Confinement of two-dimensional excitons in a non-homogeneous magnetic field

The effective Hamiltonian describing the motion of an exciton in an external non-homogeneous magnetic field is derived. The magnetic field plays the role of an effective potential for the exciton motion, results into an increment of the exciton mass and modifies the exciton kinetic energy operator. In contrast to the homogeneous field case, the exciton in a non-homogeneous magnetic field can also be trapped in the low field region and the field gradient increases the exciton confinement. The trapping energy and wave function of the exciton in a GaAs two-dimensional electron gas for specific circular magnetic field configurations are calculated. The results show than excitons can be trapped by non-homogeneous magnetic fields, and that the trapping energy is strongly correlated with the shape and strength of the non-homogeneous magnetic field profile.Comment: 9 pages, 12 figure

Experimental demonstration of a mu=-1 metamaterial lens for magnetic resonance imaging

In this work a mu=-1 metamaterial (MM) lens for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is demonstrated. MRI uses surface coils to detect the radiofrequency(RF) energy absorbed and emitted by the nuclear spins in the imaged object. The proposed MM lens manipulates the RF field detected by these surface coils, so that the coil sensitivity and spatial localization is substantially improved. Beyond this specific application, we feel that the reported results are the experimental confirmation of a new concept for the manipulation of RF field in MRI, which paves the way to many other interesting applications.Comment: 9 pages, 3 figure

Conformations of dendrimers in dilute solution

Conformations of isolated homo- dendrimers of G=1-7 generations with D=1-6 spacers have been studied in the good and poor solvents, as well as across the coil-to-globule transition, by means of a version of the Gaussian self-consistent (GSC) method and Monte Carlo (MC) simulation in continuous space based on the same coarse-grained model. The latter includes harmonic springs between connected monomers and the pair-wise Lennard-Jones potential with a hard core repulsion. The scaling law for the dendrimer size, the degrees of bond stretching and steric congestion, as well as the radial density, static structure factor, and asphericity have been analysed. It is also confirmed that while smaller dendrimers have a dense core, larger ones develop a hollow domain at some separation from the centre.Comment: RevTeX, 14 pages, 19 PS figures, Accepted for publication in J. Chem. Phy

Exciton trapping in magnetic wire structures

The lateral magnetic confinement of quasi two-dimensional excitons into wire like structures is studied. Spin effects are take into account and two different magnetic field profiles are considered, which experimentally can be created by the deposition of a ferromagnetic stripe on a semiconductor quantum well with magnetization parallel or perpendicular to the grown direction of the well. We find that it is possible to confine excitons into one-dimensional (1D) traps. We show that the dependence of the confinement energy on the exciton wave vector, which is related to its free direction of motion along the wire direction, is very small. Through the application of a background magnetic field it is possible to move the position of the trapping region towards the edge of the ferromagnetic stripe or even underneath the stripe. The exact position of this 1D exciton channel depends on the strength of the background magnetic field and on the magnetic polarisation direction of the ferromagnetic film.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures, to be published in J. Phys: Condens. Matte

Domain wall description of superconductivity

In the present work we shall address the issue of electrical conductivity in superconductors in the perspective of superconducting domain wall solutions in the realm of field theory. We take our set up made out of a dynamical complex scalar field coupled to gauge field to be responsible for superconductivity and an extra scalar real field that plays the role of superconducting domain walls. The temperature of the system is interpreted through the fact that the soliton following accelerating orbits is a Rindler observer experiencing a thermal bath.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures, Latex. Version to appear in PL

Field-theoretical renormalization group for a flat two-dimensional Fermi surface

We implement an explicit two-loop calculation of the coupling functions and the self-energy of interacting fermions with a two-dimensional flat Fermi surface in the framework of the field theoretical renormalization group (RG) approach. Throughout the calculation both the Fermi surface and the Fermi velocity are assumed to be fixed and unaffected by interactions. We show that in two dimensions, in a weak coupling regime, there is no significant change in the RG flow compared to the well-known one-loop results available in the literature. However, if we extrapolate the flow to a moderate coupling regime there are interesting new features associated with an anisotropic suppression of the quasiparticle weight Z along the Fermi surface, and the vanishing of the renormalized coupling functions for several choices of the external momenta.Comment: 16 pages and 22 figure