Understanding the proton spin “puzzle” with a new “minimal” quark model

We investigate the spin structure of the nucleon in an extended Jaffe-Lipkin quark model. In addition to the conventional 3q structure, different (3q)(Q ) admixtures in the nucleon wave function are also taken into account. The contributions to the nucleon spin from various components of the nucleon wave function are discussed. The effect due to the Melosh-Wigner rotation is also studied. It is shown that the Jaffe-Lipkin term is only important when antiquarks are negatively polarized. We arrive at a new “minimal” quark model, which is close to the naive quark model, in order to understand the proton spin “puzzle”. Received: 4 November 2000 / Accepted: 23 October 2001     

Vertical water distribution during the drying of polymer films cast from aqueous emulsions

We present a systematic study of the vertical uniformity of water distribution during the drying of waterborne colloidal films, testing the predictions of a Peclet number Pe defined for this system. Pe indicates the relative contributions of water evaporation and Brownian diffusion in determining the concentration profile in the vertical direction (i.e. normal to the substrate). When Pe < 1, the water concentration in films cast from an alkyd emulsion is found via magnetic-resonance profiling to be uniform with depth, which is consistent with expectations. When Pe > 1, a gradient in the water concentration develops, with less water near the interface with air. The water profiles reveal that the alkyd particles do not coalesce immediately upon contact in close-packing. At later times, a concentrated surface layer develops, but particles are not coalesced in this layer to form a continuous “skin”, but rather the structure is likely to be that of a biliquid foam. Received 20 March 2002 and Received in final form 12 June 2002     

Medium effects in the production and π0γ decay of ω-mesons in pA collisions in the GeV region

The ω resonance production and its π⁰γ decay in pA reactions close to threshold is considered within the Intranuclear Cascade (INC) model. The π⁰γ invariant-mass distribution shows two components which correspond to the ω decay “inside” and “outside” the nucleus, respectively. The “inside” component is distorted by medium effects, which introduce a mass shift as well as collisional broadening for the ω-meson and its decaying pion. The relative contribution of the “inside” component is analyzed in detail for different kinematical conditions and nuclear targets. It is demonstrated that a measurement of the correlation in azimuthal angle between the π⁰ and γ momenta allows to separate events related to the “inside”ω decay from different sources of background when uncorrelated π⁰'s and γ's are produced. Received: 2 April 2001 / Accepted: 5 June 2001     

Interaction at the barrier in the systems 9, 10, 11Be + 209Bi: Well-established facts and open questions

The experimental data relative to the interaction for the systems ^{9, 10, 11}Be + ²⁰⁹Bi at the Coulomb barrier are critically discussed and compared also with present theories. The break-up (BU) of the two loosely bound projectiles, ^{9, 11}Be, seems to influence the fusion process by “hindering” the fusion cross-sections; but, contrary to expectations, the ¹¹Be halo structure has no influence, since no “enhancement” is evident from the existing data. Attempt to describe simultaneously all the ⁹Be + ²⁰⁹Bi system data: fusion, elastic scattering and BU, within a coupled-channel (CC) approach is only partly successful. It is important, from a theoretical viewpoint, to include in the CC formalism as well as possible the BU process both to continuum states as well as to unbound resonances. More accurate and well-focused experiments are also necessary to pin down this problem. Received: 1 May 2001 / Accepted: 4 December 2001     

Controlled structure and density of “living” polystyrene brushes on flat silica surfaces

Thin layers of polystyrene were grown from surface-grafted nitroxide initiators via controlled “living” free radical polymerization. The “reactive” Langmuir-Blodgett deposition method allowed an effective control of the initiator layer density leading to PS brushes with different and high grafting density and stretching. The influence of the grafting density on the layer structure was studied. Comparison with theoretical predictions for monodispersed brushes in bad solvent was discussed. The thickness was found to vary linearly with molecular weight and the density dependence was shown using wetting measurements. Special features of controlled radical nitroxide polymerization from a surface were discussed. A direct comparison of the molecular weight and polydispersity between surface and bulk polymers was made by de-grafting the brushes into a toluene/HF solution. Finally, some evidence of a “surface Fischer” effect was shown from re-initiated layers. Received 20 December 2001     

