Coulomb blockade in graphene nanoribbons

We propose that recent transport experiments revealing the existence of an energy gap in graphene nanoribbons may be understood in terms of Coulomb blockade. Electron interactions play a decisive role at the quantum dots which form due to the presence of necks arising from the roughness of the graphene edge. With the average transmission as the only fitting parameter, our theory shows good agreement with the experimental data.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure

Unstable particles versus resonances in impurity systems, conductance in quantum wires

We compute the DC conductance for a homogeneous sine-Gordon model and an impurity system of Luttinger liquid type by means of the thermodynamic Bethe ansatz and standard potential scattering theory. We demonstrate that unstable particles and resonances in impurity systems lead to a sharp increase of the conductance as a function of the temperature, which is characterized by the Breit-Wigner formula.Comment: 5 pages Latex, 1 figure replaced, version to appear in J. Phys.

Electronic compressibility of a graphene bilayer

We calculate the electronic compressibility arising from electron-electron interactions for a graphene bilayer within the Hartree-Fock approximation. We show that, due to the chiral nature of the particles in this system, the compressibility is rather different from those of either the two-dimensional electron gas or ordinary semiconductors. We find that an inherent competition between the contributions coming from intra-band exchange interactions (dominant at low densities) and inter-band interactions (dominant at moderate densities) leads to a non-monotonic behavior of the compressibility as a function of carrier density.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures. Final versio

Turning waves and breakdown for incompressible flows

We consider the evolution of an interface generated between two immiscible incompressible and irrotational fluids. Specifically we study the Muskat and water wave problems. We show that starting with a family of initial data given by (\al,f_0(\al)), the interface reaches a regime in finite time in which is no longer a graph. Therefore there exists a time $t^*$ where the solution of the free boundary problem parameterized as (\al,f(\al,t)) blows-up: \|\da f\|_{L^\infty}(t^*)=\infty. In particular, for the Muskat problem, this result allows us to reach an unstable regime, for which the Rayleigh-Taylor condition changes sign and the solution breaks down.Comment: 15 page

Cyclic and ruled Lagrangian surfaces in complex Euclidean space

We study those Lagrangian surfaces in complex Euclidean space which are foliated by circles or by straight lines. The former, which we call cyclic, come in three types, each one being described by means of, respectively, a planar curve, a Legendrian curve of the 3-sphere or a Legendrian curve of the anti de Sitter 3-space. We also describe ruled Lagrangian surfaces. Finally we characterize those cyclic and ruled Lagrangian surfaces which are solutions to the self-similar equation of the Mean Curvature Flow. Finally, we give a partial result in the case of Hamiltonian stationary cyclic surfaces

Gains from the upgrade of the cold neutron triple-axis spectrometer FLEXX at the BER-II reactor

The upgrade of the cold neutron triple-axis spectrometer FLEXX is described. We discuss the characterisation of the gains from the new primary spectrometer, including a larger guide and double focussing monochromator, and present measurements of the energy and momentum resolution and of the neutron flux of the instrument. We found an order of magnitude gain in intensity (at the cost of coarser momentum resolution), and that the incoherent elastic energy widths are measurably narrower than before the upgrade. The much improved count rate should allow the use of smaller single crystals samples and thus enable the upgraded FLEXX spectrometer to continue making leading edge measurements.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures, 5 table