943 research outputs found
Dirac gap-induced graphene quantum dot in an electrostatic potential
A spatially modulated Dirac gap in a graphene sheet leads to charge
confinement, thus enabling a graphene quantum dot to be formed without the
application of external electric and magnetic fields [Appl. Phys. Lett.
\textbf{97}, 243106 (2010)]. This can be achieved provided the Dirac gap has a
local minimum in which the states become localised. In this work, the physics
of such a gap-induced dot is investigated in the continuum limit by solving the
Dirac equation. It is shown that gap-induced confined states couple to the
states introduced by an electrostatic quantum well potential. Hence the region
in which the resulting hybridized states are localised can be tuned with the
potential strength, an effect which involves Klein tunneling. The proposed
quantum dot may be used to probe quasi-relativistic effects in graphene, while
the induced confined states may be useful for graphene-based nanostructures.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figure
Optomechanical-like coupling between superconducting resonators
We propose and analyze a circuit that implements a nonlinear coupling between
two superconducting microwave resonators. The resonators are coupled through a
superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) that terminates one of the
resonators. This produces a nonlinear interaction on the standard
optomechanical form, where the quadrature of one resonator couples to the
photon number of the other resonator. The circuit therefore allows for
all-electrical realizations of analogs to optomechanical systems, with coupling
that can be both strong and tunable. We estimate the coupling strengths that
should be attainable with the proposed device, and we find that the device is a
promising candidate for realizing the single-photon strong-coupling regime. As
a potential application, we discuss implementations of networks of
nonlinearly-coupled microwave resonators, which could be used in
microwave-photon based quantum simulation.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figure
The dynamical Casimir effect in superconducting microwave circuits
We theoretically investigate the dynamical Casimir effect in electrical
circuits based on superconducting microfabricated waveguides with tunable
boundary conditions. We propose to implement a rapid modulation of the boundary
conditions by tuning the applied magnetic flux through superconducting quantum
interference devices (SQUIDs) that are embedded in the waveguide circuits. We
consider two circuits: (i) An open waveguide circuit that corresponds to a
single mirror in free space, and (ii) a resonator coupled to a microfabricated
waveguide, which corresponds to a single-sided cavity in free space. We analyze
the properties of the dynamical Casimir effect in these two setups by
calculating the generated photon-flux density, output-field correlation
functions, and the quadrature squeezing spectra. We show that these properties
of the output field exhibit signatures unique to the radiation due to the
dynamical Casimir effect, and could therefore be used for distinguishing the
dynamical Casimir effect from other types of radiation in these circuits. We
also discuss the similarities and differences between the dynamical Casimir
effect, in the resonator setup, and downconversion of pump photons in
parametric oscillators.Comment: 18 pages, 14 figure
Detectable inertial effects on Brownian transport through narrow pores
We investigate the transport of suspended Brownian particles dc driven along
corrugated narrow channels in a regime of finite damping. We demonstrate that
inertial corrections cannot be neglected as long as the width of the channel
bottlenecks is smaller than an appropriate particle diffusion length, which
depends on both, the temperature and the strength of the dc drive. Therefore,
transport through sufficiently narrow constrictions turns out to be sensitive
to the viscosity of the suspension fluid. Applications to colloidal systems are
discussed
- …