Methyl 2,3‐dideoxy‐2‐S‐methylmercurio‐2‐thio‐β‐d‐manno‐oct‐2‐ulo­pyranosonate‐(2,6)

The hexo­pyran­osyl ring of the title compound, [Hg(CH₃)(C₉H₁₅O₇S)], adopts the ⁴C₁ chair conformation, and the anomeric configuration of the thio­methyl­mercury linkage is β. The compound exists as two symmetry‐independent conformers, A and B, within the unit cell, and each shows an almost linear S—Hg—C arrangement. Most of the bond distances and angles in A and B are similar, although a marked difference exists in the side‐chain conformation. Weak secondary intramolecular (between Hg and ring O) and intermolecular (between A and B conformers) interactions are documented.     

Anomalous proximity effect in gold coated (110) YBa2Cu3O7-delta films: penetration of the Andreev bound states

Scanning tunneling spectroscopy of (110)YBa(2)Cu(3)O(7-delta)/Au bilayers reveal a proximity effect markedly different from the conventional one. While proximity-induced mini-gaps rarely appear in the Au layer, the Andreev bound states clearly penetrate into the metal. Zero bias conductance peaks are measured on Au layers thinner than 7 nm with a magnitude similar to those detected on the bare superconductor films. The peaks then decay abruptly with Au thickness and disappear above 10 nm. This length is shorter than the normal coherence length and corresponds to the (ballistic) mean free path.     

Gaussian-beam propagation in generic anisotropic wave-number profiles

The propagation characteristics of a scalar Gaussian beam in a homogeneous anisotropic medium are considered. The medium is described by a generic wave-number profile wherein the field is formulated by a Gaussian plane-wave distribution and the propagation is obtained by saddle-point asymptotics to extract the Gaussian beam phenomenology in the anisotropic environment. The resultant field is parameterized in terms of e.g., the spatial evolution of the Gaussian beam's curvature, beam width, which are mapped to local geometrical properties of the generic wave-number profile.     

Excited-state intermolecular proton transfer of firefly luciferin III. Proton transfer to a mild base

Steady-state and time-resolved techniques were employed to study the excited-state proton transfer (ESPT) from d-luciferin, the natural substrate of the firefly luciferase, to the mild acetate base in aqueous solutions. We found that in 1 M aqueous solutions of acetate or higher, a proton transfer (PT) process to the acetate takes place within 30 ps in both H(2)O and D(2)O solutions. The time-resolved emission signal is composed of three components. We found that the short-time component decay time is 300 and 600 fs in H(2)O and D(2)O, respectively. This component is attributed either to a PT process via the shortest water bridged complex available, ROH··H(2)O··Ac(-), or to PT taking place within a contact ion pair. The second time component of 2000 and 3000 fs for H(2)O and D(2)O, respectively, is attributed to ROH* acetate complex, whose proton wire is longer by one water molecule. The decay rate of the third, long-time component is proportional to the acetate concentration. We attribute it to the diffusion-assisted reaction as well as to PT process to the solvent.     

Stabilizing stick-slip friction

Even the most regular stick-slip frictional sliding is always stochastic, with irregularity in both the intervals between slip events and the sizes of the associated stress drops. Applying small-amplitude oscillations to the shear force, we show, experimentally and theoretically, that the stick-slip periods synchronize. We further show that this phase locking is related to the inhibition of slow rupture modes which forces a transition to fast rupture, providing a possible mechanism for observed remote triggering of earthquakes. Such manipulation of collective modes may be generally relevant to extended nonlinear systems driven near to criticality.     

A cardinal preserving extension making the set of points of countable V cofinality nonstationary

Assuming large cardinals we produce a forcing extension of V which preserves cardinals, does not add reals, and makes the set of points of countable V cofinality in κ⁺ nonstationary. Continuing to force further, we obtain an extension in which the set of points of countable V cofinality in ν is nonstationary for every regular ν ≥ κ⁺. Finally we show that our large cardinal assumption is optimal. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant no. DMS-0094174.     

Artin-Schreier extensions in NIP and simple fields

We show that NIP fields have no Artin-Schreier extension, and that simple fields have only a finite number of them.     

Strongly interacting atom lasers in three-dimensional optical lattices

We show that the dynamical melting of a Mott insulator in a three-dimensional lattice leads to condensation at nonzero momenta, a phenomenon that can be used to generate strongly interacting atom lasers in optical lattices. For infinite on-site repulsion, the case considered here, the momenta at which bosons condense are determined analytically and found to have a simple dependence on the hopping amplitudes. The occupation of the condensates is shown to scale linearly with the total number of atoms in the initial Mott insulator. Our results are obtained by using a Gutzwiller-type mean-field approach, gauged against exact-diagonalization solutions of small systems.