Statistical, Nonlinear, and Soft Matter Physics Commons^™

Emergent Critical Properties In Liquid-Gas Transition And Single Dislocations In Solid He4, Max Yarmolinsky

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

My research focuses on the analytical and numerical study of seemingly completely different systems - the classical critical point of the liquid-gas transition and a quantum topological defect (dislocation) in solid Helium-4. The unifying theme, though, is Emergence - the appearance of unexpected qualities at large distance and time scales in these systems. Our results resolve the long standing controversy about the nature of the liquid-gas criticality by showing with high confidence that it is the same as that of Ising ferromagnet. In solid ⁴He, a quantum superclimbing dislocation, which is expected to be violating space-time symmetry according to …

Proximitized Materials, Igor Žutić, Alex Matos-Abiague, Benedikt Scharf, Hanan Dery, Kirill Belashchenko

Kirill Belashchenko Publications

Advances in scaling down heterostructures and having an improved interface quality together with atomically thin two-dimensional materials suggest a novel approach to systematically design materials. A given material can be transformed through proximity effects whereby it acquires properties of its neighbors, for example, becoming superconducting, magnetic, topologically nontrivial, or with an enhanced spin–orbit coupling. Such proximity effects not only complement the conventional methods of designing materials by doping or functionalization but also can overcome their various limitations. In proximitized materials, it is possible to realize properties that are not present in any constituent region of the considered heterostructure. While the …

Repairable Moment-Resisting Steel Buildings, Heath William Pederson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Current seismic design codes ensure life safety for buildings, but structural members may significantly yield or even fail under strong earthquakes. A new design approach is to implement connections that localize the yielding and failure to fuses. A more sophisticated approach is to be able to replace the fuses after the event. The present study was carried out to develop repairable moment-resisting (MR) connections for steel buildings and to investigate their seismic performance through nonlinear finite element analyses (FEA). Two details were proposed using buckling restrained fuses (BRFs) and buckling restrained reinforcement (BRR). Test data was collected from the literature …

Giardia Lamblia Growth In Viscoelastic Fluids, Kelly Watanabe

CMC Senior Theses

Giardia lamblia is a single-celled protozoan parasite that when ingested, causes diarrheal disease and infects 33% of people in developing countries. Previous studies observe Giardia in water-like fluids, but Giardia's infectious environment consists of viscoelastic mucus in the small intestine. Therefore, Giardia was cultured in viscoelastic fluids, and its population growth was observed in vitro. To create shear-thinning viscoelastic fluids, 0.2% and 0.4% long-chain polyacrylamide (LCPAM) was added to cell culture media. Giardia was cultured in control media, 0.2% LCPAM, and 0.4% LCPAM, and population growth was quantitatively determined over time. Increasing LCPAM concentration resulted in a solution with …

Practical Chaos: Using Dynamical Systems To Encrypt Audio And Visual Data, Julia Ruiter

Scripps Senior Theses

Although dynamical systems have a multitude of classical uses in physics and applied mathematics, new research in theoretical computer science shows that dynamical systems can also be used as a highly secure method of encrypting data. Properties of Lorenz and similar systems of equations yield chaotic outputs that are good at masking the underlying data both physically and mathematically. This paper aims to show how Lorenz systems may be used to encrypt text and image data, as well as provide a framework for how physical mechanisms may be built using these properties to transmit encrypted wave signals.

The Solvation Energy Of Ions In A Stockmayer Fluid, Cameron John Shock

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

The solvation of ions in polar solvents has been a long studied system since the early twentieth century. A common technique to calculate the energy associated with ion solvation is the Born Solvation energy equation. This equation assumes an ion is placed in an incompressible, homogeneous dielectric, which is not necessarily representative of a real system. In this work the Stockmayer Fluid Model is used in a molecular dynamics simulation through the software LAMMPS to check the quantitative correctness of the Born equation. It is also shown how solvation energies of ions placed in polymerized and non-polymerized solvents differ. It …

Universality Class Of Explosive Percolation In Barabási-Albert Networks, Habib E. Islam, M. K. Hassan

Physics Faculty Publications

In this work, we study explosive percolation (EP) in Barabási-Albert (BA) network, in which nodes are born with degree k = m, for both product rule (PR) and sum rule (SR) of the Achlioptas process. For m = 1 we find that the critical point t_c = 1 which is the maximum possible value of the relative link density t; Hence we cannot have access to the other phase like percolation in one dimension. However, for m > 1 we find that t_c decreases with increasing m and the critical exponents ν, α, β and γ …

