Dispersion transition and the nonergodicity of the disordered nanoporous medium-nonwetting liquid system

The experiments in which a nonwetting liquid does not flow from a disordered nanoporous medium are described. The outflow is shown to depend on the degree of filling of the porous medium and its temperature in a critical manner. A physical mechanism is proposed where the transition of a system of liquid nanoclusters in a confinement into a metastable state in narrow filling and temperature ranges results from the appearance of a potential barrier due to the fluctuations of the collective “multiparticle” interaction of liquid nanoclusters in neighboring pores of different sizes at the shell of a percolation cluster of filled pores. The energy of a metastable state forms a potential relief with numerous maxima and minima in the space of a porous medium. The dispersed liquid volume in a metastable state is calculated with an analytical percolation theory for a ground state with an infinite percolation cluster. The outflow time distribution function of pores is calculated, and a power law is obtained for the decrease in nonwetting liquid volume retained in a porous medium with increasing time. The relaxation of the system under study is a multistage process accompanied by discontinuous equilibrium and overcoming of numerous local maxima of a potential relief. The formation of the metastable state of retained nonwetting liquid results from the nonergodicity properties of a disordered porous medium. The proposed model can describe the detected dependences of dispersed liquid volume on the degree of filling and temperature.     

Observation of a dispersion transition and the stability of a liquid in a nanoporous medium

It has been found that the removal of overpressure is accompanied by a transition of some nonwetting-liquid nanoclusters to the stable state in narrow ranges of the filling factor and temperature. This means that the nonwetting liquid becomes ??wetting.??     

Search for and study of low-mass scalar mesons in reaction np → npπ+π? at neutron beam momentum Pn = (5.20 ± 0.12) GeV/c

We present the results of a search for and study of the resonance effects in the system of π⁺π⁻ from the reaction np → npπ⁺π⁻ at the momentum of quasi-monochromatic neutrons P _n = (5.20 ± 0.12) GeV/c from the data obtained in an exposure of the 1-m hydrogen bubble chamber of Veksler and Baldin Laboratory of High Energies, Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (VBLHE JINR). After the supplementary selection of the events where a secondary proton was emitted in the forward hemisphere in the general c.m.s. of the reaction (cosθ* _p > 0) in the effective mass spectrum of π⁺π⁻ combinations, we found nine peculiarities at the masses (350 ± 3), (408 ± 3), (489 ± 3), (579 ± 5), (676 ± 7), (762 ± 11), (878 ± 7), (1036 ±13), and (1170 ± 11) MeV/c ² with experimental widths of no more than several tens of MeV/c ². We carried out a direct measurement of the spins of resonances and also obtained other quantum numbers. All of these peculiarities have a similar set of quantum numbers I ^G (J ^PC ) = 0⁺ (0⁺⁺). We investigated a sequence of scalar-isoscalar resonances f ₀(σ₀) with masses in the range M ≤ 1200 MeV/c ². We found a phenomenological dependence of the resonance mass on its number. This dependence covered not only the resonances shown in this paper, but also those present in PDG tables with quantum numbers of f ₀(σ₀) mesons.     

Pro duction of Exotic Nuclei in Low-Energy Multi-Nucleon Transfer Reactions

Multinucleon transfer processes in low-energy heavy ion collisions open a new field of research in nuclear physics, namely, production and studying properties of heavy neutron rich nuclei. This not-yet-explored area of the nuclear map is extremely important for understanding the astrophysical nucleosynthesis and the origin of heavy elements. Beams of very heavy U-like ions are needed to produce new long-living isotopes of transfermium and superheavy elements located very close to the island of stability.The calculated cross sections are high enough to perform the experiments at available accelerators.Beams of medium-mass ions (such as 136Xe, 192Os, 198Pt) can be used for the production of neutron rich nuclei located along the neutron closed shell N = 126 (the last waiting point) having the largest impact on the astrophysical r-process. The Low-energy multinucleon transfer reactions is a very efficient tool also for the production and spectroscopic study of light exotic nuclei. The corresponding cross sections are 2 or 3 orders of magnitude larger as compared with high energy fragmentation reactions.     

