Affine connections and second-order affine structures

Smooth manifolds have been always understood intuitively as spaces with an affine geometry on the infinitesimal scale. In Synthetic Differential Geometry this can be made precise by showing that a smooth manifold carries a natural structure of an infinitesimally affine space. This structure is comprised of two pieces of data: a sequence of symmetric and reflexive relations defining the tuples of mutual infinitesimally close points, called an infinitesimal structure, and an action of affine combinations on these tuples. For smooth manifolds the only natural infinitesimal structure that has been considered so far is the one generated by the first neighbourhood of the diagonal. In this paper we construct natural infinitesimal structures for higher-order neighbourhoods of the diagonal and show that on any manifold any symmetric affine connection extends to a second-order infinitesimally affine structure

Structure of the Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov state in two-dimensional superconductors

Nonuniform superconducting state due to strong spin magnetism is studied in two-dimensional type-II superconductors near the second order phase transition line between the normal and the superconducting states. The optimum spatial structure of the orderparameter is examined in systems with cylindrical symmetric Fermi surfaces. It is found that states with two-dimensional structures have lower free energies than the traditional one-dimensional solutions, at low temperatures and high magnetic fields. For s-wave pairing, triangular, square, hexagonal states are favored depending on the temperature, while square states are favored at low temperatures for d-wave pairing. In these states, orderparameters have two-dimensional structures such as square and triangular lattices.Comment: 11 pages (LaTeX, revtex.sty), 3 figures; added reference

The Hunter-Saxton equation: remarkable structures of symmetries and conserved densities

In this paper, we present extraordinary algebraic and geometrical structures for the Hunter-Saxton equation: infinitely many commuting and non-commuting $x,t$-independent higher order symmetries and conserved densities. Using a recursive relation, we explicitly generate infinitely many higher order conserved densities dependent on arbitrary parameters. We find three Nijenhuis recursion operators resulting from Hamiltonian pairs, of which two are new. They generate three hierarchies of commuting local symmetries. Finally, we give a local recursion operator depending on an arbitrary parameter. As a by-product, we classify all anti-symmetric operators of a definite form that are compatible with the Hamiltonian operator $D_x^{-1}$

Excitons in T-shaped quantum wires

We calculate energies, oscillator strengths for radiative recombination, and two-particle wave functions for the ground state exciton and around 100 excited states in a T-shaped quantum wire. We include the single-particle potential and the Coulomb interaction between the electron and hole on an equal footing, and perform exact diagonalisation of the two-particle problem within a finite basis set. We calculate spectra for all of the experimentally studied cases of T-shaped wires including symmetric and asymmetric GaAs/Al$_{x}$Ga$_{1-x}$As and In$_{y}$Ga$_{1-y}$As/Al$_{x}$Ga$_{1-x}$As structures. We study in detail the shape of the wave functions to gain insight into the nature of the various states for selected symmetric and asymmetric wires in which laser emission has been experimentally observed. We also calculate the binding energy of the ground state exciton and the confinement energy of the 1D quantum-wire-exciton state with respect to the 2D quantum-well exciton for a wide range of structures, varying the well width and the Al molar fraction $x$. We find that the largest binding energy of any wire constructed to date is 16.5 meV. We also notice that in asymmetric structures, the confinement energy is enhanced with respect to the symmetric forms with comparable parameters but the binding energy of the exciton is then lower than in the symmetric structures. For GaAs/Al$_{x}$Ga$_{1-x}$As wires we obtain an upper limit for the binding energy of around 25 meV in a 10 {\AA} wide GaAs/AlAs structure which suggests that other materials must be explored in order to achieve room temperature applications. There are some indications that In$_{y}$Ga$_{1-y}$As/Al$_{x}$Ga$_{1-x}$As might be a good candidate.Comment: 20 pages, 10 figures, uses RevTeX and psfig, submitted to Physical Review

Cosmic structures and gravitational waves in ghost-free scalar-tensor theories of gravity

We study cosmic structures in the quadratic Degenerate Higher Order Scalar Tensor (qDHOST) model, which has been proposed as the most general scalar-tensor theory (up to quadratic dependence on the covariant derivatives of the scalar field), which is not plagued by the presence of ghost instabilities. We then study a static, spherically symmetric object embedded in de Sitter space-time for the qDHOST model. This model exhibits breaking of the Vainshtein mechanism inside the cosmic structure and Schwarzschild-de Sitter space-time outside, where General Relativity (GR) can be recovered within the Vainshtein radius. We then look for the conditions on the parameters on the considered qDHOST scenario which ensure the validity of the Vainshtein screening mechanism inside the object and the fulfilment of the recent GW170817/GRB170817A constraint on the speed of propagation of gravitational waves. We find that these two constraints rule out the same set of parameters, corresponding to the Lagrangians that are quadratic in second-order derivatives of the scalar field, for the shift symmetric qDHOST.Comment: 16 page