1,627 research outputs found
Cones, pringles, and grain boundary landscapes in graphene topology
A polycrystalline graphene consists of perfect domains tilted at angle
{\alpha} to each other and separated by the grain boundaries (GB). These nearly
one-dimensional regions consist in turn of elementary topological defects,
5-pentagons and 7-heptagons, often paired up into 5-7 dislocations. Energy
G({\alpha}) of GB computed for all range 0<={\alpha}<=Pi/3, shows a slightly
asymmetric behavior, reaching ~5 eV/nm in the middle, where the 5's and 7's
qualitatively reorganize in transition from nearly armchair to zigzag
interfaces. Analysis shows that 2-dimensional nature permits the off-plane
relaxation, unavailable in 3-dimensional materials, qualitatively reducing the
energy of defects on one hand while forming stable 3D-landsapes on the other.
Interestingly, while the GB display small off-plane elevation, the random
distributions of 5's and 7's create roughness which scales inversely with
defect concentration, h ~ n^(-1/2)Comment: 9 pages, 4 figure
Twisting Graphene Nanoribbons into Carbon Nanotubes
Although carbon nanotubes consist of honeycomb carbon, they have never been
fabricated from graphene directly. Here, it is shown by quantum
molecular-dynamics simulations and classical continuum-elasticity modeling,
that graphene nanoribbons can, indeed, be transformed into carbon nanotubes by
means of twisting. The chiralities of the tubes thus fabricated can be not only
predicted but also externally controlled. This twisting route is an opportunity
for nanofabrication, and is easily generalizable to ribbons made of other
planar nanomaterials.Comment: 9 pages, 10 figure
Spectral properties of rotating electrons in quantum dots and their relation to quantum Hall liquids
The exact diagonalization technique is used to study many-particle properties
of interacting electrons with spin, confined in a two-dimensional harmonic
potential. The single-particle basis is limited to the lowest Landau level. The
results are analyzed as a function of the total angular momentum of the system.
Only at angular momenta corresponding to the filling factors 1, 1/3, 1/5 etc.
the system is fully polarized. The lowest energy states exhibit spin-waves,
domains, and localization, depending on the angular momentum. Vortices exist
only at excited polarized states. The high angular momentum limit shows
localization of electrons and separation of the charge and spin excitations.Comment: 14 pages 18 figure
Current-spin-density functional study of persistent currents in quantum rings
We present a numerical study of persistent currents in quantum rings using
current spin density functional theory (CSDFT). This formalism allows for a
systematic study of the joint effects of both spin, interactions and impurities
for realistic systems. It is illustrated that CSDFT is suitable for describing
the physical effects related to Aharonov-Bohm phases by comparing energy
spectra of impurity-free rings to existing exact diagonalization and
experimental results. Further, we examine the effects of a symmetry-breaking
impurity potential on the density and current characteristics of the system and
propose that narrowing the confining potential at fixed impurity potential will
suppress the persistent current in a characteristic way.Comment: 7 pages REVTeX, including 8 postscript figure
On the formation of Wigner molecules in small quantum dots
It was recently argued that in small quantum dots the electrons could
crystallize at much higher densities than in the infinite two-dimensional
electron gas. We compare predictions that the onset of spin polarization and
the formation of Wigner molecules occurs at a density parameter to the results of a straight-forward diagonalization of the Hamiltonian
matrix
Bayesian Parameter Estimation for Latent Markov Random Fields and Social Networks
Undirected graphical models are widely used in statistics, physics and
machine vision. However Bayesian parameter estimation for undirected models is
extremely challenging, since evaluation of the posterior typically involves the
calculation of an intractable normalising constant. This problem has received
much attention, but very little of this has focussed on the important practical
case where the data consists of noisy or incomplete observations of the
underlying hidden structure. This paper specifically addresses this problem,
comparing two alternative methodologies. In the first of these approaches
particle Markov chain Monte Carlo (Andrieu et al., 2010) is used to efficiently
explore the parameter space, combined with the exchange algorithm (Murray et
al., 2006) for avoiding the calculation of the intractable normalising constant
(a proof showing that this combination targets the correct distribution in
found in a supplementary appendix online). This approach is compared with
approximate Bayesian computation (Pritchard et al., 1999). Applications to
estimating the parameters of Ising models and exponential random graphs from
noisy data are presented. Each algorithm used in the paper targets an
approximation to the true posterior due to the use of MCMC to simulate from the
latent graphical model, in lieu of being able to do this exactly in general.
The supplementary appendix also describes the nature of the resulting
approximation.Comment: 26 pages, 2 figures, accepted in Journal of Computational and
Graphical Statistics (http://www.amstat.org/publications/jcgs.cfm
Diffusion Monte Carlo study of circular quantum dots
We present ground and excited state energies obtained from Diffusion Monte
Carlo (DMC) calculations, using accurate multiconfiguration wave functions, for
electrons () confined to a circular quantum dot. We analyze the
electron-electron pair correlation functions and compare the density and
correlation energies to the predictions of local spin density approximation
theory (LSDA). The DMC estimated change in electrochemical potential as
function of the number of electrons in the dot is compared to that from LSDA
and Hartree-Fock (HF) calculations.Comment: 7 pages, 4 eps figures. To be published in Phys. Rev. B, September
15th 2000. See erratum cond-mat/030571
Determination of the Bending Rigidity of Graphene via Electrostatic Actuation of Buckled Membranes
The small mass and atomic-scale thickness of graphene membranes make them
highly suitable for nanoelectromechanical devices such as e.g. mass sensors,
high frequency resonators or memory elements. Although only atomically thick,
many of the mechanical properties of graphene membranes can be described by
classical continuum mechanics. An important parameter for predicting the
performance and linearity of graphene nanoelectromechanical devices as well as
for describing ripple formation and other properties such as electron
scattering mechanisms, is the bending rigidity, {\kappa}. In spite of the
importance of this parameter it has so far only been estimated indirectly for
monolayer graphene from the phonon spectrum of graphite, estimated from AFM
measurements or predicted from ab initio calculations or bond-order potential
models. Here, we employ a new approach to the experimental determination of
{\kappa} by exploiting the snap-through instability in pre-buckled graphene
membranes. We demonstrate the reproducible fabrication of convex buckled
graphene membranes by controlling the thermal stress during the fabrication
procedure and show the abrupt switching from convex to concave geometry that
occurs when electrostatic pressure is applied via an underlying gate electrode.
The bending rigidity of bilayer graphene membranes under ambient conditions was
determined to be eV. Monolayers have significantly lower
{\kappa} than bilayers
- …