Neutrino-less double beta decay experiments

The observation of neutrinoless double beta decay would unambiguosly demonstrate that neutrinos are Majorana particles and would provide unique information about the ordering and absolute scale of neutrino masses. This very rare decay is actively searched for in a number of candidate isotopes. It violates lepton-number and is predicted by many extensions of the standard model. The most recent experimental results are reviewed. The technological advances and the most compelling requirements for the new generation of experiments are discussed.     

Designing Nanoscale Counter Using Reversible Gate Based on Quantum-Dot Cellular Automata

Some new technologies such as Quantum-dot Cellular Automata (QCA) is suggested to solve the physical limits of the Complementary Metal-Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) technology. The QCA as one of the novel technologies at nanoscale has potential applications in future computers. This technology has some advantages such as minimal size, high speed, low latency, and low power consumption. As a result, it is used for creating all varieties of memory. Counter circuits as one of the important circuits in the digital systems are composed of some latches, which are connected to each other in series and actually they count input pulses in the circuit. On the other hand, the reversible computations are very important because of their ability in reducing energy in nanometer circuits. Improving the energy efficiency, increasing the speed of nanometer circuits, increasing the portability of system, making smaller components of the circuit in a nuclear size and reducing the power consumption are considered as the usage of reversible logic. Therefore, this paper aims to design a two-bit reversible counter that is optimized on the basis of QCA using an improved reversible gate. The proposed reversible structure of 2-bit counter can be increased to 3-bit, 4-bit and more. The advantages of the proposed design have been shown using QCADesigner in terms of the delay in comparison with previous circuits.     

Förster Resonance Energy Transfer Study of Cytochrome <Emphasis Type="Italic">c</Emphasis>—Lipid Interactions

Specific interactions between a mitochondrial hemoprotein cytochrome c (cyt c) and cardiolipin, a lipid component of mitochondrial membrane, are crucial to electron shuttling and apoptotic activities of this protein. In the present study the Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) between anthrylvinyl-labeled phosphatidylcholine as a donor and heme moiety of cyt c as an acceptor was employed to give a quantitative characterization of the protein binding to the model membranes from the mixtures of phosphatidylcholine (PC) with phosphatidylglycerol (PG), phosphatidylserine (PS) or cardiolipin (CL) in different molar ratios. The multiple arrays of the FRET data were globally analyzed in terms of the model of energy transfer in two-dimensional systems combined with the scaled particle adsorption model. The arguments in favor of the specificity of cyt c interactions with CL were obtained, including the higher adsorption potential and the deeper protein insertion in the lipid bilayer.     

Photophysical and Electrochemical Studies of 4-Dicyanomethylene 2,6-Dimethyl-4H-Pyran (DDP) Dye with Amides in Water

Photophysical and electrochemical studies of DDP dye with Formamide and alkyl substituted amides were carried out in water. Addition of Formamide (F), Acetamide (ACM), N,N-Dimethylformamide (DMF), Dimethylacetamide (DMAC) to DDP dye result in an isosbestic point. A fluorescence enhancement of DDP dye is observed on the addition of amides. Apart from the fluorescence enhancement, the addition of formamide result in no significant shift in the position of emission maxima of DDP dye whereas addition of ACM and DMF result in a shift towards the blue and red region respectively. DDP dye exhibits three lifetime components which are unique in lifetime and amplitude. The fluorescence lifetime and relative amplitude of DDP dye varies significantly by addition of amides in aqueous solution which are influenced by amidewater hydrogen-bonding network and hydrophobic influences of the alkyl substituted amides. The nature of interaction between dye and amide be predominantly through hydrogen-bonding wherein the carbonyl oxygen (C=O) of amides are bonded to N-H hydrogen of DDP dye through water molecule. The existence of more than one microenvironment of DDP dye in aqueous phase is elucidated by Electrochemical Impedence Spectroscopy (EIS) through Nyquist plots wherein it signifies that there exist at least three different micro environments which support the existence of different fluorescence lifetimes. Fluorescence spectral technique is used as an efficient tool to elucidate the nature of interaction of water soluble probe with hydrogen-bonding solutes is established in our studies.     