Adhesion At Solid/Liquid Interfaces, Neda Ojaghlou

Theses and Dissertations

The adhesion at solid/liquid interface plays a fundamental role in diverse fields and helps explain the structure and physical properties of interfaces, at the atomic scale, for example in catalysis, crystal growth, lubrication, electrochemistry, colloidal system, and in many biological reactions. Unraveling the atomic structure at the solid/liquid interface is, therefore, one of the major challenges facing the surface science today to understand the physical processes in the phenomena such as surface coating, self-cleaning, and oil recovery applications. In this thesis, a variety of theory/computational methods in statistical physics and statistical mechanics are used to improve understanding of water adhesion …

Fwer Controlling Procedures In Simultaneous And Selective Inference, Li Yu

Dissertations

With increasing complexity of research objectives in clinical trials, a variety of relatively complex and less intuitive multiple testing procedures (MTPs) have been developed and applied in clinical data analysis. In order to make testing strategies more explicit and intuitive to communicate with non-statisticians, several flexible and powerful graphical approaches have recently been introduced in the literature for developing and visualizing newer MTPs. Nevertheless, some theoretical as well as methodological issues still remain to be fully addressed. This dissertation addresses several important issues arising in graphical approaches and related selective inference problems. It consists of three parts.

In the first …

Application Of Graphical Models In Protein-Protein Interactions And Dynamics, Amir Vajdi Hoojghan

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

Every organism contains a few hundred to thousands of proteins. A protein is made of a sequence of molecular building blocks named amino acids. Amino acids will be referred to as residues. Every protein performs one or more functions in the cell. In order for a protein to do its job, it requires to bind properly to other partner proteins. Many genetic diseases such as cancer are caused by mutations (changes) of specific residues which cause disturbances in the functions of those proteins.

The problem of prediction of protein binding site is a crucial topic in computational biology. A protein …

Fatigue Performance And Shear Demand Distributions Of Clustered Shear Connectors In Composite Bridge Girders, Brian David Hillhouse

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The current American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) Bridge Specifications assumes uniform shear flow demands at the steel-concrete interface of composite bridge girders. As stud pitch increases to beyond 24 in or as studs become clustered to account for pre-cast concrete decks, this assumed shear demand distribution may be unrepresentative. Understanding shear transfer and resulting demands on headed studs in composite beams are important for ensuring adequate composite design. This study investigates stud demands in composite bridge girders using large-scale fatigue testing and direct pressure measurements for stud force calculations. In this study, two large-scale composite beam …

Conforming Nanoparticle Sheets To Surfaces With Gaussian Curvature, Noah P. Mitchell, Remington L. Carey, Jelani Hannah, Yifan Wang, Sean P. Mcbride, Xiao-Min Lin, Heinrich M. Jaeger

Physics Faculty Research

Nanoparticle monolayer sheets are ultrathin inorganic-organic hybrid materials that combine highly controllable optical and electrical properties with mechanical exibility and remarkable strength. Like other thin sheets, their low bending rigidity allows them to easily roll into or conform to cylindrical geometries. Nanoparticle monolayers not only can bend, but also cope with strain through local particle rearrangement and plastic deformation. This means that, unlike thin sheets such as paper or graphene, nanoparticle sheets can much more easily conform to surfaces with com- plex topography characterized by non-zero Gaussian curvature, like spherical caps or saddles. Here, we investigate the limits of nanoparticle …

Magnetoelectric Memory Cells With Domain-Wall-Mediated Switching, Kirill Belashchenko, Oleg Tchernyshyov, Alexey Kovalev, Dmitri Nikonov

Kirill Belashchenko Publications

A magnetoelectric memory cell with domain - wall - mediated switching is implemented using a split gate architecture . The split gate architecture allows a domain wall to be trapped within a magnetoelectric antiferromagnetic ( MEAF ) active layer . An extension of this architecture applies to multiple gate linear arrays that can offer advantages in memory density , programmability , and logic functionality . Applying a small anisotropic in - plane shear strain to the MEAF can block domain wall precession to improve reliability and speed of switching

Reversible Motion In A Contact Line, Audrey Profeta, Esmeralda Orozco, Juan A. Ortiz Salazar, Dani Medina, Nathan C. Keim

