High-sensitivity tool for studying phonon related mechanical losses in low loss materials

Fundamental mechanical loss mechanisms exist even in very pure materials, for instance, due to the interactions of excited acoustic waves with thermal phonons. A reduction of these losses in a certain frequency range is desired in high precision instruments like gravitational wave detectors. Systematic analyses of the mechanical losses in those low loss materials are essential for this aim, performed in a highly sensitive experimental set-up. Our novel method of mechanical spectroscopy, cryogenic resonant acoustic spectroscopy of bulk materials (CRA spectroscopy), is well suited to systematically determine losses at the resonant frequencies of the samples of less than 10^(-9) in the wide temperature range from 5 to 300 K. A high precision set-up in a specially built cryostat allows contactless excitation and readout of the oscillations of the sample. The experimental set-up and measuring procedure are described. Limitations to our experiment due to external loss mechanisms are analysed. The influence of the suspension system as well as the sample preparation is explained.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, proceedings of PHONONS07, submitted to Journal of Physics: Conference Serie

Spin Glass and antiferromagnetism in Kondo lattice disordered systems

The competition between spin glass (SG), antiferromagnetism (AF) and Kondo effect is studied here in a model which consists of two Kondo sublattices with a gaussian random interaction between spins in differents sublattices with an antiferromagnetic mean Jo and standard deviation J. In the present approach there is no hopping of the conduction electrons between the sublattices and only spins in different sublattices can interact. The problem is formulated in the path integral formalism where the spin operators are expressed as bilinear combinations of Grassmann fields which can be solved at mean field level within the static approximation and the replica symmetry ansatz. The obtained phase diagram shows the sequence of phases SG, AF and Kondo state for increasing Kondo coupling. This sequence agrees qualitatively with experimental data of the Ce_{2} Au_{1-x} Co_{x} Si_{3} compound.Comment: 7 pages, 1 figure, submitted to EPJ

Twice Chosen: Spouse Matching and Earnings Among Women in First and Second Marriages

This study examines spousal matching for females in second-order marriages. It is based on detailed data from longitudinal Swedish population data registers. We aim to follow women who marry, divorce, and subsequently remarry compared with females who marry and stay married over the course of the study interval. The earnings of both groups are modeled through regression analysis in the year prior to their marriages along with the earnings of each husband. The residuals from the regressions represent unobservables in the process of earnings generation. From the regressions we obtain spouse-to-be pairs of earnings residuals and we measure the correlation of residuals for each marital regime. Overall, we find significant positive correlations for all three of the marital partitions. The correlation tends to be smaller for the first of a sequence of marriages for women who divorce than for women who marry and stay so. For the second of the successive marriages, however, the correlation of the residuals is larger than that for women who marry but once. We also find evidence of “matching” between successive husbands. Women who marry men with unmeasured positive earnings capacities, in the event of divorce, tend to select and match in a similar fashion the second time around.Marital matching; Remarriage; Assortative mating; Earnings

One-step replica symmetry breaking solution for a highly asymmetric two-sublattice fermionic Ising spin glass model in a transverse field

The one-step replica symmetry breaking (RSB) is used to study a two-sublattice fermionic infinite-range Ising spin glass (SG) model in a transverse field $\Gamma$. The problem is formulated in a Grassmann path integral formalism within the static approximation. In this model, a parallel magnetic field $H$ breaks the symmetry of the sublattices. It destroys the antiferromagnetic (AF) order, but it can favor the nonergodic mixed phase (SG+AF) characterizing an asymmetric RSB region. In this region, intra-sublattice disordered interactions $V$ increase the difference between the RSB solutions of each sublattice. The freezing temperature shows a higher increase with $H$ when $V$ enhances. A discontinue phase transition from the replica symmetry (RS) solution to the RSB solution can appear with the presence of an intra-sublattice ferromagnetic average coupling. The $\Gamma$ field introduces a quantum spin flip mechanism that suppresses the magnetic orders leading them to quantum critical points. Results suggest that the quantum effects are not able to restore the RS solution. However, in the asymmetric RSB region, $\Gamma$ can produce a stable RS solution at any finite temperature for a particular sublattice while the other sublattice still presents RSB solution for the special case in which only the intra-sublattice spins couple with disordered interactions.Comment: 11 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.

Jahn-Teller effect versus Hund's rule coupling in C60N-

We propose variational states for the ground state and the low-energy collective rotator excitations in negatively charged C60N- ions (N=1...5). The approach includes the linear electron-phonon coupling and the Coulomb interaction on the same level. The electron-phonon coupling is treated within the effective mode approximation (EMA) which yields the linear t_{1u} x H_g Jahn-Teller problem whereas the Coulomb interaction gives rise to Hund's rule coupling for N=2,3,4. The Hamiltonian has accidental SO(3) symmetry which allows an elegant formulation in terms of angular momenta. Trial states are constructed from coherent states and using projection operators onto angular momentum subspaces which results in good variational states for the complete parameter range. The evaluation of the corresponding energies is to a large extent analytical. We use the approach for a detailed analysis of the competition between Jahn-Teller effect and Hund's rule coupling, which determines the spin state for N=2,3,4. We calculate the low-spin/high-spin gap for N=2,3,4 as a function of the Hund's rule coupling constant J. We find that the experimentally measured gaps suggest a coupling constant in the range J=60-80meV. Using a finite value for J, we recalculate the ground state energies of the C60N- ions and find that the Jahn-Teller energy gain is partly counterbalanced by the Hund's rule coupling. In particular, the ground state energies for N=2,3,4 are almost equal