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Articles 1 - 12 of 12

Full-Text Articles in Physics

Experimental Characterization Of Coherent Magnetization Transport In A One-Dimensional Spin System, Chandrasekhar Ramanathan, Paola Cappellaro, Lorenza Viola, David G. Cory Oct 2011

Experimental Characterization Of Coherent Magnetization Transport In A One-Dimensional Spin System, Chandrasekhar Ramanathan, Paola Cappellaro, Lorenza Viola, David G. Cory

Dartmouth Scholarship

We experimentally characterize the non-equilibrium, room-temperature magnetization dynamics of a spin chain evolving under an effective double-quantum (DQ) Hamiltonian. We show that the Liouville space operators corresponding to the magnetization and the two-spin correlations evolve 90 degrees out of phase with each other, and drive the transport dynamics. For a nearest-neighbor-coupled N-spin chain, the dynamics are found to be restricted to a Liouville operator space whose dimension scales only as N2, leading to a slow growth of multi-spin correlations. Even though long-range couplings are present in the real system, we find excellent agreement between the analytical predictions …


Generic Phases Of Cross-Linked Active Gels: Relaxation, Oscillation And Contractility, Shiladitya Banerjee, Tanniemola B. Liverpool, M. C. Marchetti Oct 2011

Generic Phases Of Cross-Linked Active Gels: Relaxation, Oscillation And Contractility, Shiladitya Banerjee, Tanniemola B. Liverpool, M. C. Marchetti

Physics - All Scholarship

We study analytically and numerically a generic continuum model of an isotropic active solid with internal stresses generated by non-equilibrium `active' mechano-chemical reactions. Our analysis shows that the gel can be tuned through three classes of dynamical states by increasing motor activity: a constant unstrained state of homogeneous density, a state where the local density exhibits sustained oscillations, and a steady-state which is spontaneously contracted, with a uniform mean density.


Substrate Rigidity Deforms And Polarizes Active Gels, Shiladitya Banerjee, M. C. Marchetti Aug 2011

Substrate Rigidity Deforms And Polarizes Active Gels, Shiladitya Banerjee, M. C. Marchetti

Physics - All Scholarship

We present a continuum model of the coupling between cells and substrate that accounts for some of the observed substrate-stiffness dependence of cell properties. The cell is modeled as an elastic active gel, adapting recently developed continuum theories of active viscoelastic fluids. The coupling to the substrate enters as a boundary condition that relates the cell's deformation field to local stress gradients. In the presence of activity, the coupling to the substrate yields spatially inhomogeneous contractile stresses and deformations in the cell and can enhance polarization, breaking the cell's front-rear symmetry.


Active Jamming: Self-Propelled Soft Particles At High Density, Silke Henkes, Yaouen Fily, M. Christina Marchetti Jul 2011

Active Jamming: Self-Propelled Soft Particles At High Density, Silke Henkes, Yaouen Fily, M. Christina Marchetti

Physics - All Scholarship

We study numerically the phases and dynamics of a dense collection of self-propelled particles with soft repulsive interactions in two dimensions. The model is motivated by recent in vitro experiments on confluent monolayers of migratory epithelial and endothelial cells. The phase diagram exhibits a liquid phase with giant number fluctuations at low packing fraction and high self-propulsion speed and a jammed phase at high packing fraction and low self-propulsion speed. The dynamics of the jammed phase is controlled by the low frequency modes of the jammed packing.


Decay Of Nuclear Hyperpolarization In Silicon Microparticles, M. Lee, M. C. Cassidy, C. Ramanathan, C. M. Marcus Jul 2011

Decay Of Nuclear Hyperpolarization In Silicon Microparticles, M. Lee, M. C. Cassidy, C. Ramanathan, C. M. Marcus

Dartmouth Scholarship

We investigate the low-field relaxation of nuclear hyperpolarization in undoped and highly doped silicon microparticles at room temperature following removal from high field. For nominally undoped particles, two relaxation time scales are identified for ambient fields above 0.2 mT. The slower, T1,s, is roughly independent of ambient field; the faster, T1,f, decreases with increasing ambient field. A model in which nuclear spin relaxation occurs at the particle surface via a two-electron mechanism is shown to be in good agreement with the experimental data, particularly the field independence of T1,s. For boron-doped particles, a single relaxation time scale is observed. This …


Nonlinear Hydrodynamics Of Disentangled Flux-Line Liquids, Panayotis Benetatos, M. Cristina Marchetti Jul 2011

Nonlinear Hydrodynamics Of Disentangled Flux-Line Liquids, Panayotis Benetatos, M. Cristina Marchetti

Physics - All Scholarship

In this paper we use non-Gaussian hydrodynamics to study the magnetic response of a flux-line liquid in the mixed state of a type-II superconductor. Both the derivation of our model, which goes beyond conventional Gaussian flux liquid hydrodynamics, and its relationship to other approaches used in the literature are discussed. We focus on the response to a transverse tilting field which is controlled by the tilt modulus, c44, of the flux array. We show that interaction effects can enhance c44 even in infinitely thick clean materials. This enhancement can be interpreted as the appearance of a disentangled flux-liquid fraction. In …


Theory Of Double-Sided Flux Decorations, M. Cristina Marchetti, David R. Nelson Jul 2011

Theory Of Double-Sided Flux Decorations, M. Cristina Marchetti, David R. Nelson

Physics - All Scholarship

A novel two-sided Bitter decoration technique was recently employed by Yao et al. to study the structure of the magnetic vortex array in high-temperature superconductors. Here we discuss the analysis of such experiments. We show that two-sided decorations can be used to infer {\it quantitative} information about the bulk properties of flux arrays, and discuss how a least squares analysis of the local density differences can be used to bring the two sides into registry. Information about the tilt, compressional and shear moduli of bulk vortex configurations can be extracted from these measurements.


