Improved chlorate candle provides concentrated oxygen source

Improved chlorate candle is used as a solid, portable source of oxygen in emergency situations. It contains sodium chlorate, iron, barium peroxide, and glass mixed in powdered form. The oxygen evolves from the decomposition of the sodium chlorate when an ignition pellet is electrically initiated

Competition between Kondo screening and quantum Hall edge reconstruction

We report on a Kondo correlated quantum dot connected to two-dimensional leads where we demonstrate the renormalization of the g-factor in the pure Zeeman case i.e, for magnetic fields parallel to the plane of the quantum dot. For the same system we study the influence of orbital effects by investigating the quantum Hall regime i.e. a perpendicular magnetic field is applied. In this case an unusual behaviour of the suppression of the Kondo effect and of the split zero-bias anomaly is observed. The splitting decreases with magnetic field and shows discontinuous changes which are attributed to the intricate interplay between Kondo screening and the quantum Hall edge structure originating from electrostatic screening. This edge structure made up of compressible and incompressible stripes strongly affects the Kondo temperature of the quantum dot and thereby influences the renormalized g-factor

Optical properties of current carrying molecular wires

We consider several fundamental optical phenomena involving single molecules in biased metal-molecule-metal junctions. The molecule is represented by its highest occupied and lowest unoccupied molecular orbitals, and the analysis involves the simultaneous consideration of three coupled fluxes: the electronic current through the molecule, energy flow between the molecule and electron-hole excitations in the leads and the incident and/or emitted photon flux. Using a unified theoretical approach based on the non-equilibrium Green function method we derive expressions for the absorption lineshape (not an observable but a ueful reference for considering yields of other optical processes) and for the current induced molecular emission in such junctions. We also consider conditions under which resonance radiation can induce electronic current in an unbiased junction. We find that current driven molecular emission and resonant light induced electronic currents in single molecule junctions can be of observable magnitude under appropriate realizable conditions. In particular, light induced current should be observed in junctions involving molecular bridges that are characterized by strong charge transfer optical transitions. For observing current induced molecular emission we find that in addition to the familiar need to control the damping of molecular excitations into the metal substrate the phenomenon is also sensitive to the way in which the potential bias si distributed on the junction.Comment: 56 pages, 8 figures; submitted to JC

Kinetics of electron-positron pair plasmas using an adaptive Monte Carlo method

A new algorithm for implementing the adaptive Monte Carlo method is given. It is used to solve the relativistic Boltzmann equations that describe the time evolution of a nonequilibrium electron-positron pair plasma containing high-energy photons and pairs. The collision kernels for the photons as well as pairs are constructed for Compton scattering, pair annihilation and creation, bremsstrahlung, and Bhabha & Moller scattering. For a homogeneous and isotropic plasma, analytical equilibrium solutions are obtained in terms of the initial conditions. For two non-equilibrium models, the time evolution of the photon and pair spectra is determined using the new method. The asymptotic numerical solutions are found to be in a good agreement with the analytical equilibrium states. Astrophysical applications of this scheme are discussed.Comment: 43 pages, 7 postscript figures, to appear in the Astrophysical Journa

Quantum transport in chains with noisy off-diagonal couplings

We present a model for conductivity and energy diffusion in a linear chain described by a quadratic Hamiltonian with Gaussian noise. We show that when the correlation matrix is diagonal, the noise-averaged Liouville-von Neumann equation governing the time-evolution of the system reduces to the Lindblad equation with Hermitian Lindblad operators. We show that the noise-averaged density matrix for the system expectation values of the energy density and the number density satisfy discrete versions of the heat and diffusion equations. Transport coefficients are given in terms of model Hamiltonian parameters. We discuss conditions on the Hamiltonian under which the noise-averaged expectation value of the total energy remains constant. For chains placed between two heat reservoirs, the gradient of the energy density along the chain is linear.Comment: 6 pages, to appear in J. Chem. Phy

Ultrafast Magnetization Dynamics in Diluted Magnetic Semiconductors

We present a dynamical model that successfully explains the observed time evolution of the magnetization in diluted magnetic semiconductor quantum wells after weak laser excitation. Based on the pseudo-fermion formalism and a second order many-particle expansion of the exact p-d exchange interaction, our approach goes beyond the usual mean-field approximation. It includes both the sub-picosecond demagnetization dynamics and the slower relaxation processes which restore the initial ferromagnetic order in a nanosecond time scale. In agreement with experimental results, our numerical simulations show that, depending on the value of the initial lattice temperature, a subsequent enhancement of the total magnetization may be observed within a time scale of few hundreds of picoseconds.Comment: Submitted to PR

Signatures of spin in the n=1/3 Fractional Quantum Hall Effect

The activation gap Delta of the fractional quantum Hall state at constant filling n =1/3 is measured in wide range of perpendicular magnetic field B. Despite the full spin polarization of the incompressible ground state, we observe a sharp crossover between a low-field linear dependence of Delta on B associated to spin texture excitations and a Coulomb-like behavior at large B. From the global gap-reduction we get information about the mobility edges in the fractional quantum Hall regime.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Theoretical study of electronic transport through a small quantum dot with a magnetic impurity

We model a small quantum dot with a magnetic impurity by the Anderson Hamiltonian with a supplementary exchange interaction term. The transport calculations are performed by means of the Green functions within the equation of motion scheme, in which two decoupling procedures are proposed, for high and low temperatures, respectively. The paper focuses on the charge fluctuations for such a system, aspect not addressed before, as well as on the Kondo resonance. We show a specific role of the excited state, which can be observed in transport and in spin-spin correlations. Our studies show on a new many-body feature of the phase shift of transmitted electrons, which is manifested in a specific dip. In the Kondo regime, our calculations complement existing theoretical results. The system shows three Kondo peaks in the density of states: one at the Fermi energy and two side peaks, at a distance corresponding to the singlet-triplet level spacing. The existence of the central peak is conditioned by a degenerate state (the triplet) below the Fermi energy.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figure