THE SPECTROSCOPY OF CRYSTAL DEFECTS - A COMPENDIUM OF DEFECT NOMENCLATURE

The authors bring together tables of current defect nomenclature and a summary of the rules actually practised (rather than idealised schemes) in choosing such labels for signals obtained with a range of spectroscopies. As well as providing a source of reference for the user lost in a maze of labels, the compilation also indicates parallels between similar defect species in very different systems (e.g. ice and quartz), even though the relationships may be far from obvious from the labels. The systems considered are all non-metals, namely ionic crystals (including oxides), silica, semiconductors (e.g. III-V and tetrahedrally coordinated II-VI), valence crystals (e.g. diamond, c-Si, a-Si) and other special hosts like ice and conducting polymers

Entanglement quantification by local unitaries

Invariance under local unitary operations is a fundamental property that must be obeyed by every proper measure of quantum entanglement. However, this is not the only aspect of entanglement theory where local unitaries play a relevant role. In the present work we show that the application of suitable local unitary operations defines a family of bipartite entanglement monotones, collectively referred to as "mirror entanglement". They are constructed by first considering the (squared) Hilbert-Schmidt distance of the state from the set of states obtained by applying to it a given local unitary. To the action of each different local unitary there corresponds a different distance. We then minimize these distances over the sets of local unitaries with different spectra, obtaining an entire family of different entanglement monotones. We show that these mirror entanglement monotones are organized in a hierarchical structure, and we establish the conditions that need to be imposed on the spectrum of a local unitary for the associated mirror entanglement to be faithful, i.e. to vanish on and only on separable pure states. We analyze in detail the properties of one particularly relevant member of the family, the "stellar mirror entanglement" associated to traceless local unitaries with nondegenerate spectrum and equispaced eigenvalues in the complex plane. This particular measure generalizes the original analysis of [Giampaolo and Illuminati, Phys. Rev. A 76, 042301 (2007)], valid for qubits and qutrits. We prove that the stellar entanglement is a faithful bipartite entanglement monotone in any dimension, and that it is bounded from below by a function proportional to the linear entropy and from above by the linear entropy itself, coinciding with it in two- and three-dimensional spaces.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figures. Improved and generalized proof of monotonicity of the mirror and stellar entanglemen

The effect of stellar-mass black holes on the structural evolution of massive star clusters

We present the results of realistic N-body modelling of massive star clusters in the Magellanic Clouds, aimed at investigating a dynamical origin for the radius-age trend observed in these systems. We find that stellar-mass black holes, formed in the supernova explosions of the most massive cluster stars, can constitute a dynamically important population. If a significant number of black holes are retained (here we assume complete retention), these objects rapidly form a dense core where interactions are common, resulting in the scattering of black holes into the cluster halo, and the ejection of black holes from the cluster. These two processes heat the stellar component, resulting in prolonged core expansion of a magnitude matching the observations. Significant core evolution is also observed in Magellanic Cloud clusters at early times. We find that this does not result from the action of black holes, but can be reproduced by the effects of mass-loss due to rapid stellar evolution in a primordially mass segregated cluster.Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRAS Letters; 2 figures, 1 tabl

The Planck Surveyor mission: astrophysical prospects

Although the Planck Surveyor mission is optimized to map the cosmic microwave background anisotropies, it will also provide extremely valuable information on astrophysical phenomena. We review our present understanding of Galactic and extragalactic foregrounds relevant to the mission and discuss on one side, Planck's impact on the study of their properties and, on the other side, to what extent foreground contamination may affect Planck's ability to accurately determine cosmological parameters. Planck's multifrequency surveys will be unique in their coverage of large areas of the sky (actually, of the full sky); this will extend by two or more orders of magnitude the flux density interval over which mm/sub-mm counts of extragalactic sources can be determined by instruments already available (like SCUBA) or planned for the next decade (like the LSA-MMA or the space mission FIRST), which go much deeper but over very limited areas. Planck will thus provide essential complementary information on the epoch-dependent luminosity functions. Bright radio sources will be studied over a poorly explored frequency range where spectral signatures, essential to understand the physical processes that are going on, show up. The Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect, with its extremely rich information content, will be observed in the direction of a large number of rich clusters of Galaxies. Thanks again to its all sky coverage, Planck will provide unique information on the structure and on the emission properties of the interstellar medium in the Galaxy. At the same time, the foregrounds are unlikely to substantially limit Planck's ability to measure the cosmological signals. Even measurements of polarization of the primordial Cosmic Microwave background fluctuations appear to be feasible.Comment: 20 pages, Latex (use aipproc2.sty, aipproc2.cls, epsfig.sty), 10 PostScript figures; invited review talk, Proc. of the Conference: "3 K Cosmology", Roma, Italy, 5-10 October 1998, AIP Conference Proc, in press Note: Figures 6 and 7 have been replaced by new and correct version

