36,030 research outputs found
Deconfined Fermions but Confined Coherence?
The cuprate superconductors and certain organic conductors exhibit transport
which is qualitatively anisotropic, yet at the same time other properties of
these materials strongly suggest the existence of a Fermi surface and low
energy excitations with substantial free electron character. The former of
these features is very difficult to account for if the material possesses three
dimensional coherence, while the latter is inconsistent with a description
based on a two dimensional fixed point. We therefore present a new proposal for
these materials in which they are categorized by a fixed point at which
transport in one direction is not renormalization group irrelevant, but is
intrinsically incoherent, i.e. the incoherence is present in a pure system, at
zero temperature. The defining property of such a state is that single electron
coherence is confined to lower dimensional subspaces (planes or chains) so that
it is impossible to observe interference effects between histories which
involve electrons moving between these subspaces.Comment: 31 pages, REVTEX, 3 eps figures, epsf.tex macr
A New Radio - X-Ray Probe of Galaxy Cluster Magnetic Fields
Results are presented of a new VLA-ROSAT study that probes the magnetic field
strength and distribution over a sample of 16 ``normal'' low redshift (z < 0.1)
galaxy clusters. The clusters span two orders of magnitude in X-ray luminosity,
and were selected to be free of (unusual) strong radio cluster halos, and
widespread cooling flows. Consistent with these criteria, most clusters show a
relaxed X-ray morphology and little or no evidence for recent merger activity.
Analysis of the rotation measure (RM) data shows cluster-generated Faraday RM
excess out to ~0.5 Mpc from cluster centers. The results, combined with RM
imaging of cluster-embedded sources and ROSAT X-ray profiles indicates that the
hot intergalactic gas within these ``normal'' clusters is permeated with a high
filling factor by magnetic fields at levels of = 5-10 (l/10 kpc)^{-1/2}
microGauss, where l is the field correlation length. These results lead to a
global estimate of the total magnetic energy in clusters, and give new insight
into the ultimate energy origin, which is likely gravitational. These results
also shed some light on the cluster evolutionary conditions that existed at the
onset of cooling flows.Comment: 6 pages, 1 figure, uses emulateapj5.sty, accepted by ApJ
Two-dimensional magnetism in the pnictide superconductor parent material SrFeAsF probed by muon-spin relaxation
We report muon-spin relaxation measurements on SrFeAsF, which is the parent
compound of a newly discovered iron-arsenic-fluoride based series of
superconducting materials. We find that this material has very similar magnetic
properties to LaFeAsO, such as separated magnetic and structural transitions
(TN = 120 K, Ts = 175 K), contrasting with SrFe2As2 where they are coincident.
The muon oscillation frequencies fall away very sharply at TN, which suggests
that the magnetic exchange between the layers is weaker than in comparable
oxypnictide compounds. This is consistent with our specific heat measurements,
which find that the entropy change S = 0.05 J/mol/K largely occurs at the
structural transition and there is no anomaly at TN.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure
Minimax Estimation of Nonregular Parameters and Discontinuity in Minimax Risk
When a parameter of interest is nondifferentiable in the probability, the
existing theory of semiparametric efficient estimation is not applicable, as it
does not have an influence function. Song (2014) recently developed a local
asymptotic minimax estimation theory for a parameter that is a
nondifferentiable transform of a regular parameter, where the nondifferentiable
transform is a composite map of a continuous piecewise linear map with a single
kink point and a translation-scale equivariant map. The contribution of this
paper is two fold. First, this paper extends the local asymptotic minimax
theory to nondifferentiable transforms that are a composite map of a Lipschitz
continuous map having a finite set of nondifferentiability points and a
translation-scale equivariant map. Second, this paper investigates the
discontinuity of the local asymptotic minimax risk in the true probability and
shows that the proposed estimator remains to be optimal even when the risk is
locally robustified not only over the scores at the true probability, but also
over the true probability itself. However, the local robustification does not
resolve the issue of discontinuity in the local asymptotic minimax risk
Flux Qubits and Readout Device with Two Independent Flux Lines
We report measurements on two superconducting flux qubits coupled to a
readout Superconducting QUantum Interference Device (SQUID). Two on-chip flux
bias lines allow independent flux control of any two of the three elements, as
illustrated by a two-dimensional qubit flux map. The application of microwaves
yields a frequency-flux dispersion curve for 1- and 2-photon driving of the
single-qubit excited state, and coherent manipulation of the single-qubit state
results in Rabi oscillations and Ramsey fringes. This architecture should be
scalable to many qubits and SQUIDs on a single chip.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, higher quality figures available upon request.
