Anomalous Electron Trajectory in Topological Insulators

We present a general theory about electron orbital motions in topological insulators. An in-plane electric field drives spin-up and spin-down electrons bending to opposite directions, and skipping orbital motions, a counterpart of the integer quantum Hall effect, are formed near the boundary of the sample. The accompanying Zitterbewegung can be found and controlled by tuning external electric fields. Ultrafast flipping electron spin leads to a quantum side jump in the topological insulator, and a snake-orbit motion in two-dimensional electron gas with spin-orbit interactions. This feature provides a way to control electron orbital motion by manipulating electron spin.Comment: 5 pages and 4 figures for the letter, 6 pagers for the online supplemental materia

Mode Selection in the Spontaneous Motion of an Alcohol Droplet

An alcohol (pentanol) droplet exhibits spontaneous agitation on an aqueous solution, driven by a solutal Marangoni effect. We found that the droplet's mode of motion is controlled by its volume. A droplet with a volume of less than $0.1 \mu\rm{l}$ shows irregular translational motion, whereas intermediate-sized droplets of $0.1-200 \mu\rm{l}$ show vectorial motion. When the volume is above $300 \mu\rm{l}$, the droplet splits into smaller drops. These experimental results regarding mode selection are interpreted in terms of the wave number selection depending on the droplet volume.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure

Amoebas of complex hypersurfaces in statistical thermodynamics

The amoeba of a complex hypersurface is its image under a logarithmic projection. A number of properties of algebraic hypersurface amoebas are carried over to the case of transcendental hypersurfaces. We demonstrate the potential that amoebas can bring into statistical physics by considering the problem of energy distribution in a quantum thermodynamic ensemble. The spectrum ${\epsilon_k}\subset \mathbb{Z}^n$ of the ensemble is assumed to be multidimensional; this leads us to the notions of a multidimensional temperature and a vector of differential thermodynamic forms. Strictly speaking, in the paper we develop the multidimensional Darwin and Fowler method and give the description of the domain of admissible average values of energy for which the thermodynamic limit exists.Comment: 18 pages, 5 figure