An {\it ab initio} study of the magnetic and electronic properties of Fe, Co, and Ni nanowires on Cu(001) surface

Magnetism at the nanoscale has been a very active research area in the past decades, because of its novel fundamental physics and exciting potential applications. We have recently performed an {\it ab intio} study of the structural, electronic and magnetic properties of all 3$d$ transition metal (TM) freestanding atomic chains and found that Fe and Ni nanowires have a giant magnetic anisotropy energy (MAE), indicating that these nanowires would have applications in high density magnetic data storages. In this paper, we perform density functional calculations for the Fe, Co and Ni linear atomic chains on Cu(001) surface within the generalized gradient approximation, in order to investigate how the substrates would affect the magnetic properties of the nanowires. We find that Fe, Co and Ni linear chains on Cu(001) surface still have a stable or metastable ferromagnetic state. When spin-orbit coupling (SOC) is included, the spin magnetic moments remain almost unchanged, due to the weakness of SOC in 3$d$ TM chains, whilst significant orbital magnetic moments appear and also are direction-dependent. Finally, we find that the MAE for Fe, and Co remains large, i.e., being not much affected by the presence of Cu substrate.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure

Information filtering via biased heat conduction

Heat conduction process has recently found its application in personalized recommendation [T. Zhou \emph{et al.}, PNAS 107, 4511 (2010)], which is of high diversity but low accuracy. By decreasing the temperatures of small-degree objects, we present an improved algorithm, called biased heat conduction (BHC), which could simultaneously enhance the accuracy and diversity. Extensive experimental analyses demonstrate that the accuracy on MovieLens, Netflix and Delicious datasets could be improved by 43.5%, 55.4% and 19.2% compared with the standard heat conduction algorithm, and the diversity is also increased or approximately unchanged. Further statistical analyses suggest that the present algorithm could simultaneously identify users' mainstream and special tastes, resulting in better performance than the standard heat conduction algorithm. This work provides a creditable way for highly efficient information filtering.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

A non-variational approach to nonlinear stability in stellar dynamics applied to the King model

In previous work by Y. Guo and G. Rein, nonlinear stability of equilibria in stellar dynamics, i.e., of steady states of the Vlasov-Poisson system, was accessed by variational techniques. Here we propose a different, non-variational technique and use it to prove nonlinear stability of the King model against a class of spherically symmetric, dynamically accessible perturbations. This model is very important in astrophysics and was out of reach of the previous techniques

Systematic {\it ab initio} study of the magnetic and electronic properties of all 3d transition metal linear and zigzag nanowires

It is found that all the zigzag chains except the nonmagnetic (NM) Ni and antiferromagnetic (AF) Fe chains which form a twisted two-legger ladder, look like a corner-sharing triangle ribbon, and have a lower total energy than the corresponding linear chains. All the 3d transition metals in both linear and zigzag structures have a stable or metastable ferromagnetic (FM) state. The electronic spin-polarization at the Fermi level in the FM Sc, V, Mn, Fe, Co and Ni linear chains is close to 90% or above. In the zigzag structure, the AF state is more stable than the FM state only in the Cr chain. It is found that the shape anisotropy energy may be comparable to the electronic one and always prefers the axial magnetization in both the linear and zigzag structures. In the zigzag chains, there is also a pronounced shape anisotropy in the plane perpendicular to the chain axis. Remarkably, the axial magnetic anisotropy in the FM Ni linear chain is gigantic, being ~12 meV/atom. Interestingly, there is a spin-reorientation transition in the FM Fe and Co linear chains when the chains are compressed or elongated. Large orbital magnetic moment is found in the FM Fe, Co and Ni linear chains

Magnetic moment and magnetic anisotropy of linear and zigzag 4{\it d} and 5{\it d} transition metal nanowires: First-principles calculations

