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In the usual perception, surface superconductivity is associated with the surface nucleation of a superconducting condensate above the upper critical field in type-II superconductors or with a rearrangement of phonon properties and the electron-phonon coupling near surfaces/interfaces. Recently, it has been found that there is another example when the surface superconducting temperature is increased up to 20-25% as compared to the bulk one due to constructive interference of superconducting pair states. In the present work, we demonstrate that in fact, such an interferenceinduced enhancement can be much more pronounced, up to nearly 70%. Furthermore, here it is shown that such an interference enhancement persists over a wide range of microscopic parameters.

Recently it has been demonstrated that the pair-exchange coupling of quasi-one-dimensional (Q1D) bands with conventional higher-dimensional bands in one multiband superconducting material can result in the formation of robust aggregate pair condensate. In particular, it has been found that the Q1D thermal pair fluctuations are suppressed in the presence of deep conventional band(s), where the Fermi level is much larger than the characteristic cut-off energy. Here we report that impact of the Q1D fluctuations is significantly weakened even in the presence of nearly shallow higher-dimensional band(s), which shed new light on robust superconducting state observed in emerging chain-like-structured superconducting materials A_2Cr_3As_3 (A = K, Rb, Cs)., Comment: 12 pages, 3 figures

The interference of multiple condensates coexisting in one system may lead to unconventional coherent behavior. This is expected when the spatial lengths of the condensates are essentially different. Traditionally, the characteristic spatial length of a superconducting condensate is associated with the gap function. However, the broader readership is more familiar with the concept of the Cooper-pair wave function. For conventional single-band superconductors, the gap function coincides with the center-of-mass Cooper-pair wave function up to the coupling constant, and the corresponding gap and wave function characteristic lengths are the same. Surprisingly, we find that in two-band superconductors, these lengths are the same only near the critical temperature. At lower temperatures, they can significantly deviate from each other, and the fundamental question of which of these lengths should be preferred when specifying the spatial scale of a band-dependent condensate in multiband superconducting materials arises.

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Cluster formation is a focus of interdisciplinary research in both chemistry and physics. Here we discuss the exotic example of this phenomenon in the vortex matter of a thin superconductor. In superconducting films, the clustering takes place because of particular properties of the vortex interactions in the crossover or intertype regime between superconductivity types I and II. These interactions are controlled by the two parameters that are responsible for the crossover, Ginzburg-Landau parameter κ, which specifies the superconducting material of the film, and film thickness d, which controls effects due to stray magnetic fields outside the sample. We demonstrate that their competition gives rise to a complex spatial dependence of the interaction potential between vortices, favoring the formation of chainlike vortex clusters.

Background: The biological activities of dark Chinese teas are largely due to their microbial post-fermentation. Herbal teas are traditional Russian beverages that hold special value, owing to their taste and useful medicinal properties. However, no data are available in the literature on using microbial post-fermentation for enhancing their biological activity. The goal of this work was to demonstrate that the fungus Eurotium isolated from Chinese black teas can be used for the post-fermentation of herbal teas produced from bay willow and apple leaves.Methods: Eurotium cristatum was isolated from brick Chinese tea Fujan and identified using conventional methods of microbiology and molecular biology. Low molecular weight metabolites (phenols, amines, sugars, and amino acids) were determined by HPLC. E. cristatum was grown in association with the bacterium Bacillus amyloliquefaciens.Results: It was revealed to exhibit valuable biosynthetic features, such as a lack of mycotoxins, zero antimicrobial activity, and the capacity to synthesize neuroactive amines. B. amyloliquefaciens displayed a wide spectrum of antibiotic (antimicrobial and antifungal) activities that anifested themselves even with antibiotic-resistant bacteria). While growing on green unfermented tea (Camellia sp.) E. cristatum produced and modified neuroactive amines, such as dopamine, serotonin, and epinephrine. The fungus efficiently grew during the post-fermentation of herbal teas from both bay willow and apple leaves. Even though Camellia leaves substantially differed from bay willow and apple leaves in terms of phenol content, the growth of E. cristatum on Camellia was also sufficiently good. This suggests that the growth of Eurotium fungi is not influenced by the phenolic compounds. The data obtained on the composition of phenolic compounds, carbohydrates, and amino acids in the fermented plants and raw material provide evidence that the growth of the fungus proceeds depends on the hydrolysis of high molecular weight phenols and cell biopolymers in the fermented material.Conclusion: Thus, the ability of E. cristatum to grow on plant leaves of significantly different biochemical composition provides foundations for new technologies aiming to obtain post-fermented herbal teas with high biological activity that are enriched in low molecular weight compounds including biogenic amines.

