The covariant electromagnetic Casimir effect for real conducting cylindrical shells

Using covariant quantization of the electromagnetic field, the Casimir force per unit area experienced by a long conducting cylindrical shell, under both Dirichlet and Neumann boundary conditions, is calculated. The renormalization procedure is based on the plasma cut-off frequency for real conductors. The real case of a gold (silver) cylindrical shell is considered and the corresponding electromagnetic Casimir pressure is computed. It is discussed that the Dirichlet and Neumann problems should be considered separately without adding their corresponding results.     

Influence of surface heterogeneity in electroosmotic flows—Implications in chromatography, fluid mixing, and chemical reactions in microdevices

We analyze the influence of surface heterogeneity, inducing a random ζ-potential at the walls in electroosmotic incompressible flows. Specifically, we focus on how surface heterogeneity modifies the physico-chemical processes (transport, chemical reaction, mixing) occurring in microchannel and microreactors. While the macroscopic short-time features associated with solute transport (e.g. chromatographic patterns) do not depend significantly on ζ-potential heterogeneity, spatial randomness in the surface ζ-potential modifies the spectral properties of the advection-diffusion operator, determining different long-term properties of transport/reaction phenomena compared to the homogeneous case. Examples of physical relevance (chromatography, infinitely fast reactions) are addressed.     

Decay rate with coordinate-dependent diffusion coefficients

Using a master equation for the reduced density matrix of open quantum system, the influence of coordinate-dependent microscopical diffusion coefficients on the decay rate from a potential well is studied. For different temperatures, frictions, heights of barrier and ratios of stiffnesses of the potential in the minimum and on the top of the barrier, the quasistationary decay rates are obtained with the sets of coordinate-dependent and -independent microscopical diffusion coefficients, and coordinate-dependent phenomenological diffusion coefficients.     

A general modal frequency-domain vortex lattice method for aeroelastic analyses

The generalized aerodynamic force (GAF) matrix is derived for the Unsteady Vortex Lattice Method (UVLM) without the assumption of out-of-plane dynamics. As a result, the approach naturally includes in-plane motion and forces unlike the doublet lattice method (DLM). The derived UVLM GAF is therefore applicable to industry-standard techniques for aeroelastic stability analyses, such as the p–k method. In this work, the fluid–structure interpolation is performed with radial basis functions for surface interpolation. The generalized aerodynamic forces computed with the UVLM are verified against the DLM from NASTRAN on a simple flat plate configuration. The ability of the UVLM to include steady loads is verified with a T-tail flutter case and the results confirm the importance of including steady loads for T-tail flutter analysis. The modal frequency domain VLM therefore provides the same level of efficiency and accuracy than the DLM, but without the restrictions and with the ability to handle complex geometries. It is therefore a viable replacement to the DLM.     

Magnetic susceptibility and magnetic resonance study of acceptor doped fullerenes C60(MF6)2 (M=As, Sb, P)

In order to check whether superconductivity occurs in the acceptor doped fullerenes C₆₀(MF₆)₂ (M=As, P, Sb) and to study their magnetic and structural properties, we have carried out magnetic, EPR and NMR measurements of these compounds. Temperature dependences of magnetic susceptibility down to 5 K and field dependences of magnetic moment at 5 K show no ‘bulk’ transition in superconducting state. Some reasons of the absence of superconductivity, such as insufficient charge transfer between C₆₀ and intercalated species and inhomogeneity of the compounds under study, are discussed.     

Ultrasonic characterization of shrinkage microporosity in aluminum castings

Shrinkage microporosity in cast aluminum was characterized utilizing the frequency dependence of ultrasonic attenuation caused by scattering from the pores. Measurements were made with the plate specimen immersed in water, and, by using a focused transducer, spatial resolution of about 2 mm was obtained. An accurate measure of attenuation was obtained by comparing the specimen’s ultrasonic signal with that from a pore-free reference specimen. Although the attenuation could be fitted using a single spherical pore size, better fits were obtained by assuming a lognormal distribution of spheres. Pore volume fraction inferred from the lognormal fits overestimates the actual volume fraction, determined from density measurements, by the same factor for all volume fractions. The actual volume fraction is overestimated by more than 100%, due to the complicated, nonspherical pore shapes, and must be taken into account to obtain accurate values of porosity. The strong correlation (r²=0.97) between ultrasonic and density-derived volume fractions permits reliable, nondestructive laboratory measurements of porosity.     

Phonon effects in tunnelling through a double quantum dot molecule

Phonon effects in tunnelling through a double quantum dot molecule are investigated by use of a recently developed technique, which is based on an exact mapping of a many-body electron-phonon interaction problem onto a multichannel one-body problem. The molecule is sandwiched between two ideal electrodes and the electron at each dot of the molecule interacts independently with Einstein phonons. Single-electron transmission rates through the molecule are computed and the nonlinear spectrum obtained shows a structure with many more satellite peaks due to the excitations of phonons. The strength of resonant peaks is found to be strongly dependent on the number of excited phonons. The effects of electron-phonon interaction on the current and shot noise, depending on the voltage bias applied at the two electrodes as well as the potential energy of the molecule, are discussed.     

Spin-dependent shot noise of inelastic transport through molecular quantum dots

Here we present a theoretical analysis of the effect of inelastic electron scattering on spin-dependent transport characteristics (conductance, current–voltage dependence, magnetoresistance, shot noise spectrum, Fano factor) for magnetic nanojunction. Such device is composed of molecular quantum dot (with discrete energy levels) connected to ferromagnetic electrodes (treated within the wide-band approximation), where molecular vibrations are modeled as dispersionless phonons. Non-perturbative computational scheme, used in this work, is based on the Green's function theory within the framework of mapping technique (GFT–MT), which transforms the many-body electron–phonon interaction problem into a single-electron multi-channel scattering problem. The consequence of the localized electron–phonon coupling is polaron formation. It is shown that polaron shift and additional peaks in the transmission function completely change the shape of considered transport characteristics.     

Influence of the central metal atom on the nonlinear optical properties of MPcs solutions and thin films

Third order nonlinear optical susceptibility (χ^〈3〉) of metallophthalocyanines (MPcs, where M = Co, Cu, Zn, Mg) thin films and solutions was investigated by standard backward degenerate four wave mixing (DFWM) method at 532 nm. Third harmonic generation (THG) measurement at 1064 nm performed on MPcs thin films is also discussed. MPcs thin films were grown by conventional thermal evaporation in high vacuum and solution were dissolved in tetrahydrofuran (THF), in which the studied materials are soluble. In the case of microscopic nonlinearity, we calculated the second order hyperpolarizability (γ) for MPcs solutions. We found that the χ^〈3〉 and the γ values are affected by the nature of the central metal atom. We also found that the value is larger than that measured via THG experiment. The variation in χ^〈3〉 values occurs due to the different resonance contributions.