Electronic polarizabilities of ions in transition metal oxides

A method for evaluating the electronic polarizabilities from ionic radii in transition metal oxides has been suggested. The ionic radii used in the present calculations are those deduced from the electron density measurements. The calculated polarizabilities agree closely with the experimental values obtained from the electronic dielectric constant.     

Electronic polarizabilities of ions in transition metal oxides

A method for evaluating the electronic polarizabilities from ionic radii in transition metal oxides has been suggested. The ionic radii used in the present calculations are those deduced from the electron density measurements. The calculated polarizabilities agree closely with the experimental values obtained from the electronic dielectric constant.     

Calculations of dynamic multipolar polarizabilities of the Cd clock transition levels

The pursuit of a systematic frequency uncertainty beyond 10^-18 clock has triggered a multitude of investigations on the multipolar and higher-order lattice light shifts. The Cd atom has been proposed as a new candidate for the development of a lattice clock because of its smaller blackbody radiation shift at room temperature. Here, we apply an improved combined method of the Dirac-Fock plus core polarization and relativistic configuration interaction methods to calculate the dynamic multipolar polarizabilities of the Cd clock states. The effects of the high-order core-polarization potentials on the energies, reduced matrix elements, and multipolar polarizabilities have been evaluated systematically. The detailed comparison with available literature demonstrates that taking into account of the high-order core-polarization potentials is a simple and effective approach to improve the results of atomic properties for heavy atoms.     

Structural phase transition in a large cluster

The effect of a phase transition between structures in a large cluster with a pair interatomic interaction on the thermodynamic parameters of the cluster is analyzed. The statistical parameters of a cluster consisting of 923 atoms are determined for an icosahedron and a face-centered cubic (fcc) structure. The specific heat and entropy of this cluster are calculated in the case when the transition between the icosahedron and fcc structures has the greatest effect on these parameters, so that at zero temperature this cluster has the structure of an icosahedron, and as the temperature increases to the melting point it assumes an fcc structure. Even with this, the contribution of the excitations of the atomic configurations to the thermodynamic parameters of a cluster is small compared with the excitation of vibrations in the cluster. The contribution of a configurational excitation in the thermodynamic parameters of a cluster becomes substantial for the liquid state of clusters.     

Negative muon hyperfine transition rate in aluminum

The residual polarization of theF ^– hyperfine state of ^–27Al has been investigated as a function of applied transverse magnetic field strength using standard TD- ^–SR techniques. TheF ^– precession frequency is –0.2623(5) [theoretical value: –0.2622] times that of the free muon in the same field. The observed muon decay electron asymmetry in theF ^– state decreases with increasing magnetic field strength, due to initial precession in the opposite direction of theF ⁺ state, which most muon initially populate, followed by a rapid transition to theF ^– state. A fit of the data to this model indicates a transition rateR=41(9)s^–1, in good agreement with theoretical predictions. This method can be used to determineR experimentally in other cases where it is too fast to be observed directly.     

Directional-to-random transition of cell cluster migration

Efficient cell migration is crucial for the functioning of biological processes, e.g., morphogenesis, wound healing, and cancer metastasis. In this study, we monitor the migratory behavior of the 3D fibroblast clusters using live cell microscopy,and find that crowded environment affects cell migration, i.e., crowding leads to directional migration at the cluster’s periphery. The number of cell layers being stacked during seeding determines the directional-to-random transition. Intriguingly,the m...     

Data cluster analysis: Abrupt transition

A cluster analysis optimization technique for partitioning data is applied to a class of distributions which are functions of a single variable. It is shown that under certain realizable conditions an infinitesimal change in the data distribution causes a large, abrupt change in the location of the optimal boundary separating two data clusters. This abrupt (phase) transition is illustrated with an example.     