—Approaches to stabilizing the cells of lactic acid organisms (LAO) investigated in the present work resulted in maintaining the viable cell titer at 107–108 cells/mL, the value recommended for the LAO titer in foodstuffs, for 12 months. Natural LAO associations selected for long-term preservation of LAO cell viability exhibited high efficiency. Lactic acid bacteria Lactobacillus plantarum and yeasts Candida parapsilosis were isolated from the association isolated from marketed curdled milk and selected for 6 months. The death rate of these LAO in binary culture (50% of each component) was several times lower than in monocultures. Adding other approaches for cell stabilization in a binary LAO culture (anoxic conditions and stabilizing antioxidant and biopolymer supplements) resulted in a 5- to 6-fold increase in the number of viable cells after 12-month storage. The algorithm for combined application of several approaches to prolongation of cell viability in the cultures of lactic acid microorganisms during long-term storage (up to 12 months) was not reported previously. It may be recommended for LAO cell stabilization both in fermented milk products and in leaven cultures. This is the first report of C. parapsilosis as the yeast component of a stable association with lactic acid bacteria.

In this work, we revisit the problem of superconductivity under the influence of boundary effects. By solving the Bogoliubov-de Gennes (BdG) equations for the tight-binding model, we demonstrate that the critical temperature of the nucleation of superconductivity near a sample surface can be considerably enhanced as compared to its bulk value. To bring to light this effect, we investigate different methods to solve numerically the BdG equations, including the continuous and Anderson approximations, and perform the calculations for a wide range of the system parameters. We obtain that all the self-consistent BdG eigenstates are delocalized and occupy the entire volume of the sample. Our results reveal that the enhancement of the surface critical temperature originates from the quantum interference of different BdG states contributing to the order parameter. We also find that the surface enhancement is the largest when the conduction band is symmetric with respect to the Fermi level, particularly, the half filling is an important proviso for the pronounced surface effect on the critical temperature. The approximate continuous model as well as the Anderson approximation do not capture the main feature of the surface effect. In addition, our study of this effect versus surface roughness reveals its fragile character.

The data obtained confirmed the effectiveness of using organosilicon compounds to activate the biooxidation of wastewater. Selected compositions can improve the efficiency of wastewater treatment and reduce the cost of biostimulants while increasing the commercial attractiveness of their use.

Small-angle neutron scattering is used in combination with transport measurements to investigate the current-induced effects on the morphology of the intermediate mixed state domains in the intertype superconductor niobium. We report the robust self-organisation of the vortex lattice domains to elongated parallel stripes perpendicular to the applied current in a steady-state. The experimental results for the formation of the superstructure are supported by theoretical calculations, which highlight important details of the vortex matter evolution. The investigation demonstrates a mechanism of a spontaneous pattern formation that is closely related to the universal physics governing the intermediate mixed state in low-$\kappa$ superconductors., Comment: 15 pages, 9 figures

The preservation of activity of extracellular enzymes in soil is presently associated with their immobilization on organic or inorganic carriers. Enzyme immobilization results, however, in a significant decrease in enzymatic activity. In the present work, the mechanism responsible for promotion of the catalytic activity was revealed, as well as the favorable effect of low-molecular alkylhydrozybenzenes of the class of alkylresorcinols, which are common in soil organic matter, on stability of immobilized enzymes (exemplified by amylases) by their post-translational modification. Optimal conditions (enzyme to sorbent ratio, pH optimum, CaCl2 concentration, and sorption time) for amylase sorption on a biological sorbent (yeast cell walls) were determined and decreased activity of the immobilized enzyme compared to its dissolved state was confirmed. Alkylresorcinols (C7AHB) at concentrations of 1.6 to 80 mM were found to cause an increase of amylase activity both in the case of already sorbed enzymes (by 30%) and in the case of a free dissolved enzyme with its subsequent immobilization (by 50–60%). In both cases, the optimal C7AHB concentration was 16 mM. Amylase stability was determined for C7AHB-modified and unmodified enzymes immobilized on the biological sorbent after two cycles of freezing (–20°C) and thawing (4°C). Inverse dependence was revealed between increasing stability of C7AHB-modified enzymes and an increase in their activity, as well as higher stability of immobilized modified amylases than of the dissolved modified enzyme. Investigation of the effect of C7HOB-modification in the preservation of activity in immobilized amylases after four freeze–thaw cycles revealed: (1) better preservation of activity by the modified immobilized enzymes compared to immobilized ones; (2) differences in the dynamics of activity loss within compared pairs, with activity of immobilized amylases decreasing after the second cycle to a lower level (42%) than activity of the modified immobilized enzymes after the fourth cycle (48%). These results demonstrate that in the preservation of activity of extracellular enzymes in soil both stabilization mechanisms are of importance: immobilization on organic carriers and modification of the enzyme conformation by low-molecular compounds with the functions of chemical chaperones.

