Publications
Discovering the flight autostabilizer of fruit flies by inducing aerial stumbles
Just as the Wright brothers implemented controls to achieve stable airplane flight, flying insects have evolved behavioral strategies that ensure recovery from flight disturbances. Pioneering studies performed on tethered and dissected insects demonstrate that the sensory, neurological, and musculoskeletal systems play important roles in flight control. Such studies, however, cannot produce an integrative model of insect flight stability because they do not incorporate the interaction of these systems with free-flight aerodynamics.
Evolution of electronic structure from insulator to superconductor in Bi2Sr2-xLax(Ca,Y )Cu2 O 8+δ
La-doped and Y-doped Bi2 Sr2 CaCu2 O 8+δ compounds Bi2Sr2-xLax(Ca,Y )Cu2 O8+δ, which range from the insulator to the deeply underdoped superconductor, have been studied by angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy. We have observed that the lower Hubbard band (LHB) of the parent insulator is gradually shifted upward with doping without significantly changing the band dispersions, which implies a downward shift of the chemical potential with hole doping.
Spin-charge interplay in electronic liquid crystals: Fluctuating spin stripe driven by charge nematic ordering
We study the interplay between charge and spin ordering in electronic liquid crystalline states with a particular emphasis on fluctuating spin stripe phenomena observed in recent neutron scattering experiments. Based on a phenomenological model, we propose that charge nematic ordering is indeed behind the formation of temperature dependent incommensurate inelastic peaks near wave vector (π, π) in the dynamic structure factor of YBa2Cu3O6+y. We strengthen this claim by providing a compelling fit to the experimental data. © 2010 The American Physical Society.
Many-body physics in the radio-frequency spectrum of lattice bosons
We calculate the radio-frequency spectrum of a trapped cloud of cold bosonic atoms in an optical lattice. By using random phase and local-density approximations we produce both trap-averaged and spatially resolved spectra, identifying simple features in the spectra that reveal information about both superfluidity and correlations. Our approach is exact in the deep Mott limit and in the dilute superfluid when the hopping rates for the two internal spin states are equal.
Compact and flexible basis functions for quantum Monte Carlo calculations
Molecular calculations in quantum Monte Carlo frequently employ a mixed basis consisting of contracted and primitive Gaussian functions. While standard basis sets of varying size and accuracy are available in the literature, we demonstrate that reoptimizing the primitive function exponents within quantum Monte Carlo yields more compact basis sets for a given accuracy. Particularly large gains are achieved for highly excited states.
On-site correlations in optical lattices: Band mixing to coupled quantum Hall puddles
We extend the standard Bose-Hubbard model to capture arbitrarily strong on-site correlations. In addition to being important for quantitatively modeling experiments, for example, with rubidium atoms, these correlations must be included to describe more exotic situations. Two such examples are when the interactions are made large via a Feshbach resonance and when each site rotates rapidly, making a coupled array of quantum Hall puddles. Remarkably, even the mean field approximation to our model includes all on-site correlations.
High-resolution spatial mapping of shear properties in cartilage
Structural properties of articular cartilage such as proteoglycan content, collagen content and collagen alignment are known to vary over length scales as small as a few microns (Bullough and Goodfellow, 1968; Bi et al., 2006). Characterizing the resulting variation in mechanical properties is critical for understanding how the inhomogeneous architecture of this tissue gives rise to its function.
Laminating lattices with symmetrical glue
We use the automorphism group Aut(H), of holes in the lattice L8=A2⊕A2⊕D4, as the starting point in the construction of sphere packings in 10 and 12 dimensions. A second lattice, L4=A2⊕A2, enters the construction because a subgroup of Aut(L4) is isomorphic to Aut(H). The lattices L8 and L4, when glued together through this relationship, provide an alternative construction of the laminated lattice in twelve dimensions with kissing number 648.
Slow cooling and temperature-controlled protein crystallography
In cryocrystallography, rapid sample cooling is generally deemed essential to prevent solvent crystallization and associated sample damage. We show that by carefully and completely removing all external solvent, many protein crystals can be successfully cooled to T = 100 K at only 0.1 K/s without additional penetrating cryoprotectants. Slow cooling provides an alternative when flash cooling fails, and enables diffraction studies of protein structure and function at all temperatures between T = 300 K and T = 100 K. © 2009 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.
Classical density-functional theory of inhomogeneous water including explicit molecular structure and nonlinear dielectric response
We present an accurate free-energy functional for liquid water written in terms of a set of effective potential fields in which fictitious noninteracting water molecules move. The functional contains an exact expression of the entropy of noninteracting molecules and thus provides an ideal starting point for the inclusion of complex intermolecular interactions which depend on the orientation of the interacting molecules.