The ears of insects exhibit a broad functional diversity with the ability to detect sounds across a wide range of frequencies and intensities. In tympanal ears, the membrane is a crucial step in the transduction of the acoustic stimulus into a neural signal. The tropical butterfly Morpho peleides has an oval-shaped membrane at the base of the forewing with an unusual dome in the middle of the s...

We study connections between vibrational spectra and average nearest neighbor number in disordered clusters of colloidal particles with attractive interactions. Measurements of displacement covariances between particles in each cluster permit calculation of the stiffness matrix, which contains effective spring constants linking pairs of particles. From the cluster stiffness matrix, we derive vi...

We consider separately a spin and an oscillator that are coupled to their environment. After a finite interval of random length, the state of the environment changes, and each change causes a random change in the resonance frequency of the spin or vibrational frequency of the oscillator. Mathematically, the evolution of these frequencies is described by a continuous-time random walk. Physically...

We report the first spectroscopic observation of and vibrational predissociation dynamics for ArBr(2). Measurements are reported for the linear and T-shaped isomers with time and frequency resolution near the Fourier limit of a 15 ps pulse. For the T-shaped isomer, the Ar-Br(2) bond energy D(0) for the B state, nu(')=19, is found to be 200 cm(-1), yielding a D(0)(X) value of 213 cm(-1). Product...

Employing extensive quantum-chemical calculations at the DFT/B3LYP and MP2 level, quartic force fields of isolated N-methylacetamide are constructed. Taking into account 24 vibrational degrees of freedom, the model is employed to perform numerically exact vibrational configuration interaction calculations of the vibrational energy relaxation of the amide I mode. It is found that the energy tran...

The evolution of the vibrational spectra of the isoelectronic hydrogen clusters H26, H24He, and H24Li(+) is determined with pressure. We establish the vibrational modes with collective character common to the clusters, identify their individual vibrational fingerprints and discuss frequency shifts in the giga-Pascal pressure region. The results are of interest for the identification of doping e...