An extensive {\it ab initio} study of the physical properties of both linear and zigzag atomic chains of all 4$d$ and 5$d$ transition metals (TM) within the GGA by using the accurate PAW method, has been carried out. All the TM linear chains are found to be unstable against the corresponding zigzag structures. All the TM chains, except Nb, Ag and La, have a stable (or metastable) magnetic state in either the linear or zigzag or both structures. Magnetic states appear also in the sufficiently stretched Nb and La linear chains and in the largely compressed Y and La chains. The spin magnetic moments in the Mo, Tc, Ru, Rh, W, Re chains could be large ($\geq$1.0 $\mu_B$/atom). Structural transformation from the linear to zigzag chains could suppress the magnetism already in the linear chain, induce the magnetism in the zigzag structure, and also cause a change of the magnetic state (ferromagnetic to antiferroamgetic or vice verse). The calculations including the spin-orbit coupling reveal that the orbital moments in the Zr, Tc, Ru, Rh, Pd, Hf, Ta, W, Re, Os, Ir and Pt chains could be rather large ($\geq$0.1 $\mu_B$/atom). Importantly, large magnetic anisotropy energy ($\geq$1.0 meV/atom) is found in most of the magnetic TM chains, suggesting that these nanowires could have fascinating applications in ultrahigh density magnetic memories and hard disks. In particular, giant magnetic anisotropy energy ($\geq$10.0 meV/atom) could appear in the Ru, Re, Rh, and Ir chains. Furthermore, the magnetic anisotropy energy in several elongated linear chains could be as large as 40.0 meV/atom. A spin-reorientation transition occurs in the Ru, Ir, Ta, Zr, La and Zr, Ru, La, Ta and Ir linear chains when they are elongated. Remarkably, all the 5$d$ as well as Tc and Pd chains show the colossal magnetic anisotropy (i.e., it is impossible to rotate magnetization into certain directions). Finally, the electronic band structure and density of states of the nanowires have also been calculated in order to understand the electronic origin of the large magnetic anisotropy and orbital magnetic moment as well as to estimate the conduction electron spin polarization.Comment: To appear in Phys. Rev.

Observation of an in-plane magnetic-field-driven phase transition in a quantum Hall system with SU(4) symmetry

In condensed matter physics, the study of electronic states with SU(N) symmetry has attracted considerable and growing attention in recent years, as systems with such a symmetry can often have a spontaneous symmetry-breaking effect giving rise to a novel ground state. For example, pseudospin quantum Hall ferromagnet of broken SU(2) symmetry has been realized by bringing two Landau levels close to degeneracy in a bilayer quantum Hall system. In the past several years, the exploration of collective states in other multi-component quantum Hall systems has emerged. Here we show the conventional pseudospin quantum Hall ferromagnetic states with broken SU(2) symmetry collapsed rapidly into an unexpected state with broken SU(4) symmetry, by in-plane magnetic field in a two-subband GaAs/AlGaAs two-dimensional electron system at filling factor around $\nu=4$. Within a narrow tilting range angle of 0.5 degrees, the activation energy increases as much as 12 K. While the origin of this puzzling observation remains to be exploited, we discuss the possibility of a long-sought pairing state of electrons with a four-fold degeneracy.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figure

Triaxiality and shape coexistence in Germanium isotopes

The ground-state deformations of the Ge isotopes are investigated in the framework of Gogny-Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov (HFB) and Skyrme Hartree-Fock plus pairing in the BCS approximation. Five different Skyrme parametrizations are used to explore the influence of different effective masses and spin-orbit models. There is generally good agreement for binding energies and deformations (total quadrupole moment, triaxiality) with experimental data where available (i.e., in the valley of stability). All calculations agree in predicting a strong tendency for triaxial shapes in the Ge isotopes with only a few exceptions due to neutron (sub-)shell closures. The frequent occurrence of energetically very close shape isomers indicates that the underlying deformation energy landscape is very soft. The general triaxial softness of the Ge isotopes is demonstrated in the fully triaxial potential energy surface. The differences between the forces play an increasing role with increasing neutron number. This concerns particularly the influence of the spin-orbit model, which has a visible effect on the trend of binding energies towards the drip line. Different effective mass plays an important role in predicting the quadrupole and triaxial deformations. The pairing strength only weakly affects binding energies and total quadrupole deformations, but considerably influences triaxiality.Comment: 9 page

Flat galaxies with dark matter halos - existence and stability

We consider a model for a flat, disk-like galaxy surrounded by a halo of dark matter, namely a Vlasov-Poisson type system with two particle species, the stars which are restricted to the galactic plane and the dark matter particles. These constituents interact only through the gravitational potential which stars and dark matter create collectively. Using a variational approach we prove the existence of steady state solutions and their nonlinear stability under suitably restricted perturbations.Comment: 39 page