Phonon-like Excitations Research Articles

10.1007/s11497-008-1002-1

The thermal and quark/baryon chemical potential dependences of quark condensate and masses of $\pi$- and $\sigma$-mesons are studied in the instanton model of the QCD vacuum in precritical region. The impact of phonon-like excitations of instanton liquid on the characteristics of $\sigma$-meson in such an environment is also examined.

Dynamics of a globular protein and its hydration water studied by neutron scattering and MD simulations

This review article describes our neutron scattering experiments made in the past four years for the understanding of the single-particle (hydrogen atom) dynamics of a protein and its hydration water and the strong coupling between them. We found that the key to this strong coupling is the existence of a fragile-to-strong dynamic crossover (FSC) phenomenon occurring at aroundTL= 225±5 K in the hydration water. On lowering of the temperature toward FSC, the structure of hydration water makes a transition from predominantly the high density form (HDL), a more fluid state, to predominantly the low density form (LDL), a less fluid state, derived from the existence of a liquid–liquid critical point at an elevated pressure. We show experimentally that this sudden switch in the mobility of hydration water on Lysozyme, B-DNA and RNA triggers the dynamic transition, at a temperatureTD= 220 K, for these biopolymers. In the glassy state, belowTD, the biopolymers lose their vital conformational flexibility resulting in a substantial diminishing of their biological functions. We also performed molecular dynamics (MD) simulations on a realistic model of hydrated lysozyme powder, which confirms the existence of the FSC and the hydration level dependence of the FSC temperature. Furthermore, we show a striking feature in the short time relaxation (β-relaxation) of protein dynamics, which is the logarithmic decay spanning 3 decades (from ps to ns). The long timeα-relaxation shows instead a diffusive behavior, which supports the liquid-like motions of protein constituents. We then discuss our recent high-resolution X-ray inelastic scattering studies of globular proteins, Lysozyme and Bovine Serum Albumin. We were able to measure the dispersion relations of collective, intra-protein phonon-like excitations in these proteins for the first time. We found that the phonon energies show a marked softening and at the same time their population increases substantially in a certain wave vector range when temperature crosses over theTD. Thus the increase of biological activities aboveTDhas positive correlation with activation of slower and large amplitude collective motions of a protein.

Superconducting properties of a boson-exchange model of doped graphene

We study the superconducting properties of a doped one-layer graphene by using a model in which the interparticle attraction is caused by a boson (phonon-like) excitations. We study the dependence of the superconducting gap Δ and the mean-field critical temperature TcMF on the carrier density, attraction strength, and characteristic (Debye) bosonic frequency. In addition, we study the temperature-carrier density phase diagram of the model by taking into account the thermal fluctuations of the order parameter. We show that the fluctuations result in a significant suppression of TcMF, such that the real (Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless) critical temperature Tc is much lower than TcMF. The region Tc<T<TcMF is characterized by a finite density of states at the Fermi level (the pseudogap phase). We show that the width of the temperature interval of the pseudogap phase depends strongly on the model parameters—carrier concentration, attraction amplitude, and boson frequency.

Towards light scalar meson structure

The origin of the lightest scalar mesons is studied in the framework of the instanton liquid model of the QCD vacuum. The impact of phonon-like vacuum excitations on the σ-meson features is qualitatively analyzed. In particular, it is noticed that the changes produced in the scalar sector may unexpectedly become quite considerable in spite of insignificant values of corrections to the dynamical quark masses and then the medley of σ-meson and those excitations may reveal itself as broad resonance states of different masses.

Studies of Phononlike Low-Energy Excitations of Protein Molecules by Inelastic X-Ray Scattering

Molecular dynamics simulations and neutron scattering experiments have shown that many hydrated globular proteins exhibit a universal dynamic transition at TD = 220 K, below which the biological activity of a protein sharply diminishes. We studied the phononlike low-energy excitations of two structurally very different proteins, lysozyme and bovine serum albumin, using inelastic x-ray scattering above and below TD. We found that the excitation energies of the high-Q phonons show a marked softening above TD. This suggests that the large amplitude motions of wavelengths corresponding to this specific Q range are intimately correlated with the increase of biological activities of the proteins.

Circular dichroism enhancement in large DNA aggregates simulated by a generalized oscillator model

An increased circular dichroism (CD) signal of large molecular aggregates formed upon DNA condensation was observed a long time ago, and is often referred to as psi-CD. The effort to understand this phenomenon is further motivated by the latest DNA packing studies and advances in macromolecular chemistry. In the present work, the transition dipole coupling model describing interactions of molecules with light has been extended to handle systems of arbitrary size. The analytical formulae obtained retain the simplicity and computational speed of the standard approach. The origin of the psi-effect was investigated on several model systems. The results suggest that the CD enhancement is primarily caused by delocalized phonon-like excitations in nucleic acid strands. The size of the system exhibiting the effect thus does not need to be comparable with or greater than the wavelength of the absorbed light. Small structural irregularities still allow for the enhancement while a larger disorder breaks it. The modeling is consistent with previous experimental electronic and vibrational CD studies, and makes it possible to correlate the enhancement with the geometry of the nucleic acid systems.

