Searches at HERA

Searches for physics beyond the Standard Model have been performed in high-energy $e^{\pm}p$ collisions at HERA. No significant deviation from the Standard Model has been observed while searching for contact interactions, extra dimensions, leptoquarks, R-parity violating squarks and excited fermions. Exclusion limits have been inferred which extend or complement bounds from other colliders. The H1 collaboration has observed a puzzling excess of events with an high $P_t$ isolated lepton and missing transverse momentum, and interpretation as flavour changing neutral currents has been explored.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures, contribution to the Lake Louise Winter Institut

Tight binding description of the electronic response of a molecular device to an applied voltage

We analyze the effect of an external electric field on the electronic structure of molecules which have been recently studied as molecular wires or diodes. We use a self-consistent tight binding technique which provides results in good agreement with ab initio calculations and which may be applied to a large number of molecules. The voltage dependence of the molecular levels is mainly linear with slopes intimately related to the electronic structure of the molecules. We emphasize that the response to the applied voltage is an important feature which governs the behavior of a molecular device

Assessment of the notions of band offsets, wells and barriers at nanoscale semiconductor heterojunctions

Epitaxially-grown semiconductor heterostructures give the possibility to tailor the potential landscape for the carriers in a very controlled way. In planar lattice-matched heterostructures, the potential has indeed a very simple and easily predictable behavior: it is constant everywhere except at the interfaces where there is a step (discontinuity) which only depends on the composition of the semiconductors in contact. In this paper, we show that this universally accepted picture can be invalid in nanoscale heterostructures (e.g., quantum dots, rods, nanowires) which can be presently fabricated in a large variety of forms. Self-consistent tight-binding calculations applied to systems containing up to 75 000 atoms indeed demonstrate that the potential may have a more complex behavior in axial hetero-nanostructures: The band edges can show significant variations far from the interfaces if the nanostructures are not capped with a homogeneous shell. These results suggest new strategies to engineer the electronic properties of nanoscale objects, e.g. for sensors and photovoltaics.Comment: Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.

Study of Phase Reconstruction Techniques applied to Smith-Purcell Radiation Measurements

Measurements of coherent radiation at accelerators typically give the absolute value of the beam profile Fourier transform but not its phase. Phase reconstruction techniques such as Hilbert transform or Kramers Kronig reconstruction are used to recover such phase. We report a study of the performances of these methods and how to optimize the reconstructed profiles

Discrete Time Quantum Walk Approach to State Transfer

We show that a quantum state transfer, previously studied as a continuous time process in networks of interacting spins, can be achieved within the model of discrete time quantum walks with position dependent coin. We argue that due to additional degrees of freedom, discrete time quantum walks allow to observe effects which cannot be observed in the corresponding continuous time case. First, we study a discrete time version of the engineered coupling protocol due to Christandl et. al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 92, 187902 (2004)] and then discuss the general idea of conversion between continuous time quantum walks and discrete time quantum walks.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figures, comments welcom