Physics Commons^™

Coefficient Of Bohm Diffusion In Fully Ionized Plasma And Its Theoretical Proof, Ahmad Talaei, Reza Amrollahi

Ahmad Talaei

Sigma Exchange In The Nuclear Force And Effective Field Theory, John Donoghue

John Donoghue

In the phenomenological description of the nuclear interaction a crucial role is traditionally played by the exchange of a scalar I=0 meson, the sigma, of mass 500-600 MeV, which however is not seen clearly in the particle spectrum and which has a very ambiguous status in QCD. I show that a remarkably simple and reasonably controlled combination of ingredients can reproduce the features of this part of the nuclear force. The use of chiral perturbation theory calculations for two pion exchange supplemented by the Omnes function for pion rescattering suffices to reproduce the magnitude and shape of the exchange of …

Guiding Of Laser Beams In Plasmas By Radiation Cascade Compression, Serguei Y. Kalmykov, Gennady Shvets

Serge Youri Kalmykov

The near-resonant beatwave excitation of an electron plasma wave (EPW) can be employed for generating trains of few-fs electromagnetic pulses in rarefied plasmas. The EPW produces a co-moving index grating that induces a laser phase modulation at the beat frequency. Consequently, the cascade of sidebands red- and blue-shifted from the fundamental by integer multiples of the beat frequency is generated in the laser spectrum. When the beat frequency is lower than the electron plasma frequency, the phase chirp enables laser beatnote compression by the group velocity dispersion [S. Kalmykov and G. Shvets, Phys. Rev. E 73, 46403 (2006)]. In the …

Energy In Vectorial Relativity: E ≈ M.C2, Jorge A. Franco

Jorge A Franco

In previous work it was shown that assumptions, y = y' and z = z’, within Lorentz Transformations were needless, and therefore groundless. Because of such assumptions, Lorentz Transformations (LT) depend on the body’s spatial orientation, i.e. the well-known transverse and longitudinal transformations of magnitudes, characterized by different scaling factors. On the contrary, the development of LT without assumptions, brought about new transformations that do not depend on spatial orientation and a unique mass definition, m = °m /[1 –(v/c)^2]^(3/2). As it is known, Einstein arrived at two definitions: transverse mass mT = °m /[1 –(v/c)^2]^ (1/2) and longitudinal mass …

Gravitation In Vectorial Relativity, Jorge A. Franco

Jorge A Franco

It is known that Kepler’s Laws can be derived from the Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation. For doing this, mass is considered as an invariable parameter. Although this consideration works wonderfully to solve most of problems in astronomy calculations, as in all physics, when body’s speeds are so high and very precise measurements are required, the referred Kepler Laws do not cope enough what is expected. That’s why the General Theory of Relativity materialized. As it was indirectly pointed out by Einstein in 1905, Newton and Kepler Laws do not consider the relativistic variation of mass with its velocity. In …

Posterminaries: After Nabarro, Alexander H. King

Alexander H. King

With the passing of Frank Nabarro in July of this year, we have lost one of the founding fathers of materials science. His name appears in many of the textbooks from which we train our students today, and also on the spines of several volumes on dislocation theory, including his classic monograph on the subject. He rightly stands among the gods of our field. Ninety years old at his death, he was a sprightly dancer at the frontiers of knowledge, right up to the end.

Vortex Matter, Effective Magnetic Charges, And Generalizations Of Dipolar Superfluidity Concept In Layered Systems, Egor Babaev

Egor Babaev

In the first part of this letter we discuss electrodynamics of an excitonic condensate in a bilayer. We show that under certain conditions the system has a dominant energy scale and is described by the effective electrodynamics with "planar magnetic charges". In the second part of the paper we point out that a vortex liquid state in bilayer superconductors also possesses dipolar superfluid modes and establish equivalence mapping between this state and a dipolar excitonic condensate. We point out that a vortex liquid state in an N-layer superconductor possesses multiple topologically coupled dipolar superfluid modes and therefore represents a generalization …

Injection, Trapping, And Acceleration Of Electrons In A Three-Dimensional Nonlinear Laser Wakefield, Serguei Y. Kalmykov, Leonid M. Gorbunov, Patrick Mora, Gennady Shvets

Serge Youri Kalmykov

It is demonstrated that the accelerating and focusing phases of the nonlinear three-dimensional axisymmetric laser wake can almost entirely overlap starting from a certain distance behind the laser pulse in homogeneous plasma. Such field structure results from the curvature of phase fronts due to the radially inhomogeneous relativistic shift of plasma frequency. Consequently, the number of trapped low-energy electrons can be much greater than that predicted by the linear wake theory. This effect is favorable for quasi-monoenergetic acceleration of a considerable charge (several hundreds of pC) to about 1 GeV per electron in the plasma wakefield driven by an ultrashort …

