A Bionic Coulomb Phase on the Pyrochlore Lattice

A class of three dimensional classical lattice systems with macroscopic ground state degeneracies, most famously the spin ice system, are known to exhibit "Coulomb" phases wherein long wavelength correlations within the ground state manifold are described by an emergent Maxwell electrodynamics. We discuss a new example of this phenomenon-the four state Potts model on the pyrochlore lattice-where the long wavelength description now involves three independent gauge fields as we confirm via simulation. The excitations above the ground state manifold are bions, defects that are simultaneously charged under two of the three gauge fields, and exhibit an entropic interaction dictated by these charges. We also show that the distribution of flux loops shows a scaling with loop length and system size previously identified as characteristic of Coulomb phases

The Renormalization Group and the Superconducting Susceptibility of a Fermi Liquid

A free Fermi gas has, famously, a superconducting susceptibility that diverges logarithmically at zero temperature. In this paper we ask whether this is still true for a Fermi liquid and find that the answer is that it does {\it not}. From the perspective of the renormalization group for interacting fermions, the question arises because a repulsive interaction in the Cooper channel is a marginally irrelevant operator at the Fermi liquid fixed point and thus is also expected to infect various physical quantities with logarithms. Somewhat surprisingly, at least from the renormalization group viewpoint, the result for the superconducting susceptibility is that two logarithms are not better than one. In the course of this investigation we derive a Callan-Symanzik equation for the repulsive Fermi liquid using the momentum-shell renormalization group, and use it to compute the long-wavelength behavior of the superconducting correlation function in the emergent low-energy theory. We expect this technique to be of broader interest.Comment: 9 pages, 2 figure

Dipolar bogolons: from superfluids to Pfaffians

We study the structure of Bogoliubov quasiparticles, 'bogolons,' the fermionic excitations of paired superfluids that arise from fermion (BCS) pairing, including neutral superfluids, superconductors, and paired quantum Hall states. The naive construction of a stationary quasiparticle in which the deformation of the pair field is neglected leads to a contradiction: it carries a net electrical current even though it does not move. However, treating the pair field self-consistently resolves this problem: In a neutral superfluid, a dipolar current pattern is associated with the quasiparticle for which the total current vanishes. When Maxwell electrodynamics is included, as appropriate to a superconductor, this pattern is confined over a penetration depth. For paired quantum Hall states of composite fermions, the Maxwell term is replaced by a Chern-Simons term, which leads to a dipolar charge distribution and consequently to a dipolar current pattern.Comment: 5 pages main text + 5 pages supplementary material; 1 figure. Version published in PRL under different title; typos corrected, references adde

AKLT Models with Quantum Spin Glass Ground States

We study AKLT models on locally tree-like lattices of fixed connectivity and find that they exhibit a variety of ground states depending upon the spin, coordination and global (graph) topology. We find a) quantum paramagnetic or valence bond solid ground states, b) critical and ordered N\'eel states on bipartite infinite Cayley trees and c) critical and ordered quantum vector spin glass states on random graphs of fixed connectivity. We argue, in consonance with a previous analysis, that all phases are characterized by gaps to local excitations. The spin glass states we report arise from random long ranged loops which frustrate N\'eel ordering despite the lack of randomness in the coupling strengths.Comment: 10 pages, 1 figur

Observation of Coherent Helimagnons and Gilbert damping in an Itinerant Magnet

We study the magnetic excitations of itinerant helimagnets by applying time-resolved optical spectroscopy to Fe0.8Co0.2Si. Optically excited oscillations of the magnetization in the helical state are found to disperse to lower frequency as the applied magnetic field is increased; the fingerprint of collective modes unique to helimagnets, known as helimagnons. The use of time-resolved spectroscopy allows us to address the fundamental magnetic relaxation processes by directly measuring the Gilbert damping, revealing the versatility of spin dynamics in chiral magnets. (*These authors contributed equally to this work

A Comparison of Corrosion Behavior of Copper and Its Alloy in Pongamia pinnata Oil at Different Conditions

Vegetable oils are promising substitutes for petrodiesel as they can be produced from numerous oil seed crops that can be cultivated anywhere and have high energy contents, exhibiting clean combustion behavior with zero CO2 emission and negligible SO2 generation. The impact of biofuel on the corrosion of various industrial metals is a challenge for using biofuel as automotive fuel. Fuel comes in contact with a wide variety of metallic materials under different temperatures, velocities, and loads thereby causing corrosion during storage and flow of fuel. Hence, the present investigation compares the corrosion rates of copper and brass in Pongamia pinnata oil (O100), 3% NaCl, and oil blend with NaCl (O99) obtained by static immersion test and using rotating cage. The corrosivity and conductivity of the test media are positively correlated. This study suggested that the corrosivity of copper is higher than brass in Pongamia pinnata oil (PO)

Archaea and Bacteria Acclimate to High Total Ammonia in a Methanogenic Reactor Treating Swine Waste

Citation: Esquivel-Elizondo, S., Parameswaran, P., Delgado, A. G., Maldonado, J., Rittmann, B. E., & Krajmalnik-Brown, R. (2016). Archaea and Bacteria Acclimate to High Total Ammonia in a Methanogenic Reactor Treating Swine Waste. Archaea-an International Microbiological Journal, 10. doi:10.1155/2016/4089684Inhibition by ammonium at concentrations above 1000mgN/L is known to harm the methanogenesis phase of anaerobic digestion. We anaerobically digested swine waste and achieved steady state COD-removal efficiency of around 52% with no fatty-acid or H-2 accumulation. As the anaerobic microbial community adapted to the gradual increase of total ammonia-N (NH3 -N) from 890 +/- 295 to 2040 +/- 30 mg/L, the Bacterial and Archaeal communities became less diverse. Phylotypes most closely related to hydrogenotrophic Methanoculleus (36.4%) and Methanobrevibacter (11.6%), along with acetoclastic Methanosaeta (29.3%), became the most abundant Archaeal sequences during acclimation. This was accompanied by a sharp increase in the relative abundances of phylotypes most closely related to acetogens and fatty-acid producers (Clostridium, Coprococcus, and Sphaerochaeta) and syntrophic fatty-acid Bacteria (Syntrophomonas, Clostridium, Clostridiaceae species, and Cloacamonaceae species) that have metabolic capabilities for butyrate and propionate fermentation, as well as for reverse acetogenesis. Our results provide evidence countering a prevailing theory that acetoclastic methanogens are selectively inhibited when the total ammonia-N concentration is greater than similar to 1000 mgN/L. Instead, acetoclastic and hydrogenotrophic methanogens coexisted in the presence of total ammonia-N of similar to 2000 mgN/L by establishing syntrophic relationships with fatty-acid fermenters, as well as homoacetogens able to carry out forward and reverse acetogenesis

Variant N=(1,1) Supergravity and (Minkowski)_4 x S^2 Vacua

We construct the fermionic sector and supersymmetry transformation rules of a variant N=(1,1) supergravity theory obtained by generalized Kaluza-Klein reduction from seven dimensions. We show that this model admits both (Minkowski)_4 x S^2 and (Minkowski)_3 x S^3 vacua. We perform a consistent Kaluza-Klein reduction on S^2 and obtain D=4, N=2 supergravity coupled to a vector multiplet, which can be consistently truncated to give rise to D=4, N=1 supergravity with a chiral multiplet.Comment: Latex, 17 pages. Version appearing in Classical and Quantum Gravit