Adapting with the Times: The Railroad Depot in South Dakota, 1873 to 2006

This study traces tire architectural .and social evolution of passenger depots in South Dakota from 1873 to 2006. This evolution is broken down into four stages: development and expansion; prominence and significance; abandonment and deterioration; preservation and rehabilitation. The first stage, development and expansion, reviews the development of railroads as a primary transportation system and the expansion of that system across the United States and particularly South Dakota. Deficiencies in earlier transportation methods, including stagecoach, horseback, canals, and steamboat, contributed to the emergence and rapid growth of railroads. As railroads ·expanded, they became critical factors in settlement, community development and decline, and the everyday lives of South Dakotans. The prominence and significance of South Dakota\u27s depots during the heyday of railroad activity makes up the second stage of this\u27 study. Architecturally, depots were initially small, simple buildings, often converted box cars that served primarily railroad functions. But as railroads and communities developed, depots also became more significant, both architecturally and socially. Functions and activities entirely unrelated to the railroad started occurring at the local depot and led to them becoming epicenters of community activity. Factors that contributed to the decline in railroad travel, especially the development of transportation alternatives, gave impetus to the third stage, the abandonment, deterioration, and demolition of depots statewide. As automobiles and buses along improved highway systems, and the growing airline industry began to negatively impact railroad travel, the prominence of the local depot also began to decline. Line abandonments and station closures led to hundreds of depots, primarily smaller woodframe depots, to be sold, moved, left to deteriorate, or demolished from the 1960s through the 1980s. Finally, for those that survived the third stage, the fourth stage consisted of the preservation and rehabilitation of South Dakota\u27s depots. The rampant deterioration and demolition of depots during the third stage sparked this final stage. For a variety of reasons/ including preserving history or economics, people began to rehabilitate them into a wide range of new functions, including restaurants, public or private offices, and museums. A nationwide framework and ethic for historic preservation created by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 contributed to this preservation. While railroads initially responded with skeptit ism toward preservation efforts, primarily J:\u3eecause of.the perception of restrictions being placed on their property, some railroads began to support and contribute to such projects

Anomalous dephasing of bosonic excitons interacting with phonons in the vicinity of the Bose-Einstein condensation

The dephasing and relaxation kinetics of bosonic excitons interacting with a thermal bath of acoustic phonons is studied after coherent pulse excitation. The kinetics of the induced excitonic polarization is calculated within Markovian equations both for subcritical and supercritical excitation with respect to a Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC). For excited densities n below the critical density n_c, an exponential polarization decay is obtained, which is characterized by a dephasing rate G=1/T_2. This dephasing rate due to phonon scattering shows a pronounced exciton-density dependence in the vicinity of the phase transition. It is well described by the power law G (n-n_c)^2 that can be understood by linearization of the equations around the equilibrium solution. Above the critical density we get a non-exponential relaxation to the final condensate value p^0 with |p(t)|-|p^0| ~1/t that holds for all densities. Furthermore we include the full self-consistent Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov (HFB) terms due to the exciton-exciton interaction and the kinetics of the anomalous functions F_k= . The collision terms are analyzed and an approximation is used which is consistent with the existence of BEC. The inclusion of the coherent x-x interaction does not change the dephasing laws. The anomalous function F_k exhibits a clear threshold behaviour at the critical density.Comment: European Physical Journal B (in print

Revivals, collapses and magnetic-pulse generation in quantum rings

Using a microscopic theory based on the density matrix formalism we investigate quantum revivals and collapses of the charge polarization and charge current dynamics in mesoscopic rings driven by short asymmetric electromagnetic pulses. The collapsed state is utilized for sub-picosecond switching of the current and associated magnetization, enabling thus the generation of pulsed magnetic fields with a tunable time structure and shape asymmetry which provides a new tool to study ultrafast spin-dynamics and ratchet-based effects.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure

Quantitative validation of PEDFLOW for description of unidirectional pedestrian dynamics

The results of a systematic quantitative validation of PEDFLOW based on the experimental data from FZJ are presented. Unidirectional flow experiments, totaling 28 different combinations with varying entry, corridor and exit widths, were considered. The condition imposed on PEDFLOW was that all the cases should be run with the same input parameters. The exit times and fundamental diagrams for the measuring region were evaluated and compared. This validation process led to modifications and enhancements of the model underlying PEDFLOW. The preliminary conclusions indicate that the results agree well for densities smaller than 3 m-2 and a good agreement is observed even at high densities for the corridors with bcor = 2.4 m, and bcor = 3.0 m. For densities between 1 and 2 m-2 the specific flow and velocities are underpredicted by PEDFLOW.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, 1 Table, conference PED201