By numerically solving the Bogoliubov-de Gennes equations for the single vortex state in a two-band superconductor, we demonstrate that the disparity between the healing lengths of two contributing condensates is strongly affected by the band Fermi velocities, even in the presence of the magnetic field and far beyond the regime of nearly zero Josephson-like coupling between bands. Changing the ratio of the band Fermi velocities alters the temperature dependence of the condensate lengths and significantly shifts parameters of the ``length-scales locking" regime at which the two characteristic lengths approach one another., Comment: 10 pages, 9 figures

There is a tacit assumption that multiband superconductors are essentially the same as multigap superconductors. More precisely, it is usually assumed that the number of excitation gaps in the single-particle energy spectrum of a uniform superconductor determines the number of contributing bands in the corresponding superconducting model. Here we demonstrate that contrary to this widely accepted viewpoint, the superconducting magnetic properties are sensitive to the number of contributing bands even when the corresponding excitation gaps are degenerate and cannot be distinguished. In particular, we find that the crossover between superconductivity types I and II - the intertype regime - is strongly affected by difference between characteristic lengths of multiple contributing condensates. The reason for this is that condensates with diverse characteristic lengths coexisting in one system interfere constructively or destructively, which results in multi-condensate magnetic phenomena regardless of the presence/absence of the multigap structure in the single-particle excitation spectrum., Comment: 13 pages and 2 figures

A combination of strong Cooper pairing and weak superconducting fluctuations is crucial to achieve and stabilize high-Tc superconductivity. We demonstrate that a coexistence of a shallow carrier band with strong pairing and a deep band with weak pairing, together with the Josephson-like pair transfer between the bands to couple the two condensates, realizes an optimal multicomponent superconductivity regime: it preserves strong pairing to generate large gaps and a very high critical temperature but screens the detrimental superconducting fluctuations, thereby suppressing the pseudogap state. Surprisingly, we find that the screening is very efficient even when the inter-band coupling is very small. Thus, a multi-band superconductor with a coherent mixture of condensates in the BCS regime (deep band) and in the BCS-BEC crossover regime (shallow band) offers a promising route to higher critical temperatures., Comment: 8 pages, 1 figure, including supplemental materials

Self-duality or matching between the magnetic and condensate characteristic lengths is a fundamental property of isotropic superconductors at the critical Bogomolnyi point (B-point). The self-dual state of the condensate is infinitely degenerate, which is the core reason for the sharp transition between the superconductivity types in the nearest vicinity of the critical temperature T_c. Below T_c non-local interactions in the condensate remove the degeneracy, which leads to the appearance of a finite intertype (IT) domain between types I and II. This domain exhibits the mixed state with exotic field-condensate configurations and non-standard magnetic response, which cannot be understood within the dichotomy of the conventional superconductivity types. At a first glance, this picture does not apply to an anisotropic system because no spatial matching between the condensate and magnetic field can be generally expected for direction-dependent characteristic lengths. However, contrary to these expectations, here we demonstrate that anisotropic superconductors follow the same scenario of the interchange between types I and II. In anisotropic materials the IT domain is governed by the B-point of the effective isotropic model obtained by the appropriate scaling transformation of the initial anisotropic formalism. This transformation depends on the direction of the applied magnetic field, and thus the superconductivity type of strongly anisotropic materials can be dependent on this direction., Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures

