Biomedical subjects

Alberto Verga

Publications and source records attributed to Alberto Verga.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

Effect of step stiffness and diffusion anisotropy on the meandering of a growing vicinal surface.

We study the step meandering instability on a surface characterized by the alternation of terraces with different properties, as in the case of Si(001). The interplay between diffusion anisotropy and step stiffness induces a finite wavelength instability corresponding to a meandering mode. The instability sets in beyond a threshold value which depends on the relative magnitudes of the destabilizing flux and the stabilizing stiffness difference. The meander dynamics is governed by the conserved Kuramoto-Sivashinsky equation, which display spatiotemporal coarsening.

Journal Article↗

PubMed2005

Kinetic step bunching instability during surface growth.

We study the step bunching kinetic instability in a growing crystal surface characterized by anisotropic diffusion. The instability is due to the interplay between the elastic interactions and the alternation of step parameters. This instability is predicted to occur on a vicinal semiconductor surface Si(001) or Ge(001) during epitaxial growth. The maximal growth rate of the step bunching increases like F4, where F is the deposition flux. Our results are complemented with numerical simulations which reveal a coarsening behavior in the long time evolution for the nonlinear step dynamics.

Journal Article↗

PubMed2004

Relaxation towards localized vorticity states in drift plasma and geostrophic flows.

The drift of ions in a magnetized plasma or the height fluctuations of a rotating fluid layer are described by the conservation equation of a potential vorticity. This potential vorticity contains an intrinsic length scale, the hybrid Larmor radius in plasma, and the Rossby length in the quasigeostrophic flow. The influence of this scale in the evolution of a random initial vorticity field is investigated using a thermodynamic approach. In contrast to the perfect fluid case, where the vorticity tends to a well defined stationary state, complete relaxation towards an equilibrium state is not observed in numerical simulations of quasigeostrophic decaying turbulence. The absence of global thermodynamic equilibrium is explained by the relaxation towards states of local equilibrium where the vorticity is concentrated. The interaction between these separated regions is extremely weak. Explicit, axisymmetric, localized solutions of the mean field integrodifferential equation of extremal entropy states are obtained using asymptotic methods. A comparison of the computed solutions with the observed coherent structures shows that they effectively correspond to states in local thermodynamic equilibrium.

Journal Article↗

PubMed2002

Slow relaxation and solvent effects in the collapse of a polymer.

Using molecular dynamic simulations we study the quench of a homopolymer chain into a poor solvent at finite temperature. We show that, depending on the quench depth, there are different relaxation pathways to the collapsed state. Solvent effects are introduced through an effective Lennard-Jones potential depending on the local monomer density. The various relaxation regimes are characterized by the contact correlation function. As the quench depth increases, the system evolves towards a glassy state, and the relaxation dynamics continuously changes from an exponential to a stretched exponential law. The characteristic relaxation time diverges at low temperature following an Arrhenius law, like in the case of strong glasses. We found that the stretching exponent depends on aging in a nonuniversal way. The solvent modifies the globular state by diminishing the effects of frustration and glassy behavior.

Journal Article↗

PubMed2002

Unwinding globules under tension and polymer collapse.

Polymer collapse is known to be mediated by the formation of pearls. These intermediate structures behave as small globules under tension. The globule size is studied by molecular dynamic simulations as a function of the strength of an external stretching force applied to its ends, for different values of the chain length. A very strong first-order-like transition from a compact globule state to a stretched one is observed. A model of this transition in terms of a globule-chain system is presented. The critical force, above which the globule unwinds, is shown to satisfy a power law scaling like N(1/3) in the number of monomers.

Models, Chemical↗