material. The article reports application of Ozawa-Flynn-Wall model to deal with non-isothermal TG data for the evaluation of the activation energy corresponding to the combustion of the fir wood. The average activation energy related to fir wood combustion was 128.9 kJ/mol, and the average reaction order for the combustion of wood was calculated as 0.30
Computer simulation of crystallization kinetics with non-Poisson distributed nuclei
The influence of non-uniform distribution of nuclei on crystallization
kinetics of amorphous materials is investigated. This case cannot be described
by the well-known Johnson-Mehl-Avrami (JMA) equation, which is only valid under
the assumption of a spatially homogeneous nucleation probability. The results
of computer simulations of crystallization kinetics with nuclei distributed
according to a cluster and a hardcore distribution are compared with JMA
kinetics. The effects of the different distributions on the so-called Avrami
exponent are shown. Furthermore, we calculate the small-angle scattering
curves of the simulated structures which can be used to distinguish
experimentally between the three nucleation models under consideration.Comment: 14 pages including 7 postscript figures, uses epsf.sty and
ioplppt.st
Computational Methods to Study Kinetics of DNA Replication
New technologies such as DNA combing have led to the availability of large quanti-ties of data that describe the state of DNA while undergoing replication in S phase. In this chapter, we describe methods used to extract various parameters of replica-tion — fork velocity, origin initiation rate, fork density, numbers of potential and utilized origins — from such data. We first present a version of the technique that applies to “ideal ” data. We then show how to deal with a number of real-world complications, such as the asynchrony of starting times of a population of cells, the finite length of fragments used in the analysis, and the finite amount of DNA in a chromosome. Key words: DNA replication, replication fork velocity, origin initiation
Dynamic Phase Transition, Universality, and Finite-size Scaling in the Two-dimensional Kinetic Ising Model in an Oscillating Field
We study the two-dimensional kinetic Ising model below its equilibrium
critical temperature, subject to a square-wave oscillating external field. We
focus on the multi-droplet regime where the metastable phase decays through
nucleation and growth of many droplets of the stable phase. At a critical
frequency, the system undergoes a genuine non-equilibrium phase transition, in
which the symmetry-broken phase corresponds to an asymmetric stationary limit
cycle for the time-dependent magnetization. We investigate the universal
aspects of this dynamic phase transition at various temperatures and field
amplitudes via large-scale Monte Carlo simulations, employing finite-size
scaling techniques adopted from equilibrium critical phenomena. The critical
exponents, the fixed-point value of the fourth-order cumulant, and the critical
order-parameter distribution all are consistent with the universality class of
the two-dimensional equilibrium Ising model. We also study the cross-over from
the multi-droplet to the strong-field regime, where the transition disappears
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