Snapshots Of Laser Wakefields, Nicholas H. Matlis, Steven A. Reed, Stepan S. Bulanov, Vladimir Chvykov, Galina Kalintchenko, Takeshi Matsuoka, Pascal Rousseau, Victor Yanovsky, Anatoly Maksimchuk, Serguei Y. Kalmykov, Gennady Shvets, Michael C. Downer

Serge Youri Kalmykov

Tabletop plasma accelerators can now produce GeV-range electron beams and femtosecond X-ray pulses, providing compact radiation sources for medicine, nuclear engineering, materials science and high-energy physics. In these accelerators, electrons surf on electric fields exceeding 100 GeV m^{−1}, which is more than 1,000 times stronger than achievable in conventional accelerators. These fields are generated within plasma structures (such as Langmuir waves or electron density ‘bubbles’) propagating near light speed behind laser or charged-particle driving pulses. Here, we demonstrate single-shot visualization of laser-wakefield accelerator structures for the first time. Our ‘snapshots’ capture the evolution of multiple wake periods, detect structure variations …

Odd-Even Effects In Bent-Core Compounds Containing Terminal N-Alkyl Carboxylate Groups, S. Umadevi, Antal Jakli, B. Sadashiva

Antal Jakli

A homologous series of eleven five-ring symmetrical bent-core compounds containing terminal n-alkyl carboxylate groups were synthesized, characterized and their dielectric and electro-optical properties have been investigated. The lower homologues (n = 6-11) of the series show B-2 structures with an interesting odd-even effect concerning their local director tilt and polar arrangements. This odd-even effect probably is due to steric (entropic) reasons, which are not suppressed by the relatively low polar interaction. Three of the middle homologues display a B-7' phase, which is bistable and shows linear electro-optical switching with a transition to the chiral antiferroelectric smectic phase at a lower …

Phase Field Theory Of Surface- And Size-Induced Microstructures, Valery I. Levitas, D.W. Lee, D. L. Preston

Valery I. Levitas

New surface- and size-induced microstructures are found as analytic solutions to a phase field theory of first-order phase transformations. A recently developed exact stability criterion, based on most destabilizing fluctuations, is used to analyze the stability and physical interpretation of each microstructure. Conditions for barrierless surface nucleation, i.e. relationship between surface energy, driving force for the transformation and sample size, are found. If they are met, some of these microstructures are destroyed resulting in the barrierless transformation to alternative phases.

Sum Frequency Generation Vibrational Spectroscopic And High-Pressure Scanning Tunneling Microscopic Studies Of Benzene Hydrogenation On Pt(111), Kaitlin M. Bratlie, Max O. Montano, Lucio D. Flores, Matti Paajanen, Gabor A. Somorjai

Kaitlin M. Bratlie

Sum frequency generation (SFG) vibrational spectroscopy and high-pressure scanning tunneling microscopy (HP-STM) have been used in combination for the first time to study a catalytic reaction. These techniques have been able to identify surface intermediates in situ during benzene hydrogenation on a Pt(111) single-crystal surface at Torr pressures.

Simulation Of Ultrashort Laser Pulses In Nonlinear Media, Jeremy Gulley

Jeremy R. Gulley

No abstract is currently available.

Comment On “Structural Stability Of Complex Hydrides: Libh4 Revisited”, Duane D. Johnson, Nikolai A. Zarkevich

Duane D. Johnson

A Comment on the Letter by Zbigniew Łodziana and Tejs Vegge, Phys. Rev. Lett. 93, 145501 (2004).

Comparison Of Tropospheric Ozone Columns Calculated From Mls, Omi, And Ozonesonde Data, Gary A. Morris, Bojan Bojkov, Mark R. Schoeberl, Amy Wozniak, Jerry Ziemke, Sushil Chandra, Jack Fishman, Ivanka Stajner

Gary A. Morris

This poster shows a comparison of three derived tropospheric ozone residual (TOR) products with integrated tropospheric ozone columns from ozonesonde profile: (1) the method of Ziemke et al. (2006), (2) a modified version of Fishman et al. (2003), and (3) a trajectory mapping approach. In each case, MLS ozone profiles are integrated to the tropopause and subtracted from OMI (TOMS retrieval) total column ozone. The effectiveness of each of these techniques is examined as a function of latitude, time, and geographic region. In general, we find good agreement between the derived products and the ozonesondes, with the Fishman et al. …

Posterminaries: The Scales Of Judgement, Alexander H. King

Alexander H. King

Materials scientists are generally well-versed in physics, and physics, above all, is a science of measurements. The first instinct of a physicist is to parse a problem in terms of its measurables in the dimensions of mass, length, and time, and it is the shifting of attention down the scale of length that particularly characterizes our present times as the Nano Age.

