Pressure-induced commensurate stacking of graphene on boron nitride

Combining atomically-thin van der Waals materials into heterostructures provides a powerful path towards the creation of designer electronic devices. The interaction strength between neighboring layers, most easily controlled through their interlayer separation, can have significant influence on the electronic properties of these composite materials. Here, we demonstrate unprecedented control over interlayer interactions by locally modifying the interlayer separation between graphene and boron nitride, which we achieve by applying pressure with a scanning tunneling microscopy tip. For the special case of aligned or nearly-aligned graphene on boron nitride, the graphene lattice can stretch and compress locally to compensate for the slight lattice mismatch between the two materials. We find that modifying the interlayer separation directly tunes the lattice strain and induces commensurate stacking underneath the tip. Our results motivate future studies tailoring the electronic properties of van der Waals heterostructures by controlling the interlayer separation of the entire device using hydrostatic pressure.Comment: 17 pages, 4 figures and supplementary information. Updated to published versio

Optimal Control Theory for Continuous Variable Quantum Gates

We apply the methodology of optimal control theory to the problem of implementing quantum gates in continuous variable systems with quadratic Hamiltonians. We demonstrate that it is possible to define a fidelity measure for continuous variable (CV) gate optimization that is devoid of traps, such that the search for optimal control fields using local algorithms will not be hindered. The optimal control of several quantum computing gates, as well as that of algorithms composed of these primitives, is investigated using several typical physical models and compared for discrete and continuous quantum systems. Numerical simulations indicate that the optimization of generic CV quantum gates is inherently more expensive than that of generic discrete variable quantum gates, and that the exact-time controllability of CV systems plays an important role in determining the maximum achievable gate fidelity. The resulting optimal control fields typically display more complicated Fourier spectra that suggest a richer variety of possible control mechanisms. Moreover, the ability to control interactions between qunits is important for delimiting the total control fluence. The comparative ability of current experimental protocols to implement such time-dependent controls may help determine which physical incarnations of CV quantum information processing will be the easiest to implement with optimal fidelity.Comment: 39 pages, 11 figure

Algorithms for finite Projected Entangled Pair States

Projected Entangled Pair States (PEPS) are a promising ansatz for the study of strongly correlated quantum many-body systems in two dimensions. But due to their high computational cost, developing and improving PEPS algorithms is necessary to make the ansatz widely usable in practice. Here we analyze several algorithmic aspects of the method. On the one hand, we quantify the connection between the correlation length of the PEPS and the accuracy of its approximate contraction, and discuss how purifications can be used in the latter. On the other, we present algorithmic improvements for the update of the tensor that introduce drastic gains in the numerical conditioning and the efficiency of the algorithms. Finally, the state-of-the-art general PEPS code is benchmarked with the Heisenberg and quantum Ising models on lattices of up to $21 \times 21$ sites.Comment: 18 pages, 20 figures, accepted versio

Ring exchange, the Bose metal, and bosonization in two dimensions

Motivated by the high-T_c cuprates, we consider a model of bosonic Cooper pairs moving on a square lattice via ring exchange. We show that this model offers a natural middle ground between a conventional antiferromagnetic Mott insulator and the fully deconfined fractionalized phase which underlies the spin-charge separation scenario for high-T_c superconductivity. We show that such ring models sustain a stable critical phase in two dimensions, the *Bose metal*. The Bose metal is a compressible state, with gapless but uncondensed boson and ``vortex'' excitations, power-law superconducting and charge-ordering correlations, and broad spectral functions. We characterize the Bose metal with the aid of an exact plaquette duality transformation, which motivates a universal low energy description of the Bose metal. This description is in terms of a pair of dual bosonic phase fields, and is a direct analog of the well-known one-dimensional bosonization approach. We verify the validity of the low energy description by numerical simulations of the ring model in its exact dual form. The relevance to the high-T_c superconductors and a variety of extensions to other systems are discussed, including the bosonization of a two dimensional fermionic ring model

Spectral-Element and Adjoint Methods in Seismology

We provide an introduction to the use of the spectral-element method (SEM) in seismology. Following a brief review of the basic equations that govern seismic wave propagation, we discuss in some detail how these equations may be solved numerically based upon the SEM to address the forward problem in seismology. Examples of synthetic seismograms calculated based upon the SEM are compared to data recorded by the Global Seismographic Network. Finally, we discuss the challenge of using the remaining differences between the data and the synthetic seismograms to constrain better Earth models and source descriptions. This leads naturally to adjoint methods, which provide a practical approach to this formidable computational challenge and enables seismologists to tackle the inverse problem

A variational method based on weighted graph states

In a recent article [Phys. Rev. Lett. 97 (2006), 107206], we have presented a class of states which is suitable as a variational set to find ground states in spin systems of arbitrary spatial dimension and with long-range entanglement. Here, we continue the exposition of our technique, extend from spin 1/2 to higher spins and use the boson Hubbard model as a non-trivial example to demonstrate our scheme.Comment: 36 pages, 13 figure

A Structural Model for Fluctuations in Financial Markets

In this paper we provide a comprehensive analysis of a structural model for the dynamics of prices of assets traded in a market originally proposed in [1]. The model takes the form of an interacting generalization of the geometric Brownian motion model. It is formally equivalent to a model describing the stochastic dynamics of a system of analogue neurons, which is expected to exhibit glassy properties and thus many meta-stable states in a large portion of its parameter space. We perform a generating functional analysis, introducing a slow driving of the dynamics to mimic the effect of slowly varying macro-economic conditions. Distributions of asset returns over various time separations are evaluated analytically and are found to be fat-tailed in a manner broadly in line with empirical observations. Our model also allows to identify collective, interaction mediated properties of pricing distributions and it predicts pricing distributions which are significantly broader than their non-interacting counterparts, if interactions between prices in the model contain a ferro-magnetic bias. Using simulations, we are able to substantiate one of the main hypotheses underlying the original modelling, viz. that the phenomenon of volatility clustering can be rationalised in terms of an interplay between the dynamics within meta-stable states and the dynamics of occasional transitions between them.Comment: 16 pages, 8 (multi-part) figure