Interacting Dirac Materials

We investigate the extent to which the class of Dirac materials in two-dimensions provides general statements about the behavior of both fermionic and bosonic Dirac quasiparticles in the interacting regime. For both quasiparticle types, we find common features for the interaction induced renormalization of the conical Dirac spectrum. We perform the perturbative renormalization analysis and compute the self-energy for both quasiparticle types with different interactions and collate previous results from the literature whenever necessary. Guided by the systematic presentation of our results in Table~\ref{Summary}, we conclude that long-range interactions generically lead to an increase of the slope of the single-particle Dirac cone, whereas short-range interactions lead to a decrease. The quasiparticle statistics does not qualitatively impact the self-energy correction for long-range repulsion but does affect the behavior of short-range coupled systems, giving rise to different thermal power-law contributions. The possibility of a universal description of the Dirac materials based on these features is also mentioned.Comment: 19 pages and 12 Figures; Contains 6 Appendice

Optical diffraction for measurements of nano-mechanical bending

Micromechanical transducers such as cantilevers for AFM often rely on optical readout methods that require illumination of a specific region of the microstructure. Here we explore and exploit the diffraction effects that have been previously neglected when modeling cantilever bending measurement techniques. The illumination of a cantilever end causes an asymmetric diffraction pattern at the photodetector that significantly affects the calibration of the signal in the popular optical beam deflection technique (OBDT). Conditions for optimized linear signals that avoid detection artifacts conflict with small numerical aperture illumination and narrow cantilevers which are softer and therefore more sensitive. Embracing diffraction patterns as a physical measurable allows a richer detection technique that decouples measurements of tilt and curvature and simultaneously relaxes the requirements on the alignment of illumination and detector. We show analytical results, numerical simulations and physiologically relevant experimental data demonstrating the usefulness of these diffraction features. We offer experimental design guidelines and identify and quantify possible sources of systematic error of up to 10% in OBDT. We demonstrate a new nanometre resolution detection method that can replace OBDT, where Frauenhofer and Bragg diffraction effects from finite sized and patterned cantilevers are exploited. Such effects are readily generalized to arrays, and allow transmission detection of mechanical curvature, enabling in-line instruments. In particular, a cantilever with a periodic array of slots produces Bragg peaks which can be analyzed to deduce the cantilever curvature. We highlight the comparative advantages over OBDT by detecting molecular activity of antibiotic Vancomycin, with an RMS noise equivalent to less than $2.5 \mu M$ (1.5 nm), as example of possible multi-maker bio-assays.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figure

Hysteresis of Backflow Imprinted in Collimated Jets

We report two different types of backflow from jets by performing 2D special relativistic hydrodynamical simulations. One is anti-parallel and quasi-straight to the main jet (quasi-straight backflow), and the other is bent path of the backflow (bent backflow). We find that the former appears when the head advance speed is comparable to or higher than the local sound speed at the hotspot while the latter appears when the head advance speed is slower than the sound speed bat the hotspot. Bent backflow collides with the unshocked jet and laterally squeezes the jet. At the same time, a pair of new oblique shocks are formed at the tip of the jet and new bent fast backflows are generated via these oblique shocks. The hysteresis of backflow collisions is thus imprinted in the jet as a node and anti-node structure. This process also promotes broadening of the jet cross sectional area and it also causes a decrease in the head advance velocity. This hydrodynamic process may be tested by observations of compact young jets.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ

A Monte Carlo Event Generator for W Off-shell Pair Production including Higher Order Electromagnetic Radiative Corrections

We present the Monte Carlo event generator {\tt WOPPER} for pair production of $W$'s and their decays at high energy $e^+e^-$ colliders. {\tt WOPPER} includes the effects from finite $W$ width and focusses on the calculation of higher order electromagnetic corrections in the leading log approximation including soft photon exponentiation and explicit generation of exclusive hard photons.Comment: Contribution to the Second Workshop -- Munich, Annecy, Hamburg: $e^+e^-$ Collisions at 500~GeV: The Physics Potential, November 20, 1992, to April 3, 1993. LaTeX, 6 pages + 4 uuencoded EPS figures, IKDA 93/28, SI-93-

Scaling of magnetic fluctuations near a quantum phase transition

We use inelastic neutron scattering to measure the magnetic fluctuations in a single crystal of the heavy fermion alloy CeCu_5.9Au_0.1 close to the antiferromagnetic quantum critical point. The energy and temperature-dependent spectra obey (E/T) scaling at Q near (1,0,0). The neutron data and earlier bulk susceptibility are consistent with the form 1/X ~ f(Q)+(-iE+bT)^a, with an anomalous exponent a=0.8. We confirm the earlier observation of quasi-low dimensionality and show how both the magnetic fluctuations and the thermodynamics can be understood in terms of a quantum Lifshitz point.Comment: Latex file with two postscript figure