Real-Time Measurements On Electron Plasma Response In Dielectrics Under Influence Of Ultrafast Laser Radiation, Sebastian Winkler, Jeremy Gulley, Igor Burakov, Razvan Stoian, Nadezhda Bulgakova, Anton Husakou, Alexandre Mermillod-Blondin, Arkadi Rosenfeld, David Ashkenasi, Ingolf Hertel, William Dennis

Jeremy R. Gulley

No abstract is currently available.

Nanostructured Bi2se3 Films And Their Thermoelectric Transport Properties., Xiaofeng Qiu, Leah Austin, Philip Muscarella, Jeffrey Dyck, Clemens Burda

Jeffrey Dyck

No abstract provided.

The Nuclear Central Force In The Chiral Limit, John Donoghue

John Donoghue

Chiral perturbation theory supplemented by the Omnes function is employed to study the strength of the isoscalar central nuclear interaction, G_S, in the chiral limit vs the physical case. A very large modification is seen, i.e. eta_s = G_S ~ chiral /G_S ~ physical = 1.37 +- 0.10 . This large effect is seen to arise dominantly at low energy from the extra contributions made by massless pions at energies near the physical threshold where the physical spectral function must vanish kinematically. The slope away from the chiral limit, d_S, is also calculated and is correspondingly large. I also explain …

Precision And Accuracy Of Thermal Calibration Of Atomic Force Microscopy Cantilevers, Nancy Burnham, G Matei, E Thoreson, J Pratt, D Newell

Nancy A. Burnham

To have confidence in force measurements made with atomic force microscopes(AFMs), the spring constant of the AFM cantilevers should be known with good precision and accuracy, a topic not yet thoroughly treated in the literature. In this study, we compared the stiffnesses of uncoated tipless uniform rectangular silicon cantilevers among thermal, loading, and geometric calibration methods; loading was done against an artifact from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The artifact was calibrated at NIST using forces that were traceable to the International System of units. The precision and accuracy of the thermal method were found to be …

Selective Light-Induced Desorption: The Mechanism Of Photoalignment Of Liquid Crystals At Adsorbing Solid Surfaces, V. G. Nazarenko, O. P. Boiko, A. B. Nych, Yu. A. Nastishin, V. M. Pergamenshchik, Philip J. Bos

Philip J. Bos

We demonstrate experimentally that bare solid surfaces with adsorbed organic molecules can orient liquid crystals after UV light irradiation. The detailed structure and behavior of the surface-adsorbed molecules are not important to the effect: just their UV light absorption should depend on their orientation. The only requirement to the solid substrates is their transparency to the UV light. The universal reason for the photoinduced anisotropy in such systems is that photons clean from the surface those molecules that absorb them most intensively. This is a kind of light rubbing resulting in the anisotropic ablation of the adsorbed material.

Undulated Cylinders Of Charged Diblock Copolymers, Gregory M. Grason, Christian Santangelo

Christian Santangelo

We study the cylinder to sphere morphological transition of diblock copolymers in aqueous solution with a hydrophobic block and a charged block. We find a metastable undulated cylinder configuration for a range of charge and salt concentrations which, nevertheless, occurs above the threshold where spheres are thermodynamically favorable. By modeling the shape of the cylinder ends, we find that the free-energy barrier for the transition from cylinders to spheres is quite large and that this barrier falls significantly in the limit of high polymer charge and low solution salinity. This suggests that observed undulated cylinder phases are kinetically trapped structures.

Electrically Tunable Lens Based On A Dual-Frequency Nematic Liquid Crystal, Oleg Pishnyak, Susumu Sato, Oleg Lavrentovich

Oleg Lavrentovich

We report on an electrically controlled liquid-crystal-based variable optical lens filled with a dual-frequency nematic material. The lens design employs a hole-patterned electrode structure in a flat nematic cell. In order to decrease the lens switching time we maximize the dielectric torque by using a dual-frequency nematic material that is aligned at an angle approximately 45 degrees with respect to the bounding plates by obliquely deposited SiOx, and by using an overdrive scheme of electrical switching. Depending on the frequency of the applied field, the director realigns either toward the homeotropic state (perpendicular to the substrates) or toward the planar …

Ginzburg-Landau Theory Of Microstructures: Stability, Transient Dynamics, And Functionally Graded Nanophases, Valery I. Levitas, D. L. Preston, Dong Wook Lee

Valery I. Levitas

The stability, transient dynamics, and physical interpretation of microstructures obtained from a Ginzburg-Landau theory of first-order phase transformations are studied. The Jacobi condition for stability fails numerically, thus an alternative exact stability criterion, based on critical (most destabilizing) fluctuations, is developed. The degree-of-stability parameter is introduced to quantify the physical stability of long-lived unstable microstructures. For nanofilms, the existence of functionally graded nanophases is demonstrated. Numerical simulations indicate that graded nanophases can be produced by dissolving material from both surfaces of a nanofilm. Stability under finite fluctuations and post-bifurcation microstructure evolution are investigated numerically.