Dry matter yields and quality of organic lupin/cereal mixtures for wholecrop forage

In view of climate change predictions and the general desirability of increasing the amount of home grown protein, a case exists for the investigation of lupins and lupin/cereal bicrop combinations as wholecrop forage on organic farms. A replicated randomised block trial is described which took place at the Royal Agricultural College, Cirencester, in 2005. This involved spring sown blue, white and yellow lupins, millet, wheat and triticale and lupin/cereal bi-crops. Data for dry matter yields for wholecrop silage, crude protein, MAD fi bre content and estimated ME, are presented for a single harvest. It is concluded that white lupins and white lupin bi-crops with spring wheat or triticale offer the best prospects for a viable wholecrop forage crop in an organic situation

Heavy meson masses and decay constants from relativistic heavy quarks in full lattice QCD

We determine masses and decay constants of heavy-heavy and heavy-charm pseudoscalar mesons as a function of heavy quark mass using a fully relativistic formalism known as Highly Improved Staggered Quarks for the heavy quark. We are able to cover the region from the charm quark mass to the bottom quark mass using MILC ensembles with lattice spacing values from 0.15 fm down to 0.044 fm. We obtain f_{B_c} = 0.427(6) GeV; m_{B_c} = 6.285(10) GeV and f_{\eta_b} = 0.667(6) GeV. Our value for f_{\eta_b} is within a few percent of f_{\Upsilon} confirming that spin effects are surprisingly small for heavyonium decay constants. Our value for f_{B_c} is significantly lower than potential model values being used to estimate production rates at the LHC. We discuss the changing physical heavy-quark mass dependence of decay constants from heavy-heavy through heavy-charm to heavy-strange mesons. A comparison between the three different systems confirms that the B_c system behaves in some ways more like a heavy-light system than a heavy-heavy one. Finally we summarise current results on decay constants of gold-plated mesons.Comment: 16 pages, 12 figure

Distillability and positivity of partial transposes in general quantum field systems

Criteria for distillability, and the property of having a positive partial transpose, are introduced for states of general bipartite quantum systems. The framework is sufficiently general to include systems with an infinite number of degrees of freedom, including quantum fields. We show that a large number of states in relativistic quantum field theory, including the vacuum state and thermal equilibrium states, are distillable over subsystems separated by arbitrary spacelike distances. These results apply to any quantum field model. It will also be shown that these results can be generalized to quantum fields in curved spacetime, leading to the conclusion that there is a large number of quantum field states which are distillable over subsystems separated by an event horizon.Comment: 25 pages, 2 figures. v2: Typos removed, references and comments added. v3: Expanded introduction and reference list. To appear in Rev. Math. Phy

Polarization and readout of coupled single spins in diamond

We study the coupling of a single nitrogen-vacancy center in diamond to a nearby single nitrogen defect at room temperature. The magnetic dipolar coupling leads to a splitting in the electron spin resonance frequency of the nitrogen-vacancy center, allowing readout of the state of a single nitrogen electron spin. At magnetic fields where the spin splitting of the two centers is the same we observe a strong polarization of the nitrogen electron spin. The amount of polarization can be controlled by the optical excitation power. We combine the polarization and the readout in time-resolved pump-probe measurements to determine the spin relaxation time of a single nitrogen electron spin. Finally, we discuss indications for hyperfine-induced polarization of the nitrogen nuclear spin