Morphology transition and slow dynamics in the collapse of amphiphilic monolayers at the air-water interface

The morphology on collapsed monolayers at the air-water interface has been studied using phase contrast microscopy. It is found that the transition from randomly distributed to quasi-one dimensional crack pattern takes place, depending on the pH value of the subphase and the presence of specific divalent metal ions. In these macroscopic patterns, the former exhibits a surface roughening due to a monolayer buckling while the latter becomes more smooth and uniform. The occurrence of the former is instantaneous and the latter follows a slow dynamics, i.e., the crack propagation in monolayers occurs with a delay for crack nucleation. Thus the change of pattern indicates the existence of a dynamic transition. The transition is discussed with the scenario of a crack instability in brittle materials. The changes of viscous nature and of ion binding, and the compression direction probably operate for the observed behavior effectively. Received 11 January 1999     

An experimental test of the critical behaviour of fracture precursors

The statistical properties and the localization of fracture precursors on heteregeneous materials is studied by recording their acoustic emission as a function of the applied load. It's found that the microcrack cluster together as the load increases and the instantaneous acoustic energy has an invariant power law distribution. The integrated acoustic energy presents a critical divergency close to the failure load for the sample. These result support the idea that fracture can be viewed as a critical phenomenon. Finally a measure of the concentration of microcraks, which allows us to predict the failure load, is introduced. These properties are studied also when a periodic load is applied to the sample. It's found that the Kaiser effect is not strictly satisfied in heteregeneous materials. Received: 23 January 1998 / Revised: 20 April 1998 / Accepted: 17 June 1998     

Critical dynamics in clusters of noble gas atoms

The multi-fragmentation dynamics of noble gas atomic clusters is considered for different statistically distributed deposited energies. The conditions giving rise to the development of criticality in the cluster evolution are revealed from an analysis of the signals in the fragment mass distribution. The time dependence of the observables related to critical exponents is studied. It is demonstrated that in a certain regime the cluster exhibits a behavior which can be identified as the precursor of a second-order liquid-gas phase transition. Received 1st September 1998 and Received in final form 14 January 1999     

Aging kinetics of porous media due to freezing-thawing cycles

The two-dimensional Ausloos et al. model of fluid invasion, freezing and thawing in a porous medium is elaborated upon and investigated in order to take into account the pore volume redistribution and conservation during freezing. The results are qualitatively different from previous work, since the damaged pore sizes are found to be much less than the possible maximum value and is reached after a large number of invasion-freezing-thawing cycles, e.g. the material is “slowly damaged”. The pore size distribution is thus found in better agreement with expected practical findings. The successive invasion percolation clusters are still found to be self-avoiding with aging. The cluster size decreases with a power law as a function of invasion-frost-thaw iterations. The aging kinetics is also discussed through the normalized totally invaded pore volume. Received 24 September 1999 and Received in final form 5 January 2000     

Perturbative renormalization of multi-channel Kondo-type models

The poor man's scaling is extended to higher order by the use of the open-shell Rayleigh-Schr?dinger perturbation theory. A generalized Kondo-type model with the SU(n)SU(m) symmetry is proposed and renormalized to the third order. It is shown that the model has both local Fermi-liquid and non-Fermi-liquid fixed points, and that the latter becomes unstable in the special case of n=m=2. Possible relevance of the model to the newly found phase IV in Ce_xLa_1-xB₆ is discussed. Received: 24 February 1998 / Accepted: 17 April 1998     

New aspects of critical sound attenuation in magnetic systems with spin-lattice relaxation

A general theory of critical sound propagation, including phonon-spin-energy coupling, is studied in anisotropic magnets above their transition temperature. The Kawasaki weak singularity in the ultrasonic attenuation is found as a nonasymptotic effect. A new nonasymptotic regime similar to the one in the binary mixture is also determined. The role of coupling constants and the bare relaxation times in establishing the dominance region of particular terms, is discussed. Received: 9 December 1997 / Accepted: 24 February 1998     

Scaling with respect to disorder in time-to-failure

We revisit a simple dynamical model of rupture in random media with long-range elasticity to test whether rupture can be seen as a first-order or a critical transition. We find a clear scaling of the macroscopic modulus as a function of time-to-rupture and of the amplitude of the disorder, which allows us to collapse neatly the numerical simulations over more than five decades in time and more than one decade in disorder amplitude onto a single master curve. We thus conclude that, at least in this model, dynamical rupture in systems with long-range elasticity is a genuine critical phenomenon occurring as soon as the disorder is non-vanishing. Received: 11 July 1997 / Revised: 6 November 1997 / Accepted: 10 November 1997     

Nonmonotonic external field dependence of the magnetization in a finite Ising model: Theory and MC simulation

Using field theory and Monte Carlo (MC) simulation we investigate the finite-size effects of the magnetization M for the three-dimensional Ising model in a finite cubic geometry with periodic boundary conditions. The field theory with infinite cutoff gives a scaling form of the equation of state where is the reduced temperature, h is the external field and L is the size of system. Below and at the theory predicts a nonmonotonic dependence of f(x,y) with respect to at fixed and a crossover from nonmonotonic to monotonic behaviour when y is further increased. These results are confirmed by MC simulation. The scaling function f(x,y) obtained from the field theory is in good quantitative agreement with the finite-size MC data. Good agreement is also found for the bulk value at . Received 20 July 1999 and Received in final form 11 November 1999     