Gas-phase conformational and energetic properties of deprotonated dinucleotides

Ion mobility experiments and molecular modeling calculations were used to investigate the gas-phase conformations and folding energetics of 16 deprotonated dinucleotides. [M-H]^- ions were formed by MALDI and their collision cross-sections measured in helium using ion mobility based techniques. Cross-sections of theoretical structures, generated by molecular mechanics/dynamics calculations, were compared to the experimental values for conformational identification of the dinucleotides. Temperature dependent measurements and kinetic theory were also used to obtain energetic and dynamic data concerning the folding properties of the dinucleotides. Three distinct families of conformations, with significantly different collision cross-sections, were identified: a “stacked” family in which the two nucleobases stack; an “H-bonded” family in which the two nucleobases stay in the same plane and are hydrogen-bonded to each other; and an “open” family in which the two nucleobases are separated from each other. At temperatures ≥ 300 K these conformers rapidly interconvert in most systems, but they can be separated and individually observed in the lower temperature (80-200 K) experiments. The types and relative amounts of each conformer observed, and the temperature at which they can be separated, are base and sequence dependent. Theoretical modeling of the temperature-dependent data was used to determine isomerization barrier heights between the various conformers and yielded values between 0.8-12.9 kcal/mol, depending on the dinucleotide. Received 17 May 2002 Published online 13 September 2002     

Glassy effects in the swelling/collapse dynamics of homogeneous polymers

We investigate, using numerical simulations and analytical arguments, a simple one-dimensional model for the swelling or the collapse of a closed polymer chain of size N, representing the dynamical evolution of a polymer in a Θ-solvent that is rapidly changed into a good solvent (swelling) or a bad solvent (collapse). In the case of swelling, the density profile for intermediate times is parabolic and expands in space as t ^1/3, as predicted by a Flory-like continuum theory. The dynamics slows down after a time ∝N ² when the chain becomes stretched, and the polymer gets stuck in metastable “zig-zag” configurations, from which it escapes through thermal activation. The size of the polymer in the final stages is found to grow as . In the case of collapse, the chain very quickly (after a time of order unity) breaks up into clusters of monomers (“pearls”). The evolution of the chain then proceeds through a slow growth of the size of these metastable clusters, again evolving as the logarithm of time. We enumerate the total number of metastable states as a function of the extension of the chain, and deduce from this computation that the radius of the chain should decrease as 1/ln(ln t). We compute the total number of metastable states with a given value of the energy, and find that the complexity is non-zero for arbitrary low energies. We also obtain the distribution of cluster sizes, that we compare to simple “cut-in-two” coalescence models. Finally, we determine the aging properties of the dynamical structure. The subaging behaviour that we find is attributed to the tail of the distribution at small cluster sizes, corresponding to anomalously “fast” clusters (as compared to the average). We argue that this mechanism for subaging might hold in other slowly coarsening systems. Received 23 October 2000     

Polymers with self-avoiding interaction in random medium: a localization-delocalization transition

In this paper we investigate the problem of a long self-avoiding polymer chain immersed in a random medium. We find that in the limit of a very long chain and when the self-avoiding interaction is weak, the conformation of the chain consists of many “blobs” with connecting segments. The blobs are sections of the molecule curled up in regions of low potential in the case of a Gaussian distributed random potential or in regions of relatively low density of obstacles in the case of randomly distributed hard obstacles. We find that as the strength of the self-avoiding interaction is increased the chain undergoes a delocalization transition in the sense that the appropriate free energy per monomer is no longer negative. The chain is then no longer bound to a particular location in the medium but can easily wander around under the influence of a small perturbation. For a localized chain we estimate quantitatively the expected number of monomers in the “blobs” and in the connecting segments. Received 13 November 2002 Published online 14 March 2003     

The effect of α, β crystalline structure on the mechanical properties of polypropylene

In order to study the effect of the α,β crystalline structure of polypropylene (PP) on its mechanical properties, it is necessary to prepare samples with variable α/β-phase content but with constant crystallinity and constant spherulite size. With this objective, heat treatment was first defined to be applied to an isotactic PP containing a β nucleating agent in order to achieve these conditions. Then study of the effect of the β-phase content on the tensile properties and fracture behaviour has been done at room temperature. The mechanical properties at fracture were assessed by three-point bending tests and were analysed on the basis of the “Essential Work of Fracture” (EWF). The results show that the elongation at fracture under tensile stress and the “near” Plane-Strain Essential Work of Fracture, w _Ie, increase substantially with the β-phase content. Besides, Young's modulus and the yield stress in tensile tests decrease slowly with the β-phase content. Finally, these results are analysed taking account the differences in structure of the α and β spherulites. Received 18 September 2000 and Received in final form 19 December 2000     

Size and randomness effects on the temperature-dependent hopping conductivity of nanocrystalline chains

