9,375 research outputs found
Thermal fluctuations in moderately damped Josephson junctions: Multiple escape and retrapping, switching- and return-current distributions and hysteresis
A crossover at a temperature T* in the temperature dependence of the width s
of the distribution of switching currents of moderately damped Josephson
junctions has been reported in a number of recent publications, with positive
ds/dT and IV characteristics associated with underdamped behaviour for lower
temperatures T<T*, and negative ds/dT and IV characteristics resembling
overdamped behaviour for higher temperatures T>T*. We have investigated in
detail the behaviour of Josephson junctions around the temperature T* by using
Monte Carlo simulations including retrapping from the running state into the
supercurrent state as given by the model of Ben-Jacob et al. We develop
discussion of the important role of multiple escape and retrapping events in
the moderate-damping regime, in particular considering the behaviour in the
region close to T*. We show that the behaviour is more fully understood by
considering two crossover temperatures, and that the shape of the distribution
and s(T) around T*, as well as at lower T<T*, are largely determined by the
shape of the conventional thermally activated switching distribution. We show
that the characteristic temperatures T* are not unique for a particular
Josephson junction, but have some dependence on the ramp rate of the applied
bias current. We also consider hysteresis in moderately damped Josephson
junctions and discuss the less commonly measured distribution of return
currents for a decreasing current ramp. We find that some hysteresis should be
expected to persist above T* and we highlight the importance, even well below
T*, of accounting properly for thermal fluctuations when determining the
damping parameter Q.Comment: Accepted for publication in PR
An entropy stable discontinuous Galerkin method for the shallow water equations on curvilinear meshes with wet/dry fronts accelerated by GPUs
We extend the entropy stable high order nodal discontinuous Galerkin spectral
element approximation for the non-linear two dimensional shallow water
equations presented by Wintermeyer et al. [N. Wintermeyer, A. R. Winters, G. J.
Gassner, and D. A. Kopriva. An entropy stable nodal discontinuous Galerkin
method for the two dimensional shallow water equations on unstructured
curvilinear meshes with discontinuous bathymetry. Journal of Computational
Physics, 340:200-242, 2017] with a shock capturing technique and a positivity
preservation capability to handle dry areas. The scheme preserves the entropy
inequality, is well-balanced and works on unstructured, possibly curved,
quadrilateral meshes. For the shock capturing, we introduce an artificial
viscosity to the equations and prove that the numerical scheme remains entropy
stable. We add a positivity preserving limiter to guarantee non-negative water
heights as long as the mean water height is non-negative. We prove that
non-negative mean water heights are guaranteed under a certain additional time
step restriction for the entropy stable numerical interface flux. We implement
the method on GPU architectures using the abstract language OCCA, a unified
approach to multi-threading languages. We show that the entropy stable scheme
is well suited to GPUs as the necessary extra calculations do not negatively
impact the runtime up to reasonably high polynomial degrees (around ). We
provide numerical examples that challenge the shock capturing and positivity
properties of our scheme to verify our theoretical findings
Fabrication of mirror templates in silica with micron-sized radii of curvature
We present the fabrication of exceptionally small-radius concave microoptics
on fused silica substrates using CO2 laser ablation and subsequent reactive ion
etching. The protocol yields on-axis near-Gaussian depressions with radius of
curvature microns at shallow depth and low surface roughness of 2
angstroms. This geometry is appealing for cavity quantum electrodynamics where
small mode volumes and low scattering losses are desired. We study the optical
performance of the structure within a tunable Fabry-Perot type microcavity,
demonstrate near-coating-limited loss rates (F = 25,000) and small focal
lengths consistent with their geometrical dimensions.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure
Electric field sensing with a scanning fiber-coupled quantum dot
We demonstrate the application of a fiber-coupled quantum-dot-in-a-tip as a
probe for scanning electric field microscopy. We map the out-of-plane component
of the electric field induced by a pair of electrodes by measurement of the
quantum-confined Stark effect induced on a quantum dot spectral line. Our
results are in agreement with finite element simulations of the experiment.
Furthermore, we present results from analytic calculations and simulations
which are relevant to any electric field sensor embedded in a dielectric tip.
In particular, we highlight the impact of the tip geometry on both the
resolution and sensitivity.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figure
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