Fabrication and Characterization of Electrostatic Quantum Dots in a Si/SiGe 2D Electron Gas, Including an Integrated Read-out Channel

A new fabrication technique is used to produce quantum dots with read-out channels in silicon/silicon-germanium two-dimensional electron gases. The technique utilizes Schottky gates, placed on the sides of a shallow etched quantum dot, to control the electronic transport process. An adjacent quantum point contact gate is integrated to the side gates to define a read-out channel and thus allow for noninvasive detection of the electronic occupation of the quantum dot. Reproducible and stable Coulomb oscillations and the corresponding jumps in the read-out channel resistance are observed at low temperatures. The fabricated dot combined with the read-out channel represent a step towards the spin-based quantum bit in Si/SiGe heterostructures.Comment: 3 pages, 4 fig

Increasing Flash Memory Lifetime by Dynamic Voltage Allocation for Constant Mutual Information

The read channel in Flash memory systems degrades over time because the Fowler-Nordheim tunneling used to apply charge to the floating gate eventually compromises the integrity of the cell because of tunnel oxide degradation. While degradation is commonly measured in the number of program/erase cycles experienced by a cell, the degradation is proportional to the number of electrons forced into the floating gate and later released by the erasing process. By managing the amount of charge written to the floating gate to maintain a constant read-channel mutual information, Flash lifetime can be extended. This paper proposes an overall system approach based on information theory to extend the lifetime of a flash memory device. Using the instantaneous storage capacity of a noisy flash memory channel, our approach allocates the read voltage of flash cell dynamically as it wears out gradually over time. A practical estimation of the instantaneous capacity is also proposed based on soft information via multiple reads of the memory cells.Comment: 5 pages. 5 figure

On Termination for Faulty Channel Machines

A channel machine consists of a finite controller together with several fifo channels; the controller can read messages from the head of a channel and write messages to the tail of a channel. In this paper, we focus on channel machines with insertion errors, i.e., machines in whose channels messages can spontaneously appear. Such devices have been previously introduced in the study of Metric Temporal Logic. We consider the termination problem: are all the computations of a given insertion channel machine finite? We show that this problem has non-elementary, yet primitive recursive complexity

Two-dimensional coding for probe recording on magnetic patterned media

The effect of intertrack intersymbol interference in a magnetic patterned medium is studied. A two-dimensional (2-D) channel code is proposed, dedicated to perpendicularly magnetized media without soft underlayer, which exhibit read pulses showing overshoot. Read pulse shapes were investigated using a magnetic-force microscope tip scanning the patterned medium row-by-row. To test different codes, a bit-detection simulation program was developed to generate large amounts of data on which bit error rates can be measured. Application of the 2-D channel code, which implies recording of particular dot positions with fixed bits ("ones", "zeros"), resulted in the elimination of 2-D worst-case bit patterns and a subsequent reduction of detected-bit errors. The accompanying redundancy of 22% is inevitable for this type of 2-D code

Multi-channel Kondo Models in non-Abelian Quantum Hall Droplets

We study the coupling between a quantum dot and the edge of a non-Abelian fractional quantum Hall state which is spatially separated from it by an integer quantum Hall state. Near a resonance, the physics at energy scales below the level spacing of the edge states of the dot is governed by a $k$-channel Kondo model when the quantum Hall state is a Read-Rezayi state at filling fraction $\nu=2+k/(k+2)$ or its particle-hole conjugate at $\nu=2+2/(k+2)$. The $k$-channel Kondo model is channel isotropic even without fine tuning in the former state; in the latter, it is generically channel anisotropic. In the special case of $k=2$, our results provide a new venue, realized in a mesoscopic context, to distinguish between the Pfaffian and anti-Pfaffian states at filling fraction $\nu=5/2$.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure; references updated, version to appear in PR