Preparation of gas-tight strontium-doped lanthanum cobaltate by an aqueous sol-gel process

Gas-tight dense membranes of highly Sr-doped LaCoO3 (such as the composition La0.3Sr0.7CoO3 chosen in this study) are difficult to prepare using usual synthesis processes. This report presents an aqueous sol-gel route using metal acetates as precursors to achieve this goal. Hydrogen peroxide and ammonia are added to the acetates precursor solution to obtain stable sol and xerogel, as well as a homogeneous powder after heat treatment. Thermal analysis and XRD show the presence of SrCO3 and La2O3 when the heat treatment temperature of the xerogel is lower than 950 °C. Single phase of cubic perovskite La0.3Sr0.7CoO3 can be obtained after treatment at above 1000 °C. Sintering the cold pressed green compact at above 1100 °C may result in gas-tight samples. It is found that the sintering temperature has a minor influence on the oxygen permeability of a gas-tight membrane

A Necessary And Sufficient Condition of Distillability with unite fidelity from Finite Copies of a Mixed State: The Most Efficient Purification Protocol

It is well known that any entangled mixed state in $2\otimes 2$ systems can be purified via infinite copies of the mixed state. But can one distill a pure maximally entangled state from finite copies of a mixed state in any bipartite system by local operation and classical communication? This is more meaningful in practical application. We give a necessary and sufficient condition of this distillability. This condition can be expressed as: there exists distillable-subspaces. According to this condition, one can judge whether a mixed state is distillable or not easily. We also analyze some properties of distillable-subspaces, and discuss the most efficient purification protocols. Finally, we discuss the distillable enanglement of two-quibt system for the case of finite copies.Comment: a revised versio

The distillable entanglement of multiple copies of Bell states

It is impossible to discriminate four Bell states through local operations and classical communication (LOCC), if only one copy is provided. To complete this task, two copies will suffice and be necessary. When $n$ copies are provided, we show that the distillable entanglement is exactly $n-2$.Comment: An argument in the original paper is replaced by a procedure of strict proo

Mixture of multiple copies of maximally entangled states is quasi-pure

Employing the general BXOR operation and local state discrimination, the mixed state of the form \rho^{(k)}_{d}=\frac{1}{d^{2}}\sum_{m,n=0}^{d-1}(|\phi_{mn}><\phi_{mn}|)^{\otim es k} is proved to be quasi-pure, where $\{|\phi_{mn}>\}$ is the canonical set of mutually orthogonal maximally entangled states in $d\times d$. Therefore irreversibility does not occur in the process of distillation for this family of states. Also, the distillable entanglement is calculated explicitly.Comment: 6 pages, 1 figure. The paper is subtantially revised and the general proof is give

Optimally Conclusive Discrimination of Non-orthogonal Entangled States Locally

We consider one copy of a quantum system prepared with equal prior probability in one of two non-orthogonal entangled states of multipartite distributed among separated parties. We demonstrate that these two states can be optimally distinguished in the sense of conclusive discrimination by local operations and classical communications(LOCC) alone. And this proves strictly the conjecture that Virmani et.al. [8] confirmed numerically and analytically. Generally, the optimal protocol requires local POVM operations which are explicitly constructed. The result manifests that the distinguishable information is obtained only and completely at the last operation and all prior ones give no information about that state.Comment: 4 pages, no figure, revtex. few typos correcte

Shock Diffraction by Convex Cornered Wedges for the Nonlinear Wave System

We are concerned with rigorous mathematical analysis of shock diffraction by two-dimensional convex cornered wedges in compressible fluid flow governed by the nonlinear wave system. This shock diffraction problem can be formulated as a boundary value problem for second-order nonlinear partial differential equations of mixed elliptic-hyperbolic type in an unbounded domain. It can be further reformulated as a free boundary problem for nonlinear degenerate elliptic equations of second order. We establish a first global theory of existence and regularity for this shock diffraction problem. In particular, we establish that the optimal regularity for the solution is $C^{0,1}$ across the degenerate sonic boundary. To achieve this, we develop several mathematical ideas and techniques, which are also useful for other related problems involving similar analytical difficulties.Comment: 50 pages;7 figure

Improving gas sensing properties of graphene by introducing dopants and defects: a first-principles study

The interactions between four different graphenes (including pristine, B- or N-doped and defective graphenes) and small gas molecules (CO, NO, NO2 and NH3) were investigated by using density functional computations to exploit their potential applications as gas sensors. The structural and electronic properties of the graphene-molecule adsorption adducts are strongly dependent on the graphene structure and the molecular adsorption configuration. All four gas molecules show much stronger adsorption on the doped or defective graphenes than that on the pristine graphene. The defective graphene shows the highest adsorption energy with CO, NO and NO2 molecules, while the B- doped graphene gives the tightest binding with NH3. Meanwhile, the strong interactions between the adsorbed molecules and the modified graphenes induce dramatic changes to graphene's electronic properties. The transport behavior of a gas sensor using B- doped graphene shows a sensitivity two orders of magnitude higher than that of pristine graphene. This work reveals that the sensitivity of graphene-based chemical gas sensors could be drastically improved by introducing the appropriate dopant or defect

Tertiarybutyldimethylantimony: a new Sb source for low temperature organometallic vapor phase epitaxial growth of InSb

Journal ArticleThis article investigates tertiarybutyldimethylantimony as a source for low-temperature organometallic vapor phase epitaxial growth of indium antimonide (InSB); extraction of good surface morphology InSb layers; efficiency of InSB growth; and, presence of a negligible parasitic reaction between trimethylindium and trimethylantimony

Perturbative QCD analysis of B→ϕK∗B \to \phi K^* decays

We study the first observed charmless $B\to VV$ modes, the $B\to\phi K^*$ decays, in perturbative QCD formalism. The obtained branching ratios $B(B\to\phi K^*)\sim 15 \times 10^{-6}$ are larger than $\sim 9\times 10^{-6}$ from QCD factorization. The comparison of the predicted magnitudes and phases of the different helicity amplitudes, and branching ratios with experimental data can test the power counting rules, the evaluation of annihilation contributions, and the mechanism of dynamical penguin enhancement in perturbative QCD, respectively.Comment: 14 pages, 2 tables, brief disscussion on hard sacle added, version to appear in PR

Better detection of Multipartite Bound Entanglement with Three-Setting Bell Inequalities

It was shown in Phys. Rev. Lett., 87, 230402 (2001) that N (N >= 4) qubits described by a certain one parameter family F of bound entangled states violate Mermin-Klyshko inequality for N >= 8. In this paper we prove that the states from the family F violate Bell inequalities derived in Phys. Rev. A, 56, R1682 (1997), in which each observer measures three non-commuting sets of orthogonal projectors, for N >=7. We also derive a simple one parameter family of entanglement witnesses that detect entanglement for all the states belonging to F. It is possible that these new entanglement witnesses could be generated by some Bell inequalities.Comment: Revtex4, 1 figur