Interface effects on the shot noise in normal metal- d-wave superconductor Junctions

The current fluctuation in normal metal / d-wave superconductor junctions are studied for various orientation of the crystal by taking account of the spatial variation of the pair potentials. Not only the zero-energy Andreev bound states (ZES) but also the non-zero energy Andreev bound states influence on the properties of differential shot noise. At the tunneling limit, the noise power to current ratio at zero voltage becomes 0, once the ZES are formed at the interface. Under the presence of a subdominant s-wave component at the interface which breaks time-reversal symmetry, the ratio becomes 4eComment: 13 pages, 3 figure

Massively parallel simulations for disordered systems

Simulations of systems with quenched disorder are extremely demanding, suffering from the combined effect of slow relaxation and the need of performing the disorder average. As a consequence, new algorithms, improved implementations, and alternative and even purpose-built hardware are often instrumental for conducting meaningful studies of such systems. The ensuing demands regarding hardware availability and code complexity are substantial and sometimes prohibitive. We demonstrate how with a moderate coding effort leaving the overall structure of the simulation code unaltered as compared to a CPU implementation, very significant speed-ups can be achieved from a parallel code on GPU by mainly exploiting the trivial parallelism of the disorder samples and the near-trivial parallelism of the parallel tempering replicas. A combination of this massively parallel implementation with a careful choice of the temperature protocol for parallel tempering as well as efficient cluster updates allows us to equilibrate comparatively large systems with moderate computational resources.Comment: accepted for publication in EPJB, Topical issue - Recent advances in the theory of disordered system

Diaphragmatic hernia in the south-west of England.

A retrospective anatomical, family, and epidemiological study was made of 143 patients (81 female and 62 male) with diaphragmatic hernia who were born in the south-west of England between 1943 and 1974. Thirty-nine cases were stillborn. Seventy-five per cent of patients had a left-sided diaphragmatic defect, 22% had a right-sided defect, and 3% had a bilateral defect. Fifty per cent of the patients had other congenital malformations, most frequently of the nervous system. No maternal age or birth order effect was noted. Cases of diaphragmatic hernia without other malformations had in general a normal fetal growth rate. Eight per cent of the cases were illegitimate. There were two pairs of twins discordant for diaphragmatic hernia, one pair being dizygotic and the other monozygotic. In no case of diaphragmatic hernia was there a relative affected with a diaphragmatic hernia. The most common type of diaphragmatic defect was a posterolateral hernia (92%), followed in frequency by an eventration of the diaphragm (5%), the least common defect being a retrocostosternal hernia (2%). Diaphragmatic hernia appears to be aetiologically as well as anatomically heterogeneous. In this series there were two cases of trisomy 18, one case of trisomy 21, one case trisomic for a small part of chromosome 20, and two cases with the Pierre Robin syndrome. It seems likely that diaphragmatic hernia is a non-specific consequence of several teratological processes