STAR Program Research Presentations

When a body of liquid sits on a surface, an irregular border between the wet and dry regions of the surface exists, called the contact line. Driving this contact line back and forth repeatedly can change its shape.We use a syringe pump to cyclically infuse and withdraw a predetermined volume of water, and take photos of the contact line after each cycle. Comparing these images to each other determines if the contact line is returning to the same shape. We find that below a critical value of infused volume, after many cycles the contact line reaches a steady state in …

A Network Theoretical Approach To Real-World Problems: Application Of The K-Core Algorithm To Various Systems, Kate Burleson-Lesser

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The study of complex networks is, at its core, an exploration of the mechanisms that control the world in which we live at every scale, from particles no bigger than a grain of sand and amino acids that comprise proteins, to social networks, ecosystems, and even countries. Indeed, we find that, regardless of the physical size of the network's components, we may apply principles of complex network theory, thermodynamics, and statistical mechanics to not only better understand these specific networks, but to formulate theories which may be applied to problems on a more general level. This thesis explores several networks …

Interdisciplinary Studies Of Complex Network And Machine Learning And Its Applications, Shaojun Luo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this dissertation, we introduce the concept of network-based statistical inference methods of two types: network structure inference and variable inference. For network structure inference, we introduce correlation matrix, graphical Lasso, network clustering and identify the influencer in the network. For variable inference, we also introduce from Bayesian network, to Random Markov Field and Ising Model, Boltzmann and Restricted Boltzmann machine and the algorithm of Belief Propagation. Last but not the least, we introduce the most widely used neural network family and its two main types: Convolutional Neural Network and Recurrent Neural Network.

In Chapter 3 we provide an example …

Dynamics Of A Vertically Vibrated Doubly Tethered Granular Chain, Lorenzo P. Joquiño

The International Student Science Fair 2018

Polymer physics studies the structure and dynamics of polymers and polymeric systems. Results from polymer physics have been used in various fields such as biology, polymer processing, and electronics. Mechanical analogs like granular chain have been utilized in studying polymer dynamics as they are able to demonstrate coarsed-grained behavior of polymer motion while still being accurate about a polymer's properties at a larger length scale. In this study, vibrated granular chain of beads was used as an analog system to represent the polymer motion in a solution. The granular chain was confined to a circular container. Its both ends were …

Numerical And Analytical Bounds On Threshold Error Rates For Hypergraph-Product Codes, Alexey Kovalev, Sanjay Prabhakar, Ilya Dumer, Leonid P. Pryadko

Department of Physics and Astronomy: Faculty Publications

We study analytically and numerically decoding properties of finite-rate hypergraph-product quantum low density parity-check codes obtained from random (3,4)-regular Gallager codes, with a simple model of independent X and Z errors. Several nontrivial lower and upper bounds for the decodable region are constructed analytically by analyzing the properties of the homological difference, equal minus the logarithm of the maximum-likelihood decoding probability for a given syndrome. Numerical results include an upper bound for the decodable region from specific heat calculations in associated Ising models and a minimum-weight decoding threshold of approximately 7%.

Simulating The Electrical Properties Of Random Carbon Nanotube Networks Using A Simple Model Based On Percolation Theory, Roberto Abril Valenzuela

Physics

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have been subject to extensive research towards their possible applications in the world of nanoelectronics. The interest in carbon nanotubes originates from their unique variety of properties useful in nanoelectronic devices. One key feature of carbon nanotubes is that the chiral angle at which they are rolled determines whether the tube is metallic or semiconducting. Of main interest to this project are devices containing a thin film of randomly arranged carbon nanotubes, known as carbon nanotube networks. The presence of semiconducting tubes in a CNT network can lead to a switching effect when the film is electro-statically …

Pseudo Power Law Statistics In A Jammed, Amorphous Solid, Jacob Brian Hass

Physics

Simulations have shown that in many solid materials, rearrangements within the solid obey power-law statistics. A connection has been proposed between these statistics and the ability of a system to reach a limit cycle under cyclic driving. We study experimentally a 2D jammed solid that reaches such a limit cycle. Our solid consists of microscopic plastic beads adsorbed at an oil-water interface and cyclically sheared by a magnetically driven needle. We track each particles trajectory in the solid to identify rearrangements. By associating particles both spatially and temporally, we can measure the extent of each rearrangement. We study specifically the …