Developing a renormalization group approach, we study the hopping conductivity of nanocrystalline chains with different site energies. Exact calculations show that many parameters including nano-sizes, randomness of grain distributions, lattice distortions, site energies, transition rates, Fermi energy, and temperature influence the conductivity. Some new singular features, for example the frequency shift, the amplitude fluctuations, and the interchange between “peak” and “valley” behavior of the imaginary part of the conductivity can be caused by certain parameters mentioned above, while the interface distortions modulate mainly the overall amplitudes of the conductivity at the whole frequency region. Received 13 January 2000 and Received in final form 12 September 2000     

Gravitational decoherence of atomic interferometers

We study the decoherence of atomic interferometers due to the scattering of stochastic gravitational waves. We evaluate the “direct” gravitational effect registered by the phase of the matter waves as well as the “indirect” effect registered by the light waves used as beam-splitters and mirrors for the matter waves. Considering as an example the space project HYPER, we show that both effects are negligible for the presently studied interferometers. Received 15 February 2002 / Received in final form 12 April 2002 Published online 19 July 2002     

Spectroscopy on very neutron-rich nuclei beyond N = 20

Recent studies on nuclear structure by using radioactive isotope beams available at the RIKEN projectile-fragment separator (RIPS) are introduced. Special emphasis is given to two selected experiments from recent programs that highlight studies on the magicity loss observed for very neutron-rich nuclei beyond N = 20 in the “island-of-inversion” region; the particle stability of ³¹F, and the low-lying excited states of ³⁴Mg. Received: 1 May 2001 / Accepted: 4 December 2001     

Switching of banana liquid crystal mesophases under field

Taking advantage of the great number of bent-core or “banana" compounds synthesized and studied in the laboratory, we describe their behaviour under the application of an external electric field. If the field were a static one, we would work within the frame of an equilibrium phase diagram in a (field E, temperature T) space where some phases would be simple dielectrics and others ferroelectric ones with a macroscopic polarization, either spontaneous or induced by the field. In this paper, we deal with the basic responses of “banana” liquid crystals under the application of a low frequency (1 to 100 Hz) AC field. Firstly square-wave voltages allow us to locate the phase boundary between dielectric (at lower field) and ferroelectric phases (higher field) at a given temperature and field threshold. Then we apply slowly varying AC voltages with shapes like triangle or “triple-plateau” to check out the stability of the induced ferroelectric phase versus field removal. Three behaviours are encountered, the unstable one (short lifetime of the high-field ferroelectric phase) where the macroscopic polarization is destroyed and then rebuilt in the opposite direction during each half period and usually called “antiferroelectric”; the stable one (long lifetime) with a polarization that rotates at constant modulus which is labeled as “ferroelectric” and a new one where the macroscopic polarization is proportional to the applied fied, we named this behaviour as “superparaelectric”. Let us stress that these observations apply to the ferroelectric phases of the (E, T) phase diagram not to the zero field (0,T) phases observed in the usual phase characterization experiments except for an eventual spontaneous ferroelectric phase. Received 18 April 2002 and Received in final form 17 January 2003 Published online: 16 April 2003 RID="a" ID="a"e-mail: marcerou@crpp.u-bordeaux.fr RID="b" ID="b"URL: http://www.crpp-bordeaux.cnrs.fr     

Mixing and sorting of bidisperse two-dimensional bubbles

We have examined a number of candidates for the minimum-surface-energy arrangement of two-dimensional clusters composed of N bubbles of area 1 and N bubbles of area λ ( λ≤1). These include hexagonal bubbles sorted into two monodisperse honeycomb tilings, and various mixed periodic tilings with at most four bubbles per unit cell. We identify, as a function of λ, the minimal configuration for N → ∞. For finite N, the energy of the external (i.e., cluster-gas) boundary and that of the interface between honeycombs in “phase-separated” clusters have to be taken into account. We estimate these contributions and find the lowest total energy configuration for each pair (N,λ). As λ is varied, this alternates between a circular cluster of one of the mixed tilings, and “partial wetting” of the monodisperse honeycomb of bubble area 1 by the monodisperse honeycomb of bubble area λ. Received 1 August 2002 RID="a" ID="a"e-mail: paulo@ist.utl.pt     

Probability distribution of inherent states in models of granular media and glasses

