225 research outputs found
Characteristic molecular properties of one-electron double quantum rings under magnetic fields
The molecular states of conduction electrons in laterally coupled quantum
rings are investigated theoretically. The states are shown to have a distinct
magnetic field dependence, which gives rise to periodic fluctuations of the
tunnel splitting and ring angular momentum in the vicinity of the ground state
crossings. The origin of these effects can be traced back to the Aharonov-Bohm
oscillations of the energy levels, along with the quantum mechanical tunneling
between the rings. We propose a setup using double quantum rings which shows
that Aharonov-Bohm effects can be observed even if the net magnetic flux
trapped by the carriers is zero.Comment: 16 pages (iopart format), 10 figures, accepted in J.Phys.Cond.Mat
Theory of electrons, holes and excitons in GaAs polytype quantum dots
Single and multi-band (Burt-Foreman) k.p Hamiltonians for GaAs crystal phase
quantum dots are developed and used to assess ongoing experimental activity on
the role of such factors as quantum confinement, spontaneous polarization,
valence band mixing and exciton Coulomb interaction. Spontaneous polarization
is found to be a dominating term. Together with the control of dot thickness
[Vainorious Nano Lett. 15, 2652 (2015)] it enables wide exciton wavelength and
lifetime tunability. Several new phenomena are predicted for small diameter
dots [Loitsch et al. Adv. Mater. 27, 2195 (2015)], including non-heavy hole
ground state, strong hole spin admixture and a type-II to type-I exciton
transition, which can be used to improve the absorption strength and reduce the
radiative lifetime of GaAs polytypes
Electronic structure of few-electron concentric double quantum rings
The ground state structure of few-electron concentric double quantum rings is
investigated within the local spin density approximation. Signatures of
inter-ring coupling in the addition energy spectrum are identified and
discussed. We show that the electronic configurations in these structures can
be greatly modulated by the inter-ring distance: At short and long distances
the low-lying electron states localize in the inner and outer rings,
respectively, and the energy structure is essentially that of an isolated
single quantum ring. However, at intermediate distances the electron states
localized in the inner and the outer ring become quasi-degenerate and a rather
entangled, strongly-correlated system is formed.Comment: 16 pages (preprint format), 6 figure
On the role of AGN feedback on the thermal and chemodynamical properties of the hot intra-cluster medium
We present an analysis of the properties of the ICM in an extended set of
cosmological hydrodynamical simulations of galaxy clusters and groups performed
with the TreePM+SPH GADGET-3 code. Besides a set of non-radiative simulations,
we carried out two sets of simulations including radiative cooling, star
formation, metal enrichment and feedback from supernovae, one of which also
accounts for the effect of feedback from AGN resulting from gas accretion onto
super-massive black holes. These simulations are analysed with the aim of
studying the relative role played by SN and AGN feedback on the general
properties of the diffuse hot baryons in galaxy clusters and groups: scaling
relations, temperature, entropy and pressure radial profiles, and ICM chemical
enrichment. We find that simulations including AGN feedback produce scaling
relations that are in good agreement with X-ray observations at all mass
scales. However, our simulations are not able to account for the observed
diversity between CC and NCC clusters: unlike for observations, we find that
temperature and entropy profiles of relaxed and unrelaxed clusters are quite
similar and resemble more the observed behaviour of NCC clusters. As for the
pattern of metal enrichment, we find that an enhanced level of iron abundance
is produced by AGN feedback with respect to the case of purely SN feedback. As
a result, while simulations including AGN produce values of iron abundance in
groups in agreement with observations, they over-enrich the ICM in massive
clusters. The efficiency of AGN feedback in displacing enriched gas from halos
into the inter-galactic medium at high redshift also creates a widespread
enrichment in the outskirts of clusters and produces profiles of iron abundance
whose slope is in better agreement with observations.Comment: 23 pages, 14 figures, 1 table, accepted for publication in MNRA
Dielectric control of spin in semiconductor spherical quantum dots
The ground state electronic configuration of semiconductor spherical quantum dots populated with
different numbers of excess electrons, for different radii and dielectric constants of the embedding
medium is calculated and the corresponding phase diagram drawn. To this end, an extension of the
spin density functional theory to study systems with variable effective mass and dielectric constant
is employed. Our results show that high/low spin configurations can be switched by appropriate
changes in the quantum dot embedding environment and suggest the use of the quantum dot spin as
a sensor of the dielectric response of medi
Cool Core Clusters from Cosmological Simulations
We present results obtained from a set of cosmological hydrodynamic
simulations of galaxy clusters, aimed at comparing predictions with
observational data on the diversity between cool-core (CC) and non-cool-core
(NCC) clusters. Our simulations include the effects of stellar and AGN feedback
and are based on an improved version of the smoothed particle hydrodynamics
code GADGET-3, which ameliorates gas mixing and better captures gas-dynamical
instabilities by including a suitable artificial thermal diffusion. In this
Letter, we focus our analysis on the entropy profiles, the primary diagnostic
we used to classify the degree of cool-coreness of clusters, and on the iron
profiles. In keeping with observations, our simulated clusters display a
variety of behaviors in entropy profiles: they range from steadily decreasing
profiles at small radii, characteristic of cool-core systems, to nearly flat
core isentropic profiles, characteristic of non-cool-core systems. Using
observational criteria to distinguish between the two classes of objects, we
find that they occur in similar proportions in both simulations and in
observations. Furthermore, we also find that simulated cool-core clusters have
profiles of iron abundance that are steeper than those of NCC clusters, which
is also in agreement with observational results. We show that the capability of
our simulations to generate a realistic cool-core structure in the cluster
population is due to AGN feedback and artificial thermal diffusion: their
combined action allows us to naturally distribute the energy extracted from
super-massive black holes and to compensate for the radiative losses of
low-entropy gas with short cooling time residing in the cluster core.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, accepted in ApJL, v2 contains some modifications
on the text (results unchanged
Cosmological hydrodynamical simulations of galaxy clusters: X-ray scaling relations and their evolution
We analyse cosmological hydrodynamical simulations of galaxy clusters to
study the X-ray scaling relations between total masses and observable
quantities such as X-ray luminosity, gas mass, X-ray temperature, and .