$ B \to D^{(*)}$ transitions in a quark model

We propose a constituent quark model to evaluate heavy decay constants and form factors relevant for semileptonic transitions. We show that the model reproduces the scaling laws dictated by the spin-flavor symmetry in the heavy quark limit and describes quite well the experimental data.Received: 29 December 2004, Published online: 21 February 2005     

GaS multi-walled nanotubes from the lamellar precursor

Inorganic fullerene-like (IF) nanotubes constructed from layered metal chalcogenides are of particular significance because of their excellent physical properties and potential application in wide fields. But very few previous studies were focused on the IF nanotubes of layered III-VI semiconductor. Therefore we investigate the preparation, structure and photoluminescence (PL) properties of GaS nanotube (an important III-VI semiconductor IF nanotube). A simple method is introduced to prepare GaS multi-walled nanotubes for the first time by annealing the natural lamellar precursor in Ar. The reaction temperature is crucial for the formation of nanotube. A suitable temperature range is 500–850 °C. Bulk quantities of GaS nanotubes with diameters of 30–150 nm and lengths up to ten micrometers were produced. Some of these nanotubes show corrugated and interlinked structure and form many segments, demonstrating a bamboo-like structure. As compared to bulk materials, the obvious distinction of the products in PL spectra at liquid nitrogen temperature of 77 K was due to the structure variety. PACS 61.46.+w; 81.07.De; 81.16.Be     

Multicanonical Monte Carlo simulations on intramolecular micelle formation in copolymers

The formation of intramolecular micelles in copolymers with periodic sequence, where hydrophobic units (stickers) are periodically placed along the chain, is studied by using multicanonical Monte Carlo computer simulations for an off-lattice bead-rod model in three dimensions. With decreasing the temperature, a transition from random-coil conformations to micelles occurs and flower-type micelles are formed via the transition. The number of stickers forming a micelle core is limited by the excluded-volume effect of loop chains around micelle cores. By this effect, two intramolecular micelles are formed for long polymer chains with 60 bonds via the coil-to-micelle transition. By further decreasing the temperature, we find that another transition, i.e., a micelle-to-micelle transition, takes place. At this transition point, the two intramolecular micelles merge into one micelle. Furthermore, we extend the multicanonical MC method to study elastic properties of single polymer chains with strong attractive interactions under external force fields, and study how the intramolecular micellization affects the elastic property of single polymer chains.     

Ergodic Properties of the Quantum Geodesic Flow on Tori

We study ergodic averages for a class of pseudodifferential operators on the flatN-dimensional torus with respect to the Schrödinger evolution. The later can be consider a quantization of the geodesic flow on . We prove that, up to semi-classically negligible corrections, such ergodic averages are translationally invariant operators.Mathematics Subject Classifications (2000) 58J50, 58J40, 81S10.     

Smoothness of Time Functions and the Metric Splitting of Globally Hyperbolic Spacetimes

The folk questions in Lorentzian Geometry which concerns the smoothness of time functions and slicings by Cauchy hypersurfaces, are solved by giving simple proofs of: (a) any globally hyperbolic spacetime (M, g) admits a smooth time function whose levels are spacelike Cauchy hyperfurfaces and, thus, also a smooth global splitting if a spacetime M admits a (continuous) time function t then it admits a smooth (time) function with timelike gradient on all M.The second-named author has been partially supported by a MCyT-FEDER Grant, MTM2004-04934-C04-01.To Professor P.E. Ehrlich, wishing him a continued recovery and good health     

On the Well-Posedness Problem and the Scattering Problem for the Dullin-Gottwald-Holm Equation

In this paper, we study the well-posedness of the Cauchy problem and the scattering problem for a new nonlinear dispersive shallow water wave equation (the so-called DGH equation) which was derived by Dullin, Gottwald and Holm. The issue of passing to the limit as the dispersive parameter tends to zero for the solution of the DGH equation is investigated, and the convergence of solutions to the DGH equation as ²0 is studied, and the scattering data of the scattering problem for the equation can be explicitly expressed; the new exact peaked solitary wave solutions are obtained in the DGH equation. After giving the condition of existing peakon in the DGH equation, it turns out to be nonlinearly stable for the peakon in the DGH equation.