Modification of the surface state of rough substrates by two different varnishes and influence on the reflected light

Modification of the visual appearance when a rough surface is covered by a varnish is mostly attributed to the levelling of the substrate surface, which depends on the molecular weight of the varnish. The topography of varnished surfaces, however, has never been measured directly. Surfaces of varnishes applied over glass substrates of varying roughness were studied, therefore, using mechanical profilometry. Two different varnishes made with a low and a high molecular weight resin were studied. Both varnishes lower the r.m.s. roughness of the substrates and filter the high spatial frequencies. These results are amplified for the varnish containing the low molecular weight resin. The light reflected by the varnished samples is modelled from these topographical data. Its angular distribution, calculated from the probability density of slopes is presented, taking into account separately the air/varnish and the varnish/substrate interfaces. These analyses are presented in a back-scattering configuration. They show that varnishing significantly reduces the angular width of the reflected light and that this effect is magnified for the low molecular weight resin. Modelling furthermore shows that the influence of the roughness of the varnish/substrate interface is negligible in the total reflected light.     

Negative differential conductance and hot phonons in suspended nanotube molecular wires

Freely suspended metallic single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) exhibit reduced current carrying ability compared to those lying on substrates, and striking negative differential conductance at low electric fields. Theoretical analysis reveals significant self-heating effects including electron scattering by hot nonequilibrium optical phonons. Electron transport characteristics under strong self-heating are exploited for the first time to probe the thermal conductivity of individual SWNTs (approximately 3600 W m-1 K-1 at T=300 K) up to approximately 700 K, and reveal a 1/T dependence expected for umklapp phonon scattering at high temperatures.     

Weak decoherence and quantum trajectory graphs

Griffiths' quantum trajectories formalism is extended to describe weak decoherence. The decoherence conditions are shown to severely limit the complexity of histories composed of fine-grained events.     

Recent results on hyperpolarized<Superscript>3</Superscript>He−<Superscript>4</Superscript>He liquid mixtures

Laser optical pumping in low magnetic field provides very high nuclear polarizations in gaseous helium mixtures, and is used to prepare polarized liquid. Wall relaxation in glass cells is effiently reduced using cesium coatings, and bulk longitudinal relaxation times are measured. In highly magnetized samples, dipolar fields control the spin dynamics in anisotropic volumes and weak external magnetic field inhomogeneities. Long lived magnetostatic modes are observed by pulsed NMR. Detailed analysis of their frequency and damping gives information on magnetization density and spin diffusion coefficient in polarized mixtures. Experiments are performed above 0.2 K on mixtures with³He concentrations of order a few percents or larger. When phase separation occurs, the³He-rich phase retains a high polarization.     

Gravitational contribution to the Casimir energy in Kaluza-Klein theories

The Casimir energy of the gravitational field in Kaluza-Klein theories is investigated. The mathematical techniques needed to compute the contribution of a single graviton loop to the quantum effective potential on a background manifold of (Minkowski space) ? (N-sphere) are developed. In these computations the cosmological constant plays a dynamical role, acting like a mass for the graviton. The numerical work for the case N = 1 is done explicitly, and a solution to the one-loop corrected equations of motion is found, although it is not stable. The possibility of an imaginary part to the effective potential for N > 1 is noted, and its existence is attributed to tachyonic terms in the mode sum.     

Carbon-13 and Fluorine-19 NMR Spectroscopy of the Supramolecular Solid p-tert-Butylcalix[4]arene ·α,α,α-trifluorotoluene

The supramolecular 1 : 1 host–guest inclusion compound, p-tert-butylcalix[4]arene ·α,α,α-trifluorotoluene, 1, is characterized by ¹⁹F and ¹³C solid-state NMR spectroscopy. Whereas the ¹³C NMR spectra are easily interpreted in the context of earlier work on similar host–guest compounds, the ¹⁹F NMR spectra of solid 1 are, initially, more difficult to understand. The ¹⁹F{¹H} NMR spectrum obtained under cross-polarization and magic-angle spinning conditions shows a single isotropic resonance with a significant spinning sideband manifold. The static ¹⁹F{¹H} CP NMR spectrum consists of a powder pattern dominated by the contributions of the anisotropic chemical shift and the homonuclear dipolar interactions. The ¹⁹F MREV-8 experiment, which minimizes the ¹⁹F–¹⁹F dipolar contribution, helps to identify the chemical shift contribution as an axial lineshape. The full static ¹⁹F{¹H} CP NMR spectrum is analysed using subspectral analysis and subsequently simulated as a function of the ¹⁹F–¹⁹F internuclear distance (D_FF = 2.25 ± 0.01 Å) of the rapidly rotating CF₃ group without including contributions from additional libration motions and the anisotropy in the scalar tensor. The shielding span is found to be 56 ppm. The width of the centerband in the ¹⁹F{¹H} sample-spinning CP NMR spectrum is very sensitive to the angle between the rotor and the magnetic field. Compound 1 is thus an attractive standard for setting the magic angle for NMR probes containing a fluorine channel with a proton-decoupling facility.     

Solutions of the Dirac–Fock Equations for Atoms¶and Molecules

The Dirac-Fock equations are the relativistic analogue of the well-known Hartree-Fock equations. They are used in computational chemistry, and yield results on the inner-shell electrons of heavy atoms that are in very good agreement with experimental data. By a variational method, we prove the existence of infinitely many solutions of the Dirac-Fock equations "without projector", for Coulomb systems of electrons in atoms, ions or molecules, with Z h 124, N h 41, N h Z. Here, Z is the sum of the nuclear charges in the molecule, N is the number of electrons.     

The Renormalization Group and Its Finite Lattice Approximations

We investigate finite lattice approximations to the Wilson renormalization group in models of unconstrained spins. We discuss first the properties of the renormalization group transformation (RGT) that control the accuracy of this type of approximation and explain different methods and techniques to practically identify them. We also discuss how to determine the anomalous dimension of the field. We apply our considerations to a linear sigma model in two dimensions in the domain of attraction of the Ising fixed point using a Bell–Wilson RGT. We are able to identify optimal RGTs which allow accurate computations of quantities such as critical exponents, fixed-point couplings and eigenvectors with modest statistics. We finally discuss the advantages and limitations of this type of approach.     

Nanosecond dynamics of ferroelectric/dielectric superlattices

The nanosecond response of a PbTiO(3)/SrTiO(3) ferroelectric/dielectric superlattice to applied electric fields is closely linked to the dynamics of striped domains of the remnant polarization. The intensity of domain satellite reflections observed with time-resolved x-ray microdiffraction decays in 5-100 ns depending on the magnitude of the electric field. The piezoelectric response of the superlattice within stripe domains is strongly suppressed due to electromechanical clamping between adjacent regions of opposite polarization. Regions of the superlattice that have been switched into a uniform polarization state by the applied electric field, however, exhibit piezoelectricity during the course of the switching process. We propose a switching model different from previous models of the switching of superlattices, based instead on a spatially heterogeneous transformation between striped and uniform polarization states.     

Temporal cleaning of a high-energy fiber-based ultrafast laser using cross-polarized wave generation

We report the use of cross-polarized wave generation to perform both pulse shortening and temporal cleaning of a high-energy ytterbium-doped fiber-based femtosecond laser system. The nonlinear processes allow both a highly efficient nonlinear conversion of 20% and a large compression ratio of 3.5, with inherently improved coherent and incoherent contrasts. This results in the generation of 37 μJ, 115 fs pulses at a repetition rate of 100 kHz with high temporal quality.