Impurity Effects in Two-Electron Coupled Quantum Dots: Entanglement Modulation

We present a detailed analysis of the electronic and optical properties of two-electron quantum dots with a two-dimensional Gaussian confinement potential. We study the effects of Coulomb impurities and the possibility of manipulate the entanglement of the electrons by controlling the confinement potential parameters. The degree of entanglement becomes highly modulated by both the location and charge screening of the impurity atom, resulting two regimes: one of low entanglement and other of high entanglement, with both of them mainly determined by the magnitude of the charge. It is shown that the magnitude of the oscillator strength of the system could provide an indication of the presence and characteristics of impurities that could largely influence the degree of entanglement of the system.Comment: Regular Article (Journal of Physics B, in press), 9 pages, 10 figure

Photocurable Bioink for the Inkjet 3D Pharming of Hydrophilic Drugs.

Novel strategies are required to manufacture customized oral solid dosage forms for personalized medicine applications. 3D Pharming, the direct printing of pharmaceutical tablets, is an attractive strategy, since it allows for the rapid production of solid dosage forms containing custom drug dosages. This study reports on the design and characterization of a biocompatible photocurable pharmaceutical polymer for inkjet 3D printing that is suitable for hydrophilic active pharmaceutical ingredients (API). Specifically, hyaluronic acid was functionalized with norbornene moieties that, in the presence of poly(ethylene) glycol dithiol, Eosin Y as a photoinitiator, and a visible light source, undergoes a rapid step-growth polymerization reaction through thiol-ene chemistry. The engineered bioink was loaded with Ropinirole HCL, dispensed through a piezoelectric nozzle onto a blank preform tablet, and polymerized. Drug release analysis of the tablet resulted in 60% release within 15 min of tablet dissolution. The study confirms the potential of inkjet printing for the rapid production of tablets through the deposition of a photocurable bioink designed for hydrophilic APIs

A Systematic Review

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: There are increasing reports on case series on spontaneous isolated mesenteric artery dissection, that is, dissections of the superior mesenteric artery and celiac artery, mainly due to improved diagnostic capacity of high-resolution computed tomography angiography performed around the clock. A few case-control studies are now available, while randomized controlled trials are awaited. MATERIAL AND METHODS: The present systematic review based on 97 original studies offers a comprehensive overview on risk factors, management, conservative therapy, morphological modeling of dissection, and prognosis. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS: Male gender, hypertension, and smoking are risk factors for isolated mesenteric artery dissection, while the frequency of diabetes mellitus is reported to be low. Large aortomesenteric angle has also been considered to be a factor for superior mesenteric artery dissection. The overwhelming majority of patients can be conservatively treated without the need of endovascular or open operations. Conservative therapy consists of blood pressure lowering therapy, analgesics, and initial bowel rest, whereas there is no support for antithrombotic agents. Complete remodeling of the dissection after conservative therapy was found in 43% at mid-term follow-up. One absolute indication for surgery and endovascular stenting of the superior mesenteric artery is development of peritonitis due to bowel infarction, which occurs in 2.1% of superior mesenteric artery dissections and none in celiac artery dissections. The most documented end-organ infarction in celiac artery dissections is splenic infarctions, which occurs in 11.2%, and is a condition that should be treated conservatively. The frequency of ruptured pseudoaneurysm in the superior mesenteric artery and celiac artery dissection is very rare, 0.4%, and none of these patients were in shock at presentation. Endovascular therapy with covered stents should be considered in these patients.publishersversionpublishe

Present Limits on the Precision of SM Predictions for Jet Energies

We investigate the impact of theoretical uncertainties on the accuracy of measurements involving hadronic jets. The analysis is performed using events with a Z boson and a single jet observed in $p\bar{p}$ collisions at $\sqrt{s}$ = 1.96 TeV in 4.6 $\mathrm{fb^{-1}}$ of data from the Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF). The transverse momenta (\pt) of the jet and the boson should balance each other due to momentum conservation in the plane transverse to the direction of the $p$ and $\bar{p}$ beams. We evaluate the dependence of the measured \pt-balance on theoretical uncertainties associated with initial and final state radiation, choice of renormalization and factorization scales, parton distribution functions, jet-parton matching, calculations of matrix elements, and parton showering. We find that the uncertainty caused by parton showering at large angles is the largest amongst the listed uncertainties. The proposed method can be re-applied at the LHC experiments to investigate and evaluate the uncertainties on the predicted jet energies. The distributions produced at the CDF environment are intended for comparison to those from modern event generators and new tunes of parton showering.Comment: Submitted to Nucl. Instr. and Meth.

Periodic Chaotic Billiards: Quantum-Classical Correspondence in Energy Space

We investigate the properties of eigenstates and local density of states (LDOS) for a periodic 2D rippled billiard, focusing on their quantum-classical correspondence in energy representation. To construct the classical counterparts of LDOS and the structure of eigenstates (SES), the effects of the boundary are first incorporated (via a canonical transformation) into an effective potential, rendering the one-particle motion in the 2D rippled billiard equivalent to that of two-interacting particles in 1D geometry. We show that classical counterparts of SES and LDOS in the case of strong chaotic motion reveal quite a good correspondence with the quantum quantities. We also show that the main features of the SES and LDOS can be explained in terms of the underlying classical dynamics, in particular of certain periodic orbits. On the other hand, statistical properties of eigenstates and LDOS turn out to be different from those prescribed by random matrix theory. We discuss the quantum effects responsible for the non-ergodic character of the eigenstates and individual LDOS that seem to be generic for this type of billiards with a large number of transverse channels.Comment: 13 pages, 18 figure

Top quark physics in hadron collisions

The top quark is the heaviest elementary particle observed to date. Its large mass makes the top quark an ideal laboratory to test predictions of perturbation theory concerning heavy quark production at hadron colliders. The top quark is also a powerful probe for new phenomena beyond the Standard Model of particle physics. In addition, the top quark mass is a crucial parameter for scrutinizing the Standard Model in electroweak precision tests and for predicting the mass of the yet unobserved Higgs boson. Ten years after the discovery of the top quark at the Fermilab Tevatron top quark physics has entered an era where detailed measurements of top quark properties are undertaken. In this review article an introduction to the phenomenology of top quark production in hadron collisions is given, the lessons learned in Tevatron Run I are summarized, and first Run II results are discussed. A brief outlook to the possibilities of top quark research a the Large Hadron Collider, currently under construction at CERN, is included.Comment: 84 pages, 32 figures, accepted for publication by Reports on Progress in Physic