5,726 research outputs found
Effects of tidally enhanced stellar wind on the horizontal branch morphology of globular clusters
Metallicity is the first parameter to influence the horizontal branch (HB)
morphology of globular clusters (GCs). It has been found, however, that some
other parameters may also play an important role in affecting the morphology.
While the nature of these important parameters remains unclear, they are
believed to be likely correlated with wind mass-loss of red giants, since this
mass loss determines their subsequent locations on the HB. Unfortunately, the
mass loss during the red giant stages of the stellar evolution is poorly
understood at present. The stellar winds of red giants may be tidally enhanced
by companion stars if they are in binary systems. We investigate evolutionary
consequences of red giants in binaries by including tidally enhanced stellar
winds, and examine the effects on the HB morphology of GCs. We find that red,
blue, and extreme horizontal branch stars are all produced under the effects of
tidally enhanced stellar wind without any additional assumptions on the
mass-loss dispersion. Furthermore, the horizontal branch morphology is found to
be insensitive to the tidal enhancement parameter, Bw. We compare our
theoretical results with the observed horizontal branch morphology of globular
cluster NGC 2808, and find that the basic morphology of the horizontal branch
can be well reproduced. The number of blue horizontal branch stars in our
calculations, however, is lower than that of NGC 2808.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, 2 tables, accepted for publication in Astronomy &
Astrophysic
Detect Spinons via Spin Transport
Existence of spinons is the defining property of quantum spin liquids. These
exotic excitations have (fractionalized) spin quantum number and no electric
charge, and have been proposed to form Fermi surfaces in the recently
discovered organic spin liquid candidates. However direct probes for them are
still lacking. In this paper we propose to experimentally identify the spinons
by measuring the spin current flowing through the spin liquid candidate
materials, which would be a direct test for the existence of spin-carrying
mobile excitations. By the nonequilibrium Green function technique we evaluate
the spin current through the interface between a Mott insulator and a metal
under a spin bias, and find that different kinds of Mott insulators, including
quantum spin liquids, can be distinguished by different relations between the
spin bias and spin current, In the end we will also discuss relations to
experiments and estimate experimentally relevant parameters.Comment: 7 pages with appendix, 3 figure
Disorder and metal-insulator transitions in Weyl semimetals
The Weyl semimetal (WSM) is a newly proposed quantum state of matter. It has
Weyl nodes in bulk excitations and Fermi arcs surface states. We study the
effects of disorder and localization in WSMs and find three exotic phase
transitions. (I) Two Weyl nodes near the Brillouin zone boundary can be
annihilated pairwise by disorder scattering, resulting in the opening of a
topologically nontrivial gap and a transition from a WSM to a three-dimensional
(3D) quantum anomalous Hall state. (II) When the two Weyl nodes are well
separated in momentum space, the emergent bulk extended states can give rise to
a direct transition from a WSM to a 3D diffusive anomalous Hall metal. (III)
Two Weyl nodes can emerge near the zone center when an insulating gap closes
with increasing disorder, enabling a direct transition from a normal band
insulator to a WSM. We determine the phase diagram by numerically computing the
localization length and the Hall conductivity, and propose that the exotic
phase transitions can be realized on a photonic lattice.Comment: 7 pages with appendix, 6 figure
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