Submitted to PR
Notes towards an evaluation of The Office of Children’s Rights Commissioner for London: Phase 1. 2000-2001
This report records phase I of an evaluation of the Office of Children's Rights Commissioner for London (the Office) over the first 18 months of its 3 year life. This can be only a partial evaluation, not a definitive or conclusive one. We observed processes, progress and interim outcomes, and collected young people’s and adults’ views about the Office. Some of the findings could be used as baseline data in a second phase evaluation, for later comparison. The Office is due to close in April 2003. Section 1 explains how the Office was set up, and its staffing and objectives. We report the SSRU evaluation plans and activities, besides the social context of the Office’s work, and background debates about children’s right and abilities to participate as citizens. Section 2 reviews in more detail the Office’s activities in connection with its eight original aims recorded in 1998 in its funding applications. Section 3 records the views of children and adults about children’s rights in London and the work of the Office. The groups range from people working in the Office, to young people in schools and other settings, to policy makers. Section 4 summarises how our findings so far answer the evaluation questions set out in 2000 in our original protocol. Appendix 1 outlines the case for a national Children’s Rights Commissioner. Appendix 2 gives further details about the evaluation, and Appendix 3 reviews the problems of doing evaluations in general, and of doing evaluations for and with children in particular
Temperature dependence of the nitrogen-vacancy magnetic resonance in diamond
The temperature dependence of the magnetic resonance spectra of
nitrogen-vacancy (NV-) ensembles in the range of 280-330 K was studied. Four
samples prepared under different conditions were studied with NV-
concentrations ranging from 10 ppb to 15 ppm. For all of these samples, the
axial zero-field splitting (ZFS) parameter, D, was found to vary significantly
with temperature, T, as dD/dT = -74.2(7) kHz/K. The transverse ZFS parameter,
E, was non-zero (between 4 and 11 MHz) in all samples, and exhibited a
temperature dependence of dE/(EdT) = -1.4(3) x 10^(-4) K^(-1). The results
might be accounted for by considering local thermal expansion. The observation
of the temperature dependence of the ZFS parameters presents a significant
challenge for room-temperature diamond magnetometers and may ultimately limit
their bandwidth and sensitivity.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures, 1 tabl
Strongly enhanced photon collection from diamond defect centres under micro-fabricated integrated solid immersion lenses
The efficiency of collecting photons from optically active defect centres in
bulk diamond is greatly reduced by refraction and reflection at the diamond-air
interface. We report on the fabrication and measurement of a geometrical
solution to the problem; integrated solid immersion lenses (SILs) etched
directly into the surface of diamond. An increase of a factor of 10 was
observed in the saturated count-rate from a single negatively charged
nitrogen-vacancy (NV-) within a 5um diameter SIL compared with NV-s under a
planar surface in the same crystal. A factor of 3 reduction in background
emission was also observed due to the reduced excitation volume with a SIL
present. Such a system is potentially scalable and easily adaptable to other
defect centres in bulk diamond.Comment: 5 Pages, 5 figures (4 subfigures) - corrected typ
Interchain coherence of coupled Luttinger liquids at all orders in perturbation theory
We analyze the problem of Luttinger liquids coupled via a single-particle
hopping \tp and introduce a systematic diagrammatic expansion in powers of
\tp. An analysis of the scaling of the diagrams at each order allows us to
determine the power-law behavior versus \tp of the interchain hopping and of
the Fermi surface warp. In particular, for strong interactions, we find that
the exponents are dominated by higher-order diagrams producing an enhanced
coherence and a failure of linear-response theory. Our results are valid at any
finite order in \tp for the self-energy.Comment: 4 pages, 3 ps figures. Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. Let
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