6,190 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
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
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
Can Polymer Coils be modeled as "Soft Colloids"?
We map dilute or semi-dilute solutions of non-intersecting polymer chains
onto a fluid of ``soft'' particles interacting via a concentration dependent
effective pair potential, by inverting the pair distribution function of the
centers of mass of the initial polymer chains. A similar inversion is used to
derive an effective wall-polymer potential; these potentials are combined to
successfully reproduce the calculated exact depletion interaction induced by
non-intersecting polymers between two walls. The mapping opens up the
possibility of large-scale simulations of polymer solutions in complex
geometries.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures ReVTeX[epsfig,multicol,amssymb] references update
Sum of exit times in series of metastable states in probabilistic cellular automata
Reversible Probabilistic Cellular Automata are a special class
of automata whose stationary behavior is described by Gibbs--like
measures. For those models the dynamics can be trapped for a very
long time in states which are very different from the ones typical
of stationarity.
This phenomenon can be recasted in the framework of metastability
theory which is typical of Statistical Mechanics.
In this paper we consider a model presenting two not degenerate in
energy
metastable states which form a series, in the sense that,
when the dynamics is started at one of them, before reaching
stationarity, the system must necessarily visit the second one.
We discuss a rule for combining the exit times
from each of the metastable states
Thermal conductivity in the vicinity of the quantum critical endpoint in Sr3Ru2O7
Thermal conductivity of Sr3Ru2O7 was measured down to 40 mK and at magnetic
fields through the quantum critical endpoint at H_c = 7.85 T. A peak in the
electrical resistivity as a function of field was mimicked by the thermal
resistivity. In the limit as T -> 0 K we find that the Wiedemann-Franz law is
satisfied to within 5% at all fields, implying that there is no breakdown of
the electron despite the destruction of the Fermi liquid state at quantum
criticality. A significant change in disorder (from (H=0T) = 2.1
cm to 0.5 cm) does not influence our conclusions. At
finite temperatures, the temperature dependence of the Lorenz number is
consistent with ferromagnetic fluctuations causing the non-Fermi liquid
behavior as one would expect at a metamagnetic quantum critical endpoint.Comment: 4 figures, published in PR
Universal Heat Conduction in YBa_2Cu_3O_6.9
The thermal conductivity of YBa_2Cu_3O_6.9 was measured at low temperatures
in untwinned single crystals with concentrations of Zn impurities from 0 to 3%
of Cu. A linear term kappa_0/T = 0.19 mW/K^2.cm is clearly resolved as T -> 0,
and found to be virtually independent of Zn concentration. The existence of
this residual normal fluid strongly validates the basic theory of transport in
unconventional superconductors. Moreover, the observed universal behavior is in
quantitative agreement with calculations for a gap function of d-wave symmetry.Comment: Latex file, 4 pages, 3 EPS figures, to appear in Physical Review
Letter
Internal Anisotropy of Collision Cascades
We investigate the internal anisotropy of collision cascades arising from the
branching structure. We show that the global fractal dimension cannot give an
adequate description of the geometrical structure of cascades because it is
insensitive to the internal anisotropy. In order to give a more elaborate
description we introduce an angular correlation function, which takes into
account the direction of the local growth of the branches of the cascades. It
is demonstrated that the angular correlation function gives a quantitative
description of the directionality and the interrelation of branches. The power
law decay of the angular correlation is evidenced and characterized by an
exponent and an angular correlation length different from the radius of
gyration. It is demonstrated that the overlapping of subcascades has a strong
effect on the angular correlation.Comment: RevteX, 8 pages, 6 .eps figures include
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