Casimir amplitudes in a quantum spherical model with long-range interaction

A d-dimensional quantum model system confined to a general hypercubical geometry with linear spatial size L and “temporal size” 1/T ( T - temperature of the system) is considered in the spherical approximation under periodic boundary conditions. For a film geometry in different space dimensions , where is a parameter controlling the decay of the long-range interaction, the free energy and the Casimir amplitudes are given. We have proven that, if , the Casimir amplitude of the model, characterizing the leading temperature corrections to its ground state, is . The last implies that the universal constant of the model remains the same for both short, as well as long-range interactions, if one takes the normalization factor for the Gaussian model to be such that . This is a generalization to the case of long-range interaction of the well-known result due to Sachdev. That constant differs from the corresponding one characterizing the leading finite-size corrections at zero temperature which for is . Received 3 June 1999 and Received in final form 16 August 1999     

Violation of finite-size scaling in three dimensions

We reexamine the range of validity of finite-size scaling in the lattice model and the field theory below four dimensions. We show that general renormalization-group arguments based on the renormalizability of the theory do not rule out the possibility of a violation of finite-size scaling due to a finite lattice constant and a finite cutoff. For a confined geometry of linear size L with periodic boundary conditions we analyze the approach towards bulk critical behavior as at fixed for where is the bulk correlation length. We show that for this analysis ordinary renormalized perturbation theory is sufficient. On the basis of one-loop results and of exact results in the spherical limit we find that finite-size scaling is violated for both the lattice model and the field theory in the region . The non-scaling effects in the field theory and in the lattice model differ significantly from each other. Received 5 February 1999     

Intermittent granular flow and clogging with internal avalanches

The dynamics of intermittent granular flow through an orifice at the bottom of a granular bin and the associated clogging due to formation of arches blocking the outlet, is studied numerically in two dimensions. When the hole size is less than the grain diameter, only a single grain is removed from the system so that the system self-organizes to a steady state and the distribution of the grain displacements decays as power laws. On the other hand, when hole sizes are within few times of the grain diameter, the outflow distributions are also observed to follow a power law. Received 21 July 1999 and Received in final form 17 September 1999     

Finite-size effects in the self-organized critical forest-fire model

We study finite-size effects in the self-organized critical forest-fire model by numerically evaluating the tree density and the fire size distribution. The results show that this model does not display the finite-size scaling seen in conventional critical systems. Rather, the system is composed of relatively homogeneous patches of different tree densities, leading to two qualitatively different types of fires: those that span an entire patch and those that do not. As the system size becomes smaller, the system contains less patches, and finally becomes homogeneous, with large density fluctuations in time. Received 24 April 1999 and Received in final form 26 October 1999     

A DMRG study of the -symmetric Heisenberg chain

The spin one-half Heisenberg chain with U q [ SU (2)] symmetry is studied via density-matrix renormalization. Ground-state energy and q-symmetric correlation functions are calculated for the non-Hermitian case with integer r. This gives bulk and surface exponents for (para)fermionic correlations in the related Ising and Potts models. The case of real q corresponding to a diffusion problem is treated analytically. Received: 18 February 1998 / Accepted: 17 March 1998     

The sharp peak-flat trough pattern and critical speculation

We find empirically a characteristic sharp peak-flat trough pattern in a large set of commodity prices. We argue that the sharp peak structure reflects an endogenous inter-market organization, and that peaks may be seen as local “singularities” resulting from imitation and herding. These findings impose a novel stringent constraint on the construction of models. Received: 2 February 1998 / Revised and accepted: 22 February 1998     

Hot and cold denaturation of proteins: Critical aspects

We argue that the first order hot and cold folding transitions of proteins observed at physiological chemical conditions ends in a critical point at a given temperature and chemical potential of the surrounding water. We investigate the properties of this critical point using a single-pathway scenario for the folding process. This pathway assumption determines the form of a Hamiltonian whose critical properties define a new universality class. Received 9 November 1998     

Landau expansion for a metamagnetic model

We performed a detailed Landau expansion of the free energy for a metamagnetic model considering terms up to twelfth order. We obtained explicit expressions for the coefficients as a function of the temperature and the ratio between ferro- and antiferromagnetic interactions. We showed that a naive analysis based on the signs of these coefficients cannot always give us sufficient guarantee about the correctness of the phase diagram of the model. In these cases it is necessary to resort to the full expression of the free energy in order to characterize the nature of the phase transition. Received 28 November 2001     

Finite size scale invariance

We develop a new approach to scale symmetry, which takes into account the possible finite cut-offs of the fields or the parameters. This new symmetry, called finite size scale symmetry: i) includes the traditional self-similarity as a limiting case, when the cut-offs are set to infinity (infinite size-system); ii) is consistent with the traditional finite size scaling approach already used in critical phenomena; iii) enables the computation of some of the universal functions appearing in the finite size scaling formulation; iv) allows scale transformations leaving the cut-offs invariant, like in the traditional renormalization approach; v) can be formulated to allow for positive or negative fields and parameters; vi) leads to new predictions about the shape of some distributions in critical phenomena or turbulence which are in very good agreement with the experimental or numerical findings. Received 26 January 1999 and Received in final form 25 October 1999     

Hahn echo and criticality in spin-chain systems

We present a theory to establish a relation between Hahn spin-echo of a spin-1/2 particle and quantum phase transitions in many-body systems. The Hahn echo is calculated and discussed at zero as well as at finite temperatures. On the example of XY model, we show that the critical points of the chain are marked by the extremal values in the Hahn echo, and can influence the Hahn echo in finite temperatures. An explanation for the relation between the echo and criticality is also presented.     

Excitations in the dilute lattice model: , and mass spectra

On the basis of features observed in the exact perturbation approach solution for the eigenspectrum of the dilute A₃ model, we propose expressions for excitations in the dilute A₄ and A₆ models. Principally, we require that these expressions satisfy the appropriate inversion relations. We demonstrate that they give the expected E₇ and E₆ mass spectra, and universal amplitudes, and agree with numerical expressions for the eigenvalues. Received: 17 February 1998 / Accepted: 30 April 1998