Elastic and magnetoelastic properties of TbMnO3single crystal by nanosecond time resolved acoustics and first-principles calculations

Time resolved pump and probe acoustics and first-principles calculations were employed to assess elastic properties of the TbMnO₃perovskite manganite having orthorhombic symmetry. Measuring sound velocities of bulk longitudinal and shear acoustic waves propagating along at least two different directions in the high symmetry planes (100), (010) and (001), provided a powerful mean to selectively determine the six diagonal elastic constantsC₁₁= 227 GPa,C₂₂= 349 GPa,C₃₃= 274 GPa,C₄₄= 71 GPa,C₅₅= 57 GPa,C₆₆= 62 GPa. Among the three remaining off-diagonal ones,C₂₃= 103 GPa was determined with a bissectrice direction. Density functional theory calculations with colinear spin-polarized provided complementary insights on their optical, elastic and magnetoelastic properties.

Quantitative lipopolysaccharide analysis using HPLC/MS/MS and its combination with the limulus amebocyte lysate assay

Quantitation of plasma lipopolysaccharides (LPSs) might be used to document Gram-negative bacterial infection. In the present work, LPS-derived 3-hydroxymyristate was extracted from plasma samples with an organic solvent, separated by reversed phase HPLC, and quantitated by MS/MS. This mass assay was combined with the limulus amebocyte lysate (LAL) bioassay to monitor neutralization of LPS activity in biological samples. The described HPLC/MS/MS method is a reliable, practical, accurate, and sensitive tool to quantitate LPS. The combination of the LAL and HPLC/MS/MS analyses provided new evidence for the intrinsic capacity of plasma lipoproteins and phospholipid transfer protein to neutralize the activity of LPS. In a subset of patients with systemic inflammatory response syndrome, with documented infection but with a negative plasma LAL test, significant amounts of LPS were measured by the HPLC/MS/MS method. Patients with the highest plasma LPS concentration were more severely ill. HPLC/MS/MS is a relevant method to quantitate endotoxin in a sample, to assess the efficacy of LPS neutralization, and to evaluate the proinflammatory potential of LPS in vivo.

Bell-type inequalities for cold heteronuclear molecules

We introduce Bell-type inequalities allowing for nonlocality and entanglement tests with two cold heteronuclear molecules. The proposed inequalities are based on correlations between each molecule spatial orientation, an observable which can be experimentally measured with present day technology. Orientation measurements are performed on each subsystem at different times. These times play the role of the polarizer angles in Bell tests realized with photons. We discuss the experimental implementations of the proposed tests, which could also be adapted to other high dimensional quantum angular momenta systems.

Making an omnidirectional reflector

The effect of having a finite number of layers on the design of omnidirectional reflectors was investigated. It was shown that the structure should be finished with a low-index layer having a thickness larger than a quarter-wave to increase reflectivity, whereas layers below may remain of quarter-wave optical thickness at normal incidence angle. This general trend has been used for designing and realizing two a-Si-SiO(2) (amorphous silicon and silicon dioxide) omnidirectional reflectors in the near-infrared range on a silicon and a silica substrate, respectively. Owing to the decrease of absorption of recrystallized silicon as compared with a-Si in the visible range, the transmissivity of the structure realized on silica substrate was dramatically increased in the visible range upon annealing, whereas the high reflectivity and the omnidirectional effect were maintained in the near-infrared range.