702 research outputs found
Microwave photon detectors based on semiconducting double quantum dots
Detectors of microwave photons find applications in different fields ranging from security to cosmology. Due to the intrinsic difficulties related to the detection of vanishingly small energy quanta ¯hω, significant portions of the microwave electromagnetic spectrum are still uncovered by suitable techniques. No prevailing technology has clearly emerged yet, although different solutions have been tested in different contexts. Here, we focus on semiconductor quantum dots, which feature wide tunability by external gate voltages and scalability for large architectures. We discuss possible pathways for the development of microwave photon detectors based on photon-assisted tunneling in semiconducting double quantum dot circuits. In particular, we consider implementations based on either broadband transmission lines or resonant cavities, and we discuss how developments in charge sensing techniques and hybrid architectures may be beneficial for the development of efficient photon detectors in the microwave range
Origin and spectroscopic determination of trigonal anisotropy in a heteronuclear single-molecule magnet
W-band ({\nu} ca. 94 GHz) electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopy
was used for a single-crystal study of a star-shaped Fe3Cr single-molecule
magnet (SMM) with crystallographically imposed trigonal symmetry. The high
resolution and sensitivity accessible with W-band EPR allowed us to determine
accurately the axial zero-field splitting terms for the ground (S =6) and first
two excited states (S =5 and S =4). Furthermore, spectra recorded by applying
the magnetic field perpendicular to the trigonal axis showed a pi/6 angular
modulation. This behavior is a signature of the presence of trigonal transverse
magnetic anisotropy terms whose values had not been spectroscopically
determined in any SMM prior to this work. Such in-plane anisotropy could only
be justified by dropping the so-called 'giant spin approach' and by considering
a complete multispin approach. From a detailed analysis of experimental data
with the two models, it emerged that the observed trigonal anisotropy directly
reflects the structural features of the cluster, i.e., the relative orientation
of single-ion anisotropy tensors and the angular modulation of single-ion
anisotropy components in the hard plane of the cluster. Finally, since
high-order transverse anisotropy is pivotal in determining the spin dynamics in
the quantum tunneling regime, we have compared the angular dependence of the
tunnel splitting predicted by the two models upon application of a transverse
field (Berry-phase interference).Comment: 13 pages, 9 figure
Macroscopic Quantum Tunneling in Small Antiferromagnetic Particles: Effects of a Strong Magnetic Field
We consider an effect of a strong magnetic field on the ground state and
macroscopic coherent tunneling in small antiferromagnetic particles with
uniaxial and biaxial single-ion anisotropy. We find several tunneling regimes
that depend on the direction of the magnetic field with respect to the
anisotropy axes. For the case of a purely uniaxial symmetry and the field
directed along the easy axis, an exact instanton solution with two different
scales in imaginary time is constructed. For a rhombic anisotropy the effect of
the field strongly depends on its orientation: with the field increasing, the
tunneling rate increases or decreases for the field parallel to the easy or
medium axis, respectively. The analytical results are complemented by numerical
simulations.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figure
Probing Transverse Magnetic Anisotropy by Electronic Transport through a Single-Molecule Magnet
By means of electronic transport, we study the transverse magnetic anisotropy
of an individual Fe single-molecule magnet (SMM) embedded in a
three-terminal junction. In particular, we determine in situ the transverse
anisotropy of the molecule from the pronounced intensity modulations of the
linear conductance, which are observed as a function of applied magnetic field.
The proposed technique works at temperatures exceeding the energy scale of the
tunnel splittings of the SMM. We deduce that the transverse anisotropy for a
single Fe molecule captured in a junction is substantially larger than the
bulk value.Comment: 18 pages with 16 figures; version as publishe
Predicting human eye fixations via an LSTM-Based saliency attentive model
Data-driven saliency has recently gained a lot of attention thanks to the use of convolutional neural networks for predicting gaze fixations. In this paper, we go beyond standard approaches to saliency prediction, in which gaze maps are computed with a feed-forward network, and present a novel model which can predict accurate saliency maps by incorporating neural attentive mechanisms. The core of our solution is a convolutional long short-term memory that focuses on the most salient regions of the input image to iteratively refine the predicted saliency map. In addition, to tackle the center bias typical of human eye fixations, our model can learn a set of prior maps generated with Gaussian functions. We show, through an extensive evaluation, that the proposed architecture outperforms the current state-of-the-art on public saliency prediction datasets. We further study the contribution of each key component to demonstrate their robustness on different scenarios
Franck-Condon Blockade in a Single-Molecule Transistor
We investigate vibron-assisted electron transport in single-molecule
transistors containing an individual Fe4 Single-Molecule Magnet. We observe a
strong suppression of the tunneling current at low bias in combination with
vibron-assisted excitations. The observed features are explained by a strong
electron-vibron coupling in the framework of the Franck-Condon model supported
by density-functional theory
Direct exoplanet detection and characterization using the ANDROMEDA method: Performance on VLT/NaCo data
Context. The direct detection of exoplanets with high-contrast imaging
requires advanced data processing methods to disentangle potential planetary
signals from bright quasi-static speckles. Among them, angular differential
imaging (ADI) permits potential planetary signals with a known rotation rate to
be separated from instrumental speckles that are either statics or slowly
variable. The method presented in this paper, called ANDROMEDA for ANgular
Differential OptiMal Exoplanet Detection Algorithm is based on a maximum
likelihood approach to ADI and is used to estimate the position and the flux of
any point source present in the field of view. Aims. In order to optimize and
experimentally validate this previously proposed method, we applied ANDROMEDA
to real VLT/NaCo data. In addition to its pure detection capability, we
investigated the possibility of defining simple and efficient criteria for
automatic point source extraction able to support the processing of large
surveys. Methods. To assess the performance of the method, we applied ANDROMEDA
on VLT/NaCo data of TYC-8979-1683-1 which is surrounded by numerous bright
stars and on which we added synthetic planets of known position and flux in the
field. In order to accommodate the real data properties, it was necessary to
develop additional pre-processing and post-processing steps to the initially
proposed algorithm. We then investigated its skill in the challenging case of a
well-known target, Pictoris, whose companion is close to the detection
limit and we compared our results to those obtained by another method based on
principal component analysis (PCA). Results. Application on VLT/NaCo data
demonstrates the ability of ANDROMEDA to automatically detect and characterize
point sources present in the image field. We end up with a robust method
bringing consistent results with a sensitivity similar to the recently
published algorithms, with only two parameters to be fine tuned. Moreover, the
companion flux estimates are not biased by the algorithm parameters and do not
require a posteriori corrections. Conclusions. ANDROMEDA is an attractive
alternative to current standard image processing methods that can be readily
applied to on-sky data
Tunneling Splittings in Mn12-Acetate Single Crystals
A Landau-Zener multi-crossing method has been used to investigate the tunnel
splittings in high quality Mn-acetate single crystals in the pure
quantum relaxation regime and for fields applied parallel to the magnetic easy
axis. With this method several individual tunneling resonances have been
studied over a broad range of time scales. The relaxation is found to be
non-exponential and a distribution of tunnel splittings is inferred from the
data. The distributions suggest that the inhomogeneity in the tunneling rates
is due to disorder that produces a non-zero mean value of the average
transverse anisotropy, such as in a solvent disorder model. Further, the effect
of intermolecular dipolar interaction on the magnetic relaxation has been
studied.Comment: Europhysics Letters (in press). 7 pages, including 3 figure
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