Morphology transition in cluster growth at different temperature

The cluster growth on two-dimensional square lattice at different temperature is investigated by Monte Carlo simulation, considering the binding energy of substrate, the coupling energy of nearest neighbor particles and a strain field. The simulation shows that, for 400 K ≤ T ≤ 480 K, the average branch width of the fractal cluster is independent to the temperature T, which is almost equal to the diameter of single particle. For 500 K ≤ T ≤ 680 K, however, the branch width increases gradually to 4 with temperature. With T further increases, clusters consist of large number of particles disappear, due to the strong activity of each particle. The coordination number distributions of clusters at different temperature are also studied.     

Oscillations of the superconducting transition temperature in aluminum films

Oscillations of the superconducting transition temperature of thin Al-films have been observed during deposition of siliconmonoxide SiO. Friedel oscillations as well as the quantum size effect may account for the observations.     

Size-dependent reactivity of aluminum cluster cations toward water molecules

Using the autocorrelation of speckles in the deep Fresnel region is a novel approach to measuring surface parameters of a rough surface. In this letter, we construct a scanning system using a fibre-optic probe for detecting the speckle field with excellent resolution. By relating the autocorrelation function of the speckle intensity and the surface height with the Kirchhoff approximation theory, we realise the measurement of the surface parameters. Three parameters, i.e. the roughness w, the lateral correlation length ξ and roughness exponent α are extracted. We measure two sample surfaces in the experiment, and the results are consistent with those measured by atomic force microscope (AFM).     

Evidence of a fcc-hcp transition in aluminum at multimegabar pressure

The structure phase transition and the equation of state (EOS) of the third-period simple metal Al were investigated at pressure up to 333 GPa by powder x-ray diffraction experiments. The theoretically predicted fcc-hcp transition was observed at the reduced volume V/V0 of 0.509(1), corresponding to the pressure of 217+/-10 GPa. From the obtained pressure-volume data, the pressure derivative of the bulk modulus K0' for the EOS of fcc-Al was determined to be 4.83(3) by fitting to the Vinet formulation with a fixed value 72.7 GPa of K0 obtained from previous ultrasonic experiments.     

Molecular dynamics simulations of cluster distribution from femtosecond laser ablation in aluminum

Femtosecond laser ablation and plume evolution of aluminum is investigated for various inhomogeneous laser pulses. For the simulations of the atoms the molecular dynamics code IMD is used. The ablated gas-phase is scanned by a cluster algorithm (DBSCAN), from which we gain a cluster size distribution of the ablated material. Per single pulse, only a small portion of the total volume evaporates into the gas phase. Therefore??to have reasonable statistics??we have to deal with huge samples (6×10⁷?atoms). The ablation threshold is determined by comparing the depth of the holes to the applied fluence. Angular and velocity distributions of the plume are compared to experiments.     

Evidence for the transition from the diffusion-limit in aluminum particle combustion

This work presents experimental evidence that the transition from gas-phase diffusion-limited combustion for aluminum particles begins to occur at a particle size of 10 μm at a pressure of 8.5 atm. Measurements of the particle temperature by AlO spectroscopy and three-color pyrometry indicate that the peak temperature surrounding a burning particle approaches the aluminum boiling temperature as particle size is decreased to 10 μm when oxygen is the oxidizer. This reduction indicates that reactions are occurring at or near the particle surface rather than in a detached diffusion flame. When CO₂ is the oxidizer, the combustion temperatures remain near the aluminum boiling temperature for particles as large as 40 μm, indicating that the flame is consistently near the surface throughout this size range. Burn time measurements of 10 and 2.8 μm powders indicate that burn time is roughly proportional to particle diameter to the first power. The burn rates of micron- and nano-particles also show strong pressure dependence. These measurements all indicate that the combustion has deviated from the vapor-phase diffusion limit, and that surface or near-surface processes are beginning to affect the rate of burning. Such processes would have to be included in combustion models in order to accurately predict burning characteristics for aluminum with diameter less than 10 μm.