26,222 research outputs found
Transport properties of armchair graphene nanoribbon junctions between graphene electrodes
The transmission properties of armchair graphene nanoribbon junctions between
graphene electrodes are investigated by means of first-principles quantum
transport calculations. First the dependence of the transmission function on
the size of the nanoribbon has been studied. Two regimes are highlighted: for
small applied bias transport takes place via tunneling and the length of the
ribbon is the key parameter that determines the junction conductance; at higher
applied bias resonant transport through HOMO and LUMO starts to play a more
determinant role, and the transport properties depend on the details of the
geometry (width and length) of the carbon nanoribbon. In the case of the
thinnest ribbon it has been verified that a tilted geometry of the central
phenyl ring is the most stable configuration. As a consequence of this rotation
the conductance decreases due to the misalignment of the orbitals between
the phenyl ring and the remaining part of the junction. All the computed
transmission functions have shown a negligible dependence on different
saturations and reconstructions of the edges of the graphene leads, suggesting
a general validity of the reported results
Axion Like Particles and the Inverse Seesaw Mechanism
Light pseudoscalars known as axion like particles (ALPs) may be behind
physical phenomena like the Universe transparency to ultra-energetic photons,
the soft -ray excess from the Coma cluster, and the 3.5 keV line. We
explore the connection of these particles with the inverse seesaw (ISS)
mechanism for neutrino mass generation. We propose a very restrictive setting
where the scalar field hosting the ALP is also responsible for generating the
ISS mass scales through its vacuum expectation value on gravity induced
nonrenormalizable operators. A discrete gauge symmetry protects the theory from
the appearance of overly strong gravitational effects and discrete anomaly
cancellation imposes strong constraints on the order of the group. The
anomalous U symmetry leading to the ALP is an extended lepton number and
the protective discrete symmetry can be always chosen as a subgroup of a
combination of the lepton number and the baryon number.Comment: 29pp. v4: published version with erratum. Conclusions unchange
First-Principles Study of Substitutional Metal Impurities in Graphene: Structural, Electronic and Magnetic Properties
We present a theoretical study using density functional calculations of the
structural, electronic and magnetic properties of 3d transition metal, noble
metal and Zn atoms interacting with carbon monovacancies in graphene. We pay
special attention to the electronic and magnetic properties of these
substitutional impurities and found that they can be fully understood using a
simple model based on the hybridization between the states of the metal atom,
particularly the d shell, and the defect levels associated with an
unreconstructed D3h carbon vacancy. We identify three different regimes
associated with the occupation of different carbon-metal hybridized electronic
levels:
(i) bonding states are completely filled for Sc and Ti, and these impurities
are non-magnetic;
(ii) the non-bonding d shell is partially occupied for V, Cr and Mn and,
correspondingly, these impurties present large and localized spin moments;
(iii) antibonding states with increasing carbon character are progressively
filled for Co, Ni, the noble metals and Zn. The spin moments of these
impurities oscillate between 0 and 1 Bohr magnetons and are increasingly
delocalized.
The substitutional Zn suffers a Jahn-Teller-like distortion from the C3v
symmetry and, as a consequence, has a zero spin moment. Fe occupies a distinct
position at the border between regimes (ii) and (iii) and shows a more complex
behavior: while is non-magnetic at the level of GGA calculations, its spin
moment can be switched on using GGA+U calculations with moderate values of the
U parameter.Comment: 13 figures, 4 tables. Submitted to Phys. Rev. B on September 26th,
200
Testing the Modern Merger Hypothesis via the Assembly of Massive Blue Elliptical Galaxies in the Local Universe
The modern merger hypothesis offers a method of forming a new elliptical
galaxy through merging two equal-mass, gas-rich disk galaxies fuelling a
nuclear starburst followed by efficient quenching and dynamical stabilization.
