While many researchers adopt a sharding approach to design scaling blockchains, few works have studied the transaction placement problem incurred by sharding protocols. The widely-used hashing placement algorithm renders an overwhelming portion of tr
ansactions as cross-shard. In this paper, we analyze the high cost of cross-shard transactions and reveal that most Bitcoin transactions have simple dependencies and can become single-shard under a placement algorithm taking transaction dependencies into account. In addition, we perform a case study of OptChain, which is the state-of-the-art transaction placement algorithm for sharded blockchains, and find a defect of it. A fix is proposed, and our evaluation results demonstrate that the fix helps OptChain improve the system throughput by 4x.
We have used neutron spectroscopy to investigate the spin dynamics of the quantum (S = 1/2) antiferromagnetic Ising chains in RbCoCl3. The structure and magnetic interactions in this material conspire to produce two magnetic phase transitions at low
temperatures, presenting an ideal opportunity for thermal control of the chain environment. The high-resolution spectra we measure of two-domain-wall excitations therefore characterize precisely both the continuum response of isolated chains and the Zeeman-ladder bound states of chains in three different effective staggered fields in one and the same material. We apply an extended Matsubara formalism to obtain a quantitative description of the entire dataset, Monte Carlo simulations to interpret the magnetic order, and finite-temperature DMRG calculations to fit the spectral features of all three phases.
Hopf solitons in the Skyrme-Faddeev system on $R^3$ typically have a complicated structure, in particular when the Hopf number Q is large. By contrast, if we work on a compact 3-manifold M, and the energy functional consists only of the Skyrme term (
the strong-coupling limit), then the picture simplifies. There is a topological lower bound $Egeq Q$ on the energy, and the local minima of E can look simple even for large Q. The aim here is to describe and investigate some of these solutions, when M is $S^3$, $T^3$ or $S^2 times S^1$. In addition, we review the more elementary baby-Skyrme system, with M being $S^2$ or $T^2$.
The magnetic insulator Yttrium Iron Garnet can be grown with exceptional quality, has a ferrimagnetic transition temperature of nearly 600 K, and is used in microwave and spintronic devices that can operate at room temperature. The most accurate prio
r measurements of the magnon spectrum date back nearly 40 years, but cover only 3 of the lowest energy modes out of 20 distinct magnon branches. Here we have used time-of-flight inelastic neutron scattering to measure the full magnon spectrum throughout the Brillouin zone. We find that the existing model of the excitation spectrum, well known from an earlier work titled The Saga of YIG, fails to describe the optical magnon modes. Using a very general spin Hamiltonian, we show that the magnetic interactions are both longer-ranged and more complex than was previously understood. The results provide the basis for accurate microscopic models of the finite temperature magnetic properties of Yttrium Iron Garnet, necessary for next-generation electronic devices.
The challenge of one-dimensional systems is to understand their physics beyond the level of known elementary excitations. By high-resolution neutron spectroscopy in a quantum spin ladder material, we probe the leading multiparticle excitation by char
acterizing the two-magnon bound state at zero field. By applying high magnetic fields, we create and select the singlet (longitudinal) and triplet (transverse) excitations of the fully spin-polarized ladder, which have not been observed previously and are close analogs of the modes anticipated in a polarized Haldane chain. Theoretical modelling of the dynamical response demonstrates our complete quantitative understanding of these states.
This letter describes a completely-integrable system of Yang-Mills-Higgs equations which generalizes the Hitchin equations on a Riemann surface to arbitrary k-dimensional complex manifolds. The system arises as a dimensional reduction of a set of int
egrable Yang-Mills equations in 4k real dimensions. Our integrable system implies other generalizations such as the Simpson equations and the non-abelian Seiberg-Witten equations. Some simple solutions in the k=2 case are described.
Self-dual Yang-Mills instantons on $R^4$ correspond to algebraic ADHM data. The ADHM equations for $S^1$-symmetric instantons give a one-dimensional integrable lattice system, which may be viewed as an discretization of the Nahm equations. In this no
te, we see that generalized ADHM data for $T^2$-symmetric instantons gives an integrable two-dimensional lattice system, which may be viewed as a discrete version of the Hitchin equations.
We study smooth SU(2) solutions of the Hitchin equations on R^2, with the determinant of the complex Higgs field being a polynomial of degree n. When n>=3, there are moduli spaces of solutions, in the sense that the natural L^2 metric is well-defined
on a subset of the parameter space. We examine rotationally-symmetric solutions for n=1 and n=2, and then focus on the n=3 case, elucidating the moduli and describing the asymptotic geometry as well as the geometry of two totally-geodesic surfaces.
The moduli space of centred Bogomolny-Prasad-Sommmerfield 2-monopole fields is a 4-dimensional manifold M with a natural metric, and the geodesics on M correspond to slow-motion monopole dynamics. The best-known case is that of monopoles on R^3, wher
e M is the Atiyah-Hitchin space. More recently, the case of monopoles periodic in one direction (monopole chains) was studied a few years ago. Our aim in this note is to investigate M for doubly-periodic fields, which may be visualized as monopole walls. We identify some of the geodesics on M as fixed-point sets of discrete symmetries, and interpret these in terms of monopole scattering and bound orbits, concentrating on novel features that arise as a consequence of the periodicity.
Magnetic insulators have proven to be usable as quantum simulators for itinerant interacting quantum systems. In particular the compound (C$_{5}$H$_{12}$N)$_{2}$CuBr$_{4}$ (short (Hpip)$_{2}$CuBr$_{4}$) was shown to be a remarkable realization of a T
omonaga-Luttinger liquid (TLL) and allowed to quantitatively test the TLL theory. Substitution weakly disorders this class of compounds and allows thus to use them to tackle questions pertaining to the effect of disorder in TLL as well, such as the formation of the Bose glass. As a first step in this direction we present in this paper a study of the properties of the related (Hpip)$_{2}$CuCl$_{4}$ compound. We determine the exchange couplings and compute the temperature and magnetic field dependence of the specific heat, using a finite temperature Density Matrix Renormalization group (DMRG) procedure. Comparison with the measured specific heat at zero magnetic field confirms the exchange parameters and Hamiltonian for the (Hpip)$_{2}$CuCl$_{4}$ compound, giving the basis needed to start studying the disorder effects.