It is well known that superconducting films made of a type-I material can demonstrate a type-II magnetic response, developing stable vortex configurations in a perpendicular magnetic field. Here we show that the superconducting state of a type-I nanowire undergoes more complex transformations, depending on the nanowire thickness. Sufficiently thin nanowires deviate from type I and develop multiquantum vortices and vortex clusters similar to intertype (IT) vortex states in bulk superconductors between conventional superconductivity types I and II. When the nanowire thickness decreases further, the quasi-one-dimensional vortex matter evolves towards type II so that the IT vortex configurations gradually disappear in favor of the standard Abrikosov lattice (chain) of single-quantum vortices. However, type II is not reached. Instead, an ultrathin nanowire re-enters abruptly the type-I regime while vortices tend to be suppressed by the boundaries, eventually becoming one-dimensional phase-slip centers. Our results demonstrate that arrays of nanowires can be used to construct composite superconducting materials with a widely tunable magnetic response.

The preservation of activity of extracellular enzymes in soil is presently associated with their immobilization on organic or inorganic carriers. Enzyme immobilization results, however, in a significant decrease in enzymatic activity. In the present work, the mechanism responsible for promotion of the catalytic activity was revealed, as well as the favorable effect of low-molecular alkylhydrozybenzenes of the class of alkylresorcinols, which are common in soil organic matter, on stability of immobilized enzymes (exemplified by amylases) by their post-translational modification. Optimal conditions (enzyme to sorbent ratio, pH optimum, CaCl2 concentration, and sorption time) for amylase sorption on a biological sorbent (yeast cell walls) were determined and decreased activity of the immobilized enzyme compared to its dissolved state was confirmed. Alkylresorcinols (C7AHB) at concentrations of 1.6 to 80 mM were found to cause an increase of amylase activity both in the case of already sorbed enzymes (by 30%) and in the case of a free dissolved enzyme with its subsequent immobilization (by 50–60%). In both cases, the optimal C7AHB concentration was 16 mM. Amylase stability was determined for C7AHB-modified and unmodified enzymes immobilized on the biological sorbent after two cycles of freezing (–20°C) and thawing (4°C). Inverse dependence was revealed between increasing stability of C7AHB-modified enzymes and an increase in their activity, as well as higher stability of immobilized modified amylases than of the dissolved modified enzyme. Investigation of the effect of C7HOB-modification in the preservation of activity in immobilized amylases after four freeze–thaw cycles revealed: (1) better preservation of activity by the modified immobilized enzymes compared to immobilized ones; (2) differences in the dynamics of activity loss within compared pairs, with activity of immobilized amylases decreasing after the second cycle to a lower level (42%) than activity of the modified immobilized enzymes after the fourth cycle (48%). These results demonstrate that in the preservation of activity of extracellular enzymes in soil both stabilization mechanisms are of importance: immobilization on organic carriers and modification of the enzyme conformation by low-molecular compounds with the functions of chemical chaperones.

We investigate how the interplay of quantum confinement and level broadening caused by disorder affects superconducting correlations in ultra-small metallic grains. We use the electron-phonon interaction-induced electron mass renormalization and the reduced static-path approximation of the BCS formalism to calculate the critical temperature as a function of the grain size. We show how the strong electron-impurity scattering additionally smears the peak structure in the electronic density of states of a metallic grain and imposes additional limits on the critical temperature under strong quantum confinement.

This work investigates interactions of vortices in superconducting materials between standard types I and II, in the domain of the so-called intertype (IT) superconductivity. Contrary to common expectations, the many-body (many-vortex) contribution is not a correction to the pair-vortex interaction here but plays a crucial role in the formation of the IT vortex matter. In particular, the many-body interactions stabilize vortex clusters that otherwise could not exist. Furthermore, clusters with large numbers of vortices become more stable when approaching the boundary between the intertype domain and type I. This indicates that IT superconductors develop a peculiar unconventional type of the vortex matter governed by the many-body interactions of vortices.

