Spin-3/2 physics of semiconductor hole nanowires: Valence-band mixing and tunable interplay between bulk-material and orbital bound-state spin splittings

We present a detailed theoretical study of the electronic spectrum and Zeeman splitting in hole quantum wires. The spin-3/2 character of the topmost bulk-valence-band states results in a strong variation of subband-edge g factors between different subbands. We elucidate the interplay between quantum confinement and heavy-hole - light-hole mixing and identify a certain robustness displayed by low-lying hole-wire subband edges with respect to changes in the shape or strength of the wire potential. The ability to address individual subband edges in, e.g., transport or optical experiments enables the study of holes states with nonstandard spin polarization, which do not exist in spin-1/2 systems. Changing the aspect ratio of hole wires with rectangular cross-section turns out to strongly affect the g factor of subband edges, providing an opportunity for versatile in-situ tuning of hole-spin properties with possible application in spintronics. The relative importance of cubic crystal symmetry is discussed, as well as the spin splitting away from zone-center subband edges.Comment: 16 pages, 12 figures, RevTe

Pseudospin symmetry in supersymmetric quantum mechanics: Schr\"odinger equations

The origin of pseudospin symmetry (PSS) and its breaking mechanism are explored by combining supersymmetry (SUSY) quantum mechanics, perturbation theory, and the similarity renormalization group (SRG) method. The Schr\"odinger equation is taken as an example, corresponding to the lowest-order approximation in transforming a Dirac equation into a diagonal form by using the SRG. It is shown that while the spin-symmetry-conserving term appears in the single-particle Hamiltonian $H$, the PSS-conserving term appears naturally in its SUSY partner Hamiltonian $\tilde{H}$. The eigenstates of Hamiltonians $H$ and $\tilde{H}$ are exactly one-to-one identical except for the so-called intruder states. In such a way, the origin of PSS deeply hidden in $H$ can be traced in its SUSY partner Hamiltonian $\tilde{H}$. The perturbative nature of PSS in the present potential without spin-orbit term is demonstrated by the perturbation calculations, and the PSS-breaking term can be regarded as a very small perturbation on the exact PSS limits. A general tendency that the pseudospin-orbit splittings become smaller with increasing single-particle energies can also be interpreted in an explicit way.Comment: 31 pages, 11 figures, 2 table

Scaling property of ideal granitic sequences

Quantification of granite textures and structures using a mathematical model for characterization of granites has been a long-term attempt of mathematical geologists over the past four decades. It is usually difficult to determine the influence of magma properties on mineral crystallization forming fined-grained granites due to its irregular and fine-grained textures. The ideal granite model was originally developed for modeling mineral sequences from first and second-order Markov properties. This paper proposes a new model for quantifying scale invariance properties of mineral clusters and voids observed within mineral sequences. Sequences of the minerals plagioclase, quartz and orthoclase observed under the microscope for 104 aplite samples collected from the Meech Lake area, Gatineau Park, Québec were used for validation of the model. The results show that the multi-scale approaches proposed in this paper may enable quantification of the nature of the randomness of mineral grain distributions. This, in turn, may be related to original properties of the magma