Determination of zinc by flow injection with fluorimetric detection in a micellar medium

A room-temperature flow injection spectrofluorimetric method is presented for the determination of Zn(II), based on the use of salicylaldehyde thiocarbohydrazone in the presence of Triton X-100 and sodium acetate-acetic acid buffer. Various physical and chemical variables affecting the reaction in the flow system were evaluated. The proposed method is very selective. The calibration graph is linear over the range 10-1000 ng/ml, with a detection limit of 5 ng/ml and a relative standard deviation at the 50 ng/ml level of 1.8 %. The method was successfully applied to the determination of Zn(II) in drinking waters and biological samples.     

Design of an Auger Electron Mössbauer Spectrometer (AEMS) using a modified cylindrical mirror analyzer

We have designed and built an Auger Electron Mössbauer Spectrometer (AEMS) for the detection of resonant ⁵⁷Fe Auger electrons using a modified commercial cylindrical mirror analyzer (CMA). The CMA final aperture was modified intentionally in order to increase electron transmission at the expense of reducing its energy resolution, from an original value of 0.5 % to a value of 11 % after the modification. The Channeltron detector electronics and the pre-amplifier were also modified in order to increase the counting efficiency. The electron energy analyzer is selective in energy in the 30 eV–3000 eV range, so the spectrometer can be used to detect MNN (45 eV) and LMM (600–700 eV) Fe Auger signals, what gives it a high surface sensitivity for Fe containing samples. We have used it to acquire the Fe LMM Auger signals generated from the de-excitation process after γ-Ray resonant nuclear absorption. The spectrometer can be used to study samples non-enriched in ⁵⁷Fe, with acquisition times from 5 to 7 days, what is a big advantage. From electron trajectory Monte Carlo simulations in metallic iron, the mean-escape-depth of the detected Auger signals has been estimated in approximately 1 nm. Fe K conversion electrons and KLL Auger electrons with mean escape depths of 129 nm and 78 nm respectively also contribute to the detected signal although in a lesser proportion.     

Magnetic and Structural Properties of the Mechanically Alloyed Nd2(Fe100 − x Nb x )14B System

In this work we report the magnetic and structural properties obtained by Mössbauer spectrometry, Vibrating Sample Magnetometer and X-ray diffraction of milled powders with initial composition Nd₂(Fe_{100 ? x} Nb _x )₁₄B with x = 0 and x = 4. The mixtures were ball milled for different times up to 240 h. Structural and microstructural parameters were derived from high statistics X-ray patterns and discussed as a function of milling time. The Mössbauer spectra of the samples were fitted by means of a sextet and an hyperfine field distribution, associated to a pure iron phase (α-Fe) and a disordered iron-based phase, respectively. The α-Fe grain size decreases from 50 nm for 6 h up to 5 nm for 240 h milling time. The Vibrating Sample Magnetometer results allow to conclude that these samples behave as soft ferromagnets.     

Background field method at finite temperature and density

In this Letter we make use of the Background Field Method (BFM) to compute the effective potential of an SU(2)$\mathit{SU}(2)$ gauge field theory, in the presence of chemical potential and temperature. The main idea is to consider the chemical potential as the background field. The gauge fixing condition required by the BFM turns out to be exactly the one we found in a previous article in a different context.     

Effects of the Rashba spin-orbit coupling on Hofstadter's butterfly

We study the effect of Rashba spin-orbit coupling on the Hofstadter spectrum of a two-dimensional tight-binding electron system in a perpendicular magnetic field. We obtain the generalized coupled Harper spin-dependent equations which include the Rashba spin-orbit interaction and solve for the energy spectrum and spin polarization. We investigate the effect of spin-orbit coupling on the fractal energy spectrum and the spin polarization for some characteristic states as a function of the magnetic flux α and the spin-orbit coupling parameter. We characterize the complexity of the fractal geometry of the spin-dependent Hofstadter butterfly with the correlation dimension and show that it grows quadratically with the amplitude of the spin-orbit coupling. We study some ground state properties and the spin polarization shows a fractal-like behavior as a function of α, which is demonstrated with the exponent close to unity of the decaying power spectrum of the spin polarization. Some degree of spin localization or distribution around +1 or -1, for small spin-orbit coupling, is found with the determination of the entropy function as a function of the spin-orbit coupling. The excited states show a more extended (uniform) distribution of spin states.     

Temperature dependence of the rho-meson mass and width

It is shown, to leading order in the virial expansion, that unitarity of the ππ scattering amplitude implies that if the ρ-meson widthΓ _ρ(T) increases with temperature, then the ρ-meson massM _ρ(T) must also increase. The temperature dependence ofM _ρ(T) is explicitly obtained from a simple, but physically motivated, parametrization of theI=J=1 ππ scattering amplitude.