Mesoscopic conductance fluctuations in a coupled quantum dot system

We study the transport properties of an Aharonov-Bohm ring containing two quantum dots. One of the dots has well-separated resonant levels, while the other is chaotic and is treated by random matrix theory. We find that the conductance through the ring is significantly affected by mesoscopic fluctuations. The Breit-Wigner resonant peak is changed to an antiresonance by increasing the ratio of the level broadening to the mean level spacing of the random dot. The asymmetric Fano form turns into a symmetric one and the resonant peak can be controlled by magnetic flux. The conductance distribution function clearly shows the influence of strong fluctuations.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures; revised for publicatio

Effect of the Kondo correlation on thermopower in a Quantum Dot

In this paper we study the thermopower of a quantum dot connected to two leads in the presence of Kondo correlation by employing a modified second-order perturbation scheme at nonequilibrium. A simple scheme, Ng's ansatz [Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 76}, 487 (1996)], is adopted to calculate nonequilibrium distribution Green's function and its validity is further checked with regard to the Onsager relation. Numerical results demonstrate that the sign of the thermopower can be changed by tuning the energy level of the quantum dot, leading to a oscillatory behavior with a suppressed magnitude due to the Kondo effect. We also calculate the thermal conductance of the system, and find that the Wiedemann-Franz law is obeyed at low temperature but violated with increasing temperature, corresponding to emerging and quenching of the Kondo effect.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures; accepted for publication in J Phys.: Condensed Matte

Validation of a Novel Sensing Approach for Continuous Pavement Monitoring Using Full-Scale APT Testing

The objective of this paper is to present a novel approach for the continuous monitoring of pavement condition through the use of combined piezoelectric sensing and novel condition-based interpretation methods. The performance of the developed approach is validated for the detection of bottom-up fatigue cracking through full-scale accelerated pavement testing (APT). The innovative piezoelectric sensors are installed at the bottom of a thin 102 mm (4 in.) asphalt layer. The structure is then loaded until failure (up to 1 million loading cycles in this study). The condition-based approach, used in this work, does not rely on stain measurements and allows users to bypass the need for any structural or finite-element models. Instead, the data compression approach relies on variations in strain energy harvested by smart sensors to track changes in material and structural conditions. Falling weight deflectometer (FWD) measurements and visual inspections were used to validate the observations from the sensing system. The results in this paper present a first large-scale validation in pavement structures for a piezopowered sensing system combined with a new response-only based approach for data reduction and interpretation. The proposed data analysis method has demonstrated a very early detection capability compared to classical inspection methods, which unveils a huge potential for improved pavement monitoring

I-V characteristics of single electron tunneling from symmetric and asymmetric double-barrier tunneling junctions

Copyright 2007 American Institute of Physics. This article may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and the American Institute of Physics. The following article appeared in Applied Physics Letters, 90(22), 223112, 2007 and may be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.274525

Fabrication of nanoscale gaps using a combination of self-assembled molecular and electron beam lithographic techniques

Copyright 2006 American Institute of Physics. This article may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and the American Institute of Physics. The following article appeared in Applied Physics Letters, 88(22), 223111, 2006 and may be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.220920

Data compression approach for long-term monitoring of pavement structures

Pavement structures are designed to withstand continuous damage during their design life. Damage starts as soon as the pavement is open to traffic and increases with time. If maintenance activities are not considered in the initial design or considered but not applied during the service life, damage will grow to a point where rehabilitation may be the only and most expensive option left. In order to monitor the evolution of damage and its severity in pavement structures, a novel data compression approach based on cumulative measurements from a piezoelectric sensor is presented in this paper. Specifically, the piezoelectric sensor uses a thin film of polyvinylidene fluoride to sense the energy produced by the micro deformation generated due to the application of traffic loads. Epoxy solution has been used to encapsulate the membrane providing hardness and flexibility to withstand the high-loads and the high-temperatures during construction of the asphalt layer. The piezoelectric sensors have been exposed to three months of loading (approximately 1.0 million loads of 65 kN) at the French Institute of Science and Technology for Transport, Development and Networks (IFSTTAR) fatigue carrousel. Notably, the sensors survived the construction and testing. Reference measurements were made with a commercial conventional strain gauge specifically designed for measurements in hot mix asphalt layers. Results from the carrousel successfully demonstrate that the novel approach can be considered as a good indicator of damage progression, thus alleviating the need to measure strains in pavement for the purpose of damage tracking

Kondo effect in coupled quantum dots under magnetic fields

The Kondo effect in coupled quantum dots is investigated theoretically under magnetic fields. We show that the magnetoconductance (MC) illustrates peak structures of the Kondo resonant spectra. When the dot-dot tunneling coupling $V_C$ is smaller than the dot-lead coupling $\Delta$ (level broadening), the Kondo resonant levels appear at the Fermi level ($E_F$). The Zeeman splitting of the levels weakens the Kondo effect, which results in a negative MC. When $V_{C}$ is larger than $\Delta$, the Kondo resonances form bonding and anti-bonding levels, located below and above $E_F$, respectively. We observe a positive MC since the Zeeman splitting increases the overlap between the levels at $E_F$. In the presence of the antiferromagnetic spin coupling between the dots, the sign of MC can change as a function of the gate voltage.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figure

Electron Transport through T-Shaped Double-Dots System

Correlation effects on electron transport through a system of T-shaped double-dots are investigated, for which only one of the dots is directly connected to the leads. We evaluate the local density of states and the conductance by means of the non-crossing approximation at finite temperatures as well as the slave-boson mean field approximation at zero temperature. It is found that the dot which is not directly connected to the leads considerably influences the conductance, making its behavior quite different from the case of a single-dot system. In particular, we find a novel phenomenon in the Kondo regime with a small inter-dot coupling, i.e. Fano-like suppression of the Kondo-mediated conductance, when two dot levels coincide with each other energetically.Comment: 6 pages,7 figure