Evolution of the electronic properties of transition metal nanoclusters on graphite surface

The electronic properties of nanoclusters of transition (Ni, Co, Cr) and noble (Au, Cu) metals deposited on the surface of highly oriented pyrolytic graphite (HOPG) are studied using the method of X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. The laws of variation of a change ΔE _b in the binding energies of core-level electrons in the initial (ΔE _i) and final (ΔE _f) states of atoms in nanoclusters, the intrinsic widths γ of photoelectron lines, and their singularity indices α as functions of the metal cluster size d are determined. A qualitative difference in behavior of the ΔE _i(d) and α(d) values in metals of the two groups (Ni, Cr versus Co, Cu) is found. The values of the final-state energy (ΔE _f < 0) and the line width (Δγ > 0) in the clusters of all metals studied vary in a similar manner. It is shown that a significant contribution to E _i is due to a transfer of the valence-shell electrons at the cluster-substrate interface, which is caused by the contact potential difference. The value of an uncompensated charge per nanocluster is determined as a function of the cluster size and the number of atoms in the cluster. The behavior of ΔE _f(d) is controlled by the Coulomb energy of a charged cluster and by a decrease in the efficiency of electron screening, which is different in the metals studied. The broadening of photoelectron lines is determined by a spread of the cluster sizes and by lower electron screening in the final Fermi system. An asymmetry of the core-level electron spectra of nanoclusters can be explained using notions about the electron-hole pair excitation near the Fermi level. The effect of the structure of the density of electron states in the d band of transition metals on the asymmetry of photoelectron lines is considered and it is concluded that this structure near the Fermi level qualitatively changes with a decrease in the nanocluster size. The obtained results indicate that the behavior of the electron subsystem of clusters of the d-metals in a size range of 2–10 nm under consideration is close to the behavior of a normal Fermi system.     

Measurement of the temperature distribution on the surface of the laser heated specimen in a diamond anvil cell system by the tandem imaging acousto-optical filter

We demonstrate that combining the laser heating (LH) system in a diamond anvil cell (DAC) with a tandem acousto-optical tunable filter (TAOTF) allows measurement of the temperature distribution (TD) under infrared (IR, 1064?nm) LH of a specimen under high pressure in a DAC. The main component of the system is a TAOTF synchronized with a video camera. The system allows TD mapping within a temperature range of approximately 1000–2000?K on the surface of a laser-heated object (Fe plates) at high pressure in a DAC with a spatial resolution 2?µm by fitting the actual signal to Planck’s equation at each point.     

Structural Phase Transitions and the Equation of State in SnSe at High Pressures up to 2 Mbar

The crystal structure of tin selenide SnSe has been studied under quasihydrostatic compression at pressures up to 205 GPa created in diamond anvil cells at room temperature. Two structural phase transitions have been detected at and P ≈ 2.5 32 GPa. The former phase transition is continuous from the GeS-type structure (space group Pbnm) to the TlI-type structure (space group Cmcm). The phase transition to the CsCl-type cubic structure (space group Pm\(\bar 3\)m) occurs at 32 GPa and is accompanied by a stepwise decrease in the volume of the unit cell by 7%. The pressure dependence of the specific volume of the unit cell at room temperature has been constructed up to 205 GPa.     

Interference analysis of the pion-production volume for hadron-hadron and nucleus-nucleus collisions at primary momenta in the range 3.8–5.2 GeV/<Emphasis Type="Italic">c</Emphasis> per nucleon

By the method of interference correlations, it was directly proven for the first time that the pion-production volume in neutron-proton (np) interactions at primary momenta in the range 3.8–5.2 GeV/c is not constant. It was shown that the interference patterns for np and MgMg interactions are identical. It was established that the rate of expansion of the pion-production volume does not depend on the type of interacting particles (from np and e ⁺ e ^? to PbPb collisions) or on their primary energy (from 3.4 to 200 GeV). It was found that the determination of dimensions is possible only for individual approximately stationary volume elements in their rest frame. A change in the kinematical properties of the subensemble under analysis leads to changes both in the size of the respective element and in its shape.     

Study of the tunnel conductance and electronic screening in nanoclusters of d metals on graphite surface

The evolution of the electronic structure of pulsed-laser-deposited nanoclusters of noble and transition metals (Au, Cu, Ni, Co, Cr) on a graphite surface with a decrease in their size from 10 to 1 nm has been investigated by scanning tunnel spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, and Auger electron spectroscopy. The data obtained suggest that the properties of nanoclusters differ from metallic when the lateral cluster size reaches ～2–3 nm and the height reaches ～1 nm and that the shape of clusters (transition from three-dimensional to two-dimensional ones) significantly affects their transition to the nonmetallic state.