Three sets of simulations are performed with an improved version of the
smoothed particle hydrodynamics GADGET-3 code. These consider the following:
non-radiative gas, star formation and stellar feedback, and the addition of
feedback by active galactic nuclei (AGN). We select clusters with , mimicking the typical selection of
Sunyaev-Zeldovich samples. This permits to have a mass range large enough to
enable robust fitting of the relations even at . The results of the
analysis show a general agreement with observations. The values of the slope of
the mass-gas mass and mass-temperature relations at are 10 per cent lower
with respect to due to the applied mass selection, in the former case,
and to the effect of early merger in the latter. We investigate the impact of
the slope variation on the study of the evolution of the normalization. We
conclude that cosmological studies through scaling relations should be limited
to the redshift range , where we find that the slope, the scatter, and
the covariance matrix of the relations are stable. The scaling between mass and
is confirmed to be the most robust relation, being almost independent of
the gas physics. At higher redshifts, the scaling relations are sensitive to
the inclusion of AGNs which influences low-mass systems. The detailed study of
these objects will be crucial to evaluate the AGN effect on the ICM.Comment: 24 pages, 11 figures, 5 tables, replaced to match accepted versio
An improved SPH scheme for cosmological simulations
We present an implementation of smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) with
improved accuracy for simulations of galaxies and the large-scale structure. In
particular, we combine, implement, modify and test a vast majority of SPH
improvement techniques in the latest instalment of the GADGET code. We use the
Wendland kernel functions, a particle wake-up time-step limiting mechanism and
a time-dependent scheme for artificial viscosity, which includes a high-order
gradient computation and shear flow limiter. Additionally, we include a novel
prescription for time-dependent artificial conduction, which corrects for
gravitationally induced pressure gradients and largely improves the SPH
performance in capturing the development of gas-dynamical instabilities. We
extensively test our new implementation in a wide range of hydrodynamical
standard tests including weak and strong shocks as well as shear flows,
turbulent spectra, gas mixing, hydrostatic equilibria and self-gravitating gas
clouds. We jointly employ all modifications; however, when necessary we study
the performance of individual code modules. We approximate hydrodynamical
states more accurately and with significantly less noise than standard SPH.
Furthermore, the new implementation promotes the mixing of entropy between
different fluid phases, also within cosmological simulations. Finally, we study
the performance of the hydrodynamical solver in the context of radiative galaxy
formation and non-radiative galaxy cluster formation. We find galactic disks to
be colder, thinner and more extended and our results on galaxy clusters show
entropy cores instead of steadily declining entropy profiles. In summary, we
demonstrate that our improved SPH implementation overcomes most of the
undesirable limitations of standard SPH, thus becoming the core of an efficient
code for large cosmological simulations.Comment: 21 figures, 2 tables, accepted to MNRA
Diverse cytomotive actins and tubulins share a polymerization switch mechanism conferring robust dynamics
Protein filaments are used in myriads of ways to organize other molecules within cells. Some filament-forming proteins couple the hydrolysis of nucleotides to their polymerization cycle, thus powering the movement of other molecules. These filaments are termed cytomotive. Only members of the actin and tubulin protein superfamilies are known to form cytomotive filaments. We examined the basis of cytomotivity via structural studies of the polymerization cycles of actin and tubulin homologs from across the tree of life. We analyzed published data and performed structural experiments designed to disentangle functional components of these complex filament systems. Our analysis demonstrates the existence of shared subunit polymerization switches among both cytomotive actins and tubulins, i.e., the conformation of subunits switches upon assembly into filaments. These cytomotive switches can explain filament robustness, by enabling the coupling of kinetic and structural polarities required for cytomotive behaviors and by ensuring that single cytomotive filaments do not fall apart
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