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Full-Text Articles in Physics

Hysteresis In Driven Disordered Systems: From Plastic Depinning To Magnets, M. Cristina Marchetti, Karin A. Dahmen Nov 2002

Hysteresis In Driven Disordered Systems: From Plastic Depinning To Magnets, M. Cristina Marchetti, Karin A. Dahmen

Physics - All Scholarship

We study the dynamics of a viscoelastic medium driven through quenched disorder by expanding about mean field theory in $6-\epsilon$ dimensions. The model exhibits a critical point separating a region where the dynamics is hysteretic with a macroscopic jump between strongly pinned and weakly pinned states, from a region where the sliding state is unique and no jump occurs. The disappearance of the jump at the critical point is described by universal exponents. As suggested in \onlinecite{MMP00}, the model appears to be in the same universality class as the zero-temperature random field Ising model of hysteresis in magnets.


Adiabatic Invariance With First Integrals Of Motion, Artur D. Adib Oct 2002

Adiabatic Invariance With First Integrals Of Motion, Artur D. Adib

Dartmouth Scholarship

The construction of a microthermodynamic formalism for isolated systems based on the concept of adiabatic invariance is an old but seldom appreciated effort in the literature, dating back at least to P. Hertz [Ann. Phys. (Leipzig) 33, 225 (1910)]. An apparently independent extension of such formalism for systems bearing additional first integrals of motion was recently proposed by Hans H. Rugh [Phys. Rev. E 64, 055101 (2001)], establishing the concept of adiabatic invariance even in such singular cases. After some remarks in connection with the formalism pioneered by Hertz, it will be suggested that such an extension can …


Observation Of Anomalous Spin-State Segregation In A Trapped Ultracold Vapor, Dwight L. Whitaker, H. J. Lewandowski, D. M. Harber, E. A. Cornell Jan 2002

Observation Of Anomalous Spin-State Segregation In A Trapped Ultracold Vapor, Dwight L. Whitaker, H. J. Lewandowski, D. M. Harber, E. A. Cornell

Pomona Faculty Publications and Research

We observe counterintuitive spin segregation in an inhomogeneous sample of ultracold, noncondensed rubidium atoms in a magnetic trap. We use spatially selective microwave spectroscopy to verify a model that accounts for the differential forces on two internal spin states. In any simple understanding of the cloud dynamics, the forces are far too small to account for the dramatic transient spin polarizations observed. The underlying mechanism remains to be elucidated.