arXiv subjects

A. Travesset

Publications and source records attributed to A. Travesset.

18 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2008

Micellar Crystals in Solution from Molecular Dynamics Simulations

Polymers with both soluble and insoluble blocks typically self-assemble into micelles, aggregates of a finite number of polymers where the soluble blocks shield the insoluble ones from contact with the solvent. Upon increasing concentration, these micelles often form gels that exhibit crystalline order in many systems. In this paper, we present a study of both the dynamics and the equilibrium properties of micellar crystals of triblock polymers using molecular dynamics simulations. Our results show that equilibration of single micelle degrees of freedom and crystal formation occurs by polymer transfer between micelles, a process that is described by transition state theory. Near the disorder (or melting) transition, bcc lattices are favored for all triblocks studied. Lattices with fcc ordering are also found, but only at lower kinetic temperatures and for triblocks with short hydrophilic blocks. Our results lead to a number of theoretical considerations and suggest a range of implications to experimental systems with a particular emphasis on Pluronic polymers.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2007

The many origins of charge inversion in electrolyte solutions: effects of discrete interfacial charges

We show that charge inversion, i.e. interfacial charges attracting counterions in excess of their own nominal charge, is a general effect that takes place in most charged systems next to aqueous solutions with multivalent ions and identify three different electrostatic origins for this effect 1) counterion-counterion correlations, 2) correlations between counterions and interfacial charges and 3) complexation. We briefly describe the first two regimes and provide a detailed characterization of the complexation regime from united atom molecular dynamics simulation of a phospholipid domain in contact with an aqueous solution. We examine the expected conditions where each regime should apply and describe a representative experimental example to illustrate each case. We point out that our results provide a characterization of ionic distributions irrespectively of whether charge inversion takes place and show that processes such as proton release and transfer are also linked to ionic correlations. We conclude with a discussion of further experimental and theoretical implications.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2006

Charge inversion at minute electrolyte concentrations

Anionic DMPA monolayers spread on LaCl$_3$ solutions reveal strong cation adsorption and a sharp transition to surface overcharging at unexpectedly low bulk salt concentrations. We determine the surface accumulation of La$^{3+}$ with anomalous x-ray reflectivity and find that La$^{3+}$ compensates the lipid surface charge by forming a Stern layer with $\approx 1$ La$^{3+}$ ion per 3 lipids below a critical bulk concentration, $c_t \approx 500 \mathrm{nM}$. Above $c_t$, the surface concentration of La$^{3+}$ increases to a saturation level with $\approx 1$ La$^{3+}$ per lipid, thus implying that the total electric charge of the La$^{3+}$ exceeds the surface charge. This overcharge is observed at $\approx$ 4 orders of magnitude lower concentration than predicted in ion-ion correlation theories. We suggest that transverse electrostatic correlations between mobile ions and surface charges (interfacial Bjerrum pairing) may account for the charge inversion observed in this dilute regime.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2006

Bjerrum pairing correlations at charged interfaces

Electrostatic correlations play a fundamental role in aqueous solutions. In this letter, we identify transverse and lateral correlations as two mutually exclusive regimes. We show that the transverse regime leads to binding by generalization of Bjerrum pair formation theory, yielding binding constants from first-principle statistical-mechanical calculations. We compare our theoretical predictions with experiments on charged membranes and Langmuir monolayers and find good agreement. We contrast our approach with existing theories in the strong-coupling limit and on charged modulated interfaces, and discuss different scenarios that lead to charge reversal and equal-sign attraction by macro-ions.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2006

Solid domains in lipid vesicles and scars

The free energy of a crystalline domain coexisting with a liquid phase on a spherical vesicle may be approximated by an elastic or stretching energy and a line tension term. The stretching energy generally grows as the area of the domain, while the line tension term grows with its perimeter. We show that if the crystalline domain contains defect arrays consisting of finite length grain boundaries of dislocations (scars) the stretching energy grows linearly with a characteristic length of the crystalline domain. We show that this result is critical to understand the existence of solid domains in lipid-bilayers in the strongly segregated two phase region even for small relative area coverages. The domains evolve from caps to stripes that become thinner as the line tension is decreased. We also discuss the implications of the results for other experimental systems and for the general problem that consists in finding the ground state of a very large number of particles constrained to move on a fixed geometry and interacting with an isotropic potential.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2004

Induced Crystallization of Polyelectrolyte-Surfactant Complexes at the Gas-Water Interface