The present paper develops a Statistical Mechanics approach to the inherent states of glassy systems and granular materials by following the original ideas proposed by Edwards for granular media. We consider three lattice models (a diluted spin glass, a system of hard spheres under gravity and a hard-spheres binary mixture under gravity) introduced to describe glassy and granular systems. They are evolved using a “tap dynamics” analogous to that of experiments on granular media. We show that the asymptotic states reached in such a dynamics are not dependent on the particular sample history and are characterized by a few thermodynamical parameters. We assume that under stationarity these systems are distributed in their inherent states satisfying the principle of maximum entropy. This leads to a generalized Gibbs distribution characterized by new “thermodynamical” parameters, called “configurational temperatures” (related to Edwards compactivity for granular materials). Finally, we show by Monte Carlo calculations that the average of macroscopic quantities over the tap dynamics and over such distribution indeed coincide. In particular, in the diluted spin glass and in the system of hard spheres under gravity, the asymptotic states reached by the system are found to be described by a single “configurational temperature”. Whereas in the hard-spheres binary mixture under gravity the asymptotic states reached by the system are found to be described by two thermodynamic parameters, coinciding with the two configurational temperatures which characterize the distribution among the inherent states when the principle of maximum entropy is satisfied under the constraint that the energies of the two species are independently fixed. Received 19 March 2002 and Received in final form 14 June 2002     

Frequency dependence of the photonic noise spectrum in an absorbing or amplifying diffusive medium

A theory is presented for the frequency dependence of the power spectrum of photon current fluctuations originating from a disordered medium. Both the cases of an absorbing medium (“grey body”) and of an amplifying medium (“random laser”) are considered in a waveguide geometry. The semiclassical approach (based on a Boltzmann-Langevin equation) is shown to be in complete agreement with a fully quantum mechanical theory, provided that the effects of wave localization can be neglected. The width of the peak in the power spectrum around zero frequency is much smaller than the inverse coherence time, characteristic for black-body radiation. Simple expressions for the shape of this peak are obtained, in the absorbing case, for waveguide lengths large compared to the absorption length, and, in the amplifying case, close to the laser threshold. Received 8 August 2000     

Scattering properties of salt-free wormlike micellar solutions

Static and dynamic light scattering and conductivity experiments were carried out on salt-free aqueous micellar solutions of cetyltrimethylammonium n-hexane sulfonate (CTAC_6SO_3) and cetyltrimethylammonium n-heptane sulfonate (CTAC_7SO_3) as a function of surfactant concentration. This study confirms the analogy between the behavior in the semi-dilute regime of elongated micellar systems and “classical” polyelectrolyte solutions. Time-resolved scattering experiments performed after a variation of concentration from about twice the overlap volume fraction to less than half of it revealed the existence of a structural relaxation with a characteristic time of several hours. Received 21 December 1999     

A remark on the large difference between the glueball mass and T<Subscript>c</Subscript> in quenched QCD

The lattice QCD studies indicate that the critical temperature T _c ≃ 260-280 MeV of the deconfinement phase transition in quenched QCD is considerably smaller than the lowest-lying glueball mass m _G ≃ 1500-1700 MeV, i.e., T _c ≪ m _G. As a consequence of this large difference, the thermal excitation of the glueball in the confinement phase is strongly suppressed by the statistical factor e ^-mG/Tc ≃ 0.00207 even near T ≃ T _c. We consider its physical implication, and argue the abnormal feature of the deconfinement phase transition in quenched QCD from the statistical viewpoint. To appreciate this, we demonstrate a statistical argument of the QCD phase transition using the recent lattice QCD data. From the phenomenological relation between T _c and the glueball mass, the deconfinement transition is found to take place in quenched QCD before a reasonable amount of glueballs is thermally excited. In this way, quenched QCD reveals a question “what is the trigger of the deconfinement phase transition ?” Received: 18 November 2002 / Accepted: 4 February 2003 / Published online: 29 April 2003     

Modelling of magnetic effects in near-field optics

Green's dyadic technique represents a powerful tool for calculations in electrodynamics, especially in modelling optical properties of nanoscopic objects. The method does not only provide field distributions, but also maps of susceptibilities and densities of states. Whereas the formalism is well established for dielectrics and electric fields, I present here a straight forward extension to tensors of both electric and magnetic type as well as mixed ones and furthermore to the situation where objects with dielectric and magnetic permeabilities are present together. As examples, characteristic field patterns are compared for elementary dielectric and magnetic perturbations. Green's tensors calculated for a coral structure reveal that mixed susceptibilities can exhibit other symmetries than pure electric or magnetic ones. Maps of all tensor components can thus give essential clues to the interpretation of near-field images. Received 15 December 2002 Published online 20 June 2003 RID="a" ID="a"Files “maths.ps” and “tensors.ps” are only available in electronic form at http://www.edpsciences.org RID="b" ID="b"e-mail: Ursula.Schroeter@uni-konstanz.de