Cooperative Self-Propulsion Of Active And Passive Rotors, Yaouen Fily, Aparna Baskaran, M. Cristina Marchetti Jul 2011

Cooperative Self-Propulsion Of Active And Passive Rotors, Yaouen Fily, Aparna Baskaran, M. Cristina Marchetti

Physics - All Scholarship

Using minimal models for low Reynolds number passive and active rotors in a fluid, we characterize the hydrodynamic interactions among rotors and the resulting dynamics of a pair of interacting rotors. This allows us to treat in a common framework passive or externally driven rotors, such as magnetic colloids driven by a rotating magnetic field, and active or internally driven rotors, such as sperm cells confined at boundaries. The hydrodynamic interaction of passive rotors contains an azimuthal component 1/r2 to dipolar order that can yield the recently discovered “cooperative self-propulsion” of a pair of rotors of opposite vorticity. While this …


Motor-Driven Dynamics Of Cytoskeletal Filaments In Motility Assays, Shiladitya Banerjee, M. Cristina Marchetti, Kristian Muller-Nedebock Jun 2011

Motor-Driven Dynamics Of Cytoskeletal Filaments In Motility Assays, Shiladitya Banerjee, M. Cristina Marchetti, Kristian Muller-Nedebock

Physics - All Scholarship

We model analytically the dynamics of a cytoskeletal filament in a motility assay. The filament is described as rigid rod free to slide in two dimensions. The motor proteins consist of polymeric tails tethered to the plane and modeled as linear springs and motor heads that bind to the filament. As in related models of rigid and soft two-state motors, the binding/unbinding dynamics of the motor heads and the dependence of the transition rates on the load exerted by the motor tails play a crucial role in controlling the filament's dynamics. Our work shows that the filament effectively behaves as …


Polar Patterns In Active Fluids, Luca Giomi, M. Cristina Marchetti Jun 2011

Polar Patterns In Active Fluids, Luca Giomi, M. Cristina Marchetti

Physics - All Scholarship

We study the spatio-temporal dynamics of a model of polar active fluid in two dimensions. The system exhibits a transition from an isotropic to a polarized state as a function of density. The uniform polarized state is, however, unstable above a critical value of activity. Upon increasing activity, the active fluids displays increasingly complex patterns, including traveling bands, traveling vortices and chaotic behavior. The advection arising from the particles self-propulsion and unique to polar fluids yields qualitatively new behavior as compared to that obtain in active nematic, yielding traveling-wave structures. We show that the nonlinear hydrodynamic equations can be mapped …


Dynamical Critical Scaling And Effective Thermalization In Quantum Quenches: Role Of The Initial State, Shusa Deng, Gerardo Ortiz, Lorenza Viola Mar 2011

Dynamical Critical Scaling And Effective Thermalization In Quantum Quenches: Role Of The Initial State, Shusa Deng, Gerardo Ortiz, Lorenza Viola

Dartmouth Scholarship

We explore the robustness of universal dynamical scaling behavior in a quantum system near criticality with respect to initialization in a large class of states with finite energy. By focusing on a homogeneous XY quantum spin chain in a transverse field, we characterize the nonequilibrium response under adiabatic and sudden quench processes originating from a pure as well as a mixed excited initial state, and involving either a regular quantum critical or a multicritical point. We find that the critical exponents of the ground-state quantum phase transition can be encoded in the dynamical scaling exponents despite the finite energy of …


Superlattice Ultrasonic Generation, Thomas E. Wilson, M. Oehme, E. Kasper, H-J. L. Gossmann Mar 2011

Superlattice Ultrasonic Generation, Thomas E. Wilson, M. Oehme, E. Kasper, H-J. L. Gossmann

Physics Faculty Research

We report the first experimental evidence for the resonant excitation of coherent high-frequency acoustic phonons in semiconducting doping superstructures by far-infrared laser radiation. After a grating-coupled delta-doped silicon doping superlattice is illuminated with ~1 kW/mm2 nanosecond-pulsed 246 GHz laser radiation, a delayed nanosecond pulse is detected by a superconducting bolometer at a time corresponding to the appropriate time-of-flight for ballistic longitudinal acoustic phonons across the (100) silicon substrate. The absorbed phonon power density in the microbolometer is observed to be ~10 μW/mm2, in agreement with theory. The phonon pulse duration also matches the laser pulse duration. The …