Quantum confinement effects in Si/Ge heterostructures with spatially ordered arrays of self-assembled quantum dots

Magnetotunneling spectroscopy was employed to probe the confinement in vertical Si/Ge double-barrier resonant tunneling diodes with regularly distributed Ge quantum dots. Their current-voltage characteristics reveal a step-like behavior in the vicinity of zero bias, indicating resonant tunneling of heavy-holes via three-dimensionally confined unoccupied hole states in Ge quantum dots. Assuming parabolic confinement we extract the strength of the confinement potential of quantum dots.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Transport in Graphene: Ballistic or Diffusive?

We investigate the transport of electrons in disordered and pristine graphene devices. Fano shot noise, a standard metric to assess the mechanism for electronic transport in mesoscopic devices, has been shown to produce almost the same magnitude ($\approx 1/3$) in ballistic and diffusive graphene devices and is therefore of limited applicability. We consider a two-terminal geometry where the graphene flake is contacted by narrow metallic leads. We propose that the dependence of the conductance on the position of one of the leads, a conductance profile, can give us insight into the charge flow, which can in turn be used to analyze the transport mechanism. Moreover, we simulate scanning probe microscopy (SPM) measurements for the same devices, which can visualize the flow of charge inside the device, thus complementing the transport calculations. From our simulations, we find that both the conductance profile and SPM measurements are excellent tools to assess the transport mechanism differentiating ballistic and diffusive graphene systems.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figures. Renamed by editorial staff as "Ballistic versus diffusive transport in graphene

Dynamics of photoexcited carriers in graphene

The nonequilibrium dynamics of carriers and phonons in graphene is investigated by solving the microscopic kinetic equations with the carrier-phonon and carrier-carrier Coulomb scatterings explicitly included. The Fermi distribution of hot carriers are found to be established within 100 fs and the temperatures of electrons in the conduction and valence bands are very close to each other, even when the excitation density and the equilibrium density are comparable, thanks to the strong inter-band Coulomb scattering. Moreover, the temporal evolutions of the differential transmission obtained from our calculations agree with the experiments by Wang et al. [Appl. Phys. Lett. 96, 081917 (2010)] and Hale et al. [Phys. Rev. B 83, 121404 (2011)] very well, with two distinct differential transmission relaxations presented. We show that the fast relaxation is due to the rapid carrier-phonon thermalization and the slow one is mainly because of the slow decay of hot phonons. In addition, it is found that the temperatures of the hot phonons in different branches are different and the temperature of hot carriers can be even lower than that of the hottest phonons. Finally, we show that the slow relaxation rate exhibits a mild valley in the excitation density dependence and is linearly dependent on the probe-photon energy.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figure

Wave function Monte Carlo method for polariton condensates

We present a quantum jump approach to describe coupled quantum and classical systems in the context of Bose-Einstein condensation in the solid state. In our formalism, the excitonic gain medium is described by classical rate equations, while the polariton modes are described fully quantum mechanically. We show the equivalence of our method with a master equation approach. As an application, we compute the linewidth of a single mode polariton condensate. Both the line broadening due to the interactions between polaritons and the interactions with the reservoir excitons is taken into account.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figure

Coherent control of correlated nanodevices: A hybrid time-dependent numerical renormalization-group approach to periodic switching

The time-dependent numerical renormalization-group approach (TD-NRG), originally devised for tracking the real-time dynamics of quantum-impurity systems following a single quantum quench, is extended to multiple switching events. This generalization of the TD-NRG encompasses the possibility of periodic switching, allowing for coherent control of strongly correlated systems by an external time-dependent field. To this end, we have embedded the TD-NRG in a hybrid framework that combines the outstanding capabilities of the numerical renormalization group to systematically construct the effective low-energy Hamiltonian of the system with the prowess of complementary approaches for calculating the real-time dynamics derived from this Hamiltonian. We demonstrate the power of our approach by hybridizing the TD-NRG with the Chebyshev expansion technique in order to investigate periodic switching in the interacting resonant-level model. Although the interacting model shares the same low-energy fixed point as its noninteracting counterpart, we surprisingly find the gradual emergence of damped oscillations as the interaction strength is increased. Focusing on a single quantum quench and using a strong-coupling analysis, we reveal the origin of these interaction-induced oscillations and provide an analytical estimate for their frequency. The latter agrees well with the numerical results.Comment: 20 pager, Revtex, 10 figures, submitted to Physical Review