Decoherence of interacting electrons in disordered conductors: on the relation between influence functional and diagrammatic approaches

We establish a connection between the influence functional approach of Golubev and Zaikin (GZ) and Keldysh diagrammatic perturbation theory for calculating the decoherence time of interacting electrons in disordered metals; we show how the standard diagrams for the Cooperon self energy can be recovered from GZ's influence functional $e^{- (i S_R + S_I)}$. This allows us to shed light on GZ's claim that $S_R$ is irrelevant for decoherence: $S_R$ generates as many important self energy diagrams as $S_I$; GZ's neglect of $S_R$ is permissible only at high temperatures ($T > \hbar / \tau_{el}$).Comment: 6 pages LaTeX, 2 figures, for conference proceedings: "Quantum Transport and Quantum Coherence" -- Localisation 2002 Sophia University, Tokyo, August 16-19, 2002, to be published in a supplement of the Journal of Physical Society of Japa

Electron transport and current fluctuations in short coherent conductors

Employing a real time effective action formalism we analyze electron transport and current fluctuations in comparatively short coherent conductors in the presence of electron-electron interactions. We demonstrate that, while Coulomb interaction tends to suppress electron transport, it may {\it strongly enhance} shot noise in scatterers with highly transparent conducting channels. This effect of excess noise is governed by the Coulomb gap observed in the current-voltage characteristics of such scatterers. We also analyze the frequency dispersion of higher current cumulants and emphasize a direct relation between electron-electron interaction effects and current fluctuations in disordered mesoscopic conductors.Comment: 16 pages, 4 figure

Effect of Nyquist Noise on the Nyquist Dephasing Rate in 2d Electron Systems

We measure the effect of externally applied broadband Nyquist noise on the intrinsic Nyquist dephasing rate of electrons in a two-dimensional electron gas at low temperatures. Within the measurement error, the phase coherence time is unaffected by the externally applied Nyquist noise, including applied noise temperatures of up to 300 K. The amplitude of the applied Nyquist noise from 100 MHz to 10 GHz is quantitatively determined in the same experiment using a microwave network analyzer.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures. Author affiliation clarified; acknowledgements modified. Replacement reason clarifie

Universal scaling of current fluctuations in disordered graphene

We analyze the full transport statistics of graphene with smooth disorder at low dopings. First we consider the case of 1D disorder for which the transmission probability distribution is given analytically in terms of the graphene-specific mean free path. All current cumulants are shown to scale with system parameters (doping, size, disorder strength and correlation length) in an identical fashion for large enough systems. In the case of 2D disorder, numerical evidence is given for the same kind of identical scaling of all current cumulants, so that the ratio of any two such cumulants is universal. Specific universal values are given for the Fano factor, which is smaller than the pseudodiffusive value of ballistic graphene (F=1/3) both for 1D (F=0.243) and 2D (F=0.295) disorder. On the other hand, conductivity in wide samples is shown to grow without saturation as \sqrt{L} and Log L with system length L in the 1D and 2D cases respectively.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figures. Published version, includes corrected figure for Fano facto

Quantum parallel dense coding of optical images

We propose quantum dense coding protocol for optical images. This protocol extends the earlier proposed dense coding scheme for continuous variables [S.L.Braunstein and H.J.Kimble, Phys.Rev.A 61, 042302 (2000)] to an essentially multimode in space and time optical quantum communication channel. This new scheme allows, in particular, for parallel dense coding of non-stationary optical images. Similar to some other quantum dense coding protocols, our scheme exploits the possibility of sending a classical message through only one of the two entangled spatially-multimode beams, using the other one as a reference system. We evaluate the Shannon mutual information for our protocol and find that it is superior to the standard quantum limit. Finally, we show how to optimize the performance of our scheme as a function of the spatio-temporal parameters of the multimode entangled light and of the input images.Comment: 15 pages, 4 figures, RevTeX4. Submitted to the Special Issue on Quantum Imaging in Journal of Modern Optic

New Examples of Systems of the Kowalevski Type

A new examples of integrable dynamical systems are constructed. An integration procedure leading to genus two theta-functions is presented. It is based on a recent notion of discriminantly separable polynomials. They have appeared in a recent reconsideration of the celebrated Kowalevski top, and their role here is analogue to the situation with the classical Kowalevski integration procedure.Comment: 17 page

Structure of natural impact glasses on AFM data

This work was supported by the RSF (project No. 17-17-01080)

Detection of a new methanol maser line with the Kitt Peak 12-m telescope by remote observing from Moscow

A new methanol maser line 6(-1)-5(0)E at 133 GHz was detected with the 12-m Kitt Peak radio telescope using remote observation mode from Moscow. Moderately strong, narrow maser lines were found in DR21(OH), DR21-W, OMC-2, M8E, NGC2264, L379, W33-Met. The masers have similar spectral features in other transitions of methanol-E at 36 and 84 GHz, and in transitions of methanol-A at 44 and 95 GHz. All these are Class I transitions, and the new masers also belong to Class I. In two other methanol transitions near 133 GHz, 5(-2)-6(-1)E and 6(2)-7(1)A+, only thermal emission was detected in some sources. Several other sources with wider lines in the transition 6(-1)-5(0)E also may be masers, since they do not show any emission at the two other methanol transitons near 133 GHz. These are NGC2071, S231, S255, GGD27, also known as Class I masers. The ratio of intensities and line widths of the 133 GHz masers and 44 GHz masers is consistent with the saturated maser model, in which the line rebroadening with respect to unsaturated masers is suppressed by cross relaxation due to elastic collisions.Comment: 4 pages, AASTeX text, uses aasms4.sty, 2 Postscript figures, to be published in Ap