arXiv subjects

David S. Dean

Publications and source records attributed to David S. Dean.

At least 73 records · Page 4Linked to original sources

arXiv2012

Out of equilibrium thermal Casimir effect in a model polarizable material

Relaxation of the thermal Casimir or van der Waals force for a model dielectric medium is investigated. We start with a model of interacting polarization fields with a dynamics that leads to a frequency dependent dielectric constant of the Debye form. In the static limit the usual zero frequency Matsubara mode component of the Casimir force is recovered. We then consider the out of equilibrium relaxation of the van der Waals force to its equilibrium value when two initially uncorrelated dielectric bodies are brought into sudden proximity. It is found that the spatial dependence of the out of equilibrium force is the same as the equilibrium one but it has a time dependent amplitude, or Hamaker coefficient, which increases in time to its equilibrium value. The final relaxation to the equilibrium value is exponential in systems with a single or finite number of polarization field relaxation times. However, in systems, such as those described by the Havriliak-Negami dielectric constant, with a broad distribution of relaxation times, we observe a much slower power law decay to the equilibrium value.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2011

Ordering of anisotropic polarizable polymer chains on the full many-body level

We study the effect of dielectric anisotropy of polymers on their equilibrium ordering within mean-field theory but with a formalism that takes into account the full n-body nature of van der Waals forces. Dielectric anisotropy within polymers is to be expected as the electronic properties of the polymer will typically be different along the polymer than across its cross section. It is therefore physically intuitive that larger charge fluctuations can be induced along the chain than perpendicular to it. We show that this dielectric anisotropy leads to n-body interactions which can induce an isotropic--nematic transition. The two body and three body components of the full van der Waals interaction are extracted and it is shown how the two body term behaves like the phenomenological self-aligning-pairwise nematic interaction. At the three body interaction level we see that the nematic phase that is energetically favorable is discotic, however on the full n-body interaction level we find that the normal axial nematic phase is always the stable ordered phase. The n-body nature of our approach also shows that the key parameter driving the nematic-isotropic transition is the bare persistence length of the polymer chain.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2011

On the distribution of estimators of diffusion constants for Brownian motion

We discuss the distribution of various estimators for extracting the diffusion constant of single Brownian trajectories obtained by fitting the squared displacement of the trajectory. The analysis of the problem can be framed in terms of quadratic functionals of Brownian motion that correspond to the Euclidean path integral for simple Harmonic oscillators with time dependent frequencies. Explicit analytical results are given for the distribution of the diffusion constant estimator in a number of cases and our results are confirmed by numerical simulations.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2011

Overscreening in 1D lattice Coulomb gas model of ionic liquids

Overscreening in the charge distribution of ionic liquids at electrified interfaces is shown to proceed from purely electrostatic and steric interactions in an exactly soluble one dimensional lattice Coulomb gas model. Being not a mean-field effect, our results suggest that even in higher dimensional systems the overscreening could be accounted for by a more accurate treatment of the basic lattice Coulomb gas model, that goes beyond the mean field level of approximation, without any additional interactions.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2011

Insights into the mechanisms of electromediated gene delivery and application to the loading of giant vesicles with negatively charged macromolecules

We present experimental results regarding the electrotransfer of plasmid DNA into phosphatidylcholine giant unilamellar vesicles (GUVs). Our observations indicate that a direct entry is the predominant mechanism of electrotransfer. A quantitative analysis of the DNA concentration increments inside the GUVs is also performed, and we find that our experimental data are very well described by a simple theoretical model in which DNA entry is mostly driven by electrophoresis. Our theoretical framework allows for the prediction of the amount of transfered DNA as a function of the electric field parameters, and thus paves the way towards a novel method for encapsulating with high efficiency not only DNA, but any negatively charged macromolecule into GUVs.

physics.bio-ph↗

arXiv2011

Electromediated formation of DNA complexes with cell membranes and its consequences for gene delivery

Electroporation is a physical method to induce the uptake of therapeutic drugs and DNA, by eukaryotic cells and tissues. The phenomena behind electro-mediated membrane permeabilization to plasmid DNA have been shown to be significantly more complex than those for small molecules. Small molecules cross the permeabilized membrane by diffusion whereas plasmid DNA first interacts with the electropermeabilized part of the cell surface, forming localized aggregates. The dynamics of this process is still poorly understood because direct observations have been limited to scales of the order of seconds. Here, cells are electropermeabilized in the presence of plasmid DNA and monitored with a temporal resolution of 2 ms. This allows us to show that during the first pulse application, plasmid complexes, or aggregates, start to form at distinct sites on the cell membrane. FRAP measurements show that the positions of these sites are remarkably immobile during the application of further pluses. A theoretical model is proposed to explain the appearance of distinct interaction sites, the quantitative increase in DNA and also their immobility leading to a tentative explanation for the success of electro-mediated gene delivery.

