284 research outputs found
Revealing the electronic structure of a carbon nanotube carrying a supercurrent
Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are not intrinsically superconducting but they can
carry a supercurrent when connected to superconducting electrodes. This
supercurrent is mainly transmitted by discrete entangled electron-hole states
confined to the nanotube, called Andreev Bound States (ABS). These states are a
key concept in mesoscopic superconductivity as they provide a universal
description of Josephson-like effects in quantum-coherent nanostructures (e.g.
molecules, nanowires, magnetic or normal metallic layers) connected to
superconducting leads. We report here the first tunneling spectroscopy of
individually resolved ABS, in a nanotube-superconductor device. Analyzing the
evolution of the ABS spectrum with a gate voltage, we show that the ABS arise
from the discrete electronic levels of the molecule and that they reveal
detailed information about the energies of these levels, their relative spin
orientation and the coupling to the leads. Such measurements hence constitute a
powerful new spectroscopic technique capable of elucidating the electronic
structure of CNT-based devices, including those with well-coupled leads. This
is relevant for conventional applications (e.g. superconducting or normal
transistors, SQUIDs) and quantum information processing (e.g. entangled
electron pairs generation, ABS-based qubits). Finally, our device is a new type
of dc-measurable SQUID
BKM Lie superalgebras from counting twisted CHL dyons
Following Sen[arXiv:0911.1563], we study the counting of (`twisted') BPS
states that contribute to twisted helicity trace indices in four-dimensional
CHL models with N=4 supersymmetry. The generating functions of half-BPS states,
twisted as well as untwisted, are given in terms of multiplicative eta products
with the Mathieu group, M_{24}, playing an important role. These multiplicative
eta products enable us to construct Siegel modular forms that count twisted
quarter-BPS states. The square-roots of these Siegel modular forms turn out be
precisely a special class of Siegel modular forms, the dd-modular forms, that
have been classified by Clery and Gritsenko[arXiv:0812.3962]. We show that each
one of these dd-modular forms arise as the Weyl-Kac-Borcherds denominator
formula of a rank-three Borcherds-Kac-Moody Lie superalgebra. The walls of the
Weyl chamber are in one-to-one correspondence with the walls of marginal
stability in the corresponding CHL model for twisted dyons as well as untwisted
ones. This leads to a periodic table of BKM Lie superalgebras with properties
that are consistent with physical expectations.Comment: LaTeX, 32 pages; (v2) matches published versio
Superconductivity in a single C60 transistor
Single molecule transistors (SMTs) are currently attracting enormous
attention as possible quantum information processing devices. An intrinsic
limitation to the prospects of these however is associated to the presence of a
small number of quantized conductance channels, each channel having a high
access resistance of at best =12.9 k. When the
contacting leads become superconducting, these correlations can extend
throughout the whole system by the proximity effect. This not only lifts the
resistive limitation of normal state contacts, but further paves a new way to
probe electron transport through a single molecule. In this work, we
demonstrate the realization of superconducting SMTs involving a single C60
fullerene molecule. The last few years have seen gate-controlled Josephson
supercurrents induced in the family of low dimensional carbon structures such
as flakes of two-dimensional graphene and portions of one-dimensional carbon
nanotubes. The present study involving a full zero-dimensionnal fullerene
completes the picture.Comment: 12 pages, 3 figure
Foundations of Black Hole Accretion Disk Theory
This review covers the main aspects of black hole accretion disk theory. We
begin with the view that one of the main goals of the theory is to better
understand the nature of black holes themselves. In this light we discuss how
accretion disks might reveal some of the unique signatures of strong gravity:
the event horizon, the innermost stable circular orbit, and the ergosphere. We
then review, from a first-principles perspective, the physical processes at
play in accretion disks. This leads us to the four primary accretion disk
models that we review: Polish doughnuts (thick disks), Shakura-Sunyaev (thin)
disks, slim disks, and advection-dominated accretion flows (ADAFs). After
presenting the models we discuss issues of stability, oscillations, and jets.
Following our review of the analytic work, we take a parallel approach in
reviewing numerical studies of black hole accretion disks. We finish with a few
select applications that highlight particular astrophysical applications:
measurements of black hole mass and spin, black hole vs. neutron star accretion
disks, black hole accretion disk spectral states, and quasi-periodic
oscillations (QPOs).Comment: 91 pages, 23 figures, final published version available at
http://www.livingreviews.org/lrr-2013-
Finding the sources of missing heritability in a yeast cross
For many traits, including susceptibility to common diseases in humans,
causal loci uncovered by genetic mapping studies explain only a minority of the
heritable contribution to trait variation. Multiple explanations for this
"missing heritability" have been proposed. Here we use a large cross between
two yeast strains to accurately estimate different sources of heritable
variation for 46 quantitative traits and to detect underlying loci with high
statistical power. We find that the detected loci explain nearly the entire
additive contribution to heritable variation for the traits studied. We also
show that the contribution to heritability of gene-gene interactions varies
among traits, from near zero to 50%. Detected two-locus interactions explain
only a minority of this contribution. These results substantially advance our
understanding of the missing heritability problem and have important
implications for future studies of complex and quantitative traits
Preservation of Genes Involved in Sterol Metabolism in Cholesterol Auxotrophs: Facts and Hypotheses
Background: It is known that primary sequences of enzymes involved in sterol biosynthesis are well conserved in organisms that produce sterols de novo. However, we provide evidence for a preservation of the corresponding genes in two animals unable to synthesize cholesterol (auxotrophs): Drosophila melanogaster and Caenorhabditis elegans. Principal Findings: We have been able to detect bona fide orthologs of several ERG genes in both organisms using a series of complementary approaches. We have detected strong sequence divergence between the orthologs of the nematode and of the fruitfly; they are also very divergent with respect to the orthologs in organisms able to synthesize sterols de novo (prototrophs). Interestingly, the orthologs in both the nematode and the fruitfly are still under selective pressure. It is possible that these genes, which are not involved in cholesterol synthesis anymore, have been recruited to perform different new functions. We propose a more parsimonious way to explain their accelerated evolution and subsequent stabilization. The products of ERG genes in prototrophs might be involved in several biological roles, in addition to sterol synthesis. In the case of the nematode and the fruitfly, the relevant genes would have lost their ancestral function in cholesterogenesis but would have retained the other function(s), which keep them under pressure. Conclusions: By exploiting microarray data we have noticed a strong expressional correlation between the orthologs of ERG24 and ERG25 in D. melanogaster and genes encoding factors involved in intracellular protein trafficking and folding an
Similar Genetic Mechanisms Underlie the Parallel Evolution of Floral Phenotypes
The repeated origin of similar phenotypes is invaluable for studying the underlying genetics of adaptive traits; molecular evidence, however, is lacking for most examples of such similarity. The floral morphology of neotropical Malpighiaceae is distinctive and highly conserved, especially with regard to symmetry, and is thought to result from specialization on oil-bee pollinators. We recently demonstrated that CYCLOIDEA2–like genes (CYC2A and CYC2B) are associated with the development of the stereotypical floral zygomorphy that is critical to this plant–pollinator mutualism. Here, we build on this developmental framework to characterize floral symmetry in three clades of Malpighiaceae that have independently lost their oil bee association and experienced parallel shifts in their floral morphology, especially in regard to symmetry. We show that in each case these species exhibit a loss of CYC2B function, and a strikingly similar shift in the expression of CYC2A that is coincident with their shift in floral symmetry. These results indicate that similar floral phenotypes in this large angiosperm clade have evolved via parallel genetic changes from an otherwise highly conserved developmental program
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