Related papers: Stretching helical nano-springs at finite temperat…
Recent experiments showed that the shear modulus of solid 4He stiffens in the same temperature range (below 200 mK) where mass decoupling and supersolidity have been inferred from torsional oscillator measurements. The two phenomena are…
We analyze the thermal conductivity of frustrated spin-1/2 chains within linear-response theory focusing on its frequency dependence at finite temperatures. Using exact diagonalization, the low-frequency limit of the thermal conductivity is…
We develop a novel biased Monte-Carlo simulation technique to measure the force-extension curves and the distribution function of the extension of fluctuating filaments stretched by external force. The method is applicable for arbitrary…
This paper examines the mechanical response of flexible fiber packings subject to triaxial compression. Short fibers yield in a manner similar to typical granular materials in which the deviatoric stress remains nearly constant with…
Relativistic electronic properties of a nanospring under a static magnetic field are theoretically investigated in the present study. The wave equation accounting for the spin-orbit interaction is derived for the nanospring as a special…
Chiral polymers are ubiquitous in nature and in the cellular context they are often found in association with membranes. Here we show that surface bound polymers with an intrinsic twist and anisotropic bending stiffness can exhibit a sharp…
We investigate the possibility of a striped inhomoegenous phase occurring as an electronic system with an order parameter linearly coupled to the elastic degrees of freedom is tuned through the electronic phase transition. We find that in…
A coarse grained model of a random polypeptide chain, with only discrete torsional degrees of freedom and Hookean springs connecting pairs of hydrophobic residues is shown to display stretched exponential relaxation under Metropolis…
The thermodynamics and dynamics of supercooled liquids correlate with their elasticity. In particular for covalent networks, the jump of specific heat is small and the liquid is {\it strong} near the threshold valence where the network…
We report an ultrasonic investigation of the elastic moduli on a single crystal of hexagonal YMnO_3 as a function of temperature. Stiffening anomalies in the antiferromagnetic N\'eel state below T_N = 72.4 K are observed on all the four…
Homogenization of the incremental response of grids made up of preloaded elastic rods leads to homogeneous effective continua which may suffer macroscopic instability, occurring at the same time in both the grid and the effective continuum.…
We investigate the entanglement properties of thermal states of the harmonic lattice in one, two and three dimensions. We establish the value of the critical temperature for entanglement between neighbouring sites and give physical reasons.…
Stiff, elongated biomolecules such as filamentous viruses, DNA or cellulose nanocrystals are known to form liquid crystals often exhibiting a helical supramolecular organization. Little is known about the microscopic origin, size and…
Kinetic helicity is one of the invariants of the Euler equations that is associated with the topology of vortex lines within the fluid. In superfluids, the vorticity is concentrated along vortex filaments. In this setting, helicity would be…
The nonlinear mechanics of a flexible elastic rod constrained at its edges by a pair of sliding sleeves is analyzed. The planar equilibrium configurations of this variable-length elastica are found to have shape defined only by the…
Inspired by the complex influence of the globular crosslinking proteins on the formation of biofilament bundles in living organisms, we study and analyze a theoretical model for the structure and thermodynamics of bundles of helical…
A statistical theory of cholesteric liquid crystals composed of short rigid biaxial molecules is presented. It is derived in the thermodynamic limit at a small density and a small twist. The uniaxial (biaxial) cholesteric phase is regarded…
We demonstrate experimentally the existence of a purely elastic fingering instability which arises when air penetrates into an elastomer confined in a Hele-Shaw cell. Fingers appear sequentially and propagate within the bulk of the material…
We report the first direct observation of the decay of the excited-state population in electrons trapped on the surface of liquid helium. The relaxation dynamics, which are governed by inelastic scattering processes in the system, are…
We study the sliding friction for viscoelastic solids, e.g., rubber, on hard flat substrate surfaces. We consider first the fluctuating shear stress inside a viscoelastic solid which results from the thermal motion of the atoms or molecules…