physics.bio-ph↗

arXiv2010

Diffusion of active tracers in fluctuating fields

The problem of a particle diffusion in a fluctuating scalar field is studied. In contrast to most studies of advection diffusion in random fields we analyze the case where the particle position is also coupled to the dynamics of the field. Physical realizations of this problem are numerous and range from the diffusion of proteins in fluctuating membranes and the diffusion of localized magnetic fields in spin systems. We present exact results for the diffusion constant of particles diffusing in dynamical Gaussian fields in the adiabatic limit where the field evolution is much faster than the particle diffusion. In addition we compute the diffusion constant perturbatively, in the weak coupling limit where the interaction of the particle with the field is small, using a Kubo-type relation. Finally we construct a simple toy model which can be solved exactly.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2010

Sample-to-sample fluctuations of electrostatic forces generated by quenched charge disorder

It has been recently shown that randomly charged surfaces can exhibit long range electrostatic interactions even when they are net neutral. These forces depend on the specific realization of charge disorder and thus exhibit sample to sample fluctuations about their mean value. We analyze the fluctuations of these forces in the parallel slab configuration and also in the sphere-plane geometry via the proximity force approximation. The fluctuations of the normal forces, that have a finite mean value, are computed exactly. Surprisingly, we also show that lateral forces are present, despite the fact that they have a zero mean, and that their fluctuations have the same scaling behavior as the normal force fluctuations. The measurement of these lateral force fluctuations could help to characterize the effects of charge disorder in experimental systems, leading to estimates of their magnitudes that are complementary to those given by normal force measurements.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2010

Non-monotoic fluctuation-induced interactions between dielectric slabs carrying charge disorder

We investigate the effect of monopolar charge disorder on the classical fluctuation-induced interactions between randomly charged net-neutral dielectric slabs and discuss various generalizations of recent results (A. Naji et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 104, 060601 (2010)) to highly inhomogeneous dielectric systems with and without statistical disorder correlations. We shall focus on the specific case of two generally dissimilar plane-parallel slabs, which interact across vacuum or an arbitrary intervening dielectric medium. Monopolar charge disorder is considered to be present on the bounding surfaces and/or in the bulk of the slabs, may be in general quenched or annealed and may possess a finite lateral correlation length reflecting possible `patchiness' of the random charge distribution. In the case of quenched disorder, the bulk disorder is shown to give rise to an additive long-range contribution to the total force, which decays as the inverse distance between the slabs and may be attractive or repulsive depending on the dielectric constants of the slabs. We show that in the case of two dissimilar slabs the net effect due to the interplay between the disorder-induced and the pure van der Waals interactions can lead to a variety of unusual non-monotonic interaction profiles between the dielectric slabs. In particular, when the intervening medium has a larger dielectric constant than the two slabs, we find that the net interaction can become repulsive and exhibit a potential barrier, while the underlying van der Waals force is attractive. On the contrary, when the intervening medium has a dielectric constant in between that of the two slabs, the net interaction can become attractive and exhibit a free energy minimum, while the pure van der Waals force is repulsive. Therefore, the charge disorder, if present, can drastically alter the effective interaction between net-neutral objects.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2010

The out of equilibrium behavior of Casimir type fluctuation induced forces for free classical fields

We present a general method to study the non-equilibrium behavior of Casimir type fluctuation induced forces for classical free scalar field theories. In particular we analyze the temporal evolution of the force towards its equilibrium value when the field dynamics is given by a general class of over damped stochastic dynamics (including the model A and model B class). The steady state force is also analyzed for systems which have non-equilibrium steady states, for instance where they are driven by colored noise. The key to the method is that out of equilibrium force is computed by specifying an energy of interaction between the field and the surfaces in the problem. In general we find that there is a mapping of the dynamical problem onto a corresponding static one, and in the case where the latter can be solved the full dynamical behavior of the force can be extracted. The method is used how to compute the non-equilibrium Casimir force induced between two parallel plates by a fluctuating field, in the cases of Dirichlet, Neumann and mixed boundary conditions. Various other examples, such as the fluctuation induced force between inclusions in fluctuating media are discussed.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2010

Drag forces in classical fields

Inclusions, or defects, moving at constant velocity through free classical fields are shown to be subject to a drag force which depends on the field dynamics and the coupling of the inclusion to the field. The results are used to predict the drag exerted on inclusions, such as proteins, in lipid membranes due to their interaction with height and composition fluctuations. The force, measured in Monte Carlo simulations, on a point like magnetic field moving through an Ising ferromagnet is also well explained by these results.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2009

Fluctuation-Induced Interaction between Randomly Charged Dielectrics

Monopolar charge disorder effects are studied in the context of fluctuation-induced interactions between neutral dielectric slabs. It is shown that quenched bulk charge disorder gives rise to an additive contribution to the net interaction force which decays as the inverse distance between the slabs and may thus completely mask the standard Casimir--van der Waals force at large separations. By contrast, annealed (bulk or surface) charge disorder leads to a net interaction force whose large-distance behavior coincides with the universal Casimir force between perfect conductors, which scales as inverse cubic distance, and the dielectric properties enter only in subleading corrections.