Multiple condensates in a superconducting material can interfere constructively or destructively and this leads to unconventional effects not inherent in single-band superconductors. Such effects can be pronounced when the spatial scales (healing lengths) of different band condensates deviate from each other. Here we show that, contrary to usual expectations, this deviation can be considerable even far beyond the regime of nearly decoupled bands, being affected by difference between the band Fermi velocities. Our study is performed within the extended Ginzburg-Landau (GL) formalism that goes to one order beyond the GL theory in the perturbation expansion of the microscopic equations over the proximity to ${T}_{c}$. The formalism makes it possible to obtain closed analytical results for the profiles of the band condensates and for their healing lengths and, at the same time, captures the difference between the healing lengths which does not appear in the standard GL domain.

We demonstrate that in a weak-coupled two-band superconducting slab the interaction between vortices penetrating the sample and its boundaries leads to the phenomenon of vortex splitting, which divides composite vortices and creates fractional ones. The interaction between vortices, attractive for different bands and repulsive for the same band, which is controlled by the electric current density flowing through the system, leads to an ordered alternating arrangement of the vortices. This arrangement creates nonequilibrium interband phase textures or domains with different signs of the Josephson energy of the interaction between the band condensates. Such phase textures have a significant effect on the dissipation caused by the vortex motion. In particular, in the phase-texture regime the onset of the dissipation is shifted to higher current densities.

The appearance of a shallow band(s) drives a superconductor towards the BCS-BEC crossover, conventionally associated with notable changes in single-particle properties and an elevated critical temperature. Here we demonstrate that the proximity to the crossover induced by a shallow band has also a dramatic effect on the phase diagram of the superconducting magnetic properties. When the system passes from the BCS to BEC regime, the intertype domain between superconductivity types I and II enlarges systematically, being inversely proportional to the square of the Cooper-pair radius, the main parameter that controls the BCS-BEC superconductivity. We also show that despite the presence of a shallow band, the condensate fluctuations are suppressed when it coexists in one material with standard deep bands, as in recent iron chalcogenides ${\mathrm{Fe}\mathrm{Se}}_{x}{\mathrm{Te}}_{1\ensuremath{-}x}$ and $\mathrm{FeSe}$.

We study the coherent dynamics of pairing in a nanoscale superconductor, that is intrinsically multiband, after an external perturbation in the non-adiabatic regime. The description of the dynamics of the pairing order is within the density-matrix approach based on the BCS model and the Bogoliubov-de Gennes equations. We find that for certain resonant wire widths the superconducting order parameter exhibits two oscillatory frequencies which are determined by the long-time asymptotic values of the subgaps. This in turn leads to a pronounced beating phenomenon. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The possibility of using nuclear explosions to prevent dangerous space objects, specifically, the asteroid Apophis, from colliding with our planet is evaluated. Two variants are considered: delivery of an impulse capable of deflecting the trajectory to a safe distance from Earth or fragmentation by means of a powerful explosion into fragments small enough not to cause a catastrophe during an encounter with Earth. The dynamics of the destruction of the asteroid is examined. The fragment size distribution after a nuclear explosion with a definite energy release is presented. It is concluded that to prevent a dangerous collision between our planet and the asteroid Apophis the nuclear explosions must be applied well ahead of time.

Superconducting films are usually regarded as type II superconductors even when they are made of a type I material. The reason is the presence of stray magnetic fields that stabilize the vortex matter by inducing long-range repulsive interactions between vortices. While very thin films indeed reach this limit, there is a large interval of thicknesses where magnetic properties of superconducting films cannot be classified as either of the two conventional superconductivity types. Recent calculations revealed that in this interval the system exhibits spontaneous formation of magnetic flux-condensate patterns and superstructures appearing due to the interplay between the long-range stray field effects and proximity to the Bogomolnyi self-duality point. These calculations were based on the periodic in-plane boundary conditions which, as is well known from classical electrodynamics, for systems with long-range interactions can lead to field distortions and considerable discrepancies between results of different calculation methods. Here we demonstrate that similar spontaneous patterns are obtained for superconducting films with open in-plane boundary conditions (vanishing in-plane currents perpendicular to the edges of the finite film) and thus the phenomenon is not an artefact of chosen boundary conditions.