Substantial Pressure Effect On The Resistivity And Curie Temperature For The Diluted Magnetic Semiconductor Sb2–X Vx Te3., Jeffrey Dyck, K. Ahilan, M. Aronson, C. Uher, P. Lošťák

Jeffrey Dyck

The influence of hydrostatic pressure on the electrical resistivity ρ and ferromagnetic transition temperature T C of bulk, single crystal Sb1–x Vx Te3 with x = 0.03 is presented. Pressure strongly suppresses ρ at all temperatures, with an overall decrease of about 35% at 1.6 GPa. The peak in ρ , a signature of T C, moves to lower temperature with increasing pressure. An overall suppression of T C near 40% at 1.6 GPa is observed. The results are discussed within the context of a carrier-mediated ferromagnetic exchange interaction.

Fluorine Containing Nonsymmetrical Five-Ring Achiral Banana-Shaped Compounds With Columnar And Synclinic Antiferroelectric Layered Phases, Channabasaveshwar Yelamaggad, Indudhara Shashikala, Uma Hiremath, Guangxun Liao, Antal Jakli, Doddamane Shankar Rao, Subbarao Prasada, Quan Li

Antal Jakli

The phase transitional behavior of two homologous series of five-ring banana-shaped compounds comprising fluorine substituents synthesized through covalent linking of two chemically dissimilar rod-like anisometric cores (arms) to central 1,3-phenylene is reported. The novelty of these molecules originates from the fact that the molecules are highly nonsymmetrical. One of the arms, which is either salicylaldimine or Schiff base core, possesses two vicinal fluorine atoms at the terminal ring having a n-decyloxy tail; while the n-alkyl tail attached to the other arm was varied to realize a homologous series of compounds. The mesophases have been characterized by several complementary studies. The …

Quark And Lepton Masses And Mixing In The Landscape, John Donoghue, Koushik Dutta, Andreas Ross

John Donoghue

Even if quark and lepton masses are not uniquely predicted by the fundamental theory, as may be the case in the string theory landscape, nevertheless their pattern may reveal features of the underlying theory. We use statistical techniques to show that the observed masses appear to be representative of a scale invariant distribution, rho(m) ~ 1/m. If we extend this distribution to include all the Yukawa couplings, we show that the resulting CKM matrix elements typically show a hierarchical pattern similar to observations. The Jarlskog invariant measuring the amount of CP violation is also well reproduced in magnitude. We also …

Estimating The Dynamics Of Kernel-Based Evolving Networks, Gabor Csardi, Katherine J. Strandburg, Laszlo Zalanyi, Jan Tobochnik, Peter Erdi

Katherine J. Strandburg

In this paper we present the application of a novel methodology to scientific citation and collaboration networks. This methodology is designed for understanding the governing dynamics of evolving networks and relies on an attachment kernel, a scalar function of node properties, which stochastically drives the addition and deletion of vertices and edges. We illustrate how the kernel function of a given network can be extracted from the history of the network and discuss other possible applications.

Smectic Liquid Crystals: Materials With One-Dimensional, Periodic Order, Randall D. Kamien, Christian Santangelo

Christian Santangelo

Smectic liquid crystals are materials formed by stacking deformable, fluid layers. Although smectics prefer to have flat, uniformly-spaced layers, boundary conditions can impose curvature on the layers. Since the layer spacing and curvature are intertwined, the problem of finding minimal configurations for the layers becomes nontrivial. We discuss various topological and geometrical aspects of these materials and present recent progress on finding some exact layer configurations. We also exhibit connections to the study of certain embedded minimal surfaces and briefly summarize some important open problems.

Strongly Anisotropic Roughness In Surfaces Driven By An Oblique Particle Flux, Beate Schmittmann, Gunner Pruessner, Hans-Karl Janssen

Beate Schmittmann

Using field theoretic renormalization, an MBE-type growth process with an obliquely incident influx of atoms is examined. The projection of the beam on the substrate plane selects a “parallel” direction, with rotational invariance restricted to the transverse directions. Depending on the behavior of an effective anisotropic surface tension, a line of second-order transitions is identified, as well as a line of potentially first-order transitions, joined by a multicritical point. Near the second-order transitions and the multicritical point, the surface roughness is strongly anisotropic. Four different roughness exponents are introduced and computed, describing the surface in different directions, in real or …