cond-mat.other↗

arXiv2009

The effects of dielectric disorder on van der Waals interactions in slab geometries

We study the thermal Casimir effect between two thick slabs composed of plane-parallel layers of random dielectric materials interacting across an intervening homogeneous dielectric. It is found that the effective interaction at long distances is self averaging and its value is given by a that between non-random media with the effective dielectric tensor of the corresponding random media. The behavior at short distances becomes random (sample dependent) and is dominated by the local values of the dielectric constants proximal to each other across the homogeneous slab. These results are extended to the regime of intermediate slab separations by using perturbation theory for weak disorder and also by extensive numerical simulations for a number of systems where the dielectric function has a log-normal distribution.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2009

Dipole diffusion in a random electrical potential

We study the Langevin dynamics of a dipole diffusing in a random electrical field E derived from a quenched Gaussian potential. We show that in a suitable adiabatic limit (where the dynamics of the dipole moment is much faster than the dynamics of its position), one can reduce the coupled stochastic equations to an effective Langevin equation for a particle diffusing in an effective potential with a spatially varying and anisotropic local diffusivity $κ_{ij}$. Analytic results, close to the adiabatic limit, for the diffusion constant $κ_e$ are found in one dimension and a finite temperature dynamical transition is found. The system is also studied numerically. In particular, we study the anomalous diffusion exponent in the low temperature regime. Our findings strongly support the conclusion that the location of the dynamical transition and the anomalous diffusion exponents are determined by purely static considerations, i.e. they are independent of the relative values of the diffusion constants of the particle position and its dipole moment.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗

arXiv2009

The Non-equilibrium Behavior of Fluctuation Induced Forces

While techniques to compute thermal fluctuation induced, or pseudo-Casimir, forces in equilibrium systems are well established, the same is not true for non-equilibrium cases. We present a general formalism that allows us to unambiguously compute non-equilibrium fluctuation induced forces by specifying the energy of interaction of the fluctuating fields with the boundaries. For a general class of classical fields with dissipative dynamics, we derive a very general relation between the Laplace transform of the time-dependent force and the static partition function for a related problem with a different Hamiltonian. In particular, we demonstrate the power of our approach by computing, for the first time, the explicit time dependence of the non-equilibrium pseudo-Casimir force induced between two parallel plates, upon a sudden change in the temperature of the system. We also show how our results can be used to determine the steady-state behavior of the non-equilibrium force in systems where the fluctuations are driven by colored noise.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2009

Thermal Casimir effect with soft boundary conditions

We consider the thermal Casimir effect in systems of parallel plates coupled to a mass-less free field theory via quadratic interaction terms which suppress (i) the field on the plates (ii) the gradient of the field in the plane of the plates. These boundary interactions correspond to (i) the presence of an electrolyte in the plates and (ii) a uniform field of dipoles, in the plates, which are polarizable in the plane of the plates. These boundary interactions lead to Robin type boundary conditions in the case where there is no field outside the two plates. In the appropriate limit, in both cases Dirichlet boundary conditions are obtained but we show that in case (i) the Dirichlet limit breaks down at short inter-plate distances and in (ii) it breaks down at large distances. The behavior of the two plate system is also seen to be highly dependent on whether the system is open or closed. In addition we analyze the Casimir force on a third plate placed between two outer plates. The force acting on the central plate is shown to be highly sensitive to whether or not the fluctuating scalar field is present in the region exterior to the two confining plates.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2009

One-dimensional counterion gas between charged surfaces: Exact results compared with weak- and strong-coupling analysis

We evaluate exactly the statistical integral for an inhomogeneous one-dimensional counterion-only Coulomb gas between two charged boundaries and from this compute the effective interaction, or disjoining pressure, between the bounding surfaces. Our exact results are compared with the limiting cases of weak and strong coupling which are the same for 1D and 3D systems. For systems with a large number of counterions it is found that the weak coupling (mean-field) approximation for the disjoining pressure works perfectly and that fluctuations around the mean-field in 1D are much smaller than in 3D. In the case of few counterions it works less well and strong coupling approximation performs much better as it takes into account properly the discreteness of the counterion charges.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2008

Self Similar Renormalization Group Applied to Diffusion in non-Gaussian Potentials

We study the problem of the computation of the effective diffusion constant of a Brownian particle diffusing in a random potential which is given by a function $V(ϕ)$ of a Gaussian field $ϕ$. A self similar renormalization group analysis is applied to a mathematically related problem of the effective permeability of a random porous medium from which the diffusion constant of the random potential problem can be extracted. This renormalization group approach reproduces practically all known exact results in one and two dimensions. The results are confronted with numerical simulations and we find that their accuracy is good up to points well beyond the expected perturbative regime. The results obtained are also tentatively applied to interacting particle systems without disorder and we obtain expressions for the self-diffusion constant in terms of the excess thermodynamic entropy. This result is of a form that has commonly been used to fit the self diffusion constant in molecular dynamics simulations.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