Synchrotron-X-ray and surface tension studies of a strong polyelectrolyte (PE) in the semi-dilute regime (~ 0.1M monomer-charges) with varying surfactant concentrations show that minute surfactant concentrations induce the formation of a PE-surfactant complex at the gas/solution interface. X-ray reflectivity and grazing angle X-ray diffraction (GIXD) provide detailed information of the top most layer, where it is found that the surfactant forms a two-dimensional liquid-like monolayer, with a noticeable disruption of the structure of water at the interface. With the addition of salt (NaCl) columnar-crystals with distorted-hexagonal symmetry are formed.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2003

Universality in the Screening Cloud of Dislocations Surrounding a Disclination

A detailed analytical and numerical analysis for the dislocation cloud surrounding a disclination is presented. The analytical results show that the combined system behaves as a single disclination with an effective fractional charge which can be computed from the properties of the grain boundaries forming the dislocation cloud. Expressions are also given when the crystal is subjected to an external two-dimensional pressure. The analytical results are generalized to a scaling form for the energy which up to core energies is given by the Young modulus of the crystal times a universal function. The accuracy of the universality hypothesis is numerically checked to high accuracy. The numerical approach, based on a generalization from previous work by S. Seung and D.R. Nelson ({\em Phys. Rev A 38:1005 (1988)}), is interesting on its own and allows to compute the energy for an {\em arbitrary} distribution of defects, on an {\em arbitrary geometry} with an arbitrary elastic {\em energy} with very minor additional computational effort. Some implications for recent experimental, computational and theoretical work are also discussed.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2003

Grain Boundary Scars and Spherical Crystallography

We describe experimental investigations of the structure of two-dimensional spherical crystals. The crystals, formed by beads self-assembled on water droplets in oil, serve as model systems for exploring very general theories about the minimum energy configurations of particles with arbitrary repulsive interactions on curved surfaces. Above a critical system size we find that crystals develop distinctive high-angle grain boundaries, or scars, not found in planar crystals. The number of excess defects in a scar is shown to grow linearly with the dimensionless system size. The observed slope is expected to be universal, independent of the microscopic potential.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2001

Crackling Noise, Power Spectra and Disorder Induced Critical Scaling

Crackling noise is observed in many disordered non-equilibrium systems in response to slowly changing external conditions. Examples range from Barkhausen noise in magnets to acoustic emission in martensites to earthquakes. Using the non-equilibrium random field Ising model, we derive universal scaling predictions for the dependence of the associated power spectra on the disorder and field sweep rate, near an underlying disorder-induced non-equilibrium critical point. Our theory applies to certain systems in which the crackling noise results from avalanche-like response to a (slowly) increasing external driving force, and is characterized by a broad power law scaling regime of the power spectra. We compute the critical exponents and discuss the relevance of the results to experiments.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2001

Universal Negative Poisson Ratio of Self Avoiding Fixed Connectivity Membranes

We determine the Poisson ratio of self-avoiding fixed-connectivity membranes, modeled as impenetrable plaquettes, to be sigma=-0.37(6), in statistical agreement with the Poisson ratio of phantom fixed-connectivity membranes sigma=-0.32(4). Together with the equality of critical exponents, this result implies a unique universality class for fixed-connectivity membranes. Our findings thus establish that physical fixed-connectivity membranes provide a wide class of auxetic (negative Poisson ratio) materials with significant potential applications in materials science.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv1998

The Renormalization Group and its Finite Lattice Approximations

We investigate finite lattice approximations to the Wilson Renormalization Group in models of unconstrained spins. We discuss first the properties of the Renormalization Group Transformation (RGT) that control the accuracy of this type of approximations and explain different methods and techniques to practically identify them. We also discuss how to determine the anomalous dimension of the field. We apply our considerations to a linear sigma model in two dimensions in the domain of attraction of the Ising Fixed Point using a Bell-Wilson RGT. We are able to identify optimal RGTs which allow accurate computations of quantities such as critical exponents, fixed point couplings and eigenvectors with modest statistics. We finally discuss the advantages and limitations of this type of approach.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv1998

New Analytical Results on Anisotropic Membranes

We report on recent progress in understanding the tubular phase of self-avoiding anisotropic membranes. After an introduction to the problem, we sketch the renormalization group arguments and symmetry considerations that lead us to the most plausible fixed point structure of the model. We then employ an epsilon-expansion about the upper critical dimension to extrapolate to the physical interesting 3-dimensional case. The results are $ν=0.62$ for the Flory exponent and $ζ=0.80$ for the roughness exponent. Finally we comment on the importance that numerical tests may have to test these predictions.

