Axion topological field theory of topological superconductors

Topological superconductors are gapped superconductors with gapless and topologically robust quasiparticles propagating on the boundary. In this paper, we present a topological field theory description of three-dimensional time-reversal invariant topological superconductors. In our theory the topological superconductor is characterized by a topological coupling between the electromagnetic field and the superconducting phase fluctuation, which has the same form as the coupling of "axions" with an Abelian gauge field. As a physical consequence of our theory, we predict the level crossing induced by the crossing of special "chiral" vortex lines, which can be realized by considering s-wave superconductors in proximity with the topological superconductor. Our theory can also be generalized to the coupling with a gravitational field.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figures. An error in the references is corrected. The acknowledgement is update

Bending and Breathing Modes of the Galactic Disk

We explore the hypothesis that a passing satellite or dark matter subhalo has excited coherent oscillations of the Milky Way's stellar disk in the direction perpendicular to the Galactic midplane. This work is motivated by recent observations of spatially dependent bulk vertical motions within ~ kpc of the Sun. A satellite can transfer a fraction of its orbital energy to the disk stars as it plunges through the Galactic midplane thereby heating and thickening the disk. Bulk motions arise during the early stages of such an event when the disk is still in an unrelaxed state. We present simple toy-model calculations and simulations of disk-satellite interactions, which show that the response of the disk depends on the relative velocity of the satellite. When the component of the satellite's velocity perpendicular to the disk is small compared with that of the stars, the perturbation is predominantly a bending mode. Conversely, breathing and higher order modes are excited when the vertical velocity of the satellite is larger than that of the stars. We argue that the compression and rarefaction motions seen in three different surveys are in fact breathing mode perturbations of the Galactic disk.Comment: 12 pages, 12 figure

Spectroscopy studies of straincompensated mid-infrared QCL active regions on misoriented substrates

In this work, we perform spectroscopic studies of AlGaAs/InGaAs quantum cascade laser structures that demonstrate frequency mixing using strain-compensated active regions. Using a three-quantum well design based on diagonal transitions, we incorporate strain in the active region using single and double well configurations on various surface planes (100) and (111). We observe the influence of piezoelectric properties in molecular beam epitaxy grown structures, where the addition of indium in the GaAs matrix increases the band bending in between injector regions and demonstrates a strong dependence on process conditions that include sample preparation, deposition rates, mole fraction, and enhanced surface diffusion lengths. We produced mid-infrared structures under identical deposition conditions that differentiate the role of indium(strain) in intracavity frequency mixing and show evidence that this design can potentially be implemented using other material systems

Orientation-dependent pseudomorphic growth of InAs for use in lattice-mismatched mid-infrared photonic structures

In this study, InAs was deposited on GaAs (100) and GaAs (111)B 2 degrees towardssubstrates for the purpose of differentiating the InAs growth mode stemming from strain and then analyzed using in-situ reflection high energy electron diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, Raman spectroscopy, reflectance spectroscopy, and atomic force microscopy. The procession of InAs deposition throughout a range of deposition conditions results in assorted forms of strain relief revealing that, despite lattice mismatch for InAs on GaAs (approximately 7%), InAs does not necessarily result in typical quantum dot/wire formation on (111) surfaces, but instead proceeds two-dimensionally due primarily to the surface orientation

The Joint Efficient Dark-energy Investigation (JEDI): Measuring the cosmic expansion history from type Ia supernovae

JEDI (Joint Efficient Dark-energy Investigation) is a candidate implementation of the NASA-DOE Joint Dark Energy Mission (JDEM). JEDI will probe dark energy in three independent methods: (1) type Ia supernovae, (2) baryon acoustic oscillations, and (3) weak gravitational lensing. In an accompanying paper, an overall summary of the JEDI mission is given. In this paper, we present further details of the supernova component of JEDI. To derive model-independent constraints on dark energy, it is important to precisely measure the cosmic expansion history, H(z), in continuous redshift bins from z \~ 0-2 (the redshift range in which dark energy is important). SNe Ia at z > 1 are not readily accessible from the ground because the bulk of their light has shifted into the near-infrared where the sky background is overwhelming; hence a space mission is required to probe dark energy using SNe. Because of its unique near-infrared wavelength coverage (0.8-4.2 microns), JEDI has the advantage of observing SNe Ia in the rest frame J band for the entire redshift range of 0 < z < 2, where they are less affected by dust, and appear to be nearly perfect standard candles. During the first year of JEDI operations, spectra and light curves will be obtained for ~4,000 SNe Ia at z < 2. The resulting constraints on dark energy are discussed, with special emphasis on the improved precision afforded by the rest frame near-infrared data.Comment: 8 pages, accepted for publication in SPIE proceeding