The Bogomolnyi point separates superconductivity types I and II while itself hiding infinitely degenerate magnetic flux configurations, including very exotic states (referred to here as flux ``monsters''). When the degeneracy is removed, the Bogomolnyi point unfolds into a finite, intertype domain in the phase diagram between types I and II. One can expect that in this case the flux monsters can escape their ``prison'' at the Bogomolnyi point, occupying the intertype domain and shaping its internal structure. Our calculations reveal that such exotic flux distributions are indeed stable in the intertype regime of thin superconductors made of a type-I material, where the Bogomolnyi degeneracy is removed by stray magnetic fields. They can be classified into three typical patterns that are qualitatively different from those in types I and II: superconducting islands separated by vortex chains; stripes/worms/labyrinths patterns; and mixtures of giant vortices and vortex clusters. Our findings shed light on the problem of the interchange between types I and II, raising important questions on the completeness of the textbook classification of the superconductivity types.

In the nearest vicinity of the critical temperature, types I and II of conventional single-band superconductors interchange at the Ginzburg-Landau parameter $\ensuremath{\kappa}=1/\sqrt{2}$. At lower temperatures this point unfolds into a narrow but finite interval of $\ensuremath{\kappa}$'s, shaping an intertype (transitional) domain in the $(\ensuremath{\kappa},T)$ plane. In the present work, based on the extended Ginzburg-Landau formalism, we show that the same picture of the two standard types with the transitional domain in between applies also to multiband superconductors. However, the intertype domain notably widens in the presence of multiple bands and can become extremely large when the system has a significant disparity between the band parameters. It is concluded that many multiband superconductors, such as recently discovered borides and iron-based materials, can belong to the intertype regime.

We study the vortex profiles in two-gap superconductors using the extended Ginzburg-Landau theory. The results shed more light on the disparity between the effective length scales in two bands. We compare the behavior expected from the standard Ginzburg-Landau theory with this new approach, and find good qualitative agreement in the case of LiFeAs. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The use of nuclear charges to prevent dangerous space objects from impacting the Earth is considered. Emphasis is placed on of two problems: imparting momentum to small cosmic bodies (SCBs) detected at a sufficient distance from the Earth to divert their trajectory to a safe distance from the planet; disintegration of SCBs by a nuclear explosion into fragments small enough compared to the initial body so that their impact on the Earth does not lead to an accident. The energy release of nuclear charges necessary to achieve this goal is estimated. The fragmentation process is considered using as an example a hypothetical SCB of the type of the asteroid Icarus.

The properties of a clean superconductor with nanoscale dimensions are governed by quantum confinement of the electrons. This results in a spatially inhomogeneous superconducting condensate and in the formation of new Andreev-type quasiparticle states. These states are mainly located beyond regions where the superconducting condensate is enhanced. A numerical self-consistent solution of the Bogoliubov-de Gennes equations for a cylindrical metallic nanowire shows that these new Andreev-type states decrease the ratio of the energy gap to the critical temperature.

Quantum confinement is the major mechanism governing superconductivity in highly crystalline metallic specimens with nanoscale dimensions. Changes in the single-electron spectrum due to size quantization result in quantum-size variations of the superconducting properties (e.g., critical temperature and critical magnetic field) with profound enhancements at the points of the superconducting resonances. Our investigation is based on a self-consistent numerical solution of the Bogoliubov-de Gennes equations for clean metallic nanofilms and nanowires.

Magnetic response is a fundamental property of superconducting materials, which helps to distinguish two superconductivity types: the ideally diamagnetic type I and type II, which can develop the mixed state with Abrikosov vortices. We demonstrate that multi-band superconductors with one shallow band, that have recently attracted much attention for their high critical temperatures and unusual properties, often stay apart of this simple classification. In a wide range of microscopic parameters such systems fall into the inter-type or transitional interval in between the standard types and display unconventional mixed state configurations., Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure

Superconductors, ideally diamagnetic when in the Meissner state, can also exhibit paramagnetic behavior due to trapped magnetic flux. In the absence of pinning such paramagnetic response is weak, and ceases with increasing sample thickness. Here we show that in multiband superconductors paramagnetic response can be observed even in slab geometries, and can be far larger than any previous estimate - even multiply larger than the diamagnetic Meissner response for the same applied magnetic field. We link the appearance of this giant paramagnetic response to the broad crossover between conventional Type-I and Type-II superconductors, where Abrikosov vortices interact non-monotonically and multibody effects become important, causing unique flux configurations and their locking in the presence of surfaces., Comment: 9 pages, 6 figures

