15,323 research outputs found
Dressed tunneling approximation for electronic transport through molecular transistors
A theoretical approach for the non-equilibrium transport properties of
nanoscale systems coupled to metallic electrodes with strong electron-phonon
interactions is presented. It consists in a resummation of the dominant Feynman
diagrams from the perturbative expansion in the coupling to the leads. We show
that this scheme eliminates the main pathologies found in previous simple
analytical approaches for the polaronic regime. The results for the spectral
and transport properties are compared with those from several other approaches
for a wide range of parameters. The method can be formulated in a simple way to
obtain the full counting statistics. Results for the shot and thermal noise are
presented.Comment: 11 pages, 11 figures. Accepted for publication in Physical Review
Resonant tunneling through a small quantum dot coupled to superconducting leads
We address the problem of non-linear transport through discrete electronic
levels in a small quantum dot coupled to superconducting electrodes. In our
approach the low temperature I-V characteristics can be calculated including
all multiple quasi-particle and Andreev processes. The limit of very weak
coupling to the leads and large charging energies is briefly analyzed comparing
the calculated lineshapes of the I-V curves with recent experimental results.
When the coupling to the leads increases and Coulomb blockade effects can be
neglected, the combination of multiple Andreev processes and resonant
transmission gives rise to a rich subgap structure which largely differs from
the one found in the more studied S-N-S systems. We show how multiple processes
can be included within a simple sequential tunneling picture qualitatively
explaining the subgap structure. We suggest an experimental set-up where the
predicted effects could be observed.Comment: 11 pages, 4 postscript figures, to be published in Phys. Rev. B
(rapid communications
Field enhancement in subnanometer metallic gaps
Motivated by recent experiments [Ward et al., Nature Nanotech. 5, 732
(2010)], we present here a theoretical analysis of the optical response of
sharp gold electrodes separated by a subnanometer gap. In particular, we have
used classical finite difference time domain simulations to investigate the
electric field distribution in these nanojunctions upon illumination. Our
results show a strong confinement of the field within the gap region, resulting
in a large enhancement compared to the incident field. Enhancement factors
exceeding 1000 are found for interelectrode distances on the order of a few
angstroms, which are fully compatible with the experimental findings. Such huge
enhancements originate from the coupling of the incident light to the
evanescent field of hybrid plasmons involving charge density oscillations in
both electrodes.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, to appear in Physical Review
Universal Conductance Distributions in the Crossover between Diffusive and Localization Regimes
The full distribution of the conductance in quasi-one-dimensional
wires with rough surfaces is analyzed from the diffusive to the localization
regime. In the crossover region, where the statistics is dominated by only one
or two eigenchannels, the numerically obtained P(G) is found to be independent
of the details of the system with the average conductance as the only
scaling parameter. For < e^2/h, P(G) is given by an essentially
``one-sided'' log-normal distribution. In contrast, for e^2/h <= 2e^2/h,
the shape of P(G) remarkable agrees with those predicted by random matrix
theory for two fluctuating transmission eigenchannels.Comment: Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. Let
Enabling science with Gaia observations of naked-eye stars
ESA's Gaia space astrometry mission is performing an all-sky survey of
stellar objects. At the beginning of the nominal mission in July 2014, an
operation scheme was adopted that enabled Gaia to routinely acquire
observations of all stars brighter than the original limit of G~6, i.e. the
naked-eye stars. Here, we describe the current status and extent of those
observations and their on-ground processing. We present an overview of the data
products generated for G<6 stars and the potential scientific applications.
Finally, we discuss how the Gaia survey could be enhanced by further exploiting
the techniques we developed.Comment: 16 pages, 8 figures. Submitted for the proceedings of the 2016 SPIE
Astronomical Instrumentation and Telescopes conference (SPIE 9904
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