Supersymmetric Field Theory in 2T-physics

We construct N=1 supersymmetry in 4+2 dimensions compatible with the theoretical framework of 2T physics field theory and its gauge symmetries. The fields are arranged into 4+2 dimensional chiral and vector supermultiplets, and their interactions are uniquely fixed by SUSY and 2T-physics gauge symmetries. Many 3+1 spacetimes emerge from 4+2 by gauge fixing. Gauge degrees of freedom are eliminated as one comes down from 4+2 to 3+1 dimensions without any remnants of Kaluza-Klein modes. In a special gauge, the remaining physical degrees of freedom, and their interactions, coincide with ordinary N=1 supersymmetric field theory in 3+1 dimensions. In this gauge, SUSY in 4+2 is interpreted as superconformal symmetry SU(2,2|1) in 3+1 dimensions. Furthermore, the underlying 4+2 structure imposes some interesting restrictions on the emergent 3+1 SUSY field theory, which could be considered as part of the predictions of 2T-physics. One of these is the absence of the troublesome renormalizable CP violating F*F terms. This is good for curing the strong CP violation problem of QCD. An additional feature is that the superpotential is required to have no dimensionful parameters. To induce phase transitions, such as SUSY or electro-weak symmetry breaking, a coupling to the dilaton is needed. This suggests a common origin of phase transitions that is driven by the vacuum value of the dilaton, and need to be understood in a cosmological scenario as part of a unified theory that includes the coupling of supergravity to matter. Another interesting aspect is the possibility to utilize the inherent 2T gauge symmetry to explore dual versions of the N=1 theory in 3+1 dimensions. This is expected to reveal non-perturbative aspects of ordinary 1T field theory.Comment: 54 pages, late

Charge-coupled device for low background observations

A charge-coupled device with a low-emissivity metal layer located between a sensing layer and a substrate provides reduction in ghost images. In a typical charge-coupled device of a silicon sensing layer, a silicon dioxide insulating layer, with a glass substrate and a metal carrier layer, a near-infrared photon, not absorbed in the first pass, enters the glass substrate, reflects from the metal carrier, thereby returning far from the original pixel in its entry path. The placement of a low-emissivity metal layer between the glass substrate and the sensing layer reflects near infrared photons before they reach the substrate so that they may be absorbed in the silicon nearer the pixel of their points of entry so that the reflected ghost image is coincident with the primary image for a sharper, brighter image

Dipole: Diagnosis Prediction in Healthcare via Attention-based Bidirectional Recurrent Neural Networks

Predicting the future health information of patients from the historical Electronic Health Records (EHR) is a core research task in the development of personalized healthcare. Patient EHR data consist of sequences of visits over time, where each visit contains multiple medical codes, including diagnosis, medication, and procedure codes. The most important challenges for this task are to model the temporality and high dimensionality of sequential EHR data and to interpret the prediction results. Existing work solves this problem by employing recurrent neural networks (RNNs) to model EHR data and utilizing simple attention mechanism to interpret the results. However, RNN-based approaches suffer from the problem that the performance of RNNs drops when the length of sequences is large, and the relationships between subsequent visits are ignored by current RNN-based approaches. To address these issues, we propose {\sf Dipole}, an end-to-end, simple and robust model for predicting patients' future health information. Dipole employs bidirectional recurrent neural networks to remember all the information of both the past visits and the future visits, and it introduces three attention mechanisms to measure the relationships of different visits for the prediction. With the attention mechanisms, Dipole can interpret the prediction results effectively. Dipole also allows us to interpret the learned medical code representations which are confirmed positively by medical experts. Experimental results on two real world EHR datasets show that the proposed Dipole can significantly improve the prediction accuracy compared with the state-of-the-art diagnosis prediction approaches and provide clinically meaningful interpretation