hep-lat↗

arXiv1998

Properties of Quantum Hall Skyrmions from Anomalies

It is well known that the Fractional Quantum Hall Effect (FQHE) may be effectively represented by a Chern-Simons theory. In order to incorporate QH Skyrmions, we couple this theory to the topological spin current, and include the Hopf term. The cancellation of anomalies for chiral edge states, and the proviso that Skyrmions may be created and destroyed at the edge, fixes the coefficients of these new terms. Consequently, the charge and the spin of the Skyrmion are uniquely determined. For those two quantities we find the values $eνN_{Sky}$ and $νN_{Sky}/2$, respectively, where $e$ is electron charge, $ν$ is the filling fraction and $N_{Sky}$ is the Skyrmion winding number. We also add terms to the action so that the classical spin fluctuations in the bulk satisfy the standard equations of a ferromagnet, with spin waves that propagate with the classical drift velocity of the electron.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv1997

The Phase Diagram of the $U(2)\times U(2)$ Sigma Model

We study the phase diagram of the $U(2) \times U(2)$ scalar model in $d=4$ dimensions. We find that the phase transition is of first order in most of the parameter space. The theory can still be relevant to continuum physics (as an effective theory) provided the transition is sufficiently weakly first order. This places restrictions on the allowed coupling constants.

hep-lat↗

arXiv1997

The phase diagram of the $U(2) \times U(2)$ Sigma Model and its Implications for Chiral Hierarchies

Motivated by the issue of whether it is possible to construct phenomenologically viable models where the electroweak symmetry breaking is triggered by new physics at a scale $Λ\gg 4πv$, where $v$ is the order parameter of the transition ($v\sim 250$ GeV) and $Λ$ is the scale of new physics, we have studied the phase diagram of the $U(2) \times U(2)$ model. This is the relevant low energy effective theory for a class of models which will be discussed below. We find that the phase transition in these models is first order in most of parameter space. The order parameter can not be made much smaller than the cut-off and, consequently a large hierarchy does not appear sustainable. In the relatively small region in the space of parameters where the phase transition is very weakly first order or second order the model effectively reduces to the O(8) theory for which the triviality considerations should apply.

hep-lat↗

arXiv1996

Plasmons in simple-metal slabs: a semiclassical approach

Collective excitations in simple metal systems can be described successfully in terms of a local one-body excitation operator Q, due to the long range nature of the coulomb interaction. For the plasmon modes of a simple-metal slab, momentum expansions of Q are calculated using a variational procedure, equivalent to a restricted RPA calculation. The dispersion relation and the density fluctuation for each mode are found in the sudden approximation using the proper Q operator and the RPA sum-rule formalism. The contribution of the exchange and correlation energy is estimated using a local density functional. The positive background is described within a jellium model while the ground-state electronic density is approximated by a double step profile. The density fluctuation of the plasmon modes above the plasma frequency form standing waves across the slab. The spectra below the plasma frequency is qualitatively different to that of local optics calculations, due to the appearance of two multipole plasmon modes that shift down the origin of the $ω_{+}$ plasmon. The dependence of the results on the width of the slab, the density of the simple-metal and the surface diffuseness is discussed. Throughout, we compare our results with previous RPA and TDLDA calculations.

cond-mat↗

arXiv1996

M.C.R.G. Study of Fixed-connectivity Surfaces

We apply Monte Carlo Renormalization group to the crumpling transition in random surface models of fixed connectivity. This transition is notoriously difficult to treat numerically. We employ here a Fourier accelerated Langevin algorithm in conjunction with a novel blocking procedure in momentum space which has proven extremely successful in $λϕ^4$. We perform two successive renormalizations in lattices with up to $64^2$ sites. We obtain a result for the critical exponent $ν$ in general agreement with previous estimates and similar error bars, but with much less computational effort. We also measure with great accuracy $η$. As a by-product we are able to determine the fractal dimension $d_H$ of random surfaces at the crumpling transition.

hep-lat↗

arXiv1995

Determination of the Crumpling Fractal Dimension Via k-Space MCRG

Motivated by the successful application of MCRG in momentum space to $λϕ^4_3$ we determine the critical exponents at the crumpling transition in fixed triangulated surfaces. The results are still tentative, but suggest that $-1.0\ge η\ge -1.3$, pointing at a value for the fractal Hausdorff dimension at the crumpling transistion fixed point somewhere between 3 and 4.

hep-lat↗