Search results for "Metastability"
showing 10 items of 262 documents
Collapsibility of metastable sand by non-conventional oedometer tests
2018
The stability of foundations soils could represent a clear and present threat for the conservation of even well preserved buildings, particularly for Architectural heritage conservation and land art heritage. A dramatic case is the presence of collapsible metastable sands as foundation soils, as it occurs in the sacral complex Valle dei Templi in Agrigento. This site listed by UNESCO, stands on a crest of a calcarenite cuesta, overlaying a layer of these sands. When the collapsible sand is dry, the structure is strong enough to bond the sand particles together. When the sand becomes wet, a de-structuration mechanism occurs and the soil’s strength is compromised. This paper has a twofold aim…
Structures of stiff macromolecules of finite chain length near the coil-globule transition: A Monte Carlo simulation
2000
Using a coarse-grained model of a semiflexible macromolecule, the equilibrium shapes of the chain have been studied varying both the temperature and the chain stiffness. We have applied Monte Carlo techniques using the bond fluctuation model for a chain length of N = 80 effective monomers, and two different types of interactions: a potential depending on the angle between successive bonds along the chain to control the chain stiffness, and an attractive interaction between non-bonded effective monomers to model variable solvent quality. In a diagram of states where chain stiffness and inverse temperature and used as variables, we find regions where the chain exists as coil, as spherical glo…
Coupled normal fluid and superfluid profiles of turbulent helium II in channels
2015
We perform fully coupled two--dimensional numerical simulations of plane channel helium II counterflows with vortex--line density typical of experiments. The main features of our approach are the inclusion of the back reaction of the superfluid vortices on the normal fluid and the presence of solid boundaries. Despite the reduced dimensionality, our model is realistic enough to reproduce vortex density distributions across the channel recently calculated in three--dimensions. We focus on the coarse--grained superfluid and normal fluid velocity profiles, recovering the normal fluid profile recently observed employing a technique based on laser--induced fluorescence of metastable helium molec…
String dynamics and metastability of fully-heavy tetraquarks
2017
Multiquark states have been advocated to explain recent experimental data in the heavy-light sector, and there are already speculations about multiquarks containing only heavy quarks and antiquarks. With a rigorous treatment of the four-body problem in current quark models, full-charm $(cc\bar c\bar c)$ and full-beauty $(bb\bar b\bar b)$ tetraquarks are found to be unbound. Thus their stability should rely on more subtle effects that are not included in the simple picture of constituent quarks. The case of $(bc\bar b\bar c)$ might be more favorable if the naive color-additive model of confinement is replaced by a string-inspired interaction.
Role of the Δ Resonance in the Population of a Four-Nucleon State in the Fe56→Fe54 Reaction at Relativistic Energies
2016
The 54Fe nucleus was populated from a 56Fe beam impinging on a Be target with an energy of E=A ¼ 500 MeV. The internal decay via γ-ray emission of the 10þ metastable state was observed. As the structure of this isomeric state has to involve at least four unpaired nucleons, it cannot be populated in a simple two-neutron removal reaction from the 56Fe ground state. The isomeric state was produced in the low-momentum (-energy) tail of the parallel momentum (energy) distribution of 54Fe, suggesting that it was populated via the decay of the Δ0 resonance into a proton. This process allows the population of fournucleon states, such as the observed isomer. Therefore, it is concluded that the obser…
Sensitive laser spectroscopy on trapped barium ions by quenching with hydrogen
1983
The sensitivity of laser spectroscopy on barium ions stored in a radio frequency quadrupole trap was drastically increased by using hydrogen for quenching the optically pumped metastable states. The attained fluorescence intensity per ion permits the detection of single ions. The method will be applied to environmental studies on actinides.
Thermodynamic predictions of the formation of chalcogenide glasses
1985
The understanding of glass forming ability requires quantitative information on the stable and metastable phase equilibria of binary and multicomponent systems, particularly as a function of composition and temperature. This paper discusses the success of the use of Gibbs free energy curves for the supercooled liquid relative to the stable crystalline phases to describe glass forming ability. Applications are reported for the systems GeSe2-Se, Sb2Se3-Se and GeSe2-Sb2Se3 for which experimental minimal quenching rates are available. A strongly associated regular solution model for the liquid phase gives a predicted behaviour consistent with experimental data. The method is intended to apply t…
On the Nature of the Plateau in Two-Step Dinuclear Spin-Crossover Complexes
2004
A remarkable feature of the spin-crossover process in several dinuclear iron(II) compounds is a plateau in the two-step transition curve. Up to now, it has not been possible to analyse the spin state of dinuclear pairs that constitute such a plateau, due to the relative high temperatures at which the transition takes place in complexes investigated so far. We solved this problem by experimentally studying a novel dinuclear spin-crossover compound [[Fe(phdia)(NCS)(2)](2)(phdia)] (phdia: 4,7-phenanthroline-5,6-diamine). We report here on the synthesis and characterisation of this system, which exhibits a two-step spin transition at T(c1)=108 K and T(c2)=80 K, displaying 2 K and 7 K wide therm…
Lifetime of the metastable 6P 3/2 level of PbII
1989
Pb+-ions were stored in a r.f.-quadrupole trap. Short laser pulses at a 710-nm M1-transition excited the ions to the metastable 6P 3/2 level. Time-resolved registration of the subsequent decay photons at the same wavelength directly gives the lifetime of that state. No dependence of the decay rate on the density of different buffer gases up to 10−5 mbar pressure was observed and from this we deduced upper limits to the quenching cross section. We have observed, however, a small dependence on the stored ion number. The final result for the lifetime is 41.2 ± 0.7 ms in agreement with the result of a previous calculation.
Magnetic octupole moment of Yb-173 using collinear laser spectroscopy
2021
The hyperfine constants of the $4{f}^{14}6s6p^{3}P_{2}^{o}$ state in neutral Yb have been measured using three different dipole transitions. This state was recently shown to have a comparatively large hyperfine magnetic octupole splitting, and thus a puzzlingly large magnetic octupole moment. The measurement is performed using collinear laser spectroscopy on a fast atomic beam, which provides a straightforward route to probing long-lived metastable atomic states with high resolution. From the combined analysis of all three lines we find no significant evidence for a nonzero octupole moment in $^{173}\mathrm{Yb}$.