Low-molecular-weight cell-to-cell communication factors are produced by various pro- and eukaryotes and involved in autoregulation of the growth and development of microbial cultures. As for some bacterial and yeast species, these factors were identified as isomers and homologues of alkylhydroxybenzenes (AHB). Depending on the concentration, they participate in controlling the transition to stationary phase, entering the resting state, and stress resistance of vegetative cells to gamma-irradiation, photooxidation (singlet oxygen), and heat shock. Chemical analogues of microbial AHB protected microbial cultures from stressful situations and exerted (1) the stabilizing activity toward macromolecules and (2) the ability to scavenge active oxygen species. The stabilizing effect of AHBs resulted from their complex formation with protected macromolecules due to intermolecular hydrogen bonds, hydrophobic and electrostatic interactions and was demonstrated on models of individual enzymes (trypsin). Particularly, AHBs protected the yeast from the action of (a) active oxygen species formed during gamma-irradiation (500 Gy, 1.96 Gy/s) or (b) singlet oxygen generated in cells photosensitized by chlorin e 6 (10 μg/L). It is important that microbial AHBs were not species-specific and defended cultured microbial and animal cells from the action of organic toxicants. The use of AHBs as protectants and adaptogens is discussed as well as perspectives of further investigations.

It has been shown that one of the alkyl hydroxybenzenes, C7-AHB, can be used in malting for regulating barley growth. Depending on concentration (0.01–1.0%) and duration (from 10 min to 6 h), treatment of barley with a C7-AHB solution stimulates embryo development (0.01–0.02%) or suppresses the growth of vegetative organs (>0.5%) and modulates enzyme activities in germinating grains. Stimulation of the activities of the amylolytic and protein–proteinase complexes in barley depending on the C7-AHB concentration improves malt quality by increasing both the degree of its saccharification and protein dissolution.

A brief and simple introduction into the problem of the thermodynamical consistency is given. The thermodynamical consistency relations, which should be taken into account under constructing a quasiparticle model, are found in a general manner from the finite-temperature extension of the Hellmann-Feynman theorem. Restrictions following from these relations are illustrated by simple physical examples.

The purpose of the present article is to call attention to some realistic quasiparticle-based description of the quark/gluon matter and its consistent implementation in thermodynamics. A simple and transparent representation of the thermodynamical consistency conditions is given. This representation allows one to review critically and systemize available phenomenological approaches to the deconfinement problem with respect to their thermodynamical consistency. A particular attention is paid to the development of a method for treating the string screening in the dense matter of unbound color charges. The proposed method yields an integrable effective pair potential which can be incorporated into the mean-field picture. The results of its application are in reasonable agreement with lattice data on the QCD thermodynamics., Comment: revised figures, minor style corrections and added new references

The well-known results concerning a dilute Bose gas with the short-range repulsive interaction should be reconsidered due to a thermodynamic inconsistency of the method being basic to much of the present understanding of this subject. The aim of our paper is to propose another way of treating the dilute Bose gas with an arbitrary strong interaction. Using the reduced density matrix of the second order and a variational procedure, this way allows us to escape the inconsistency mentioned and operate with singular potentials of the Lennard-Jones type. The derived expansion of the condensate depletion in powers of the boson density n=N/V reproduces the familiar result, while the expansion for the mean energy per particle is of the form epsilon=2 pi planck(2)an/m[1+128/(15 square root of [pi]) square root of [na(3)](1-5b/8a)+...], where a is the scattering length and b> or =0 stands for one more characteristic length depending on the shape of the interaction potential (in particular, for the hard spheres a=b). All the consideration concerns the zero temperature.

As is known, the 1/q^2 theorem of Bogoliubov asserts that the mean density of the fermion pair states with the total momentum q obeys the inequality n_q > C/q^2 (q \to 0) in the case of the Fermi system taken at nonzero temperature and in the superconducting state provided the interaction term of its Hamiltonian is locally gauge invariant. With the principle of correlation weakening it is proved in this paper that the reason for the mentioned singular behaviour of n_q is the presence of the bound states of particle pairs with nonzero total momenta. Thus, below the temperature of the superconducting phase transition there always exist the bound states of the fermion couples beyond the pair condensate. If the pseudogap observed in the normal phase of the high-T_c superconductors is stipulated by the presence of the electron bound pairs, then the derived result suggests, in a model-independent manner, that the pseudogap survives below T_c.