A key prediction of this scenario is a central concentration of young stars
during the brief phase of morphological transformation from highly-disturbed
remnant to new elliptical galaxy. To test this aspect of the merger hypothesis,
we use integral field spectroscopy to track the stellar Balmer absorption and
4000\AA\ break strength indices as a function of galactic radius for 12 massive
(), nearby (),
visually-selected plausible new ellipticals with blue-cloud optical colours and
varying degrees of morphological peculiarities. We find that these index values
and their radial dependence correlate with specific morphological features such
that the most disturbed galaxies have the smallest 4000\AA\ break strengths and
the largest Balmer absorption values. Overall, two-thirds of our sample are
inconsistent with the predictions of the modern merger hypothesis. Of these
eight, half exhibit signatures consistent with recent minor merger
interactions. The other half have star formation histories similar to local,
quiescent early-type galaxies. Of the remaining four galaxies, three have the
strong morphological disturbances and star-forming optical colours consistent
with being remnants of recent, gas-rich major mergers, but exhibit a weak,
central burst consistent with forming of their stars. The final
galaxy possesses spectroscopic signatures of a strong, centrally-concentrated
starburst and quiescent core optical colours indicative of recent quenching
(i.e., a post-starburst signature) as prescribed by the modern merger
hypothesis.Comment: 25 pages, 37 figures, accepted to MNRA
Exciting polaritons with quantum light
We discuss the excitation of polaritons---strongly-coupled states of light
and matter---by quantum light, instead of the usual laser or thermal
excitation. As one illustration of the new horizons thus opened, we introduce
Mollow spectroscopy, a theoretical concept for a spectroscopic technique that
consists in scanning the output of resonance fluorescence onto an optical
target, from which weak nonlinearities can be read with high precision even in
strongly dissipative environments.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure
Interactions and star formation activity in Wolf-Rayet galaxies
We present the main results of the PhD Thesis carried out by
L\'opez-S\'anchez (2006), in which a detailed morphological, photometrical and
spectroscopical analysis of a sample of 20 Wolf-Rayet (WR) galaxies was
realized. The main aims are the study of the star formation and O and WR
stellar populations in these galaxies and the role that interactions between
low surface companion objects have in the triggering of the bursts. We analyze
the morphology, stellar populations, physical conditions, chemical abundances
and kinematics of the ionized gas, as well as the star-formation activity of
each system.Comment: 16 pages, 15 figure
Electronic structure interpolation via atomic orbitals
We present an efficient scheme for accurate electronic structure
interpolations based on the systematically improvable optimized atomic
orbitals. The atomic orbitals are generated by minimizing the spillage value
between the atomic basis calculations and the converged plane wave basis
calculations on some coarse -point grid. They are then used to calculate the
band structure of the full Brillouin zone using the linear combination of
atomic orbitals (LCAO) algorithms. We find that usually 16 -- 25 orbitals per
atom can give an accuracy of about 10 meV compared to the full {\it ab initio}
calculations. The current scheme has several advantages over the existing
interpolation schemes. The scheme is easy to implement and robust which works
equally well for metallic systems and systems with complex band structures.
Furthermore, the atomic orbitals have much better transferability than the
Shirley's basis and Wannier functions, which is very useful for the
perturbation calculations
High-performance functional renormalization group calculations for interacting fermions
We derive a novel computational scheme for functional Renormalization Group
(fRG) calculations for interacting fermions on 2D lattices. The scheme is based
on the exchange parametrization fRG for the two-fermion interaction, with
additional insertions of truncated partitions of unity. These insertions
decouple the fermionic propagators from the exchange propagators and lead to a
separation of the underlying equations. We demonstrate that this separation is
numerically advantageous and may pave the way for refined, large-scale
computational investigations even in the case of complex multiband systems.
Furthermore, on the basis of speedup data gained from our implementation, it is
shown that this new variant facilitates efficient calculations on a large
number of multi-core CPUs. We apply the scheme to the , Hubbard model on
a square lattice to analyze the convergence of the results with the bond length
of the truncation of the partition of unity. In most parameter areas, a fast
convergence can be observed. Finally, we compare to previous results in order
to relate our approach to other fRG studies.Comment: 26 pages, 9 figure
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