Sigma meson and phonon-like excitations of the instanton vacuum

The possible nature of two experimentally observed scalar mesons that are widely spaced in mass and whose special features may be caused by the excitations of the instanton liquid considered as a model of the QCD vacuum. It is shown that mass changes in the scalar sector may prove to be unexpectably large, even though the scale of such corrections to the dynamical quark mass is relatively small.

A comparative study of optic phonon-like excitations in liquid mixtures and molten salts

We report a study of collective excitations in an equimolar Lennard–Jones liquid mixture KrAr and a molten salt NaCl within the parameter-free generalized collective modes (GCM) approach. It is shown that the high-frequency propagating modes in liquid KrAr and molten NaCl correspond to optic phonon-like excitations, caused by fast mass-concentration (charge in NaCl) fluctuations. Dispersion curves for optic collective excitations are discussed.

Phonon evaporation in freely expanding Bose-Einstein condensates

Phonon-like excitations can be imprinted into a trapped Bose-Einstein condensate of cold atoms using light scattering. If the condensate is suddenly let to freely expand, the initial phonons lose their collective character by transferring their energy and momentum to the motion of individual atoms. The basic mechanisms of this evaporation process are investigated by using the Gross-Pitaevskii theory and dynamically rescaled Bogoliubov equations. Different regimes of evaporation are shown to occur depending on the phonon wavelength. Distinctive signatures of the evaporated phonons are visible in the density distribution of the expanded gas, thus providing a new type of spectroscopy of Bogoliubov excitations.

Phonon interpretation of the 'boson peak' in supercooled liquids.

Glasses are amorphous solids, in the sense that they display elastic behaviour. In crystalline solids, elasticity is associated with phonons, which are quantized vibrational excitations. Phonon-like excitations also exist in glasses at very high (terahertz; 10(12) Hz) frequencies; surprisingly, these persist in the supercooled liquids. A universal feature of such amorphous systems is the boson peak: the vibrational density of states has an excess compared to the Debye squared-frequency law. Here we investigate the origin of this feature by studying the spectra of inherent structures (local minima of the potential energy) in a realistic glass model. We claim that the peak is the signature of a phase transition in the space of the stationary points of the energy, from a minima-dominated phase (with phonons) at low energy to a saddle-point-dominated phase (without phonons). The boson peak moves to lower frequencies on approaching the phonon-saddle transition, and its height diverges at the critical point. Our numerical results agree with the predictions of euclidean random matrix theory on the existence of a sharp phase transition between an amorphous elastic phase and a phonon-free one.

Dynamics of the Incommensurate Phase of the Fully Deuterated Diacetylene 2,4-Hexadiynylene Bis( p -Toluene Sulfonate)

Inelastic coherent neutron and Raman scattering is used to make a dynamical study of the disubstituted and fully deuterated diacetylene 2,4-hexadiynylene bis( p -toluenesulfonate) ( p TS-D) in a partially polymerized state ( x = 1.5%). The aim of this study is to investigate the dynamics of the incommensurate phase and to make a comparison with the dynamics of the same monocrystal in the high-temperature phase [Even et al. , Phys. Rev ., B52 , 7142.] and the dynamics of the pure monomer p TS-D crystal [Bertault et al ., Adv. Mat. for Optics and Electronics , 6 , 317.]. The phason and amplitudon modes are observed as very damped phonon-like excitations. The effect of polymerization on the critical dynamics in p TS-D is discussed.

Crystal-like high frequency phonons in the amorphous phases of solid water.

The high frequency dynamics of low-density (LDA) and high-density (HDA) amorphous ice and of cubic ice ( I(c)) has been measured by inelastic x-ray scattering in the 1-15 nm(-1) momentum transfer ( Q) range. Sharp phononlike excitations are observed, and the longitudinal acoustic branch is identified up to Q = 8 nm(-1) in LDA and I(c) and up to 5 nm(-1) in HDA. The narrow width of these excitations is in sharp contrast to the broad features observed in all amorphous systems studied so far. The "crystal-like" behavior of amorphous ices, therefore, implies a considerable reduction in the number of decay channels available to soundlike excitations which is interpreted as a sign of low local disorder.

Phonon-like excitations of instanton liquid

Phonon-like excitations of an anti-instanton-instanton liquid that are due to adiabatic variations in the instanton dimension are considered on the basis of an approximate calculation of the relevant path integral, which is saturated by quasizero modes. The kinetic term and the effective Lagrangian are found for such excitations. The properties of their spectrum, which has a mass gap determined by ΛQCD, are discussed.

