Pattern Formation of Ion Channels with State Dependent Electrophoretic Charges and Diffusion Constants in Fluid Membranes

A model of mobile, charged ion channels in a fluid membrane is studied. The channels may switch between an open and a closed state according to a simple two-state kinetics with constant rates. The effective electrophoretic charge and the diffusion constant of the channels may be different in the closed and in the open state. The system is modeled by densities of channel species, obeying simple equations of electro-diffusion. The lateral transmembrane voltage profile is determined from a cable-type equation. Bifurcations from the homogeneous, stationary state appear as hard-mode, soft-mode or hard-mode oscillatory transitions within physiologically reasonable ranges of model parameters. We study the dynamics beyond linear stability analysis and derive non-linear evolution equations near the transitions to stationary patterns.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures, will be submitted to Phys. Rev.

Inversion of the exciton built-in dipole moment in In(Ga)As quantum dots via nonlinear piezoelectric effect

We show that anisotropic biaxial stress can be used to tune the built-in dipole moment of excitons confined in In(Ga)As quantum dots up to complete erasure of its magnitude and inversion of its sign. We demonstrate that this phenomenon is due to piezoelectricity. We present a model to calculate the applied stress, taking advantage of the so-called piezotronic effect, which produces significant changes in the current-voltage characteristics of the strained diode-membranes containing the quantum dots. Finally, self-consistent k.p calculations reveal that the experimental findings can be only accounted for by the nonlinear piezoelectric effect, whose importance in quantum dot physics has been theoretically recognized although it has proven difficult to single out experimentally.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figure

Formation of complex Langmuir and Langmuir-Blodgett films of water soluble rosebengal

This communication reports the formation of complex Langmuir monolayer at the air-water interface by charge transfer types of interaction with the water soluble N- cetyl N, N, N trimethyl ammonium bromide (CTAB) molecules doped with rosebengal (RB), with the stearic acid (SA) molecules of a preformed SA Langmuir monolayer. The reaction kinetics of the formation of RB-CTAB-SA complex monolayer was monitored by observing the increase in surface pressure with time while the barrier was kept fixed. Completion of interaction kinetics was confirmed by FTIR study. This complex Langmuir films at the air-water interface was transferred onto solid substrates at a desired surface pressure to form multilayered Langmuir-Blodgett films. Spectroscopic characterizations reveal some molecular level interactions as well as formation of microcrystalline aggregates depending upon the molar ratios of CTAB and RB within the complex LB films. Presence of two types of species in the complex LB films was confirmed by fluorescence spectroscopy.Comment: 13 pages, figures

Forces on Dust Grains Exposed to Anisotropic Interstellar Radiation Fields

Grains exposed to anisotropic radiation fields are subjected to forces due to the asymmetric photon-stimulated ejection of particles. These forces act in addition to the ``radiation pressure'' due to absorption and scattering. Here we model the forces due to photoelectron emission and the photodesorption of adatoms. The ``photoelectric'' force depends on the ambient conditions relevant to grain charging. We find that it is comparable to the radiation pressure when the grain potential is relatively low and the radiation spectrum is relatively hard. The calculation of the ``photodesorption'' force is highly uncertain, since the surface physics and chemsitry of grain materials are poorly understood at present. For our simple yet plausible model, the photodesorption force dominates the radiation pressure for grains with size >~0.1 micron exposed to starlight from OB stars. We find that the anisotropy of the interstellar radiation field is ~10% in the visible and ultraviolet. We estimate size-dependent drift speeds for grains in the cold and warm neutral media and find that micron-sized grains could potentially be moved across a diffuse cloud during its lifetime.Comment: LaTeX(41 pages, 19 figures), submitted to Ap

Molecular hydrogen formation on grain surfaces

We reconsider H2 formation on grain surfaces. We develop a rate equation model which takes into account the presence of both physisorbed and chemisorbed sites on the surface, including quantum mechanical tunnelling and thermal diffusion. In this study, we took into consideration the uncertainties on the characteristics of graphitic surfaces. We calculate the H2 formation efficiency with the Langmuir Hinshelwood and Eley Rideal mechanisms, and discuss the importance of these mechanisms for a wide range of grain and gas temperatures. We also develop a Monte Carlo simulation to calculate the H2 formation efficiency and compare the results to our rate equation models. Our results are the following: (1) Depending on the barrier against chemisorption, we predict the efficiency of H2 formation for a wide range of grain and gas temperatures. (2) The Eley-Rideal mechanism has an impact on the H2 formation efficiency at high grain and gas temperatures. (3) The fact that we consider chemisorption in our model makes the rate equation and Monte Carlo approaches equivalent.Comment: in "Light, dust and chemical evolution", Journal of Physics: Conference Serie

Resolving the temporal evolution of line broadening in single quantum emitters

Light emission from solid-state quantum emitters is inherently prone to environmental decoherence, which results in a line broadening and in the deterioration of photon indistinguishability. Here we employ photon correlation Fourier spectroscopy (PCFS) to study the temporal evolution of such a broadening in two prominent systems: GaAs and In(Ga)As quantum dots. Differently from previous experiments, the emitters are driven with short laser pulses as required for the generation of high-purity single photons, the time scales we probe range from a few nanoseconds to milliseconds and, simultaneously, the spectral resolution we achieve can be as small as ∼ 2µeV. We find pronounced differences in the temporal evolution of different optical transition lines, which we attribute to differences in their homogeneous linewidth and sensitivity to charge noise. We analyze the effect of irradiation with additional white light, which reduces blinking at the cost of enhanced charge noise. Due to its robustness against experimental imperfections and its high temporal resolution and bandwidth, PCFS outperforms established spectroscopy techniques, such as Michelson interferometry. We discuss its practical implementation and the possibility to use it to estimate the indistinguishability of consecutively emitted single photons for applications in quantum communication and photonic-based quantum information processing

Strong-field terahertz-optical mixing in excitons

Driving a double-quantum-well excitonic intersubband resonance with a terahertz (THz) electric field of frequency \omega_{THz} generated terahertz optical sidebands \omega=\omega_{THz}+\omega_{NIR} on a weak NIR probe. At high THz intensities, the intersubband dipole energy which coupled two excitons was comparable to the THz photon energy. In this strong-field regime the sideband intensity displayed a non-monotonic dependence on the THz field strength. The oscillating refractive index which gives rise to the sidebands may be understood by the formation of Floquet states, which oscillate with the same periodicity as the driving THz field.Comment: 4 pages, 6 figure

Optical Properties of Vanadium in 4H Silicon Carbide for Quantum Technology

We study the optical properties of tetravalent vanadium impurities in 4H silicon carbide (4H SiC). Emission from two crystalline sites is observed at wavelengths of 1.28 \mum and 1.33 \mum, with optical lifetimes of 163 ns and 43 ns. Group theory and ab initio density functional supercell calculations enable unequivocal site assignment and shed light on the spectral features of the defects. We conclude with a brief outlook on applications in quantum photonics