29,785 research outputs found
Spontaneous patterns in coherently driven polariton microcavities
We consider a polariton microcavity resonantly driven by two external lasers
which simultaneously pump both lower and upper polariton branches at normal
incidence. In this setup, we study the occurrence of instabilities of the
pump-only solutions towards the spontaneous formation of patterns. Their
appearance is a consequence of the spontaneous symmetry breaking of
translational and rotational invariance due to interaction induced parametric
scattering. We observe the evolution between diverse patterns which can be
classified as single-pump, where parametric scattering occurs at the same
energy as one of the pumps, and as two-pump, where scattering occurs at a
different energy. For two-pump instabilities, stripe and chequerboard patterns
become the dominant steady-state solutions because cubic parametric scattering
processes are forbidden. This contrasts with the single-pump case, where
hexagonal patterns are the most common arrangements. We study the possibility
of controlling the evolution between different patterns. Our results are
obtained within a linear stability analysis and are confirmed by finite size
full numerical calculations.Comment: 15 pages, 9 figure
The critical current of YBa2Cu3O7-d Low Angle Grain Boundaries
Transport critical current measurements have been performed on 5 degree
[001]-tilt thin film YBa2Cu3O7-delta single grain boundaries with magnetic
field rotated in the plane of the film, phi. The variation of the critical
current has been determined as a function of the angle between the magnetic
field and the grain boundary plane. In applied fields above 1 T the critical
current, j_c, is found to be strongly suppressed only when the magnetic field
is within an angle phi_k of the grain boundary. Outside this angular range the
behavior of the artificial grain boundary is dominated by the critical current
of the grains. We show that the phi dependence of j_c in the suppressed region
is well described by a flux cutting model.Comment: To be published in PRL, new version with minor changes following
referees report
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