Intrinsic electron-doping in nominal "non-doped" superconducting (La,Y)2_2CuO4_4 thin films grown by dc magnetron sputtering

The superconducting nominal "non-doped" $La_{1.85}Y_{0.15}CuO_4$ (LYCO) thin films are successfully prepared by dc magnetron-sputtering and in situ post-annealing in vacuum. The best $T_{C0}$ more than 13K is achieved in the optimal LYCO films with highly pure c-axis oriented T'-type structure. In the normal state, the quasi-quadratic temperature dependence of resistivity, the negative Hall coefficient and effect of oxygen content in the films are quite similar to the typical Ce-doped T'-214 cuprates, suggesting that T'-LYCO shows the electron-doping nature like known n-type cuprates, and is not a band superconductor as proposed previously. The charge carriers are considered to be induced by oxygen deficiency.Comment: 5 pages, 7 figure

Renormalization Group Method and Reductive Perturbation Method

It is shown that the renormalization group method does not necessarily eliminate all secular terms in perturbation series to partial differential equations and a functional subspace of renormalizable secular solutions corresponds to a choice of scales of independent variables in the reductive perturbation method.Comment: 5 pages, late

Optical spectroscopy study on single crystalline LaFeAsO

Millimeter-sized single crystals of LaFeAsO were grown from NaAs flux and the in-plane optical properties were studied over a wide frequency range. A sizable electronic correlation effect was indicated from the analysis of the free-carrier spectral weight. With decreasing temperature from 300 K, we observed a continuous suppression of the spectral weight near 0.6 eV. But a spin-density-wave gap formation at lower energy scale was seen only in the broken-symmetry state. We elaborate that both the itinerancy and local spin interactions of Fe\emph{3d} electrons are present for the FeAs-based systems; however, the establishment of the long-range magnetic order at low temperature has a dominantly itinerant origin.Comment: 4 figures, 5 page

Does Inflation Provide Natural Initial Conditions for the Universe?

If our universe underwent inflation, its entropy during the inflationary phase was substantially lower than it is today. Because a low-entropy state is less likely to be chosen randomly than a high-entropy one, inflation is unlikely to arise through randomly-chosen initial conditions. To resolve this puzzle, we examine the notion of a natural state for the universe, and argue that it is a nearly-empty spacetime. If empty space has a small vacuum energy, however, inflation can begin spontaneously in this background. This scenario explains why a universe like ours is likely to have begun via a period of inflation, and also provides an origin for the cosmological arrow of time.Comment: Submitted to Gravity Research Foundation Essay Competition; based on hep-th/041027

Phase-reference VLBI Observations of the Compact Steep-Spectrum Source 3C 138

We investigate a phase-reference VLBI observation that was conducted at 15.4 GHz by fast switching VLBA antennas between the compact steep-spectrum radio source 3C 138 and the quasar PKS 0528+134 which are about 4$^\circ$ away on the sky. By comparing the phase-reference mapping with the conventional hybrid mapping, we demonstrate the feasibility of high precision astrometric measurements for sources separated by 4$^\circ$. VLBI phase-reference mapping preserves the relative phase information, and thus provides an accurate relative position between 3C 138 and PKS 0528+134 of $\Delta\alpha=-9^m46^s.531000\pm0^s.000003$ and $\Delta\delta=3^\circ6^\prime26^{\prime\prime}.90311\pm0^{\prime\prime}.00007$ (J2000.0) in right ascension and declination, respectively. This gives an improved position of the nucleus (component A) of 3C 138 in J2000.0 to be RA=$05^h 21^m 9^s.885748$ and Dec=$16^\circ 38' 22''.05261$ under the assumption that the position of calibrator PKS 0528+134 is correct. We further made a hybrid map by performing several iterations of CLEAN and self-calibration on the phase-referenced data with the phase-reference map as an input model for the first phase self-calibration. Compared with the hybrid map from the limited visibility data directly obtained from fringe fitting 3C 138 data, this map has a similar dynamic range, but a higher angular resolution. Therefore, phase-reference technique is not only a means of phase connection, but also a means of increasing phase coherence time allowing self-calibration technique to be applied to much weaker sources.Comment: 9 pages plus 2 figures, accepted by PASJ (Vol.58 No.6

Coupled structural/thermal/electromagnetic analysis/tailoring of graded composite structures

Accomplishments are described for the first year effort of a 5-year program to develop a methodology for coupled structural/thermal/electromagnetic analysis/tailoring of graded composite structures. These accomplishments include: (1) the results of the selective literature survey; (2) 8-, 16-, and 20-noded isoparametric plate and shell elements; (3) large deformation structural analysis; (4) eigenanalysis; (5) anisotropic heat transfer analysis; and (6) anisotropic electromagnetic analysis