Free-induction decay in a fluctuating two-level system

We study theoretically free-induction decay (FID) in an inhomogeneously broadened system of two-level atoms whose transition frequencies fluctuate according to the Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process. A numerical solution of the model shows that at low intensities the saturation behaviour of FID may depend strongly on the statistics of the fluctuations, but at high intensities the fluctuations play a minor role. The results mimic qualitatively the recent experimental data of DeVoe and Brewer, but a full quantitative agrrement with experiments is not reached.     

A statistical study of the additivities of substituent effects in the 13C NMR chemical shifts of hydroxy- and chloro-substituted benzenes

The ¹³C NMR spectra of six hydroxybenzenes, all chlorobenzenes, all chlorophenols and eight chlorocatechols are measured and assigned. The additivity of the substituent effects and the usefulness of some corrective parameters are studied with regression analysis. The order of the chemical shifts is most efficiently predicted by the simplest substituent effect model, containing only the direct effects of the substituents, although the 95% confidence limits of the calculated shifts are as high as 5.6 ppm. If the chemical shifts need to be predicted within the measuring errors (approximately 0.05–0.10 ppm, in the present data), the number of necessary corrections is very impractical. The correction parameters are found to be independent of the solvent if no conformational effects are operative. These corrections, or the non-additivity parameters, are thus theoretically interesting. Approximate ¹J(CH) couplings are also reported and the additivity of substitution effects on these parameters are discussed.     

Atomistic simulation of the transition from atomistic to macroscopic cratering

Using large-scale atomistic simulations, we show that the macroscopic cratering behavior emerges for projectile impacts on Au at projectile sizes between 1000 and 10000 Au atoms at impact velocities comparable to typical meteoroid velocities. In this size regime, we detect a compression of material in Au nanoparticle impacts similar to that observed for hypervelocity macroscopic impacts. The simulated crater volumes agree with the values calculated using the macroscopic crater size scaling law, in spite of a downwards extrapolation over more than 15 orders of magnitude in terms of the impactor volume. The result demonstrates that atomistic simulations can be used as a tool to understand the strength properties of materials in cases where only continuum models have been possible before.     

Nonlinear phenomenology from quantum mechanics: soliton in a lattice

We study a soliton in an optical lattice holding bosonic atoms quantum mechanically using both an exact numerical solution and quantum Monte Carlo simulations. The computation of the state is combined with an explicit account of the measurements of the numbers of the atoms at the lattice sites. In particular, importance sampling in the quantum Monte Carlo method arguably produces faithful simulations of individual experiments. Even though the quantum state is invariant under lattice translations, an experiment may show a noisy version of the localized classical soliton.     

A mass spectrometric study of metal binding to osteocalcin

Electrospray ionization Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry was used to investigate Ca(2+), Mg(2+), and La(3+) binding to bovine bone osteocalcin (OCN). OCN was shown to bind 3 mol Ca(2+) per mol protein. There was also evidence for the presence of four additional metal binding sites. Ca(2+) increased the formation of the OCN dimer. Mg(2+) bound to OCN to the same extent as Ca(2+) but did not induce the dimerization of OCN. La(3+) bound to a lesser extent than either Ca(2+) or Mg(2+) to OCN and, like Mg(2+), did not influence dimerization. Each Gla residue of OCN participates in Ca(2+) binding, whereas Mg(2+) binding may occur preferentially at sites other than Gla residues. This implies that the different natures of Ca(2+)- and Mg(2+)-containing OCN complexes influence the tendency of OCN to form a dimer.