The model recently proposed by A.A. Shanenko [Phys. Lett. A 227 (1997) 367] is used to derive linear integro-differential equations whose solutions provide reasonable estimates for the momentum distribution and condensate fraction in interacting many-boson system at zero temperature. An advantage of these equations is that they can be employed in the weak coupling regime and beyond. As an example, analytical treatment of the weak coupling case is given., Comment: 12 pages, REVTEX, no figures, submitted to Phys. Lett. A

Chiral fermions are responsible for low-temperature properties of vortices in fermionic condensates, both superconducting (charged) and superfluid (neutral). One of the most striking consequences of this fact is that the core of a single-quantum vortex collapses at low temperatures, T -> 0 (i.e., the Kramer-Pesch effect for superconductors), due to the presence of chiral quasiparticles in the vortex-core region. We show that the situation changes drastically for fermionic condensates confined in quasi-one-dimensional and quasi-two-dimensional geometries. Here quantum confinement breaks the chirality of in-core fermions. As a result, instead of the ultimate shrinking, the core of a single-quantum vortex extends at low temperatures, and the condensate profile surprisingly mimics the multiquantum vortex behavior. Our findings are relevant for nanoscale superconductors, such as recent metallic nanoislands on silicon, and also for ultracold superfluid Fermi gases in cigar-shaped and pancake-shaped atomic traps.

A simple model of estimating the radial distribution function of an imperfect Bose gas in the ground state is presented. The model is based on integro-differential equations derived by considering the space boson distribution in an external field. With the approach proposed, the particular case of dilute Bose gas is investigated within the hard sphere approximation and beyond.

A procedure to derive the Ginzburg-Landau (GL) theory from the multiband BCS Hamiltonian is developed in a general case with an arbitrary number of bands and arbitrary interaction matrix. It combines the standard Gor'kov truncation and a subsequent reconstruction in order to match accuracies of the obtained terms. This reconstruction recovers the phenomenological GL theory as obtained from the Landau model of phase transitions but offers explicit microscopic expressions for the relevant parameters. Detailed calculations are presented for a three-band system treated as a prototype multiband superconductor. It is demonstrated that the symmetry in the coupling matrix may lead to the chiral ground state with the phase frustration, typical for systems with broken time-reversal symmetry., Comment: 9 pages

The QCD phase transition is treated within a statistical model taking into account the coexistence of interacting quark-gluon and hadron phases. Being in agreement with the recent lattice QCD data, this statistical mixed phase model predicts that the “softest point” of the equation of state, resulting in the longest-lived fireball effect, is atesp ≈ 0.35GeV/fm3. It is shown that this “softest point” is washed out at the baryon densities higher than the normal nuclear density. The approach is extended to include strangeness. Attention is drawn to the study of signatures for forming the mixed quark-hadron phase of nuclear matter in the collision energy rangeElab ≈ 2–10 GeV/A.

Statistical systems whose particles can coagulate, forming compact bound objects called droplets or clusters are considered. We analyze the methods of constructing effective thermodynamic potentials for such systems and of calculating their thermodynamic characteristics. The central point of our paper is the formulation of thermodynamic restriction rules which permit a correct definition of thermodynamic characteristics; not following these rules may lead to unphysical results. The application of the restriction rule is illustrated by a statistical model of quark–gluon clustering matter.

Bogomolnyi critical point, originally introduced in string theories, is fundamental to superconductivity. At the critical temperature T_c it marks the sharp border between ideally diamagnetic bulk type-I superconductors and type-II ones that can host vortices, while itself it harbors infinitely degenerate distributions of magnetic flux in the superconducting state. Here we show that below T_c the physics of the Bogomolnyi critical point projects onto a wider range of microscopic parameters, even extremely wide for multiband superconductors. In this critical range, the degeneracy of the superconducting state at Tc is lifted into a sequence of novel topological equilibria and the customary understanding of superconducting phenomena does not suffice. As a radical departure from traditional views, we introduce the paradigm of critical superconductors, discuss their distinct magnetic properties, advocate their subdivision in terms of possible intermediate states, and demonstrate direct relevance of this paradigm to superconducting materials of prime interest today., Comment: submitted to PRL