Phononlike excitations of the instanton liquid

The phonon-like excitations of (anti)-instanton ($\bar II$) liquid due to adiabatic variations of vacuum wave functions are studied in this paper. The kinetic energy term is found and the proper effective Lagrangian for such excitations is evaluated. The properties of their spectrum, while corresponding masses are defined by $\Lambda_{QCD}$, are investigated.

Quantum entanglement in dilute optical lattices

A scheme is proposed for coupling the vibrational motion of atoms trapped at distant sites of a dilute optical lattice. The coupling is provided by the backaction of the atomic motion on the lattice potential wells, which is strongly enhanced by recycling the lattice beams in a high finesse optical ring resonator. The resulting phononlike excitations are characterized and their frequency spectrum is calculated. How this coupling can be utilized for implementation of quantum logic gates in an optical lattice is discussed. A concrete experimental scenario in a rubidium lattice is illustrated.

To -12pt [-12pt]to 16ptRapid Note Wavefunctions for the Luttinger liquid

Standard bosonization techniques lead to phonon-like excitations in a Luttinger liquid (LL), reflecting the absence of Landau quasiparticles in these systems. Yet in addition to the above excitations some LL are known to possess solitonic states carrying fractional quantum numbers (e.g. the spin 1/2 Heisenberg chain). We have reconsidered the zero modes in the low-energy spectrum of the gaussian boson LL hamiltonian both for fermionic and bosonic LL: in the spinless case we find that two elementary excitations carrying fractional quantum numbers allow to generate all the charge and current excited states of the LL. We explicitly compute the wavefunctions of these two objects and show that one of them can be identified with the 1D version of the Laughlin quasiparticle introduced in the context of the Fractional Quantum Hall effect. For bosons, the other quasiparticle corresponds to a spinon excitation. The eigenfunctions of Wen's chiral LL hamiltonian are also derived: they are quite simply the one dimensional restrictions of the 2D bulk Laughlin wavefunctions.

Dynamics of Glasses and Glass-Forming Liquids Studied by Inelastic X-ray Scattering

The development of inelastic x-ray scattering with millielectron volt energy resolution at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in Grenoble, France, provides a method for studying high-frequency collective dynamics in disordered systems. This has led to the observation of propagating acoustic phonon-like excitations in glasses and glass-forming liquids down to wavelengths comparable to the interparticle distance. Using the inelastic x-ray scattering results on glycerol as a representative example, it is shown that the microscopic dynamic properties are related to the excess of vibrational states in glasses and to the consequences at the microscopic level of the liquid-glass transition. Moreover, they allow derivation of the infinite frequency sound velocity, a quantity related to the structural relaxation times and to the change of ergodicity at the liquid-glass transition.

Many-body blockade of resonant tunneling of two-dimensional electrons

In high magnetic fields tunneling of two-dimensional electrons requires an extra energy to overcome an effective barrier due to electron-electron interaction. This barrier is clearly visible as a shift of the tunnel resonance to higher biases. The filling factor \ensuremath{\nu}=1 marks a surprisingly rapid transition between low-field (quadratically developing shift) and high-field (saturation) regimes. At low temperatures, the many-body shift decays linearly with increasing temperature, which can be attributed to coupling of a tunneling electron to phononlike excitations in the correlated electron system.

A molecular dynamics study of the collective correlation functions of a hard-core fluid with a Yukawa tail

We present a molecular dynamics study of the collective correlation functions of a hard-core system with an attractive Yukawa tail, for various thermodynamic states in the fluid and liquid regions of the phase diagram. The results are compared with available information for hard spheres. The small-q behavior of the intermediate scattering functions indicates the propagation of sound waves, i.e., phononlike collective excitations, in the hard-core Yukawa system. The upper limit of q for these collective modes is practically independent of the thermodynamic state. The computed transverse current correlation functions show that at liquid densities the hard-core Yukawa system is able to sustain shear wave propagation above a critical q; the upper limit of q for sound waves and the lower limit for shear waves nearly coincide. All of these features are qualitatively similar to those found for hard spheres. However, there are significant quantitative differences, which reflect the influence of the attractive Yukawa tail on the dynamical behavior of the system.

Collective Excitations of a Bose-Einstein Condensate in a Dilute Gas.

We observe phononlike excitations of a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) in a dilute atomic gas. ${}^{87}$Rb atoms are optically trapped and precooled, loaded into a magnetic trap, and then evaporatively cooled through the BEC phase transition to form a condensate. We excite the condensate by applying an inhomogeneous oscillatory force with adjustable frequency and symmetry. We have observed modes with different angular momenta and different energies and have studied how their characteristics depend on interaction energy. We find that the condensate excitations persist longer than their counterparts in uncondensed clouds.